#the village fucked him over they set him up for failure and in some sense he knew it
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HE WAS SO MAD
#classic Kakashi DID disobey orders for his kids#It's insane when people say he'd never act rebellious against konoha when the evidence is there in the classic#or course things changed in shippuden#but in the classic? he went to the land of the waves mission without reporting the the classification was wrong#because he wanted to help tazuna properly#he allowed sasuke to fight in the preliminaries with the cursed mark and secretly sealed it went it was over#he hide the fact that a three men cell was needed for the chuning exams to give sakura the space to decide for herself what she wanted#he was all the time hiding information and acting on his own#even when he says later that he couldn't do much for them it's not because he didn't try#the village fucked him over they set him up for failure and in some sense he knew it#he accepted to be their sensei because he cared for them and he was on their side#I'm fully convinced that if shippuden had followed the classic as it was supposed to do kakashi would have rebelled in more than one way#but it didn't happen :( so#Kakashi Hatake#naruto#Tsunade Senju#Naruto Classic
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so we all know how disco elysium pays homage to the noir genre through its premise and tone, right? but have you thought about how it also hits a lot of the same plot beats as a spaghetti western? there's a lot of overlap between de and spaghetti westerns, so just stick with me babe, okay? firstly, the morality of the game is anything but clean cut. you can have harry do some fucked up shit because you're playing a cop and the game wants to hit home that legality and morality are not synonymous. harry just needs to do his job for the plot to progress. he doesn't have to be a good person to finish the game. next, alcoholism features heavily as a plot point. alcohol was everywhere in spaghetti westerns, and characters often struggle with alcohol addiction, though it's rare for the protagonist to be an alcoholic. a relatively surface level similarity is the fact that guns are present in both spaghetti westerns and de. then there's the fact that harry is a lawman. spaghettis feature lawman main characters often, if not in title then in spirit. even if a spaghetti doesn't explicitly name the progonist as a sheriff, he often fills the role of a peacekeeper or lawman through his persecution of the villains. also, martinaise is a great stand in for the common spagetti setting of a run down railroad town. practically all of the industry has left or been quashed out, leaving a town that's filled with the past and well on its way to becoming a ghost town (the fishing village especially). and another thing, babe - the townsfolk are (rightfully) hostile towards harry and kim, which is another common trope in spaghettis, a trope that's exacerbated not only by their status as lawmen, but by their status as outsiders (harry could even be called a drifter, if you play him as a hobocop). but one of the biggest similarities between de and the spaghetti western genre is the climatic shootout, right? you see, it's the culmination of the mounting tension weaved throughout the entire game. it takes place in the town square, and features most of the main players in the game. no matter what you say, it always ends in bullets and blood because that's the genre standard. you can't talk your way out of a standoff, in de or in a spaghetti western. the bad guys die, but so do some good guys, and you learn to live with it. then here's the big thing, so listen up: the number one similarity between spaghettis and de in my mind is the sense of time they both give you in their setting. spaghettis often deconstruct the concept of 'the wild west' by taking place in the twilight years of the west and showing the metaphorical death of the cowboy, or by showing a wild west that is bloody and cruel rather than whitewashed and hays-code friendly like the hollywood westerns were. de does both of these things - it's set after the revolution fails during a time of decline and failure, and it also doesn't shy away from the violence and death that comes with such a setting. so, even though it isn't a deliberate homage, i think de is a great example of a- oh shit, they're selling peanuts over there, babe, i'm gonna go get some, brb
#len's meta#disco elysium#disco elysium meta#i'm obsessed with this trend going around of meta posts accompanied by this picture soni decided to do my own#originally this was gonna be abt the boiadeiros but i couldn't generate anything interesting so it ended up being abt spaghettis instead
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The Scroll is written. The deep lore of the Messengers continues.
Wait, it does? Since when? I've been carrying the Scroll since I left my village and I haven't seen shit.
Well, that's not entirely true. I see time portals now, but only after having time traveled for the first time. There's Quarble, but he's an external entity being sent to my by Shopkeeper. And, of course, there's the Shop itself, but that's a facet of the Tower of Time.
What is the Scroll supposed to be showing me?
No, that's wrong.
Okay, you're telling me it is the tears. The Scroll lets you view the rips in space and time. But that can't be true because I didn't see shit for my entire journey up through fighting Burgundy Telethon. If the Scroll does this then why didn't--
Hey remember that time when you didn't read the fucking Scroll until after you got Soldier killed and we sent you back? Good times.
...
I mean.
You don't gotta call me out in front of Prophet like that.
So, as Blue Robes, we wear the cloak so that dumbass Messengers don't flip their shit the second they meet us.
That's hurtful.
And reasonable. I resent the accuracy of that offense.
I'm guessing that's what provoked the retaliatory raid that killed most of us? Good job keeping them from reclaiming the Music Box. Especially since you guys leave it on a pedestal out in the open where anyone can snatch it up. I've tried setting it on fire three times when nobody was looking.
...
And this just happened out of the blue one day? Pun very much intended? That's very interesting because I read in Luana's fable that the Immortal Alchemist doesn't know shit about Songster magic so there's no possible way he could have been responsible. Someone else had to have done something like this.
Someone else who's well-trained in musical mysticism. Perhaps someone who could reasonably be described as, "Gifted with a beautiful voice and an otherworldly ability to create mesmerizing trinkets". Hmm?
B'st met with Elder Mist, one of the world's foremost prophets, at the end of his journey.
Eons later, Muse was gifted in what can only be Songster magic, an art long-dead except for B'st during Luana's era.
Conveniently, as soon as we reclaimed the Music Box, somebody just happened to weave some epic Songster magic to manifest into the world a set of metaphysical keys that would open it. Purely coincidental timing, I'm sure.
There has to be something to this. And by something, I mean, "Are you sure you're not Muse?" Because I think you're Muse. ≖_≖
It all makes sense now. We pull this guy out, we save the timeline, and that thing in the future never exists. We've got the Songster enchantments. I'm ready to go.
Hey, so, between you and me, there's another option. I didn't want to say this in front of Shopkeep.
Technically, we just need to make him stop playing his organ. Killing him would achieve that just as well as rescuing him would, and would probably be a lot easier to pull off.
We can try it her way first. But if it comes down to mission failure or his life, I'm slitting his throat. If she is who I think she is then I understand how much his life means to her. But he's nobody to me so if it comes to it, slashy slashy.
*deep breath*
Here we go.
This feels like the same kind of magic as the Money Sink.
...
I suppose it would, wouldn't it?
I guess it was optimistic of me to think he'd be standing right there as soon as I entered. That level of convenience is reserved for definitely inexplicable musical coincidences.
Vulgar!
...haha....
Hahahahahaha
I'm so glad we're friends now hahahaha
Shopkeeper's final story is a touching reflection on one creator's road to becoming a game developer and bringing The Messenger to life, and it wouldn't feel right for me to dipshit all over it. I just want to take a moment to appreciate his journey.
...
And then back to dipshittery.
Oh, wow. It's her. That's definitely Muse in these portraits.
He decorates his organ with roses and her picture. We're going full-on Phantom of the Oper--
...
Phantom. Right. Got it.
*deep breath* Winging it. Gotcha. But if we win this one, we all get to go home and have actual lives.
Alright. Here we go. For all time.
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[19 days] whiplash [ch. 365 after-shot]
The shop will be closing soon. He’s seen an attendant wandering around, who will probably ask him to leave in the next five minutes. There’s no one else here. His clothes are vivid against the neon glow of the tanks. The fish cast strange shadows on his shirt, living out a second life on his skin.
They swim in half-circles before sharply changing direction, never touching the glass. He wonders if they know it’s there, as if they can sense some immovable wall that holds them back.
He’s not getting deep about this. He could contemplate, quite extensively, about how their freedom must be bought by some higher power, and they would really only go from one tank to the next, slightly bigger, slightly richer. It’s all fake shit, and he remembers that in some ways he’s got it better than an animal. He can, at least, run away. Maybe he won’t get far. Just to the edges of the city villages where he’ll get a job earning less than before and lose his place in school.
Guan Shan puts a finger on the glass in front of him. There’s a label in the corner, peeling away from the glass. Veiltail goldfish. They have wispy, membrane-like tails. He could put his hand on the other side and see all the way through. Guan Shan watches the only black fish in the tank move placidly through the water.
Beneath the label, a smaller one: Black moor. For a minute he considers tugging the label off and putting it in his pocket, a little secret. He remembers that would be stealing, in some way, and someone in the shop would have to go to the effort of printing and laminating and reapplying the label just for one fish.
Guan Shan turns away.
He wanders for a few more minutes. He’s aware of his reflection in the glass. He worries about how long the attendant will let him stay there, and the thought that they will make him leave makes him feel slightly sick. He likes it here—the quiet, the muted hum of the tanks, the strange lights. They make him feel somewhere else.
His mother is working the night shift and won’t be home until just before he’s meant to go to school the next morning. They’ll have long enough together that he could tell her he got fired from the shop, but not long enough that he could reasonably pretend to have forgotten as he tugs on his uniform and slips out the front door.
She won’t be mad—she never is.
She can’t take on another shift.
Mentally, he has started taking stock. His Xbox is a few years old, but he’ll get something for it. He has a stack of old music magazines from his dad that could catch the eye of a collector. His computer, maybe.
The earrings.
His stomach twists.
Really, it’s not much. It’ll earn them a month, which could be just long enough for him to get another job, but what’s the likelihood of that in a city where most kids are just trying to bulk their CV’s for their college applications. Besides, his grades speak for themselves. He got lucky with the shop, and lightning doesn’t strike twice.
‘Hey, kid. We’re closing soon, so unless you wanna buy something…’
Guan Shan nods. His shoulders round.
For no logical reason, he says: ‘Can I take a goldfish?’
‘Sure. The black moor? Saw you had your eye on that one.’
‘No, one of the others.’
The attendant comes up next to him. ‘Just the one? They don’t like being on their own, you know.’
He presses his jaw tightly. A small sound comes out of him. He looks at the price tag and is somehow shocked and saddened to see the figure so low.
‘Fine,’ he says. ‘The black one, too, I guess.’
He pays, then leaves. It’s late enough that the streets are quieter than he expected. He’s usually home by now, his shift over, reheating leftovers while he works on his homework. He stands there while the shop attendant locks up behind him, holding the plastic bag with two fish in his hand. He feels stupid. Behind his eyes, he can feel a sort of stinging sensation.
He has the unnameable urge to grab one of the passing strangers and tell them how he’s feeling, what has happened, what could happen. On some level he knows that everyone has their own problems, and he’s not the type of person to overstep his bounds. Instead, he watches them pass, and after a few more minutes he goes to the nearest subway station and gets the train home.
/
He had half expected He Tian to find him on the street. He’d imagined it, He Tian catching his arm as he wandered from store to store, deliberating at large windows with thin mannequins and expensive jewellery without price tags. There is a part of him that’s disappointed that it didn’t play out like this, a part of him that is even angrier to find He Tian sitting in the stairwell of his apartment when he eventually does get home.
It’s close to midnight, and the stairwell is clinically quiet. Outside, the stars are dusty and covered in a thin layer of smog that is less noticeable in the day. He Tian looks exhausted. He’s the type of good looking where even the slightest imperfection somehow makes him even more attractive. Guan Shan hates it.
He stands when Guan Shan walks in, suddenly filling the space, and Guan Shan says, ‘Get outta my way.’
‘Where have you been?’
Guan Shan shoulders past him. There’s a moment where he thinks He Tian will grab him around the shoulders, the air around him simmering enough that Guan Shan is convinced it’s a near thing, choking with danger, but he lets him pass. He follows Guan Shan up the staircase, his footsteps silent, his body casting long shadows on the steps where Guan Shan sets his feet.
At the door, Guan Shan pockets the notice that’s taped there, knowing He Tian has already seen it. Less sharply, he picks up the notes in He Tian’s and Jian Yi’s writing and folds them into careful squares.
‘You’re not comin’ in,’ he says.
‘I called you, like, fifty times. Did you block me?’
Guan Shan thinks He Tian sounds angrier than he really has a right to be. He turns and presses his back to the door. He has his keys clenched tightly in a closed fist.
‘Yeah. I didn’t want to talk to you. I thought you would’ve gotten that.’
‘I can get you another job. Something better paid.’
‘You’re so fuckin’ clueless.’
He Tian’s eyes tighten.
‘You’re ruining my life,’ says Guan Shan.
‘That’s—that isn’t true. I’ve helped you. You would’ve been expelled if—’
‘Maybe I would’ve gotten expelled. But I wouldn’t have had She Li on my dick all the time, would I? Wouldn’t need you to get me a job ‘cause you made me lose my last one, would I? You’re just—stickin’ a bandage on shit when you hurt me first.’
‘It’s not always like that. Don’t make it sound like it’s always like that.’
Guan Shan shakes his head. ‘I want you to go. I told you I didn’t want to see you again. Fuck off.’
He Tian says, ‘Let me pay what was on the door.’
‘Fuck off.’
He Tian doesn’t move and Guan Shan squeezes his eyes shut. He’s going to cry again, the frustration bubbling sourly in the back of his throat. He doesn’t trust himself to open the door while He Tian is still here because he knows he’ll probably let him in.
‘Do I really make you feel like a failure?’
Guan Shan rubs at his eyes with his fist. His voice comes hoarse and thick: ‘I am a failure. Bein’ around you just makes it so much more fuckin’ obvious.’
He doesn’t want He Tian’s pity when he says this, or his reassurance. He’s just being honest. Saying it out loud is kind of breathlessly relieving. He couldn’t say something like that to his mother, or any of the teachers at school. He couldn’t say it to Grey, who he’s known for years. He Tian knows more about him than anyone. It’s a terrifying thought.
If they never see each other again, will He Tian tell everyone the things Guan Shan has told him? About the restaurant and his dad, or about She Li and the things Guan Shan has let him do to him? He feels vulnerable and sick thinking about it, completely powerless, as he does a lot of the time when he’s around He Tian.
He oscillates between that feeling of uselessness and the feeling of being so empowered that he thinks it must be what being high or drunk feels like. That latter has him trusting his own convictions, having an unadulterated faith in himself like jumping from a bridge and thinking he might just fly—so long as He Tian is with him. He doesn’t like how it’s one or the other, empowered or powerless, and rarely anything in between. He’s heard adults on TV talking about being codependent, pulled punishingly into each other's orbit, and he wonders if this is the same thing.
In the end he supposes it doesn’t really matter. So what if He Tian tells everyone? Probably, he won’t see the rest of the year out at school. He’ll get a job on a different side of the city and no one will hear from him ever again. The embarrassment will all be internal and will only last a week or two. Then life will move on. He wishes he were older and wiser and better at believing this. He wishes it didn’t feel like the universe might fall out from beneath him.
‘Doesn’t matter what I do, it turns to shit,’ he tells He Tian. ‘No matter how hard I work, I’m never gonna earn enough. I can spend three hours studyin’ for a test and still come last. If it isn’t She Li, then it’ll be someone else. I just—I can’t catch a fuckin’ break, He Tian. But you do somethin’ and you come first every time. Life’s so easy for you.’
He Tian shifts from side to side. ‘Do you think things wouldn’t feel so hard if you stopped focussing on what you think my life is like?’
‘You’re pissin’ me off.’
‘I don’t know how I’m meant to help you. You won’t let me give you money. It’s like pulling teeth from you just trying to know what’s going on with you. What are you so fucking afraid of?’
‘I never asked for your help.’
‘You shouldn’t have to—that’s why we’re friends.’
‘I never said I wanted to be your friend.’
He Tian frowns, his look very serious. He isn’t teasing tonight. Neither is Guan Shan. There is the sense that their interactions are always anything but teasing, really, some dark undercurrent that runs between the two of them like dark veins.
He Tian says, ‘Are those fish?’
For a moment Guan Shan thinks he’s joking, deflecting wildly to distract from the seriousness of what Guan Shan has just said. Then he feels the crinkle of a plastic bag in his hand and, remembering how he’d just spent the last few hours, nearly drops the two goldfish onto the floor.
‘Yeah,’ he says.
‘You don’t have a tank.’
‘Yeah, no. I don’t know why I bought them.’
He Tian hesitates. There is a curious, predictable gleam in his eyes. ‘Red and black?’
‘It’s all they had left at the store.’
He Tian is looking intently at the bag. ‘Do you remember when we went to the aquarium? And you said I wasn’t someone you could forget?’
‘I just meant that—’
‘I know what you meant. But I always pretend like you meant it the other way.’
Guan Shan thinks, Don’t you think things would be easier if you stopped focusing on what you want me to mean and what I actually mean?
Instead of saying anything, he looks down at his sneakers. They’re scuffed and starting to rip at the seams. The thought of having to buy new ones makes him panic and the thought of buying a pair of second-hand ones online makes him panic even more. There’s no shame in it, but the thought of wearing someone else’s clothes makes him feel strange, especially when he knows He Tian could buy fifty pairs without blinking.
Guan Shan considers that thought and replays what He Tian has just said about focusing on his life too much more than his own. Maybe part of that is true.
Before He Tian, did he always feel things so intensely? Did the bad always feel so fucking awful? He knows that things were mechanical, and he was mean and didn’t think much about other people in particularly nice ways. He knows he didn’t laugh much then, or have dinners and sleepovers with friends. He knows everything hurt on a distant, muted level that was easy to ignore. Not much time has passed since then, and he reasons that nothing about him has probably changed, just everything else around him.
‘I can’t understand why you won’t let me help you,’ says He Tian, when the silence has stretched too long.
‘Because I’ll get used to it.’
He Tian frowns, not understanding.
‘One day, you’re not gonna be around. And I’ll be fucked.’
‘I’ll always be there for you.’
‘You don’t know that. People say that a lot and then they disappear or get taken away, even if they didn’t want to.’
It’s obvious they’re talking about his dad, but it feels safer to talk about things in vague, subjective conversation. Maybe things would be easier if they talked openly about things and didn’t use metaphors and hypotheticals. As it is, Guan Shan doesn’t feel ready to try the alternative. He is conscious of the fact that this feels like a conversation. They are passing words back and forth that hold meaning and neither of them has touched the other yet. It feels new and fragile as an oil painting, still wet, and so he doesn’t let himself think about this for long.
‘I think you’re getting this wrong,’ says He Tian. ‘I’m not asking you to rely on me. Obviously, I’d kind of like that. I like the thought of you needing me, and I know that says something about me. But—I’m just asking you to let me help you. Just here and there, no strings.’
Guan Shan rubs his forehead with the back of his knuckles. His keys are starting to pinch his skin and he can feel a headache starting to surface.
‘I’m tired,’ he says. ‘I actually do want you to go.’
He Tian’s jaw clenches and he breathes out heavily through his nose. He’s probably thinking he’s wasted his time.
‘Okay,’ he says then. ‘But we’re not done.’
A new wave of exhaustion comes over Guan Shan, crippling and final. He wants to get into bed with his skin against cold sheets and sleep for twelve hours without waking once.
‘You’re not the only one that ever gets to decide that,’ he tells He Tian, a little sharply. ‘You’ve gotta learn to let people go.’
‘But what if I know I can help them?’ says He Tian. ‘If I don’t, I’ve just—failed.’
They look at each other.
A minute stretches into an eternity that could be seconds or hours, and everything has gone backwards. Everything is the same.
Guan Shan can’t put his finger on what has just happened, but he feels like laughing. Their fears are twinned, self-perpetuating, some kind of ouroboros chasing its tail. Who will get caught first?
They both seem to take in a breath at the same time, and He Tian takes a step back.
‘Goodnight,’ he says.
Guan Shan nods. He waits for He Tian’s retreating back to disappear a few flights down before opening the door to his apartment, and shuts it swiftly behind him.
/
There’s a knock at the door while he’s brushing his teeth. The fish are swimming placidly in their bag on the edge of the bathroom sink. It’s past one, and he keeps all the lights off because his eyes are feeling sore. He’s adjusted to the dim glow that comes from street lamps seeping through the curtains, the blink of the timer on the electric stove, his Xbox gleaming in his bedroom. His mother shouldn’t be home yet and she has her own set of keys.
With a sinking heart, Guan Shan pictures his landlord demanding payment.
Worse, he pictures He Tian. Before He Tian left, they’d resolved nothing. It feels like being back to square one, chasing each other around a chess board. It fills him with a vast emptiness that makes him feel like he’s existing outside of himself, waiting for someone else to take over.
He pads silently towards the front door, his toothbrush jammed into his cheek, and peers through the viewer. There’s toothpaste dripping down his chin. In the hall, there’s no one there. He’s half-convinced he imagined it. He counts to ten before he opens the door, steps out—and his foot connects with something hard. There is a cardboard box sitting on the welcome mat.
Guan Shan peers around. The light in the stairwell is artificially bright. He kneels down and opens the tabs on the box, which hasn’t been taped. He swallows.
For the fish, says the note on the second box, nestled inside the first. Careful, it’s fragile.
Guan Shan rubs the heel of a palm into his right eye. He sighs. Then he reaches out, braces himself, and picks up the tank. He carries it into his apartment, and the door locks behind him.
/
thank you for reading! if you’d like to support me on my ko-fi/request a short drabble, you can do so here: https://ko-fi.com/agapaic 💞
#19 days#tianshan#old xian#he tian#mo guan shan#my fanfic#sorry for errors - it's late but i couldn't get this out my head
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Blackinnon headcanons (because @marlymckitten’s lovely ones got me to write a bit again <3 go check on hers!!!!)
Yes. It’s sappy. But I love sappy Blackinnon. I can’t bear angst any longer so enjoy!
Sirius fell in love with her before she fell in love with him. Actually, he fell in love with Marlene before James fell in love with Lily, even if he took longer to realize it. He unconsciously developed a crush on her during their first year and recognize his messy feelings as love when he was a bit older. Anyway, he liked to say to her that he had loved her since he was a kid and Marlene used to roll her eyes and call him a sappy liar — but Sirius was not lying. Not even a bit.
I personally hc that they didn’t start dating at Hogwarts. Sirius was, emotionally, too much of a mess to actually sort out what he felt. It was not that he wasn’t sure of her — he knew he loved Marlene. He was certain of that. He was just scared to hurt her in any way possible, and though less of himself — he though he wasn’t able to make her happy, and he could not bear it.
It was Marlene who made the first move. One night, she just kissed him. They were alone in London, laughing, smoking and chatting at 1 AM while the rest of the gang had already went home. She just did it. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. Hard, passionately. It took him out of breath.
As their relationship became solid, it was clear to both of them that what was happening was that.. they were settling. To Sirius, the word has seem horrendous till she had told him what she felt for him. But he was happier that he had ever been with her and was actually pretty content with the perspective of being hers for the rest of his life.
They weren’t too much into PDA. Sirius resting a hand on her tights, or holding hands was ok — but they couldn’t stand couples who made out constantly while they were out with friends. It was totally different when they were drunk: in that occasions they could not take their hands off each other and used to disappear so as to shag in some bathroom or to go home (to shag. Yes, they did it nonstop)
They had a matching tattoo. They had gone out one evening in March, just the two of them. It was supposed to be a romantic dinner but it had naturally lead to a drunk night in some club in London. After that, they had found some weird (and probably too dirty to be trusted) tattoo shop which was still opened at night and decided to go for it. They were too tipsy to be taken seriously, but managed to explain to the tattooer what they wanted. At the end, Sirius got the written “star of the sky” in Marlene’s handwriting, and she had “star of the sea” in his, on their pelvis. It was sappy, they knew it, but it was them.
Marlene absolutely adored Sirius. She thought he was breathtaking. That’s true, a lot of people thought that — Sirius was indeed a very handsome man, but to Marlene, Sirius was much more than that. Marlene loved everything about him. She loved stroking his hair and caressing the side of his face. She loved when he took her hands into his. She loved kissing his full lips and holding his gaze, despite it made her blush most of the time. She loved feeling his weight on her when he fell asleep while cuddling. She loved feeling him inside of her, it made her feel a sense of fullness and connection she had never felt with someone before.
James was so happy when they got together. He wasn’t even the slightest angry or upset at them, though they knew he would have killed them both if they hurt each other.
Lily was ecstatic when they started dating, too. Perhaps even more than her husband, considering she was the first person Sirius admitted he was in love with Marlene to. It happened during their seventh year at Hogwarts. Lily was looking for Marls — she knew the Astronomy Tower was her and Sirius’ spot and expected to find her there, but only him was present that evening. They talked quite a lot and at one point he just slipped it out. It felt so scaring, but so, so good. Lily promised not to tell a soul, not even to James and Sirius trusted her. She also advised him to tell her, but he knew he needed more time.
He desired a family with her but was scared to bring the topic up — he didn’t really think he would have really been much of a father material with the upbringing he had. His worse nightmare was perhaps inflicting on his children the same pain he had had to endure during his childhood — the idea scared him shitless. But one day, they talked about it. They approached the subject shyly, as if having different perspectives would have risked to break what they had. When Sirius told her it would have be nice, to have kids one day, Marlene could not suppress the wide, genuine smile that appeared on her face. “You’d really want them?” “Yes. With you, I would want them. I think I would be a shit father, but with you to balance I think they’d turn up nice” “That’s bullshit. You will be a wonderful dad.” “I will be? Not “would”?” “Yep. You will. I think we should talk about it… having kids, one day.” Sirius had never been happier.
Marlene’s family was fond of Sirius. Her parents and brother especially. And of course Euphemia and Fleamont loved Marlene — she was James’ first friend ever. Euphemia confessed them once that she had been planning their wedding since fifth year (James laughed a bit to much for Marlene’s liking after hearing that).
Marlene once had called Walburga Black a “fucking cow”. She hadn’t just called her that, she had YELLED it on the platform before taking Sirius hand and making him follow her on the train. She had heard a sneaky comment from her: it was the usual babbling about Sirius being a shame, a failure for being how he was, for hanging out with dirty mudbloods and staying at the Potters. She could not take it. Although her mother (who had intercepted her daughter’s furious expression) had tried to stop her, she had just walked over and yelled at Walburga Black, a witch from a noble and ancient family in the Magical Community, that she was a fucking cow. Around lots, lots of people. Sirius thought he had never loved her more.
Once Sirius told her he wanted to shave his beard, and she screamed, horrified and threatened not to have sex with him for a month if he really did it.
For his 23rd birthday, Marlene gifted him a handful of Polaroids of her nudes, along with his real present. Sirius remained in total awe for a few seconds and then looked at her like a puppy who has received the best toy ever. He really was a simple man, not needing much to be happy.
Sirius couldn’t cook for shit. He could barely prepare a toast without burning something. And most of the time, when he was hungry, he forgot he could use magic. That meant he was not able to surprise her with breakfast in bed or some thing like that — okay, he knew how to make coffee or how to spread jam on bread, he was not that dumb. Anyway, Marlene used to tease him by saying he would starve if she refused to cook for the rest of his days. “I can always eat you, you know” “You are incredible, Black”
7th year’s St Valentine’s Day was perhaps the worst one Marlene had spent in her seventeen years on the Earth. Not that she had ever celebrated it (she hated St Valentine’s Day, the sappy promises, the fake couples who put on a good face during the trip to Hogsmeade so as to show off even if half school knew one of them was shagging someone else. She just couldn’t bear it), but that year every. single. one of her friends had a date. Lily went with James, Remus had gone to Hogsmeade with a bloke he had met in the summer, Alice went with Frank, Mary had been asked by a quite good looking boy who was part of the same club as hers, Emmeline and Dorcas went together (their first public trip after their coming out) and even Peter had managed to set up a date with a really nice girl he had had a crush on since fifth year. And Sirius… well, she supposed he was shagging three or four girls at the same time. Marlene spent most of her time in the library, catching up with her homework, and after a rather depressing lunch alone she hid herself in the Common Room who was occupied only by first and second years who could not go to the village yet. She read a book until she heard someone calling her name. She didn’t even had to turn around to know who it was. Nobody called her Lene. They walked through the empty corridors and corners of the school, perfectly comfortable with one another. He asked her what she had done that day, but she didn’t ask him back. She didn’t want to know if he had gone to Hogsmeade with someone. What she didn’t know was that, yes, he had gone to the village… to buy her flowers. They following morning, when she woke up, she found a beautiful bouquet of tulips — her favorites — of all colors. The was no card attached and it took Lily twenty minutes to convince Marlene that they really were for her.
Marlene’s dream had always been to visit Paris. When she was ten, she promised herself that she would only have gone with the love of her life — Marlene pretended to be nauseated by romance, but the truth was that she was a hopeless romantic herself. She kept the promise. One year or so into their relationship, Sirius and Marlene stayed in Paris for a week. One night they went to a bar and returned to the apartment quite intoxicated and extremely horny, so the usual. They shagged everywhere, on the couch, on the bed, on the floor, by the fucking window, not caring who could see them. Once they were finished, they were laying on the couch, naked, only covered by a thin blanket to protect them from the chilly air, their bodies entangled. She told him about her promise. He just looked at her, his eyes full of pure love. And he told her. And it was not scary, quite the contrary, actually. “I love you” he simply said. “I love you so much, Marls” She tried to reply, but her voice was thick with emotion. He understood anyway and gently kissed her, thinking he had finally found something worth living for. And it was love, it had always been love.
#blackinnon#sirius black#marlene mckinnon#marauders#marlene x sirius#sirius x marlene#harry potter#marauders era#blackinnon headcanons
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Baby Steps.
You hummed a small song to yourself as you walked along the dirt path to town. Your wicker basket swayed at your side as you went along, looking around at the nature around you.
It had been years since you walked this path to town. Your mother used to bring you along on her visits often. The villagers had become friends. As you continued to grow, they became your family. The town reminds you of your mother and some of your best moments with her. After her death, your father made it very clear he didn't approve of you going into town anymore. It started with little excuses like him not being able to escort you or not having the time. That evolved into a full fledged ban.
As you got older and learned of your fathers secrets you figured out the true reason he didn't want you in town. The villagers would discuss his failures. He couldn't let his precious reputation be tarnished by those affected most by his fuck ups.
As you enter town, you smile at all of the people who look at you. You can recognize some of them. But it had been so long since you'd seen any of them. A nostalgic feeling falls over you as you walk past the shops. Many had been shut down long ago after your father raised the taxes. But some still managed to scrape by. You made your way into each one, saying hello to the shop keeps and making sure to buy a few items.
Joy overcame you as you made your way to the bakery. Your mother used to bring you here every trip. You would snack on a pastry while she chatted with the baker, Jenni.
If your mother had anything close to a best friend, it would be Jenni. Your mother never really fit in with the nobility. Because of that she had very few friends outside of the servants and townspeople. She felt most connected to them. They were here people, who understood here the most.
You make your way inside the bakery, praying that Jenni still runs the place. You browse the selection sitting inside the glass cases. Everything looks just as delicious as you remembered. As you're checking out the breads as woman comes from the back and finishes helping another customer.
"Is that Y/N?"
You look up as you hear your name. A huge smile spreads across your face as you spot Jenni standing behind the counter. Her long brown hair is braided down her back, allowing you to see her face. She quickly rounds the counter and hurries over to you. Grabbing your shoulders and making you face her, she looks at you all over.
"It is you! Oh my goodness how you've grown! Come here!"
Jenni wraps you in a tight hug, a smile plastered on her face. You wrap your arms around her and immediately feel a sense of calm come over you. Her embrace reminds you of your mother. Jenni pulls away and you can see the happy tears falling from her eyes. She quickly wipes them away and motions towards one of the many tables within the bakery.
"Please, sit. I'll grab us some tea and pastries."
You quickly nod and take a seat as she disappears into the back room once again. She comes back with a tray filled with goodies and tea. She sets it down and takes her seat across from you.
"So, tell me hun. How is everything?"
You prepare your tea and take a sip.
"Everything is okay, I suppose. Nothing has been the same since mom passed."
Jenni prepares her tea as you begin talking.
"I know. It's been so hard without her here. I can't imagine what it's been like for you and your father. I wanted to be more help after her passing but they wouldn't let me come to the estate and you stopped coming to town. I'm so sorry I haven't been there for you."
Jenni's eyes begin to fill with tears as she speaks. Your heart breaks listening to her. You so badly wanted her comfort through all of these hard times just as much as she needed yours.
"Please don't apologize, Jenni. I know you would have if you could have been. I apologize for not trying harder. I should have found a way to town. I know my mother would have wanted me here with you in the town rather than locked up in that house."
Jenni immediately reaches across the table and grabs your hand.
"No, no. Don't say things like that. You were just a child. You should have never had to deal with the things you have. Children are not meant to have all the responsibilities thrusted upon your shoulders."
Her words cause tears to stream down your face. If only she knew the half of it. Those words impact you deeply and you find yourself compelled to tell her everything. So you spend the next hour telling Jenni everything that has happened since your mother passed. From your fathers abuse, to his addiction issues, and everything that has happened this season. She sits and listens intently the entire time, only breaking eye contact to sip her tea. As you finish, you feel pounds lighter.
Jenni rubs your hand gently, comforting you. She gives you a small smile.
"Can I just say how proud I am of you? You are a remarkable young woman, Y/N. Your mother would be so proud."
"Oh Jenni, you're going to make me a blubbering mess again!" You say as you quickly wipe the forming tears from your eyes.
Jenni just chuckles and takes a bite from the pastry in front of her. She wipes her mouth on her napkin and clears her throat.
"So, tell me about these young men. They seem to be taking up a lot of space in your mind."
You can't help the blush that grows on your cheeks. She isn't wrong in her observation. Your mind constantly went to thoughts of Poe and your connection. But it seemed he was now competing with another for control of your thoughts. Kylo had been kind since the moment he introduced himself. But you couldn't help the fear that still lived within you due to the things Lizzie had told you.
You take a sip from your tea and tell her about both Poe and Kylo. Jenni smirks at you from behind her teacup.
"Well, Y/N, it seems like both these men are quite taken with you as well. It'll be your decision in the end."
You shake your head and let out a small laugh.
"Now I'm not so sure about that. But I know for sure it won't be my decision. I'm fairly certain my father has already made it for me. He was clear that I needed to marry Lord Hux."
Jenni tenses up at your words, her face falling.
"Your father does not get to decide your future, Y/N. Who you marry is completely up to you."
"I have to think of what's best for the dukedom. The townspeople deserve better than what my father has been doing to them. It's up to me to be with someone that can provide that for them. Otherwise, I'm no better."
Jenni shakes her head and grabs a hold of your hand again, giving it a squeeze.
"You should never compare yourself to your father. You two could not be more different. Your father had the means to care for his dukedom and he ruined it. You don't, but would do anything to change that. We all have full faith in whatever future you choose, because you are the one who chose it. Now go out there and follow your heart and everything else will fall in place after."
______________________________________
You returned home with a new sense of confidence. Your visit to town was refreshing. It was exactly what you needed to help bring you back to Earth and into your mind. You now felt prepared and assured in the decisions you were soon to make.
As you get in, you make your way to the kitchen to put away some of the things you had bought from the shops in town. Just as you finish placing the cleaned fruits into a bowl, Jillian makes her way into the kitchen.
"Oh, Y/N! I have been looking for you all day! Where have you been?"
"I just went on a small trip to town while I had the time."
Jillian comes to stand next to you at the counter looking over all the things you purchased.
"If I had known you were going I would have accompanied you!"
You shrug and start cleaning the vegetables.
"This was a trip I needed to make by myself."
Jillian nods silently and continues to watch you work. You both stand there in silence for a few moments before she speaks up again.
"Listen Y/N, I wanted to apologize for what happened at the picnic. I wanted to stop him from making a scene but he sent me back here before I could do anything. He told me I'd lose my job and I just couldn't risk it. I hope you can forgive me."
You turn to face Jillian and immediately wrap her up in a hug.
"Jill, you don't need to apologize. You went out of your way for me and I couldn't be more thankful, even if the day ended in disaster.If anyone is to blame here its my father."
Jillian pulls away from the hug and smiles.
"Your father is kind of the worst, honestly."
"Yeah, that's putting it lightly. I'd say my father is an asshole."
Jillian's eyes go wide and her jaw drops at your words. It was very rare for you to use such language. You did your best to stick to the strict etiquette you were taught.
"Y/N! I can not believe you just said that! Especially out in the open!"
You place the now clean vegetables in their own dish and wipe your hands on a towel.
"My trip to town was very refreshing. I feel like it helped me to remember who I actually am, not this shell of a person that's been built and paraded around."
"And this new you is looser and more fun, I hope?"
You laugh and swat Jillian with the towel.
"I've always been fun, you shit!"
The pair of you fall into a fit of giggles and finish putting away your finds, gossiping and joking the entire time.
_________________________________
Later on in the day you had been asked to meet your father on the lanai for dinner. You were tempted to blow him off and make something with Jill in the kitchen. But after the scene he attempted to make at the picnic you thought against it. You didn't want Jill to be at the receiving end of any of your father's outbursts.
So now you sat across from him, picking at your salad silently. You prayed this would be over soon. Just one look at your father and you could tell he was uncomfortable as well. You could see the sweat on his brow and he kept pulling at the collar of his shirt. Finally, he took a sip of his wine and cleared his throat.
"Thank you for having dinner with me. I was hoping we could talk about the last event."
You set your fork down and turn your full attention to him. Finally looking at him for the first time since his outburst. You figured that was what this dinner was about. But you had absolutely no clue where the conversation would go. Your father mimics your actions, setting his fork down and looking at you.
"I want to apologize if you were upset by my actions at the picnic. I hope you can understand where I was coming from at the time. Sneaking out of my house and mingling with men below you will just not do. You're better than that and you know it."
His sorry excuse for an apology sparks anger within you. But before you even get a chance to speak up he has already moved on. Your father picks up his fork and begins eating again. He says through a mouthful of food,
"So, tell me about this King Kylo. You two seem to be well acquainted."
All the words you had prepared leave your mind at his questioning. What in the world did Kylo have to do with this? He did come to your rescue at the picnic. But he certainly never spoke to your father.
"What? King Kylo and I met very briefly at one of the last events. He came over to save me from the embarrassment you were causing."
Your words seem to go right over his head. He continues on in his little game of questions.
"I like that young man. He seems rough and direct. The perfect type of man to lead and take care of things. Did he express interest in you, Y/N?"
Truthfully, you weren't certain what Kylo's intentions with you were. He seemed interested in you. But to what extent you couldn't be sure of. Surely a man with a reputation such as his wasn't looking for a wife to stand by his side. Though just imagine it sends an eruption of butterflies through you.
Kylo was so kind and gentle with you. You were weary of him during your discussion. Constantly trying to figure out his motives. But it felt so natural to speak with him. It was as if he understood you.
But you'd never say this to your father. To Jill or Jenni maybe, but never him.
He'd find a way to use it against you. So instead you tell him a half truth.
"I'm not sure of his intentions, father. We've spoken very little."
Your father scratches at his scruffy beard at your response, seemingly pondering your answer. He sits up in his seat and crosses his arm on the table.
"Well let's change that, hm? Make it a point to speak to him more. Seems like a wonderful match."
With that, he gets up and leaves you sitting there. You look at your unfinished food and push it away from you, appetite completely gone.
Of course your father would want such a thing. Who better to fix all his financial issues than a fucking king? Even better if he comes out of it looking good. Any parent would go to the ends of the Earth to marry their child off to royalty. It doesn't get any better than a king. But yet again, your opinion has been left out of the equation.
The butterflies that once swarmed you take off. If your father wants you to get closer to Kylo, you would do the opposite.
_____________________________________
Kylo's POV
Kylo had his speech prepared since the beginning of the season. He was more than prepared to let loose all his pent up anger. To finally get the revenge he had been yearning for since his parent's death.
But he kept finding it hard to bring it up. As they all sat in the formal dining room of Luke's palace, Kylo couldn't stop the waves of nostalgia from crashing over him. He remembered the elaborate dinners he had had here with his parents. His mother always looked more relaxed here. Everything looked the same as well. The walls are still covered in family portraits and paintings of the country.
Luke brings Kylo from his thoughts by tapping his fork on his glass, grabbing everyone's attention.
"I'd just like to say a few words. It's wonderful to have all of us together this evening. It's been way too long. Thank you for joining us, Ben. I hope this is something we can do much more often."
Kylo's anger comes back full force at the sound of his dead name, pushing away what nostalgia he was feeling. He sits completely still as everyone cheers and clicks their glasses together.
Luke raises his glass to his lips and sips his wine, looking over Kylo.
"Ben, I've seen you talking with Miss Y/N. She's a wonderful young woman. Isn't she, Mara Jade?"
Mara Jade nods at Luke's comment, keeping her eyes on Kylo.
"She certainly caught your eye, huh? I noticed you gazing at her at a few of the events this season. I was happy to hear you finally introduced yourself to her."
This was one of the last things Kylo wanted to talk about. His uncle barely knew anything about him as it was. Now he wants to get involved in his romantic affairs. He had no interest in being another form of entertainment for him.
Kylo clears his throat and swallows down his anger.
"I have spoken to many of the debutantes in the ton this season."
Luke smirks and lets out a light chuckle.
"Right, of course. But you haven't swooped in and saved all of them from societal embarrassment. Just Miss Y/N."
"I was simply going over to have a small discussion with her and her father. Nothing more."
Luke gives him a smug look and nods. Kylo's anger was reaching it's breaking point. He should have known his uncle would be aware of his every move this season. He's the king of the damn country of course. But he can't help but feel as though he's being watched.
Kylo looks up and meets his aunt's gaze. She's giving him that knowing look she always used to give him as a child. Mara Jade always had a way of reading Kylo like a book. As a child, she was always able to see through his facades. Whenever she could, she'd take him for a walk in the woods or play blocks with him. Allowing him a moment to be a child and get away from the stresses his parents pushed upon him.
She seems to be doing that now as well. Kylo can see it in her eyes as she gazes at him. He looks away and avoids her looks. He's a grown ass man now. He's done being treated like a child and looked like a pawn in this season's game. As his anger finally reaches its peak, he decides now is the moment to let it all loose.
"I'd rather be discussing what you've been up to all these years, uncle. It seems you've been so busy."
"Well of course, all kings are busy. You'd know that yourself."
"Oh, well I ask since it seems you've been too busy to even learn my correct name."
Luke sits up straight at Kylo's words, beginning to sense the change in moods. Mara Jade looks between the two men.
"Now, you know that's not true. I just figured since-"
Kylo cuts his sentence short, already knowing where Luke was attempting to go.
"You just figured that since we're related you could use whatever name you pleased. Or were you going to use the word family, Luke? We are not a family. We are merely individuals who share blood."
As he continues to speak, he finds the words coming easier to him. Everything that has been stored within him for years finally spilling out of his mouth and all over the ridiculously elegant dinner.
Kylo picks up his napkin from his lap and sets it down on the table. He looks up into his uncle's eyes, nostrils flaring and continues.
"The same blood you abandoned and forgot about until convenient. The blood you watched struggle from afar and never offered any help. Now explain to me, uncle, why would you do that?"
Luke looks at Kylo speechless. He doesn't move a single muscle, clearly taken by surprise at Kylo's words. This only makes Kylo angrier. He wants answers, no. He deserves answers.
"My parents died and I was left with seemingly everything and nothing all at once. An entire kingdom was thrown at me as a child. You failed to assist your blood during such a large change. You failed to show up to your sister's burial. You have failed your own fucking blood, Luke. You abandoned me."
Luke readjusts himself in his seat and looks to his wife. He places his napkin down and clears his throat.
"Ben, please let me explain myself. I wanted nothing more than to be there for everything. But-"
Kylo stands from the table abruptly, causing his chair to slide across the floor. He slams his hands on the table and looks at Luke with wild eyes.
"After all of that, you still disrespect me? Are you really attempting to feed me some bullshit excuse?"
Luke quickly stands and holds his hands out in front of him.
"Now please, let's all just relax and sit down about this. Let me explain, please."
Kylo clenches his jaw and stands up straight, running his fingers through his hair in a failed attempt to put himself back together.
"I've heard plenty. I won't sit here and listen to any more shit."
With that he turns and storms out of the room. Luke quickly stands to follow him out.
"Ben, please!"
Mara Jade quickly stands and grabs ahold of Luke's arm, stopping him.
"Luke, let him go. This was a lot on him. He needs time to cool off and absorb everything that's just happened."
Luke looks at her and sighs.
"He's never going to understand. There's so much he doesn't know."
Mara Jade looks up at him and gives him a small smile. She fixes his jacket and pats his chest.
"I know, hun. But one day he will and everything will make sense to him. Baby steps."
#king kylo#star wars#kyloren#kylo#kylorenthings#kylo ren#long reads#regency#historical#brigerton#star wars fandom#fanfiction#smutty fanfiction#fanfic
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The Leash (Part 11)
Summary: Your rescue was supposed to be as smooth as these missions can be. However very quickly, Tobirama faces off against an enemy that has no form, color or smell - and time is running short, very fast. Unless he figures out what truly holds you hostage, your life will be lost.
Warnings (for the finished work): Blood, illness, descriptions of heavy injuries and graphic violence, torture (both depicted and implied), needles, morally grey territory, human experimentation, panic attacks, character death, angst with a happy ending
~6000 words (this chapter, finished work: 80.000)
Previous: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10
Read on AO3!
Disclaimer below the cut!
DISCLAIMER!
Part two of the finale! More to go after this though as you can tell, stay with me <3
Other than that: enjoy my very self indulgent work, filled with my own headcanons and angst galore.
Let me know what you think and thank you so much for reading!!!!
________
Tobirama was nothing if not dutiful. The time for your last dose had come faster than he wanted to. And he’d be there to administer it. He made sure to look more presentable before he entered your rooming using the hiraishin seal. What for, he didn’t know anymore. It didn’t matter, did it? Failure was certain, anyway. Perhaps it was for decency. Or maybe he needed the moment to recover. He was too numb. Spent from the breakdown. The short minute he spent at your shared home - that already screamed mute guilt at him - to wash off his smeared facial paint and reapply it before teleporting to your room.
You were in your bed, perfectly still. At peace. Of course. You couldn’t take any withdrawal anymore, at all - your body was too exhausted. To think this was how you’d pass - a shadow of your former self, at the limit of what you could take, physically, in every sense. You had fought a gruesome, cruel battle, gave it your everything, and now? Now, it was all for nothing. The sorrow flared again in a most painful way.
You won’t even hear his words.
He wouldn't even get to say goodbye.
Dazedly he strode closer to your bed, silently wondering where Hashirama was. He’d surely be here in a moment, he barely left your side. Your condition wouldn’t allow it - although with the seals covering your pale skin, you were stable, at least stable enough to allow him to tend to other duties, briefly. So long as the withdrawal didn’t kick in. He seized the moment while it presented itself like this.
He wouldn’t get another.
His eyes prickled again as he shuffled closer to your side. Briefly, he sat down on the side of your bed like he always had done when nobody else was around - but soon, the ache in his chest pulled him down onto his knees on the floor, by your side. The tightness inside was yet expanding and stealing his breath viciously as he wheezed past his clenched teeth for more air. Looking at you - your content face, the way your chest moved evenly albeit too fast - weak maybe but alive - it was tearing him apart. He didn’t know how to even exist with the grief that was seizing him faster than a fire ate up dry parchment.
His shaking hands reached for your cold, slender one, enclosing it in his, slowly bringing it to his face as he nearly buckled over it. Already, his chakra expanded to cover your network gently, coating it, wrapping around it in an utmost tender way. Tears welled just as the sorrow overflowed inside of him, like a barrel that was full and kept being poured in. The moment was sheer agony and yet he didn’t want it to end - to let go - because that would be the end.
Very tenderly he increased the connection to examine you, briefly - you still wouldn’t respond, but that was normal. You hadn’t woken in a couple of days during what was your lucid interval because you simply were too strained - Tobirama wondered if you could at all, really. The exhaustion was too great. Still, his examination found you were no better nor worse than the last time he performed it - your body was heavily impacted by each time the withdrawal had wreaked havoc inside, particularly your lung and heart were affected. At the same time the seals steadily streamed their support into you to keep your blood pressure up, your airways free, your attacked organs functioning. Not to mention the many wounds from the torture that had not been healing as you had been fighting for dear life. There wasn’t a part of you that wasn’t affected in some way, damaged, dysfunctional - critical, but not so that it couldn’t be helped.
It was, just like they had judged, a narrow edge they had been teetering.
And now it would tilt. The delicate balance they had managed to uphold, all they had done-
“I’m so sorry,” Tobirama finally spoke, his voice but a broken, haunted whisper. The baritone wrecked by guilt and sorrow alike, entirely unlike him and yet with an utter tenderness, reserved for you and your ears only. “I’m so sorry, Y/n.” Tears still flowed. “I’ve given it my all, my love. I couldn’t do it. I had it - I thought I had it - but in the last moment, it eluded me,” he continued, slowly cracking more by his sobs. “My failure will cost you everything,” he was practically wheezing now. “And I will never forgive myself for it. The void inside of me won’t ever be filled.” He paused for a moment to take a few shaking breaths, stroking over your forearm as he still cradled your hand to his face, rocking back and forth on his knees now.
“Please, forgive me, for I’ll never be able to.”
He didn’t know how much time had passed when he heard the door being opened. He needn’t tune into his sensory skills to know it was Hashirama, only his brother carried the gargantuan aura about himself.
His steps froze the moment he realised Tobirama’s pose. “What are you doing?”
Tobirama didn’t move nor open his eyes. He didn’t want to break the connection with you. He’d savour every single second that he had left with you. With a numb voice, he explained the result of his last experiment to his brother, his final findings, their implications.
During it, Hashirama got on his knees by Tobirama’s side, an arm flung around him in comfort.
________
The clinking of metal armor echoed through the corridors of the interrogation and information headquarters. Two fully equipped shinobi made their way down the hall. One of them carried an odachi in front of his chest with both hands - sheathed. For now. They were given respectful nods and salutes where they passed members of the unit, but nobody questioned their purpose nor their destination. After a left turn they were greeted by a burly man with stern, pale eyes and two more members of the unit, all dressed in a black uniforms. Only curt greetings were exchanged before they descended the winding staircase down into the cell block.
Their appearance gathered attention immediately. A rumble clattered through the bleak prison, growing with each cell block they passed. They needn’t go far. It was the middle cell block where they intended to go.
The prisoner’s gaze swept up as the group of five halted in front of his cell. Recognition flashed in his gaze, followed by laughter that carried an eerie sense of finality. “It happened, finally?”
Nobody answered. The burly man unlocked the door to enter with his two subordinates. The prisoner flashed a toothy grin, aimed precisely at one of the armed shinobi, namely the one carrying the odachi. “I’ve won,” he sneered, “I’ve fucking won, I’ve told you!” - his voice was a hoarse shout in the end, strained by the pain of a broken jaw. The three interrogators made quick work of the chains that held him tightly wrapped in the middle of the cell to ready him for transportation, arms still secured and legs only allowed a minimum of movement to walk.
The two armored shinobi watched them entirely impassively, showing not even a shred of emotion.
The prisoner’s manic laughter echoed off the prison’s wall forlornly, hauntingly. An utterly broken sound of defiance only a certain kind person would have.
A shrill scream broke through the dismal setting. “You fucking idiot! I hope you rot in hell!” - the woman of the far end. Nobody paid attention to her.
The group made their way down the corridor that was only illuminated by a few candles along the way, passing the stairway they had taken down. The prisoner kept chattering. His voice carried a slight tremble now, “How did she die? Tell me, come on. I’ve never actually seen it, but I learned it’s fucking gruesome in the end,” his eyes were alight with sick pleasure.
The shinobi dressed in blue battle armor adorned with a white fur collar gripped the odachi so hard his knuckles turned white. His back was turned towards the prisoner, he couldn’t see the way his face scrunched under his happuri.
Nobody answered him.
He kept jabbering along incessantly. At some point the tone had taken on a perfectly fine frantic edge. Blubbering, almost, to himself. Eventually, they reached a door the burly man unlocked. The room beyond was dark but lit up as soon as they entered. No windows were inside, just like in the prison block, but no seals adorned these walls. This room was entirely bleak save for dark, crimson stains on the stone floor in the middle of the room.
The subordinates dragged the prisoner into that very center. With an ungraceful kick to the back of his knees, he was brought to kneel. The two shinobi stood in front of him and the man in the red armor crossed his arms. His expression was sorrowful, moved. But the taut line of his jaw and the coldness of his gaze betrayed no lightness about this situation.
“Zenji of the Stone Village,” he began somberly as the three interrogation unit members lined up behind their prisoner who now was wheezing on a low tune, his stare fixated on the harbinger of his fate. “The actions of your unit have endangered our borders, the civilians who live there and ultimately,” he paused meaningfully to take a deep breath - the stone cold tone cracked a little, pained lines wrinkled his smooth face. “Cost the life of one of our own.”
Immediately, Zenji’s mien lit up. He grinned widely, but he did not give the red-armored man another glance. Instead, his gaze was trained on the figure in blue, whose scarlet eyes were murderous as he stared him down, face framed by his happuri and finely applied facial paint. He looked spotless. Zenji cackled again.
“I do not wish for there to be more bloodshed,” the shinobi continued, entirely unperturbed by the behavior of the prisoner. “However our village can and will not condone these actions with idleness nor continue to nurture an enemy we cannot possibly ever release. Your kage,” Zenji’s head snapped back to the red-armored man momentarily. “Made clear he is not interested in an exchange of prisoners.”
The room became completely silent.
“I bear no revenge nor joy, but as the Hokage of Konoha, I’m here to tell you that you have been sentenced to death.”
The blue armored man stepped closer now, odachi still tightly clasped, but the man in the red armor raised his hand slightly, prompting him to stop and give him an irritated stare.
Zenji’s ragged breaths came wheezing so loudly they echoed off the walls as his wide eyes stared at the man, motionless besides the fight for oxygen.
Hashirama regarded the prisoner with the same cold gaze he had been wearing all the time. “Do you wish to speak one last time?”
That was his clue. Zenji threw his head back to release a long groan, each breath transforming more and more into a chuckle. A disconcerting lull settled over the room as it died down with a sense of finality and his eyes locked with Tobirama’s. “Oh, I fucking do,” he began, grinning widely. “To him. It’s my last wish.”
Tobirama’s eyes narrowed and he clenched his teeth, giving no verbal answer. Hashirama did instead. “Very well.”
Zenji cocked his head. “Tell me, how did you fail? What part of the leash didn’t you copy? I want to know.”
Tobirama’s eyes closed slowly and his jaw worked visibly. “Anjia…,” he began slowly, his deep voice so low it was barely more than a strained growl.
“Answer him, Tobirama. A dying man’s wish should not be denied.” Hashirama’s tone left no room for discussion.
Tobirama’s eyes opened again to give Zenji a glance of sheer hatred, his nostrils flared, scarlet glare ablaze. He did not even attempt to hide the fury in his voice as he spoke. If he spat the words out any more in fact, they’d be lost in the rage. “I created a leash of my own and tethered Kimi to it. However…,” he worked hard to find the next words, Zenji’s grin widened already, likely in anticipation for the best part of the story, “... it would appear my sealing technique differs from yours, if just slightly.”
The prisoner burst into laughter, Tobirama flinched. The sheathed odachi trembled slightly from the force he held it with. “I fucking knew it! Ah,” he replied when he had gained a grip on himself again. “The seal. The master’s finishing touch. Unique, really.” Zenji wriggled his eyebrow in a manner that prompted Tobirama to bare his teeth slightly. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to copy mine. Ha!”
Hashirama cleared his throat.
But Zenji was not yet finished. “I’m not a liar though, y’know? I keep my promises,” the grin now was sickening. Gloating. Zenji cherished this moment as though he was an actor on a grand stage. Living it to its fullest. “And I promised to tell you everything once Y/n croaked, so here we are.”
Tobirama exhaled a wheezing breath as he stepped closer abruptly, Hashirama’s hand shooting up instantly to lay on his shoulder guard. “Brother, please,” he whispered, turning towards him slightly. Then the cold stare was back on Zenji. “You need not besmirch your Village’s secrets now.”
“Ah, ah,” Zenji sneered, “Why the fuck should I care? I’m as good as dead anyway, and I want to teach Konoha’s best scientist how he could have saved his oh so beloved.” His voice dripped with caustic smugness and Hashirama had to grip Tobirama’s forearm lest his brother shot forward and delivered the sentence just for these words alone.
Tobirama’s expression was one of sheer murder. His teeth were bared and the scarlet gaze alone was ready to kill a man - just like the rest of himself, particularly the large weapon he carried; the same weapon he had used many times before.
Zenji continued to live his show. “Now I needn’t explain the weaving process since you kinda copied it - well fucking done, man - but my seal - ah, let’s see. My seal is relatively simple!” Hashirama’s grip on his brother tightened as he near vibrated with lethal energy still, spurring Zenji to even greater extravagance. “Of course, it was passed down to me by the one who taught me, but I made some modifications,” he drawled lazily, an adventurous glint to his gaze.
What followed was a detailed explanation about the intricacy and yet simplicity of his own sealing process Tobirama couldn’t stomach anymore - he turned away lest he drove the odachi through the prisoner’s neck on the spot, perhaps. It was impossible to tell in the dim light - the shadow looming over his face hid his expression well and with the happuri, his profile was somewhat obscured. Only the taut stance, the clenched grasp on his weapon were telltale signs of the high-strung situation - a tight coil, ready to lash out any second.
Zenji didn’t hold back on information about how exactly he performed the seal that made the disruption stick within the leash - everyone else listened quietly. Hashirama’s mien had turned stony throughout it and the three members of the interrogation unit simply watched the man with practiced nonchalance.
“And that,” Zenjia finished his grand, final play, “is what could’ve saved Y/n. Too fucking bad.” The grin he wore was nothing short of sick. “Maybe I can tell her too, when I’m dead, hm?”, he tilted his head.
Suffocating silence befell the room.
Hashirama cleared his throat. It was time for the execution of judgement, literally. He turned his head towards Tobirama, whose back was turned towards the prisoner at this point. “Very well,” he concluded with a loaded kind of finality.
A few moments of heavy silence later, Tobirama turned around.
His head was tilted downwards slightly, shadows cast over his face.
Then he looked up.
Smirking broadly.
He lowered the odachi that he had clasped so tightly throughout all of the conversation - more like, Zenji’s soliloquy, and stepped yet again closer to the prisoner.
The smirk became smug, and smugness became condescending as skin around his mouth wrinkled in an utterly arrogant way. There was a satisfied, bright glint in his scarlet gaze. “You are without a doubt the dumbest shinobi I’ve ever encountered,” finally, he bared his teeth in a wide grin. “And for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart.” His baritone voice dripped with sarcasm.
Zenji’s expression fell apart. His jaw hung open slightly and his gaze was wide as he tried to process the change of demeanour in who he deemed by now his arch nemesis. “What the fuck?”, he spat out finally when Tobirama didn’t speak again.
He simply clicked his tongue sympathetically and arched both eyebrows. “Y/n is not dead. In fact, thanks to you, she will live.” Both relief and caustic smugness were tangible in the way he worded this, no doubt basking in the moment of figuratively crushing Zenji under his heel. Who still didn’t find the words to answer yet, but Tobirama was more than happy to supply him with more fodder. “Certainly, time was running quite short - almost, imagine, almost - you could’ve won.”
Zenji’s jaw trembled beside the pain that must cause him alongside the rest of him. The man still hadn’t found his words again.
Tobirama wasn’t done with the verbal execution, however. “I truly did not know how to copy your seal after creating my own.” A slow nod, his baritone voice now came rolling smoothly, “And then it occurred to me - why not use your petty thirst for revenge for Y/n? All it’d take was make you believe she died. And here we are,” a smile spread over his lips again. “You delivered perfectly.” Then, he had the audacity to give Zenji a single pat on the head as though he was praising a dog.
The prisoner recoiled from the touch as though it was scalding hot. “Fuck you!” he screamed from the top of his lungs, nearly tipping over from his kneeling position, had it not been for Ikuro’s hand shooting out to secure him by the shoulder. “Rot in fucking hell, Senju!” he howled, but it was no more than a little bandaid for the hurt pride.
Tobirama already turned around to Hashirama, any trace of smugness or gloating gone from his expression. “I’ll get to work. Thank you, anija,” he dipped his head slightly. Zenji was still shouting profanities at him, but it was no more than a background noise.
Hashirama smiled broadly, much more like himself. “Of course.”
Tobirama turned back to Ikuro and his subordinates. Now, he actually took a slight bow. “And thank you, too. There still is little more to be done, but I’m very grateful for your support.”
Ikuro had already wrestled an unruly Zenji off of the floor, but the burly man wore a wide grin. “I - no, we will be expecting you. Right, Zenji? Come on, let’s get you back to your compatriots. They’ll be glad to see you again,” he finished with a dangerous chuckle.
The sounds already drowned out as Tobirama initiated the hiraishin seal teleport to the laboratory.
You only had a few hours left.
_______
You were suspended in sweet nothingness.
You had been for a while really, perturbed only by occasional nightmares. They were dim and far away, visions of what had been. Maybe. You weren’t sure anymore.
It hadn’t been like this before. Before, your world had been on fire. You had been on fire. Being burned from the inside out and yet too powerless to scream out your agony at the world. Something - someone - had chained you up in the nothingness with no company except your torment that you suffered through, over and over again. Until it faded, and the nightmares came. You laughed about those now. Then, all was calm. For a while.
Your reason for going through all this was becoming but an abstract concept.
Until you weren’t even sure anymore what might be happening. Dimly, you remembered your strength leaving you - waking up was getting harder, eventually it was tantamount to the one armed climbing exercises you used to steel yourself with. You actually had been able to pull off something like that?
Tobirama had been by your side every waking second. His face; you’d never forget the expression. Never before had you seen him haunted by distress of this kind while his chakra warmly embraced you, while he comforted you - telling you he was working hard. You had wanted to comfort him in turn, then. He needed it more than you - he hadn’t looked fine. Drawn, worn out.
Unwell. Sick, almost.
Things must be looking very bad, you knew then. It reminded you why you went through all this. But you all were losing the fight, it seemed?
No matter how much you fought, how badly you wanted to - during the phases in which you weren’t suffering from being burned alive nor haunted by nightmares, you couldn’t wake anymore. You wanted to. So badly. But your eyes wouldn’t open and ultimately, the darkness was your lonely repose in which you anxiously waited for the next time the fire began to light up again.
But that had been fading. The fire’s burn was becoming shorter. And your consciousness was slipping more. Sometimes, you thought you felt Tobirama’s presence, but maybe that was wishful thinking.
Eventually it was just you and forlorn nothingness with the occasional nightmare.
Had you died?
It changed. The fire returned once more - and this time, this time it felt as though you were burning away. Not like before - when it burned you out until someone snuffed out the flames - now, it consumed your very being. It became so great at some point, pain was all you were - nothing besides the scorch of the fire that ate you alive.
You realised then, this must be it - every moment more of you faded and the pain kept on roaring through every single cell of your body. But you - you were becoming duller and duller. You didn’t want to. Not yet - this wasn’t how you were going to go down, was it? Yet the promise of eternal rest after this, all of this pain - it was alluring. After all you’ve been through, was there really a point in returning?
Tobirama would choke you personally if he ever caught on to these thoughts.
But he’s not here, is he?
You were all alone.
Ready to go. You had fought, you had tried, you had walked the road to hell many times over but eventually even your stamina would forego you.
Except they didn’t let you go. Something - no, someone was holding you back. Any time you were dipping into the part of darkness you just knew there was no returning from, there was a pull. It was forceful, unpleasant - a jolt that might have spurred your heart to keep on beating, your lungs to draw air and each organ of your body to keep on functioning.
You wanted to reject it.
I don’t want to, anymore. I can’t. I just can’t. It hurts too much. Please.
They didn’t let you.
You wanted to cry.
You were suspended in nothingness by titan chains that forcefully kept you right on your very own pyre while pain was becoming you.
_______
He didn’t want to take any chances. But he didn’t have time, either. Tobirama had no choice but to follow the information Zenji had given as dutifully as possible and hope this was it - that the bottle of leash he had crafted was identical to what Zenji would have produced. Really, it was an all out move. His back was against the proverbial wall while yours lowered more and more into a coffin.
You were going into withdrawal again, and he knew what that meant.
Never before had he woven the leash this fast - frankly working with a larger quantity of base substance seemed to make the whole process easier, and yet at the same time more demanding. Not that he felt any of it, he was focusing entirely on getting this done as fast as possible. Once he was satisfied with the result - enough to give it to you that was, which was about the highest standard he could think of - he teleported straight into your room.
Where his brother was bent over your sweating, and shaking body as his palms glowed lightly.
The rattle of your breath - Tobirama knew it well. He had heard it many times before.
A dying person’s breath.
“I’ve got it,” Tobirama whispered as his heart spasmed alongside your flat rasps for air. Blood rushed in his ears and ice-cold through his veins. He struggled to keep the floor under his feet as he staggered closer swiftly. He wouldn’t lose you now. Not after all this, not with the solution to your demise in his hands.
Hashirama didn’t even answer him; his expression was wrinkled by deep concentration and a fine sheen of sweat had formed on his forehead.
Numbly, Tobirama plucked the vial with Zenji’s - his - leash from his pocket and effortlessly opened your mouth. Your skin was icy to the touch and so pale, were it not for your faint chakra signature, he’d have thought you dead already.
The image branded itself into his mind, scarring him forever.
He poured the leash in and tilted your head back so it’d run down your pharynx, giving your scalp a trembling stroke with his hand.
With prickling eyes, he moved to bend over you, place his palms on you as well to assist his brother in healing - no, in keeping you alive. As soon as he established the connection needed for examining and healing, the reality of your condition rolled over him like a boulder. Your body’s reaction to the withdrawal was as violent as ever, just like the substance that was causing it. A proverbial bushfire that had spread throughout all of you. Hashirama wasn’t just stabilizing you alongside the seals - he was taking aggressive action to keep you alive. There wasn’t a part of you he wasn’t actively pouring his own chakra in to keep on working. Were it not for him, you’d be long gone already - in his brother’s chakra’s embrace you’d stay alive, barely, so long as he forced your body to keep on going, and going. Tobirama was positive you were well beyond what you could take any more in terms of another person’s chakra.
The alternative was you dying.
It was another problem they’d deal with later. Swiftly, he began to assist his brother to split up the efforts evenly and try to keep you alive to the best of his abilities.
The next moments felt like an eternity.
Work. Work already. It was all Tobirama could think of while his chakra bolstered your failing heart to keep it on pumping, wound through your lungs into the tiniest alveoles to clear them of fluid and repair tissue damage so that you might breathe.
Just work.
Agonizingly slowly, the drug was taking effect. Already, your chakra began to clog, freeze - the muting component hit your network exactly like the leash would.
Tobirama thought time and his heart both froze in the next few moments that surely decided your fate.
The withdrawal’s flame died down and fizzled out as though water had been poured over it.
Time was starting again.
He started to breathe once more. Before he realised it, he sank to his knees at the side of your bed. He couldn’t focus any more, he barely felt the wheezes that escaped him as a few heavy sobs wrecked his torso.
He had done it. Finally.
The oppressing feeling of time running out - the rock that had been crushing him was lifted.
But the elevation did not last long.
Reality - the parts that weren’t circling around the fact you were at least not going to die due to a lack of the leash - very quickly yanked him back to the situation at hand. Already, he dragged himself up again to aid Hashirama once more, who had not once broken focus. They had stopped the destructive withdrawal, true enough; but the damages it had wrought were not gone of course. Swiftly he gathered himself to concentrate back on aiding his brother in keeping you alive, really, a task no less dire than before. Rather, it was time to tip the scales into the opposite direction now.
He couldn’t say how long the two of them sat in silence, simply forcing you to keep going by continuously pouring their chakra into you.
He wouldn’t lose you - not now, not after everything you both had gone through.
He wouldn’t let you go.
Bit by bit, your body started to function more and more on its own - requiring less of the forceful aid both brothers were providing. That wasn’t to say you were becoming stable at all - tentatively, Hashirama would nudge Tobirama to withdraw some, only to watch you relapse quickly.
As it was, your condition remained critical.
Some time later, his brother allowed himself a momentary almost-break. Hashirama hummed deeply. “She’s well into chakra overload now,” he announced somberly, gazing at your face. “However we can’t stop yet.”
Tobirama’s attention was still mostly turned inwards and towards you as he did the brunt of the work so his brother could catch a breath. There wasn’t a part of you his chakra wasn’t aiding in some way; all he managed was a brief grunt of agreement.
Effectively, chakra overload wasn’t much different than a late allergic reaction of the body to the procedures a medic nin had performed. The extend of what a patient could take and experienced varied from how well-versed the healer was - and Tobirama knew his brother’s skills to be capable of healing fatal wounds without sending the person into overload - but your system barely had been able to catch a break from the agonizingly long time of capture, torture and what effectively just served to keep you alive for more torture. And then of course, all that had followed back home, in Konoha.
But what they had been doing to you for who knew how long?
That was as good as keeping defying death itself.
Hashirama sighed deeply. “I suppose we have no other choice anyway. The next few hours will be decisive.”
An ice-cold shiver ran down Tobirama’s spine, disrupting his strained focus momentarily.
Of course. They couldn’t keep on going like this forever - and neither would you endlessly, readily respond to what they did.
Either you’d start pulling your own weight again, or…
Tobirama swallowed heavily.
Silently, Hashirama’s efforts picked up again alongside his own to stabilise you.
_________
Tobirama had thought weaving the leash was about one of the most straining things he had done. But like so often these last few days, he had been wrong - cradling your very life with his proverbial hands was wrecking him a lot more for numerous reasons - the least of which was the exhaustion setting in.
Because if one thing was keeping him going, it was his determination - he wouldn’t, he couldn’t lose you, not now, not after all this.
Slowly, they had begun to lessen the intensity of the aid they provided and watched whether you relapsed into a more severe state or not. If you did, they settled back to the previous level - and waited again. A tedious procedure, but there was no other way.
Eventually, the time you managed without any aid from him or Hashirama had increased substantially - naturally, the seals on your body still were working strongly, though.
Both were now standing next to your bed, an eerie silence had filled the room, save for your flat, strained breaths.
Hashirama spoke first. “I don’t want to say this is over, yet,” he announced somberly. His mien was drawn, tired. His brother had his limits - keeping someone alive for hours pushed even him. Something told Tobirama he still could have kept on going, though. “Though we will watch now. Her overload is very severe. If she makes the next hours well enough…” He trailed off, giving Tobirama what best could be described as a sad glance.
Tobirama didn’t know what he felt anymore. In these last hours he felt just about any kind of extreme emotion - utter heartbreak, loss, sorrow, murderous fury, followed by exhilaration, followed by despair, topped off with numbing focus.
Truth be told, he could sleep while standing at this point. And yet at the same time, he was restless. He knew - he knew, just a bit longer. Just a bit.
He swallowed heavily. “Alright.” His gaze was locked on your gaunt features still. “We should keep her sedated,” not that he believed for a second you’d be anywhere near waking anytime soon. “There will be no more withdrawal challenges. We’ll keep her chakra locked and use the seals to stabilise her until the overload fades.” Perhaps he was just convincing himself this would work, too.
Hashirama hummed in agreement. “Frankly her weak state may be advantageous. She’s too weak to have much of a too severe reaction now, I believe.”
Tobirama’s gaze flickered momentarily to his brother, then back to you. He hadn’t considered that angle. Then, he sighed deeply. “The irony,” he muttered finally.
A low chuckle was the answer, which irritated Tobirama slightly. However his brother’s gaze bore an honest kind of appreciation he always had a hard time spitting sarcasm at. “Either way, I’m hopeful she’ll make it. You’ve done it. The plan was… daring, but.” He shrugged.
He could only give a curt snort in reply. “I regret not having used my enemy’s pettiness and thirst for revenge for Y/n’s advantage sooner.” The solution had been so obvious when it revealed itself to him in what had been the darkest hour of all this fight. When he had crumbled by your bedside with his brother by his side. He frowned then. “Although it made the show most… credible.”
Hashirama’s mouth formed a thin line again as he nodded. His brother might not have fallen apart like Tobirama did, but his reaction had been just as intense. And just like Tobirama, he had been ready to protect you with any means available. Using his position for a mock execution was nothing difficult. “Now to find a cure.”
Tobirama sighed again and crossed his arms. Luckily, time wouldn’t be pressing him this time. Although he had not spent a single second on the matter, either. “I first will create the leash in such a way Y/n doesn’t need to suffer the psychotropic effects of the base substance anymore.” His baritone voice was firm. With the weight off of his chest, the protectiveness was filling him again. You were not going to suffer any more than you had. And he knew precisely how to make that happen. “It’ll just be medication she has to take regularly.”
Again, his brother hummed affirmatively. “Very well. Even so…,” he frowned then, growing quite stern. “You are going to sleep now. For about a day or three.”
Anger flashed through Tobirama faster than he had truly comprehended the words. “Anija, I will not-”
“Yes. You will.” Hashirama crossed his arms. “You’ve been awake for, what? Forty-eight hours? More? Don’t make me throw you out.”
Tobirama’s voice had risen in volume before he realised it might disturb you, but the ire stewing inside made it near impossible to keep it down. “I most certainly will not before I made the drug more bearable for-”
Something flashed in Hashirama’s eyes. One didn’t need Tobirama’s sensor skills to feel the surge in chakra that his brother emitted - but for him, it was like staring into the sun. Sometimes, it was too much. Like right now.
He yielded with no more than a curt “Alright,” before teleporting to your shared home.
Now, it didn’t feel so forlorn anymore.
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hi!! I saw ur lil fall drabble list and was wondering if maybe 63 with javi? (also, even if u don’t do this prompt, I just wanted to say thank u for your writing, there’s just something super warm about ur blog ) :’)
63. “It’s hand holding season.”
Oh 🥺 This is soft but I love it and one grumpy DEA man 🥰 I hope you enjoy and thank you, mi amor 💕
»»————- ♡ ————-««
Javier sighed heavily as he slumped back in his seat, tossing the binoculars to the side. Rolling your eyes at him, you reached for the offending item and held them in to your eyes as you tried to see anything.
This stakeout had been quiet, oh so quiet, and was turning into a colossal waste of time. You almost envied Murphy for getting to stay back at the office to handle paperwork. It would at least have given you something to occupy your mind.
"This was a fuckin' set up," Javier sighed as he grabbed another cigarette, shoved it into his mouth and lit it. You made a noncommittal sound as you set the binoculars down in the center console and reached for your water bottle. Despite the fact that it was nearing Christmas, it was still warm in Colombia, and you were thankful for having to remembered to wear a light shirt and jean shirt, "they dropped this information to get us out here and waste time."
"You don't know that, Javi," you told him, reaching for the cigarette and pulling out of his mouth. He was momentarily stunned as he watched you bring it to your own lips and take a long drag before throwing it outside the window, "a horrible habit really."
"You're..." he trailed off as a little smirk grew on his face.
"What?" you teased before opening the door and sliding out of the passenger seat, "funny? Brilliant? Beautiful? A better agent than you? All things I already knew."
"Let's just go into the town and see if we can find anything," you suggested as he nodded, following closely on your tail.
It wasn't a town so much as a small village in the middle of the jungle, but it was quaint - sweet even. And it felt safe. Almost too safe. You wondered if that was all part of their plan or if you'd just become so jaded that anything that wasn't outwardly a threat became suspicious. Either way, there wasn't much there.
You stopped by and examined some of the stalls that boasted colorful fruit, berries you knew Javi adored, and delicious food, making small talk with the locals. Javier remained silent, following close behind and throwing in a word here and there.
He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he almost bowled you over when you made a pointed stop to buy some fruit.
"Sorry," he murmured as you just shook your head at him, paying a large sum, much larger than necessary, for the berries you'd asked for. The vendor didn't seem to want to accept but you insisted.
You continued on, popping a few of the ripe and juicy blueberries into your mouth. Christmas displays were everywhere and you took your time to look at everything. Javier was there too looking at everything, but in this case, everything was you.
"Javi?" you asked when you noticed her paused, an almost confused look on his face. You motioned for him to follow, "come on."
"Berries," he said as you offered him the bag to pick some out, "why berries?"
"I like them," you raised an eyebrow, "and they're your favorites too. Win-win?"
"Y-yeah," he agreed, nodding but still curious as he took a few berries in his hand, mulling them over before popping them in his own mouth, "wait."
"Hmm?" you turned back to him and watched as he pointed to the corner of your mouth.
"You've got some juice," he said as you tried to scrub the drying bits away, to no avail. He tutted in the back of his throat as he shook his head. Lifting his hand, he waited for a moment before reaching over to see if you would stop him. But when you didn't, he used his thumb to delicately wipe away the juice from the corner of your lips. You tried to ignore the feeling of his hand on, suppressing the warmth that was spreading throughout you, "all better."
"Thanks," you murmured softly before continuing on, heading towards where you spied a large Christmas tree display. Javi had been stunned into silence, but quickly caught up to you, trying to make sense of the feelings that were bubbling up much stronger suddenly.
"Hey," he said softly as you studied him, finding a light pink tinge creeping into his cheeks, "give me your hand."
"My hand?" you asked with a laugh as he nodded, "whatever for?"
"Its...hand holding season," he blurted out, "it'll help us blend in. Just like all those other couples."
"Hand holding season?" you repeated as he nodded.
"Yeah, you know, Christmas, it's all about couples and stuff."
"Or we could just be friends?" you offered up as he shook his head.
"Not good enough," he insisted as he reached for your hand. You didn't even bother to stop him. You had no desire to.
The rest of your time in the small village and largest uneventful, which turned out to be a nice change of pace. You were sure that Javi had been right this was some sort of set up to get you to look away from something else or just to throw you off the Escobar's scent....but for once you didn't mind.
You enjoyed walking around with Javi, talking about anything and everything as you looked around. It was easy - fun. Part of it even felt so real, like you were an actual couple instead of just paying pretend. Javi just have gotten in the little charade too because by the time you to the car, he was still holding your hand, and your fingers were still laced together.
"Javi," you held up your clasped hands as you moved to open your door, " I think we're good now."
"What if...what if I don't want to let go?" he asked softly as you looked up to meet his honeyed eyes. They were searching yours, looking for some sort of sign that you wanted this too. And you did. You had for a long time.
"You don't have to," you whispered softly, fighting back a huge grin.
"I think...God, this probably going to sound crazy, but I'm in love with you," he decided to just get it all out before blabbering too much and making a completle fool of himself.
"Yeah?" you asked as he bit his lip but nodded. It had taken him a long, long time to put together the pieces but here he was, finally, "okay."
"What?" he dropped your hand out of surprise as you laughed and crossed your arms over your chest, "all I get is an okay? I just told you-"
"I know," you stopped him, "me too. It took you long enough to realize...I thought...maybe you never would. Or that I was setting myself up for failure. What made you finally realize?"
"The berries," he admitted as broke into a fit of giggles, "what?!"
"I hate berries," you admitted, "they're probably my least favorite fruit."
"Then why did you..."
"Because they're your favorites, Javi. I know you always enjoy them," you whispered as the softest look crossed his features, "and you never treat yourself to anything, so you basically forced my hand. The rest are yours by the way."
"Holy shit," he whispered as he waited in amusement, shaking his head, "fuck. This whole time. I'm a dumbass. If I wouldn't have been so stupid-"
"Javier?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you gonna kiss me or...do you need a few more years to get there first?"
"Fuck you," he grinned as he put his hands on both sides of your face, pulling you gently towards him as he crashed his lips onto yours. You wrapped your arms around his neck, running a hand through his dark hair.
"Not too bad," you said when you broke apart for some air. He just laughed lightly, "might need to work on that a little."
"Oh yeah?"
"Uh huh," you teased, "unless that's the best you've got it."
"You're just asking for it-"
"Yeah, Javi, I am," you whispered in his ear before kissing him again, "what are you going to do to about it?"
"Let's get out of here."
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So all the terrible retcons and geographic inconsistency (Kul Tiras wtf) and the time travel and the bullshit with the night elves is bad (Illidan is the worst character ever, don't @ me), but the most frustrating part of WoW lore to me is its failure to explore certain complex emotional themes in a really satisfying way--like, the people who expound and expand on Warcraft lore are canny enough to notice that these emotional themes *exist*, but not clever enough to actually work with them or build them out, and so the whole thing collapses into rule-of-cool melodrama. There's nothing wrong with rule-of-cool melodrama; I love rule-of-cool melodrama. But Warcraft lore is *begging* to combine that rule of cool melodrama with some really rich and interesting emotions and character interpretations, it sets them up and is all ready to knock them down, and just... doesn't.
Take the conversation between Saurfang and Garrosh in the Borean Tundra, in WotLK, the one that ends with Saurfang saying "I don't eat pork." I think that's emblamatic of the big theme that unites the Horde, that makes it make sense as a faction. The Alliance, after all, started as a defensive association in the face of the Orc invasion; its renaissance after the creation of Durotar and the invasion of the Scourge is only natural. But what is the theme of the Horde? Is it honor? Strength? Sheer brutality? Well, none of those things. Orcs claim to value honor and strength; the Forsaken are certainly various shades of very dark gray at best, the Tauren and the Orcs *do* seem like natural allies of a sort, but all the races of the Horde have something even deeper in common: trauma. The Orcs are still (cf. Saurfang) dealing with the emotional turmoil of having been both forced and partially complicit in the atrocities of the First and Second War--after which their homeworld was destroyed, they were forced into concentration camps, and they had to rebuild their culture and their identity from the ground up. They have to find a new place in a new world, and there's this tension between the younger generation that doesn't have firsthand experience with any of this and just remembers that the Horde used to be a name that struck fear into the hearts of their enemies (Garrosh Hellscream, for instance) and the older generation that remembers how awful that time really was, and doesn't want to see the old ways revived because it might just destroy their people for good this time. Then there's the Darkspear Trolls and the Tauren, who were both driven out of their old homelands, and fell in with the Horde as natural allies with similar cultural points of reference; and the Blood Elves, whose suffering in the Third War was severe enough to radically alter their culture, coupled with being betrayed by their ruler who decided that joining the Burning Legion and abandoning them sounded like a better time than rebuilding Quel'Thalas.
And then there's the Forsaken. Oh, man, the Forsaken. The Forsaken and Sylvanas are some of my favorite characters in all of WoW, because sure, you could look at it and say, "okay, creepy undead who like green things that go plop and mad science = evil, bad guys." But you'd really be missing what makes the Forsaken interesting. They're not the Scourge--they explicitly broke away from the Scourge when Arthas left Lordaeron. They're not invaders, either. They're in fact mostly the human population of the destroyed kingdom of Lordaeron, the inheritors of that land, but who are treated by the Alliance as interlopers with no right to the very towns and villages they have *always* called home. They're treated as monsters by every living person who ever knew them, and they can't help but regard themselves that way, too. "What are we, if not slaves to this torment?" is one of the casual interaction lines you get when you click on Sylvanas: they do not *like* being dead. But Sylvanas is ruthless and cruel and after Arthas is killed, wins the Val'kyr over to her side so she can keep making more Forsaken. Why?
Simple. Let us imagine: you are an ordinary person, of no unusually great or poor moral virtue. You are hurt, badly. Grieviously. In a way you will never recover from. And everyone you love, all of your friends and your family, the whole society you come from, now sees you as an unredeemable monster that should, no, must be destroyed. How long must you be called a monster before you decide--fuck it, I *will* be the monster they call me. Because, at least that way, no one can ever hurt me again.
The overpowering motivation for the Forsaken is not power or bloodlust; it's not money, or forbidden knowledge. It's making sure no one in the whole world is ever able to make slaves of them again. To make sure they will not be hurt. And the biggest misstep the Alliance ever made was not reaching out to Sylvanas with overtures of friendship as soon as she established her kingdom--because like it or not, she has the support of the people of Lordaeron, and thus a damn good claim to her position. Maybe, if they had, they could have influenced the Forsaken, shown them that they had friends and didn't need to resort to amoral methods to defend themselves. But as it stands, they only have allies of convenience in the Horde (at least until Sylvanas becomes Warchief), and they know that no one in Azeroth is quite happy to see them continue to exist and be free. Everything else about the Forsaken--their use of dark magic, their development of a new, even more destructive plague, their recruiting former servants of the Lich King and raising new Forsaken from among the dead of the ongoing wars--makes perfect sense from the standpoint of a people that knows they are under threat from all sides, and will do anything to survive.
(The Draenei could have been something like this, too, FWIW. Like, a broken people, a people of exiles who are most comfortable in the shadows and with moral ambiguity. But then Metzen had to go make them Righteous Space Goats. I mean, come on. They're just boring now. They were never going to be Horde-aligned--there's too much history with the Orcs there!--but having a group like that on the side of the Alliance, to help drive home the point that there is not a clear good guys/bad guys distinction here, would have been really nice.)
That actually makes them a pretty damn good fit for the Horde. Moreover, it creates an interesting point of tension with the Alliance, which is clearly *not* always the good guys. I mean, there's the matter of orc concentration camps, but also consider the refusal of leaders like Daelin Proudmoore to contemplate peace (and the subsequent, somewhat... forced turn of Jaina Proudmoore from dove to hawk) and the steadfast refusal of many on that side to deal fairly with the races of the Horde just because they appear monstrous. And arrogance, hoo boy. Dalaran, Gilneas, the Night Elves--huge swathes of the Alliance are characterized by being arrogant and not a little cruel.
And what of Sylvanas becoming Warchief? I don't know where the BFA lore is going (I'm not playing retail anyway), but right now it looks like they're setting up another Garrosh type situation, and preparing for Thrall to retake the Warchief-ship, but if they do that it would be a real pity. First of all, because, well, we saw that already in Mists of Pandaria! What, are we going to besiege Orgrimmar again? Second of all--Sylvanas and Garrosh are *very* different people. Garrosh was, well, Proud; hence the Sha of Pride. He wanted glory and power, he wanted war for war's sake, so he could live up to his father's reputation as a warrior. He was willing to sacrifice everything else that made the Horde the Horde for that. Sylvanas, though, has one overriding motivation: Keep Her People Safe. Punish the people who hurt her is a strong secondary motivation--but it's part of that first one, because if she can make her enemies' victories painful enough, she might discourage them from trying to press their advantage. And her people *trust* her on this: "Dark Lady watch over you," they say when you take your leave. She is not an autocrat--she is their beloved protector. So, she makes the ruins of Lordaeron uninhabitable. She annihilates Teldrassil. Does she spend very many Orc and Troll and Tauren lives doing so? Very well. They aren't *her* people.
I don't think this has to be a tragic flaw leading to her downfall. It sure doesn't make her a good leader for the rest of the Horde, though (even though, on an emotional and aesthetic level, I am 3000% here for Warchief Sylvanas, even more than Warchief Vol'jin, who also had a lot of the creepy threatening vibe that made him a much more interesting choice than either Thrall or Garrosh). But you could make it one, and you could do it very well--they've already mentioned in the tie-ins that Calia Menethil, Arthas's sister, teeeechnically has a claim to the throne of Lordaeron. And, even more interesting, is no longer quite among the living, even if the mechanism of that unlife is happy fun magic instead of evil death magic. Moreover, she has some sympathy for the Forsaken. You could have a squaring-off between them, and you could have a Queen Calia--maybe. If you could bridge that gap and make her understand that the Forsaken feel fundamentally apart from the other human kingdoms now, if she could come to understand just how much evil the Alliance has done to them, if she could really grok what it's like to be them. Then you could have a leader who understands their trauma--but also wants to heal it, rather than lash out at anyone and everyone that might conceivably be a threat. That, too, would be very interesting.
(There’s a reason that, while I loved the Alliance as a kid, I only play Horde toons as an adult. It’s not just that the Horde feel more interesting and vivid to me. It’s that the hypocrisy and the arrogance of the Alliance stands out in much greater relief now. The Horde aren’t good guys--nobody’s the good guys, here--but they don’t lie about their motivations, and they don’t act with cruelty and then play the victim in response. Jaina was an important exception, but they badly mishandled her character in the runup to MoP, which I find very hard to forgive.)
But knowing Blizz, even if they go vaguely that route, they won't stick the emotional landing. There is a very good, if very OTT and melodramatic (in the best possible way), series of fantasy novels or games lurking *behind*, or perhaps parallel, to Warcraft's lore. It is a shame that Blizzard has done so much to obscure it with obnoxious cruft, retcons and timeline compression, repetitive use of the same handful of characters, stupid-ass time-travel plots that create ten thousand plot holes and inconsistencies, shitty tie-in novels (cf. everything by Richard Knaak), and a total failure to make half the world's characters (i.e., everyone in the Alliance) at all interesting. I have a daydream of doing my own version of WoW lore and posting it somewhere like on AO3, but one of the things that makes WoW lore simultaneously so interesting and disappointing to me is that it's embedded in the explorable, realized space of video game worlds. Hard to reproduce that in print, I think. Might be worth it to try.
#world of warcraft#lore#warcraft lore#the forsaken#sylvanas windrunner#the work of chris metzen and its discontents#but hey#at least i got full chain of the scarlet crusade on my warrior in classic
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LGBTQIA+ Historical Romance Novels for Winter, Hanukkah, Solstice, and Christmas 2019 - Updated Dec 17th!
A Very Surrey SFS Christmas by Nicola Davidson (m/f, m/m, f/f, bisexual, and poly)
- Welcome to the Surrey Sexual Freedom Society - where unconventional and uninhibited ladies and gentlemen discuss all matters erotic…
It’s Christmastide in Surrey, and the Society members have gathered at Lady Portia and Denham’s estate to host a magnificent masked ball. Alas, not everything is going quite to plan, as a curmudgeonly duke, England’s naughtiest cat, a viscount with writer’s block, two newborns, and some colorful local residents conspire to turn order into chaos. But with those you love all things are possible, and it wouldn’t be A Very Surrey SFS Christmas without madcap mischief, banter, and a whole lot of wicked fun…
This series of extended epilogues include Beatrice and Amelia, Madeline and Ethan, Clayton, Susanna, and Joseph, Lady Portia and Denham, and Fairfield.
Please note this book contains explicit language and sexual content.
Peter Cratchit’s Christmas by Drew Marvin Fraye
- Peter Cratchit, a young lad preparing to make his way in the world, is the eldest son of Scrooge’s lowly clerk Bob Cratchit. Peter flourishes under the tutelage of his “Uncle” Scrooge and seeks to make his mark as a man of business, like his uncle before him.
One Christmas Eve, as Scrooge lays dying, Peter embarks on a risky ocean voyage that he believes will secure the future for his family. Onboard, Peter finds love, happiness, and success, only to lose it all by the voyage’s end. Returning to London, Peter shuns his family and instead finds himself living on the streets, haunted by his failures and his dead lover, selling his body just to survive while he waits for the winter cold to claim him once and for all.
But winter snows also mean Christmas is coming, and for the Cratchit family, Christmas is a time of miracles. Can a visit from three familiar spirits change Peter’s life again? Is there one more miracle in store for the lost son of one of Dickens’ most enduring families?
Yuletide Treasure by Eliot Grayson
- There’s not enough Yuletide spirit in the world to fix this holiday disaster…
Eben Sypeman’s world is falling apart. It’s two days before Yule and his business partner is dead, leaving behind empty accounts and looming bankruptcy. And if that isn’t bad enough, his patron goddess is irritated with him. It seems she’s tired of his tendency to mince words and avoid conflict. She’s insisting—quite forcefully—that he start being totally honest with everyone, including himself. Divinely enforced honesty couldn’t have come at a less opportune time, especially when his clerk’s tall, dark and distractingly handsome son enters the picture.
The last thing on Tim Pratchett’s mind is romance. All the former soldier wants is to fill in for his sick father at work and recover from his war wounds in peace. But there’s something about the grumpy Eben that confounds and entices him in equal measure. Their timing couldn’t be worse. They’re complete opposites. And yet … none of that matters when he’s with Eben.
But if Eben and Tim have any hope of finding their very own happily ever after, they’ll have to survive a dickens of a truth curse and the machinations of a trickster goddess—all while searching for enough yuletide treasure to save them all.
A joyous, relaxing Yule indeed. Bah, humbug.
This is an M/M romance with explicit scenes, a voyeuristic pagan goddess, and an odious nephew. Despite any other possible similarities to A Christmas Carol, there are neither ghosts nor geese, but readers can expect a happy ending and at least one use of the word “dickens.”
The Stonecutter Earl’s First Christmas by Adella Harris
- Nathan Fitzroy hates the holidays. Estranged from his family for refusing to marry, he’s still expected to keep up appearances, which means attending their holiday celebrations. And that means that, from the beginning of December until the middle of January, he needs to find work that will let him take off almost as many days as he works there. For him, that means working at a molly house called the Goat’s Horn.
Owen Landon was quite content to be a stone cutter. It was what he’d trained for, and it earned him enough money to pay his brother’s school fees and still live comfortably enough in a cottage in their village. He’d always been told his father was distantly related to nobility, but he’d never thought much of it, until a solicitor came to tell him he was the new Earl of Morebrook, a position he has no idea how to fill.
One night in December, when Owen can’t stand his new role another moment, he sneaks away to the seediest molly house he can find, the Goat’s Horn, for a distraction. And find one he does, a beautiful fellow with just the accent and bearing he’s supposed to be learning. When he sees the man again away from the molly house, he comes up with a plan to both spend more time with him and learn to be an earl. Owen offers him a position tutoring him before the start of the Christmas parties he’s supposed to attend.
Nathan’s worst nightmare comes true when one of the clients of the Goat’s Horn recognizes him outside of the molly house. But the man offers him a position that will allow him to earn money away from the Goat’s Horn until Christmas. If only he can remember he’s supposed to be tutoring the fellow, not bedding him, and certainly not falling in love with him.
A steamy Christmas romance with hints of Pygmalion.
Approx. 50,000 words, 200 pages
Tinsel and Spruce Needles holiday series by Elna Holst (f/f and f/non binary MCs, MCs with disabilities !!!!!)
Candlelight Kisses
- Malmö, Sweden, 1994
Erika Stolt is a feminist activist, and not one of the slick, lipstick lesbian variety. She’s the kind who trashes beauty contests, who graffitis her own subversive messages over commercial billboards, and who fucks people mainly as a political statement. But then a community service sentence lands her a spot as the unlikely new assistant of one of the candidates for the Malmö Lucia contest, and the world as she knows it is promptly turned on its head.
Little X
- Malmö, Sweden, 1996
Sofie Andersson is a dyslectic born under the star sign Aries, who drives the local buses for a living. Her hobbies include knitting terrible hats and intermittent lesbianism. This December she is on the point of moving into her first flat of her own, figuring out her place in the world, when an instant attraction to a handsome stranger leads her to question everything she’s taken for granted.
Wild Bells
- Lund, Sweden, 1998
Mia Andersson is not a nice person. She is a sharp, sensational-looking, aloof lawyer-to-be, and the busiest sapphic player in town. Mia Andersson takes no prisoners, tells no tales, and if you gave her your number, chances are she won’t call. But this holiday season, at age twenty-seven, wheels that are out of her control have been set in motion, and it looks like she might just get caught in the spin.
February and December: Dominus Calendar Series I (Volume 1) by JP Kenwood
- As a lifelong passion continues to fade, another love deepens… two stand-alone m/m stories of love, lust, and friendship in ancient Rome featuring characters from JP Kenwood's Dominus series. February: Home from the first war against the kingdom of Dacia, Gaius Fabius ignores his obligations in Rome and returns to his secluded seaside villa in southern Italy. Under the pretense of a holiday trip, his best friend and secret lover, Lucius Petronius, surprises him with an unexpected visit. Later that evening, the lusty masters share the delights of Gaius’s blond pleasure slave, Nicomedes. December: With whispers of an embezzlement scandal floating through the capital, Lucius Petronius and his beloved concubine, Bryaxis, celebrate the raucous winter solstice festival of the Saturnalia with Luc’s family. After a joy-filled evening of food, gifts, and stories, Lucius and Bryaxis reverse roles in the master chamber. Warnings for explicit language, filthy loving, and daft shenanigans.
Christmas for a Vampire by Ruby Moone
- Because even Vampires deserve a second chance.
Companion story to The Christmas Curse.
Recently turned vampire Ellis Davenport faces another dismal Christmas. His new life is filled with riches but is cold, lonely, and empty. Refusing to acknowledge his vampire self or to participate in any kind of vampire society, he skirts the edges of that world and has done so since the man he loved chose death rather than spend eternity with him.
As far as Ellis is concerned, Quinn Fordham died on the battlefield in Badajoz. But, as he circulates at yet another tedious Christmas party, he hears piano music, someone playing the Moonlight Sonata like Quinn used to play for him. Entranced, he finds his lover but just as their lips touch, Quinn disappears.
Before Ellis has time to resolve this odd hallucination, he and his friend Trent sense the approach of Lord Heath, their vampire sire. Yet, before their sire arrives, Ellis is stunned to find Quinn not only alive, but a vampire, and furiously angry with him. Can they move beyond the lie that separated them and find each other again?
Dances Long Forgotten by Ruby Moone - Coming December 19th!
Per Ruby:
Ghosts of past romance
Second chance love
Gentlemen dancing with gentlemen
Long buried family secrets
On Christmas Eve, Dylan, the man of James Pell-Charnley’s dreams, is on the point of walking out. Then they hear the faint strains of a waltz in the library of the empty abbey. The music is said to be heard only by those truly in love, and it gives James the courage to tell Dylan the story.
In December 1841, Lord Hugo Pell-Charnley is in a terrible mess. The youngest son of the late Marquis, youngest brother of the incumbent, never felt to fit. When his life comes crashing down, and his life and his family are threatened, he is forced to face his elder brother and confess his deepest secret. When he arrives at Winsford Abbey he finds he must also confront the shame from his past in the form of Lyndon Cross. The boy he’d loved but betrayed in school.
As they clear the ghosts from the past, they dance in each other’s arms in the library to the soft strains of the waltz, but long buried secrets threaten to destroy their happiness.
Two hundred years later, can those dances long forgotten give James and Dylan the courage to hold on to love?
Hither, Page by Cat Sebastian
- A jaded spy and a shell shocked country doctor team up to solve a murder in postwar England.
James Sommers returned from the war with his nerves in tatters. All he wants is to retreat to the quiet village of his childhood and enjoy the boring, predictable life of a country doctor. The last thing in the world he needs is a handsome stranger who seems to be mixed up with the first violent death the village has seen in years. It certainly doesn’t help that this stranger is the first person James has wanted to touch since before the war.
The war may be over for the rest of the world, but Leo Page is still busy doing the dirty work for one of the more disreputable branches of the intelligence service. When his boss orders him to cover up a murder, Leo isn’t expecting to be sent to a sleepy village. After a week of helping old ladies wind balls of yarn and flirting with a handsome doctor, Leo is in danger of forgetting what he really is and why he’s there. He’s in danger of feeling things he has no business feeling. A person who burns his identity after every job can’t set down roots.
As he starts to untangle the mess of secrets and lies that lurk behind the lace curtains of even the most peaceful-seeming of villages, Leo realizes that the truths he’s about to uncover will affect his future and those of the man he’s growing to care about.
If anything else becomes available, this list will be updated, and the date listed at the top–after the post title.
A Christmas Cotillion by Ellie Thomas
- England, 1820. Bachelor Jonathan Cavendish has become reclusive in the years following a failed romance with the love of his life. In the years following their split, he has thrown all his energy into restoring the small estate he inherited from a great uncle and has put aside any thoughts of romance.
Although he’d rather remain at home alone for the festive season, this year he’s accompanying his cousin Freddy to a Christmas country house party. Freddie seems to be constantly falling in love and, on this occasion, he is infatuated with a young lady called Belinda. Jonathan is asked by Freddy’s anxious mother to accompany him to the house party to keep an eye on the situation, in case the young lady turns out to be an unsuitable choice.
Despite this inauspicious beginning, Jonathan catches the eye of Nick, the handsome son of a local well-to-do farmer, who is a constant presence at the holiday entertainments. Nick is intrigued by Jonathan’s kindness and also by the sadness he hides from public view.
The initial attraction between the men seems to be mutual, but can Nick break through Jonathan’s defences and teach him to love again?
2018′s More Extensive List
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Reclamation
Title: Reclamation
Rating:M
Pairing: Kakairu
WC: 10k+
Summary:
Survivor’s guilt was an inevitable part of being a shinobi, they’d been taught this early on.
They just hadn’t been taught how to deal with it, and as Kakashi got older, he was starting to realize that was because no one knew how.
Every day was a lesson in living.
Notes:
After many, many years of reading Kakashi fanfics, I’ve decided to finally give in and have a try at it myself. It was a lot of fun and a great challenge to write this. I am very excited to continue writing kakairu, kakagai, and kakayama in the future (for those of you who know me as that BNHA writer ( @fucking-zawa-sensei) don’t worry I’ll still write EM).
As with most of my fics, this is very sad, but I promise there will be happiness by the end. Hang in there.
Below is a portion of fic, read all of it on AO3 here
Reclamation
To anyone else, they might call this silence.
For Kakashi, the rustling of the tree leaves, the rush of wind passing by his face, the constant, endless pounding of his pulse, mimics the sound of waves crashing into breaker rocks. It’s akin to the crackle of thunder as the lightning leaves the ground, returning back to the clouds.
It’s missions like these that make him feel alive.
More than that, it’s missions like these that make him feel untethered, haunting, as if he’s floating above his own body, desperately out of control of his own limbs, watching them move without him, soaring from tree branch to tree branch with all his muscles pulling him back to Konoha.
It’s missions like these that make him feel like there’s nothing holding him down, nothing keeping him here, like one wrong step would send him catapulting into the night sky’s embrace, leaving no remains for hunter nins to burn.
He’d leave no secrets behind.
These nights bring a heavy burden, bring reminders that life is nothing but a body, too easily taken by another hand, that each breath, each moment is so easily wasted.
Missions like these make him feel invincible, untouchable.
Missions like these make him feel terrified.
Petrified.
Horrified.
Barely human.
He’d lie down on a hundred kunai for Konoha, had certainly already taken that many at various times throughout his long life as a shinobi, but lately he was starting to feel like there had to be something else.
Konoha wasn’t enough to bring him home on nights like this.
The air he sucks into his lungs feels sharp, stinging with the late night chill that has already settled over his worn muscles.
Each footfall, the bounce back of the wood beneath his sandals, manages to ground him only slightly.
Half his mind is focused on the gates he knows he is closing in on, once a beacon, large doors that signified a job well done, a mission complete, but anymore felt like a hiatus, a small pause in a journey elsewhere.
The other half is still lingering behind him, running through every move, every kill. His sharingan, as usual, had recorded it all, adding to an endless loop of jutsu and gore and blood.
He tried, here and there, to supplement it with other things.
Occasionally lifting his headband to take in the sight of the river flowing through Konoha, as he leaned against the side of the bridge, watching as dragonflies landed on the small rocks, little droplets of water falling off their feet as they rose up again, taking flight.
Even this had backfired on more than one occasion, though.
Happy memories had soured.
Fallen friends’ smiling faces now passed quickly in his mind’s eye, some more violently than others, replaced with their last moments, gasped out final requests, promises, and pleas for a life already lost.
Every jounin carried a bingo book, a burden that only seemed to increase in weight with each new entry, and sometimes, even more so when the pages were torn out.
It meant different things for different shinobi, a list of people to avoid, flea on sight, or a list of targets, people to hunt down. Some ninja seemed to use it as a leaderboard, wanting to add page after page to their own entries, while challenging themselves to take down their competition.
For Kakashi, it was a list of people coming for him, chasing him, always right behind him every hour of every day. It was a reason not to trust a single face he saw on his travels, a reason not to let anyone close.
Everyone he knew was at risk, all fodder for a fire that sometimes felt far out of his control.
The book had never felt heavier than it did the day it had been slid across the godaime’s desk, his former pupil’s name now prominently featured.
Team 7 had been one of the few things that disrupted the replay of death after death, but now, Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, their laughter, their pranks, their teasing, all melted away. Replaced with a Konoha headband, deep cut through the middle. Replaced with a small, broken, bloodied blond body limp in his arms as he carried it home. Replaced with a set of green eyes glazed over with tears, and then a fierce determination that Kakashi knew too well.
He’d been there.
He’d chased those ghosts.
He’d trained himself raw like they all were now. He’d worked himself to exhaustion, until sleep was something he fell into in more ways than one, just to get the memories to quiet for a moment.
Except the sharingan didn’t allow that, never had, never will.
So each step closer to the village is one more fight left behind.
On nights like these, he feels a trail manifesting leap by leap, miles and miles of bone and muscle and blood and voices all grabbing at his ankles as he does the one thing he’d never been able to train out of him:
Run.
The bingo book was a burden, but Kakashi sometimes felt like he had something far heftier stored beneath his skin, a catalogue of lives stolen and lost and never returned.
Survivor’s guilt was an inevitable part of being a shinobi, they’d been taught this early on.
They just hadn’t been taught how to deal with it, and as Kakashi got older, he was starting to realize that was because no one knew how.
Every day was a lesson in living.
In the distance, something rustles, but Kakashi’s instincts are running at full throttle and even over the post-battle haze of unwanted memories and recordings resurfaced by his childhood friend’s gift, Kakashi can easily attribute that particular kind of twig snapping to a small animal.
Probably a field mouse, his mind supplies.
Sometimes, being a ninja felt an awful lot like coming up for air only to find that the surface of the water has been frozen over.
The suspicion, the paranoia, it never really faded away. Kakashi could fall back into a casual, relaxed slouch all he wanted, but there was never a moment where he wasn’t keeping tabs on any movement in his limited peripheral vision. Even more so, his ears were tuned to every sound in the village, always waiting, always expecting something out of place.
Like the unsettling stillness right before the explosive release of summoning smoke that occurred all those years ago, before the blistering sound of shrill screams and the rush of adrenaline reached Kakashi.
The better your senses were, the warier you were, the higher chance of survival.
The village needed him.
The sole of his shoe slips just slightly on the next branch and his pulse triples as he glances back at the wood.
He sees blood, not much, not enough to affect his footing.
As he hits the next branch, another shock of instability jolts through his leg. He looks down at his body, taking stock, something he really should have done after the battle was over, but he’d been too caught up in ghosts to notice anything out of place.
He was leaving a small trail of blood behind him. His skin begins to prickle and his eyes narrow at the crimson drop plummeting down from his chest, watching it fall and vanish behind him, gone before it hits the ground, as he continues to race through the forest.
This was a genin level mistake.
A tail of breadcrumbs that would get you killed, every time, without fail.
Survival was imperative.
Dying meant Konoha lost one of its best protectors.
More than that, dying meant failure to uphold his responsibilities.
Naruto could tell everyone he’d bring Sasuke back over and over, and all his classmates could believe him, that’s fine, they were young.
Kakashi saw the way any lingering jounins’ mouths turned down at the edges when they overhead these words.
These kids didn’t have the experience Kakashi did, that the other jounin and ANBU did. Their generation hadn’t lived through war, they hadn’t seen the in-fighting among the elders and clans, they only knew the destruction second-hand, as people they never got to meet and things they never got to see, lost before their time.
They didn’t know how powerful revenge could make a person.
Kakashi did.
Sasuke may still be a child himself, but there was always a fierce shadow consuming the boy.
He’d never admit it, not out loud, but after their fight on the hospital rooftop, a chilling wave of reality he’d always dreaded came crashing down over Kakashi’s shoulders that night. With the village decimated by Orochimaru’s attack, he’d hardly had time to have many thoughts beyond complete the mission, as one after another they piled up. Exhaustion was becoming the norm, both physically and mentally. Still, the alarming chirp of the his jutsu, perhaps foolishly passed down to the surviving Uchiha boy, and the unsettling swirl of chakra just centimeters from his hand as it had wrapped around Naruto’s wrist, were a constant presence in his psyche between accepted mission scrolls.
He’d never forget it, didn’t need the sharingan to keep the memory sealed tight in his mind.
The first night after their fight, he’d found cover in a small crevice tucked into a cliffside after completing his mission, taking a small reprieve to regain some strength before returning back to the village, still not fully recovered from Itachi’s attack. A heavy weight settled in his stomach as he accepted the inevitable.
One day he’d have to kill Sasuke.
That had become all the more clear after he’d abandoned the village and forsaken Konoha.
Some part of Kakashi still wanted to believe Naruto, still wanted to see that there was another option for Sasuke, that he hadn’t been wrong to try and steer him back toward team 7, away from Itachi, away from Orochimaru, away from the false solitude of vengeance.
Kakashi was a realist, though.
Those fleeting hopes were hard to hold onto.
Instead, he tried to fool himself into thinking he could have the strength to do what the sandaime failed to.
Read the rest on AO3 here
#kakairu#hatake kakashi#kakashi#umino iruka#kakashi fanfic#naruto fanfic#kakairu fanfic#my fanfiction
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06. Gloxinia - love at first sight
((Here we are, the first fic on this blog!!! :D This one is a relatively fluffy one (surprisingly so for Innocents) that’s based off of chapter three, featuring Guy and his massive insta-crush on Etienne. It’s cute. Very cute. UwU Try to pretend like they’re not all going to suffer.))
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The rain is thick and dark. Guy sits tied to post in the center of a village that he was supposed to slaughter. He’s been close to death more times than he can count, but this is the first time it’s ever felt so real.
A devil, they said. A boy who called lightning down from the sky. Guy wasn’t close enough to see him very clearly at the time. All he really remembers is white. White from the sky, burning their boss to a crisp. White standing before them all, a face blurred out by what Guy can only imagine is the terror still clinging to his insides. It’s not right. He’s not supposed to be afraid of anything. But there he is, about to die and as scared as anyone.
“Just who’d come to save you?”
The words echo in Guy’s head on loop. They may have been said by the spoiled brats he tried to rob and kill, but something about them rings just a little too true. Guy’s always been the youngest, the smallest, the weakest, the one who has to fight not to weigh the group down.
Is it naive to cling to the hope that someone in his family will care enough to come back for him? At this point, Guy doesn’t know.
Soaked through with rain, Guy’s hair is falling in his face. He’s been stripped down to nothing but thin, worn pants, and even in this early spring rain, it’s cold. There’s not enough meat on his bones to ward off the chill.
For the first time in a long, long while, Guy feels like a child. He’s stuck waiting, tied down and left with nothing to do but wait for someone to come back for him. Or for the villagers to decide to execute him instead of drawing it out for any longer. It’s really whichever comes first at this point, and Guy is getting a sinking feeling that it’s going to be the latter.
It’s hard to blame them for not coming back. In the end, Guy failed. He got caught, and death is what happens to failures in his world. There’s no one out there who’d be stupid enough to forgive him now.
Through the pouring rain, Guy hears footsteps. His body tenses, jumping to alertness even though there’s not a thing he could do to protect himself at this point. Someone’s coming. Guy braces himself for another beating at the very best-- to die, if they decide it’s time.
Instead, it’s a boy a little bit younger than him.
The boy is wearing a hood and poor clothes. He’s a villager, nothing more. Probably there to beat him up; take out his anger and pain for the deceased on Guy’s body just like everyone else’s done so far.
But all the boy does is kneel. When his eyes meet Guy’s... they’re a shade of blue that puts the sky to shame.
No, Guy thinks, that color puts jewels to shame. It’s like a punch to the gut. Looking into that boy’s eyes, Guy can’t bring himself to get a word out. The boy is looking at him with something unreadable, something that Guy would think is kindness if he didn’t know so much better by now.
In small, calloused hands, the boy holds out a piece of bread. “Eat,” he says, looking at Guy as if it would really be that easy-- as if Guy could surrender his pride and eat from his hand like a tamed thing. Kindness isn’t real, Guy reminds himself, not for people like him. When someone looks at him with those sorts of eyes, it’s nothing but worthless pity, wasted on someone who’d slit the boy’s throat in a second if he was free.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” Guy spits, leveling a glare. Even now, he can’t falter. “I don’t care if I die here!”
It’s true, or at least Guy hopes it is. Not caring is kind of all he has left. He’s always told himself that he’d never be afraid of death, but saying that and staring his impending demise in the face are very different things.
“Even if you die, you won’t be any better off,” the boy replies, his blue, blue eyes fixed on Guy all the while. It’s unnerving. His voice is soft, not a trace of anger or condescension to be found. There seems to be genuine worry in his tone, and all it does is make Guy want to scream.
“Shut up!” Guy shouts, gritting his teeth. “You don’t know anything about me! Go away, you damn hypocrite!” Hypocrite. That’s all the boy is. A person who pretends to be kind and care about others, but will turn around and damn them to death the second it benefits them. It’s easy for the boy to be nice now, when there’s no one else around. He’d change his tune in a heartbeat if the rest of his village and family were there to see him.
Guy lets his head drop. He’s tired. He doesn’t want to argue this anymore. The sooner they hurry up and kill him, the better.
He tries to tell himself that he’s not avoiding meeting the boy’s eyes, but that line of thought doesn’t get him much of anywhere. He is hiding, just a little bit. He doesn’t want to see that faked, deceitful kindness anymore.
“We’re going to be leaving soon,” another voice says. Guy doesn’t know when the other boy arrived, but that probably says something about how worn-thin he’s getting. “Being nice to him now is just cruel, Etienne.”
At least this one has the right idea. And some sense, from the sound of it. If Guy was any weaker, dangling kindness right in front of his face would just be torture. As it is, all it does is make him feel sort of disgusted, both with the boy for offering and himself for taking the bait. It’s not worth either of their effort to pretend like Guy is worth the offer.
The second boy drags the first away. Guy lets himself lean back. It’s over. That’s the last time he’ll have to deal with either of them.
. . .
Morning comes. The village is back to bustling. From what Guy’s made out, the boy who killed the boss is setting out on some ridiculous ‘Children’s Crusade’. A foolish thought. A bunch of village brats wouldn’t survive for a second on their own out in the world. They’d be walking right into death.
It almost makes Guy want to laugh. Whatever idiot came up with that idea, Guy is sure he’ll die first. The village is really going to throw their kids out into the real world, it seems. Guy wouldn’t believe it if they lasted more than a month on their own. It’s almost sad to think of a bunch of kids getting tossed out to learn the hard way, but considering that these are the same kids who got him tied to this post in the first place...
Guy hopes the manor-lord brats are the first to bite it.
There’s talking, a lot of it. Guy hears bits and pieces about twins, a leper, new uniforms, and more. It’s impossible not to listen, but Guy tries to tune it out. That kind of thing doesn’t matter to him. Not one bit.
But the longer they talk, the more Guy’s mind starts to wander. The brats would need someone to protect them. A bunch of coddled kids heading out into the world is a death sentence. If they had someone who knew what they were doing, they might make it even a little longer. Whatever pity Guy has for the village that’s going to execute him goes right to the kids.
Then, a voice that Guy remembers all too clearly cuts through the crowd like a knife to his ears.
“Wait, Nicolas!”
Someone cuts through the crowd.
That someone is a boy with white hair, shining like fresh snow... and eyes bluer than any sky.
Guy’s breath catches in his throat just seeing him. That’s the boy from last night. That’s the boy who killed the boss. That’s the boy who this whole mess is all about. And yet, that’s the boy who tried to hand Guy bread like it somehow mattered to be nice to him. The one with eyes almost kind.
“Would you like to come too?” The boy offers a hand, kneeling down to put himself at Guy’s level. People shout in the background, obviously protesting. Guy can see why; he’s a fucking bandit.
“Would you like to come along and help me?” the boy asks again, looking at Guy with those blue, blue eyes.
“Don’t make a fool of me... I refuse to be one of your comrades! I’m just going to die here, so leave me be!” Guy shouts it, trying to make himself believe that it’s still what he means. Caught under those eyes, his resolve is faltering fast. That boy, he’s going to die at this rate--
“Do you have any idea how many people I’ve killed!? It’s because you don’t know that that you can even think of inviting me! Killing is my job! I’ve mercilessly slaughtered children and the elderly who were crying and begging for their lives! I’ve even killed monks to steal money!” Guy doesn’t know why he’s saying it. They’re all aware of just what kind of person he is, except for maybe the idiot trying to drag him along. It’s like all the hatred Guy’s ever felt for himself is spilling out, over his lips like fresh blood.
“I did it all for the sake of my comrades! Because I thought of them as my family!” Don’t say it. Don’t say it. “But... none of them came to rescue me... Ha! It’s better if I just die here!” In the end, that’s for the best. The villagers deserve to avenge their dead. Guy’s resolve to let anything else happen is fading fast. This is ridiculous, fucking ridiculous!
And then, Guy meets those blue eyes once again, and the words that he thinks he may have meant all along come right out.
“So go. If a guy as depraved and wicked as me comes along, you’ll fall down to the depths of hell as well.” It’s what he’s been thinking for years. It’s not like he could have ever voice those thoughts around his family, but now-- with that person still, still looking at him with kindness in his eyes--
The boy with the hair like snow pulls him into a hug.
Under any other circumstances, being touched so suddenly would make Guy bite someone’s ear off. Somehow, this time, all it does is make his body melt into the touch. That’s-- That’s not supposed to happen!
“You’re not depraved, nor wicked,” the boy starts, his soft voice suddenly way too close to Guy’s ear, his skinny arms right around Guy’s shoulders in a touch more tender than Guy’s ever experienced. His heart feels like it’s pounding out of his chest. “You only did what you had to to survive. If you come to Jerusalem, God will forgive all of your past sins.”
The words sink in like a branding iron to the skin. No one says this stuff to him. No one means it. There’s something in the boy’s voice that’s way too genuine. Guy doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. There’s a lump in his throat that’s choking him, strangling him on his own guilt and fear. He can’t-- How is he supposed to respond--? This isn’t how people are supposed to treat him. This isn’t what he deserves.
“Wh...! Why!?” Guy chokes. He’s shaking. He’s trembling like he never has before, not even when faced with a blade to his throat.
“We’ll be your new family from today...”
“Why... are you like this...!?” Tears spill over, hot down his cheeks. Guy can’t remember the last time he cried. This isn’t fair. The boy’s hair is soft against his cheek, his voice is tender and kind.
Guy thinks that this might be worse than what dying feels like.
The others chime in, agreeing with the boy. Guy can’t believe what he’s hearing. They’re really going to let him in so easily? No one’s going to beat the shit out of him again before they’ll consider him forgiven? It feels unreal on a thousand levels, but that boy by his side...
The boy unties him. His blue eyes meet Guy’s again. He looks somewhere between pleased with himself and disgustingly tender, which by all rights should make Guy’s stomach turn. Instead, all he feels is a weird fluttery feeling, deep in the pit of his gut.
“You’re all idiots! You’re too damn nice for your own good!” Guy snaps, trying to pretend like he wasn’t crying just a moment ago. He’s gotta save even a little bit of his pride, even if this kid already knows he’s got none.
Guy whistles, knowing that one person will come back for him. As expected, the thunder of Jean’s hooves follows moments later.
The kids freak out again, but with the reins in his hands, Guy feels something like himself. He’s off of that awful post, probably not going to die any time soon, and looking right at a person he’s starting to feel like might be some kind of angel. It’s crazy on a thousand levels, but after what that boy said... Guy thinks that he might be starting to take this seriously.
“I don’t care about the Holy Land or whatever. But as long as we’re family, I’ll risk my life!” He’s serious, Guy realizes with something of a sinking feeling. He’s dead fucking serious.
It makes sense in a way. His family left him behind to die. He can’t really blame them, but at the same time, it hurts. Those people had been by his side for eight years. He’d watched men come and go, join and die. He’d given his all to make sure that the group survived. He’d devoted his life, and the only place it got him was abandoned in a village to die. In the end, the group’s survival came first. Guy can understand that.
He thinks he has a new family now.
Looking at all of the kids, fresh-faced and innocent, Guy knows he’s gonna have his work cut out for him. These brats don’t know the first thing about surviving on their own, that much is obvious. Protecting them is probably going to get him killed.
Even so, that boy with the blue eyes may as well have given him a new one. Guy should have died at that post, but here he is.
Living for someone else’s sake.
The decision comes quickly. This boy, this one, is Guy’s family now. He gave a filthy bandit a second chance, looked at Guy like he was someone worth saving. Guy’s throat feels tight just looking at him, and that probably means something. If he’s meant to follow anyone, if God really does have a plan for his sorry carcass, this might just be it.
He can trail in the shadow of someone purer than him. He can protect this stupid kid with his fucking life. He can give his all just to make sure that those eyes never quit looking at him like he’s worth something.
“Guy. And this is my partner, Jean.”
“Nice to meet you,” the boy says. “My name is Etienne.”
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So now that I have a chance to write this in an orderly manner:
In my land of things, Hiltz is a Complete Monster.
I only work with two* Complete Monsters in any of my stories, and the other one is technically abandoned, so. I don't have a lot of real estate for the explorations that come with these kinds of characters just because they tend to fucking bend space around them and make the whole story darker just because they're in it. Not every story I have is down for this, nor am I. so.
(*there is another character in KB that is kind of this, but [it's complicated, and] their innate lack of emotional depth makes them not really... the same. being indifferent to abuse vs being oblivious to it is a big divider imo)
Despite the backstory comic I just made, I'm not trying make him sympathetic. That piece is just a tiny, specific, show-relevant slice of backstory that I've had in-mind for a LONG while because it was sorely missing. It exists just as much to "explain" him as it does point out that there were steep ethical issues involved with humans obliviously dredging up the past. Plus plants a flag in what relevance I think Hiltz actually had to the death of Raven's parents. I've always wanted someone to make something for that span of time and to my knowledge no one has. So.
My Hiltz backstory IN ZOIDIAN TIMES would very quickly paint him in a different light, and that's more-or-less why he essentially does a backflip and accelerates past the Moral Event Horizon fast in my canon because he was already there, just wasn't whole and hale enough to recall it. Also keep in mind that he's narrating the backstory piece (by necessity) so of course he's presented well.
He was part of a group that was already on an outright genocidal crusade against other Zoidians (and Zoids, and Organoids) who weren't "strong" enough and therefore deserved to die for the betterment of the species. That group got heavily into the power of the primal (you know, the four F's... except for them it was more like 3) because of the viciously positive feedback loop it set up. Their unyielding brutality was incompatible with the... you know, DECENT society other groups were trying to maintain. Hence big war, big apocalypse.
The events that led up to the Death Saurer/Death Scorpion took a long, excruciating time, over which the group Hiltz was part of chewed through the fabric of society like a cancer. Part of what made things really bad was the creeping conversion to the "winning" side's way of thinking. The assault on their society was both outright (active attacks on peaceful settlements) and insidious (attempts to convert, planting people in key positions/institutions, etc).
Once Hiltz got his wits about him in CC-times and realized what had happened, he felt obligated to do something to erase humanity - which was many times worse than even the most "inferior" Zoidian. The issues being, during his early time among humans he lost a fair amount of his mental stability because they did not treat him well (read: vivisected, and unintentionally they basically starved him), and he was kept in isolation. This damage was compounded by the lack of having Ambient around - Zoidians don't do well without their Organoids, and especially in that group they'd become over-reliant on them.
So... Hiltz started out pretty penalized on the sanity front. (The only reason he just didn't up and die was because he was so strong-willed)
Then he realized the futility of his entire, prior belief system, life and efforts up to that point given that Zoidians were basically a dead race (hence his wide nihilistic streak) ... then let himself be tempted by One... then was basically, inadvertently mentally stabbed to death by Ambient carrying around the shard of One... then (in his mind) was betrayed by Ryss.
And, you know, the whole Death Stinger power trip thing didn't help. There was very little good about him to begin with, but by GF there just Wasn't Any. He was completely ax-crazy.
But let me back up a little bit.
Let's consider that tetchy canon timeline.
Per the math, Ryss being found in the Imperial village with Nicholai happened 3 years prior to when Hiltz retrieved Ambient & Raven's parents were killed.
The Republican army attacked that village and took young Ryss, but given that Prozen had all the information about that village and its associated events restricted/classified, I'm going to make a relatively safe assumption that he had Imperial forces shitkick the Republican ones shortly thereafter and they took possession of Ryss.
Ryss wasn't treated as badly as Hiltz was, but she wasn't treated especially well either. She had Specula so fared much better overall, but... she had Specula and people kept trying to mess with/take Specula away and THAT wasn't great.
However, the Imperial Army - aggressively subverting expectations - was far more conservative in their Zoidian research so never did anything too drastic. Ryss was also incredibly hostile because she was afraid. She barely knew the language, and the range of traumatizing human behaviors she’d seen didn't help much.
Hiltz lived in that small colony during this timeframe, oblivious. Several years later though, after recovering his memory, he sought out the opposing faction, because fuck the Republicans and he needed resources to do anything.
He figured he could talk, teleport, and brute force his way around - and he was right, and very soon was acquainted with Prozen.
And here's where I'm going to put up some 'sensitive subject' caution tape.
Shortly after that is when he learned they had a young ancient Zoidian girl in their custody. Obviously this was INCREDIBLY relevant to Hiltz's interests - remember, at that point he wasn't aware of any other living Zoidians, and from what he learned from the Scholar had become concerned that most that would've otherwise survived, had been killed.
So Hiltz is introduced to Ryss, who's matured a little but she's still the Zoidian equivalent of a preteen.
Remember: Hiltz is from the Big On Genocide group and to anyone who knows what's up, it's written all over him. Ryss is from a smaller clan that was specifically targeted by Hiltz's group so of course she's torn between being absolutely terrified and being glad that someone who speaks her language and understands Organoids exists at all.
Hiltz explained the situation as he understood it, and worked to gain Ryss's trust by basically denouncing his association with his group. He put an end to her being held against her will, and they stayed together from then on.
But let's be real. Hiltz wanted to fuck her six ways from Sunday. And she was VERY aware of this. And he knew she was very aware of this. So on and so forth. (read: at this point in time Ryss found she could easily exert control over exactly one person and did so. Much to Hiltz’s chagrin.)
However, not only were there functional issues with this (eg Specula wasn't fully sexually mature, which tl;drs into "Ryss wasn't yet either" - and obviously part of Hiltz's interest was reproduction), Hiltz also did have the sense to not... you know, rape a child. He did genuinely want Ryss to trust him, work with him, and - hey, you know, maybe even -want- to be his mate? Pickings were slim after all, but there wasn't any reason they couldn't make the best of a bad situation.
(maybe he might have tried “not constantly thinking of her as a lesser” but okay)
So everyone grew up some more and hooray, Guardian Force.
Thing is, Hiltz was an angry, mentally-unstable person with a slow but vicious temper, and though Ryss rarely caught sight of that, his wanton violence was a bit scary. Ryss also began to sympathize more with humans over time, which Hiltz couldn't stand. Ryss especially sympathized with Raven, who she initially was just intrigued by, but then she kiiiind of fell for him.
[insert that short comic, Collapse.]
I have no intention, never have had any intention, of portraying Hiltz positively. In my canon he's a disgusting, broken, shambling mess with offensively high Charisma and I thematically like the idea of his atrocious scattering of a lineage having to deal with all the problems that'd come with (also, hi: the whole thing with anyone of Zoidian blood feeling compelled to Zoids and especially Organoids? Is a sort of allegory for addiction, which... yanno, runs in families)
k? k.
Oh and Ambient is an aggressively problematic pile of shit also. He's just as vicious as Hiltz. Aren't we excited to have him show up in NC? HAHAH FUCK.
Organoids are their own entities, though. He's not just some strange extension of Hiltz's personality. He's his own "person" - one who's been a delighted participant in -many, many- atrocious acts. He's arrogant and prideful, he's got a dark sense of humor and is loyal to a fault. He just doesn't have a handle on the problems One has caused him, and it's gnawed at him for years. (and unlike the older canon version, he's not completely lost his mind or anything - but depressed wallowing in a pit of failure and hate for years isn't really healthy.)
He's also held on to grudges for dear life, because otherwise the vastness of existence w/o partners for a hugely social creature was untenable.
Basically, I think there may be some hope for him to be turned around as a character. Hiltz - nope, never.
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Lalli, orders, and a driving force of the narrative
let me be clear, this post is about trains.
but it is also about moving walkways that take you in a single direction, whether you meant to get on them or not.
and finally, it’s about people who push you to get on the train against your will, and the consequences of being railroaded (ha! funny joke!) like this.
(and it’s also about how Taru is a deceptive asshole who probably deliberately targeted a vulnerable Tuuri to try to manipulate Onni, but I digress.)
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actually no. let’s start there. let’s talk about the hypocrisy, deception, and all around shady tactics used by the expedition planners. the expedition is set up for failure from the start by gross mismanagement because the organizers slack off on safety and even their mission statement – they just want money. even before they get the mission approved, the budget they submitted was already “refreshingly low.”
(yeah, you guys are so damn brave.)
from the very start, all Torbjorn wanted was a cash grab. he finds normal work degrading, and that's basically it. rare, priceless books obtained under the misleading guise of a research/exploration expedition. they don’t even mention it in the mission contracts. there is nothing on the books about this shit. the proper documentation is never filed. they lied to the Nordic Council through their teeth to get the funding for the expedition. every moment of that prologue section is marked by deception and shortcuts taken at the expense of the young people they’re throwing under the bus.
(yes, Emil. there’s like a 100% chance they absolutely ripped you off. you guys got some unknown set bonuses, they get percentages. without question.)
it’s like Siv trying to cover the hole in Torbjorn’s pants with ink to fool people from a distance. it’s a fucking mess.
and then they have the audacity to strip away all the safety measures that might have prevented disaster instead of, I don’t know, cutting their own salaries. you can trace the majority of the mistakes and mishaps right back to this line here, where Taru and Trond decide NAHHH, you don’t need a day and a night scout and a cat.
one scout. pulling a basically 24/7 double duty in completely uncleansed, unfamiliar, monster-infested territory, in a role that would normally be filled by three different people/animals. way to go, guys. if Lalli and Onni hadn’t been mages of any kind of talent, everyone would have been dead.
and then there’s this blink and you’ll miss it moment, where Taru claims that she knows people who are “extremely bored with their lives” as they discuss desperate people and idiots they can hire for their underfunded, doomed expedition.
One. Taru knows one person bored with her life.
She knows Tuuri.
But she doesn’t want Tuuri. Taru wants Onni as a defense mage. She asks him first, before any other member of her extended family. And when Onni says no…Taru targets Tuuri, the actually bored, adventurous, inexperienced, easily manipulated target she had in mind to force Onni’s hand. she sells Tuuri the exact same lie about this being a research trip, and because Taru is family who also previously worked at Keuruu, she knew exactly how to lure Tuuri in with the call of adventure and discovery.
(Tuuri, you are absolutely being tricked into this.)
Taru is family, and Taru is a military strategist, and Taru plays Tuuri like a fucking fiddle. there's a blithe, almost breathtaking disregard for human decency going around here. (the Vasterstroms probably took one look at their disaffected, undereducated, prideful nephew and thought, ah, how convenient! we’ll send him off into the meat grinder instead.) Taru only failed in that Onni showed up late – she still ultimately succeeded in luring him out of Keuruu, and then afterward has the gall. the audacity. to say she intended to try to recruit him again. after Tuuri fucking died.
how callous can you get.
a lot of this is also played for laughs. Siv and Torbjorn and Trond and Taru are often comical beats, because that’s the tone the comic has taken for them. Onni’s angry protests at the start of the comic come off as that of a bad-tempered, inflexible older brother whose concern is over-exaggerated and unreasonable, who is obstructing Tuuri’s first ever chance at Adventure!!!
oh wait. whoops. that happened.
now, let’s talk about Lalli.
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Neither Lalli nor Onni want to leave Keuruu. Lalli’s just quieter and less assertive about it, especially once Tuuri starts steering him around, his only lifeline in countries where he doesn’t speak the language.
in a lot of instances, however, Lalli defaults to doing what he’s told. he believes Tuuri when she fills in details for him. he keeps going to his scouting job even after Tuuri quits his job for him OH WAIT THAT’S RIGHT, TUURI LITERALLY SIGNED HIM UP FOR A NEW JOB AND VOLUNTOLD HIM TO LEAVE WITHOUT LALLI REALIZING IT HAPPENED.
because Lalli is tired. it’s a running theme. he works nights. and Tuuri eagerly dumps all this info on him during the daylight hours where their shifts overlap, and apparently pushes all of the paperwork for their new job through without Lalli actively signing off on it or processing what’s happening even once. Tuuri claims they resigned together. I highly doubt Lalli had a damn clue.
a lot of bad shit happens because people keep pushing Lalli into things when he’s exhausted. from the moment they stumble off the boat to meet Emil, Lalli is plagued by nausea, poor sleep, and sometimes no sleep at all. but for Lalli, a lifetime of obeying orders – from Ensi, from Onni, from the Keuruu military structure he grew up in – has primed him to go along with it when he’s told what his job is, almost without question.
it's a kind of inertia. Lalli doesn’t want to leave the safe routine of Keuruu, because that’s what he’s used to. but once Tuuri literally shoves him into motion, he keeps going along with her as a path of least resistance. Tuuri wants her adventure, and what Lalli wants won’t stand in her way. even when Lalli does say no, Tuuri gets what she wanted.
and only very rarely does Tuuri not get her way. Lalli plants his feet only once, really. but Tuuri still goes behind his back to make sure someone else forces Lalli to continue on, while he’s trying to assure their safety in the only way he can.
Lalli keeps winding up on/getting manhandled into one-way trips. boats he’s told he’s not allowed to leave. trains that continue to push him along the track in one direction. a walkway that inexorably pushes him toward the outside world, and change. a bridge literally collapses after standing through a century of the apocalypse so that they have no choice but to continue on the expedition. once he accepts this as his new job in a weird, scary foreign country full of death, inertia keeps him there.
and Lalli isn’t the only one who can be pushed.
Tuuri is the driving force behind a lot of the first adventure, at least as far as Lalli and Onni is concerned. literally – she drives the cat tank.
but somehow, despite her entire family and village apart from Onni and Lalli dying a horrific death to the rash en mass, Tuuri has not internalized the reality of the world. she’s running on her own plucky excitement and blind optimism and scotch tape and whatever Taru fed her about the expedition. she chafes at the confines of Keuruu and wants to see the outside world, and we’re supposed to sympathize with her sense of feeling trapped by military restrictions and an overbearing, overprotective older brother, because that’s how adventures usually go.
so reality in the form of a troll punches a hole through her and the tank.
Onni isn’t overprotective. it turns out that, in the end, he was exactly right. but just as Lalli is forced to work perpetually exhausted and psychically burdened every day by the mass presence of trolls in the silent world, Onni is now forced to work at an extreme distance. he pulls out all the magical stops, potentially gives himself a literal stroke to try to protect Tuuri from that distance – but the expedition planners bought a cheap tank and hired the bare minimum of people and picked the most dangerously careless, cheap options every. damn. time.
so as Tuuri’s illness progresses, the tank progressively falls apart, until both of them die. the crew is forced to continue on foot. it's not a fun adventure anymore; it’s survival, dealing with the ghosts and notoro hazards, and retreat. there's no new impetus without Tuuri.
(the way Tuuri treats/disregards/runs rampant over her reluctant, neuroatypical cousin is a meta in and of itself, tbh.)
-
once they’re back, without Tuuri pushing him along, Lalli defaults to obeying Onni. inertia in action. Lalli has been taught since he was very, very young that if he doesn’t obey orders or if he makes a mistake, he’s a risk, and he’s just seen his cousin die because he was exhausted, because Sigrun didn’t want to backtrack and has casually trusted or brushed off Tuuri’s word on Lalli’s fatigue this whole time, Tuuri pressed exactly that button while scolding Lalli about forgetting the snow, and it set off Lalli’s stubborn pride and prior trauma at the worst possible moment.
and so Onni orders Lalli to stay and get a job with Emil instead of coming with him (supposedly) back to Keuruu. it works. Lalli accepts without really understanding what has happened or why, and lets inertia keep him in Iceland for a month without questioning it, because Onni knows what to do and Onni never lies.
but Onni has lied, and Lalli has been left behind. deliberately, intentionally, by someone who he trusted to make the call.
time to take some initiative!
except things are a lot harder, without Tuuri greasing the wheels, with Lalli trying to go at it alone.
there are no one-way trains or walkways directing Lalli toward a set destination when he sets out like this. there is no Tuuri to keep corralling him when he goes the wrong way. now Lalli keeps running into minor stumbling blocks, language barrier-induced delays, and confusing evidence of where Onni’s final destination might be. unlike the silent world expedition where they had set destinations and book library targets based on prior research and maps, Lalli is essentially choosing where to go on the fly, based on what he learns as he gets there.
but that’s because this isn’t a money-grabbing, glory hounding trip instigated by greed under false pretences. the silent world expedition was inevitable in a very doomed sort of way, which was why the trip there went so (relatively) smoothly. this is Lalli, defying orders, upsetting what used to be the natural order of his life, because he’s worried about Onni.
and in a way, it’s healthier. there are no warning signs like the troll breaching the saw train early in adventure 1. we see sea trolls killed without fuss; no one has been in danger in Finland itself yet, really. They’re trying to find Onni to clear up a deception, not perpetuate a deception for someone else’s gain, at their own cost.
now with slightly more power of friendship!
trying to find Onni is…a more genuine motivation to start a trip. for Lalli just doing this goes against every instinct he’s been trained to follow, and the bumps along the way reflect that it’s an uphill journey as he finds a new way to live.
the contradiction has been there all along, though:
Tuuri tells Lalli to wait for her in Mora. he steps on the moving walkway without realizing, and has to go against the flow to get back to her. (even then, he’s still trying to do what he’s told.) Lalli’s narrative track has been leading up to this confrontation about his own inertia and tendency to fall in with what others want for a while now.
ironically, he can’t be afraid to try new things.
-
speculation time – this new direction for Lalli is probably leading up to a confrontation first with a kade-possessed Ensi, and then (even more speculatively) with a kade-possessed Onni, with the kade playing on Lalli’s documented tendency to defer to their orders. particularly if the it hunting the Hotakainens = the kade that possessed Ensi = the nightmare moose that attacked Lalli in the dream sea. an attack which, in addition to Tuuri’s death, would have prompted more of Onni’s urgency in returning to Saimaa. Tuuri died and Lalli almost died, and Onni’s got a very strong protective and self-sacrificial streak.
we see the prototype for what’s to come as Ensi slowly loses control of herself under the kade’s influence. she gives Lalli the order not to look into her eyes, first – but she hasn’t realized yet that the kade can just use Ensi herself to contradict that order. we can assume that if Lalli meets Ensi again, he’s going to have to disregard any order she gives him that might be suspect, in a way he’s been trained not to since he was a child. even back then, when faced with the contradiction in Ensi’s orders, Lalli wound up doing...what Grandma told him…
…but he can’t rely on Ensi’s last moments of clarity anymore. it's been too long. Lalli has to make his own calls under his own direction, with no way to know if what he’s choosing is a mistake or not.
and for a maximum ironic callback, Ensi says that she’ll retire when her replacement is trained…and when she’s dead.
if kade!Ensi is looking for a replacement for her now aging body...Onni and Lalli certainly fit the bill.
#stand still stay silent#long post for ts#i'm.......so sorry#TUULI WE'LL DIE TOGETHER. AS A FAMILY HOLLOLA DIDN'T DIE FOR YOU TO BE LIKE THIS TARU
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[Where My Twin Watches]: Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Episode 41
Last time: Armstrong the Great got a promotion, Beardless grew a beard, and Teacher got a surprise surgery. Onwards!
The Mining Crew is still going through the tunnels towards Fort Briggs, it looks like Al hasn’t caught up to them yet. Whoops, Winry just tripped over a box of - gah, dynamite!
[Yoki]: “Nah, these are all sopping wet. Relax, they wouldn’t blow up even if we wanted them to.”
Wow. Yoki being the Voice of Reason. Times sure have changed.
Scar snaps at them to keep moving, “they could already be after us.” Yeah, but if you dwadle long enough then Al can catch up! So please May, keep up with the freakouts!
Back in Baschool, the storm’s passed so Sideburns is back to plotting against Kimblee. Aw, come on. I get shooting Kimblee from the get go, but why do you have to kill his other two guys (I’m assuming Chimeras like Toad and Boar). Keep them alive, they can join Al’s Chimera Army! Ed is understandably shaken at these KOS orders being thrown about.
Episode 41 - “The Abyss”
See, I hear “The Abyss” and I immediately think about the staring quote. Is Sideburns going to get a last-minute change of mind about killing all three, decide to be better than Kimblee? Not like that’s a high bar to clear, but still.
Ed’s trying to argue for taking Kimblee alive for questioning, Sideburns says he’ll never talk. As for his men? Maybe they’re being forced to serve Kimblee, but Sideburns thinks it’s too big a risk to bet on that. First Law of Briggs: The Careless are the first to die.
[Sideburns]: “We aren’t going to be careless. We’re killing Kimblee. And the two men with him.”
Walking down the hallway, Sideburns and the two Briggs soldiers talk about how Ed’s chosen the more difficult path of trying to keep his enemies alive. Their attitude seems to be “Admirable, but foolish.” Come on Ed, prove them wrong!
Back with the Mining Crew, Marcoh’s getting translations from Scar (finally), seems the current passage is about a “miracle drug” that extends life and transforms all metals to gold. Damnit, so it’s the Philosopher’s Stone, so much for the notes giving an alternative. Ooh, Xing culture lesson! Apparently Xingese refer to immortals as “a true being” oh Leto DAMN IT it’s right back to that smirking Truth. Whatever. Anyways, “True Beings” are considered perfect souls so they’re compared to the perfect metal gold (yeah, Winry and the Chimeras are totally lost by this point).
[Marcoh]: “So in other words, an immortal person is seen as a golden being.”
[May]: “In a sense…”
*camera shifts to Beard*
Oh. OOOOOOOOHHHHHH!
Keaton said:One thing of note is that all the people of Xerxes have gold hair and gold eyes. And I do mean gold, because there's no black outline that blonde people in the series have.
[May]: “It comes from the man who brought Alchemy to Xing.”
Wait, where are you going? Beard you’re walking away from one of the most badass fighters in the entire show and her husband, team up with them and you’ll be unstoppable! Whyyyyy.
Winry remarks that the Xing teacher of Alchemy having golden hair and eyes sounds like Ed and Al… hold on, I need to check something.
*rewinds to Ed standing in room*
*returns to Winry, pausing at Beard along the way*
Huh! So Beard has the Xerxes no-outline blond hair, but Ed has almost this blend between Xerxes and Amestrian hair, he has an outline but it’s not as pronounced as Winry’s. Neat!
Finally, the exit! Scar must have been feeling a bit cooped up since he just kicked the door down. Yoki relishes his newfound competence and takes the lead nope instantly falls into massive snowdrift. I knew it couldn’t last. Aw, Boar sees how deep the snow is and immediately offers to give May a piggyback ride! And Toad says they’ll go first to make walking easier for the rest.
Walking through a winter wonderland… wait, is that Al?
It is Al!
[Winry]: “That’s Al!”
[May]: “THAT’S MY HUSBAND?!”
Jeez May, chill. No I didn’t mean rub your face on Al’s arm, Winry may have frostbite-proof earrings but Al was literally just buried in a snowdrift, you’re gonna lose your cheek at this rate! Al reports on the occupation of Fort Briggs, they’ll be walking right into their hands. So now what, do they just go back to the mine? Wait a minute, Scar just walked off and is staring all mysterious-like at the mountain range… are they going to Drachma? Scar says there’s a mountain village nearby (no idea how to spell that name), there are some Ishvalans living there. Toad and Boar are skeptical, but Yoki’s all too eager to give leadership back to Scar.
Oh shoot yeah, Al did kind of just run off on Kimblee. Do they even have an excuse for that, or is Sideburns just banking on Kimblee being dead before the absence of an Elric brother becomes an issue?
...Ed literally made another suit of armor and is making a Briggs soldier puppet it around. Wow. And the voice? Kimblee, come on. I was just starting to think that you were a valid threat again. Stop disappointing me.
As “Al” struggles with stairs, Sideburns is trying to set up his assassination. Seems Kimblee’s suspicious of the Briggs soldiers (gee, I wonder why) and is planning to search the mines with just his two flunkies. As Sideburns prepares the snipers, Ed runs ahead.
Kimblee orders his guys into the mine to look for tracks as a sniper lines up his shot… until he sees Ed approaching. Ed tries claiming that Kimblee would get lost searching the tunnels- nope, Kimblee’s already clued in on the assassination plan. With an attitude and past like his, he can practically smell the murderous intent. Sideburns tells the sniper to line up the shot and nope Kimblee pops a steamcloud.
Ooooh shoot he’s going into the building with Sideburns and the snipers, isn’t he? Quick Ed, I’m totally ok with the mass murderer getting sniped but if you can still take him alive then never mind, that was a claw strike and a nonhuman fist, flunkies confirmed as Chimeras.
Hey, it’s the Lion and Gorilla from the end credits! New potential recruits for Al’s army, please don’t kill them Ed. Also, I am having major OPM flashbacks now.
Mid-ep pictures of Kimblee (wait, didn’t he already get one of these?) chewing on a Stone, and Edward getting ready to pummel some Chimeras.
While Ed is otherwise occupied, Kimblee strolls down into the mineshaft and wait what? How are there tracks? The Mine Crew left right before that huge snowstorm that Al could barely read street signs in, how on Leto’s depressing planet were these tracks now obliterated by that storm?
Fighting Music starts up as Ed faces down Lion and Gorilla, he can’t see them but at least they can’t see him but animal hybrids, remember? They’ve got superhuman senses and if sight fails then they can probably hear and smell him with ease. Yup called it. An armknife to the Lion gets Ed free to dodge Gorilla’s attacks, the Briggs troops reach the street but can’t see through the steam to help Ed. Not like they could do much against the Chimeras.
Whoops, Ed dodged a bit too much and walked straight into the mineshaft. Ouch. Now he’s going to stunt his growth even more!
[Ed]: “Dynamite, huh? There’s one perk to fighting in a mine.”
Aw, Ed baby. You’re about to try something that even Yoki knew wouldn’t work, aren’t you?
The Chimeras jump down to continue fighting Ed, who brandishes the sticks in their direction. But they just laugh at him? Aw, they know about dynamite being worthless when damp. So much for that attempt-
Nitroglycerin. Nitroglycol. Ammonium Nitrate. Nitric Acid and Ammonium.
YES
By the power of Chemistry, Ed with his silly little nose-plugs and shit-eating grin has turned your superhuman sense of smell into a tactical disadvantage!
Kimblee looks up to see a stinky explosion and his two flunkies down for the count, now without a hostage in play it’s just the Fullmetal Alchemist and the Crimson Alchemist. Ed demands that Kimblee spill the beans, but Kimblee isn’t inclined to cooperate. Saying he’ll speed things up, he pulls out a Philosopher’s Stone.
Alright, here we go! Ed vs Kimblee, the Stone Seeker against the Butcher of Ishval, our hero facing against the very power he once sought, and a true Philosopher’s Stone at that unlike Cornello’s pale fragment. This is gonna be
are you fucking kidding me.
Kimblee. Kimblee, you stupid incompetent trash-talking eternal disappointment. I thought your “fight” with Scar on the train was as low as you could go, I thought that with you easing back into my good graces you would earn recognition as an acceptable villain. But nooooo, you have to boast that you’ll end this quickly and then stand there like a dolt as Ed nyooms around you and kicks your Stone into the mineshaft. And then he slices your palm so your TC tattoo is useless.
You. Utter. Failure.
Don’t bother trying to continue dude, I know that you’re just gonna pull out your second Stone to try and keep fighting but come on. That was just embarrassing. Just stop, please.
Alright so now he’s got those glowing red eyes like Bradley had when he was blabbing at The Great Armstrong, boasting about how Ed’s mercy just gives him another chance to kill. He spits out his second Stone and wow ok that was a big explosion. The tower over the mining shaft collapses in a huge cloud of smoke, the Briggs troops are knocked back and the Chimeras fall through the shattering floor (noooo, come back, Al hasn’t had a chance to recruit you yet!).
We’ve got the Somber Music playing as the last pebbles fall in the ruined mine shaft, Ed is down at the bottom a little worse for wear. Hey, it’s Lion and Gorilla! Quick Ed, rescue them from the pipes that have them pinned so we can… uh… that’s a lot of blood. You feeling ok, buddy?
OW. Uh, so when Ed fell down into the mine shaft he landed on a beam. And the beam went through him.
The camera’s shaking and going in and out of focus as Ed tries to pull himself off the beam, but the shock’s setting in and he collapses twitching on the ground eye rolling up and getting obscured by his hair Leto this is not good
Al just collapsed?! Aw hell no he’s getting another pull from his body? Bad timing, Al’s body! The girls are panicking and the Chimera’s are wondering what’s wrong with General Armor Guy, Winry’s doesn’t know what to do and Al’s motionless in the snow not even with his usual glowing eyes stop it
Ed? Ed’s not moving and there’s too much blood finger twitch! He’s still breathing but he really needs to figure out Roy’s flame technique to seal his wound soon.
[Ed]: “I won’t make her cry…Especially not over something this stupid!”
Ok so through the Power of Love Ed is overcoming the shock to Transmute part of the beam away, then Earthbend the rubble off of the Chimeras. They’re not too happy with their boss destroying the building they were in, so heck might as well join up with the kid who dug them out.
So Ed’s helped up by the guys he was enemies with five minutes ago, Lion notes that if he pulls the beam out then Ed’ll bleed out. But Ed has a plan, bioalchemy! He totally read about it before, he’ll be fine. But with all the damage he’ll need the power of a Philosopher’s Stone
well isn’t it convenient that he knocked one down the mine shaft just a little bit ago, huh?!
Wait what, he’s going to “use his own life force”? Take a few years off his lifespan what. Ok, so I’m supposed to just go with the idea that the kid who has no real bioalchemy experience beyond the failed Human Transmutation is going to manage to concentrate as a beam is pulled out of his guts and harness the power of his own soul in a way that’s never been done before. Just spend a minute or two looking for the shiny red gem that’s down there with you! Fine whatever, Protagonist Powers away.
Look I’m sorry I know that this is a moving scene and all with Ed accepting the cost of his mercy and screaming as the bloody beam is yanked from his intestines and visualizing himself as a Single Soul Philosopher’s Stone but come on we clearly saw the Stone fall down and you’re just going to ignore it. Fine whatever I’ll try to move past it. So Ed grits his teeth and managed to ok thank you for not making it perfect, he’s patched up his organs and stopped the bleeding but it’s only a temporary fix, he’ll need some professional help. Not that he plans on getting any, he’s up and raring to keep fighting Kimblee nope he’s out for the count.
Lion and Gorilla look over their rescuer, knowing that he can’t fight their former boss as beat up as he
there it is!
Apologies for the rant about the Stone earlier, Lion just found it and decided to not give it back to Kimblee. They’ll just head out and let the madman think they died in the explosion. As for Ed? They’re off to find the kid a doctor. (Oh please let this go where I think it’s going…
*knock knock*
[Lion]: “Hey, so we hear you’re a good doctor, and we’ve got this kid who’s a bit beat up…”
[Doc]: “Oh come on!”
pleasepleaseplease)
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Beyond Broken - Chapter Three
A/N: The closer we are to danger, the further we are from harm. - is a quote from LOTR-Two Towers (Peregrine Took). Re. Playstation - I know the max PSN ID is 16 characters and ThorsMightyHammer is more but I give zero fucks on this one… I do what I want! (spoken in Cartman’s voice). Also… Mild Endgame Spoilers contained within.
Warnings: Angst and dark thoughts, loneliness, people are hurting.
Caught up on earlier chapters? If not, check out my Thor Odinson Mobile Masterlist
Hurricane Thor
“What are you doing here?” Thor grumbled from the sofa. He’d heard the assassin pick the lock and enter but until she was in striking distance he chose to ignore her in favour of online gaming.
“Heard about a perpetual storm wreaking havoc along the coast in New London. It’s got meteorologists baffled. We figured it was you.” She stepped into view, wearing casual attire; jeans and a fitted pea-coat. At least she wasn’t there to kill him. “Who moves to Connecticut anyway?”
“I’ll have you know I like it here. It’s very, ahhh, wholesome.” He was thumbing the PS4 controller like crazy.
Her reply was an eye roll.
He cursed heavily at the TV. Death by a pre-pubescent internet demon-troll wasn’t good for his mood. He hated losing.
“Why are you here, Romanoff?” He threw game controller down against the cushions and stood to his full height. “Surely you could have simply called.”
“Would have, but someone smashed his phone the last time we visited.” She held out a new communicator with a sassy flick of her wrist. “Talk to Steve, we need you back.”
“I don’t want to be back.” He grumbled, growing more ill-tempered. “We lost. Thanos won. What else is there to say?”
“Tony is out of rehabilitation.” She begged with her eyes. “At least come and see him now that he’s back in the lab and back to his philandering ways.”
“Oh that is good to hear. I always liked it when Banner would throw out his secret stash of candy.” Thor smiled weakly, pulling a beer from the fridge. “Want one?”
“Only if I’m celebrating a victory here.” She smirked. “Does that mean you’ll come?”
Thor grinned. He had missed the camaraderie between them all but they were also a constant reminder of his own failure. He’d had a chance to put a stop to Thanos and had failed spectacularly. Half of all life had been wiped out and there was nothing he could do. Even their second chance had come too late; locating his sanctuary, finding the planet defenceless, facing the mad titan himself only to find the stones gone.
“I used the stones to destroy the stones.” That purple monstrosity had said.
Thanos was so sure of his inevitability that he didn’t even put up a fight when Thor hacked off his head with Stormbreaker. There was no satisfaction in the act, only a solitary step out over the precipice to oblivion.
Thor’s grin was gone.
“No.” He rumbled so deeply it was almost a growl.
Thor chugged the bottle, feeling himself get sucked down under a tide of self-loathing. No amount of weak Midgardian ale could numb his pain.
“At least take the phone.” She softened her gaze. “We’re here if you need us.”
“Very well.” He huffed.
She was gone without another word. Closing the door behind her as she left. Thor knew she’d be back at some point, and if not her then maybe Stark. Once they found him they never stopped coming.
Thor had grown to like this town. He’d been here two months. He liked the sea and the solitude. Not many people in this town recognised him. He was free from attention, blame, and harassment. It was the closest to peaceful he could get.
Right back after the snap, he’d found a place with his people in a little fishing village in the remote north of a country called Scotland. The whole village had been wiped out on D-Day. He took the village and renamed it New Asgard. But even there, amongst his people, he found no peace, only guilt. They’d quickly found him there, The Avengers, asking him to return to the fight, so he had left New Asgard and went anywhere he thought no one would know him.
The closer you are to danger, the further you are from harm. He’d read that somewhere, wasn’t sure where exactly, but he’d decided that New London was just close enough to up state New York to put him under The Avenger’s Radar. These two months had been the longest he’d gone without them finding him. He cursed his storm inducing mood swings. Maybe he should have moved into Stark’s basement and brooded there instead.
Last night had been the first night in weeks that it hadn’t rained. He had been all set to let his mood bring more thunder but something had changed.
The girl. He thought.
She’d been a delicate looking thing, sleek and slender, with radiant skin and dark hair.
Fragile. That’s how he’d seen her the first few nights she’d passed him at his brooding spot. But there was a strength in her. She fought a great sorrow. He could tell, even without his bionic eye.
Thoughts of her drew his mind to the man she was with. The one who left her alone and out in the cold waiting for him. There was something unsavoury about that man. Thor didn’t much care for him but a woman’s choice in partner was none of his business. It must be his ring she wore on her finger.
Flopping down on the sofa again he turned his attention back to his Playstation.
“Right then, Noobmaster69, it’s time to meet your doom at the hands of ThorsMightyHammer!” It was a battle cry suitable only for a middle-aged nerd’s soundproofed basement, but he gave it with gusto regardless. Controller in hand, he set about the thrashing of one anonymous online gamer.
The gym at Ocean Beach Park was open all night. He’d been in there a few times when it was quiet. Early in the morning or late at night was better. He had basic weights there in the apartment but no treadmill, cross trainer or anything he could use to really punish himself.
No matter how much he distracted himself from it, the thought of the girl and her yapping dog wouldn’t leave his mind. There was something about her that he was drawn to, some innate quality she was possessed of that he sensed, and liked.
He told himself that he was going to the gym but instead he pounded the pathways of the park itself in a rhythmic and sweaty search for any sign of her.
She hadn’t been at the twelfth marker, nor anywhere along the promenade. He checked, running its whole length, twice. There were dog walkers still exercising their companions but none were her, and none of the dogs even looked similar to her little white and tan pup with the huge fluffy ears. He didn’t see her gentleman friend either.
Perhaps she had been scared off. Perhaps.
By the time midnight came around, he was dripping with sweat and extremely hungry. A jumbo pizza and some buffalo wings were just what he craved. Eating hastily on the walk home, he noticed the little café across from the park. The logo on the shutter triggered a memory of slender fingers grasping a paper cup with the same design. Smiling through a mouthful of pizza he carried on his journey home feeling peppy. He felt energised, contently full of greasy food and had another point of reference for his mystery woman.
There’s always tomorrow. He thought.
#Thor#thor odinson#thor fanfiction#marvel fanfiction#thor x ofc#kindred spirits#stalker thor#beyond broken#my writing#I write fanfcition#survivors guilt#post infinity war#avengers#pre endgame#thor fanfic#cloudy's writing
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