#was the SOUL color an intentional choice??? yes
Text
*SAVE The World plays*
throwback to last year after the Amphibia finale aired when I was struck with inspo when listening to the Undertale soundtrack
Andddd here's the main image file! Tried to stay true to the original game's graphic style (but I figured if the Asriel fight got color, then Anne deserved some colors as well) ✨
#hopes and dreams could also work ofc#but this song inspired the whole thing SO#amphibia#amphibia fanart#my art#outerstars art#anne boonchuy#amphibia anne#undertale#pixel art#amphibia finale#the hardest thing spoilers#amphibia the hardest thing#calamity trio#i cried SO hard when i watched the finale guys you have no idea#sprig had nothing on my waterworks#amphibia season 3#was the SOUL color an intentional choice??? yes
620 notes
·
View notes
Note
Would you recommend the SSSS comic? I know little of it beside the very beautiful artstyle and premise
to answer the question of if i would recommend SSSS as a comic: yes, yes i would.
a description for those who don't know: Stand Still Stay Silent is a post-apocalyptic horror + adventure webcomic set in the nordics (norway, sweden, denmark, finland, iceland) that have been isolated from the rest of the world and gone back to their old gods. the the world outside of safe zones is full of trolls and beasts - humans and mammals that got infected by a horrible virus and turned into monsters. the story follows a ragtag crew that ventures into the old world (derelict denmark) on an expedition to collect books.
the comic updated every workday until it concluded in 2022, and consists of two Adventures. the creator had plans for many adventures with these characters in this world, but ended it after two when she wanted to take a new direction with her life.
what i love about it:
- the art is GORGEOUS. it's been a huge source of inspiration for me. open any page and it's a masterpiece, and you will ask yourself "how the FUCK did she update this FIVE DAYS A WEEK"
- the characters are wonderful and endearing. i just, i love them so much. i am so thankful lalli hotakainen exists he is one of my #1 blorbos forever
- the world is so cool. the blend of chunky sci-fi and norse mythology fantasy magic slaps. it goes so hard. i fell so hard for this comic when i got to the big ferry ship with a viking style dragon head prow added to it. it's everything
- it really really gets nordic cultures. it's difficult to explain all the dynamics and nuances but it just gets it. it brings me as a scandinavian a lot of joy to read a story that speaks to my heart this way. the attitudes, the language barriers, the cultural differences... it was so refreshing to me in a media landscape dominated by american stories. when the pandemic hit, i decided to reread the comic because i found such an odd comfort in seeing how it depicted the scandinavian countries reacting to, well, a pandemic.
- there's kittycats
what i don't like about it:
- the most glaring and obvious flaw is that everyone in the comic is white. there's not a single character of color anywhere, not even i background shots or the prologue. there's no mention of the saami people (the indigenous people of northern europe), either. i believe this was done in ignorance more than malicious intent, but the implications are Extremely Bad and it's been bothering me (AND MANY OTHERS) since day 1. that is the number one caveat i will give to anyone wanting to check this comic out. i've been in the discourse trenches and i am not going to excuse this. it's just bad!
- you can tell in the middle of adventure 2 that the creator has kind of lost interest in the work, around the time when she found jesus i guess. like, very few people can keep up work on the same creative project for years and years and years and i think it's fine that she wanted to drop it, but it's a bit sad to see the comic dragged to its end like a limp corpse, and feeling like the creator no longer really cares about the characters.
- minna sundberg has said and done some questionable things, presumably gotten somewhat radicalised over time, and has also converted to hardcore christianity which is what her new works are about. there's nothing about this in SSSS - there is a moment of christianity represented in the story in a sort of mythological sense, just like the other religions, but this was written before minna's conversion. her new works... are a Choice. i have much to say about them, and i have, and im not gonna rehash it now.
SO YEAH hopefully this will help you take an Informed Choice! i got into this comic in 2015 and was deep in the fandom and it's for better or for worse part of my soul foundation now.
i also recommend A Redtail's Dream, minna's "practice comic" before SSSS, based on finnish mythology and the kalevala.
125 notes
·
View notes
Text
Okay so since there’s soooo much fucking transphobia rampant, here’s a post for those of you who either are Christian and/or surrounded by Christian queerphobes. Here’s a list of rebuttals to when they start talking about how being trans is ungodly.
Most of these rebuttals are religious as that is the base they will be arguing from; however I did include bit of a science to make their heads spin.
“Genesis also says that God made morning and evening. Are morning and evening strictly binary? Is there nothing inbetween? Can you define 'morning'? How about the binary of darkness and light?”
“So if we're born the gender we are, what are intersex people?” [when they inevitably say there's just "so few of them"] “There are more intersex people than there are redheads. 1.7% of the population are Intersex, while roughly 1.5% are redheads. Does that mean that redheads do not 'count' when discussing hair color?”
[to “God doesn't make mistakes”] “Yes, of course. They just do impossible things. After all, if God could put a baby into a virgin, or could bring life to the dead, why could they not put a boy's soul into a girl's body, or vice versa?”
Feel free to also say “God literally made such a mistake with all humanity that they flooded the planet.”
This line is from a Jewish source, Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel Mallory Ortberg: “As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: 'God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.'”
Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.“
If they're using the Deuteronomy verse (22:5, about not crossdressing or w/e), know that line is mistranslated. Quoting https://hoperemainsonline.com/index.php/transgender/, “A more literal translation from Hebrew reads 'The weapon of a warrior shall not be on a woman, nor shall a warrior put on the robe of a woman, for all who do these things are a hateful thing to the LORD thy God.' The word “robe” is translated from the Hebrew word simlah, which was a garment worn by both sexes. Clearly, this cannot be referring to cross-dressing. What could it be referring to then? A much more likely answer to that question is that it is about ritual purity and the mixing of blood. Both warrior’s swords and women’s garments would get blood on them, one from battle and the other from menstruation. To have a man wear the robe of a woman, or vice versa, would mix blood, which was considered an abomination under the law.”
Similar mistranslations result in the homophobic verses they spew as well. just browse through hoperemains for some inspo
This last one is long, but it talks about how all humans, including women, were created in God's image; therefore, God is both male and female. If it's wrong for humans to be, why is God enby themself?
From The Africana Bible, edited by Hugh R Page Jr:
“The term occasionally translated as 'human beings' in the NRSV and generally as "man" in most other English versions is 'adam or ha'adam. Now this is clearly not a personal name (that is, Adam) as the KJV ill-advisedly begins to indicate at about Gen. 2:19. A better translation of this term, however, would be “the earthling” since the term is derived from the term ‘adamah, meaning “land” or “earth.” Such a translation clarifies better than “man” or even “human being” that the original intent of the author is to emphasize that God made “earthlings” as a whole, not just males, in God’s image[...]”
[...]“Such a translation takes into consideration that the term ‘adam is meant to function as a collective term referring to both the male and the female. Thus, we should note that ‘adam here is not a name or an ascription of gender but a collective term for “earthlings” in general; this is emphasized by the author’s choice of the plural pronoun ‘otham, and the use of the plural verbs veyirddu and urdu, meaning in 1:26 and 1:28, 'let THEM have dominion,' further reiterates the inclusive nature of the term ‘adam. [...] In Genesis 1 and 2, both genders were created with equal expressions of God’s image, equal authority over the earth, and equal value as human beings.”
273 notes
·
View notes
Note
AU where the great deity Gentrychild gets yeeted into the canon BNHA-verse and single-handedly consumes AFO's soul, effortlessly saving Japan as her rat companions feast upon his flesh
1 - In true isekai fashion, I was hit by a truck and sent to the canon bnhaverse. Barid was driving it and was distracted by Moonpaw's shiny colors as the neon cat was walking down the street.
2 - I landed in the middle of Mustafu, immediately recognizing the canon BNHAverse and thinking that no one would bat an eye at my appearance since it's a post Dawn of Quirks world. I was very disappointed to see all of those people running away screaming from me. I guess that appearance-based-discrimination is still a thing.
3 - Despite what the prompt asks of me, I have no intention to derail the story. Izuku is in the middle of his beach training and yes, I took one thousand pictures (and several selfies) but apart from that, I didn't intervene in any way. I want All Might to have his Kamino moment. Instead, I keep stealing Nighteye's merch and watch him implode in fury, putting dirt all over Chisaski's stuff and ripping Destro Junior's remaining hair tuff by tuff.
4 - All was well until someone not only tried to cut the line to get raspberry ice cream but actually elbowed me to do so? Who does that? I politely informed him that I was here first and that he better get back to end of the line. The very rude man wearing what I first believed to be a Mandalorian helmet insulted my feathers then said that my quirk was fascinating and was about to put his hand on me! So I did what everyone would do in this situation! I ate his soul, messily and painfully. He begged a lot on his way out of life and into my stomach. But hey, at least, the line cleared out and I got my ice cream faster than expected to wash out the taste!
5 - Unfortunately, I eventually realized that I had just killed AFO, aka the main villain of the story. Shigaraki couldn't be expected to replace him, as he was still in his League of Legend phase. So I figured out that I could just kinda piece him back together and use him as a puppet so he could still play his role. After all, I have written so many AFOs, it should be child's play to keep in character and probably make him a more competent villain than what we've seen lately in the manga. Unfortunately... I didn't realize that wherever I go, the rats follow.
6 - I tried to tell them to stop by screaming that they didn't know where AFO had been but they only chew faster.
7 - Since AFO is dead and BNHA is now deprived of its villain, I have no choice but to take responsibility and to assume the role. I shall now become the new villain of the BNHA world. Wish them luck.
325 notes
·
View notes
Text
Eden's Passing is a 16+ game made in Twine by me, Doc, and is my first attempt at making an interactive fiction game!
Genre: Primarily Fantasy and Comedy focused with a smidge of Mystery and Horror elements. Do tell me if a separate catagory fits, please!
Warnings: Trauma, Bodily Injury without feeling it, Body Horror in general (more will be added as time goes on, these are what I'm currently certain off)
Demo: In the works!
Alone in a land you can't recall and stuck at the bottom of a seemingly endless ravine, the start of your journey isn't a pleasant one. Body slowly crumbling away, memory missing, and seemingly stuck with a stranger intent on calling you a name you can't remember, your attempts to leave seem fruitless until they finally offer a helping hand. Hopefully with no strings attached.
Set in the world of Nyr, you're just a lost soul trying to figure out who you are and what happened to you.
Features, added or intended:
☆ Fully customizable MC (name, hair, skin color, personality, etc.)
☆ Romantic or Platonic routes, Poly included.
☆ Long Crocodile. You'll see. ♡
☆ Learn more about the world and maybe save it, maybe launch a salamander at someone.
☆ Diverse cast of characters, ethnicities, religions, etc! (Please do tell me if anything's not accurate enough, it's fantasy, yes, but I am using some real-life ethnicities and such as basis!)
☆ A lot of lore. A lot. I made a map. I will do more than just a map. It's inevitable.
Eden's Passing isn't romance focused but, those inclined towards it, does have multiple routes with it.
Zacharie, M, 36(RO)
A 4'11" man with spiky green hair and red tinted glasses. Adventurers clothing, torn at the edges and taped to his body on his limbs, cover most of his skin. What you can see of his skin, primarily his face, has stitches spanning the length and width. No one is allowed to touch them. Beyond that, he seems nice, even when he mutters insults at passing plants or argues with books. But his skittishness towards others is concerning, especially the glint of pure terror he sometimes shows. It's typical to see him hovering around Cassian, primarily either hiding behind him or riding his shoulders.
Solo OR Poly route with Cassian or Florian.
Cassian, M, 29 (RO)
At 6'6, he's the tallest of the group. Long black hair drapes down well past his hips, sometimes being used to hide his eyes from others. Old yet well cared for armor is his ordinary choice of clothing, no matter the situation. Quiet and melancholic, it's hard to catch him smiling at much of anything. Despite that, he's the first to jump into a fight to protect his friends. One of the few people to understand Zacharie, he keeps a firm eye on anyone that might pose a threat to the smaller man. A bit of an enabler, he will turn a blind eye to the more playful deeds his companions wish to take.
Solo OR Poly route with Zacharie.
Florian, Gender Selectable (M/F/NB), 25 (RO)
At 5'3", they're the second shortest of the group. Blond curly and short hair, styled like an odd pixie cut, clashes against the bright red coat they drap over themself. Two antennae stick out from their scalp, twitching at any stimulus. A butterfly bow, which sometimes flaps on its own when Florians distressed, keeps it from falling off. When they're not being pestered by Zacharie or Wynn, they're actually the most sensible of the group. A bit of a motherhen, they do their best to prevent the others from getting into trouble. It's a thankless job, and they aren't even getting paid for it.
Solo OR Poly routes with Wynn or Zacharie.
Wynn, Gender Selectable (M/F/NB), 23 (RO)
A 5'9" elf that's joined the group alongside Florian. Long, pointed, and pierced ears flick every so often, parting their short, light purple hair. Clad in a cape that trails in the air and an outfit that shows off a concerning amount of chest, they aren't the shyest with showing skin. Long pants that hide even their boots cover their legs, yet never get dirty as they drag across the ground. A bit of a flirt, they aren't the type to take much seriously. It's common to see them, Zacharie, and Twig up to no good, typically with Wynn at the lead. A natural born leader, one might be confused why they follow MC's lead, even they seem at odds with that fact.
Solo OR Poly route with Florian.
Twig, NB, 26 (RO)
Looming over at 6'4", they tend to forget just how tall they are. Long purple hair ends as their tail begins, the fluff at the end matching their hair. Thick and curly when short, it covers up their eyes from the view of others. 5 horns sprout up from their scalp, imitating a crown of sorts, and range in size from a few inches to just two. Clad in purple and blue robes that are breathable yet skin-tight, they've had Zacharie modify it to properly accommodate their tail. Out of the group, they remain the friendliest even in the face of adversity. It's... hard for others to tell whether they're simply naive or just too forgiving, but regardless of that, they remain the first to lend their hand when others need it. A bit of a goofball as well, it's easy to catch them trying to pick the funnest option first. Quick to trust and quicker to befriend, one might wish to spare them from the cruelty of the world.
Solo route
???, NB, ??? (RO?)
A figure that stands at 5'10, they're your savior from the pit you woke up in. Long hair, starting black and quickly fading to a bright red, flows from their scalp like tendrils. It flows as if hit by a breeze constantly, regardless of airflow. Clad in only a white robe tied shut at the waist by a sash, it's easy to notice the gaps in their skin. They never answer when it's brought up, leaving you wondering just what has saved you from the ravine. Quick to anger, you'd almost think they're unpredictable if not for the consistent causes and phrases. Regardless of who you are, they insist your name is Eden. Regardless of their affection towards you, they refuse to tell you who they are. They insist you'll figure it out.
Solo route.
#if game#twine if#twine game#interactive fiction#if wip#twine#wip#please know I'm skittering behind the scenes#the prologue is being worked on btw don't worry. I'll probably post intentionally bad pics#if asked to anyway#ill probably delete these extra tags after a bit
172 notes
·
View notes
Text
Amygdala
Masterlist
part 16
There was a sadistic sort of glee that Margot took in dragging Yoongi through the store looking at dish set after dish set despite his clear disinterest in the proceedings. He was bored, but he hadn’t come to pick out dishes. He’d come to keep an eye on her, and she was determined to make the experience as painfully boring as possible in retaliation. Margot could be a very petty creature when she wanted to be, and in this instance, she wanted to be petty.
Margot spent an obscene amount of time looking over each dish set that caught her eye whether she liked the set or not, and Yoongi dutifully followed along wondering to himself how she could spend twenty minutes staring at the same pieces of ceramic, but he refused to utter a word of complaint. He was content even in the boredom just to be with her. She wasn’t lying in bed a shell of herself, and she wasn’t hurling insults at him at every turn. Overall, it was a successful outing so far by his account of it.
“Do like this one, jagi?” he asked, peering at what felt like the hundredth set she’d looked over.
“It’s nice.” She admitted, turning over the piece in her hand. “I like the color.”
Yoongi took another glance at it. “It’s green.”
“It has character unlike you’re boring ass dishes.” she shot back, quirking a brow at him as if to dare him to argue with her. “Besides, half the pieces are still white. It’s a mix and match kind of set. It adds some color to your house.”
“Pick whatever you want, love.”
Margot looked him up and down for a moment as though he’d said something incredibly dumb. “Yes. I’m going to. That’s the whole plan.”
Margot turned away from him, brushing a stray piece of hair out of her face as she debated if this was the set she wanted to bring back to the penthouse. The color was lovely, a nice calm pale green that would brighten up the space while remaining in her favored color palette. While Yoongi had done a good job of making the space into one her college self would have liked, she wasn’t that girl anymore, and her taste in colors had changed a great deal since then.
“This one.” she confirmed, and Yoongi motioned for an attendant to come over, quickly ordering for the set to be packaged up for them. “Now for mugs!” she declared, moving further into the store as Yoongi stared at her as though she’d grown a second head.
“I thought you came for dishes?”
Margot turned back around, hands on her hips. “Mugs are dishes, and your whole apartment needs a redo if you want me to stay there permanently.” Not that she had any intention of Yoongi’s apartment being her permanent home.
“Do what you need to do.”
While the idea of a complete overhaul didn’t thrill his soul, he was immensely pleased that she was making the space her own. It may not have been the most productive use of his time, but he was happy to be spending time with her and even happier that it was in a normal way.
“These ones match.” he pointed out, pulling a light green mug down from the shelf to present to Margot.
Carefully, she took the piece from him, looking it over with a critical eye, and begrudgingly she had to admit that it was a good choice. It was probably the one she would have picked out herself after a much longer process of hemming and hawing in the name of annoying him.
She bit her cheek and stared at him with narrowed eyes, annoyed at how perceptive he was when it came to her tastes. He picked up on her likes and dislikes far too quickly. In a boyfriend it would have been endearing. In him, it was off putting.
Yoongi smirked down at her, amused by her annoyance. It was all part of becoming reacquainted with each other. Her annoyance would give way to gentler emotions with time. He was sure of it. For now, he found the glowering cute.
“Stop that.” she huffed. “You’re not picking dishes.”
“Do you want this set?” He asked, quirking a brow as though to dare her to say she didn’t like what he’d picked.
She stayed quiet for a moment, eyes narrowed and biting her the inside of her cheek before she gritted out that yes, she did in fact want that set of mugs, earning a triumphant smirk from Yoongi.
“I’m going to keep looking.”
“I’ll have them add the mugs to our tab.”
“You do that.”
Margot continued to move through the store, Yoongi following behind as always. As she perused the ceramics, Yoongi’s phone began to ring, drawing her attention.
A furrow appeared between Yoongi’s brow, his mouth set in a hard line clearly irritated by the interruption. Whoever was on the other side of that call though was apparently important enough to draw Yoongi away.
“I’m sorry, jagiya. I have to take this. You should keep looking.” He placed a hand on her arm in what she assumed was meant to be a comforting way before drawing back to pick up his phone.
“What?” he barked harshly into the device, letting his displeasure be known to whoever dared disturb his day with Margot.
The woman herself continued through the store searching for an opening in this golden opportunity. With Yoongi distracted, she might just be able to get a message out. She wouldn’t be able to fully slip away. He would see her making for the exit, and she knew that her security team was more than likely not far away, but with any luck she might just be able to contact someone and let them know what had happened to her.
Looking around, Margot noticed one of the ladies who worked at the store lingering near by. With a quick glance over her shoulder to ensure that Yoongi wasn’t paying attention to her, Margot made her way over.
“Excuse me.”
“Can I help you, Min buin?” the woman asked, a customer service smile stretched across her lips.
“I was wondering if you had a phone that I could use.”
The woman’s smile dimmed, confusion in her eyes. “A phone, buin?”
“Yes. I don’t have mine currently, and my…” she steeled herself for a moment for the lie she was about to tell, the words lodged in her throat not wanting to come out. “My husband is currently occupied, and I can’t borrow his.” The woman stared at her skeptically. “Just for a moment. I promise.”
Margot kept her expression light and calm as she tried to persuade the other woman not wanting her to know that anything was amiss.
“Of course, buin.” the woman reached into her pocket pulling out her phone and passing it over despite her reservations.
“Thank you.” Margot breathed out a sigh of relief, taking the phone.
Quickly, she dialed one of the few numbers she had memorized, praying as the phone rang that he would pick up.
“Yeoboseyo?”
“Tae-il?” Margot rushed, speaking softly but quickly into the phone.
“Margot-ah?” Tae-il asked clearly just as relieved to hear her voice as she was to hear his. “Margot, where are you? What happened.”
Margot glanced at the woman who was still nearby looking at her curiously. “I’m with Yoongi.”
“What?” Tae-il’s voice shook as he spoke. “Are you alright? Has he hurt you?”
“I’m alright. We’re out running errands.”
“Errands?”
“Could you let Namjoon-ssi know that I’ve been tied up, and I won’t be able to make our meeting?”
She spoke in a hushed tone, careful not to be too loud so as not to attract Yoongi’s attention but not so softly that the call would seem unusual to the other woman. She was also careful to keep her words as unrushed as possible. That would also cause suspicion, and she doubted that this woman had any qualms about reporting any odd behavior to Yoongi. It might have just been her own paranoia, but she didn’t feel she could trust anyone where Yoongi was concerned especially not in a place where the staff referred to her as Min buin.
“Margot?”
“I don’t have my phone right now, so he won’t be able to call.”
“Margot, are you safe?”
“Yes. Please pass on the message.” Margot looked around nervously, noticing that Yoongi was putting away his phone and turning his attention back to her though she wasn’t where he had left her. It would be a matter of moments before he spotted her with a phone in hand.
“Margot.”
“I’ll call again soon.”
“Margot, don’t hang up.”
Margot hung up the call, handing the phone back to the sale’s woman. “Thank you for letting me borrow your phone.”
The woman gave her a look, still suspicious about what she had just witnessed but unwilling to ask any questions about it. “It was my pleasure, buin.”
“Mari-ah.” Yoongi called, sharp eyes spotting her tucked away behind one of the displays.
“Thank you.” she said again before turning her attention to Yoongi. “Calm down. I’m right here.” she huffed, pretending that she hadn’t just done what she’d done.
Yoongi was back by her side in a moment, slinging an arm around her waist in a display of public affection that she wasn’t particularly fond of. “What did you find, love?”
Margot took a quick glance at the items around her. “Tea sets.” she responded quickly and as breezily as she could, ignoring her shaking hands.
“Didn’t you just buy mugs?”
“Mugs and tea sets are different things.”
“Did you find anything you like?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure I’ll find something.”
The pair spent hours in the store, filtering through the departments picking out this and that for the apartment or rather with Margot picking out things for the apartment and Yoongi throwing in his two cents every now and again only to receive a withering glare from Margot in return. Even with the glares, every now and then something he would suggest would be begrudgingly accepted into the haul.
Margot made sure to make every moment count, spending longer than necessary looking over each section of the store and each item. She was all too aware that when the shopping was done, so was her time outside. There were only so many excuses she could come up with to remain out of the apartment in one day and only so long that Yoongi would allow her to use those excuses before it was time to head home.
“Come on, jagiya.” Yoongi sighed, relieved to be done with the shopping even if it meant there was now a significant dent in his credit card. “I think that’s everything you could possibly need for the moment. Let’s go grab lunch.”
Margot hesitated, unsure if she wanted to go eat with him and wracking her brain for an excuse as good as going for lunch as to why they couldn’t go back to the apartment yet. She came up with nothing.
“We can even go to Tae-il-ssi’s restaurant if you’d like.”
Her eyes widened, the offer too good to be true, but she could see no lie in his eyes as he made the offer.
“We can go to Tae-il’s?” she asked slowly, just to be sure that she had heard him correctly and wasn’t hallucinating the things that she wanted to hear.
“We can go to Tae-il’s.” he confirmed.
“Okay then. Let’s go to Tae-il’s.”
Yoongi sent their shopping back to the apartment with part of the security team as he drove them back to her former home, her real home. Margot could only hope that Tae-il would have the presence of mind not to say anything to Yoongi about the phone call she had just made. She very much doubted that he would appreciate her making illicit phone calls to send messages to detectives behind his back, and she didn’t want to see what the consequence to that action would be if he found out.
Part of her knew that it was stupid to go to Tae-il right after the call, but the other part desperately wanted to see him and assure him that she was alright. if she was very lucky, Yoongi might even allow her a moment alone to talk to Tae-il where she could give him a more detailed message for Namjoon. She knew the odds of it were slim, a mere hope of a hope, but she was determined to try for her own sanity if nothing else.
“Are you excited, jagi?” Yoongi asked, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.
“Excited?”
“To see Tae-il.”
Margot thought for a moment, trying to choose her words carefully. “I’m excited to see him, but I also don’t want to worry him too much. He’s not going to be happy that I’m with you.”
“He doesn’t like me very much does he?”
“No. No he doesn’t.” she huffed out, rolling her eyes. “You can’t really blame him though. You did ransack his restaurant.”
Yoongi’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I didn’t personally do anything.”
Margot looked over at him, once more debating if there was a brain in his head at all given the brainless things that seemed to come out of his mouth routinely.
She started to speak, and then paused, blinking slowly as she tried to piece together her thought. “You were…. you… you ordered it?” She stared at him, still trying to process. “Are you trying to imply that you aren’t at fault because you didn’t physically ransack anything despite being the one to order it? What kind of fucked up sense does that make?” She scoffed, turning to look out the passenger side window. “This is why no one likes you.”
“You don’t like me, jagiya?” he asked, a small smile pulling on the corner of his lips as he gave a small gasp of shock.
Margot turned back to him, face void of all expression. “Not even a little bit.”
“You’re lies hurt me, jagiya.” A pout pulled at his features.
“I’m sure you’ll survive like the cockroach you are.” she waved him off breezily, turning once more to watch the world pass by through the window.
Yoongi let her be after that, content to drive in silence as her thoughts took her away into a world of her own making. His own thoughts drifted to her words.
While being called a cockroach wasn’t the most flattering thing, it also wasn’t a completely inaccurate assessment. He wasn’t ashamed of the things he’d done to get where he was now, but there were certainly things in his past that strengthen the comparison. He’d scraped his way up from the bottom with the same resilience of a cockroach, and everyone who had doubted him or tried to stand in his way were either knew better than to question him or were no longer there to underestimate him. Every attempt to destroy him had failed, and he’d clawed his way up until he’d reached the success he had today. It was with that same determination he planned to approach him relationship with Margot.
Cockroach or not, he was a man who got his way, and he doubted that Margot had the same single minded determination to resist him. She’d tire of it eventually, and the comfort of their previous relationship would win out over the stubbornness she insisted on. It was a waiting game, and he was sure that he was the contestant with the most patience and the most to lose should he have guessed wrong.
If he had bet wrong in this, he would lose everything he had ever wanted. If she had bet wrong, she’d get a loving husband and a beautiful home.
Yoongi’s hands flexed on the wheel again as the thoughts ran through his head. Everything he’d ever hoped for hinged on whether or not she bluffing about hating him or not. He talked a good game and put on a good show when she spewed her vitriol against him, but deep down, beneath it all, there was a kernel of doubt that liked to snake up his spine when she did. What if it wasn’t just a bluff? What if there wasn’t still a lingering affection as he’d been banking on? What if he couldn’t get her to love him again?
Just as quickly as the doubt would rear its ugly head, Yoongi would push it back down again. He couldn’t afford to doubt himself, not in business and not in this. Everything depended on his ability to predict the correct outcome, his unfailing instincts and ruthless drive to succeed. He hadn’t been wrong before, and he wouldn’t be wrong now. She loved him. Deep beneath it, all just as his doubt lingered so did her love, and he would find a way to pull it back out again even if he had to drag it out of her kicking and screaming.
As much as he hated to admit it, it had been quite some time since he’d actually had to woo a woman. The last time may well have been Margot herself, and he’d fumbled that spectacularly. He knew the basic principles though. He knew that it would require softer tactics than he was used to, and he had been made well aware by Margot herself that she was not going to bend to him easily, but she wouldn’t have been his Margot if she had folded at the first attack. His Margot was made of stronger stuff than that, and as frustrated as he found himself at times that they couldn’t just jump back into things as they had been, he also found a certain thrill in the chase. She kept him on his toes.
A slow smile stretched over his features as he pulled over. His Margot wasn’t easy, but he wouldn’t have had her any other way.
“We’re here, jagiya.”
“Can I actually get out on my own or is the child lock still in play?” She asked, tilting her head to the side in question.
“I’ll get the door. "
Margot grumbled as he opened her door for her, offering a gentlemanly had which she chose to ignore. “The child lock is kind of demeaning, you know?”
“We can talk about not having the child locks on when you no longer look like you want to run me through.”
“So not any time soon.”
“That’s completely up to you, jagiya.”
“I dislike you immensely.” she sighed, narrowing her eyes slightly before her entire demeanor switched. Her shoulders pulled back, and a bright smile took over her face, lighting up her features as she made her way to the door.
“Uncle!”
#bts fic#yandere#yandere bts#dark romance#bts#bts fanfic#mafia au#mafia bts#mafia#bts fanfiction#Yoongi x oc#mafia yoongi#yandere yoongi#mafia suga#yandere suga#suga x oc#mafia agust d#yandere agust d#agust d x oc#soft yandere#amygdala#agust d
106 notes
·
View notes
Text
ok, alastor thought/theory dump:
i think HIS magic is the green. i see why it could by the color of his deal but the chain he had on husk was green and based off valentino and angel it’s safe to assume the chain color is the overlords. i think all green magic is his.
however when his eyes go all radio dial creepy they turn black, which, in my opinion, shows his soul isn’t his when he’s using his powers, similar to how angel only has one black eye because valentino only owns his soul in the studio.
it’s honestly a confusing mix, when he uses his powers his soul isn’t his, but they are HIS powers. so i think it’s most likely he sold his soul to make it easier to gain power on his own. he’s not stupid, if he got power through a deal the deal maker now has an element of control over his power. so he cuts corners, and with the help of presumably lilith, becomes more and more powerful.
if the deal was the source of his power he wouldn’t say that getting out of it will let him “pull the strings.” he wouldn’t even WANT out of it, his only motivation that we are certain of atm is power and control, and yes his deal takes his control but if it gives him his power losing that would take BOTH.
i think a crucial bit of information were missing is when did this deal happen and how does husk know. (and why didn’t alastor kill him but that’s vaguely explainable)
was it when he first got down? young and dumb and selling his soul, which would explain how he made such a big splash so quick? or was it seven years ago? gaining power at the expense of leaving hell with lilith to do god knows what?
i think it’s far more likely to have been when he first got to hell, and lilith was able to exercise her control over him to get him to leave with her. obviously his place in the hotel isn’t because he’s bored, that’s been made clear several times. so why?
it’s possible it’s part of his deal with lilith but she’s still such a mystery i don’t think it’s safe to say anything about her. alastor said in ep 7 that charlie was powerful, being on her side was a good bet, and he could mold her. based on that and his presumably genuine interest in everyone, i think he’s choosing to be there. it’s chess, moves and counter moves, etc. he stays at the hotel and he isn’t lying when he calls it his latest project. he’s just lying about why. he saw naive charlie on tv and knew she would welcome him in, hence his evil little grin. that’s HIS choice, not liliths.
now, for his monologue in the tower. i’m going to be working off the idea everything in the song was an intentional decision and not made for the sake of sounding good.
“this place reeks of death, there’s a chill in the air” that seems like filler, painting the scenery, but i don’t think so. i think it’s meant to show he cares about the hotel and the people in it. he can physically FEEL the tragedy affecting him. he might not be as distraught about it as someone else, but he does care.
“i barley escaped being KILLED by a hair” he put emphasis of killed while singing, that’s the key take away. he almost died. he’s coming to terms with the limit of his power and it’s driving him insane. and i think it’s important to note that… he kinda, didn’t? almost die? his microphone broke (which does show power far greater that him) and he got thrown against the wall. that’s hardly enough to kill someone. he’s been untouchable most if not all of his time in hell, so this fight was a brutal reminder he IS vulnerable. he told adam he though he was tougher than him. tougher that the first ever soul and someone only lucifer was able to take down. his ego definitely got killed but i think this line shows he’s never really processed the idea of losing.
“‘alastor altruist died for his friends’” if you watch with captions you can see that line is in quotation marks. someone else is saying that, meaning he thinks the general perception of what happened will be that his reason for almost dying is to save the people in the hotel. but that’s just the words, next step is his facial expression. his eyes are wide and darting around, he’s gripping his face, he’s TERRIFIED. love is a weakness, he’s not just feeling weak (which IS part of why he’s spiraling), he’s being perceived as weak, which is so much worse. he’s losing his control and needs it back, leading to:
“sorry to disappoint, that is not how this ends.” there’s a couple things with this line. the Vs and other overlords will be disappointed because he’s not dead and his “friends” (his word, not mine, but i think it fits) will be disappointed he’s not willing to die for them like they maybe assumed he did. “not how this ends” is obvious, he didn’t die, so his rein didn’t end. but pulling back to his desperation in this scene, he’s angry, his latest power grab isn’t working out, but it will.
“i’m hungry for freedom like never before, the constraints of my deal surely have a back door ” again with the desperation, the fear, not sure if mania is the right word but it’s what comes to mind. he’s scrambling. but at the same time, how did his deal almost make him die?? he wants out of it, hence why i said i doubt it gives him his powers, so it must in some way limit his powers? but why would he make a deal that hinders him? again, this is why i think when he first got to hell he sold his soul to make it easier to gain his own power. but in some way his power isn’t HIS. it still is on a leash.
“once i figure out how to unclip my wings, guess who will be pulling all the strings” is showing us how he is still very VERY much power driven, and will stop at nothing to get control. he may be bound now, but in season two i think we’re gonna see a lot of him trying various means to break deals. i doubt he will be the big boss at the end of the season, but he’s playing his own game, and he is CRACKING. he’ll be violent, have an even quicker temper, charlie is going to try to help him but he’ll refuse. his mouth is sewn shut, so he can’t say WHY he’s so upset, but everyone will know something is wrong.
good GOD that was long
TLDR: “i think when he first got to hell he sold his soul to make it easier to gain his own power. but in some way his power isn’t HIS. it still is on a leash.”
#hazbin alastor#hazbin hotel#hazbin spoilers#hazbin lilith#hazbin hotel theory#hazbin alastor theory
27 notes
·
View notes
Text
One Step Ahead (Yandere! Russia x Reader)
Warnings: Yandere behavior, implied kidnapping.
Anonymous Request: Can i req one shot about yandere russia accidentally met his runaway darling (that escape 2 days ago) on train and what his next move
.
.
.
You should have run when you had the chance.
Years ago, when you had first met Russia, you had been just as nervous as the rest of your coworkers upon introduction. It was hard not to freeze up and back away at the very sight of him—over six feet tall and with a presence that demanded respect and attention. Even if you had exchanged minimal pleasantries, you felt your heart seize in your throat at the thought of continued conversation.
That day, you vowed to never get on his bad side.
However, while first impressions may have colored your perceptions of him at first, you found that Russia was a rather hilarious person once you got used to his blunt nature and dark humor. Witty and well read, whenever the both of you found each other alone (rare occasions, but you found yourself looking forward to them), Russia would give you battered books filled with his homeland’s poetry. Under hushed breath as other Nations milled around the room with political favors and current events in mind, Russia would translate bits and pieces of his favorite poems.
Pushkin, Pasternak, Nabakov.
Krylov, Lermonov, Yesenin.
Derieva, Dushkova, Ivinskaya.
You would have never known this had you not given Russia a chance, but his voice was comforting and soft. The way he would read in his native tongue first was to immerse you into his homeland’s most precious written words. Afterwards, as you would roll around the syllables and hushed breaths in your mind to try and recall the correct translation, he would gently transition into your native tongue. At first, his attempts were clumsy, but to know that he was willing to translate his most famous poetry into a tongue that wasn’t refined as his, filled you with warmth. Even as he apologized for his stumbling grammar and tenuous grasp on your vocabulary, you found yourself endeared.
In time, you also began toting around books of poetry from your homeland. Like him, you would start with a hushed, reverent tone in your own tongue before transitioning into his native Russian. Before long, these private poetry sessions extended from the short breaks in meetings to scheduled rendezvous that could take you from cute cafes to expensive restaurants.
Your other Nation friends were somewhat amused, but wary of the Russian’s intentions. Yet, they noted that your abilities to speak in the Slav’s tongue was becoming more fluent rather than practical. Furthermore, the interest in his culture and prolific bodies of literature had gone from professional curiosity to something bordering on close friendship. Yes, you had told your closest friends and colleagues, in the political arena Russia was a foe not to be ignored, but as a person who needed companionship just as anyone else? He was just a man.
What you didn’t expect from such a man, was the treatment that followed afterward.
Perhaps if you weren’t so loud about your friendship with Russia, if your friends hadn’t been so keen on butting into your affairs… Maybe if you had decided not to indulge in Russian poetry from the very beginning, you could have escaped without any hard feelings.
The fact of the matter was this:
Russia could be kind, but he had the choice to strip you away from everything you held dear.
Russia could be gentle, but he also had the capacity for cruelty far beyond your imagination.
Russia could have courted you and you would not have been the wiser had it not been for the fact that he felt slighted by your words.
Did you not realize that after all the time spent with him that you could no longer be friends? Russia loved his literature beyond anything else in the world? The words of his patriots had uplifted not only his hearts, but also the souls of countless citizens living in his lands. Just because you were a fellow Nation that happened to stay with him during breaks in meetings didn’t mean that he would read to them about poetry and provide a translation in the language that most reminded them of home.
No.
He only did that for you because you were special.
Could you see him doing that for Lithuania? For America? For China?
You were special and he reserved that title just for you. How dare you throw that back in his face and claim that you were merely friends!
So, Russia took you.
He hid you away in the depths of his wintry lands and away from prying eyes. From time to time, you would move from different abodes, from dacha to dacha, region to region. There was not one moment that you would be allowed to head back to your homeland, not without Russia’s permission at least.
On one evening, after a few weeks of getting used to living near one of his cities, you finally got the courage to sneak out and board a train. It had taken some time, quick thinking, and gentle persuasion, but you had done it. Preparation had been tricky, but you managed to score a rucksack with a number of practical articles of clothing, documentation that proved that you were the representative of your home, and money. A part of you felt bad for stealing the money, but at this point, it was either you would go home or not at all.
And to many Nations who had the misfortune to be taken away to another Nation’s household, that was basically imprisonment and a one way road to a slow, but painful existence. It was rare for Nations to die when withheld for too long from their native soil, but it wasn’t unheard of.
(It was a good thing that regeneration was available. However, it wasn’t exactly viable because it was a lengthy process that took up too much energy).
After two days of alternating from trekking around on foot and hitchhiking, you finally boarded a train. The platform was densely crowded, the packed bodies talking to each other about their plans and other inane chatter. You paid them no mind. Amidst the crowd, you were sure to be invisible.
Finally, after what seemed like an inordinately long amount of time, you and the crowd began to head inside. Lugging your rucksack on your back, you passed by several compartments until you reached one that was empty. Inside, you took note of the available amenities before settling yourself onto the bed. While you had initially felt bad about the money that you took, you wanted revenge. Was booking the most expensive overnight train petty and dangerous? Probably, but after the torture Russia had put you through, you thought that it was appropriate.
The worst that Russia could do once you were finally back home was to make accusations and point fingers. International incidents were supposed to be the product of human affairs, what Nations did between themselves on a purely personal level was up to the parties involved.
Content now that you were on your way to nearest neighboring country who could help you, you unpacked a few of your essentials and began to settle in for the night.
You were finally free.
.
.
.
Russia was a patient man.
Not many people knew that, but while he was quick to anger, he let the rage freeze and crystallize in his veins, the shards of ice hardening his heart. It had been a while since someone had incurred his wrath quite like this, but he knew from the telltale signs of his political aides and secretary shying away from him, that his temper was slowly bleeding into his normally personable disposition. If he was feeling charitable, he would have felt sympathetic, but at the thought of his lover traipsing away in the dead of night without so much as a goodbye, but with at least two months’ worth of his salary in their hands, he thought himself justified when he yelled at his secretary for their inefficient organization.
Today, he was to board a train and attend a conference in his capital city. While he would rather search for his dearest lover, he knew that this meeting had to take top priority. If any of his neighbors or God forbid America found out that not only had he kidnapped one of their fellow Nations but also lost them… Russia was always ready for an altercation, but he would rather not have a repeat of the Cold War.
As many of his citizens and a number of tourists gathered on the platform, he kept himself preoccupied at the very back of the crowd nearest to the train station. He arrived fifteen minutes early, keen on keeping to his appointment and knowing that if he stayed a moment longer, his volatile energy would have caused the humans under his direct command to be more skittish than usual. Poor things, them.
As he glanced up from his phone, his eyes scanned the growing crowd. Young children tagged along with their adult companions while a few couples mingled and held each other. At the sight, Russia felt his heart harden once more, the ice in veins refusing to melt even as he heard someone whisper about their plans for a future date. Moments before Russia could tune out the rest of the world, his eyes caught sight of a particular person who tried to keep themselves in the very middle of the crowd.
Now, normally this sort of person would have escaped Russia’s notice long before now, but he couldn’t help but stare.
That rucksack.
That coat.
The stance.
The figure underneath that heavy coat that was meant to conceal height and width.
Could it be…?
Suddenly, the crowd began surging forward onto the train, the person that Russia was observing followed suit. Hurriedly, Russia pushed forward, neglecting to act the part of a polite politician as he carelessly bumped into the humans who dared to get in his way. Had they no idea that they were in the presence of a Nation on a mission?
Woe to those who thought it prudent to demand recompense for his actions.
And hell to the rest of the train if he found out that the person he was tailing was not his beloved.
Close as a shadow, but not so close as to arouse suspicion, Russia trailed behind the figure. At this point, when he saw the person walking in the same rhythm as his lover, when he heard them mutter something under their breath, and when he paid careful attention to the rucksack on their back, he knew it was them. It had to be!
When his lover rounded the corner and faced their compartment door, Russia took note of the number and placement, carefully withdrawing from the area before his lover could see him.
As he steadied the heavy beating of his heart, Russia flexed his large hands within his woolen gloves. He was feeling poetic and emotional, but he thought that the ice that froze his blood was steadily melting.
He felt alive again.
But, if he were to have you in his arms again, he would truly be free.
As he strode back to his assigned compartment, he unlocked his phone and began contacting certain people and Nations for a few favors.
You had missed out on last night’s poetry session. Perhaps you should rectify that, no?
.
.
.
DISCLAIMER: I do not condone yandere behavior outside of fictional settings. Please don’t mistake the actions of fictional characters displayed in works of fiction to be considered harmless in real life.
If you want to donate a Ko-Fi, feel free https://ko-fi.com/devintrinidad.
HETALIA AXIS POWERS/WORLD SERIES MASTERLIST
#hetalia#hetalia axis powers#hetalia world series#hws#aph#hws russia#aph russia#x reader#gender neutral reader#yandere#yandere character#yandere behavior#yandere hetalia x reader#yandere russia#yandere russia x reader#dearestones#devintrinidad
121 notes
·
View notes
Text
And what if none of their souls were saved?
They went to their maker impeccably shaved
My own little spooky challenge for the month!! Two of my favorite things: Sweeney Todd 07, and giving fictional characters government assigned fursonas!!
Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett - Dalmatian and Red fox
When I started this, I KNEW I wanted Todd to be an animal that was black and white. The monochromatic theme in Depp's version of Sweeney is SO Tim Burton that I wanted to preserve it. ALMOST settled on a skunk, but the thought of dalmatian spots mixing with blood spots was TOO cool of a concept in my eyes. TBH there WAS a time when I was tempted to make him a fox, because Sweeney TODD. Get it? But I held off because I didn't want to reuse specific animals TOO much. Speaking of which-
Mrs Lovett was always a fox from the first second. It fits her entire character (Seductive, trickster, lots of red, not to be trusted) FAR too well. The way her ears are posed are also supposed to bring a pair of horns to mind. Something DEEPLY wrong with this woman <3333
Lucy Barker/Miserable Woman - Afghan hound
PROBABLY a very uninspired and obvious choice, but...I wanted to draw ''hair ears'' lmao. Sweeney describes her blonde hair as one of the only things he remembers about her, so I wanted a dog breed that naturally had long blonde hair about it. I de-saturated her colors for her ''Miserable Woman'' look to make her look sadder and dirtier.
Anthony and Johanna - Mutt and Golden dalmatian
Yes I KNOW they look like Scamp and Angel okay. The inspiration was intentional but I might've accidentally strayed...TOO close to the source.
Johanna was one of two characters that took me on a bit of a trip. First she was an Afghan just like Lucy, then she was a doe, but I decided to have a little more fun with her. I made her a golden dalmatian, with the ''dalmatian'' coming from her father and the ''Golden'' coming from her mother. I imagined she's a bit like Oddball from 102 Dalmatians, where she's actually ''blank'' aside from the spots on her face and the two on her shoulder (she gets these ones from Todd) The black on her ear is also from Todd. I could have chosen the easy way out and made her look like her mother, but in my own silly way I thought it'd be fucked up if she looked like her father, considering the scene they share near the end of the movie.
Anthony is a sailor, so I gave him a very ''Sea dog'' mutt look. I just kind of...combined a bunch of traits and characteristics that I thought would work for him. You can see a LITTLE of Toughy from LATT in him, only because I liked the eye patch and all the scruff.
Tobias Ragg (aka Toby) - Bat
Toby was a fun one!! Oh, look how adorable he is!!! Since Toby has the final kill of the movie, and he kills Todd at that, I wanted him something small and cute but...potentially very dangerous. I settled on a bat, because they're very cute and they can carry rabies!!
And yes, that's his wig he's carrying. Didn't know how to portray him holding a pie, and I wasn't about to draw him drinking a bottle of gin, so I thought his little wig might be cute. He was honestly one of my favorites to draw <3
Adolfo Pirelli - Ring-tailed lemur
Pirelli is a ring-tailed lemur for two reasons. The first reason, is because since all the other animals are quadrupeds, having a bipedal animal felt more ''exotic'' to go with how he's seen as very special and from out of town. It makes him stick out naturally as someone of note.
The second reason he's a lemur.......is because he's played by Sacha Baron Cohen in 07.
Beadle Bamford and Judge Turpin - Hyena and Vulture
Yeah I'm just gonna come out and say it - Beadle Bamford is one of my fav characters in this movie so I made him a Hyena out of pure favoritism. Having Timothy Spall play him the same year he was Nathaniel in Enchanted was just for me, I think.
Originally, Turpin was a lion. Because...Bamford's a hyena...and they're the villains...sooooooo....yeah. And I WOULD have stuck with that, but....he's described as a vulture in No Place Like London. And while I knew my designs didn't have to adhere to that...I felt like ignoring it would have been stupid on my part. Glad I stuck with it, since...I gotta admit it works REALLY well for him. I've never drawn a vulture before, and it was fun to try something new anyway <3
23 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Gateway
"I need an icon, an image of my God(s), it's $300 I can't afford it."
Hold up.
Just... hold up.
Go out into the world.
Yes, leave your computer. I believe in you.
Go outside, and walk as far as you need to walk, until you find: a rock.
What kind of rock? It's not for me to say. A small rock, a big rock, a jagged rock or a smooth rock, a beautiful rock, a rock only a mother could love -- the kind of rock is entirely up to you, and you will pick this rock from all the rocks because it calls to you and says "I am the rock". Trust me. It will happen. No, not… not verbatim. It's a vibe. There are no talking rocks in this equation.
TL;DR: a rock.
Take that rock home.
You're going to need some limited supplies and procedures.
First, you're going to want to wash your rock. Get all that dirt off of it, make it as clean as a little rock can be, though a little bit of dirt is certainly not going to be a dealbreaker. It's just a good idea not to bring a bunch of outdoor dirt inside unless you have intimate knowledge of the area the rock was in. Dirt may have more than just "earth" in it.
In addition, I would recommend purification. Bury the dry rock in salt or clean sand for the next 24 hours before bringing it "into service" on your shrine or altar setup.
Second, you're going to need writing or painting implements. This could be a pen (if you feel it can actually, successfully write on your rock), a sharpie (very good for writing on rock), or paint! But if you're like me and can't paint in a straight line to save your soul, don't worry, use whatever you can use to write on this rock. I recommend steering clear of the color red in terms of paint and ink when thinking about my own Kemetic practice, but if your personal practice has no holds barred in terms of color selection, I am certainly not going to be a person to stop you.
Next, you're going to need a word, set of words, or phrase. Often, the word or words is going to be the name of the Deity you are trying to represent, but it could easily be something else if you feel so moved to go in a different direction. I am not teaching you how to be a cookie-cutter magician here, I am encouraging you to navigate your life and your choices on your own; but, for the basic guidance, a name is certainly sufficient.
It's important to note that this name needs to be one you understand. Writing is one of the most powerful forms of magic in this universe, but if what you are writing is meaningless to you, you are losing a functional amount of this power because you are putting a lot of energy into basic comprehension. Choose a language or symbolism for the name you will be writing that holds meaning to you within your own mind and your own heart.
You should see this name, these words, or this symbol or set of symbols, and immediately feel your Deity within the moment you see it and within yourself. It should be recognizable at a glance every single time. If you want it to be extra special in another language (particularly one of ancient origin), you want to ensure you comprehend it in this one-glance way. You should not have to sit and think and remind yourself "What does this mean".
Instant recognition is what you are looking for.
Finally, you are going to paint or write this name, phrase, symbol or set of symbols, onto your rock, and while you are writing, you are going to be putting your energy in the form of 'intent' into this creation.
There are a lot of ways you can do this. You could be thinking of the Deity in question while you do the decorative aspect of this project. You could be playing music, you could be singing, you could be chanting, you could be reciting a phrase or poem or set of words that holds meaning between you and your Deity. What is important is that you focus your intents into the writing of your Deity's symbolism whereby that rock is the focus point of this intent, and that rock in turn becomes your intent.
Yes, it's true: this simple, lowly rock, will be your icon, and it will be just as if not more effective than any other store-bought icon you could have possibly found on the internet because of the process you are undertaking now. Because it isn't about how closely your icon resembles your Deity. It isn't about how much money you've spent on your iconography, either. It isn't about new materials or old materials, it isn't about one person's interpretation or spelling of a name or another, it isn't about one particular kind of phrase or the exact words of a spell or chant or song. You do not need to spend $100, $300, $2,000 on a shrine icon, because the point of a shrine or altar or ritual icon is not what it looks like or who crafted it or what materials went into it.
The purpose of a shrine icon is all about:
Representation
Intent
Focus
Energy
Connection
Bond
And as you impart your focus and your intent, coupled with one of the most powerful forms of magic -- writing, you are creating and inscribing and imbuing a representation and embodiment of the Deity you follow, issuing a bond between you, Them, and that object that cannot easily be broken. This icon is going to be with you, on your shrine or altar or in your ritual setup, representing the powerful presence of your Deity and giving you a focus point for your communication, intention, energy, and direction.
Once completed, this icon should be treated with the same dignity and respect you would treat any altar or shrine icon that is representative of a Deity. You should keep it relatively clean, decently protected from harm or accident, in a purified state (which can include re-doing the salt or sand purification if needed), packed with care when moving, and deprecated in an appropriate manner if you will no longer be using it (probably a post for another time).
This is no longer just a rock.
This is a gateway, that you have created, and the bounds are limitless.
#polytheist#polytheism#paganism#kemet#kemeticism#kemetic#pagan#magic#magick#deity#deities#god#gods#goddess#goddesses#altar#shrine#ritual#spirituality#spiritual#religion#iconography#icon#writing#heka
13 notes
·
View notes
Text
Guess who can't draw but found a cool picrew to make some Hellings!
That they ended up looking too "pretty" and like anime-esque white-skinned Drow with horns just kinda happened, but the more I think about the second bit, the more I like that they are "weird-looking" in a Zamonian context because they look more humanoid than your average Overworlder (most of which, with the exception of gnomes, dwarves, and nocturnomaths, have prominent animal features). Given how few humans are up and about in Zamonia, I guess they'd be considered bizarre.
Since there is a disappointing lack in cool medieval hats in this, they have hair and their horns are visible. I'd say that normally, nobles decorate their horns with jewelry or they cover them with hennins/escoffions, but alas. Also, since they're all either rich or work for the rich people - naturally, they need to look at least kinda fancy.
Images under the cut + explanations of some creative choices.
First comes, of course, the king, Gornab/Gaunab.
He looks positively mad but not as insanely ugly as he is described in the book (which, I think is difficult to make in a picrew. Heiko Nerenz drew him - and Ticktack - once and that image has lived rent-free in my head).
The purple mists are meant to simulate the Gornabian Madness, and the halo naturally refers to him being the scion of a clan that was meant for greatness thanks to a prophecy. Gave him a nice crown too that he wears on casual days. Sadly there were no options for red gemstones, to hint at the Hellings' obsession with blood and violence.
Also, I like to think that while they all universally have white skin, silver-white hair, and white horns, there's quite some diversity when it comes to eye colours - although darker colours are almost non-existent, since light eyes make some sense in a subterranean setting. Gornab's are a very light-blue, perfect for that "staring into your soul" creepiness factor.
Next up is everyone's favourite royal adviser, Friftar.
I always found it hilarious how the book basically said that outside of the Netherworld, he'd be considered hideous and demon-like but by Helling beauty standards, he's quite the looker. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. He doesn't look as much of a schemer as I'd like to, but that's because I really wanted to keep the protrudent teeth, so he just looks pensive - like the philosopher king he so desperately wishes he was.
The spiderwebs behind him have him in the middle of his web of spionage, intrigue, secrecy, etc., and the red for his less-than-noble intentions.
I couldn't stop myself from giving him both a collier and also a piece of clothing that isn't black - mostly because in my personal headcanons, they do indeed wear other colors; but only together with black and they have to be dark. Thought about making his sash grey to refer to his being Gornab's grey eminence, but then went with purple since it's considered a regal colour and what Friftar wants most is to be king himself. Also, it matches with the lilac eyes.
And yes, he and Gornab wear blush. They're the most powerful men in the Netherworld, of course they wear make-up.
The third Helling is, surprise, someone who's not godawful - Ukobach.
Yes, I know he is bald, but this one had no good bald option (shocking, I know) so I chose to give him a mop of hair that kinda ended up looking like a mullet. My boy is looking stressed as he is throughout most of the book (not even the evil-looking red eyes can distract from the fact that he looks like he's about to have a breakdown!), and while he doesn't get a wooden spear, he gets a sword - not that he knows how to use it, but better to be safe than to be sorry.
Tried to make him look very youthful, but it's still funny he's the only Helling who gets to have a beard - while also being a mere teenager or at most a very young adult while Friftar and Gornab are implied to be middle-aged. Or maybe Ukobach's goatee is a gesture of rebellion and noble Helling men are meant to be clean-shaven in a way male members of Roman patriarch families used to?
Still, to denote his status, he gets some gemstones on a necklace. Not as extravagant clothing as implied to wear in the book, but he's hiding in underneath his cloak.
And then, because I can't help myself, my two girls! Since they're my own creations, it was all fun and games with them. Behold!
From The Gornab of All Gornabs, one of the main characters, Isari, dancer and entertainer at the king's court and reluctant valet to King Gornab.
Like Ukobach, I tried to make her look quite young as she is in her early adulthood (but older than Ukobach) although just like him, she's the opposite of stupid - except she's more streetsmart than the nobles she works for. Behind those big amber eyes hides a quick mind.
Since I made her as she appears in TGOAG, she was technically on the job and dressed for it, to be able to move freely during her performances instead of wearing heavy and layered robes like the courtiers do. She gets a set of flashy but otherwise plain earrings but no collier or otherwise significant jewelry and a lack of precious stones to show she is of humble origin.
She suffers from an injury while saving Gornab from the fate of being squashed during the cave-in that heals steadily but in the long-term has reduced her career as an agile artist to nothing, so sticking to the king's side is what's best for her for now.
Last but not least comes Lady Jesrin Khiendriel, the Baroness of Lesser Hel with a thirst for vengeance, who puts herself in Friftar's way to the throne of Hel in Prince of Peace with her own claim to the Crown.
Although, really, if you would ask the Helling residents of Lesser Hel, they'd really like to change the name of their city. Also, while the Khiendriels are nobility themselves, the title of Baron/ess is really just a glorified way to call them a mayor, but they're insistent.
She wants to rule the city herself, primarily because she has a claim but also because her family tried to overthrow the Gornabs some decades ago with very little success. The citizens of Hel view the Khiendriels and the Hellings of Lesser Hel with derision/disgust/mockery/etc, she is not exactly welcomed with open arms. And of course there's the titular prince of peace, who isn't going to let some parochial vassal steal his thunder. He does everything within his power to discredit her, fully employing his remaining spies and own resources to destroy her. So, those eyes that are focused on her? That's Friftar.
An able ruler that has ruled her domain for years and became popular amongst her subjects, Jesrin is very confident, you might even say openly self-sufficient and smug. It's not unjustified because she proves to be a formidable opponent to Friftar, but he does to her as well after she underestimated him, and that frustrates both of them to no end.
Jesrin is a lady of wealth and taste, and she certainly dresses the part. Like any good aristocrat, she's a fan of her jewelry. She's not there yet where she can wear a crown, but I seriously thought about it. Lesser Hel is also somewhat warmer than the capital, so she tends to wear warmer clothes in the comparatively cold Hel.
So much for that!
Maybe I can add the portraits of some other prominent Helling OCs later, but that's it :)
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Anyone who follows my BG3 musings probably knows I'm not a fan of the Ascended Astarion ending. (We're not arguing about A!Astarion vs Spawnstarion right now). Although I find most things about the A!Astarion ending unpleasant, I was just thinking about one facet of it that I actually find weirdly funny-
It's believable that our companions in the game find our Tavs/Durges attractive and react to them as being beautiful by default. It's pretty hard to go too wacky in the character creator, after all, and most of our Tavs and Durges ARE somewhere between pretty and objectively sexy as hell. And, some of them happen to be both beautiful and spooky, real hot goth babes, or else are very imposing. But, I was actually gobsmacked when there were no automatic cosmetic differences after A!Astarion turns a romanced Tav/Durge into a spawn? This is a game that does not hesitate to confer new textures and eye colors on you as consequences for other choices. Color me surprised that spawn-hood for Tav/Durge does not at LEAST turn whatever natural eyeballs you have left, red.
(I guess the premise is that his super-vampireness allowed A!Astarion to keep Tav/Durge cosmetically intact? He does mention something-or-rather about not improving on them, but I dunno if having no cosmetic or mechanical changes for a turned player was an intentional story choice as much as it was Larian not wanting to actually get into all the tedious details of Tav/Durge being undead now for like, a handful of hours of end-game gameplay.)
(Aside from the running animation, I know about the running animation)
Anyway, while I can suspend disbelief that everyone in Faerûn thinks that my Tav is pretty, I just cannot suspend my disbelief when A!Astarion declares that this
crayon box buffet of a person,
squishy animal with bright colors signaling that she is poisonous to mid-tier predators, don't eat her,
clown-colored unclown,
smurf with eyeliner and horns,
somehow, as-is, fits the bill of being anyone's ~Dark Consort~
From his dark tower or whatever, he will rain fear and terror on our enemies, while Tav, his ~Dark Consort~ stands beside him, a menacing bowl of Froot Loops in a gothic castle
wheeze
And I mean yes! Obviously! She would have had to have made some fucked up decisions to even be in that situation, so her soul would be tainted, and obviously a Tav is a very powerful level 12 whatever by the end of the game, so most anybody who knows her by reputation would be right to be at least a little impressed. But? First impressions? MY Tav is still a goddamn rainbow sprinkle disaster gremlin. A prismatic glitter tiefling. Astarion. Do you see her? Did her bright, unnatural colors and fashion sense burn out your retinas? Looking at my Tav and trying to picture her seriously existing near the head of his self-serious spooky terror army of bats and ghouls, just. Cracks me up
#Lunar plays Baldur's Gate 3#vidyagame feelings#Baldur's Gate 3 spoilers#BG3 spoilers#Tav Migadda#how many other ways can I say she's very colorful
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
So I finished Dark Souls II and its DLC and I have a lot of feelings about this game.
Not to be one of those bitches, but I genuinely do think it has become my favorite Dark Souls game of the trilogy - though that isn't to say it's technically the best in all measurable categories. It's my favorite, but it does have failures and it does have categories in which it just blatantly fails to measure up to its sister games.
But the game itself was just such an interesting experience all around. It's the entry in the series I was the least familiar with going in, so a lot of the experience was with fresh eyes. Its color palette is just stunning in its unique melancholy, not quite as monochromatic with shocks of bright contrast as Bloodborne, not quite as fully articulated in its most minute of details and intent as Elden Ring, but beautiful all the same with its melancholic entwining of dawn and dusk. Everything feels as though it is dying or just being born, which ties wonderfully into the game's opening tale of a new fate found within the loss of your mortal life.
I really appreciate how much effort was taken in crafting a story that was more of a progression of moods than it was a concrete tale. Like, yes there are proper nouns and chronicled actions, but they take the backseat to the emotions the game wants you to feel. This does mean that the game tanks pretty hard on its NPCs that aren't immediately relevant to the plot (everyone who isn't the Emerald Herald, Nashandra, and Vendrick), with a few exceptions.
Lifegems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love you lifegems, I love you so much. Please everyone praise my baby, my beautiful children: lifegems - they're SUCH a welcome addition to the game that adds an additional layer of choice and strategy to healing.
There's much to be said about the composition of individual boards and enemy placement and the decision to have mobs despawn after enough kills, but I'm tired and sad so instead I'll just list a handful of items and mechanics I really enjoy (bonfire asthetics, lifegems, attack animations, stat and level up redistribution, NPC summons, intense flexibility to how you approach the boards, fast travel) and don't enjoy (the presentation of Majula as a central hub but with many of the key merchant NPCs spread haphazardly across the map, merchants in general feeling ill thought out in what they sell, damage and mob placement can be a bit excessive at times).
15 notes
·
View notes
Text
As some may have noticed I have tried to be quiet about HC and his FS. Regardless of dms or questions. HC doesn't want her involved. There is some strong protective feelings around her. I wanted to respect that and took a step back.
I even admit I would purposely say vague or even misleading things, hoping only the person it was meant for would understand.
I know more than I have let on. However, there is a time and place.
I hope I can say what I need to say clearly.
I know Henry has read my stuff. I know there are a few readers he follows more close than others because he knows they're right and they resonate closely with him.
I had wanted to know why today he was on my mind.
I did a deep dive read.
Now is where I have to think on what and how to say what is needed while also respecting his need to keep her hidden.
HC and his FS have been decided before either were even born. We all come into life with a skeleton plan. Our purpose and who we will have along side us. You can research soul contracts. Soul families and so on. But we have free will too. We don't have to have them.
HC found out exactly who his fs was YEARS ago. That is rather rare and he should consider himself lucky. He was faced with two options. Wait or don't wait LOLOL. He chose to wait for her. The last woman he chose for himself was Tara. The others were work and business. Because he was waiting. He still is.
It just wasn't their time but he was granted a peak. Very lucky.
Since then spirit has been working to set the stage for their union. Yes I said they were options for eachother before they were even born but since that moment he realized spirit has been REALLY WORKING to help them along.
It's been patient. Dropping hints, signs and messages. Divine timing has been a big time player here all along.
Someone in particular recently DOES NOT want them to come into union. Ruin is their intention. Henry does sees that. He has made questionable choices lately LOL but he can see, believe it or not.
It's was your turn HC. The world has the ability to watch you and keep tabs. It was your turn. That's why, if you ever wondered. It's part of the reason why she has been guided to do what she does. It's your turn.
Other readers have also picked up on this. His fs is very psychic. Everyone has intuition. We need it to survive. But some are born with a natural knack for intuition.
Spirit has been dropping Easter eggs for her. Sending her on a treasure hunt. She has seen and felt the one who wishes her Ill intent. Not to scare her but as a warning but also for future use. Where I'm coming close to explaining. I find it somewhat funny since spirit actually used the one who wants their ruin to help their cause.
Every move this ruinous person made, spirit matched. You used a chess board as a reference once. It comes to mind. The difference is spirit has been working YEARS on this. It's ahead of the game.
His fs has a very academic mind. They like knowing the workings and mechanisms of everything. A treasure hunt was the best option for her. Best to ease her into it.
There is disbelief coloring her. She was finally shown the connection in full. It's going to be significantly harder to put a wedge when both parties now know. She knows. There's disbelief.
She will NEVER admit knowing. She won't tell anyone.
Everyone has free will. He or her could decide tomorrow to walk away from the other. It's a risk since she knows. He's waited awhile but I don't see it happening. She plans to wait and see for confirmation.
Hes at a stage in his life he needs to reevaluate everything. He's at an end and coming into a beginning.
Hes invited a disease into his life that has potential of crippling everything. Part of it has been his own choices that have landed him here.
Hes a big boy. He will figure it out. Time moves and he has no choice but to move with it.
Sometimes its best when things are shaken down to the nuts and bolts. You can build up stronger and better.
We need pain and disruption in order to level up. Intention immediately sets spirit in motion. Good and bad. Spirit responds accordingly.
Gnat wasn't intended to be part of WH. There is a feeling of strong arming here. He doesn't want to fight. It almost feels placating. Keep her happy, and get rid of her. Be happy so you can go. The thing is, with people like her? You give them an inch and they push for miles. She also never has had good intentions and karma can have a nasty upper cut to send you on your ass. She has not put in the work. She has not worked to make a name for herself. She wanted to ride his coal tails and expected everything to fall to her feet. It won't work that way for her. People see her. She sees herself different than reality but people see her for what she is. She's not going to make it far. She is hard to be around and work with. She is not likable. She doesn't have charm. She gives off cold and hard vibes. She has her one shot now. And I don't see it going very well but she can try to prove the world wrong. I actually encourage her to. The thing is Natalie, you've wanted his ruin. But you've now attached yourself to him professionally. He fails, you fail. Your reputations are also attached for now. Also...remember Amber Heard. This has potential of going that way and she's ruined. Yes she got him for a short time but she is the true loser now.
Henry is at a new beginning. He needs to evaluate EVERY ASPECT of his life and to have authentic people who want his greatest good around him. The thing of having people with mutual interests around you, you come second. He's been a victim of that. When it comes to the wire, and they have just a bit more push than you? You lose. Because they matter more.
He has great potential of coming back from this. It will be hard. I see potential of rebranding. Big box office movies and awards. But I also see him choosing to slow down in about ten years and being more behind the scenes.
His feelings have been tumultuous as of late. There's been highs and lows in a very short period.
Karma will continue to come after you in order for you to learn what it is trying to teach you. Spirit will keep circling to you. You don't want this to come back in a few years and hit harder. You already feel low. Do you think you want it to happen even worse?
You know next year is going to be special. Look forward to it. Keep your eye on the prize. Visualize the life you want. Visualization is a POWERFUL tool.
Ask yourself the tough questions and level up like spirit wants you too.
Hope everyone had a good holiday.
Dec 28. All alleged and for fun only. Please keep this here. I've had problems with people sharing this all over. Rather escape that drama.
13 notes
·
View notes
Text
Canary, Bad End
Things to know before going into this!
1. If you have any triggers that have to do with violence or suicidal thoughts, please skip this one.
2. Spoilers for Canary. Duh.
3. This follows canon pretty up until the reveal in chapter 49 except Marinette and Adrien didn't clear their names in Paris because that was the original plan and this was plotted ages before I decided to change that, whoops
Anyways, enjoy!
Version One: Tongues and Teeth
Summary:
Oh, I will ruin you
Oh, I will ruin you
It's a habit, I can't help it
I know that you mean so well
But I am not a vessel for your good intent
I will only break your pretty things
I will only wring you dry of everything
~~~~~
Marinette Dupain-Cheng stared at Red Robin.
Or should she say Tim Drake? Because the thing he had just said was not something that Red Robin should have known.
He tipped his head to the side, smiling that same awkward smile he always wore whenever he was a little put off by her… less savory tendencies. Because he was put off by them, that she knew. She could see it in the slight tension in his shoulders whenever she mentioned a tragedy too casually, or the hesitation in his voice whenever she mentioned something from her ‘job’.
He was put off by Canary. But he liked Marinette.
She breathed out a sigh and slowly brought her hands up to cup his cheeks.
“You’re…” She started, only for her voice to catch in her throat.
She felt stupid. She felt stupid, and angry, and relieved all at once.
She gently tugged at his domino. He winced just slightly – whether it was because he had realized his mistake or a reflexive reaction to having someone touch his mask, she didn’t know nor care. She was allowed to pull it away from his face, revealing the startlingly blue eyes that she had fallen for.
“Are you disappointed?” He asked, his gaze flicking away to stare at the sky in an attempt to hide the nerves tinging his cheeks red.
No.
Yes.
She bit her lip. “Our jobs…”
“Are just our jobs. No one should be on the clock at all hours.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“Everyone around me gets hurt eventually,” she warned.
But Tim just grinned. “You’re worth it.”
Wrong answer, she thought, looking up at him through her lashes. Eyes were the window to the soul, but she was wearing colored contacts and Tim’s domino mask tinted his vision with the color rose.
What a terrible pair they made.
Canary slid her hands into his hair and pulled Tim in for a kiss.
Tim wasn’t Red Robin. This, she realized, was why he was so comfortable kissing Marinette back. Red Robin, for him, was nothing more than a part he played to keep the city safe. Tim was emotional and prone to lashing out when hurt and Red Robin was stoic and paranoid. They were not the same.
Marinette and Canary, however, were less easy to separate.
It was unfortunate that Canary was a part of Marinette. Deep down, she knew this to be true. Canary was a fully fleshed out character, with her own specific behaviors and choices… but all acts needed a little bit of truth to make them work. Canary was her anger, given a name, made to be more than just the fire burning beneath her skin that always screamed for more. Canary was the part of Marinette that didn’t bat an eye at murder no matter whether she was a bystander or the one doing it, the part that hesitated to trust anyone, the part that needed to get revenge on anyone that had ever wronged her.
The part that put survival above all else.
And it was unfortunate that Marinette was a part of Canary. Because it made surviving difficult at times.
Marinette held the device in her hands in a death grip.
Canary handed it over when asked.
“This is the feed from a tracker on Red Robin. He spends all of his time at Wayne Manor and Wayne Enterprises. He’s Tim Drake. The bats are all Waynes or close family friends of them.”
Cobblepot watched the tiny red dot on the screen for a moment before setting it down on the table in front of him. Even though the sound of the metal touching the mahogany was quiet, it echoed around the empty, soundproofed room with ease.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and started typing.
Her gaze fell on the tiny dot currently at Wayne Manor. Tim was probably sleeping, or eating, or playing a video game… blissfully unaware that his new girlfriend had betrayed him so thoroughly.
Her phone dinged in her pocket. Not the familiar sound that meant money was entering her account that usually came when finishing a job – god, how she missed that sound, how she missed normal jobs – but the sound indicating that someone she followed on Twitter had posted something.
Not unexpected… outside of the fact that Cobblepot had used something as informal as Twitter to announce ‘his’ findings.
Tikki was still and quiet in her pocket. She disapproved, Marinette knew. But she understood.
Or, at least, she would. Eventually.
It was all necessary, after all. The bats knew the risks, her parents were just innocent bystanders.
“Call off your men,” she said.
Cobblepot’s lips curled into something like a sneer as he dialed a number and then brought his phone to his ear.
It didn’t take long for the people on the other side to pick up. It was 22:00 in Paris. Most normal people would be awake.
“Go ahead,” he said simply.
She was still as she watched the man click off his phone.
His eyes lit up with cruel amusement at the face that had gone slack with horror.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About how it was dangerous to string you along because, given time, you would find a way to defeat me… and I agree! So, I’m setting you free, little birdie.”
Canary’s hands went to where her knives usually were, but they had been confiscated before she had gone in the room with Cobblepot.
He laughed. He leaned back in his chair, hands on his stomach as his hearty chortle started rising in pitch and volume. As if this was the funniest joke he had ever heard. As if she was a joke.
She slowly rose to her feet.
Calling her parents would be useless. It was 22:00 in Paris. Her parents would be dead asleep (would die asleep), because they were bakers and bakers live on a completely different schedule than normal people did… and no one would ever notice or care. No one would help. Because, as nice as the Dupain-Chengs were, they were Marinette Dupain-Cheng’s parents. One of the two most hated people in Paris. They were dead… or would be soon. And there was nothing she could do about it.
She grit her teeth, the laughter ringing in her ears.
And then her lips pulled upwards, teeth flashing in a horrible grin that split her face into something that looked quite horrifying – inhuman, even.
“You know, Oswald,” she began.
His glee faded slightly, but he still wasn’t scared. Why would he be? She had no weapons. She would have to leave to plan and scheme and work her way to his eventual assassination, which would give him plenty of time to work around her and hire help to make sure no attempts could ever succeed. He had won.
But the use of his first name had thrown him off.
“I think your name really fits you. ‘Oz’. Like the Wizard of Oz. I’m sure you’ve heard the story. A normal man, in over his head, with an empire based on nothing but lies doing his best to maintain an image. A smart man, sure, but a normal one.”
He raised his eyebrows slightly, but it was rude to interrupt a monologue and he clearly was curious as to where she was going with this.
“And, well, Oz,” she said, hopping over the table and perching herself beside him, eyes glimmering with something that wasn’t quite glee. “There’s no place like home, and you just destroyed mine.”
She heard the familiar click of a Swiss Army Knife flicking open.
She leaned until she could rest her elbow on his chair, effectively caging him in on one side.
“And, just like that other ‘Oz’, you’re a normal man,” she said, her tone a lazy drawl, as if she had all the time in the world.
A knife found its place between her third and fourth ribs.
She took the hand twisting the knife and slowly pulled it out.
But she didn’t keel over. Barely even coughed.
Cobblepot’s eyes widened just slightly as she dragged his hand up and away, far too strong for someone that should have been bleeding out, until the knife was pressed against his own throat.
Blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth and, when she smiled again, her teeth were stained red. Canary didn’t seem to mind, though.
She leaned in close. In the dim light of the room, dark eyes gleamed with something that wasn’t quite human.
“But let me tell you a secret: I’m not.”
~
They were too late.
Canary didn’t look up as Adrien and Emma approached her. Even when Adrien caught sight of the body she was currently carving into bits with a Swiss Army Knife and started to retch, and even when Emma purposefully splashed her foot in one of the many pools of blood, she didn’t so much as flinch. They didn’t want to know whether she was ignoring them or just too engrossed in what she was doing to notice.
Emma rested a hand on her shoulder.
She paused. Briefly. Her eyes slowly traveled up his arm to squint at her adoptive mother’s face.
Emma let the hand drop, revealing a black spot on what they had previously assumed to be a pure red bodysuit.
Now, Adrien was actually throwing up. He keeled over next to the table and unloaded his stomach.
Plagg zipped out of his jacket pocket and yelled for ‘Ladybug’ to transform.
She did transform, after a moment’s consideration. Tikki dropped from her earring, and Plagg could only barely catch his fellow kwami. He dragged Tikki away from her. As if that could stop her.
Marinette let it go, though. The kwami looked faint, eyes barely open. She was exhausted.
She looked down at the stab wound that had carved its way into her chest. That was probably why. But it was funny, she didn’t really feel it. Which was unfortunate, she could really use the distraction right about then.
The world did not provide one, but Canary found one anyway in the form of a slowly recovering Adrien.
“I never should have given you the horse miraculous,” she said. Her tone was conversational, the hand that had gone back to cutting open Cobblepot’s corpse was not. “I could have saved them. Things could have been different.”
Adrien didn’t bother asking who ‘them’ was. But his face, previously tinged green, drained of color as he realized what exactly had happened. The Dupain-Chengs were dead, were already being referred to in the past tense. There was no hope left for them.
And then the blood rushed right back to his cheeks, tinging them bright red in his anger. “You could have called me for help!”
She considered this.
A grin cracked across her face. “I guess you’re right. How about you help now, then, instead? This body is heavy.”
~
They pushed the tub into the harbor.
Cobblepot was dead.
This was it.
Tikki sat on her shoulder. She could feel the kwami practically vibrating with excitement.
Canary had achieved her goal.
Cobblepot was dead and gone with no one to mourn him.
She watched red swirl upwards, mixing with the inky blackness of Gotham’s water. They hadn’t taped off the tub properly, it seems.
She had gotten her revenge.
She had watched his eyes widen with fear. Watched him choke on his words, watched him struggle to breathe beneath her hands. Had let him go to watch him scramble away, had listened to him beg.
She was supposed to be done.
She had let him pray to a god he didn’t believe in. She had informed him that he was currently looking at a god, and that they weren’t looking down upon him kindly.
This was supposed to be it.
And yet there Marinette stood. Watching the water. Waiting for the burst of serotonin that came with accomplishing a task, something to tell her she was done.
She found nothing. Years of work, and Marinette felt nothing.
Not even sadness. Or grief. She knew she should be feeling those things, her parents were dead, and yet she couldn’t even feel that.
No. Just…
Nothing.
Marinette swallowed thickly.
She turned back around. Found Adrien, Emma, and Ara. Adrien was looking at his phone, his lips pulled into a thin line – she could see the home page for Twitter reflected in his glasses, and figured he was likely staring at Cobblepot’s tweet again. Ara was watching the water beside her, eyes welling with tears. Emma stood a while away, watching her children with an expression that even Canary struggled to read.
She rested a hand on Ara’s shoulder and pretended she didn’t notice the younger girl’s flinch.
Cobblepot’s downfall had been too quick. That was the problem… probably. Well, she could still spite a dead man, could have the man tossing and turning in his cold, damp grave. Who said the person you were angry at had to be alive for you to continue to be angry at them?
Yeah. That’ll make it better. Revenge was sweet, or so she had heard, and god did she need to get this bitter taste out of her mouth.
“Let’s head back. I need to pick out color swatches for my new lounge.”
Tikki’s excitement faded, the sparkle in her eyes dimming. She looked at Canary for a long time, as if expecting her to laugh and say it was a joke, or maybe she was looking for ‘Marinette’ as she once knew her.
Marinette didn’t have any interest in looking back at the kwami.
Emma sighed. “No rest for the wicked, I see.”
“Yeah, maybe, but I’m thinking maybe I should get into a new kind of wicked,” she said, bringing her free hand up to cradle her chin. “I’m getting too old for the whole ‘informant’ thing, I think I’ll upgrade to being an actual mob boss.”
“As long as you’re paying,” Ara said, though she still wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Of course, I’m not Cobblepot.”
~
She looked around the Iceberg Lounge, blue eyes more striking than usual when compared with the splash of dark red on her cheek.
She twirled the key around her index finger.
The Lounge was hers, now. The bats would be too busy doing damage control for the next few weeks (before they inevitably gave up, because they would have to be stupid not to) to look into the building that had come into her blood-stained hands.
“I’m thinking I’ll just do red. Easier to hide blood that way,” Canary said.
Edward grinned. “This is your one chance to rebrand and you still refuse to do it?”
“Don’t talk to me, Mr. Neon-Colors-Will-Definitely-Come-Back.”
“They never left!”
She grinned at him before turning to Jonathan. The ex-therapist was watching the both of them with an odd expression that she couldn’t quite interpret.
“What do you think?” She prompted.
“About neon colors or you choosing red?”
“Either or.”
“I think red suits you,” he said after a moment’s thought, as if it were something profound.
She gave him an odd look. “I’ve been wearing it for years.”
“It suited you in a different way then.”
She stared for a moment, her eyebrows furrowing.
She turned to Edward. “He’s been spending too much time with you.”
~
Tim found her in the alley behind the lounge.
Not that she had been hiding, exactly. If she was, she would have tried harder to keep her involvement in revealing their identities a secret or, at the very least, she would have chosen a less visible casino to run.
But he hadn’t wanted to find her as Canary. He wanted to find ‘Marinette’.
She leaned back against the wall, eyes on the stars stretching above her as she smoked a cigarette.
“Why?”
Unlike the first day Red Robin had confronted Marinette in an alley, she didn’t turn around when he made a sound.
“I told you that everyone around me ends up getting hurt.”
“Why?” He repeated, unwilling to accept it.
Marinette swallowed thickly.
It would be so easy to tell him the truth, it would be so easy to manipulate him. He was practically begging for her to do so, to give him a good reason why she had done what she had done, to give him any reason to forgive her.
“You need to leave,” Marinette said instead. “Get away. Go anywhere but here. You’re not safe here anymore.”
Because of her.
“I just wanted to help,” he said, and his voice was strained with the effort to hold back tears. “I still want to help.”
What a sorry sight. Two people that had never fully broken up – that debatably should have never dated in the first place – still holding on to some sort of hope when they couldn’t hold on to each other. Some sort of hope that he would leave the city he cared about so much for his own safety, some sort of hope that she would finally allow someone in.
What a terrible pair they made.
“You can't.”
A hand grabbed hers.
He gently tugged on her, trying to get her to so much as look at him.
Marinette wasn’t going to.
She couldn’t.
He was definitely crying now. She could hear the start of the telltale hiccuping breaths, the slight sniffles, the slight scraping as he brought his hand up to wipe away the tears rolling under his mask.
“I thought you cared.”
“I do, Tim,” she said against her better judgment. Because Marinette did care, and she didn’t want him to think otherwise. She wasn’t honeypotting him, this had just been an unfortunate happenstance. “You’re the closest I’ve ever gotten to ‘true love’.”
His breath caught.
She tugged her hand from his.
“You just weren’t close enough.”
She let the metal door to the Lounge slam shut behind her.
~
The first bat to fall had been Stephanie Brown. Someone had gone to the dojo she worked at under the guise of being a customer and had proceeded to stab her during what should have been a regular sparring match.
This had happened four months and three days after the day Cobblepot had tweeted their identities.
The other bats were still in Gotham as well, going about their daily lives as if their identities hadn’t been exposed to the entire world.
Marinette had stared at the headline for a good thirty minutes in silence.
They should have left.
Why had they chosen to stay?
Marinette shook her head and pressed the end of her cigarette to the paper. Smoke joined the wisps spilling from between parted lips, the fire blacking out the woman’s face, and then flames spread along the page. She tossed it into her trash can, allowing the flames to eat away at the memory of the person she had once sought out every time Rogues held family functions.
Maybe this was the wakeup call that the bats had needed. Maybe they would leave now.
They had to, right?
~
Dick paid her a visit. Strode right into her casino as if the bright blue on his suit wasn’t an eyesore compared to the deep reds and blacks of the building.
She leaned back on her hands, crossing her legs lazily.
Canary motioned, vaguely, with her head for him to sit at one of the barstools beside her.
He did so, however reluctantly.
“What would you like to drink?” Emma asked, carefully tilting her head to hide her face among her hair.
He raised an eyebrow.
Canary smiled at him. “It’s on the house, promise.”
“... water,” he said after a moment.
“Boring,” she teased, but she told Emma to get it for him anyways.
The sound of the glass being set on the hard wood of the counter was deafening.
She smiled at Emma and waved her off, leaving the two of them alone at the bar. The next closest person was at a table a good twenty feet away, so she didn’t bother keeping her voice down:
“Something I can do for you? I should warn you now, though: the prices of my services are a little steeper than you might remember them being.”
“I’m not here for a job,” he said, his voice so low and cold it was practically a growl.
As if to directly contrast him, her own tone was high and bright as a bird’s chirp. “Oh? Here for a fight, then?”
He glared at her over his untouched water.
She met his gaze and, though her expression didn’t change, the affection bled from her face between blinks as she allowed her facade to slip away. Canary could do that with Nightwing, for he was just as bad as her. He knew just how easy it was to turn looks of contempt into those lined with love, knew that a smile could be just as cold and unsettling as a glare, knew it was easier to get things from those who thought you their friend than those who knew you were their enemy… and she was more than willing to let all of those pretenses go, if only for a moment.
In turn, he rested his chin in his hands and looked up at her with a bored expression.
“You’re the reason my family is dead.”
“Debatable,” she said nonchalantly. She pulled a cigarette box from her pocket and shook one out. “You should have left while you had the chance,” she said. She brought the cigarette to her lips and lit it. Her eyes darted to him as she put the lighter and box away, and when she exhaled the words “You still can.” lingered in the air in the same way the smoke did.
“We can’t leave,” Dick gritted out. “Not when the city still needs us.”
“That’s noble of you. I’ll be sure to cry more at your funeral.”
“You won’t be invited.”
She snickered. “Wouldn’t be anything new,” she said easily.
Only for him to reach down and pull a notecard out of who knows where and throw it down on the counter.
She picked it up, an eyebrow quirked, and then almost dropped it when she recognized the address line.
He pushed himself out of his seat. “She liked you. God knows why, but she did. She would have killed me if I didn’t at least tell you where she was.”
And, just like that, he left Marinette alone.
~
Marinette sat at the grave, fingers entwined in the fresh dirt with a strange kind of desperation. As if she would float away and join Steph as a ghost if she dared to let go.
Maybe this was the way things had had to go. If Tim was Marinette if she had been found by a better role model, Steph was Marinette if she had chosen to rebuff Riddler’s influence – or, even more, had chosen to go to Batman for help instead of him. Steph was proof that Marinette had had a choice.
She had simply made the wrong one.
So, maybe it was fitting that Steph was the one to face the consequences of her actions. Steph and Marinette were mirrors of each other, perfectly identical and yet undeniably backwards, so maybe Steph was the Canary in this scenario. Gas had leaked, the canary had stopped singing, and it was time for the miners to get out of there as quickly as possible before they ended up just as dead as the bird.
The miners just had to… listen to the warning.
She took a shaky breath in and then untangled herself from the dirt to pull herself to her feet. She tried not to think about how Steph would never be able to do the same. She forced herself to wipe at the dried tears that stuck to her cheeks, smearing dirt over her skin.
She wasn’t sure when she had started crying, but she had long-since stopped, for she had company.
She turned to face the person that had been standing there, watching, for the last five minutes.
Adrien looked as if he had seen a ghost.
Maybe he thought he had. She looked deathly pale in comparison to the dark dirt sticking to her face and hands. And, with how much was caked under her fingernails, she must have looked like she had clawed her way out of a coffin.
But wasn’t that what Canary did, anyways? Survived at all costs, even when she had nothing to truly live for anymore? Made sure that, no matter how much kicking and screaming it took, she would continue on to struggle for at least one more day?
She had always been a dead girl walking, maybe it was time she actually looked the part.
Her lips pulled back from her skull in a skeleton’s smile. “Adrien! Hi.”
He seemed to finally steel himself enough to rush forward. She stayed unflinching. He might hurt her, but he wasn’t going to kill her. That wasn’t his style.
And, indeed, he did nothing more than grab her by the collar of her shirt and lift, forcing her to look into his eyes.
The first thing she noticed was that they were rimmed red.
“Ah. I see. Skipping the pleasantries, then,” she said, her voice determinedly even. As if Marinette hadn’t just been choking on her own tears. As if they weren’t standing on the grave of her old friend.
“Shut up!” He snapped. “I trusted you!”
“A horrible decision, really.”
His grip tightened on her collar. Her neck started to ache where his knuckles pressed against her skin. She didn’t know if he could tell – tears were welling in his eyes, which would definitely make it hard for him to see that he was only a step away from strangling her.
“You said that they would leave! You said no one would die!”
His words echoed across the empty graveyard, thudding against her on all sides until Marinette felt, somehow, even more constricted than before. It was strange. Her throat was tight, and yet he still hadn’t committed to wrapping his hands around her neck.
Which is why it was even stranger when Marinette felt as if she was choking on her words when she said, “Yeah, well, I didn’t think it was going to go this way either.”
His grip loosened and then fell away, but Marinette’s breathing remained ragged.
“Do you think I just wanted to put the guy I had a crush on in danger? Fuck off, Adrien. Even I’m not that awful.”
He sighed and backed up a step, the tears that had been welling in his eyes beginning to fall. “We have to help them.”
“How?” She snapped. “Give them miraculous? Not when they’re currently pissed as hell at us. Make them leave? They’ll just come back, Nightwing made that abundantly clear when he came to visit the other day.”
“We could watch over them,” he said, and she could tell that even he knew he sounded desperate.
She almost laughed. “Please, Adrien, even if they would let us – which they wouldn’t – there’s like seven hundred of them and two of us.”
Tears rolled down Marinette’s face to match his, cutting lines through the dirt on her cheeks.
She was annoyed. Annoyed that Adrien hadn’t thought that she’d already gone through all of this in her mind as it became more and more clear that the bats weren’t skipping town. Annoyed that the bats were too stubborn to give up.
Didn’t they want to survive?
… she wasn’t sure whether she wanted that answer.
She took a step back from him as well so she could lean against the gravestone. It was nice, but it had already been defaced in the three days since Steph had been buried.
It was silent as the pair looked down at the way that the name ‘Stephanie Brown’ had been coated in purple spray paint and then written over as ‘Spoiler’ in yellow.
It was the kind of thing that Steph would have found funny, for impossible to understand reasons, and that just made her chest ache all the more.
Adrien groaned and threw his hands up, frustration and surrender and sadness all rolled into one quick motion.
Marinette closed her eyes.
“I didn’t sign up for this!”
Her eyes snapped open.
This was, in all technicality, Adrien’s first real murder. He had played a large part in giving Marinette the tech needed to pinpoint the bats. Their blood was on his hands as well. And, as much as Canary would deny it, she still remembered how awful she had felt when she had killed someone for the first time.
She remembered the way that Marinette had stood over the body long after it had gone still. Had etched the corpse of what had once been her friend into her mind's eye. She had beaten his chest in with the crowbar, as Cobblepot had told her to. It had been for the sake of her own survival, he had been the unfortunate first person to take the fall for her. And even then he had been begging for togetherness. He promised that they could leave together, figure this all out together, that they were supposed to be together. His yells echoed in her mind even years later, but never had they been so loud as in the moment after he had gone still. And, in that moment, she swore that that was all she would ever hear. She thought that she would remain just as motionless as his body, remain staring at him until the cops inevitably came and then continue clutching the crowbar until it was forced from her grip. Some not-so-small part of her wanted to stay there and wait for death to take her, too.
But, then, Marinette had been forced to turn away from the body to throw up. She had actually eaten the day before, paid for by Riddler, and somehow that made throwing up even worse. Now she actually had something to lose.
Having something to live for was amazing, right up until the moment it’s gone.
She couldn’t afford to lose anything else.
She had forced herself to keep moving.
Adrien didn’t look like he was going to be able to do the same. He looked like he wanted to bury himself in the dirt with Steph, looked like he might actually follow through with that idea.
She shoved her hands in her pockets. Kicked a chunk of rock that she thought might have once been a part of a gravestone. It hit his leg, forcing him back to reality.
Adrien ran a hand through his hair, tugged at the roots as if he was tempted to pull his brain out and throw it on the ground like a morbid offering for the deceased.
He said “I didn’t sign up for this.” again, his tone little more than a whisper that he allowed to get carried away by the breeze.
But she heard – just as she seemed to hear everything, just as all information in Gotham always seemed to find its way back to her eventually.
She sighed.
“If you want out of the game, Chaton, I’m more than willing to take you out.”
His shoulders slumped in slight relief.
If only he could see the way Tikki clawed at her hand in her pocket, desperate to free herself so she could warn him of what was to come.
Adrien thought he knew Ladybug. Thought that he knew Marinette. And maybe he did.
But he didn’t know Canary.
He didn’t know that Canary never allowed for loose ends.
This was what she thought as she carefully knotted the rope in her hands. The hotel room was dark, save for the dim blue light of the computer on Adrien’s lap, casting a ghostly glow over his face.
Canary didn’t allow for loose ends, so it was fitting that she chose to hang him by his own rope.
The moment the rope closed over his neck, the air left his throat in a wheezing cough and he was stuck desperately writhing. His chest rose and fell as if he was trying to force his lungs to breathe in air that refused to get past the rope crushing his windpipe.
The ring on his finger lay useless even as Plagg zoomed around, finding a place on her neck – still tender hours after Adrien’s near-strangling of her – to sink his jagged teeth into. He couldn’t call to transform with his voice dying in his throat just as much as he was.
She had critiqued his ability to fight that day he found her at the police station. For once, she was glad that someone had opted not to take one of her insults too much to heart.
He looked up at her. Marinette refused to look directly at him, not wanting to see the fear or betrayal there. Refused to read the lips that were desperately trying to tell her something.
Life bled out of him. His struggles became weaker and weaker. His eyelids began to droop.
Her ears ached with a high whining that made her want to let go so she could cover her ears. Everything ached in a strange way that made her body feel ridiculously heavy. For a moment, she started to fear that killing him would kill her, too.
He went slack.
His chest stopped moving.
It all stopped. There was a snapping feeling in her chest and she found herself able to breathe again.
She tied the rope tight around his neck to make sure Adrien wouldn’t be able to do the same.
She set him back down against the bed and pulled the ring from his finger.
Plagg let go of her neck instantly.
Marinette stared down at the ring in her hand. Even just holding it with her earrings on was deathly tempting. She could fix all of this. Go back in time. To when everything was simpler. Before she had made the decision to screw over the bats, or even back to the start so she could choose not to become Canary in the first place.
(Who would she be if she had never become Canary? If she had never become Ladybug?)
But Tikki’s old whispers of karma came back to her, her voice clear in her mind even though she hadn’t heard the kwami speak in what felt like years.
Canary had never liked making decisions without knowing all the facts. She didn’t know what karma would take from her, but she wasn’t going to take that sort of chance.
She wrapped the ring in a hotel towel and then stuffed it in her pocket.
Then, she turned to Adrien.
It was rough work, stuffing him into a tub not unlike the one they had all thrown Cobblepot into. Cobblepot had been in pieces already, so there hadn’t been a lot to lift. Adrien was lanky and yet somehow also insanely heavy. He almost refused to fit, stubborn even in death.
But she had experience getting rid of bodies, so eventually she managed to slam the lid down and tape it shut. She made sure to wrap it until her entire roll of ducktape had been used up.
There. That should keep him firmly trapped while he was shipped off to France.
She didn’t know what would happen when he got there. Didn’t know who would find him, nor what they would do to him once they did.
Maybe he wouldn’t have to deal with it, thought Marinette. Maybe all of the miraculous magic would be gone by then and he would suffocate in the tub by the time he reached the mainland. Maybe he would never have to deal with the atrocities that the angry citizens of Paris would do to his body once they figured out who he was.
But, at least, he wouldn’t be her problem anymore.
She didn’t care either way.
She didn’t.
~
It took hours for her to find the pocket dimension Adrien had stuffed his miraculous box into. Hours of murmuring the same words with slight variations, of peeking into every crevice of hundreds of pocket dimensions, of checking out anything and everything that might have had the miraculous box hidden inside…
Eventually, she came across a shoebox.
She had absently kicked it open, already preparing to hop out and try the next, only for a bunch of jewelry pieces to tumble out.
Maybe, had Marinette not been so drained, she would have wondered why a shoe box of all things… but, instead, she just scooped all of the miraculous back into the box and left.
Now, she sat on the counter of one of her safehouses. She forced herself to focus on making chocolate chip cookie dough. She acted like it was the most difficult thing in the world – and, indeed, some tiny part of her ached for her parents to be over her shoulder critiquing her for stirring counterclockwise instead of clockwise (it didn’t matter, but they insisted it was strange) – but, in actuality, she was just doing all of this to ignore the many tiny eyes boreing into her.
The kwamis were not happy. Plagg had disappeared into the fridge about an hour previously and had yet to reemerge. Tikki sat still and heavy in her pocket, still and quiet and heavy as a rock. The rest poked their heads out from the shoebox to glare at her.
She had told them to quiet, to sit still and stop trying to run away, but now the silence was starting to get suffocating.
She stirred harder, relishing in the quiet thumping of her spoon scraping against the side of the bowl with every turn. It wasn’t a good sound, but at least it was a sound.
A sound that was eventually forced to stop so she could set the dough on the tray and pop it into the oven.
Which left them with nothing except for the dull thrum of the old appliances.
“I had to. He knew too much.”
Never had a silence been so loud.
~
The kwamis had been hard to ignore, but at least she could force them to leave her sight.
Edward Nygma and Jonathan Crane, however, had no ‘off button’.
They had found out about Adrien. Maybe she should have tried more to hide the fact that she was involved in his murder, but in the end she had decided it was merely delaying the inevitable – Edward wasn’t the type to leave a mystery unsolved, and Jonathan would gas the entire city until he found the culprit.
So, she had laid back and waited for them to figure it out.
Now, they were at her safehouse and they were more than pissed. Edward’s anger had always been explosive, full of high cries and insults and the occasional threat, and all of the man’s normal eloquence fell away until he was red in the face and cursing everything under the sun. Jonathan’s anger came in a more quiet form, something cold and calculated, as if he was waiting for the exact right moment to get his revenge. Neither of them were fun to deal with when peeved off, but they were even worse when angry together because the full contrast pushed down on her on all sides.
She watched Edward pace back and forth, the long green trench coat he loved flapping with every exaggerated hand motion.
“– don’t even have a good reason!” He yelled, his fists clenched as if he was seriously considering punching her.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “I happen to think it was a very good reason, thank you.”
“I. Was. Not. Done. Talking,” Edward gritted out.
She rolled her eyes and fought back the childish reply of ‘well, I was done listening’ that threatened to bubble out of her throat.
“I thought you two cared about each other! How could you just do that?!”
She opened her mouth to respond, to explain herself once again, but he cut Marinette off with a glare.
And then something seemed to dawn on him. His hands fell to his sides. He stared at her. “Would you do the same to us?”
She didn’t even know what to say. A part of her screamed no, screamed that Adrien was different because she could just force herself to think about Chat Blanc and disassociate her way through murdering him… but another part of her knew that this wasn’t completely true. Even if it made her sick to think about, she knew herself better than anyone else ever could, and she knew that she would follow through if she really thought them a threat.
Adrien would never hurt her directly, but he had always been frustratingly loose-lipped. Had always been ready to join a cause if there was a smiling face and a warm hug telling him to. She didn’t want to risk it.
As for Jonathan and Edward… well, they were all Rogues. They weren’t going to be winning any ‘best friend’ awards.
Edward took her silence for the confirmation it was and his expression twisted further.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “You remember what happened between Oswald and I, yes?”
She stiffened. Of course she remembered. It was the reason Edward had been just as determined to take the man down as she was at the beginning of her time as his personal informant, though she didn’t learn about their more intimate relationship until many years later.
But, the story went that the two of them had been unofficially dating for a while, neither willing to commit… maybe that wasn’t necessary, anyways. They did things for each other, with each other, and to each other. They were in love, as much as two Rogues could ever be. A label might not have been something worth caring about… and then Edward had found a woman that liked riddles as much as he had. He had loved her, too. And Cobblepot, the personification of greed, had never taken well to not getting what he wanted. He had killed her in a fit of rage.
She thought she might have understood the feeling, though she didn’t like what that pointed to. In that moment, anger burned under her skin, threatening to consume her in the flames. And part of her relished in the idea of letting it do so.
“Do not compare me to him.”
She understood. She knew what Edward was trying to say, she knew he was implying that he would invoke the same kind of vengeance that he had with Cobblepot. That he would now be working to make her life a living hell. He wouldn’t kill her, Rogues never really bothered with killing each other over fights because they all knew that fights were simply their state of being. He would simply make her regret ever crossing him in whatever way he felt fit.
But that wasn’t what Marinette cared about right then, surprisingly, because all she could think about was how the man that had once saved her from Cobblepot was now comparing her to the man that had ruined their lives.
His jaw set. He knew he had crossed a line, but she had done so first. Now, they were standing directly in front of each other, daring the other to make the first move. To back off and apologize, to try and meet each other on the other side, to walk away entirely.
Edward was the first to do something. He turned and walked right out of the apartment.
She watched the green of his jacket get pulled out of sight. Heard the door slam behind him, so hard that it rattled the complex.
She knew that he wouldn’t kill her, he would prefer to watch as she suffered, and she wasn’t going to kill him. Not necessarily out of love for the man, but because she wasn’t completely sure she could. He was smarter than Adrien, had known Canary for as long as she had existed, and he would know better than to make himself an easy target. He had money, power, and the ability to leverage it.
She ran a hand through her hair. The rough fabric of her gloves scraped against her scalp. She closed her eyes.
Well, it wasn’t like she hadn’t expected that.
Marinette exhaled slowly, one long sigh, and then forced herself to look at Jonathan.
“So, you going to go, too, or…?”
The man looked at her. His expression was still icy, but he was still firm when he said, “No.”
~
She knew that her gloves threw people off. It wasn’t particularly uncommon to see henchmen wearing them, for they couldn’t afford to get caught by the police, but a Rogue was expected to be out and proud about who they were. And, even if they did wear gloves, it was solely for show. Solely an aesthetic choice – and, as committed as Rogues often were to their aesthetics, they were all willing to take off their gloves when push came to shove.
Well… all of them were willing, except for one.
Now, as Canary rested her hand on her cheek, sure to leave a red handprint thanks to the man she had just gutted for snitching on her current plans to Riddler… she couldn’t help but remember one of the more popular theories:
That she did it to hide the fact that her hands were permanently stained with blood.
When she had first seen the theory in her Twitter feed, she had merely scoffed. There were many reasons for her to wear gloves – touch aversion, identity reasons, and an homage to her time as a henchman to name a few – but none were quite so dramatic as that.
But, now, as Marinette peeled her hand away and fought back a grimace when her gloves tried to stick to her skin… she couldn’t help but wonder if they had had a point.
She pushed herself up in her chair and turned her head to look at Emma. The woman stood on her right, with Ara beside her.
They were her right hand men… but, considering what had happened to her last partner, this wasn’t a particularly good position to be in.
But Emma refused to leave, and Ara had nowhere else to be, so in that position they stayed.
She grinned, waving them off. “You guys can go home early. I can deal with one measly rat.”
Emma hesitated.
Ara made the decision for her, grabbing the woman by the hand and dragging her away to the locker rooms.
Canary turned back to the man.
He lay, writhing on the floor. His skin was remarkably pale, though she didn’t know whether that was because he was bleeding out or if it was the general shock of having your organs outside your body.
She knew there were far easier and more accurate ways to get information – confessions – out of people, but she wasn’t particularly concerned with that. Canary had already known what was going on, she had just been concerned with the message.
He was still alive, but only just.
She twirled her hand and a knife slipped from her sleeve, finding its place in her palm.
It was time to fix that.
~
She raised her eyebrows when she saw all of the kwamis glaring at her. This wasn’t particularly new, but the signs they were holding were.
Apparently, they were going on strike. They wouldn’t be eating, which meant that she wouldn’t be able to use their powers.
Nevermind the fact that she could make them eat with a few simple words.
Instead of pointing this out, though, she just laughed in their tiny faces and brushed past them.
“I haven’t used you guys’ help in years, why would I start now? I don’t need your powers, I’m only holding on to you so no one else can.”
Marinette didn’t look back.
Because looking back would mean seeing Tikki with her own sign.
She knew the kwami didn’t approve – the kwami never had – but it still felt like a betrayal.
Not that she would ever give the kwamis the satisfaction of knowing she thought this.
No, she would adapt. Just like she adapted to everything.
~
The silence was killing her.
Her life had never been a quiet one. Her parents were soft, but not particularly soft spoken, and they had always filled the house with the sounds of pots and pans and laughter. At school, she had friends. In Gotham, she had had her fellow henchmen. And then she was a Rogue, and a Rogue’s life was almost too loud, especially when the Rogue in question had befriended Scarecrow and Riddler.
But, now, Marinette didn’t have any of that. Her parents were dead and gone. Her friends from school hated her for something that she had been manipulated into. Adrien had died by her own hand. Emma and Ara were scared – they cared, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t shiver minutely under her watchful eye or determinedly look away when she got down to business. Edward hated her. Jonathan wasn’t intent on leaving her but he wasn’t particularly happy with her, either, and avoided her more often than he sought her out.
And where did that leave Marinette?
Part of her wanted to release the kwamis’ voices. Even if they would berate her, at least there would be something to hear.
But Marinette couldn’t bring herself to listen to Tikki’s disappointment, so instead she found the best alternative she could get:
Talking to herself.
It was an old habit. Leftover from years of having a kwami hovering on her every word for the call to action that was ‘spots on!’ (or even just because the kwami was fond of her holder, but that hadn’t been the case in years). But, she had noticed, as her words curled around her tongue and her own voice hit her ears, there was a strange sense of relief.
It was her own voice, but it was still a voice. And she could make it say whatever she wanted to without having to worry about the emotions that came with forcing others to speak.
~
She rested her chin on her arms, one of the many, many people watching the sky that night. A large, purple blimp took up what felt like the entire sky, a large screen affixed to the side displaying something that was somehow both expected and completely out of nowhere:
It was Bruce Wayne, sitting in a chair. His head lolled just slightly, but it had been pointed carefully at the camera nonetheless to show off the bright red paint carving a large crescent from cheek to cheek. There was a gun sticking out of the side of his head and, poking out the other side, was a tiny flag with the word BANG! emblazoned across it – it looked like a goofy little headband you might find in a gag store, but the red dripping from the pointed end of the flagpole and blank look in the man’s eyes screamed that it was real.
And all that anyone could hear was his killer’s horrible, high-pitched laughter as he celebrated a war finally won.
It had been inevitable. Every Gothamite had known for years that the bat’s life would end at the hands of the Joker, that eventually the No Kill Rule that Batman preached would one day be his undoing… for how can you truly win when your opponent can keep coming back? When your opponent was not extending the same courtesy to you?
Bruce’s lifeless eyes bore into the camera, and she couldn’t help but peer into them. There was no stress lines on his face, they had slackened in death, and there was no hint of anger on the body… but she couldn’t help but wonder if it had been on purpose. Whether it had been the kind of self-destructive recklessness that he had once exhibited upon Jason Todd’s death that had finally done him in…
And, if so, what Jason would think.
The laughter petered out. Slowly but surely.
And, for a long moment it was completely silent, save for Joker’s ragged breaths.
She thought he was just out of breath at first (how could he not be after all that laughing?) but then the breaths got quicker. And quicker. She listened intently for something – footsteps, another voice, the sound of a door opening or a bat screaming bloody revenge – but there was no indication that the man was anything but alone.
Maybe it had finally dawned on him. That, with the bat gone, he no longer had any purpose.
Canary understood the feeling.
She heard a click, so much quieter than anything else that the blimp had blared but still deafening, and she couldn’t bring herself to look away as a gunshot rang through the air.
A body crashed into the camera, and the screen rolled across the floor a few times before coming to a stop on its side. An unnaturally pale hand stayed stubbornly in frame, perfectly still. Red began to creep in.
And it was silent.
~
As if to make up for the silence, the next morning was so loud that she considered finding some headphones to block out sound so she could fall back asleep.
It wasn’t like there was much reason to get up today, anyways. No one good was going to be out.
Batman had been an important figure, but Bruce Wayne had been vital.
Without him… well, the city was quickly falling to chaos.
Everyone in the city knew that the place was corrupt, that Bruce Wayne was the only pillar holding Gotham up. That even if his kids continued to try and help the city, they were grieving and unable to leave the house under threat of death – they would ultimately not be of much use.
Marinette said her silent goodbyes to welfare systems, to charity donations, to the city’s last hope. To the many who would die desperate and hungry and alone, to the many that would be killed by the aforementioned people.
And to Bruce Wayne. Though she would never admit to this one.
No, Marinette would much rather cover her ears with a pillow and pretend to not hear all the screaming and fires and gunshots.
~
She didn’t know the exact day when Cass and Babs disappeared.
There was nothing in the papers, no acknowledgement of the women and their lives or even acknowledgments of their deaths. There were no bodies, no graves to mourn over.
They had simply disappeared. Leaving behind nothing but shadows that felt less whole and stationary security cameras.
Marinette hoped that this was someone finally taking her advice. Finally, some bats were skipping town.
But, since she knew the women weren’t the type to leave a city in need, she opted not to look into it. Opted to continue thinking that they were simply gone, out living their cottagecore dreams somewhere far away from – far better than – Gotham.
~
Marinette swirled a drink in her hands. The best part about owning what had once been the Iceberg Lounge was that alcohol was never far.
Jonathan leaned back against the counter, his head tilted back. He stared at the ceiling as if he was looking for answers among the red velvet draperies.
Or, maybe, he was looking for a familiar shadow.
“I can’t believe Black Bat is…” He started, only to trail off. As if saying the word aloud would suddenly make it true.
She nodded her agreement. Even if she was going to pretend to think the woman was fine, she was willing to entertain the thought of her being gone if had had enough alcohol to take down a bull.
“She was supposed to be invincible,” she sighed.
Though Marinette was obviously not all that happy about the fact that two more people she had once considered friends were gone, Cass’s death meant a lot more symbolically. Because Black Bat was easily the best fighter in the entire family, and if she could go down then the rest of them were definitely on their way out.
Jonathan closed his eyes. “She was so smart.”
“Of course you would think that, she’s like…” She trailed off, her muddied mind struggling to explain it. “An expert in your field.”
Despite the fact that she had nodded to herself as if to confirm that the words made sense, Jonathan made a questioning noise. She huffed and mulled it over for a moment.
“Well… first time I met her, right? I’d heard about her whole… ‘mind-read-y’ thing.”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously. Everyone knows,” she agreed. “And, so, I had to be all smug about it and question her on it.”
He snorted. “Yeah, that sounds like you.”
“‘Cause it was,” she said, nodding once more. “And so I go and I say: ‘think you’re so good? Tell me about myself’.”
Jonathan grinned over at her. “Oh? That was stupid.”
“I just wanted to see,” she complained, her voice a whine that did not at all fit the rumors that floated around her like the ghosts that she left in her wake. “But, anyways, she looks me dead in the eye and she says ‘scared’. She just knew. Looked at me and saw exactly what I was.”
He makes a thoughtful noise, his eyes returning to the ceiling. “Was this before or after I did the same thing?”
“Before,” she sighed. “It’s why I was so quick with a response on yours, with the whole ‘Got that much faith in yourself?’ thing.”
His lips twitched. “Aw. You did that thing where you think about how you should have won an argument in the shower afterwards.”
“Fuck off,” she mumbled, pushing his shoulder until he gave in and fell off the barstool.
He stayed on the floor, pulling his knee to his chest and turning his gaze onto her. He seemed to be looking for something in her face, but she didn’t know whether he found it.
“Can’t believe everyone thinks you’re greedy,” said Jonathan. “It’s so obvious you’re just scared.”
She blushed and looked down at her drink. Maybe it was the influence of said drink that prompted her to say, “Well, you never would have taken an interest in me if I was anything else.”
He hummed his agreement. His head tipped to the side. All traces of a smile left his expression. “It’s less fun now that I’m attached.”
She shrugged and brought the drink to her lips.
“You’re destroying yourself, I hope you know.”
Marinette’s hand shook ever so slightly as she lowered the empty glass back to the counter. Smiled as best she could. “Destroying myself? I’ll survive anything, that’s kind of my thing.”
He wasn’t having it, for once. “You and I both know that’s not what I meant.”
Marinette couldn’t bring herself to disagree. All she could do was pour herself another glass.
~
She could survive anything.
Jonathan, however, could not.
Marinette stared at the phone in her hands, the hospital’s number still bright white on her screen. The nurse was trying to talk to her, but she couldn’t make out a word they were saying.
Honestly, when you’re semi-immortal, it is sometimes hard to remember that those around you get older.
And getting older was never a good thing in their line of work. Not for people that had many enemies, many people with grudges just waiting for an opportunity for revenge.
It had been inevitable.
She hadn’t been ready.
She clicked the end call button. Buried her face in her hands. Many thoughts ran through her head that night, but only one repeated itself in Marinette’s head like a mantra:
She was his emergency contact.
~
Duke Thomas was dead.
That was what the headline had said.
Marinette couldn’t bring herself to read past that. Couldn’t even bring herself to flip to the crossword, because Duke loved puzzles and doing them when he couldn’t felt like a disservice. So, she had simply tossed it out the window to join all of the rest of the trash that littered the streets nowadays.
(And wasn’t that funny? Litter, in Gotham? That’s how you know the city had gone to shit, because no one was scared of Poison Ivy anymore. They were all going to die, at least the woman might make it quick for them.)
She shut the window quickly to keep as much of the stench out as possible, and wondered if the bats still believed in the inherent goodness of people.
She had always thought that ideology flawed.
Marinette didn’t know how she felt about the fact that she had played a direct hand in making them realize that, though.
~
No time was safe in Gotham. Crime ran rampant through the streets, too much for the few remaining bats to handle.
Red Robin tried to take over for Signal, aware that leaving crime during the day wasn’t an option, but he was adapting poorly to the new schedule and the fact that he could no longer hide in the shadows. Red Hood was too busy struggling to maintain order within his criminal empire to even bother helping the rest of the bats. Nightwing had left Bludhaven to help, but that still only left him and Robin to deal with all of the crime that took place at night.
The city was big, and Gothamites had come to the realization that they couldn’t stop everyone.
Benny died. A mugging gone wrong on his way to school.
They couldn’t do anything but pour one out for a kid who never even got old enough to drink.
~
The crime rates went up, and so did the prices.
Especially pharmaceutical prices. An already predatory industry looked down on Gotham, aware that people were already scrambling to survive, and figured that they would be willing to pay.
And some were.
Most… would have. If they could have.
Canary paid well. She had a good benefits package.
It still hadn’t been enough to keep up with the insane insulin prices, which were needlessly high even when inflation wasn’t trying to level an entire city.
Polly held out as long as she could with the little insulin that she and Lorenzo could afford, but, ultimately, there was little that they could do in a system set up to make people like them fail.
Lorenzo was inconsolable. She didn’t know his ‘lore’, but she had gathered that Polly was all he had left family-wise. He wasn’t taking well to the fact that he was alone, now.
Aaron took the grieving man under his wing, slinging an arm over his shoulders and forgetting all about his dreams of leaving the henching business. He claimed that he had already tried for long enough and it surely wasn’t going to happen if it hadn’t already.
Marinette quietly moved them both away from bartending in favor of setting them up in the kitchens.
… there was something morbidly relieving about seeing other people struggling with the crippling loneliness and hopelessness about never being able to leave the criminal underworld that she had been struggling with for months. That it was weirdly calming to be able to lead them away from the unhealthy coping mechanisms she partook in, that it gave a strange sense of control in a life that she felt had spiraled well beyond the point where she felt like she could fix things.
Those feelings settled horribly in her stomach. She knew that they were wrong.
But, her resident psychologist was dead and gone, and she had no intentions of untangling and understanding those complicated emotions without him.
So, she said that she moved them away from bartending because she was worried about her stock. Self-destruct all you want, but not on her dime.
~
Dick came for her.
It was inevitable, really.
The bats all cared about each other, that was obvious, but Nightwing had always been the one most invested in his family.
It was a little strange to see the man. His mask was abandoned – it was pretty much useless now, the entire world knew who he was at this point – which revealed deep bags lining his eyes. His cheeks were sunken and hollow. His hair was greasy.
Canary, of course, had never looked better. A healthy shine to her skin, a slimy smirk on her face that even she wasn’t sure was fake anymore, and a suit that was almost impossibly crisp.
Dick Grayson looked sickly, she looked sick.
Her smirk pulled wider. “Nightwing! Back for drinks?”
His fists clenched at his sides.
“I mean, obviously, right, since you didn’t bring the little Robin,” she continued on, waving the cigarette in her hand vaguely. “Good on you to be a responsible pseudo-parent. He really needs a father figure right now.”
He bared his teeth in a snarl.
“Aw, no fun quip?” She teased in a lighthearted tone even as her eyes narrowed in silent, cold calculation. “And here I was thinking you were the fun one.”
She dropped from the roof and took one last, long drag from her cigarette before tossing it aside.
Tim and Steph represented what she could have been, but Dick was her.
The main difference between the two was that Canary wore her true colors on her sleeve – a Coral Snake, meant to catch out the unwary or those dumb enough to mistake her for a harmless King Snake.
But, if Canary was a Coral Snake, then Nightwing was a Boa Constrictor. He crept up on his victims, winding around them in a comfortable, settling weight that could easily be mistaken for a stray vine catching around your leg, and waited until his victims were fully ensnared before pulling tight. They wouldn’t even be able to scream for help.
Now, the two snakes eyed each other. Neither of them were really in their element. Canary was far too careful to ever disregard anything that might ever hold her down, and Nightwing had never stopped paying attention from the moment he had first discovered what she was. Fighting each other was counterintuitive – stupid, even.
And yet.
She blew smoke in his face, an obvious taunt, and he was more than eager to try and punch her in retaliation.
She rolled out of the way and knives flicked to her hands. He pulled out his escrima.
Blue electricity crackled around the glorified police batons.
She rushed him.
It wasn’t a quick or pretty fight.
Neither of their weapons were made for that.
Beating a person to death was a slow process, and the knives she hid on her were often made for slashing rather than outright stabbing unless in particularly soft parts. The only ways to end it quickly were if Dick managed to get a lucky shot at her head or if she got to gouge out his neck – which, of course, meant that they were guarding those areas especially hard.
Too hard.
She yelped a curse as Dick feinted that he was going for her head and then made contact with her right shoulder. Her entire arm went numb and the knife in that hand clattered to the ground.
She backed off quickly, taking quiet note as he kicked the knife away, and her back hit the wall.
He went for her head.
She ducked under the swing, which he expected, but he didn’t expect the knife she buried in his wrist for his troubles.
A strangled scream left him.
She grabbed the escrima held in limp fingers and then stumbled away, hugging her tingling arm to herself. Eyes frantically scanned the empty streets for any hint of silver.
A blow to her back had her crashing to the floor and she gasped out as hands and knees scraped against asphalt.
But he was coming after her soon enough, weight dropping into her stomach the moment she turned around and knocking the wind out of her.
Tears sprang in her eyes and she switched the escrima to her numb hand in favor of catching the hand that came straight for her head.
And then it was a desperate struggle on both sides, escrimas flashing with dangerous light. Both of them trying to get any sort of upper hand.
Desperate blows were traded. Well-manicured nails scratched the skin of his face. A knee drove itself into the squishy part of her thigh. Backs and shoulders scraped on cold, unforgiving concrete as they rolled on the ground. A well-placed punch cracked his nose. A chunk of hair was ripped from her head.
Water and blood dripped onto her face.
Neither of them knew if they were really only crying because of the pain.
Electricity sent tingles up her side.
Her mind stuttered and he drew himself up to throw his entire weight into one last hit.
She darted up to press the end of the stolen escrima to the metal of the knife still lodged in his wrist.
Light flickered in Dick’s eyes and then disappeared.
The body slumped against her, fried from the inside out.
The escrima slid out of limp fingers and rolled across the ground.
She allowed herself to slump as well. Exhaustion lingered in every limb. The body was heavy where it pressed on her. Blood dirtied her suit. Electricity scars were sure to litter her skin and the area where the escrima had made contact were hot to the touch.
Her eyes and throat burned the worst, though she didn’t have an excuse for that.
~
Guess I really did end up going to your funeral, she thought, and it pulled a dark laugh from her lips.
And then she kept laughing. She planted the hand that wasn’t holding her cigarette against the wall as she doubled over.
Tears spilled down her cheeks, she was laughing so hard.
She swiped a hand across her eyes, but all it did was smear more of his blood over her skin.
She tossed the cigarette over her shoulder, and laughed even harder as the petrol-covered body went up in flames.
And then Marinette keeled over and threw up.
~
Her henchmen… were not happy with her.
Nightwing was a favorite among henchmen. He usually let them off with minor injuries, and even then the injuries were only done so they weren’t at risk of being murdered by aggravated Rogues. He was a good guy.
He had tried to kill her.
She wasn’t sure how to conflate the two ideas in her head.
Sure, he had lost a bunch of his family at once… but so had she, and she was fine.
She.
Was.
Fine.
Even when Lorenzo and Aaron left, yelling about how they were going to go and work for Riddler, she was fine.
~
She had bigger problems to deal with, anyways.
Namely: Robin. He was also not taking well to the fact that Nightwing was dead now. And he had decided to make his grief everyone else’s problem.
Especially Canary and Red Hood’s.
She wasn’t quite sure why Jason had been included in Damian’s wrath. Maybe he felt that the man hadn’t done enough, maybe he was mad that Jason had been focusing on his own empire rather than helping people, maybe Jason was just the first person he saw…
But, while the enemy of your enemy is not your friend, they can be a temporary ally if you’re both desperate enough.
And, as she watched another one of her safehouses go up in smoke on the news, she decided that she was.
Jason seemed to agree, though he didn’t seem too happy about it.
Still, the dramatic bastard insisted on drawing it out, and he tipped his head to the side as he regarded her.
“Are we going to kill him?” Jason asked.
She went still. Even if she knew, logically, that Robin was well over the age of adulthood and that made him fair game, the tiny part of her that was still ‘Marinette’ screamed that he was still just a kid. That hurting him was wrong, that involving him in something like that made her no better than Fu.
But, still…
She gritted her teeth. “Whatever it takes.” To get him off their backs, to survive.
He, somehow, managed to look even less enthused.
But he nodded. And she knew he got it.
So, the two street kids-turned-Rogues got to work surviving.
Finding Damian was easy. He was going after all of their bases – something he knew would hurt, something he knew would mess with them like nothing else because eventually they would run out of homes and they couldn’t go back to the way things had been – and they were nothing if not patient. Eventually, he came to them.
Fighting him was… less easy.
Marinette had had enough trouble taking down Dick, and she didn’t even like him.
But now she was faced with the kid that she had once traded pictures of animals with regularly. The kid that she had nerded out about swords and knives with. The one that complained loudly about her pinching his cheeks but never actually made any efforts to stop her –.
She needed to survive.
For one more day.
One more kill.
So she could continue on to do it all again.
It was sickening. She was ending people’s lives to further her own, and she didn’t even really want to be alive, she just couldn’t bring herself to die.
She was a coward.
But a coward that was going to live to see tomorrow.
Damian stood no match against the both of them when they worked together. The two of them were stubborn in that they always survived, no matter what, and everyone knew that only one side was going home. Add on the fact that the two Rogues had completely different skill sets and fight styles that paired together beautifully and that they were more than willing to fight dirty, the kid – the not-kid – really hadn’t had much of a chance.
And then the two of them were breathing heavily, chests heaving where Damian’s was remarkably still.
They met eyes.
There was only one way partnerships between people like them ever ended. They both knew it.
“Don’t you think there’s been enough death?” Jason said even as he leveled his gun at her head.
Yes, Marinette thought.
Canary’s grip tightened on her knives. “Whatever it takes.”
“Whatever it takes,” he agreed quietly.
~
She watched on as Ara and Emma cleaned up the aftermath. She couldn’t bring herself to touch the bodies. There was already too much blood on her, soaking through her clothes in a way that she knew would leave her skin hopelessly stained.
Ara and Emma were quiet as they worked. Ara wasn’t even phased by murder anymore. Couldn’t afford to be, not when she was one of Canary’s most trusted workers.
But what good was trust, really, when it came from someone so paranoid?
What was trust, really, when it came from someone who had proved again and again that they held nothing sacred other than their own life?
She looked down at the lifeless eyes of the people she had once called friends.
Canary had always been so concerned about staying alive, surviving at any cost.
Now, she was stuck wondering what would happen when she was the only person left alive.
~
Her body trembled minutely. From overexertion, she was sure, digging up a grave was hard enough when she had had help…
But she didn’t now. She couldn’t bring herself to trust anyone with this information.
Hell, the entire reason she was even doing this was because she didn’t trust the kwamis.
She had ordered them into silence. Had made sure they never told anyone, never ran. Had forced them out of sight.
But they were never out of mind.
All she could ever think about was how it would only take one loophole for everything to come crashing down.
It would just be typical for her by now.
So, she was back to hiding everything miraculous-related in a grave. Jason’s this time. It felt fitting, to put the gods that had kept her alive for years with the bat known for dying and coming back.
(Not that he would come back again.)
She got deep enough to feel comfortable that it wouldn’t be found anytime soon, and then she tossed the box and book down into the grave.
Heads popped out, eyes wide and staring. No one said anything, they couldn’t, and Marinette was filled with the urge to fill the silence once again, if only to give them orders:
“Stay quiet, don’t leave your weird little dimension. Don’t tell anyone you’re here. Just –.”
Tikki managed to catch her eyes for the first time in ages and Marinette’s voice cracked. She’d never seen the kwami look so disappointed, and that hurt, but she also looked at her with something she could only describe as love and understanding.
She shakily inhaled through her nose.
“Someone might find you eventually. Maybe they’ll set you free. I don’t know. I just can’t do this anymore.”
And then she was pouring dirt back into the grave.
~
Sometimes she thought that she just might hate Tim.
Because Tim Drake had shown her what it was like to not be completely alone, and it was almost painful to go back now that she had seen it.
But, most of the time, she didn’t regret the year she had spent with him.
Even if the memories were bittersweet, at least there was some sweetness. That was all she could ask for, at this point.
~
When had she started falling for her own act?
When had ‘Marinette’ stopped existing? When had she burned to death in Canary’s burning anger?
She was almost hurt. It felt like a betrayal.
Canary was supposed to protect her.
All she had done was kill everyone else.
But Canary was all she had left, and damn if she was going to lose anything else.
~
The door flung open with a resounding bang.
She gave herself a moment to take a deep breath in through her nose. She looked down at the box she had been inspecting.
“Run,” she told Ara and Emma. “The shipment is fine.”
And they did.
They were allowed to leave. Great.
That meant it was exactly who she thought it was. Great.
And then she whirled around, arms spread wide and welcoming and a smile fixed on her face.
Tim Drake stood in full bat gear, and she scrunched her nose a little at the Batman cowl and stubble on his chin. She hadn’t even known he could grow facial hair and, indeed, it was patchy.
She tipped her head to the side. “Oh, c’mon, darling, what’s a secret identity among friends?”
It had been a taunt. Nothing more. She was not sickened by the separation that the mask provided or the way he wore his father’s old face and gait like it was natural.
To her surprise, though, he actually did reach up and pull the cowl down. His hair was a mess from the cowl, and there was charcoal coating his eyelids to give them that intense depth that the eyes of the cowl always seemed to have.
The charcoal looked streaky. She tried not to think too hard about why that was.
“Marinette.”
She shuddered. She hadn’t been called that name in such a long time. Not even by herself.
“Red Robin,” she returned, only for her smile to stretch wider. “Or should I call you Batman, now?”
“I’m still Tim,” he said.
Marinette’s voice died in her throat.
Luckily, it seemed that Tim was done talking.
He rushed at her, his bo staff extending…
And Marinette…
Marinette can’t bring herself to fight back. Not really.
She knew that when he did a right hook he would leave his side open temporarily. Knew that his stance was just a little too thin and that it would be easy to unbalance him. Knew that he relied too much on his bo to drive distance and that the best way to fight him was to get in close enough that he wouldn’t be able to use it anymore.
She could only let him drive her back, knives flashing in wide arcs. Flashy things that mean nothing – that do nothing other than surface level damage to his skin that would surely heal within a few days.
Marinette couldn’t even bring herself to really fight back.
A well-placed hit to her knee had her crumpling, had her tossing her weapons aside to catch her fall.
And, just like his brother, he was more than willing to follow her to the ground.
But he tossed his own weapon in favor of locking his hands around her throat.
She gasped for air that refused to come.
White lenses glared down at her, lips pulled back in a snarl.
Canary’s hands strained, reaching for a knife that her middle finger could only barely touch.
He pressed down harder.
Marinette’s finger pushed the knife out of reach.
She swore she could feel something in her throat collapse.
She wondered if this was how Adrien had felt.
Maybe that was why she had to go out this way. Maybe soulmates always had to go out in the same way.
Her chest heaved with breaths that never came to be.
Her limbs tired.
It kind of felt like falling asleep. And that was terrifying in its own right.
It would be over soon.
Marinette’s gaze fell away, to the full moon hanging overhead, framed almost perfectly between the tops of the two buildings on either side of them.
It looked like a pearl.
Her eyes found their way back to her pearl.
She supposed she should have never thought that they would last, not with a nickname like that. Pearls were bad luck in the Wayne family.
She let her eyes flutter closed. Her vision had been starting to blur, anyways.
The streets of Gotham would claim another life. Death was owed someone, and she had been evading Him for years now. She would allow Him to take him into her arms, now, if Tim’s hands were the ones to push her into His embrace.
He pushed down.
And then, all at once, his weight disappeared.
She was allowed to roll away, to plant her shaky hands onto the cold concrete beneath her and struggle to force her throat to open again. Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, irritating her contacts, and all she could do was sob between the gasps for air and coughing fits that wrecked her body.
Her knife skidded across the ground, the metal blade creating a tiny trail of sparks, until it came to rest between her hands.
She forced herself to look up at Tim.
His lips pressed into a thin line as he looked down at her. She must have looked quite the sight – hair falling out of its usual tight bun, three-piece suit rumpled and streaked with blood, tears spilling from her eyes, and the early markings of a soon-to-be bruise littering the base of her neck like a demented necklace.
“If you’re going to kill yourself, don’t use me to do it.”
She swiped a hand across her mouth because choking was not a pretty thing and pushed herself up to sit properly. “What? Still think I can change?” A false pitying expression made its way across her face – her eyebrows drawn downwards and her lips puckered into the most aggravating of the many mocking faces in her arsenal.
“You already have,” he said.
She snorted. “Please, cut the shit. Denial and bargaining are fun parts of the grieving process, but you’ve got to move on eventually.”
He returned her bitter laugh, leaning to scoop up his bo staff from the ground and then turning to give her something that wasn’t quite a glare.
“It’s funny how you can be so good at psychoanalyzing others to a tee, and yet you know nothing about yourself.”
He turned to leave.
“I’m not good at psychoanalyzing others.”
He stilled. Chanced a look back.
She had fixed her gaze on the moon again, watching it intently as if she thought it would disappear if she ever dared to look away.
“You were supposed to leave. You had so many chances, you had every reason. You should have left.”
His lips twisted into something that might have looked like a smile to passerby, but it was far too bitter to really be amusement. “Guess we never really knew each other, then.”
“Guess not,” she agreed quietly.
And then he was leaving with a swish of his cape.
Marinette watched him go.
He was shorter and less stocky than his mentor – his father – had been, but the similarities between them are so striking that the only thing keeping her from accidentally thinking him to be Bruce was the fact that his cowl was still pulled back.
She looked at the man who had lost it all. The man with too much money and nothing productive to do anything with it. The man that is scared of new connections and maybe a little too calculating, but likely only as a coping mechanism. The man that is unable to kill even those who deserved it.
The apple never falls far from the tree.
And, with no one to pick it up, it’s left to rot.
She wondered what Bruce would think if he saw Tim like this.
She wondered if it even mattered.
~
“We quit,” said Ara, throwing down their two weeks' notices.
She looked down at the papers in front of her. At the signatures that lay there.
“I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore,” Emma said, and it sounded so much like what Jonathan had said that it hurt.
She picked up the papers and looked over them, making sure everything was in order.
“It’s like I don’t even know you anymore!”
She wondered if the woman ever did.
“Mari, please,” Emma said, and she was almost begging. “Say something.”
She took a deep breath.
And then she looked up. “How old are you now, Ara?”
Ara blanched. “That’s… that’s all you have to say?!”
But understanding passed over Emma’s face. Something shuttered over her eyes. Her face drained of color. “Seventeen,” she answered.
She nodded slowly and looked at Ara to confirm.
“I mean… yes, I’m seventeen, but does that matt –?!”
Ara’s voice cut off with a scream, because in seconds Canary was on her feet and drawing a knife across the neck of the woman that had saved them both.
It was the quickest thing she could do outside of snapping the woman’s neck. And she didn’t want to try that. Her hands were shaking too much for her to do it properly. It was hard enough to do a quick, clean cut, and even harder to pull the fox miraculous over her quickly lolling head.
Emma’s already pale face quickly turned ashy and blood gurgled in her throat as if to make up for the lack of color.
And then, all too soon, she was still.
Other than the red slowly seeping out of her, of course.
Ara screamed at her. She could barely make out the words through the sobs.
She rested her hands on her hips, her bloodsoaked knife dripping where she held it in a limp grip.
“She knew too much for me to let her go,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Really, you do, too. But you’re still a kid.”
Ara fell silent. Her face was remarkably flushed, as if to make up for the fact that Emma’s would never be again.
“You should go. And don’t come back. Once you turn eighteen…” She shrugged. “I won’t be so lenient.”
Ara gritted her teeth.
A young Asian girl with absentee parents has someone she cared about die right in front of her because of a mob boss with no allegiances to anyone.
“You’re going to regret this,” the girl hissed.
The mob boss can only smile a condescending little smile.
“I’m sure I will. Now, go run off, I’m sure you have juice boxes to drink or something.”
And, with no systemic change, the cycle began all over again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Version Two: No One Mourns the Wicked
Summary:
Goodness knows
The Wicked's lives are lonely
Goodness knows
The Wicked cry alone
Nothing grows for the Wicked
They reap only
What they sow
~~~~~
A woman in her late twenties pulled herself out of an overturned grave, dirt staining her skin and clothes.
Of course, she wasn’t actually in her late twenties, but what woman doesn’t wish to be eternally 29?
Her, actually. The moment she had woken up at age forty and stared back at her still young face, the realization that she hadn’t aged in years hitting her fully for the first time, she had cracked her mirror.
Immortality was a burden, one that was thrust upon her when she was far too young to ever really understand the consequences. One that she hadn’t even really wanted then. One she couldn’t get rid of. Not without giving up the miraculous box that was still, technically within her possession even if she hadn’t set her eyes on it in years, as she was the only person that knew where it was.
The only person alive that knew that miraculous were more than just a story that their grandparents used to tell them when they were getting ready for bed.
And she couldn’t give up the miraculous. Because, even if immortality was the universe’s way of granting her wish to always survive in the cruelest way possible, she still couldn’t bring herself to entrust them to someone else. Not when humans had proven themselves corruptible time and time again.
No, there was only one person she would have ever trusted with this, and he was long gone.
Or… he was for now.
She pulled the shoebox into her lap, dirt-covered gloves scrabbling over the cardboard in a sound that was both horrible and undeniably relieving.
She was reminded, startlingly, of someone digging up an old time capsule.
The thought brought a wry smile to her lips.
One that quickly faded as she flipped the lid open.
Many eyes flicked to her, wide and interested and so hopeful, only for their faces to fall when they saw who had dug them up.
She paid them as little mind as possible, hands already finding their way to the two that she needed.
Tikki sighed softly.
The kwami didn’t have to say it, she already knew that she was thinking about how bad and how selfish she would be if she did this.
But she was a villain. Villains are allowed to be as awful as they wish.
And, god, she certainly did wish for something.
She held the two miraculous in her hands, squeezing her eyes shut tight.
“Please…” Marinette breathed, and for once her voice matched her true age, dry and cracked and shaky. “Take me back. I don’t care about the consequences anymore. Let me fix this.”
She watched as Tikki and Plagg met eyes for just a moment before the world disappeared in a whirl of color.
She was suddenly thrown back into it.
The couch fabric was soft beneath her but the cushions were still not completely broken in. There was a dull aching in her arm that screamed of an injury long forgotten. The knife beneath her tongue nearly nicked her.
And Tim was sitting across from her. The only lines on his face were tiny stress lines on his forehead. His hands were folded neatly in his lap, body language always polite even when around people he knew. There was a slightly frustrated flush on his cheeks. And he was alive and happy and healthy.
And speaking: “You prefer energy drinks to coffee.”
She looked at him with wide eyes. She was sure that she looked like she had just seen a ghost but, to be fair, she kind of had.
“Repeat that for me?” She whispered.
He sighed and met her gaze. “You don’t like coffee. Your preferred way to get caffeine is through energy drinks.”
A tiny sound escaped her throat, and that was all the warning he got before she was grabbing him by the front of that dumb, ugly outfit that he had used to wear that she had missed more than she ever should have and pulling him close for a hug.
He was still and silent as she tried her hardest not to sob into his shirt, surprise making him stiff, before he wrapped her in his arms.
Disgust and fear curdled beneath her skin at the contact and she didn’t even care because it was Tim and somehow it was still the best – the safest – she had felt in years.
But it wouldn’t last.
Somewhere, deep in her mind, she knew that she only had twenty-four hours in this reality. That she would die soon.
She wondered, idly, why this was her punishment. Why it was exchanging one life for several. Was it because of her extended lifespan? Was she shaving off years and giving them to all of the people she had lost? Or was it because she had proven that it was an equivalent value to her? That she was willing to sacrifice them all for herself?
Maybe it was both, maybe it was neither. The universe would never tell.
It was the knowledge of the time limit looming over her head that had her pulling away from Tim far sooner than she would have liked.
She would have liked to stay there forever.
But, in twenty-four hours, she would be dead.
She had a lot to do before then.
So, she worked.
It wasn’t like she didn’t know what she wanted to do. She had had far too long to think about the way things had turned out, about how she could have done things better.
It was far too easy.
Too easy to toss her earrings into the shoebox hidden in Adrien’s pocket dimension, not to be discovered until it was far too late. Too easy to walk right up to Cobblepot and spit in his face and then watch as he screamed and fell back, clutching his eye as a throwing knife pierced his brain. Too easy to toss his body into the harbor, not to be found until she was already long gone.
She rushed to Paris to get rid of the people Cobblepot had sent. And then she had walked right across the street, stained clothes stashed in her backpack, and ran to her parents to let them envelop her in a hug that was so tight she swore something inside of her cracked.
She took everyone out for pizza. To celebrate, she had said. She grinned around her cup as Jonathan and Edward argued with Emma over who got to adopt her in a way that wasn’t entirely joking. Complained about Adrien drinking milk straight from the carton even though it didn’t really count when the carton was a single serving. Handed Ara her extra slice because, for the first time in ages, she really wasn’t all that hungry.
She went out to get drinks with Tim, sitting on top of the roof with a cup of coffee in his hand and a can of brandless energy drink in her own. Talked with him for hours about anything that he wanted, about nothing and yet everything. Promised him a date she would never be able to attend, a liar until the very end.
Had headed home on her own.
The world would be fine. They would all be fine. So what if she wasn’t around to see it?
She had seen enough.
But… at the end of her time…
Well, who had to know?
Had to know that the two packs worth of cigarette stubs in a trashcan by her bed had been smoked over her last hour? Had to know that she had had to stop writing several times while she had portioned out her will to make sure no tears dripped onto the paper? Had to know that she had screamed and cried her throat raw minutes before?
Had to know that her eyes stayed locked on her computer screen, watching the milliseconds count down in a way that was both painfully slow and far too quick? Had to know that her heart beat in time with the clock ticking down?
Had to know that her last breath was little more than a whimper as her body locked up, every muscle tensing, and she found that she was no longer able to breathe in?
The universe would never tell.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Canary Masterlist
#enjoy i say while hoping people cry#the fact that some people still think im a good person is hilarious#the fact that they think im a FLUFF WRITER is even more funny tho#anyways get fucked babes#canary#maribat#not gonna tag the ship because it's not really the focus#marinette dupain cheng#ladybug#also im doing this in a rush before my computer crashes again#this thing is LONG#and tumblr does not like it
13 notes
·
View notes
Note
STAR! STAR I LOVE IT I LOVE IT! Gosh that fic was amazing body and soul whole once more tell me your thoughts of the game! Your ideas! I NEED ANGRY DAD HENRY WITH AN AXE CHASING AFTER WILSON FOR WHAT HE DID TO HIS INK DEMON SON PLEASE!!!
Joey you lost dad rights Audrey and bendy are Henry’s kids now
Friend! Thank you!! I’m glad you enjoyed it, I had an absolute blast writing it. Saw the art and was like, “WOW, I need to write something like that right now immediately.”
I think the game is awesome! They outdid themselves! I’m in the middle of a second watch-through with a more in-depth exploration of the game, and I’m really enjoying seeing it all again. I originally just breezed through a no-commentary video from someone who had clearly finished it before and did everything very quickly, because! I had no intention of falling back in the fandom! A friend asked if I was going to watch it and that she was going to, so I figured I’d just check it out for the sake of it!
(spoilers below, if you missed the spoiler tag)
But then Henry was in it?? HECK. But even beyond Henry’s inclusion, I really like Audrey, I love baby Bendy, and the visuals are incredible. I don’t even mind that it was the same “animator gets trapped in the studio, needs to survive and escape” premise because I felt that the differences built on the original rather than copied it.
My only complaints, therefore, are extremely minor. One, I don’t love that they made the Lost Ones hostile. They were my shivering, skeletal, mostly silent, tragic babies in the first game! The deep despair they exuded just really hit me hard, so I’m kinda meh that they have a mindless sort of violence now. That’s what the Searchers are for. That being said, I did like that some had personalities.
Two, the Ink Demon. “Bendy.” Whatever you want to call him. His wandering in the original was probably one of my favorite parts, so I wasn’t a huge fan of how he only seemed to appear for scripted events, and even then, you didn’t really even see him most of the time, just heard him growling. And c’mon… “The Ink Demon is coming. Hide.” Really? What happened to the player needing to pay attention, listening for the heartbeat and watching out for his inky wall shadows? And then hearing the heart-attack inducing music when he spotted you? I think it would have been cool if they just had that darkness and the warmth being drained out of the color, and preferably, that heartbeat. I did like his voice, though, it’s a good choice for him with the emphasized demonic appearance.
Still unsure about his new design, to be honest. I really liked his tall skeletal form and the way he sort of trudged around. I don’t hate it or anything, I just don’t know if I like it, lol.
Now on to my ideas!! Angry dad Henry is actually one of the other stories I’m working on! Along with one where everything is nice and nothing hurts and Joey just one day says to Henry “I want to make a child with the Ink Machine” and Henry has to take several very deep breaths before choking out “I’ll get right on that.” There’s another I haven’t started yet but the premise is that Allison actually remembers pre-Wilson stuff like Henry does and she breaks him out (inspired specifically by a shot in Rockit Music’s song “Revive My Soul”) so it’s her, Henry, and Tom running around the studio pre- and during Audrey.
I also want to do something with either Audrey asking Henry about Joey or Henry meeting Joey’s memory ghost thing. Maybe both.
But yes, Joey has lost all dad rights and Henry will be calling dibs! Sorry, them’s the rules!
#i answered a thing#flippythegodzilla#batdr spoilers#star's thoughts about stuff#star's feelin' the love#life and times of star
11 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
nooorfreebie
Nooor_freebie
ghostingkins
This Body Is Not Mine
hephaestionscopain
ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ
bunbunscider
👾Bun
yasuyarasu
声の限り君お呼ぶよ