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dirkjakeweekly · 3 years

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DIRKJAKE FIC RECS

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INTRO

This page is not intended to be an encyclopedia, but rather a non-exhaustive list of a few Dirkjake Fanfics (and Fancomics) for those that may be interested in the ship, but a little too tired of trawling through AO3 search! Some of these contain NSFW or suggestive content, viewer discretion is advised.

[ FIC RECS (last updated Jan 2021, click readmore for full list) ]

It’s only a canvas sky

Their guardians dead at the hands of the Condesce, growing up in the shadow of her slow takeover of the Skaian Federation, Dirk Strider and Jake English have spent their whole lives alone up until shortly before their twelfth birthdays.

Or: Dirk fixes a transmitter, makes a friend, builds a robot, and tries to communicate affection over distance to the barest possible minimum.

Read here!

GOD’S BRAND NEW FATE SELECTOR (Fancomics)

In ONE PARTICULAR TIMELINE, detached from many similar ones, an aspiring divorcee stands by his baby’s cradle and attempts to hatch an escape plan with some aid from the ghost of his long-deceased boyfriend. He’s not exactly helpful.

SOMEWHERE ELSE ENTIRELY, Dirk Strider is overcame by the nagging feeling his splinters may be getting a little out of hand and far too into his head, when he gets a booty call.

One timeline is Epilogues-Compliant, another Epilogues-Divergent.

Read here!

We’re All Friends & Family Here (And Frankly, We’re Sick Of Your Shit)

It’s been about a year since the big Fast Forward, and sure, things on Earth C aren’t perfect for everyone. But they’re fine. Really. It’s fine. Everything is super fuckin’ swell, and that’s that.

It’s not like one night is going to change anything.

Read here!

Perpetuity

“Call it a car crash waiting to happen, you’ll just call it your downfall”

Dirk is a romantic, just not a particularly optimistic one.

(Written pre-epilogues release, post-game, fix-it)

Read here!

Tailspinning Into the Epilogues with Dirk and Jake (complete series)

Read here!

Stark Nonfiction (Part of the Tailspinning series)

Jake tries his hand at a gentler epilogue.

Read here!

Between the Lines (Part of the Tailspinning series)

“It’s just… I can’t remember the last time I felt so at peace, I guess. It was such a lovely jaunt with Jade, and instead of being all torn up about coming home, I feel even better, now. It’s actually been a real while and a half since I felt… bad, you know? Like actually bad.”

You don’t have much in the way of emotional permanence about that sort of thing. Surely it was months ago, when you were staring gloomily at the bottoms of bottles like the world’s most up-his-own-ass useless overdramatic dilettante. Did it even really happen, if it all, in hindsight, just seems like a dumb pantomime of misery to get attention? A successful dumb pantomime of misery to get attention, mind you, you definitely got it, and a boyfriend to boot. Was it ever really as atrocious and apocalyptic and unsurvivable as it seemed?

Read here!

A Palate Cleanser (Part of the Tailspinning series)

ROXY: hay everybody its jakes turn! ROXY: hes got a few words hed like to say about our dear departed buddy

The eulogy we missed on Candy’s page 15.

Read here!

Eschewal

“you hope he’s a benevolent god”

Read here!

Grublr. (Fancomic)

In the consort kingdom, atop of the large, humongous mansion where the god of Hope lives, there is an apartment complex.

Read here!

The Hitchhikers Guide to Your Ex-Boyfriend (Fancomic)

Jake English waking up sore and alone on a cold floor is not a strange occurrence for him as of late. The ethereal beam of light and sluggishly churning floor is new, but he’s woken up in stranger places.

If circumstances were better he’d probably have something shocked and relevant to say about this strange landscape he’s found himself in, but circumstances are in fact legendarily shit right now.

(A comic/fic where Jake English gets rights)

Read here!

The Four Kings, the God Thief, and the Black Diamond Pirates

Dirk and Vriska have it good. They raid ships, pillage merchant vessels, constantly poison each other, possess a lucrative pact with the Wind King, sing a lot of dope fuckin’ sea shanties, and captain a loveable crew of pirate scum. They’re ready to kick back, take it easy, and become the vile and revered scourge of the diamond trading line.

Then they find someone in the water.

Read here!

Sea shanties for Thots (Four Kings continuation)

Jake English has never done anything wrong, ever, in his life, if you don’t count literally all that stuff from the first installment of oxfordRoulette’s diegetic-musical-cum-found-family-pirate-AU. Luckily, that was in the last story, and he is completely better now in all respects. None of that nonsense is a thing anymore and it will not be relevant at all! Surrounded by friends and allies, with a very cool piratey boyfriend and a hold full of treasure from his recently decimated country, he’s got everything a fellow could want.

What will he do?

Befriend an octopus god. Learn to fish. Kick back. Take it easy. Kiss his boyfriend a lot. Open a jewelry company? Pursue immortality. Confront his past. Embrace his future. Maybe save the world. One thing’s for sure: there will be a lot of songs involved.

Read here!

Two idiots at Homoville, N69, TX

In a moment of desperation, Dirk goes on r/relationships. Things get oversharey real quick. He types as follows:

“I [23M] cannot understand my [24M?] roommate. He is the most bizarre man to ever set foot on earth and I’m afraid I’m losing him.”

or, and They Were Roommates.

Read here!

Drive it home with one headlight

Some mistakes are so fucking big that they divert the path of your life entirely, sending you somewhere you were never meant to go. Some mistakes are so seismic and so obvious that when you look back on your life all you can see is the beacon where you made them. Some mistakes leave you so far off course you don’t even recognize who you are or why you’re still here.

You don’t usually get a chance to make amends.

Read here!

A Tallied List of Various Occasions in Which Jake English Encountered the Elusive Smile Belonging to One Dirk Strider

Jake English, explorer extraordinaire, tracks down the most unique treasure of all: a nerd in pointy sunglasses.

Read here!

BONES OF BLACK MARROW

Dirk summons a demon for the exclusive purpose of ‘cathartic boning.’ He gets what he wants.

NOTE: This fic is ergodic (think House of Leaves), which means it cannot be downloaded for offline perusal on your kindle/pdf reader. Also has CYOA elements, so clicking “Entire Work” will make the fic impossible to read.

Read here!

fire fly

A wedding. An anxiety attack. A daring tryst.

Read here!

DIRK TOPS (Fancomic)

Ever think about how Dirk Strider got full narrative awareness of the fanfics where he’s the big scary hunk in charge and went “I can do that” when he wasn’t, in fact, able to do that? i do. i think about that.

Read here!

MLM stands for Moron loving Moron (Fancomic)

aren’t you TIRED of longing? don’t you just want to go APESHIT while dating your best bro? i mean, you’ve earned it, right? (Collection of oneshot comics. marked as complete, updates whenever)

Read here!

fist is a four letter word

Jake’s face quirks. “App?“

“Yeah, app. Like, application. You know your phone can do other things right? Like, apps.”

“You sure do keep using that word! I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean.”

“You know, apps.” You try to think of how to explain apps. You suddenly can’t think of what apps are.

What’s the name of an app.

Literally just name any app.

He’s staring at you.

Oh my god.

Read here!

Witching Hour

There’s something almost magical about that time between too late at night and too early in the morning. It’s the perfect time to meet a stranger and go on an adventure.

Read here!

#homestuck #dirkjake #dirk strider #jake english #homestuck 2 #fanfics #Sweet Picks #fancomics

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phoenixyfriend · 3 years

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The “Momma Sturmvoraus was Literally Satan” AU

As requested by @spazzbot. This AU was initially brainstormed on the GG fanworks server almost a year ago. Specifically, on the first day of 2020.

[ID: a truncated discord message by “Miss Nixy, Gay for RoboLadies” posted 01/01/2020. The message reads “I need to sleep but please for the moment consider:” and ends there.]

So. Let’s get to it.

Satan took a human form because why not see what's going on topside, live like a human, and “Oh shit is this pregnancy? This is pregnancy. Fuck, that's a tiny human. Which is now half demon. Am I supposed to take care it? Wonder if retconing this form into that Valois family was a bad idea. They do have SO much money though, I get to live like a queen. I suppose another child shouldn't hurt, it wasn't that bad. Oh, he's cute, this is actually making sense, why humans do all the sinning. Not counting dear Aaronev's murders, of course, those are just evil, but I did search out the worst of the humans to pair myself to...”

This is literally just "Tarvek and Anevka's mom was low-key Satan on a bored “let's be human for a decade or two to see what happens” jaunt, consequences happen because these kids are LITERALLY half-demon and arguably anti-Christs."

Also it's just Very Funny for Tarvek, ineffectual sexy lamp fashion twunk extraordinaire, to be an antichrist

Jeff thinks he’s pretty. Jeff keeps describing features that don’t entirely make sense. (Jeff’s canon name is Karl Thotep but they spent so long unnamed that the server collectively named them Jeff.)

This is not a crossover with anything, btw. Ambiguously Pop Culture Satan just got bored and went to have babies with a serial killer.

They’re just kids! That are vaguely demonic. So. Moreso than the rest of the Valois.

Sometimes "mom" comes back from the dead and visits Anevka and Tarvek to impart Wisdom and possibly magic lessons The rooms always smell faintly of sulfur after that...

They try to put Anevka in the machine but SHE isn't hurt and the MACHINE just melts

So that's the end of that.

It's very awkward for everyone, but the paperwork isn't too bad. It's very easy to write "incidental fire began during late-fugue experimentation, resulted in fire spreading through six rooms and several casualties, including Prince Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus."

As per @atagotiak, “I feel like if we’re going in any way dimensional weirdness with thing, Tarvek got so good at exploring bc he could just clip through walls.”

With image provided by @thisarenotarealblog:

Tarvek in Paris: My dead mother keeps showing up in my dreams to tell me I need to seduce my way out of my problems and also she looks like Satan. Tarvek's Voltaire-Appointed Therapist: I still don't know what that means. Just like the last five times. Tarvek: I keep telling her that I can’t seduce Colette, if seduction is that important she should get Anevka to do it.

Like he probably wouldn’t say most of that in front of any Voltaire-approved individual, but still.

Tarvek is still very good at self control but there's a Special Edge to his rants.

(Derailed in the moment to me thinking about Anevka in a sfw-but-concerningly-deadly succubus getup, because... yeah.)

Aaronev dies and goes to hell and his dead wife is just there like "hi! Time to be tortured for eternity!" He wasn't a good husband so. He can't exactly sentimentalize his way out.

“In the sexy way?” “... not for you, no.”

Mostly I just want the BULLSHIT that is "Storm Mom was actually just Satan getting bored and going on vacation as a retconned Valois girl, the kids are half-demons and sometimes it Shows."

To clarify: the Satan bit isn't the retcon. Grandma used to have one daughter. Now there are two. (Seffie and Martellus's mother doesn't remember being an only child, but sometimes...)

Satan retconned a new daughter in, which included a Valid Valois Venusian Vestment, so the blood tests play out.

The subtle signs of wrongness would be fun too. Anevka tends to smile a bit too wide and sharp for a human face. Inexplicable uneasiness, here you can’t point at any specific thing that’s wrong but it’s uncomfortable. Uncanny valley prettiness, almost like the porcelain she became in other timelines. Skin isn’t supposed to be that smooth.

My brain's pre-nap contribution at that point was "Satan's pronouns when not pretending to Human are sin/sinself" which is! Certainly a thing.

Tarvek, at some nebulous future point: I mean, your ancestors were monsters, but my dad was a serial killer and my mom was literally Satan, instead of just figuratively like Lucrezia, so. I mean. I kind of get what you're going through.

Per @firebirdeternal: Tarvek and Anevka growing up with "you're allergic to holy water" and not questioning it until a little later because What.

And then they test it and it's like "yeah, no, there's a rash now. That stung. What the fuck."

It INFURIATES Gil in Paris when Tarvek tells him that's a thing, because there's nothing chemically different about Holy water and regular water. But no, this is somehow happening.

It gets logged in medical journals as a Valois genetic thing because, well, Mom was like that too, right?

One time they both go into a church for an Adventure and Gil is very annoyed to find that Tarvek is like. Faintly smoking. It smells like burnt hair in here.

Gil: What smells like burnt hairgel? Tarvek: [glares]

Gil decides that it must be something particular to the church, like a fungus or something in the stone, contaminating the air and water so it only LOOKS like the holiness is what's setting off reactions.

It is not.

Tarvek once got into an argument with someone and ate a slab of raw, completely uncooked meat as a power move.

SVV seems to work perfectly. Everyone is fine. We get the ‘you fight like ducks’ moment.

And then Tarvek bursts into flames, and everyone panics because no they fixed this what the fuck is he still infected with Hogfarb’s oh my god... and then everything settles down and he's perfectly fine. Not a scratch on him, no longer turning funny colors. Completely unharmed. He's in a nicely tailored suit and looks faintly stunned

"I just met my dead mom, who's apparently Satan. She told me that after I died the first time just now, I should be harder to kill later, especially with fire, because now there's more demon and less mortal and guys I think I'm going crazy." "Is that a martini?" Tarvek looks down. "Apparently."

Tarvek starts just. Randomly setting things on fire by glaring too hard and has to tone it down. Meanwhile, Agatha and Gil are having crises about how he's somehow getting PRETTIER.

Is he faintly glowing? Maybe!

Gil handles it by angrily sniping at Tarvek about how of COURSE he's an evil little rat with a background like that.

Tarvek just wants a nap and to forget this ever happened. Many people are sworn to secrecy. It's very awkward.

Still, SVV did something, for handwave-y reasons, and so they're linked now. Gil and Agatha both getting tiny flashes of the same shenanigans.

They get none of the powers. They just keep getting Weird Shit.

Other characters with divine influence are like "Did you.... did you make a pact with a demon?" "What no that's our boyfriend."

Tho tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if a Heterodyne did sign a contract with a demon at some point in exchange for like. Materials. A hundred souls sacrificed in exchange for some succubus blood. Thanks!

Tarvek and Othar: Falling out of CW as in canon. Tarvek: WHAT THE HELL SINCE WHEN DO I HAVE WINGS HIDE THIS BEFORE I GET BOOTED FROM THE LINE FOR THE THRONE

IDK where Anevka is during all this. I think she might have decided to go sleep her way through the courts of the Ice Tsars. Vacation, y'know?

Othar after he's decided to make Tarvek his new Heroic Apprentice: AH, my poor afflicted young friend, it's noble of you to go against the dark nature of your tragic heritage like this. Tarvek: I hate you. I wish I could hate you to death. But you have a point. I shouldn't let my father's blood limit what I strive for in life. Othar: I... I thought your mother was... Tarvek: I know what I said.

Tarvek: Also you can't tell ANYONE about that, I can't have them thinking I'm not actually in line for the Storm King's throne.

He does admittedly have to like. Explain things to Grandma.

Terabithia is Tarvek’s maternal grandmother so this is supremely awkward. That said...

Grandma fondly remembers her pregnancy cravings; bone marrow and sulfur.

"Yeah so, my mother, your daughter, was... maybe actually Satan? But retconned into your life?" "Tarvek, darling, please. I figured that out half a century ago."

TARVEK ACCIDENTALLY FINDS HIM HIMSELF WEIRDLY INTENSE AT CONTRACTS

I mean that honestly just Tracks about Tarvek anyways? But like moreso.

He just. Writes something up and there's things getting signed or shook on and then the person tries to break the contract and either suddenly catch fire or are deeply unlucky for a set amount of time.

And Tarvek's just standing there like "how in the FUCK did I do that?"

Severity of infernal punishment depends on the severity of the breach of contract.

Tarvek finds out that Anevka's been convincing rich people to sign their souls over to her. It's a fun challenge. She keeps them in jars.

They can still remotely pilot their bodies but like. They can't TELL anyone what happened.

Satan: I'm going to go make babies and now everyone else has to deal with the consequences.

Anevka's living up to that whole "princess of hell" vibe. Tarvek's just like "nope nope nope I want the storm throne, not the hell throne, BYE MOM."

Satan's just feeling sinself down in hell like "awwww look at my babies go, aren't they adorable?"

Tarvek: Anevka, what... first off, how did you figure it out? Anevka: Well, I temporarily died when father put me in the machine, and... I can't say that hell kicked me out because they were afraid I'd take over, but mother DID say she'd rather I play about with human governments instead of Hell's. Tarvek: Okay, cool cool cool. What after you planning to DO with all these souls? Anevka: They make for some lovely reading lamps, don't they?

(Anevka absolutely sets herself the goal of acquiring new titles that rival her old ones, or even surpass them. She just black widows her way through Europa.)

I just want someone (probably Snackleford) to ascend, take one look at Tarvek, and run SCREAMING.

Tarvek still needed to be anchored to Higgs, because Tarvek is Baby.

Gil is eventually in a relationship with an Eternal God Queen and the Literal Son of Satan.

Family dinners can include ALL the in-laws if you duck down to hell! - You borrow Bill from... probably heaven, maybe purgatory. - You have Lu and Aaronev and Satan already there, though the first two... well. Aaronev and Lu get invited to dinner but they have to eat by themselves at the kiddy table and nobody talks to them or acknowledges their presence. After all, this is hell, and what better punishment for Lu than to be completely ignored, and for Aaronev to see Lu at her worst and be reminded that he gave everything for this horrible, horrible person who isn't even pretending to care about him anymore. - Zanta and Klaus get invited via portal. - Anevka saunters in with a blood-soaked dress and a complaint about militant demon-hunters refusing to let her go shopping for a new pair of shoes. - Zeetha tagged along with the OT3. (She can't wait to see this situation explode.)

Oh God, Satan is actually second place as far as good parenting goes.

Well, actually, fourth. Because Adam and Lilith. But second as far as bio parents go. 1. Zanta 2. Satan 3. Klaus 4/5. Lu and Aaronev N/A. Bill

Someone (Anevka) decides to stir the pot and invites Von Pinn, Terabithia, Bang.

Bang is basically Gil’s older sister, right? Right.

This is Zanta meeting Bang for the first time! Zanta is just: "It's so nice to meet my husband's adopted daughter." Klaus freezes. Bang freezes. Gil is the only one who is just. "Yeah." Meanwhile Zeetha is crying with laughter off to the side because both of them deserve this. (Zanta would legit love Bang though.)

Agatha: Tarvek, I think DuPree is-- Tarvek: Hitting on my sister? I know. Agatha: On your mom, actually. Tarvek: NO!

Also I do love the idea of like. Nobody tells Bang they're inviting her. She just wakes up in Hell like. "Ah. Yes. Fair enough."

Satan: Oh no no no my dear, you're here as a guest. Besides as well as you'd fit you're not one of mine, you've got other things waiting for you. Bang: Okay, but I love the decor. And is that Cheesecake?

Bang’s family has their own evil god in the novels, but! Bang DID pick on Tarvek a lot in Paris. Satan cares more than Anevka does. Bang might get the sexy punishment.

I feel like the fact that no permanent damage was done and it taught Tarvek a lot of things means Satan isn't gonna be all that upset about it.

And let's be real, if there's a character in GG who could look the literal Christian devil in the eye and be like "Yeah I tortured your kid, what're you going to do about it?" it's Bang.

Even Satan doesn't know what to do or think about Othar.

He sure is here! As Anevka’s arm candy! Nobody knows what to do except Anevka herself, who just wants to be Smug.

(What's that scene from Phineas and Ferb that's the mad scientist trapping the platypus within the rules of polite dining at a fine restaurant? Like he can't make a scene because that would be rude?) (That. Othar would dearly love to start a fight, but it's a Family Dinner. You're only allowed to fight verbally at those.)

(Othar isn't even fighting Satan, he just wants to argue with Klaus.) (And maybe fanboy in Bill's direction a bit).

#Girl Genius #Phoenix Posts #Anevka Sturmvoraus #Tarvek Sturmvoraus #Aaronev Sturmvoraus #Gilgamesh Wulfenbach #Agatha Heterodyne #Lucrezia Mongfish #Othar Tryggvassen #Bangladesh DuPree #Otharnevka #GG OT3

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brucewayneargento-moved · 3 years

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To All My Fathers (Chapter 1)

Summary: Damian Wayne, a fourteen year old with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, goes onto a road trip with the four men who shaped him as a person before his bone marrow transplant.

Fic also avaliable on FF.net

Damian had definitely decided he would not wear a fanny pack.

It didn't matter that it was the most convenient and comfortable way to take a chemo pump iv from place to place. He'll much rather attract attention with a backpack connected to a pump than to regress back to the eighties in the most horrendous fashion. Sure he might pick up unwanted attention from strangers but A) He could always stare at them back; B) He was past the time to care and C) He already didn't have eyebrows so that was kind of a moot point.

The boy was currently seated at the med bed of the 666 room. (Drake had made several jokes about it, which Damian didn't mind and in fact encouraged, because with his diagnosis came a morbid sense of humor and he was also glad at least one person still treated him like a human being). He was practicing violin while he could still hold it and also enjoying the fact that he was wearing actual comfortable clothes and not a paper robe that made his autism completely and utterly fucking lose it.

Some kids from the other rooms had come to see him perform and Damian loved to have an audience. Because he had an ego, not as much and not as evil as people usually thought, but still. Most of them were children younger than ten who just needed some entertainment that wasn't a superhero.

"This was Ode To Joy by Bethoveen," Damian explained. The three children around him applauded. When they stopped he could still hear hands clapping, he looked up and his eyes met his father's.

Bruce came closer to him and the kids left after being called by a nurse. Boy and man looked at each other for a few seconds.

"Are you ready?" Bruce finally asked

Damian might have sounded insane if he said it outloud, but his father and Jon were very similar.

The blue eyes, the black hair and the fact that they both cried before or after entering a room with Damian in it, bonus points if he was being stabbed with a needle right at that moment, then you could see their eyes getting crystalized almost in slow motion.

And it's not like Damian was annoyed by their emotions as one might have thought, it was more of a...sting, (man being stabbed with a needle on a daily basis was really taking a toll on him, wasn't it?) like, something that hurt but it wasn't enough for him to do anything about it more than to grit his teeth and power through it.

Numbness was apparently a common thing among patients. But Damian thought of himself as many stuff, but common wasn't one of them

And perhaps his ego was the only thing keeping him optimistic, perhaps thinking that he was too special to die alone in a hospital room was what made him stronger against the whole GvHD thing.

Leslie had told him that he was lucky to find a donor that was relatively near, in Kansas nonetheless, home of Superman and. So now he had just to keep up with the program: L-asparaginase,dexamethasone and vincristine several times a day and wait.

Or at least that was the original plan.

"Yes." he finally answered, standing up.

When all you receive in your life is gaslighting, you don't even notice the medical gaslighting.

Maybe it was the whole "being indoctrinated since birth by an ecoterrorist death cult" thing but his ability to exercise his free will hadn't been particularly developed.

The bruises? Vigilante stuff. The fever? Probably the flu. Weight loss? Maybe he had gotten a growth spurt that just made him seem thinner…He had to throw up blood to even be admitted into a hospital.

The Wayne-Head name allowed him the finest care probably ever known to man. "Nepotism: where you can die comfortably" that was an actual thing he had said while high on sedatives. He could only imagine his mother's face upon hearing it.

When he woke up both his parents were there. Damian could immediately tell something was wrong. His father was crying and his mother was stoic.

"Oh, ok, so I'm dying" He said, grabbing their attention. Both Talia and Bruce turn to look at him. Damian tried to sit and noticed his arm was cranked to an IV. "Oh, I'm actually dying."

"Do not speak like that." His mother warned him with a threatening voice. Bruce kept quiet but still with a face wet with tears.

Next to them there was a third person. She was an older woman with gray hair and glasses. Doctor Thompkins, his father's godmother. She went over to the medbed and sat on the foot. Damian crossed his arms. She was a smart woman but had the annoying habit of treating him like a perpetual child. Probably the closest thing he had to an actual grandmother.

"Damian," she fixed her glasses and looked at the clipboard she was holding. "Your blood count is in the 200.000 white cells."

Damian's eyes slightly widened, which covertly hid how much of a gut punch he just received.

"I can't have leukemia," he simply stated. There was a slight pained sound coming from his father's mouth which made Damian look him in the eye…that's how he knew it was true.

He started to grin which turned into a giggle which turned into a laugh.

Bruce and Talia looked at him with worry.

"Denial is very common," Leslie stated, trying to remain calm and also sooth Damian up. The teen kept laughing and then stopped to talk.

He had tears in his eyes. "I mean... so much for being an eugenics frankenstein monster, I've failed at even that."

The rest of that afternoon was a blur for him. Except for the being stabbed with needles on his spine parts, that one he remembered very well. Since he had such a high tolerance for pain, the fact that he was casually hurt was news to him.

Of course Dick had been the first one to enter the room.

Damian had hoped that he wasn't but after all it made sense that he did, he was his Robin. He could imagine him punching a wall and screaming when he heard the news. That mental image didn't upset him at all, clearly.

Damian was pretending to watch TV where his oldest brother entered the scene. He had prepared what he was going to say. How he was okay and how he was too stubborn to die anyways. But all of that went to hell when Dick entered the room and immediately ran up to hug him.

All of the walls he had been building up until now feel down hard. Damian just had to press his head against Dick's shoulder for the tears to start running.

"I want a falafel."

They were in the hospital room after a particularly hard session of chemo. His brother was on a chair in front of him reading a book and not looking at him.

"You just threw up on my shoe," he reminded Damian.

"I'm here for a good time, not a long time"

Dick rolled his eyes, now accustomed to the fact that his sibling had developed a morbid sense of humor because of his condition. Right at that moment the door opened and Doctor Thompkins entered the room.

"How are we?" She asked.

"Great." Both responded almost robotically. Damian gagged.

"I wanted to talk to you, Dick, about the bone marrow transplant."

"Why not talk to me?" Damian intervened. "I'm the one whose blood isn't working."

"Because you're still a child," Dick answered as a matter of fact. And despite everything he was glad his older brother at least now had the courtesy of treating him like he had always done. "What's the prognosis, doc?"

"We're considering the umbilical cord transfusion." Leslie explained. "But you will have to ask my godson first.

"Why would he need to...wait...Selina's pregnant?!" Damian asked but then he threw up again. "That wasn't meant to signify my feelings on the matter."

Leslie continued. "But that will still take a few months and...I'm afraid we don't have that much time."

Damian pretended to gag and looked down at the bucket, all to avoid looking at Dick's face.

"But the good news is that we found a match."

Damian hadn't even had time to think about that sentence before he blurted it out, but now it was there, out in the open. For everyone to hear.

"I want to have children."

Everyone being an hyperbole since Alfred was the one who was actually there. His father had to go to patrol so the butler had the night shift to take care of Damian while at the hospital to which the boy was appreciative of. Except for this moment when he was mentally slapping himself for letting on too much. Side effects of being raised to be a killing machine.

"I...did not know that." Alfred admitted. Up to twelve seconds ago he had been standing up listing the symptoms of chemo at Damian's request since he didn't trust Leslie to do it without sugarcoating it and his father might burst into tears in an attempt to do so. Damian had been listening attentively before Alfred mentioned that it was possible that he might wind up being infertile.

The boy simply turned around to the other side of the bed and sighed as tears left his eyes.

Dear Damian

I could not be more content that you are receiving the transplant that you so much need. I wish I could accompany you on the journey to Kansas, but sadly Lady Talia needs me to look out after Bialya...I wish you nothing but a rapid recovery. I implore you to remember that you are not alone in this, to remember that there is a plethora of people that adore you with all of their souls and that you will always have their help. Even when you do not want it.

Best Wishes

Ravi.

Damian looked at Alfred who glanced at him for a nanosecond in the mirror of the car. He knew he was the most active ally he had in this game. Since he not only advocated to his father for this trip to be possible but he also was the only person to always show his compassion in spite of if he actually deserved it or not. Bruce was next to him while Richard sat next to Damian and assesed his condition.

They stayed in comfortable silence in the car with only the sound of "dad music" on the radio for background noise. Damian allowed himself to close his eyes and to feel the soothing bounce of the car against the pavement on his skin...

They stopped suddenly after a while and Damian opened his eyes, he frowned in confusion as Alfred parked the car in front of the airport.

"What are we doing here?" he asked curiously.

Alfred turned around to look at him. "Your father , Master Richard and I thought It'll be a good idea to fly in a friend of yours."

Damian's frown deepened. "A friend?"

Suddenly a tap was heard on the window. They both turned around to look at the front window. It was being slightly knocked on it by a man with a white cane and a bald head who was smiling at them.

"Ravi?" Damian rubbed his eyes and felt them watering up.

Damian knew that he could never make up to Ravi for being responsible for losing his vision. And he also knew that in spite of that the man would still love him unconditionally.

That could be proven easily by the letters that he had written to him when he found out about his diagnosis…

All his father figures were here, suddenly he felt an internal strength he hadn't felt in a while.

#tw: cancer #tw // cancer #tw cancer #damian wayne #bruce wayne #dick grayson #alfred pennyworth #ravi #robin #batman #nightwing

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thebiscuiteternal · 3 years

Text

“Once More, Again” Gen, Reincarnation, Yunmeng Reconciliation, Fluff and Angst, Creepy Frogs, Promises of Cats

__________

The night hunt wasn't supposed to be a big deal at all. A flock of possessed birds had scared a caravan of travelers away from their camps. A simple cleanup job, one that didn't really even need him.

Then one of his disciples comes running up in a barely concealed panic.

"Jiang-zongzhu, we have a... problem."

Coiling up Zidian to return her to her ring shape, Jiang Cheng scowls at the man. "What kind of problem? Is there another flock?"

"Ah- no... it's..."

A loud wail breaks through the trees, the source easily pinpointed as the small, dirty girl one another disciple is gently trying to shush as she guides the child into the clearing.

"That's our problem," the first disciple says, scratching the back of his head. "We found her in what was left of the camp, but none of the caravan members claim her."

"No one at all?"

"They say they have no idea who she is. She doesn't feel like she's connected to the birds, but-"

Scowl deepening, he goes to the child and crouches down. Surprisingly, she stops crying the moment she's aware of his presence. Scrubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands, she raises her head to stare at him.

He involuntarily sucks in a sharp breath.

The shape of her jaw and nose, the tilt of her brow, the spatter of freckles across her nose and cheeks, those are all different, but looking into bright silver eyes, he knows- he knows it can't be anyone else.

Sniffling quietly, Jiang Yanli reaches for the hem of his sleeve and clutches tight.

Little Meilin has been fed and bathed and safely ensconced in a veritable nest of blankets in the guest room closest to his own before he feels like he can breathe again.

Asleep and smiling, her hair shining from the oil one of the aunties had put in it, she looks like she has been living in Lotus Pier her whole life.

Or like she never left.

He closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the wall.

No. No that's not fair.

He won't make her live in someone else's shadow. Even if she carries the same soul, she is Meilin, not Jiang Yanli and must be treated as such.

He briefly considers not telling Wei Wuxian. Wouldn't this fall squarely into that "past life" bullshit of his?

He sighs. Again, no.

Maybe it's a sign of weakness on his part, but he summons up a butterfly messenger. With a short succinct "A-jie reincarnated and is staying in Lotus Pier," he sends it off. He will contact Jin Ling properly in the morning.

---

"This better not be a trick, Jiang Cheng. That'd be low even for you."

Jiang Cheng freezes like he's been stabbed. He stares at the other man, looking for any sign of one of his usual bad taste jokes, but Wei Wuxian is pale and disheveled and angry and... oh. He really does think Jiang Cheng would lie about this to lure him back to Lotus Pier. After everything, he still...

He can't muster up any anger for this. He just feels tired all of a sudden, all the way into the marrow of his bones, and he doesn't want to be here anymore. "Liu Jiao will show you to her rooms," he says dully as he motions one of the maids who has been helping with Meilin forwards. Then he turns and leaves without waiting to see what kind of reaction Wei Wuxian has to that.

He's fleeing and he knows they can tell and he can't bring himself to care.

He tries to throw himself into work as a distraction, but quickly finds he can't concentrate for shit. After his fourth failed attempt at penning the necessary letter to Jin Ling, he decides he might as well give up.

Pointedly avoiding both Meilin's room and the area where he'd left Wei Wuxian and his ever-glowering husband, he heads out to one of the lesser-used piers. Workers gathering the autumn flowers wave in greeting, but thankfully give him space, and he settles in to watch and hopefully not do too much thinking.

---

It's nearly sunset and he's starting to doze a little when the pounding of tiny feet against the planks of the pier startle him fully awake. A giggling squeal of "Cheng-ge!" is all the warning he gets before his lap is suddenly full of squirming child.

"Cheng-ge? Who's Cheng-ge? Are we so familiar, now?" he chides with no actual bite at all as he flicks a button nose and her grin only gets even bigger. "Someone's been teaching you cheek, A-Lin."

"Can't possibly imagine anyone who would dare."

The flinch is entirely involuntary and he tries to smooth it over, but little fingers dig into his robe and he sees worry flicker over those bright eyes.

"Cheng-ge?"

"It's nothing," he says, patting her hair, then braces himself and looks up. It catches him off guard again to find Wei Wuxian watching him with a look of regret... maybe even apology.

"Mind if I sit?"

"Whether I say yes or no, you will anyway, so I might as well say yes." He'd intended it to come out sharp, the retaliation that he hadn't been able to manage earlier, but has much less heat and much more resignation than intended. Maybe it's because of that change that Wei Wuxian actually hesitates.

"If you want me to go-"

Leaning out of his lap, but refusing to get up or let go of his robes, A-Lin reaches out and tugs on Wei Wuxian's trousers in a clear demand.

Well... Maybe some things don't change, he thinks, rueful smile mirrored on his former shixiong's face as the latter obeys and kneels down beside them.

They sit in awkward silence, bound together by tiny hands holding a vice grip their clothing, until croaking songs begin ringing out from near the water and A-Lin perks up.

"Frogs! Cheng-ge, Xian-ge, can I catch one?"

He expects Wei Wuxian to automatically take over and say yes, but when he turns his head, the other man is just... watching him again.

He shakes it off and taps A-Lin on the forehead. "Boots off and let me tie up your skirts. If you get too muddy, the maids will throw you in a bath before they'll let you have dinner."

The girl wrinkles her nose, then nods and begins wrestling off her left. Practice born from another very squirmy child lets him work easily around her efforts, and she is shortly running off, laughter ringing behind her.

"You're... good with kids."

He scowls at Wei Wuxian. "That would be more of a compliment if you didn't sound so surprised," he says flatly.

"Ah." Wei Wuxian has the barest grace to look embarrassed, turning his gaze to the planks under him as he scratches his cheek. "Well... when I first met Jin Ling, he was such a brat, and then when I thought of who raised him-"

"Seriously not helping your case."

"Ugh, would you let me finish? Anyway, it turned out he was a good kid under all the thorn brambles. Which, again, considering who raised him-"

He really doesn't have the mental fortitude for this right now, he decides. Biting the inside of his cheek, he starts to get up, but a hand gripping his wrist stops him. "Wei Wu-"

"Please."

He squeezes his eyes shut.

Then he sits back down.

The hand on his wrist doesn't let go, and when he forces his eyes back open, Wei Wuxian is staring at that point of contact between them, thumb brushing absently against one of the tendons in an old familiar gesture. "When I got your message, I almost passed out," he finally says. "I was so afraid to let myself believe it. I thought I couldn't possibly be lucky enough for it to be true. I know I don't deserve for it to be true. I convinced myself you had to be lying, because somehow that actually hurt less than the possibility she was really here."

Jiang Cheng swallows back the pain that swells in his chest. His mouth tastes bitter. "Still not helping your case," he mutters.

But he still doesn't pull himself free.

Wei Wuxian laughs, the sound small and pained. "I know, I know."

"I did what you wanted," Jiang Cheng snaps, unable to stop himself. "This whole year, I-"

"I know." The grip on his wrist tightens and Wei Wuxian inhales shakily. "You did nothing to deserve it and I thought the worst of you anyway. I'm sorry."

He doesn't know how to respond to that, but he's saved from having to figure it out when a tiny figure stumbles along the docks, soaking wet and clutching one of the biggest lake frogs he's ever seen, short of a frog demon. "Did you fall in?" he asks, getting up again. "You look like a drowned-"

"He knocked me over! Look how fat he is!"

Big shiny eyes blink at him from the nest of her arms, then the creature makes a croak that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Maybe it is a frog demon.

A baby one, or something.

Wei Wuxian looks similarly nonplussed when he joins them, eyeing the frog with clear discomfort. "Eh... meimei, maybe you should let that one hop on home, yeah?"

"Aw, but he likes me!"

It does indeed seem to be very comfortable with being cuddled, which doesn't improve his opinion of it one bit. "We'll let someone look it over while you're In your bath," he says, subtly elbowing Wei Wuxian when it looks like the other might argue.

Fortunately, the other man catches on and nods. "Have to make sure he's nice and healthy."

"Okaaayyy."

---

"This is the creepiest thing I've ever seen."

Jiang Cheng can't argue with that, especially since the frog he's now definitely sure is some kind of demon is becoming creepier by the moment. Already, Wei Wuxian' prodding has caused it to turn from brown to a vague shade of greenish-purple and belch smoke.

When it opens a third eye, Lan Wangji has apparently had enough. "It should be exterminated," he says, starting to draw Bichen.

The frog hisses.

Hisses, showing off rows and rows of very un-frog-like fangs.

"Oh, fu-"

---

"Where is QiaoQiao?"

"You named it-"

"Escaped," Lan Wangji cuts in before Wei Wuxian can finish boggling at the choice.

"Yes, it escaped," Jiang Cheng says, mentally refusing to acknowledge that they agreed on the excuse. A-Lin pouts, and he gently ruffles her still-damp hair. "You can chase frogs any time you like, you know."

"But QiaoQiao was special."

That's... one way of putting it, he thinks as he tries not to shudder. "Why don't we find you something else special? What other animals do you like?"

"Hmnh... I like cats?"

"We can do cats. We'll find you the best cat," Wei Wuxian says, clearly relieved to hear no mention of dogs or more frogs.

Jiang Cheng allows it.

A loud rumble, far too loud for the tiny body that makes it, cuts into the conversation, and A-Lin hugs his sleeve to hide her face going bright red. "'m hungry," she mumbles into the cloth sheepishly, and he can't help the smile that tugs at his mouth as he crouches to scoop her up onto his hip.

"I think we're all hungry. Let's go see what the kitchens have in store for us tonight, hm?"

---

Having already seen A-Lin eat once already, Jiang Cheng takes more than a small amount of enjoyment in watching Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji openly stare as she inhales a fifth meat bun without chewing or coming up for air.

"What are you, a snake yao?" Wei Wuxian asks when he remembers how to work his jaw.

She puffs her cheeks at Wei Wuxian in an adorably offended huff. "I said I was hungry."

"No shi- kidding," Wei Wuxian quickly amends when Jiang Cheng glares. Then he grins. "How do you feel about spicier food?"

"You are not corrupting her with your chili oil addiction."

"It's not an addiction-"

"I wanna try. Can I try?"

His first instinct is to say absolutely not. But two pairs of eyes are giving him the soulful pleading look, and he sighs and fights the urge to roll his own. "Fine. But only a little," he says, picking up the bottle himself because Wei Wuxian wouldn't recognize the concept of "a little" if it bit him in the ass. "Chew this time."

"Well?" Wei Wuxian asks as she swallows the bite.

"It's okay."

He resolutely does not smirk at his former shixiong's crestfallen expression.

"Only okay?"

"Hot is good, but smoky is better," A-Lin pronounces with all the gravitas of a trained food expert, and both Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian can't help grinning at that.

"Everyone's a critic," Wei Wuxian says as he elbows his husband, who has a sleeve over his mouth in a clear attempt to pretend he's not been charmed as well.

Jiang Cheng is absolutely not smug about that.

---

"So, what are you going to do?"

Dessert is long gone, Lan Wangji has retired to bed, and the three of them are left sitting in the main hall, A-Lin clinging to his robes with honey-sticky fingers as she sleeps.

"We'll put out word, but unless someone comes to claim her, she'll stay here." Wei Wuxian continues to stare at him with that inscrutable expression, and he finally sighs. "I'm not going to turn her into A-jie. Past lives should stay in the past, remember?"

Wei Wuxian flinches and looks away.

Good.

The silence stretches long again, then his former shixiong huffs quietly. "I don't..." he starts, then licks his lips nervously and changes whatever tack he was about to take. "How are you planning on raising her, then?"

He gently pets long hair, and A-Lin responds by burrowing against his chest and shoving her face against his collar. "To figure herself out. If she wants to cook, if she wants to cultivate... hell, if she wants to make a living catching frogs, that's up to her. She's already put in her duty to this family."

"Good. That... That's good."

Still petting soft, fine hair, Jiang Cheng considers his next words carefully. "Until she's old enough to travel easily, you know she's going to demand visits from her Xian-ge."

Wei Wuxian stiffens and his head snaps up. "And... you... You're okay with that?" he asks, a faint glimmer of something akin to hope in his expression.

"At least until you deliver that cat you promised," Jiang Cheng says dryly. "I'm holding you to that. In writing, if I have to."

"You would," Wei Wuxian replies, rolling his eyes, but there is no missing the relief in his posture.

Nor the loss of tension in the room.

#mdzs #jiang cheng #wei wuxian #jiang yanli #sort of #fanfic

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fanfics4all · 4 years

Text

Not One Of You Anymore: Part 26

Request: Yes / No

Requests are closed <3 Have a nice day/night

John Murphy x Griffin!Fem!Reader

Word count: 3581

Warnings: People getting shot and I think that’s really it.

Y/N: Your Name

Summary: You weren’t meant to be born but you were so when you were ten your mom and the Chancellor sent you to the ground as a test for the 100

PLEASE DO NOT STEAL MY WORK, I WORK HARD ON MY FICS AND IT’S NOT COOL TO STEAL SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK!

If you want to be on the tag list for anything (My series fics, specific character fics, or just all of them) All you have to do is send me an ask and I will add you!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26

Masterlist

(Not my photo, credit to whoever made it!)

Bellamy’s POV

I made my way back to where they were bleeding people. I saw the girl in the cage still and took out the keys I stole. I unlocked her cage and she looked at me shocked.

“Get up. It’s time to go. I told you I’d come back for you.” I said and helped her out.

“Come on out. Our people are marching on Mount Weather right now.” I said and went to unlock the next cage. I went to help them out, but they pulled back.

“Hey, it’s okay. We’re getting you out.” I said.

“Slow down.” The girl said pushing me away.

“They just bled him.” She added.

“Listen to me. There’s an army inside this room. And I need you to help me get them ready to fight. Can you do that?” I asked and she nodded.

“Good. Start with him.” I said and we got to work. Everyone started shouting and bangging against the cages.

“Too much noise.” I said.

“Taim Yu gaf in bilaik free, shof op!” (If you want to be free, be quiet!) The girl shouted at them. They all quieted down instantly.

“Okay, How do we do this?” She asked.

“There’s an army outside going for the main door. When they get it open, all hell will break loose. That is the signal for my friends to come here, and then-” I was cut off by the PA speaker coming on.

“My fellow citizens, this is your president speaking. I have news to share with you that will change all our lives forever. For 97 years, Mount Weather has been our home. It’s kept us alive, but it has also held us captive. Most of us have made peace with what we’ve had to do to survive. We’ve done these things for one reason. So that our people could someday return to the ground. That day is today.” Cage said.

“He’s going public.” I said in shock.

“Before my friend, Lorelei Tsing was murdered by the Outsiders still at large in this mountain, she found a cure. It was in their bone marrow.” He said.

“Here. I’ll be back.” I said handing the girl the keys.

“Where are you going?” She asked.

“He’s trying to get his people to turn on each other. They’ll find my friends. I have to bring them here now. I’ll send them in groups. You get your people ready to go, but you wait for me to come back, you understand?” I asked and she nodded.

“Wait.” She stopped me again.

“Thank you.” She said.

“You free your people. Protect mine when they get here. We can thank each other when we’re all outside.” I said and went back into the vent.

Cage’s POV

“This had been the dream of our people since the bombs. But to reach it now, I need your help. The 44 criminals that irradiated Level Five, killing 15 of our people, are now keeping us from that dream. Although we’ve repaired our home, we can never replace the lives that were so viciously taken from us. Yet as hard as it is to believe, there are those among us who would help the people who did this. And I am speaking to you now. If you truly want to end the blood treatments once and for all, then the 44 murderers you’re now hiding are the key to doing that. You have one hour to turn them in without punishment. After that, we’ll be forced to consider you enemies of the state. I’m asking you please, do what’s right for your people, our people. So that we can all take our rightful place on the ground. We’re almost home.” I said and looked at the screen showing the outside world.

“What are they doing?” I asked, taking out the earpiece.

“Preparing to attack. They’re too close for missiles, sir. And without the Veil, there is nothing we can do from the inside. All ground units are ready to engage on your command.” Emerson said and I shook my head.

“Not yet.” I said.

“Sir, the longer we wait-”

“They came looking for a fight, Emerson. Doesn’t mean we need to give them one. As long as we’re behind the doors, they can’t touch us.” I said.

“And what about the intruder? And Y/N?” I asked looking at him.

“Both are still at large, sir. We’re doing everything we ca-” I grabbed some papers and tossed them at him.

“Forty-five! Go door to door. Fine them.” I said cutting him off.

Y/N’s POV

We just heard Cage’s speech. This was it. This was the final straw. Either we were going to be found, or we were going to fight. Either way this was it. I was still weak from whatever drug they put in me. But I was starting to feel a little better. We didn’t have time to get it out of me, so I was stuck in this state. We heard people knocking on doors and it was only a matter of time before they knocked on this door. The couple quickly pushed us into the wall behind a painting. Jasper kept a hold on me since I was still weak. Monty was split up on us so it was just us three.

“Yes?” The man hiding us asked, opening the door.

“Step aside, please.” guard said.

“Why? What’s wrong?” He asked playing dumb, but let them in. We watched as they started looking around.

“We’ll just be a moment.” The guard said.

“If you tell us what you’re looking for, maybe we can help you.” The woman hiding us said.

“You know what you’re looking for.” The guard said.

“Honestly, we don’t know.” The man said.

“According to your neighbors, you’ve been bringing extra food home after meals.” The guard said.

“That’s not true.” The man said.

“Is it true that you’ve refused treatment 12 time in the past 15 years?” He asked the man.

“Or that you’ve refused them 30 time? Do you deny that?” He asked the woman.

“We take the blood when we need it. We don’t take extra food.” She answered.

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.” The guard said. He looked at the table and pulled out his gun.

“Where are they?” He asked and shoved the man.

“Just hold it.” The man said. The guard shoved him to sit next to the woman and held his gun at them.

“You have five seconds to cooperate.” He said.

“Jasper…” I whispered.

“Quiet Y/N.” He whispered back.

“One… two… three…” He started counting.

“Please, don’t do this.” The man begged.

“Four…” He said and pointed his gun at the woman.

“Five!” He said.

“Wait! Wiat, wait!” Jasper said. Him and Maya took off the painting that was hiding us. The guard pointed the gun at us.

“Please, don’t shoot. Please.” Jasper begged.

“We’re here, Okay? Just leave them alone.” He said.

“I’m so sorry.” The man said to us.

“This is Tilling. Just found three more. And sir, we found her.” The guard said and looked at me. I felt my body start to shake with fear, Lexa would surely be displeased with me right now… Jasper held me close to him, but the other guard grabbed his hands and cuffed him.

“We’re bringing them in now.” Tilling said. I felt myself start to fall, I was still too weak to hold myself up. Maya quickly caught me and Tilling shot the couple in the head. Tilling came up and took me from Maya as the other guard cuffed her.

Clarke’s POV

I was in Lexa’s tent with her. We were getting ready to attack Mount Weather and get our people back. She had invited my people to her tent and they walked in.

“Welcome, Sky crew.” She said. I saw John Murphy walking in with them…

“Join us.” She said and motioned in front of her. Mr. Miller came up to me and showed me something.

“Package from Raven. Hydrazine. She said it would do the job.” He said.

“Good.” I said with a nod.

“And, uh… your Mother wanted to be here too.” He added.

“I know. But the wounded in Tondc need her more.” I said and he walked back to the others.

“Field commanders, today’s the day we get our people back. The enemy thinks it’s safe behind its doors, but it’s not. When it realized that, it will fight back. Hard. We need to be ready.” Lexa said.

“This is a rescue mission. We are not here to wipe them out. There are people inside that mountain that have helped us. Children who have nothing to do with this war. We kill their soldiers. Their leadership if we have to. But we are there to rescue our people. Is that clear?” I asked and everyone nodded.

“Then let’s begin. There are four teams. Two of them are at the dam and in the mine are moving into position already. The third, inside the mountain is freeing the grounder prisoners as we speak. It is our job as the fourth team to keep the eyes of the enemy off of them for as long as possible. To do that, we have to be in position here at the main door with our entire army. The Mountain Men believe the door can’t be opened from the outside, so they leave it unguarded. Only it can be. And thanks to our source on the inside, now we know how. According to Maya, the electromagnetic locking system has one flaw. When the power goes out, it disengages. And that’s where Raven’s team comes in. The mountain's electricity is generated at Philpott Dam. By now, they’ve taken the turbine room. It’s their job to blow the power. Once they do, we blow the lock. There is a catch. A backup generator inside the mountain. If the lock is still functioning when that back up power kicks in, we’ll never get that door open. We’ll never get our people back.” I said.

“How much time do we have until the backup power kicks in?” Someone asked.

“One minute. That’s the window.” I answered.

“Small window…” Murphy said.

“Why don’t we just take out the backup generator too? Bellamy’s inside. Have him do it.” Someone asked.

“Leaving them without power that long would kill them all. And as I said, that’s not the mission.” I said.

“Would make this a lot easier…” Murphy said under his breath.

“Besides, we lost contact with Bellamy.” I said ignoring him.

“What? We did? When?” Monroe asked.

“After he took out the acid fog.” I answered.

“Bellamy’s a warrior. He’ll be fine. Once he finds Y/N, he’ll be even better.” Lexa said and I looked at her. She gave me a nod to keep going.

“As the commander said, once the door is open, the shooting will start. And they’ll throw everything they have at us. But that’s what we want. We want them looking at us because while we’re fighting at the front door, Indra’s team will be escorting the prisoners out the back, right through the Reaper tunnels. Once all our people are free they’ll sound the retreat. We’ll be back home before Mount Weather even knows they’re gone. And that’s it. That’s the plan.” I said and Lexa stepped forward.

“The mountain has cast a shadow over these woods for too long. They’ve hunted us, controlled us, turned us into monsters. That ends today. Thanks to our alliance with the Sky People, the mountain will fall. As Clarke said, we spare the innocent. As for the guilty, Jus drien jus daun.” (Blood must have blood.) She said and her people started chanting. I looked around at them and decided to join in.

Y/N’s POV

The guard led everyone in chains, except for me. I still couldn’t walk on my own so the guard carried me. We were walking down a hallway and Maya’s Father was there at the end.

“Out of the way, Vincent.” Tilling said stopping.

“That’s my daughter.” He said.

“Dad, don’t.” Maya begged.

“Quiet. She’s been aiding and abetting the Outsiders. You need to get out of the way.” Tilling said.

“I won’t let you take her, Paul.” Vincent said.

“Listen carefully. We’ve got orders. She knows where they’re hiding. Now step aside. I’m not gonna ask you again.” Tilling said.

“If you want her, you gotta go through me.” Vincent said.

“Dad, please. They’ll kill you.” Maya begged. Tilling Turned around and handed me to Miller who put me down and I leaned against him. He then pulled out his gun, but held it towards the floor.

“Don’t make me do this, Vincent.” He said.

“I’m sorry, Paul.” Vincent said. Tilling held his gun up at him and Maya started crying. Suddenly he was shot in the head and fell to the floor. The other guard rushed to the front, but Miller choked him with the chains. Bellamy came out of the vents and Maya pulled me off to the side with Fox. Jasper grabbed the other guards keys and Miller smacked his head into the wall.

“Hey, good job. Thank you.” Bellamy said to Vincent.

“Miller, you okay?” He asked.

“Better than you.” Miller answered.

“Get everyone to the Harvest Chamber. You’ll be safer there.”

“Safer in the Harvest Chamber?” Jasper asked.

“Just trust me.” He said.

“Are the others there?” Jasper asked.

“Not yet.” He answered.

“Monty?” Jasper asked.

“Monty’s with the other group on Level Three. Don’t worry, we moved them after the last sweep. You should go there next.” Vincent said to Bellamy.

“Go. Vincent will take you. I won’t be long.” Bellamy said.

“Hey.” Jasper said, making him stop. He picked up the guard’s gun.

“I’m coming with you.” He added.

“Jasper.” Bellamy said.

“I promised I’d protect them, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.” He said and Bellamy nodded.

“Let’s go.” He said and they left.

“Can you walk?” Vincent asked me.

“I can try.” I said.

“We don’t have time for that.” Miller said and picked me up. We started leaving, but Maya didn’t move.

“Maya.” Vincent said and motioned her to follow. Vincent said something to her and they hugged. We went our separate ways again.

Clarke’s POV

Once the meeting was over we went to the door. My people had brought a drill with them. We had Monroe operating it and we all stood watching. She stopped after a little while and pulled the drill out.

“That should do it. Bombs away. Mr. Miller walked up as they moved the drill.

“Be careful.” I said and Lincoln walked up next to him.

“Archers! Watch the trees!” Lexa ordered. I watched as Lincoln talk to him and then he placed the bomb.

It was night now and the dams still weren’t blown. Something was wrong. I was slightly pacing around just staring at the door.

“It’s taking too long.” I said shaking my head.

“It takes as long as it takes.” Lexa said and she was right.

“What will you do when it’s over?” She asked.

“I have no idea.” I answered.

“Well, what do you want?” She asked.

“Nothing. My people back.” I answered and looked at her then back at the door.

“I can’t think past today.” I added.

“You should come with me to the capital.” She said and I looked at her.

“All this will change the way you think about us.” She added.

“You already have.” She said and we heard gunfire.

“It’s coming from the dam.” Lincoln said coming up to us.

“They know we’re going for the power.” I said.

“They know we’re going for the door.” Lexa said. Lincoln said something to the Grounders and walked off.

“Raven will get it done. She’s one of us.” Monroe said.

“As soon as those lights go off, you push that button.” Mr. Miller said.

“We’ll do the rest.” Lincoln added. I looked down at the remote in my hand. The lights went off and I smiled.

“She did it.” I said.

“One minute starting now.” Mr. Miller said. I looked at the remote then at Lexa.

“For those we’ve lost.” I said.

“And those we’ll soon find.” She said and we pushed the button together, but nothing happened.

“What’s wrong? Why isn’t it working?” Lexa asked.

“They’re jamming us. I have to get closer.” I said and moved closer. Guns started shooting. Lincoln grabbed me and pulled me back behind the rock. Everyone got down and Mr. Miller looked at me.

“Forty-five seconds!” He shouted.

“Swapgn gyna! gyon au!” (Flank the shooters! Go!) Lexa ordered and they started running behind, some getting shot in the process.

“If I can get there, I can trigger it manually.” Mr. Miller said.

“No, you can’t get there.” I said.

“For Nate, I have to try.” He said.

“Nauow moare! nau! Hon daun em gon dou!” (Shield wall! Now! Take him to the door!) Lexa ordered and people got up with shields.

“Go. Go with them.” She said and Mr. Miller got up and went behind them.

“Thirty seconds!” I called. They got close to the door, but all ended up falling.

“We’ll find another way in.” Lexa said.

“There is no other way in. You know that!” I said.

“We don’t need one.” Lincoln said holding a bow and arrow. He lit the tip of the arrow on fire and I looked down at the timer.

“Ten seconds.” I said and he took aim.

“Five seconds!” I said.

“Four, three, two…” I said and he shot. The door exploded and I everyone cheered.

“It worked!” I said.

“We need to get to that ridge and take out the shooters.” Lexa said. Lincoln got up, but Lexa stopped him.

“No! You stay with Clarke. When the shooting stops, you get that door open.” She said and we nodded.

“Gyon au.” (Go!) She said and left with some of her people.

After a bit the shooting stopped. But who knows if it was because they were dead or because they were saving ammo. Lincoln got up and started walking out from behind the rock.

“Lincoln.” I whispered, but he didn’t stop.

“Lexa did it.” He said and I got up as well.

“Clarke, look.” Monroe said Mr. Miller was groaning from under the metal sheet that was on top of him.

“Make sure he’s okay.” I ordered and Monroe went to help him.

“They’ll be waiting just inside the door.” I said to Lincoln.

“Good.” He said.

“Mafta op Ai!” (Follow me) He shouted and everyone started following him.

“Tu lines!” (Two lines!) He ordered.

“Ahu agul gon blukly!” (Get ready to pull!) He shouted and they set up ropes on the door.

“Train your fire on the door!” I ordered.

“Pull! Pull!” They all shouted and they started pulling. The door opened and everyone cheered.

“Attack! Now!” I shouted.

“Chil yo daun!” (Stand down!) Lexa shouted walking up to us, Emerson was with her.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Hey, look! They’re coming out!” Someone shouted and I looked towards the door. Grounders were walking out and I looked back at Lexa.

“They’re surrendering?” I asked.

“Not quite.” Emerson answered.

“What did you do?” I asked her.

“What you would have done. Saved my people.” She answered.

“Except for Y/N.” Emerson said with a smirk.

“Where are my people?” I growled.

“I’m sorry, Clarke. They weren’t part of the deal.” She said and cut Emerson free.

“You made the right choice, Commander.” He said and walked back inside.

“What is this?” Lincoln asked coming up to us.

“Your Commander’s made a deal.” I answered.

“What about prisoners from The Ark?” He asked.

“They’ll all be killed.” I answered with tears in my eyes.

“But you don’t care about that, do you?” I asked her.

“I do care, Clarke. But I made the choice with my head and not my heart. The duty to protect my people comes first.” She answered.

“Please, don’t do this. What about Y/N? He said she wasn’t with them.” I asked.

“Y/N isn’t here?” Murphy asked, coming over.

“She’s in the mountain, yes. She wasn’t part of the deal. It seems their leader has taken a liking to her and she stays with them.” She answered.

“What the hell do you mean she stays with them? She’s your right hand! She should be the most important part of the deal!” Murphy growled.

“She’ll understand. It’s what’s best for our people.” Lexa said.

“Commander, not like this. Let us fight.” Lincoln said.

“No, the deal is done.” She said and the door closed.

“Teik rowenes laud.” (Sound the retreat.) She ordered and someone blew the horn. All the Grounders started leaving.

“You too. All our people withdraw. Those were the terms.” She said to Lincoln.

“They’ll be slaughtered. Let me help them.” Lincoln begged.

“Hon daun em.” (Take him.) She said and they tried to grab him, but he fought. Eventually they took him and I looked back at Lexa.

“May we meet again.” She said and left.

“Clarke, let’s go. We’ll come back with reinforcements.” Mr. Miller said.

“Clarke? Clarke, come on.” Monroe said and I turned around.

“It’s over. I’m sorry.” She said and they walked off.

“It can’t be over.” I said looking at the door.

“For once, I agree with you Princess.” Murphy said standing next to me.

Tag list: @theschuylersistersss @iamaunicorn4704 @riverdalehoeeeeeee @imaginehuntress @tiannawashere @teenwolfbitches2 @mockinghijack @genius2050 @hollandechart @somethingdawn @j-a-val @moonstarsandsongs @les-bio-lie @tashy-bear @ashwarren32 @hollie-blogs @schisbro87 @lover-of-books-and-teas @nerdygaloresposts @teenwolfbitches2 @genius2050 @drw0301bieber @softgamerking @lady-of-lies @simonsbluee @ravenmoore14 @maynardqueen101 @emo-godess-loves-you @now-imagine

#The 100 #the 100 imagine #john murphy #the 100 john murphy #john murphy x reader #john murphy x fem!reader #john x fem!reader #john murphy x griffin!reader #clarke griffin #clarke griffin x sister!reader #fanfic #lincoln the 100 #heda lexa #Lexa #commander lexa #not one of you anymore #cage wallace

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dangermousie · 4 years

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Extraordinary You - final thoughts

Warning - this is longer than Trumpet Creeper’s Kyung’s hair.

Wow. Wow. I never thought a drama this high concept (aw, satiric high school romcom? How about a mindbending, parable-like take on religion and philosophy and free will and sense of self and existence after death instead) could ever ever stick the landing. After all, something like W Two Worlds did not (I loved W but the ending was not on par with the rest.) But it did, and it is that incredibly rare perfect drama in which I would change nothing.

Honestly, the whole story could be viewed as a meditation of the meaning of existence, with the author standing in for your deity of choice; not a benevolent deity many religions picture, sure, sometimes actively malevolent against those that disobey - the drama plain text admits that the author punishes those like Haru that try to challenge the divine plan, but that is not that uncommon in a number of religions.

And the end, with its giant no exit - just an endless circle of being in other stories or put away and dead entirely - comes across as surprisingly hopeful despite the bleakness because I think what EY told me (and I fully understand it is different for everyone) is that control and permanence and existence are all fleeting and illusory, sure. But then, all you can do is live enjoying your today to the utmost, and love and free will and self-knowledge as much as you can get of it, is the sole light in a bleak, cruel, irrational world and is worth everything.

Haru and Dan Oh, the ultimate fighters, cannot escape the cursed reincarnation circle and the worlds of the stories; but what they can do is try to change it as much as they can and to never ever give up and fight for their self-determination and their right to be together; even if it is ultimately futile and ends in erasure every time, the meaning of their life, the worth of their life is in that love and in that fight.

And I love that they take even the limitations imposed and persist through them - remember the whole question of whether the scenes and words repeat because it’s their own or the author’s? Dan Oh’s take was the incredible that it is not the author - that they remember it from story to story because that is what they really felt and wanted to express to each other but couldn’t. She has taken all the existential insanity and decided she is a person and her wants are her own and not the narrative’s.

But of course, the capricious deity punishes Haru and punishes Dan Oh by taking him away, by not letting them stay together until the last page (though that “1 year away” is largely illusory imo - I am pretty sure the bulk of that year was “skipped.”) The scene with the lights going out, and Haru and Dan Oh, clinging, knowing the end has come, and Haru telling her she was his beginning and end and to call him by his name (so it would be the last thing he hears) is - I am freaking crying at the keyboard now.

And her name is the last thing he says in this existence.

And he is gone and she is left trying to grab his floating name tag.

The thing with the names though is very important in other than a purely romantic sense. Their names is the one unchanging thing from one world to the next; even when the author does not name them, they get the same names - give them to each other or themselves. Because the name is such a sense of basic self, basic identity. Look at the scene with the Squid Fairy and the Court Lady, which also pulled every last heartstring - names are brought up again.

But of course, their time together is all so brief because the world ends in a few minutes and we do not see them in the new story. I am glad they got this one happy memory to erase the previous horror but still - so little, so fragile, so gone. But Squid Fairy and Court Lady are on the opposite side of the spectrum from Haru and Dan Oh, who will fight and fight and fight forever, no matter the odds or the risks or the outcomes. These two have accepted these worlds and these controls and the limitations and believe it is futile to fight; but the tragedy is they cannot keep their zen fully - they still love and miss each other, they still care for others.

Haru and Dan Oh have created their own meaning in the arbitrary, cruel, impermanent world and that meaning is each other; to seize the brief moments of happiness as they come and grab on to free will even if it is punished, even if they never know whether, once this world ends, they will get another world or another chance (but hey, that’s normal life too - nobody has a certainty about the after of death.) That is why they can continue on through sheer will, why Haru literally forced his way into the story, why they remember; they do not accept defeat. But Squid Fairy and Court Lady have tried to go to the other extreme of powerless acceptance and I can get that choice.

You know what has just occurred to me - in addition to fate, divine and free will, the other thing this drama addresses the concept of soul mates. The concept of someone destined by the fate for you is one many people find very appealing. But this drama posits that the true soulmate is one you affirmatively choose yourself. Because the technical soulmates here are pairs that the author puts together like Kyung and Dan Oh, and it shows not just potential incompatibility but the fact that if you do not know the love is based on true free choice, it lacks appeal. But when it’s based on genuine connection and love, it can transcend deity and worlds and the end of them all.

The ending is as hopeful as it gets in this bleak world - Haru and Dan Oh as extras and thus free to do their own thing in a benevolent enough world - college setting. When they find each other, and of course the names are again their talisman, it’ s amazing. (And they are allowed to be at least a little older though one of the horrors is that they will never really get a choice to grow old together or have a long life - many short ones is what they get. Not that everyone wants a silver wedding anniversary and 2.5 children, but the fact that they never get that choice is awful.)

But the dark underpinning never goes away either - they are still puppets of an uncaring, and sometimes actively malevolent, deity. And we do not see Kyung or Squid Fairy or Court Lady or Juda or Do Hwa - reminding us of the fact that the world ends and you may never be pulled out of the box again, be dead forever or inserted into an insane suffering set up or whatever.

Now to get to the other characters and strands:

* It’s surprising how OK I ended up being with Kyung in light of my earlier feelings for him. He really did get better, the more liberated from the authorial straight jacket he’s become. He wasn’t perfect (he clearly had Haru’s notebook but did not give it to Dan Oh; either because Haru didn’t want him to or because he wanted to keep it, who knows) but he was miles from the old Kyung. His face as he saw the end coming will haunt me.

* I know some people were unhappy with the resolution of the Do Hwa - Juda - Nam Joo story but I loved it. Maybe Juda would have picked differently if she knew the happy ending was an illusion and all that faces them is a possible eternity of nothingness or a new storyline entirely, at the moment of “triumph.” But maybe not. Unlike her stage counterpart, it’s clear that the real Juda is practical to the marrow of her bones, not prone to throwing the world away for love, and also what she really thrives on is being needed, being the one who saves and defends and is the leader in the relationship. She was never going to have that with Do Hwa, despite his gentleness. But with oblivious to the narrative to the last page Nam Joo she can have that - she can have someone who loves and needs her more than she loves and needs them, she can defend him and lead and be the boss (when she gave him a money balancing allowance book and he meekly took it, it all made so much sense.) This said, her joke about dating the boys on alternate days wasn’t as much of a joke as it was supposed to be. I could see her being the boss, money maker, polyamorous girl pretty easily. It would have been cool.

* I am pretty sure Kyung’s stepbrother/half-brother was in love with him in Trumpet Creeper - the way he talked about him in TC, the way he wanted to stay by him until the end, explicitly comparing it to Dan Oh and Haru, screams silent love to me (which adds another level of horribleness to the reincarnation/memory wipe concept here and in reality - in some of these endless worlds, people who loved each other might end up being family, even.)

Anyway, this is now my n1 kdrama of all time.

#kdrama #extraordinary you

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huntsman-ash · 3 years

Text

RWBY V8E4 LiveThoughts

And were back at it again, this week with turkey and Italian preserved sausage as a snack! Lets see what RT has for us this week.

Oh, 20 minutes. Are they normally this long?

Oh, wait, the openings almost 2 minutes long. Thats more like it.

And now to Robyn and Qrow. Seems Robyns actually liking Qrow a little bit now.

Guess the cells aren’t secured if a fly got into Schnee’s. This a “Fly on Mike Pence’s face” reference?

Qrow sounds more growly again. Did he get smacked back two seasons by Clover dying?

If by “darkness” you mean “Tyrian” then, yes. Also dude, its Clover. He was shit anyway. All the Aces are shit. Dont feel too bad about him.

And he’s got a point too. If Clover had thought with his head instead of his dick (yes, Im sure they were gonna fuck, Fair Games totally a thing), he probably wouldnt be dead now, and Tyrian would be the one with the sword through his chest.

But of course this is RWBY and V7/8 so things cant go their ways.

Ouch. Deep thoughts of Qrow. And some interesting stuff from Robyn too. I still think I’d prefer hopeandharmonizing’s Briar, though.

Marrows glare gives me life. Hare’s just a moron right now though, but thats no real surprise. She’s immature emotionally. Honestly, shes...kind of like a less bad version of our current President. Always has to be the best at everything, fastest, leader, whatever.

Thats probably why this is grating on her so much. Even though shes TECHNICALLY the Ace’s leader now (I think? Seemed like she was Clovers lieutenant, so by rate of succession she’s in command now)

A glance at the little floating control pad... “Clerance access only”. Okay, that...seems weird. Shouldnt it say something like authorized personell only? Maybe it means access by clerance only or something.

Then Robyn’s name, and then process ID 4591-27. No idea what thats useful for but its there.

Also Marrow seems to be the only competent member of the Aces rn.

Ah now we get to see some of the hills around Atlas. For those of you who have seen my headcanons on the Hunter-Killers and their base of operations, Fortress Academy, its out in these hills somewhere.

The music sounds like a boss fight.

The screen on Ren’s hoverbike reads “HVB Rhino” and “HD5800″ I can only assume HVB stands for “hoverbike” and Rhino must be its name, like how the dropships are Mantas. No clue what the number is.

Also apparently the cold in Solitas is so bad it corrupts machinery?

Ahh, good, some action. Lets see what we get now. Ohh, teamwork. And again, signs that aura allows you to move faster and farther than a normal human

Heh, it really is like a boss fight, like the chase scene at the end of the first Viking level in For Honor.

Oh, and it can call for reenforcements literally out of nowhere? Or is the whole tundra of Solitas just CRAWLING with Grimm?

Yes, yes it did just call for backup, Yang. Maybe these are all forward scouts and ambush units from the Grimmstorm. They did say its the biggest...

Another banger from Casey Lee Williams...

What the hell happened in Solitas to cause this geography? Seriously, its a line of bridges over a gap in two cliffs...that cant be natrual, not that equal in distance.

Man, those bikes didnt even last half an episode...I guess thats fair, they are facing obsurd odds. Or maybe they just want Yang to be the only one with a bike.

And there goes the dropwall. Woops.

Also you can just kinda see it but they bounce off the rock and thats why they slow down. Useful.

Also this part with them falling off the edge reminds me of the ending cutscene of Halo 4s Forerunner level, where Chief flies out of a portal and almost goes sailing off a cliff in a Ghost. Except here, the bike stays on the land and THEY go off the cliff.

I paused at just the right time cause YANGS FACE XD

Holy shit what are Ren’s weapons cables MADE OF? The one atop him is holding him AND the weight of his two teammates. And the one below has both Jaune and Yang. No sign of slippage or breackage at all.

Ahhh there’s the whaleship (Monstra? Fuck it Im gonna keep calling it the whaleship). So yeah my headcanon now is the mountain its right next too is Menachite, where Fortress is.

Oh hey back to the Schnee manor of all things! Does...this mean military invasion of the Schnee grounds. Hey Whitley. Lesbians are here.

Someone make a video cut of Weiss banging on the door to the “Knock knock open up the door its real!” part of that one song.

Hehehehhe. Nice Weiss.

Also convenient about the house staff. Good thing RT doesnt need to animate them or Willow now...

I hope the staff took some of the silverware and some paintings on the way out.

Why is MAY the one carrying Nora.

Ah so now they’re stuck out there with no cell service. Hehe.

Ah okay so the cold in Solitas DOES eat aura. Good, my headcanon still kind of stands.

I wonder, does wearing proper cold weather clothing (like bundled up stuff) help? Or does it cut right through...

Why is JAUNE the one hauling the bike? Isnt Yang the strongest? Or maybe they take turns.

Ahhh inter-team talking. Also, outpost. Hmm. Atlas one? Overrun if I had to guess. Unless he saw Fortress. Which I doubt.

I do love the circling shot here, with the light on Yang’s hair and the shadows on Ren. Its...really artistic and emotional. GREAT WORK RT.

Rens got points. And hes saying stuff I myself have been saying for ages, which is good. I wonder why this is how Ren is now...working with the Ace Ops? Being afraid of loosing Nora? No one tell him what happened last episode.

Also, Jaune’s hair seems to have gotten less crazy in recent episodes. It looks less like a banana and more like a close tactical cut.

Yangs got a point.

Ahhh and now we get to see the inside of the whale.

SALEM FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP SHOWING THE FUCK OFF. SERIOUSLY. WE GET IT.

...this is gonna be a really criingy torture section, isnt it.

Someones gonna take that “hound didnt break you” line in the WRONG direction

It is amusing the only thing holding Oscar down is the Hound actually.

Ah so they’re still searching the remains of Beacon.

Also I like how Salem calls them “her forces” as if its anything but a random bunch of expendable monsters. Like, bruh, you cant search anything with THAT.

Ignoring the boring chat between these two, notice how the Hound’s shoulder literally flexes and shifts when Salem touched it. I dont think this thing is solid at all aside from the head and the bone claws...the whole thing is just amorphous Grimm material that can adapt to whatever situation it requires. A specialist unit. A...Hunter hunter.

Yo what the fuck was that. Magic? Huh. Did we actually SEE magic for once in the show? Only took us 8 FUCKING SEASONS...

Doesnt seem to be anything but an energy blast/pain never firing though. I assume his auras still gone, cause its completely singed his shirt, but it didnt do much else.

...Im not impressed.

She really needs to stop touching his face, its creeping me out.

HAHA SHE CANT DO IT HERSELF SHE HAS TO RELY ON HAZEL BEATING THE SHIT OUT OF HIM. I think we know where she stands now, doesnt she...say what you will about her letting Hazel have his vengeance (which is very valid, even he admits hit), but me? I think she A) cant actually beat up on Ozma herself because she still cares and B) shes almost out of magic too. Its weakened as the Gods have been gone and shes been forced to rely on the Grimm and on pawns. Basically, once she and Oz are both gone? That’s it for magic. Remnant will belong to the Grimm...and to technology.

At which point without Oz around to hold them back Atlas is going to go fucking BONKERS and basically ensure the Grimm get pushed back into a corner and then finally permenantly STAMPED OUT.

More Whale insides. Seems like most of its empty grandious spaces. Or possibly muscle? Hard to tell. Either way theres a lot of open air in there...with tight corridors. If you fired a thermobaric warehead into one of the chambers the resulting blastc could possibly blow the doors off and send a raging fireball through the entire thing...Hmm. Filing that away for later.

NEO IS SO SHORT ITS FUNNY TO ME. I know its just positioning BUT SHE LOOKS EVEN SHORTER IN THIS SHOT THAN USUAL.

More note on the Hound; the “flesh” around its right shoulder spike actually sinks down when it stops moving. Its neck shifts and moves too, like the material isnt solid, but recirculating.

I also dont see any eyes. And it looks like it has some kind of...forehead mouth? Def looks like teeth down the ridge of its spine.

Oh boy yeah that...whole thing is basically melting in on itself.

I wont lie; hearing Cinder get berated by CORTANA (and yes, I still hear Cortana in Salem, espeically now that the two characters are kind of one and the same, both megalomaniacal leaders of giant armies, bar the fact that one of them is about a TRILLION times more dangerous than the other because one of them has access to Guardian Custodies and the other one is...well kind of lame and has to have beefy dudes beat up on small children etc) is pleasing to me.

Get fucked, Cinder.

And THERE is Cortana again too.

Neo Marry Popins’s Ya’lling is fucking CUTE. And I love her little smirk.

Wait the whale’s that close?

..oh my...hold on.

...thats it. THATS ATLAS’S AIR FLEET!?!

12 AIRSHIPS? 12? EXCUSE ME!?

ARE YOU LEGITAMETLY TELLING ME THE BIGGEST MILITARY ON REMNANT HAS FEWER AIRSHIPS THAN THE SMALLEST NAVY ON EARTH HAS FRIGATES? YOUR FUCKING KIDDING ME RIGHT? THERE HAS TO BE MORE SOMEWHERE. THIS IS A JOKE, A STRAIGHT UP FUCKING JOKE.

...

No, thats...thats it. Thats Atlas’s airfleet. 12 tiny vessels. I swear it was bigger last season...

...HA! HAHA! HA! Oh, Ironwood, and Atlas as a whole...you deserve everything your about to get. I hope you die SCREAMING, and that when your bodies fall bleeding and shattered to Mantle, the people down there will realize that, no. You cant just assume Hunters will do all the work for you

THIS IS REMNANT. ITS KILL OR BE KILLED. YOU EITHER MAKE A FORCE POWERFUL ENOUGH THAT THE GRIMM RUN FROM YOU OR YOU DIE INSTEAD. ATLAS FAILED. NOW THEY SUFFER.

Emerald stop simpin.

Also that is...the SHITTEST outpost...I have ever seen in my life. My overall thought process of Atlas is...sinking even LOWER than before.

Though it seems more like a waystation. Bed, Dust, some dudes coat on it. Dead heater. Its probably a rest spot for Specialists out in the tundra.

Ren does the emo sit. Lol. Yang even says it. Brood himself to death.

Alright whats this now...something forcing itself out of the tundra?

And thats it for today! Cool ass concept art at the end there too.

#rwby #rwby spoilers #spoilers #rwby v8

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inspirationdivine · 4 years

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Chance Encounters || Frank and Lydia

Timing: Current Parties: @frankmulloy @inspirationdivine Summary: Lydia and Frank meet during one of Lydia’s hunts Warnings: None!

Hunting humans occasionally meant coming to places like… this. It wasn’t true terrible, if she was honest, but it also wasn’t the Artesian. After some of the places she’d been to watch Todd perform, this human singer’s choice of venue was more than acceptable. Shortly after she walked in, Lydia’s chest began to ring, like wind chimes in a breeze. Somewhere in here was a fae, she knew it. “Darling, do you mind waiting here a moment?” Lydia asked, walking away from their booth and over to the bar, until she spotted him, an incredibly beautiful man who couldn’t be anything other than fae. He had to be. Lydia slipped to the front, thrilled to meet another fae, so she reached over the bar to offer her hand to shake him. “Hi! I’m Lydia, it’s ever such a pleasure to meet you!”

Thus far into his shift Frank has abstained from engaging with any of the Pint’s patrons (not that he was overly chatty with any of them to begin with), he had instead isolated himself from them by cleaning the glass pints with a sort of silent determination, looking up only when an order was placed and back down again when it was satisfied. In true Mulloy manner, he had built his own space which few had ever dared to cross, that afternoon was one such exception. The introduction of one, Lydia, was like a plunged blade, spearing through his cocoon of isolated peace. Her beauty was undoubtedly singular, but it was her very being that sung to him. A moment of jarring silence lasted between them, and it only occurred to Frank then that he was holding his breath. Now Frank never shook anyone’s hand, a habit that he had carefully crafted for himself and yet he took hers. Wary flesh on a waiting one, and all at once it was like an electrical shock had been administered on a heart that was flatlining, and then Frank was breathing again. “Frank.” His voice sounded uncertain but that was most definitely his name.

"Frank! It's a genuine pleasure." Lydia replied with an effortless smile. When he took her hand, the bells rang loudest, like the bell tower had struck noon. He looked a little alarmed, but maybe most fae had better taste than here. Lydia looked around briefly, but there wasn’t anyone overhearing them. They were much too focused on getting the attention of whoever was actually serving them. Forgetting about the human she’d come here with altogether, Lydia smiled as she lifted herself onto a bar seat in front of him."This was the last piece I expected to meet someone like us. Have you been working here long?" Maybe he was just shy.

Frank’s eyes followed her every movement as she lifted herself up onto the bar seat, waiting perhaps for some sort of glamour to fall away and reveal that she was more or less exactly like the rest of them. That this sudden intensity was the subject of his own making, born from wishful thinking and helpless desperation. It did not. He wasn’t sure if relieved was quite the right word. This exact moment had transpired between him and the bar owner before, a man was also like him, like them, and yet even as history played out before him again, he was just as graceless with it the second time as he was the first. “Not that long--I’m sorry like us?” He’s heard of the existence of other subspecies of faes, though he could not name all of them even if you paid him. While she felt familiar, it still wasn’t exactly the same. Perhaps that was the source of his hesitation. Or perhaps it was the way she so obviously enjoyed herself. She carried with her an easy smile that he could not hope to imitate, and was still unsure of whether he even wanted to.

He was watching her ever so keenly, Lydia felt like she was in a room with Regan again. He was trying to understand her, or perhaps, more vainly, he just couldn’t take his eyes off her. She had that effect on some people and most humans. Until he spoke, that was, and threw all her expectations out of the window. Lydia's smile dripped off her face in surprise and concern. Oh no. She was dealing with another Regan, wasn’t she? How were there so many lost fae in this town? “Do you not…. Feel a similarity? Oh, darling. I’m ever so sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you.” She said, unsure how to approach this. “Do you really not know what I’m talking about?” He was supposed to be working, this was hardly the time to drop something so significant.

Wait, what?—Frank shook his head, shaking off some of his initial surprise with it. Frank never liked surprises. Surprises either tried to kill him or rendered him stupid. Both were equally undesirable outcomes. The enchantment released its hold and slowly he began to find the functions of his brain again. Finally he regained the ability to put words and coherent thought together so he might be able to communicate with someone where no caution and distance were needed, because she was right, they were alike; the same. Was that not what Frank had always wanted? To be the same? “No, I mean, I know what you’re talking about,” he said, with perhaps the most articulacy he’s had in their entire short conversation, “I just mean you’re not…gancanagh. You’re like me but you’re not…like me. So what are you?”

He took a moment to resettle himself. Lydia didn’t mind to wait, concern creasing her features. Eventually, when he did speak, Lydia breathed a soft sigh of relief. “Oh, I was worried!” She tilted her head in surprise. He was not wrong, of course, once he explained what it was that he was. All fae rang the bell chimes in her chest in the same way, but she might have been able to guess by his beauty. “Well, no, I couldn’t possibly be. I’m neither a man nor at all masculine in any way. No more than you could be a banshee.” She smiled, leaning in as if to tell him a secret - she was. “Although we are perhaps more similar than you might expect. I’m a Leanan Sidhe. A muse. I inspire art.”

Leannán Sídhe. The name was familiar to him, attached to an old, distant, memory of his childhood. Of his mother telling him stories about beasts and faeries from their Irish folklore. Not that any self-respecting eleven year old boy ever paid much attention to stories about faeries, that was of course, before the wings started growing in. But even at his tender age, he did not have the heart to tell her that her bedtime stories were true, least of all those that were not exactly complimentary of the faerie folk. “But it’s never as simple as just inspiring art though is it?” He held her eyes as he answered the cost of that inspiration with a silent gaze. At least she inspired art, Frank was too afraid to even shake a stranger’s hand. The destruction left behind by both were much the same, and Frank was not ignorant of the woman whose eyes kept an unwavering hold on Lydia’s back. “Is she one of your...artists?”

Oh, he had merely been tongue tied. Lydia smiled, easing more comfortably into her seat now she wasn’t so worried of frightening him. The words meant something to him, and he was blunt in asking about her diet, which made Lydia smile. “No, but then again, no pain no gain, as the saying goes,” she replied, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. Lydia looked back to Kelly, giving her a small wave. She was so young, yet ever so enthusiastic to share her songs. Lonely, too, but that was the nature of humans that age. She couldn’t quite work out whether Frank was asking out of judgement or plain curiosity, and considering how wide and varied fae morality could be, she decided to play it safe, if always entirely honest. “Her interest is currently natural, rather than cultivated, if that’s what you’re asking. We’re on a thirty day free trial, as it were. What about you? This is not a bad place to work and find a meal for the evening. The company on the other hand…” Lydia looked around the room, and while of course she could not truly tell what anyone was, she was very confident that practically everyone here bar the two of them had to be human. They just had to be. “I imagine it has its ups and downs.”

Lydia served her own brand of cool indifference, far from concerned by notions of shame or guilt, on how or whom they survived on, and Frank had to suppress a shudder. Her smile was all winter and he had always struggled in the cold, but oh did she wear it so well. Her every word stroked gently at the hungry thing that lived in the marrows of his bones and the pit of his stomach, one Frank kept carefully starved with cheap whiskey and cheaper cigarettes. “I don’t mind, I’m not much of a people person anyway,” he said mildly, and then added, “the shepherd’s pie isn’t so bad…and the stew tastes pretty decent on the nights they remember to season it right.” It was a truth well known that faes couldn’t tell a lie, although Frank had become very good at living one. To pretend to himself that his judgement was from a place of righteous morals, and not from a place of deeper, venomous, resentment that she was so free to do as she was ordained and without remorse for being exactly as she was. It was her nature, as it was his, but why was he the only one telling himself that it was wrong?

"Really? Now that is a surprise." Lydia knew a fair few gancanagh, who she would have described as the definition of people persons, but there were exceptions to every rule. Horrifically, her mind turned to Jax, the Gancanagh who had worked at the ring, using his silver tongue to force Remmy to fight for his own personal gain. Frank seemed nothing like that man, and by all means, if Jax had been manipulating any other zombie, Lydia might not have minded so much. “I’ll keep the recommendations in mind if I ever bring someone who needs to eat around,” she chuckled, pushing her thoughts far away from Remmy. "By all means, let me know if I'm bothering you. I just… really like to introduce myself to fae when I run into them. It’s easier in this town than most, but still, and I don’t think I’d seen you at Faetal Attraction."

Frank answered Lydia’s surprise with his own, evident in the arch of his brow and the slight part of his lips, as if he wanted to say something but was unsure of the words. He was an oddity to her, it seemed, which begged the question of how many faes like him did she know? And then a small voice added most delicately: was his father among those acquaintances? He quickly guided his curiosity elsewhere, back to the present, to the name of a place he was not yet familiar with. He hasn’t been in White Crest all that long and much of his time was spent divided between tending the bar at the Pint and then at Soul, with little spared to himself, or anything else. A poor habit that needed amending, not that Frank was in any great rush to do that either. “Fatal attraction? Like the movie?”

Lydia stared at him for a five-count, before laughing in her bewilderment. “No, like the bar,” she chuckled, pressing her hand against her chest. “I’m not laughing at you, I’m ever so sorry. This town has a propensity for puns which results in just this sort of confusion. F-A-E Faetal.” Her chuckles had subsided, as she looked at him questioningly. “It’s a place for people like us to meet other fae. Oh, come on, now you have to let me take you sometime. Sometime when you aren’t working, we’ll make a night of it.” Better than this place, certainly, but who was she to judge? “I know you said you aren’t a people person, but there are quieter times that we could go, and it’s fun, even for a short while.”

Her pretty promise came with an even prettier smile, and Frank was immediately put ill at ease. He had developed an almost instinctual aversion toward charm, and charming people, and Lydia was practically dripping with it. A series of practiced excuses were laid out on his tongue (this was not the first time Frank had to talk his way out of doing something or going somewhere he did not want to), but underneath the coiling chain of dishonesty, a little presence at the back of his consciousness demanded his attention: curiosity. Frank has never been in a room with more than one fae at a time. People like us. He had always been intrigued by how many of them they were, how many species of faes existed beyond those he already knew of (which was not many at all), what was this community like that his ‘normal’ upbringing had deprived him of? Frank was practiced in denying himself a great many pleasures, but always failed at refusing his own curiosity. To curb any great display of enthusiasm, he resigned to her invitation with a measured, “I’ll think about it.”

He hesitated. Lydia just couldn’t get a read on him, not yet, but she would. With every passing day, her loneliness threatened to suffocate her a little more. At least a gancanagh would understand that part of her. All the same, she smiled in relief at his measured response. “Alright. Well, when you make up your mind, please drop me a line.” Lydia pulled her business card from her wallet, and looked at the quickly accumulating pile of dirty glass ware that she was distracting him from. “As much as I’m enjoying meeting you, I should probably not get you in trouble with work.” And she ought to return to sweet young Kelly, and her hunt.

Lydia Griffin. Art Conservator. Her contact information craftily spelled out beneath in fine print. He put it inside his jacket pocket with no great care. At the time, he didn’t think he would ever come to need it. It wasn’t as if they socialised in the same social circle. Frank wasn’t social at all! You need only look at their dress to realise their differences, which was stark. Outwardly, anyway. What stopped him from throwing the little rectangle of (probably expensive—it looked expensive) paper away altogether was a feeling. He wasn’t sure when, or under what circumstance but they would meet again, of this he had no doubt. Frank looked at the young woman at the table; still waiting. Evidence of impatience present in the increased frequency of glances she kept shooting in their direction. “Right, I should let you get back to your guest.” Frank took a moment, not as certain in his own pleasure at having met Lydia. He said instead, “I’ll see you around.” And he would, even if he didn’t know it yet.

#wickedswriting #para #chatzy #frank

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theskyexists · 4 years

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ive bought harrow the ninth and am now attempting to reread act 1 so that i may understand it better

ianthe clearly proposes that Harrow not get herself killed trying to bring Gideon back - reading it over again. instead to take the future and somehow?? be really powerful together and forget about their cavaliers. but harrow says no

im once again struck with how offhand this book introduces the concept that the empire goes out to deliberately kill planets over a couple of generations

now im not sure....there also seems to be an implication that there’s no aliens - because they say only humanity has a soul - but client planets were said to rebel - i guess the human colonisers rebel against central solar system command sometimes? but then what enemy does the Cohort fight? possibly it’s just bigotry that they think aliens dont have a soul

but like - they find LIVING PLANETS and then - kill them slowly. to the extent that they need to move the entire population. WHAT? why do they do that??? just so they can do some bone tricks???!

what the fuk

so how did the planets get murdered again? and which solar system planets could really have been said to have had enough life to have a soul?? cos like, only one of them is really known for that

why did God give Harrow the choice to go back home TWICE if he was never going to let her?

once again, why mess with the Hand candidates if God was always gonna come for Cytherea? just to mess with him more?

yeah - harrow keeps hearing and saying ortus ninegad but the rest of the world remembers gideon.

Harrow truly is totally mentally shattered AND time is totally fucked up

but sometimes in the fake-ish timeline Harrow remembers but doesn’t remember Gideon - like how she notes that there were two womb-bearing members of the Ninth who were the right age...but only elaborates on herself

for some reason - Harrowhark remembers Ianthe’s arm ripped from her by Cytherea - but now it’s whole. for some reason

that letter is still so what the fuck

‘like you did the last time’ - hm harrowhark sewed Ianthe’s lips shut? how did she come by the power?

is ianthe - calling Harrowhark God?

throughout the first act, they keep referring to time, having too much time, or not mastering time, or not having enough time, ‘this time’ etc.

the eggs you gave me all died - that’s DIRECTED at Harrow, is my theory

ok but the planet revenants come after Lyctors and also God (- God became God when? at the Resurrection) before the Lyctors happened - God was still at Canaan House - despite the Revenants already coming right...

is Teacher criticising god and lyctors for leaving Canaan House lol?

ok so yeah Canaan House WAS part of a ‘last sacrifice’

ok so - Harrowhark is a little resurrection miracle. This implies that God killed a lot to resurrect the Houses.

wow God is being a very dad to Harrow

Blood of Eden - BOE - they turned their back on the solar system. now they hate necromancy. in other words - when the solar system died, God resurrected it - but before that point some humans had fled - lived. and they can see what absolute fuckin horror necromancy is ACTUALLY

so what im getting is...maybe...god resurrected humanity by killing the planets...?

i just realised that Ianthe has taken Gideon’s place as the smartass in the room - the counterweight to Harrow’s portentousness

what the fuck do augustine’s comments to Mercy mean???? why is she unloveable? why would he say that God doesn’t need her? and why is it obscene that Augstine calls God John? What is the dangerous game she’s playing? What was the foul implication??

‘Then that is your downfall’ OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Harrow BURN!!!

what i don’t get is - the Cohort is an army - when they land they die because they’re being killed by an enemy at the front - NOT in pure sacrifice for thanergy. so why does only the death of humans and planets produce thanergy. why is the death of the enemy not good enough? they don’t have fuckin souls?? they MUST be complex life. and doesn’t a planet produce a constant stream of thanergy? but i guess it’s not dying enough - generally its life maintains itself in ecosystems.....unless a fuckin lyctor ‘makes the juice flow’ i guess!

sometime in the next book there IS gonna be a ‘are we the baddies’ meme. muir loves memes and she stuck skulls on absolutely EVERYTHIGN. Like WHY THE FUCK would you colonise planets if you gotta kill them for it? LOL????

huh? augustine just said that they can’t use necromancy when in the river - but mercy mocked harrow for having hypothermia ? implying her fundamental failure was not being able to necro while in the river? Harrow’s inability was what was wrong partly right?? oh no ok it’s how Harrow tried to compensate for her body going lights out while in the river. alright. that was written confusingly

how and why is this a completely different story???

The Sleeper.......is Harrowhark? the suit is too close to what she was wearing killing the asteroid. and the sleeper is lying on ‘something’. oh they just straight up say it lololol

ortus got into trouble 19 years ago...hhmmmmm wasn’t Gideon 19??? huh? which is why Mercy started at Harrow’s peculiar YELLOW eyes that Harrow can’t see herself i think

‘i do things face to face’ ortus says after stabbing harrow. HUH? why go for a stab if decapitating would have done the job? just to give her a small chance to fight back? (face to face?)

why not tell God that ‘his’ attack dog is trying to kill you?

why does Ortus the First want me dead? ‘who?’ ---uh. has she forgotten him completely (time shit) or is she saying the wrong name? mercy wouldnt reply like that then right?

she told him and he’s like - oh well guess you gotta just get through repeated almost-successful attacks on your life. ???? THANKS GOD!!!

‘you, with your unfortunate memory for poetry’ HA! i love how we are reminded that she knew all the fuckin damn books nearly by heart which is insane!

Teacher suggests his dying at least three times a day?? hahaha what?.........................is this purely a meme reference. is that meme the mental image im supposed to have of Teacher??????????? is this trying to say that this meme was preserved in the amalgamation of human life that is Teacher?? oh my god....

no.....palamedus and camilla....did old Harrow really kill them.....

seems like all the murders were consensual maybe?

it’s probably too straightforward that Harrow created and alternate timeline and made for a Harrow Lyctor without Gideon dying and kicked her to the original? maybe she took Ianthe and Coronabeth with her bc she needed Ianthe’s help

is this Cytherea or Dulcinea? Pro seems real this time. why does Dulcie call Pal and Cam strands and cords?

did muir put in a fuckin secondary school S - muir’s just like - im gonna put in all the memes as a nod to ancient human culture

still no idea what the messages are that Harrow is getting

This Harrow is so goddamn sick. I mean she was sick before, but at least she had Gideon. Really do feel that that helped her. now she didn’t have that -- AND she’s getting slapped with trauma another five times

if ortus can undo the thanergy of her own bone then why not simply crumble HARROW into dust? cos there’s a core of thanergy fusion in her that he can’t undo?

FLKJDFKLJSDLFSD fucking IANTHE ‘Wow! Not how I imagined this happening, at all.’ FUCKIN HELL

Harrow with her fucking fucked up dramatic inner monologues about weakness and Ianthe comes in with this shit. she really is doing Gideon proud here.

Did love Harrow’s musings about how only a truly idiotically obedient Cavalier would be the only one to keep to a vow of silence. HAH! nice one muir

‘have you taken the time to rest lately?’ asks God, YOUR FUCKING SAINT IS TRYING TO KILL HER IN THE FUCKING BATH YOU IDIOT AHAHAHAHA

JEZUS FUCKING CHRIST - try and be normal Harrow! try and make some soup and read a book! Harrow: *does and then hyperventilates hidden under her bed after 86 hours of zero sleep*

she was trying to remember what cutlery did. why is this so goddamn funny hahahaa. this book has ONLY been Harrow being in extreme states of misery ALL THE TIME both mentally and physically to the point of death

GOD IS HAPPY THAT SHE MADE SOUP AND DOESNT EVEN FUCKIN NOTICE SHE’S NOT SLEPT FOR A WEEK SOMEHOW THIS IS THE MOST HILARIOUS SHIT

thats what you fucking GET you piece of shit god! you push a prodigy teen to the brink and she fuckin explodes your lyctor and feeds you her fuckin marrow. maybe you shouldn’t have ignored her goddamn fucking understandable distress

SHE FUCKIN HITS HIM WITH THE FUCKIN TRUTH what an IDIOT of a God. he truly doesn’t understand mortality anymore huh

I LOVE HOW MERCYMORN CONTINUES TO MAKE HARROW YOUNGER IN HER HEAD AHAHAHAHAHAHA she’s only nine years old!!!hahahaha

naturally God focuses on how - wait- actually harrow is truly an INSANE necromancer - INSANE

still no idea what the fuck is going on in the not-past

aww. ianthe’s scent soothes harrow now. begrudgingly of course.

i thought this was gonna be lovely angsty harrow/gideon but naturally that did not happen

harrow is comfortable! first time in the whole book! one moment of comfort!!!

‘love my twin, also murder’ tridentarius pffjlfjdljf

‘how i crave your honeyed words’ hah

wow this scene sure is weirdly sexual with these similes lol ‘as though she had shyly undressed for you’ ok there Harrow you about to chop her arm off calm it probably sex repulsed thirsty teen

i do love how....there is this theme again that’s everybody underestimating the main character - who is actually a prodigy. Gideon had that with the sword and Harrow also has it with being a Lyctor now

it’s so telling that these Saints would rather be shits to these babies than help Ianthe grow a new fuckin arm

i dont see why Ianthe can’t work off this bone construct which is her own stuff and put some flesh on it since SHES A FLESH NECRO?

Ianthe that’s super gay

wow muir really never delivers on full gay does she??? i dont mind but i think it’s so striking hahaa

how are Harrow and Ianthe still hung up on the Saint of Duty? i mean, if they dont have him against the RB they’re dead anyway

why is the First going through rain and ice?

Harrow haunted? naawwww

i cant help but like mercymorn though - she cares. it’s soured ages ago but she cares.

awww Harrow needs Ianthe to sleep

Ianthe constantly poking Harrow for her prudishness is so goddamn funny.

‘It’s the type of energy i wish to take into my future’ AHAHAHAHAHAAH IANTHE MY GOD

‘i always forget you were an honest to go nun ... and six years old to boot if you listen to mercymorn’ HAHAHAHAHAHA

‘you look good enough that im proud of my handiwork but not so good that i’ll be consumed with lust and ravish you over the nut bowl’ fpdfjsdfkjsd this is what harrow means with crude japery and yet....

mercymorn has started to call harrow three years old. i will NEVER tire of this gag

all of the blood of eden stuff happened in the past 25 years??? god was on the erebos, but he also remembers ortus kicking the commander out of an airlock? that was in the last 25 years??

Ianthe‘s carressing the nape of Harrow’s neck. hmmhm

its honestly super weird if you think about it for more than 10 seconds that theyre talking about their cavaliers whom they murdered (im still not sure if all consensually) ten thousand years ago (!) and how hot they were that just seems.....fucked up

Harrow is like WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! basically all the time but especially now. yep well that was to be expected i guess lololol

Harrow being painfully frozenly fascinated by (god having) sex and deeply repulsed is very Harrow

oh nooooo well that was a perfect kiss between them really

the funny thing about Harrow is that though she is so completely fucked up - just like Gideon - she is fundamentally a helper.

why wouldn’t Harrow have thought of blood wards! she knew he could only bleed thanergy! it;s the first thing i thought - just use not bone wards then!

ortus thinks anastasia is in Harrow - which makes me think - why does he think that’s possible?

mercymorn now calls Harrow a two-year-old. i am waiting for embryonic genius

so did they use the river to get to the planets theyre killing?

Harrow feels the peace and pleasure of a stroll through nature that she has come to kill

oh my god - Harrow somehow saved Cam and Pal is still attached to the mortal plane!!

Harrow helps Cam risking herself entirely just like that. yknow as she does

i wonder if Pal has realised that Harrow is not who he remembers

i think he realised once he realised haz mat suit was Harrow also...

ianthe xo’d harrow.....lol

im sad that original harrow is definitely dead.... :( loved her. guess gideon’s not coming back either. not sure how the second adept survived. she didn’t survive in the original timeline either. but she was ‘killed’ in the other - just like coronabeth..so that means soemthing

this whole ‘flashback’ stuff to Canaan House is Harrow being in the River the whole time. the cold temperatures, the blood, the creatures theyre fishing from the sea that apparently abominations

after all, we’ve just learned about river bubbles and a haz!harrow that can change their parameters.

all the people ‘dead’ she’d not spoken to much or at all beforehand. like they’re NOT real, in the River. the only one not like that is Dyas...

the fact that the narrative keeps calling Dulcie, Dulcie means she’s really Dulcie.

there’s giant organs falling from the ceiling. this is definitely the river

they talk about time AGAIN

the Body is the devil who let herself be used to complete the work of Teacher and the Lyctors in his mythology....hmm. and when they realised the price (AFTER? the work was done?) they wanted her dead but he buried her....SHE allowed them to become Lyctors?? I still don’t understand why the heck that was necessary

the king is dead, long live the king. hmmmm

Harrow comes onto a hallucination of the devil who was her first crush with the voice of her parental figures and the eyes of a love interest she can no longer remember - which is actually not precisely a hallucination probably - and gets summarily rejected lol OUCH (the Body didn’t mean it that way ofc)

Harrow is so repressed on every single front but definitely sexually

I love Mercy

so there is death beyond death. does everybody go into the river and become a mad horrid ghost? like - is that everybody’s fate? how awful

ok so God DID resurrect the planets also. ? but like. then why are there resurrection beasts?

what does resurrection mean? and who killed the planets in the first place?

BECOMING NONE HOUSE, LEFT GRIEF

oh.....my god.

ARE YOU AND IANTHE BEING SAFE!!?!?!?! HHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA

HIS BODYGUARD IS THE DEVIL??

so the destruction of Earth somehow made God? as though it was something that simply followed from it

A.L. was destroyed in the first assault? Of an RB

so the RB’s were happily running off in the other direction until they decided to fuck around and kill their mates to become immortal and powerful - then the RB’s turned around and came towards them - which meant leaving the planets God had resurrected forever.

what the fuck god??? hahahahaa

God always seems so likeable goddamn.

Harrow is such a dramatic bitch. Affection??? JUST KILL ME!!! KILL ME!! LET ME SMASH THE GLASS SO I CAN KNEEL IN IT AND BLEED ALL OVER THE FLOOR!!!!

Harrow goes into her fun kid's game of not dying to traps.

But she instantly calls him father. OH MY GOD

HE DOESNT BELIEVE HER!!!

'then that will be your downfall' - is what Harrow said to Augustine AND IT WILL BECOME TRUE FOR THEM ALL

to be dismissed like that where it hurts most - to have God Dad dismiss her only slip of comfort her only pillar of truth in this crazy old world

'nobody had watched you leave'

SOMEBODY HAD - I love all the deliberate references to Gideon

Temporal lobe!!!! Again the temporal lobe!!!

So why was it again that Harrow refused to be locked in with the Emperor?

So isn't God gonna check out Harrow's temporal lobe? He's just gonna let that mystery go to its death?

WHAT THE FUCKKKKKKKKK

Muir what the fuck??!!!!!!!!

Oh it was.....a hallucination?

Always love how this dips into genuine horror sometimes

What's weird is that Lyctors seem made for the task of going into the river and killing Resurrection Beasts - instead of the other way around.

So say - that the sword somehow holds Gideon's soul (we've just learned that that's possible from Pal and also Ortus trying to get Pent to summon his grandma by his sword) - does it not make sense that Harrow 'for some reason' stabbing Cytherea's corpse with it transferred it to her? Or maybe it's SOMEHOW Anastasia if Ortus was macking on her. But Ortus thought HARROW had/was Anastasia.

IANTHE WANTS TO MARRY HARROW - HAHAHAHAAHAHAHA

Every fucking chapter doesn't make things any clearer. This is worse than Gideon the ninth

Hello???? Am I reading a canon alternate universe roleswap au??? What the FUCK is going on. This is like - if they hadn't gassed the 200 and her parents instead adopted Gideon for her clear necromantic gifts which nobody noticed somehow the other time round

I do love how Aiglamene was the sole source of slight comfort in Gideon's life. And Crux was Harrow's - apparently in any sequence of events.

Harrow is tumbling through timelines. But how can you do that just by messing with the lobe?

WHAT!! WHAT!!!

Is this...is this what I think it is??? Is thi

The fanfic roots are STRONG in this one. In fact I believe I've READ this fanfiction

Harrow's temporal fever dream (in the river?) HAD HER (Decidedly Not) VYING FOR 'HER DIVINE HIGHNESS' hand, which is either the Body or Gideon or both lololol. Seeing as the previous had Gideon as the main unnamed titled character - I bet it's Gideon ahahaaga

A fucking. COFFEESHOP AU. OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDDD

We've had roleswap, 'ball' au, and coffee shop au populated by the ghosts of the dead LOLOL,

I knew it!! I knew that they were ghosts and that they were in the river!!

Ok so but when did Harrow shoddily create the bubble? When she adjusted her memories at the start? When is this. Ah Harrow has the same thought hahaa

So the stage is a - she was building her memories while sleeping?

Why is that she cannot access her lyctorhood like this...

I just realised that Harrow's mind made the party food taste like SALT based on Ianthe's cooking!!!! Hahahaha

THE NARRATOR IS GIDEON. But it doesn't sound like Gideon though

There's more to the work than simply preserving Gideon's soul though. There are next steps that Harrow prepared for that Harrow doesn't know about yet

Who was the sleeper and why was it in Harrows riverscape of memories that she ACCIDENTALLY??? made

Ok she sounds like Gideon NOW

Gideon no it's not because she didn't want you! It's because she wanted you to live!!!!!

And she succeeded....your soul is INTACT in her body!!!! You're protecting her with full consciousness!! How the fuck. And why didn't that happen before when she went to the bubble?

Are the ghosts of the contestants happy that they got pulled out of the River briefly? Or were they so briefly in there they couldn't remember?

She returned them to the RIVER???? is that really such a kind fate????

Something has gone wrong in the River - yeah because why r all these ghosts going insane and stoppering it up like slib

Do love how Muir has found a way to give these characters more screentime

I actually said 'oof' when Harrow screamed at Ortus - oof that really is embarrassing. GodDAMN Ortus you stepping up with the emotional support!

I've EVEN read the damn fanfic in which they switched bodies. My god.

A. L. apparently is thought to wander about still. I think she's the body....I do believe she's the body. That's why the Lyctors are scared of her

She thought - what. Mercy is talking about blood of Eden's commander. What is going onnnnn still!!!! Mercy is the traitor I guess. But how is blood of Eden connected to the ninth house and the body?

Why is Mercy awake on the mithraeum and not in the River anyways?

Gideon.... And the commander were in cahoots? So did A. L. and Anastasia an the body and the commander all have the same eyes?????

What the fuck is going on indeed.

Cytherea seems to have had a plan B for getting revenge on the Emperor. Or something had a plan B with her corpse as the main weapon.

If guns are so effective against people why aren't they still used.

The messages are from the commander. I.e. Gideon's mother. I.e. Anastasia? We never explicitly did learn how she met her end no? Gideon was convinced that Anastasia had taken the baby. It just seems incongruous how the Emperor spent like 80 years on the Erebos and the Lyctors were faffing about - meanwhile there was this drama going on in the last half century?

I love Abigail Pent. Love that I got to see more of her.

I'd honestly forgot that Judith was alive by the end of all of that shit

The sleeper is -the sleeper is Gideon's mother. Also. She's haunted by her mother. SOMEHOW. what the fuck? They couldn't drag her spirit back from the river they said!

'you wizards never learn' there's a whole modern regular sci fi world and culture out there! Or maybe it's just a. L.

Is it? Or is it Anastasia? Or is it the commander? Or are they the same thing?

The sleeper wants Harrow's body. Somehow invaded it - probably from the river? - which means its Anastasia or the commander. Which means that whatevers possessing Cytherea is someone else.

In retrospect - Harrow's coldness to Ianthe talking about - to what her - seemed nonsense at the time - in the very first part - doesn't quite fit.

Oh my fucking GOD Gideon is fighting Ianthe for messing around with her fucking girlfriend - who is HARROW, who actually, Ianthe wants to marry.

They just went from ramping up to a serious fight to Gideon dropping Corona's name and suddenly they're like - ah we got more important priorities actually.

Augustine's first thought at thinking a.l./the body (?) is in Harrow is John - and the Second is Joy!(mercy?)

'How I was gonna have to take showers with all your clothes on.' fuckin Gideon hahahaha

Wonder if Ianthe truly believes what she's saying - that Harrow was trying to rid hersel of Gideon. It's preposterous. It's just hurtful talk.

GIDEON REALLY THOUGHT THAT LOOK TO MEAN THAT HARROW DIDNT LOVE HER??? THIS IS A CONSTANT BARRAGE OF ALL THE ANGSTY DRAMATIC SHIT IVE BEEN YEARNING FOR

Oh my fucking god Gideon calling Ianthe out for being in love with Harrow in the most iconic way ufsojdjdodnd 'she wants the D - the D stands for dead'

Crazy brain-mutilated Harrow sure made it seem that way I can tell ya that!!

Hahahahahaha Ianthe remembering Harrows prudish Ortus/Cytherea shit. Amazing

Aw Gideon really went and fell right into the cavalier/bone mistress shit huh. And trying to shield Harrow - well as noted before - very necessary because harrow has been having a godawful miserable time - mostly because of herself.

Gideon appreciating Ianthe's pun xD

Love how neither of them position themselves as the love of Harrows life but instead as inexorably attached to her by the sheer role they play in her life - they don't dare aspire to what they think they can't get.

Muir realises this is gonna end up as a Gideon/Harrow(/theBody)/Ianthe ship right?

Oh WOW THIS IS AMAZING. nonius the legendary nonius!!! Come to protect Harrow!!!

For some reason the Sleeper can manipulate the rules of this River bubble and doesn't seem surprised about it

If all her cavaliers were this excited for death, she was definitely the problem.lololol. somehow Harrow, you inspired undying loyalty in even a person that you treated abominably

Yeah Harrow you slowpoke. If the Sleeper can adjust the rules - so can you

If the sleeper was not Harrow's invention - but planted itself - then they're very lucky it got to the ghosts that weren't actually there - first.

So it was the commander....a portrait in a shuttle of blood of eden - can only be the commander. And redhaired? There are too many red haired people in this book!!

It's nice how all these ghosts got to have lasting impact from beyond the grave

NONIUS KNEW ORTUS/GIDEON?

Ok so ....there's the bed of the River with stoma. But there might also be the other side.

Did Harrow really not account for steps beyond her plan to mutilate her brain?

Is this book really gonna go: fuck you Gideon will die anyway ?????

But.wait. the sleeper had a two-hander. Where did that go???

I don't get it. If they go into the river - won't they also go insane?

SO NYAH!!!!!???

Ok but - what? The Commander ALSO -somehow - took over Cytherea's body?

'did the ten billion give you that too' I KNEW CANAAN HOUSE HELD EVEN GRUESOMER EXPERIMENTS AND SACRIFICES THAN LYCTORHOOD. God is made of ten billion souls. I think they killed humanity on earth to spare it 'slow inexorable apocalypse' and used the power to make the Empire from the resurrected. There was an extremely vague implication by Teacher to the amount of souls violated in Canaan house in the first book.

So God knows the commander went for the ninth house? Firstly, how. I don't understand how Anastasia fits in here!!! It would explain though how the commander

So the commander found the ninth house - and she died right? They tried to call her spirit but couldn't. But she became a revenant?

Ah. God THREW the bomb.

A fuckin wake me up inside joke jskdjskdnd

So Mercy and Augustine ( not Gideon ?) had all turned against God? And they were working with the commander to -... Make a baby????? And then evacuate the houses???? (For when God dies - there being a risk that Dominicus would go out I guess)

Make a baby/body to lever the one who lies in the tomb into....?

Love how the book foreshadowed Mercy and Augustine manipulating and lying to God - and turns out they did that on much bigger scale

They....meant to kill the baby to break the blood ward?

'The woman who I was pretty sure was my mother, wearing the body of the woman I'd had a crush on, who in turn had been wearing the identity of a woman she'd murdered -' KSNFKDJDKFJJFC

So why did they want this consistently characterised as kindly and humane god dead?

GIDEON THOUGHT IT WAS HIS!!!! But he called Wake Anastasia then????

They really are the same???

Oh my god I know what they're gonna say. Gideon is the daughter of God. WHICH HARROWS FUCKIN ROYALTY AU FEVER RIVER DREAM FUCKING FORESHADOWED HAAHAHAHAHHAA

Isn't it fucking ironic that God told Harrow that - HE WANTED HER TO BE HIS??? WHILE GIDEON HIS ACTUAL DAUGHTER WAS SPINNING INSIDE HER CHEST LIKE A LITTLE NUCLEAR FUSION REACTOR

They've been trying to kill him for more than 500 years???? Did mercymorn actually genuinely learn the extremely fine knowledge of the body for THIS purpose? How many thousands of years ago did they decide to kill god?

A fucking DAD JOKE

GIDEON REMEMBERING HOW SHE USED TO TELL HARROW HOW HER OTHER PARENT MIGHT BE THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD SO STOP PICKING ON HER

I am fucking DELIGHTED I AM SO GODDAMN OVERJOYED

It segues into a reminder of how shit their childhoods were and how their suffering had them lash out at each other endlessly and how it made Harrow suicidal and shit though - which is great

ALECTO'S EYES. THE A. FOR A. L.

A. L. The cavalier of God....but she walked. She had a body.

Ohhhhh. That's why they betrayed him. That age-old hurt. Ten thousand years old but still the bane of their existence, the seed of their madnesses. The loss of their cavaliers. Oh how did they manage to keep that from him?

I honestly thought - is Mercy saying she knows he killed humanity? But that's not what she couldn't have forgiven?

But why did he hide it? Why did he hide the perfect way? ('it would be easier' why???)

Ah. Yes. The expansion, why would the Emperor do that?

Uhhhhh. Couldn't Mercy have done that all along??????????????????????? Couldn't Mercy have killed God all along? That was both a trick and utterly sincere.

Augustine and Mercy were trying to do the right thing..... Mercy.... :'( Augustine was right. God is much less sentimental than he seems.

'im not even mad that you failed to either fix or put down Harrow' hm guess the constant kill quest HAD come from God after all. What a goddamn bitch of a man

What was the original plan? Unleash a. L. ? And then what? How would that help with the whole Dominicus going out problem?

Had God ever really thought to make up for all the bullshit he put his Lyctors through. He seems so affable and human but he's caused so much suffering. He's as good at manipulation at them - better!

The resurrection beast can't kill him, but he let his Lyctors die to them one by one anyway. So why??

Why are they punching each other in the River? They can use theorems right? God could blast Augustine to pieces same he did mercy?

Yes! It's true! Pyrrha and Gideon both exist in the same body - foreshadowed by his cavaliers build. There was something so fishy about it.

I love how Gideon has exactly the same response as me: what the fuck. Pyrrha??? Gideon??? What the fuck??? Why did they BOTH have an affair with their enemy??? So ok. Pyrrha stayed underground from Everybody for the thousand years. SOMEHOW their compartmentalisation let her pop up in his body regularly and not just when Gideon remembered her - because the hadn't fucked up his brain. But then how did THEY do that.

This absolutely galactic balsiness

The stoma thinks John is a resurrection beast. Might it be.....because he's..... A revenant. A 10 billion souled kinda- revenant ? A bit like.....Harrow is? Which is why he felt kin to her? Which is why he compared her creation to Resurrection?????I've really gotta reread those messages from commander wake.

A fucking jail for mother meme. Jail for one thousand years. Gideon how do you know this one????

I KNEW Ianthe would do that. Knew it. She doesn't want the system to die. Coronabeth is still out there. Well guess what - she's on the opposite side babe. Ok I realised that Gideon's mum apparently stuck to Gideon and then the sword? But also did Harrow manage to break the blood ward because of of her proximity to Gideon? Did Harrow uhhhh get put into a pocket in the river? But the emperor wasn't murdered!!! Fuckin chapters kept lying. They're on a hold planet. Finally - we meet the people. Alecto and Camilla and Corona? And Judith.? Did Alecto somehow do a time twisty around to come save Gideon at that moment in the river? Once again nothing much more is clear.

#my stuff #harrow the ninth #gtn #ninth

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crewhonk · 5 years

Text

Sunshine

Cop!Bucky X Reader

In which your best friend, Maria Rambeau goes into labour on your couch and the freeway has other plans to get you to the hospital

Warnings: Swearing, Traffic, labouring mother, fluff, cop!beefy!bucky, im suffering from intense baby fever this is pretty self indulgent, GREYS ANATOMY SPOILERS

Words: 3.5K

@nomadsgrogers i tagged you now you have to name yours and seb’s first daughter after me

Your knuckles were white with the grip you had on the steering wheels of your Jeep, the engine purring louder as you pressed your sneakered foot harder on the gas and passed several cars very illegally. You could feel the sweat beading at your temples and you heart pounding in your ears, blood rushing to them in a roar not loud enough to block out the screaming from your passenger side seat.

Maria Rambeau had come over to your house earlier that day— something not uncommon from one of your best friends, and you greeted her with a hug and a kiss on the cheek and a whispered hello to her swollen stomach. You, Maria and Carol, had served in the Airforce in your late teens and early twenties both you and Maria had left to pursue goals which were just a little closer to Earth. She had curled up on your couch, barely hiding her discomfort as you handed her an iced tea— made just the way she liked. She had just been about to lift the glass to her lips when there was a sound of rushing water and she doubled over, pain electrocuting her body so deep it felt like the marrow in her bones was frying.

You had immediately busted into action, quelling your tears of fear as you sprinted to your room for a change of clothes that may fit the very pregnant and soaked woman on your couch while yelling at her to time the spaces between her contractions.

So, you were in the jeep now, racing down the freeway and drumming your fingers over the steering wheel, shushing Maria as she tried once again to apologize for ruining your couch.

“Maria if you apologize once more I’m going to steal the birth certificate and change the name to dark roast coffee. Stop, I can get a new couch.” You bit, clenching your jaw as you swept back into the lane you were supposed to be. You thought you saw a flash of a middle finger but you genuinely couldn’t care less as the screaming woman in your car took precedence over all else.

“Did you call Carol, yet?” You asked, trying to attempt to take your friends mind off the pain rocketing through her body.

“Yeah, when you were in the bedroom. I think she screamed and swore and I’m pretty sure she said she was on her way to Brooklyn General. You know how she gets when she’s excited.” Maria smiled tiredly as the pressure lifted from her stomach. She sat back and patted the swell of her belly and looked down at it fondly. “You better calm down in there, soldier. Mama needs to get to the hospital before you meet her.”

“Yeah, and I already gotta get my couch replaced, I can’t afford to get the bloodstains out of the car.” You joked, winking over to Maria.

“I’m sorry!” She cried, laughing before gasping as the felt another contraction build in her stomach. Instead of replying you just laughed and pressed your foot harder to the gas.

___________________________

It was another five minutes of speeding down the highway when you merged onto the freeway and found yourself at your first problem.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god this is not normal!” Maria pressed her forehead against the dash and you looked over worriedly before placing your hand on her back and rubbing it in soothing circular motions.

“I’m pretty sure it is.” You hummed, noticing the there were a lot of red tail lights ahead and slowed down the jeep, flinching when you heard a low moan erupt from somewhere in Maria’s throat.

“Shut up yes it is.” She growled, biting her forearm to stifle her keens of pain. There was a moment of silence before the contraction passed and she looked over at you, eyes tired and regretful “Sorry for saying that.”

“Stop apologizing. You’re literally in labour. You could say anything and I wouldn’t be offended.” You hummed, brows furrowing as you tried to see if you could fit in the space between the cars and the blockade to see if you could bypass the traffic.

Nope.

“No, no, no. What is this traffic, are you kidding me?” Maria cried when she looked up. You pressed your lips together and pulled over as far to the side as possible. You clicked the seatbelt and looked at Maria very seriously.

“Do. Not. Leave. This car.” You said, pointing your finger in her face. Maria looked like she would like nothing more than to bite it clean off. Instead of giving your best friend the satisfaction, you opened the door and stepped out of the car.

“Y/N. Bitch! Where the fuck are you— OWWWW!” She keened and you hesitated to leave her alone. Instead of doing so, you kicked on a car door beside you and alerted the car of young adults to your presence. The driver smiled politely and turned down the music before rolling down the window and smiling.

“What’s up, Miss?” He was cute. Young, innocent, perfect for guarding a labouring soon-to-be mother.

“Y/N. Call me Y/N, please.” You dug in your bag and pulled out your wallet, giving them each as much cash as you could before asking them; “Would you mind watching my very best, labouring friend while I go and see if I can get us a ride to the hospital, please?” You begged. His eyes widened and he looked at his round friend and beautiful, but very nerdy friend before stuttering out an affirmation.

“Great, her name is Maria. I’ll be back in five minutes.” You rushed before beginning the short jog up to the front of the jam. There were a few police cars guarding the wreckage and you winced at the sight of crushed metal before running to the nearest cop car and leaning forward to rest your hand on your need and catching your breath.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” A grumbly voice sounded above you and you shot up, hands on your back and a tired smile on your face. All was very well until your eyes landed on his beautiful, gorgeous, almost offensive face. His hair was hidden with a combination of black police hat and bun, a light sprinkling of scruff on his strong jaw and crooked nose between two very intense eyes. There was a gap in his eyebrow due to a scar and his rough appearance had your knees weak.

“I— um. Yeah. I’m fine. How— how are you?” You tried to smirk and lean against the cruiser, remembering why you were there before straightening up.

“I’m fine?” He replied, a smirk on his face and eyes thoroughly amused. Sure, he had been flirted with on the job before, but not in this situation and most certainly not by someone who took his very breath away. “What can I help you with?”

Right.

“I— I have a friend back there and she is trying to stop herself from pushing a watermelon-sized human out of a space which is not watermelon sized.” You blushed as if you were in fifth grade and just hearing about the works of childbirth for the first time again. God, why did the first cop that helped her need to be a walking Adonis? A very, very amused Adonis. No way it was legal to wear a uniform that seemed to be ripping at the seams trying to keep muscles on muscles at bay.

“Jesus.” He swore, looking around and seeing that all of his coworkers were busy. “I— okay, where is she?”

_________________________

You and officer James “Bucky” Barnes, as you learned his name was, jogged back t your parked car, all three teenagers had since piled into the jeep and were trying their very best to quell the pain Maria felt shaking her to her very soul. The tiny kid looked as if he was going to explode if Maria squeezed his hand any tighter. At the sight of you, each teenager relaxed into their seats and smiled at you when you pulled open the passenger side door.

“Hey, soldier.” You smiled, wiping Maria’s curly bangs from her forehead. She looked up slowly, as if in a daze and offered you a weak smile.

“Did you know these kids are going to graduate top of their class at Midtown?” She hummed, looking back fondly at them. The pain was making her delirious and you blinked stupidly as you heard Maria’s giggles turn into a low moan of pain.

“Hey, Maria, shhh. You’re okay, you’re safe.” You pulled her head to rest in the crook of her neck and looked back at Officer Barnes who looked a little too pale to be normal. She clutched your sides, pulling your shirt up to dig her nails into the soft skin of your waist, crying low not the safe crook of your neck. He knew right now really wasn’t the best time, but he’d be damned if the sight of your waist covered in long, dark claw marks make some of the blood drain from his brain to his stomach.

Once the contraction passed, you pulled her chin so she would look at you and you spoke very slowly. The gentleness and care you showed for the people in your life made Bucky’s heart swell and he had to very much remind himself that he was, in fact, at work.

“This if Officer Barnes. He’s going to take us to the hospital, okay?” You hummed, staking her hair and smiling softly when she leaned into your touch. Seeing this side of Maira was rare, but you were living for every minute of it.

“M’kay.” You took her hand and helped her down from the car, the teens taking the hint and exiting the car, all but the small boy climbing into the old beater. Maria’s knees buckled once she tried to put weight on them, and Bucky acted swiftly, catching her and stopping her into his arms as if she weren’t a heavily pregnant woman, and, at the very most, just a toddler throwing a tantrum.

Fuck.

The boy walked to stand next to you as Officer Barnes began walking away, in the same state shock as you were right now.

“He’s like, a real-life Hollywood superhero, huh?” He muttered, patting you on the shoulder. You nodded before turning to him and wrapping your arms around his neck, pulling him into a hug.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done today. You’re a good kid— whoever raised you did a bang-up job.” You smiled, and he flushed bright red, sheepishly looking down at his feet briefly before pulling his phone from his back pocket.

“I— would it be okay if I gave you my number? I just— I wanna know what happens.” You blinked before a wide smile spread across your face, handing him your own phone and waiting for him to give it back. When he did you looked at the name and smiled.

“I’m sure she’d love to see the brave young man that held her hand in the freeway, Peter. I’ll be in touch, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

_______________________

You had all piled into the cop car quickly, Officer Barnes going to inform his Captain that he was going to take two women to the hospital before helping you both into the hard plastic seats of the back. You buckled Maria in as she went through another contraction and nodded at Officer Barnes that he was good to go.

“You buckle up, too, Doll. Need you safe.” His gaze through the rearview mirror was intense and he didn’t miss the way you flushed pink at the nickname. He bookmarked that one to use again— there was no way he wouldn’t be seeing you after this day.

The car pulled out, sirens and lights blaring as Bucky pulled out of the middle of the freeway, engine roaring as he sped his way to the hospital bay doors. Maria's contraction subsided and she slimed over to you, grabbing your hand and intertwining your fingers together.

“You’re a real life genius, you know that? In another life, I’m pretty sure you were a superhero.” You rolled your eyes at her compliment and physical affection, smiling widely and letting your eyes flicker to the rearview mirror, meeting those same blue, intense eyes once more. He seemed to smile at MAria’s comment, agreeing with her.

“I cannot wait to tell the little baby that this is how she got her way to the hospital.” You laughed, placing your hand on her belly and rubbing. Maria hummed.

“She’ll be sick of it by the time we tell it at her graduation.” Maria laughed, and you heard Bucky let out an amused huff of air through his nose.

“And her wedding.”

“And her wedding.” She replied, eyes welling up with tears. “This is really happening, isn’t it?”

“You’re gonna be a mama.” You whispered, a new kind of excitement in your eyes.

“And you’re gonna be a godmother.” She replied, the same excitement lacing her tone. Bucky’s heart damn well swelled in the front seat at the interaction. There was a pause before Maria jut her chin in the officer's direction.

“I’m pretty close to revoking Sam’s title as Godfather and giving it to this guy. He’s the real hero of the day.” She smirked, winking at you and wiggling her eyebrows.

“I don’t think he or Riley would be too happy about that— you know how much they want a little one in their house.” You laughed, nudging her shoulder but keeping her close.

“Oh, I’m sure they can wait for the next one. I’m pretty sure I’m in a little bit love with this guy.” Maria smiled at the bashful laugh she pulled from the officer. The warm smile and flustered pink on his cheeks making his hard exterior nothing more than a soft teddy bear. Or a street mutt that everyone adores.

“Me too.” You agreed quietly, winking at the man and blushing when he wiggled his eyebrows. Before you could get caught in your own feelings once more, Maria began rocking back and forth, breathing heavily and clutching your shoulder tightly as another contraction ripped her in half.

Bucky pressed his foot harder on the gas.

____________________

The cop car careened into the ER bay, and a very familiar face runs out, worry deep get in his brow at the sight of two of his closest friends in the back of a cop car. Tony Stark meets the car as it stops, opening the door to see Maria Rambeau keening in pain and you with tired, worried eyes. He nods towards the familiar officer and pulls Maria from the car and into a wheelchair. Bruce runs outside at the sight of two familiar faces and immediately starts asking questions.

“What the hell happened?” He half-shouts, meeting you and looking back at Maria who is now surrounded but the best team of doctors. Helen Cho breaks through the crowd with a smile and a wink and immediately sweeps her up further into the hospital.

“She came over and went into labour all over my couch and then we got stuck in traffic and I managed to find this Officer to help us.” You rushed, eyes darting anxiously to see if you could see Maria or Carol or anyone at all. Bruce looks back at Officer Barnes and smiles, jutting out a hand for Barnes to shake.

“Thank you, Officer. Maria is one of our people, and you helping her and Y/N means more than you know.” Bucky blushed and smiled, stepping away and watching as Bruce turned to walk back into his ER.

“Thank you, for everything, Officer.” You say, voice quiet. The toll of the day has already made your shoulders slouch and your blinks slow, but you know you have so many more hours to go before baby is here. There was no way that you would be missing your Godbaby’s birth.

“Bucky. Please, it’s Bucky.” He smiled, leaning casually on his car and crossing his arms. You lick your lips at the sight of the bulging muscles, and he subtly flexes at your reaction to him.

“You tell all the girls to call you Bucky or somethin’?” You joke, swaying up on your tip toes and back down.

‘Only the pretty ones who care too much about their pregnant friends screaming in my backseat.” He said, his voice low and rumbly and making your core tighten. You flush and your eyes dart around the ambulance bay nervously before settling back on him.

“I uh— I should go. Make sure her wife is okay, and everything.” You say, voice sad and regretful and you relish in the way his shoulders drop in disappointment.

“Yeah, you should. I’ll see you around, though okay?” He asks, watching you start to back away to the sliding doors. You smirk.

“I’ll drive a little bit faster these days then. Maybe you can give me a ticket or somethin’.” You smile and he threw his head back to let out a roaring laugh that echoes against the buildings around you. God, what you would give to drown in that sound.

“I’ll be lookin’ forward to it, Doll.” His voice is low and you can feel your face heat up under his intense stare and nickname.

“Me too, Officer.”

_____________________

It’s almost six hours later when Monica Lawson Danvers-Rambeau is brought into the world, Carol on the left side of Maria and you on the right. Monica is six pounds, 9 ounces of pure squealing baby and she is immediately the centre of the group's lives. The first baby to be born in the friend group warrants a few life-altering feelings one would think.

It’s almost midnight, and you’re curled up in one of the armchairs pressed into the corner by the window, Monica asleep in your arms. Her eyelids flutter with her very first dream and your heart feels like it's going to explode with love when you let one gentle knuckle brush her cheek as light as a feather. You could have stared at her forever, and would have too if it wasn’t for the son knock from the open door only a few feet away.

Officer Barnes stands there, a grey sweater and dark jeans adorning his body, his hair loose and tucked behind his ears and he has a pair of sunglasses to keep the rest of the strands from falling into his face. There's a large, colourful bouquet of tulips and sunflowers and babies breath in his arms and you nod your head to the table beside the bed holding the sleeping wives. You stand and walk over to him, Monica making a tiny, squeaking noise in your arms before settling back in, nuzzling her face deeper into your chest. Bucky’s heart swells at the sight.

“How’re you?” He mumbles, eyes never leaving Monica. To think she was inside his car only a few hours ago trying to escape blew his mind. She was so quiet. So peaceful now.

“I’m the best I’ve been in a long time.” You replied honestly. Life had always given you a rough hand, but this-this made everything worth it.

“That’s great to hear.” He whispered, leaning against the doorframe. You turn your head to yawn and your eyes look impossibly heavy.

“This is little Monica. You probably saved her life, you know. You got us here safe and sound. Thank you, Officer Barnes.” You hum, smiling softly, and Bucky can feel his heart rate double in pace. He clenches his jaw nervously before looking at you hopefully. The sight of his puppy dog eyes peeking through his long, dark lashes has your knees weak.

“What d’you say I wait around for as long as you need and I drive you home. We can stop at some 24-hour diner and get coffee and breakfast— I haven’t eaten in a few hours and I would like to see you some more.”

You sucked in a breath through your nose and let it out of your mouth quickly. God, he really went for the kill, didn’t he? You’d be lying to yourself if you said coffee and a beautiful date didn’t sound like the best thing in the world right now.

“The nurses are due to check up on us in a few minutes if you want to wait? I don’t wanna just leave them.” You mumble, blushing, nervous gaze softening when you look at the little pink bundle in your arms.

“She loves you already.” He smiles, gently brushing one long, thick finger over the small tuft of curly hair. She looked so much like her mother.

You smile up at him— a smile of mischief and confidence. “Well, what’s not to love, huh?”

Buckys eyes flick up to your own and your breath catches at the intensity of his stare. His moist, plump lips are turned into a small smile when he says “I can’t find anything that anyone wouldn’t.”

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destieltropecollection · 5 years

Photo

Destiel Trope Collection 2019 Day 21: Hurt/Comfort (and Whump)

Lie To Me | @castielslostwings Rating: Explicit Word Count: 27476 Main Tags and Warnings: Alternate season 14, canon divergent at s13e23 “let the good times roll”, angst with a happy ending, Michael!Dean, fix-it, pining, temporary MCD, human castiel, casturbation, top Cas/bottom Dean, Sam & Cas brother moments, alcohol as a coping mechanism, Chuck Ex Machina, hurt/comfort, Castiel whump, Dean whump Summary: Castiel and Sam's plan to expel Michael from Dean's body backfires in a big way, leaving them with an unexpectedly human archangel and the horrifying possibility that Dean's soul is gone forever. Can they bring Dean home from wherever he's gone? What will become of a human Michael trapped in Dean's body? How will Castiel survive losing the love of his life, just when things were starting to fall together?

Worlds Away | @hefellfordean Rating: Mature Word Count: 4240 Main Tags and Warnings: Multiple Universes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Interdimensional Travel, Getting Together, Angst with a Happy Ending Summary: "In all the infinite, incalculable number of worlds, you don’t love me. But what’s worse, is that I didn’t need to ask to know that I love you in any world, unconditionally – and unrequited.”, Cas says, pulling away from Dean. Castiel is sent to a place between worlds, with infinite doorways through which he must travel to return home. All of the worlds he visits have something in common: Dean doesn't love him. His world is the same - or is it?

Angel Whisperer | @noiproksa Rating: General Word Count: 2767 Main Tags and Warnings: Hurt Castiel, Concussions Summary: Taking care of a concussed angel is a lot harder than anticipated. Dean might be out of his depth, but that doesn’t mean he won’t do everything he can to make his angel feel better. (Intended as gen, but can be read as Destiel pre-slash.)

Anti-Cuddle Curse | @noiproksa Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 5155 Main Tags and Warnings: Hurt Castiel, Cuddling & Snuggling, Witch Curses, Hurt/Comfort Summary: When a witch curses Team Free Will, Dean realizes how much being able to touch Cas really means to him. (Intended as gen, but can be read as Destiel pre-slash.)

Touch Deprived | @noiproksa Rating: General Word Count: 4132 Main Tags and Warnings: Hurt Castiel, Angel Healing, Hurt/Comfort Summary: Confused by all the human rules for personal space and touching, Cas has to come up with excuses in order to be able to touch Dean and Sam. Or is it the other way around? (Intended as gen, but can be read as Destiel pre-slash.)

longing for grapefruit | @reallyelegantsharkfish Rating: Explicit Word Count: 1686 Main Tags and Warnings: Friends to Lovers, Recreational Drug Use, Marijuana, Oral Sex, Mental Health Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Shotgunning, Demisexual Castiel Summary: Dean lights up and takes the first hit, but instead of exhaling, he leans over towards Cas. It’s not a proper kiss, breathing in Dean’s air, but it’s intimate, and they take turns sharing hits in between kisses. Cas is flying. Cas can feel everything, Cas is out of his body. “Baby,” Dean says, soft in between them. “Let me make you feel good.”

Green Corners | @rustling-pages Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 72533 Main Tags and Warnings: Elemental Magic AU, (Threat of) Main Character Death, (Past) Child Death, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn Summary: After the death of his son, there is nothing left for Dean other than his garden market. His days are tough, the nights are tougher, but at least there's a reason to get up in the morning. And with the new boom on do-it-yourself garden magic, his business is going okay. Amidst the passing of time, there is only one thing that distracts him from functioning like a normal human being: Diagonally across the street, in the display window of that traditional Herb and Potion shop, plants are dying in masses. Storming in to confront the owner goes differently than he imagined, though. Castiel Novak may be the kind of guy who wears old-fashioned mage robes and keeps his shop in sweltering heat, but he's also a talented herbalist, the kindest soul Dean has ever met, and utterly beautiful. Not that Dean is ready for anything other than friendship. (Not that Cas doesn’t get sick a bit too often.)

The Bone Eater (WIP) | @rachelhaimowitz Rating: Explicit Word Count: 111259 Main Tags and Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester/Original Male Character(s), Castiel/Original Male Character(s), Hurt/Comfort, Prisoner Dean, Monsters, Dean Whump, Season/Series 09, Set somewhere between Bad Boys and Holy Terror, Size Kink, Non-Consensual Bondage, Violent Sex, Manhandling, Torture, Castiel Whump, Forced Orgasm, Prisoner Castiel, Possessive Behavior Summary: When Dean wakes in a strange prison cell, he quickly realizes he's become another victim of the mystery monster he and Sam have been hunting: a creature who sucks the marrow right out of people's bones. There are years--sometimes decades--between the killings, and no connection between them but men who were big, strong, and healthy when they disappeared. Dean learns right up close and personal why the monster picks who he picks. Unfortunately, stuck behind bars, consistently outmatched, and growing weaker by the day, he's having a tough time putting that information to good use. But Cas can't hear his prayers anymore (and doesn't owe him shit anyway, the way he left the guy), and Zeke might or might not have his ears on (and might or might not let Sam do anything about it even if he did), and Dean ain't no damsel in distress besides. He's gonna get out of there no matter what it takes, and he's damn well gonna make sure this monster never hurts anyone again--especially not the guy he finally finds the courage to admit he loves.

Fighting My Way Back | @deans-jiggly-pudding Rating: Explicit Word Count: 81740 Main Tags and Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, major character death, canon compliant up to S13, Slow Burn, PTSD Summary: Sam, Cas, and Mary are trying and failing to break Dean out of Michael’s stronghold. Jack is exploring his potential while slowly recovering his power. He has the ability to create, but until his grace is at full strength, his creation must be made out of something already existing. Our favorite nephilim has a plan to use his newfound power to snap Dean out of Michael's control, but what will become of Dean after the ejection? And can Team Free Will 2.0 stop Michael before he destroys the world?

don't leave me | @breathingdestiel Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1016 Main Tags and Warnings: au, established relationship, angst with a happy ending Summary: Dean is a mess after Cas leaves him. And it's all his fault.

Angeleech | @noiproksa Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 14457 Main Tags and Warnings: hurt/comfort, hurt castiel, case fic, platonic cuddling, sharing a bed, team free will Summary: It was supposed to be an easy hunt, but then everything goes sideways. Dean and Sam have to take care of an injured Cas and find out what is going on with the angel before it is too late.

Keeper of the Garden | @pherryt Rating: Mature Word Count: 5672 Main Tags and Warnings: Perceived MCD but not really, Season 13 Finale Coda, possessed!dean, Michael!Dean, Hurt/Comfort, Saving Dean, Recovering Dean, Angst, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Caretakers Sam and Cas (but mostly Cas), Gardening Dean, Canon, until next season starts anyway, broken!dean, Crazy!Dean, Hurt!Cas, Confessions Summary: Michael backed out of their deal and now Dean's stuck, trapped in his own mind with a crazy Archangel who keeps showing him Cas's death over and over again, keeps making Dean kill Cas over and over again... till he really does and Dean snaps... Finally free of Michael but not of his own sins, Dean is slow to recover from the possession, and is convinced Cas is dead at his own hands. Dean has done a lot of things, both good and bad, but there's nothing that will ever make up for that.

Any Other Day (WIP) | @peanutbutterjelly-pie Rating: Mature Word Count: 21679 Main Tags and Warnings: Canon Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers Summary: Victor just wants to finally enjoy his weekend. But when weird reports of a man in a trench coat having been arrested for murder in some small town in Colorado are coming in and the names of the Winchester brothers are all of a sudden mentioned for the very first time in almost a decade inside the FBI building, Victor needs to kiss his free time goodbye. So instead of spending his days on the couch, eating all the takeout he can find and watching crappy movies, he all at once sees himself confronted with an unstable angel, incapable of controlling his powers, a hunter missing from the scene, nowhere to be found, and the other one worried out of his mind about his family. Yeah, that's not the quiet weekend Victor had been hoping for. At all.

You are my home | @DesiraeLovesDestiel Rating: Explicit Word Count: 4774 Main Tags and Warnings: canon verse, bunker fic, post season 11, Castiel whump, love confessions, profound bond, smut, angst Summary: “Cas? Hey buddy, wake up.” Castiel blinked his eyes open slowly, looking up at Dean owlishly before jolting up, nearly clipping Dean’s jaw on the way. “Hey, hey,” Dean said, concern lacing his tone. “You okay, man?” Castiel cleared his throat. “Yes. My apologies, Dean.” “S’okay. You wanna tell me why you’re sleeping in Baby?” Things have settled down since rescuing Sam. Mary is bonding with her sons, and Castiel is nearly back to full capacity, just needing a little sleep here and there. When Dean discovers Cas' unusual resting spot, what starts as a series confessions leads to the emotional healing they both needed.

If This Is To End In Fire | @reaperlove77 Rating: Explicit Word Count: 16279 Main Tags and Warnings: Alternate Universe, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Dean Winchester Whump, Supernatural Elements, Smut, Anal Sex, Temporary Character Death, Happy Ending, Past Abuse, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Dean-Centric, Haunted Houses, Domestic Violence (not Dean/Cas), BAMF Castiel, Panic Attacks, Minor Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Slurs, Bottom Dean, Top Castiel, Gothic Elements Summary: Dean Winchester doesn't trust easy, not after everything he's been through. When he finds a new home and a new job in Kelvin's Point, he's almost ready to believe he also found happiness for the first time in his life. But what does he really know about this Castiel and is their love enough to keep the ghosts from the past away for good?

When Angels Cry | @sweetdaydreamsblog Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1068 Main Tags and Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Mentions of Suicide, Happy Ending, Hurt Dean Winchester, Emotionally Hurt Castiel Summary: Castiel remembers the events that transpired during Dean's last night on Earth, as well as what happened after.

Eyes Shut | @galaxystiel Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1493 Main Tags and Warnings: AU, Human!Castiel, alcoholism, drunk driving, supernatural elements, angst with a happy ending Summary: Dean learns a lesson about the dangers of drink-driving, and in the process learns a few things about his future.

And I swear | @notfunnydean Rating: Explicit Word Count: 4413 Main Tags and Warnings: abusive relationship, Dean dates Arthur Ketch at first, hurt!Dean, break up between Arthur and Dean, first time, first kiss, bottom!Dean, top!Cas, crying Dean, Cas saves Dean Summary: Dean knows that Arthur is treating him badly, but he had worse in his life and besides, it’s not like the person he really loves wants him back.

I'm a sucker for you | @notfunnydean Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 3148 Main Tags and Warnings: Drunk!Dean, hurt!Cas Summary: Dean knows he and Castiel are a good team, but he only talks about his feelings for Castiel when he’s drunk and doesn’t remember their kisses in the morning. Someday Castiel has enough.

Event Horizon | @cas-lost-grace Rating: Mature Word Count: 6442 Main Tags and Warnings: Suicidal Thoughts, Suicidal Dean, Depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Past Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst,Texting, Sharing a Bed, Happy Ending, Veteran Dean, Doctor Dean, Writer Castiel Summary: Castiel couldn't have helped his sister. That's why being offered a chance to help somebody else dealing with suicidal thoughts he took it without hesitation. When he gets the first text from someone who needs his help, nothing goes as he expected.

Finding You, in Pieces of Me | @lunastories Rating: Mature Word Count: 21263 Main Tags and Warnings: Trueform Castiel, Angst with a happy ending, Post Sam's fall into the pit Summary: Dean is jaded after the loss of his brother and left with little to no hope in humanity. Castiel decides to show the world and humanity from his perspective so that Dean can regain the spark that he’s lost. They visit seven locations that have significance to Castiel. From the Cave of Crystals inhabited by an ancient eel spirit, to the Atacama Desert haunted by a heartbroken woman, Dean goes through a journey of self discovery. Slowly, Dean falls for Castiel and the world the angel sees.

Love me to Death | @lunastories Rating: Mature Word Count: 9219 Main Tags and Warnings: Death!Dean, Temporary Character Death, Reincarnation, Angst, Self harm Summary: There once was a man who feared Death. He feared him so much he tried to seek immortality, but his efforts were in vain. Eventually, he learned to love Death and everything he represented. This is the story of a mortal and a god and their love for one another.

Mixtapes (WIP) | silverstar2419 (Wattpad) Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 8407 Main Tags and Warnings: Depression, dealing with depression, mentions of attempted suicide Summary: Two years ago Dean tried to kill himself but Bobby stepped in and saved his life. Now he deals with his unwanted life the same he used to, strippers and beer. What happens when he finds out the person he loves as more than a friend (or brother for that matter) has the same feelings? Let's find out.

What We Ache For | @almaasi Rating: Explicit Word Count: 93115 Main Tags and Warnings: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Sex Work, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Fluff, Consent, Sex Worker Castiel, Demisexual Castiel, Police Officer Dean, Affectionate Dean, Dean bottoms for the first time, Making Love, Cuddling and Snuggling, Injury Recovery, Temporary Amnesia, Supportive Sam, Castiel loves dogs, Domestic Fluff Summary: Working as a prostitute (that’s ‘sex worker’ to the decent folks), Castiel has heard more than his fair share of odd requests. When he’s paid to spend a night with Dean Winchester (handsome, dork of all dorks, has a nice car... secretly a cop), the last thing Castiel expects to hear are the words “I wanna make love.” That's the one thing he’s never done before – so Dean is going to show him how to do it. But then, barely a month after that night is over, Castiel finds himself in a difficult situation, and Dean is mistakenly summoned to help. They begin to share again: Dean’s apartment, the spare bed, their deepest secrets. Over time, with the support of Dean’s brother Sam, a mystery dog, and lots of cuddles, kisses, comfort, and tea, maybe Cas can finally be loved the way he deserves.

Lost Night | @almaasi Rating: General Word Count: 2608 Main Tags and Warnings: Canon Universe, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Brief Angst, Pre-Slash, Best Friends, Holding Hands, Dreams, Dreamwalking, Lucid Dreaming, Angel Castiel, Sad Dean, Mutual Pining Summary: Dean is so afraid of losing his best friend that he dreams Cas is floating away. His longing is great enough that the real-life Castiel is summoned, dreamwalking into Dean's subconscious – and, as The Beatles once said: "the minute you let him under your skin... then you begin to make it better..."

Unconditional | @almaasi Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 2676 Main Tags and Warnings: Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Fluff and Angst, Love Confessions, First Kiss, Unconditional Love, Human Castiel, Injured Castiel, Caring Dean, Abused Dean, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Abusive John Winchester Summary: Over the years, Dean's learned a lot about himself, and the way he loves those around him. Now Cas is back from the dead, and he came back human - and hurt. As Dean soothes Cas' wounds in the front seat of the Impala, an ache in his heart drives him to find words to explain.

Mostly in Silence | @almaasi Rating: General Word Count: 4216 Main Tags and Warnings: Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Romance, Depression, Executive Dysfunction, Mental Health Issues, Self Care, Fallen Angel Castiel, Human Castiel, Castiel in the Bunker, Depressed Castiel, Sick Castiel, Caring Dean, Stargazing, Stars, Holding Hands, First Kiss, Poetic, No Spoilers, Always Keep Fighting, You are not alone Summary: Dean returns home to the bunker, only to find Castiel is lost in a deep depression. Taking their cues from the night sky (perhaps holding hands, perhaps sharing their first kiss), Dean helps Castiel rediscover a small but shining sense of hope.

Delirium and Doctor Sexy | @almaasi Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 9388 Main Tags and Warnings: Crack, Comfort, Fluff, Pre-Slash, Doctor Sexy M.D., Hunt Gone Wrong, Dean Hallucinates, Age Regression/De-Aging (mentally only), Bisexual Dean, Closeted Dean, Innocent Dean, Character Analysis, Dean Projects His Insecurities, Dean in Panties, Magic Made Them Do It, Sexual References, No Sex, Unresolved Romantic Tension Summary: Dean got hit by a wave of magical gas while protecting Sam, and now he's curled up in a motel bed, watching comfort TV on his laptop and hallucinating. Cas hangs around to look after him. But Dean thinks the friendly angel at his bedside is actually his favourite fictional beefcake, Dr. Sexy, M.D.. With all inhibitions on standby, Dean might admit a few things about himself he never dared to tell anyone before.

Dean, 2 pm | @sternchencas Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1464 Main Tags and Warnings: suicidal thoughts, emotional hurt/comfort Summary: Cas is done with his life. He's ready to end it all. The only thing that might be able to change his mind is one little note in his calendar that says 'Dean, 2 pm'.

Patch Me Up | @babybluecas Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 1426 Main Tags and Warnings: canon universe, fallen!Cas, minor injury Summary: When Dean gets injured on a hunt, it's Cas's turn to take care of him.

Oh Death, Bring Him Back | @envydean Rating: Teen & Up Word Count: 3984 Main Tags and Warnings: Modern AU, accountant!Cas, mechanic!Dean, hurt!Dean, Temporary Character Death, two-sided unrequited love, Pining, Major Character Injury, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst, Fluff, First Kiss, Supernatural but Dean and Cas don't know about it, So much begging Summary: Dean is badly hurt after a bar fight and Castiel goes to see him only to find out that the news isn't good. However, supernatural forces are on their side. Castiel follows the doctor quickly, barely a pace behind him. It's as bad as he feared. What if he doesn't get the chance to tell Dean that he loves him. Even if Dean doesn't love him back. The room is reminiscent of a war zone. Several people are crowded around Dean's body. There's blood everywhere, machines going haywire and doctors barking orders. Castiel is frozen to the spot.

Don't Let Go | @envydean Rating: Mature Word Count: 28578 Main Tags and Warnings: EMT!Castiel, mechanic!Dean, alcoholic!Dean, Alcoholism, Car Accidents ,Hospitals, Recovery, PTSD, Descriptions of Injury, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst, Trying to fall in love Summary: Dean Winchester’s life is a mess. Ever since his father’s death, a downward spiral has seen his occasional beer become something of a crutch. Then, a revelation has him going to see his brother in California—except he doesn’t make it and ends up in a nasty accident, destroying the Impala. Air rescue paramedic, Castiel, and his partner Benny are the ones to pull him out of the wreck and that’s just the start of it. He forms a tentative friendship with Dean and manages to convince him he needs help and that he can be there for Dean. It should have been all uphill from there—because getting sober is easy, right?—except it isn’t and their relationship is thrown into turmoil at the wrong time. Slowly, they learn to accept each other once again.

Like Sands Through The Hourglass | BiP (AO3) Rating: General Word Count: 1643 Main Tags and Warnings: illness Summary: It's always Florida, and it's always witches.

Battle of Mind and Body | @light-in-my-darkness Rating: Explicit Word Count: 164466 Main Tags and Warnings: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Sexual Content, PTSD, Whump, Slow Build, Additional Warnings in Notes Summary: A confession. A car accident. A coma. The results of which lead Castiel and Dean on a destructive path. Their family and friends fight to alter that path, but without knowing the truth of that fateful night, they fear their efforts will fail. Determined to box up the pain and humiliation, Castiel falls into depression and self-harm. In the aftermath of that night, Dean confronts his own demons. Both the angel and the hunter struggle to repair the broken pieces of themselves. As they try, will the dark nature of their world stay at bay long enough for them to heal or will it shatter any progress they made?

Taker of Souls | jscribbles (AO3) Rating: Explicit Word Count: 128664 Main Tags and Warnings: temporary major character death, Minor Character Death, Pining, Slow Burn, non-con, dub-con, Blood, Gore, Body mutilation, Self Harm, zombie-type characters, Hallucinations, Nightmares, horror-imagery, shameless use of horror movie tropes, offensive language/insults, spoilers for The Witch ,the boys cry, Sickness, Sweat ,Mud, Possession, canon-calibre discussions of religion, the evil dead 2013 Crossover, Inspired By, Smut, minor prescription drug use, Vomiting, Summary: The angels have fallen. Castiel is human, Sam is recovering from the trials, and Dean doesn’t want to expose them to the world as it’s crumbling outside the bunker doors. To pass time in their solitude, Dean discovers a hidden room in the bunker full of dangerous magical artifacts and accidentally exposes his friends and family to an ancient horror. If Castiel thought adjusting to humanity was already a terror in itself, he experiences a world of pain when the ancient spirit Dean released chooses him as a vessel to fulfill its evil prophecy. Castiel begins to change as voices call out to him in the night and take the form of the one righteous man he desires, temptation drawing him to complete a ritual that will allow one of Hell’s most feared ancient entities to occupy his vessel. Before Sam, Dean, Kevin and Crowley know what is happening, they are thrown into a lockdown, unable to escape the bunker as the cruel, twisted monster inside of Castiel prowls the hallways, hunting them, thirsty for their blood, hungry for their souls.

#destiel #destiel trope collection #writersofdestiel #deancasfanficnet #destielwritersnet #tropes #hurt comfort #hurt/comfort #whump #2019

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chronicowboy · 5 years

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Rhodey had accepted his fate. He was going to die, buried in the rubble of the avengers compound — his home — with only a raccoon for company. And Rhodey was at peace with it. Why should he die any differently? He was fine with it. That was until the little voice in the back of his head, that had only ever spoken the name of his best friend, Tony Stark, the voice that James both despised with every cell of himself and loved with a fierce passion, chimed in.

Tony's going to die.

It sung the words like they were a melody that little children would recite for many years to come. They rolled so easily in his mind and so strongly through his neurons, which he probably wouldn't even think about without Tony's influence, that he just knew. The knowledge settled onto his chest, flodded through his veins, melded with the very marrow of his bones. Acceptance, depression and every other stage of grief apart from denial. That could wait for later. If there was a later. Despite the panic of water filling up their little grave, James felt quite calm. Because if Tony was to die, he would be damn sure he'd be waiting for his brother with open arms.

It was with one such thought that Rhodey heard a crackle in his ear. A static screech, that made his grip tighten on the fluffy creature in his arms, which was soon accompanied by a second of what sounded like Scott Lang's New Jersey drawl. The bubble of slightly bittersweet hope that had formed in his chest burst with the realisation that it might have indeed been his voice but not for them. He found his shoulders didn't droop as much as they probably should have.

Rhodey loathed the smile on his face, the relieved sigh that escaped his stupid smiling lips, when Scott grew a thousand times bigger and took him and Rocket with him. Tony could already be dead for all he knew. Tony could already be lost. But he didn't have a second to look for him because he was flung into the battle head first with a cyborg animal on his shoulder. Tony could already be lost. And Rhodey remembered the last time he'd properly lost Tony. He'd never hated sand more than when he lost him in it's dangerous dunes. He'd never loved sand more than when he found Tony in it, arm as extended as the tired man could manage, but a peace sign at the top nonetheless. And Rhodey thought about how exhausted he had been. A week of nonstop work. An hour of laborious fighting and fleeing. An hour of grief for the man who saved him.

James lost count of the times one of Thanos' minions had almost killed him because his mind had drifted to thoughts of Tony. Tony who could have died long ago. Tony who survived every experience that would kill anyone else. Tony who had died a thousand times over. Rhodey wasn't sure he was actually capable of dying. He always had work to do. Had a kid to rescue from the dumps or push them further up the mountain. Had a fight to diffuse in his own Stark way. Had a crisis that could only be solved with an Ironman sacrifice. Tony Stark was invincible. James only wished he hadn't believed it.

Rhodey found himself wishing they hadn't won when the battlefield had fallen silent. The air was thick with the ash of their enemy and yet thick with defeat. He knew he had to find Tony. Couldn't let his mind wander anymore; but in the few seconds it took to find his friend, his hero, his mind began to spiral.

James remembered the gangly boy he'd set eyes upon halfway through his first semester at MIT. He remembered the warnings he'd got about that Stark boy, but James knew surnames didn't define you and public personas weren't always people's real faces. He wasn't surprised at all to find out there was a broken, lonely boy under the exterior of an egotistical playboy who only ever needed a different girl on his arm each night. Tony was a shattered shell of a man and, no matter how many times he pushed Rhodes — as he had insisted on calling him — away in fear of tainting him, the soon-to-be corporal swore he'd be there for him. Always. Because that genius trapped inside a ball of anxiety smothered in an arrogant coating was his little brother. Whether he liked it or not. And big brothers protect their little brothers. How could he even call himself a friend if he couldn't protect him?

So when he found Tony fucking Stark, that idiot, crawling towards some kind of support with one arm tucked into his side like a limping dog, it was failure he felt. When he saw the piece of charred kindling that one would find at the bottom of a fire pit that was in place of Tony's left arm, it was something inexplicably painful that pushed him forward and made him help the man so he could lean against something. He hated that he considered his pain anywhere near Tony's. Selfish, James, selfish. Your little brother, your little— he's dying and you're thinking about what you're going to do. No, surely not. Tony Stark couldn't die. We've established this already. He's immortal against his own will. He is. He has to be. He can't go. And yet Rhodey could see him fading. He vaguely registered that he was shouting for Pepper, but his sense were overwhelmed when he rested his forehead on Tony's.

"You're going to be okay." He whispered. Or, at least, he did in that world of perfection and good timing that always managed to evade reality. Instead, he said nothing and let Peter through. He let Pepper comfort the boy. He let Pepper comfort the man. He let Tony die. No, you didn't. And it's Tony's voice that replaces that little one in the back of his head. His eyes are lifeless, breathing nonexistent. James, you didn't have a hand in my death. I did that for them. For us. And he laughs so coldly that Pepper looks at him to which he can only shake his head. Rhodey let it all happen. He wouldn't let anything else happen, so he slides a hand behind Tony's back. And the other goes under his knees. He pulls the body, the corpse, into his chest. It's not close enough. Metal against metal. Not chest against chest. Not brother in brother's arms. Not brothers in arms anymore. Its only when he tries to lift him that he feels how shaky his body is. Is it fatigue or emotion? James couldn't tell you, but he knew he couldn't lift his little brother. And perhaps that was the greatest injustice of all. Because he couldn't lift his little brother who should have outlasted him, not the other way around. He couldn't lift his little brother without the possibility of dropping him. He looked to Steve who was already looking at him, eyes watering and streaking through the dirt on his face, lip trembling more viciously than when Bucky had crumbled. Rhodey wanted to let him. But he couldn't because that's the man Tony trusted. That's the man that didn't trust Tony. And it was that knowledge, and a step forward from Steve, that possessed Rhodey to lift him.

The universe had won, the avengers had won, but the Starks had lost. And, well, there were more Starks than Tony would ever get to know.

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heartslogos · 5 years

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the moon or the branches

Thus far they have been unable to procure her cavalier’s body.

No matter.

Harrow can make one. She is a Lyctor. She has passed several of the trials that would have led her to becoming one. She has a faint idea of what the others would entail.

She can grow armies out of a handful of scaphoids and capitates.

Harrow can make a Gideon Nav. She might not be able to create a beguiling corpse as the Seventh can, nor does she think she would want to, but she can create a skeleton. And she can figure out a way to conjure the soul of Gideon Nav and bind it to that skeleton.

Gideon Nav is somewhere inside of her and there is no reason why Harrow cannot conceive of a way to get her out.

The Necrolord Prime thinks it would kill them both to do so.

What the most revered does not know is that Harrow was never meant to be born to start with, and Gideon Nav was not meant to live. Gideon Nav does not get killed by the things that should kill her.

Apparently, Gideon Nav can only be killed by Gideon Nav and Harrow never permitted it of her, therefore Gideon Nav does not get into the obscure annals of Ninth census records to become dust. Gideon Nav gets to come back as a skeleton that Harrow will make perfectly for her and gets to explain all the reasons why she thought it was a good idea to attempt to die against Harrow’s explicit commands, and she gets to listen to Harrow explain to her exactly why all of her self-sacrificing heroic lunacy is exactly that.

Harrow has lived her entire life with Gideon Nav. She can build Griddle’s bones by heart without looking. It would be easier than making a key.

There is no reason why Harrow cannot do this. If Septimus’ house could do it, then surely Harrow can. Harrow is capable of doing things the Seventh House would weep to do. And Harrow isn’t even attempting to preserve flesh. She’s only working with the bone. The bone is strictly her forte.

And if Silas Octakiseron could manage to call his cavalier back when he had the ambition of a snail and the capability to think beyond the tip of his nose then Harrow can dredge up Gideon Nav — the loudest, most obvious, brazen, and obnoxious pain in Harrow’s side — and make her say something suitably mind numbingly idiotic through the form of an undying bone servant.

Gideon might not have lips nor lungs to speak with, but the dead have other ways of speaking and Gideon’s already had practice pretending to have a vow of silence. A fake vow that, despite all odds, Harrow has to admit Gideon stuck surprisingly well to.

Obtaining the bones is not difficult. Traveling in the retinue of the Necrolord himself on the way to what Harrow presumes to be an elite area filled with all the resources one in training to be the Necrolord’s hand and member of his direct following, suitable of one with the title the First, means that the procurement of supplies for her to work with should not be hard.

The hard part is finding a place to be left alone.

The Necrolord’s ship is not the kind of loud chatter of the Canaan House, despite there being more people with flesh than not, but it is still a bustling hub compared to the Ninth’s sacred misery.

Thus far Harrow has only ran into Tridentarius once, by accident, and the two of them departed that meeting with the strong and mutual desire not to have any repeats.

Harrow needs to be alone. She needs to be alone with space to work, without others to peer over her shoulder or gawp or question or — or what have you.

She is also faced with the surprising problem of having too many choices in regards to material. Harrow is used to working with whatever happens to be available.

Now she has an entire breadth of bone available. Bones from the young, bones from the old, bones of someone who was six foot four, bones of someone who was a runner, bones of someone who was a priest, bones of someone who spent their life in plate armor — a plethora and variety of bones with which she can work with. Each one of them with their unique characteristics borne of whatever life the body they shuffled through the mortal coil decided to lead.

Some bones are so new that Harrow can imagine sucking the marrow out of them. Some are so old that they look like one faint jostle will send them scattering into the ship’s ventilation, lost forever.

Obviously, Harrow declines to use those. Despite how entertaining it would be to stick Griddle in something ancient, probably revered, and most likely deeply important.

Harrow pushes her sleeves up and gets to work. It is unlikely that Griddle will be in this skeleton for very long. Chances are that her cavalier will break something within the first few days. Probably on purpose.

That is fine. Harrow plans on this being a work in progress. She can add and subtract from it as time goes on. And with the many tricks and secrets Lyctor-dom has ahead of her, she is sure that there will be many, many additions she will be providing her cavalier’s vessel.

But right now she needs a good, stolid base.

Harrow is furious.

She has the bones. She has the theory. She has the power.

What she does not have is Gideon Nav piloting a perfectly well assembled skeleton at her side, where she ought to be.

Gideon hasn’t spoken to her since she woke up that first day, since the battle at Canaan house that killed her. And truthfully, Harrow isn’t sure — well.

She isn’t sure that her mind didn’t imagine he entire thing. It could have been a hallucination borne of grief and pain, as said possible hallucination said. It could also have been Gideon being a dick and playing it off.

If it was the latter then where is Gideon now?

Harrow closes her eyes, breathes, and concentrates. She drags her fingers through her own mind like a sieve, looking and searching out the edges of her soul from Gideon’s. They must be here, surely.

Because Harrow can feel the strange overlap of Gideon’s knowledge of sword and body with her own experience with necromancy. She can feel the discrepancy in the expectation of a sword in Harrow’s hand versus what Gideon’s soul-body knows a sword should feel and move like in Gideon’s own knowledge. Harrow knows that the difference exists. Gideon did not disappear completely into her.

Gideon Nav is somewhere inside of her and is being a complete and utter ass about not coming out.

One would think that Griddle would be pleased that she doesn’t have to ride along, silent and hapless, as Harrow’s private accessory.

And yet.

No Gideon.

“Are your accommodations to your liking?” the Necrolord asks in that calm, unnervingly gentle voice of his. Harrow still can’t look at him directly without wanting to weep.

Whether she wants to weep with rage at what she has lost in the name of service to him or because he’s overwhelmingly god she isn’t sure. Both, but the ratio between the two is fluid and perpetually unclear. Much like ocean tides, going hither and yon.

“Yes, lord,” Harrow answers, keeping as much bite out of her voice as possible. Her head hurts. She’s feeling dizzy from blood loss — and she’d spilt all that blood for nothing because there is still no Gideon Nav.

He doesn’t say anything back, but she knows that he is looking at her and finding her answer and lack of truthfulness falling below par. Harrow may fear, respect, and find herself slightly brain-dead just looking at him, but that does not mean that she trusts him. Not with this.

Not with her cavalier. Not when it was his Lyctors, his edict, his trials that took her away.

It doesn’t matter if the way it happened was not as he intended, ultimately he meant to take Gideon away and Harrow would never have —

Harrow bites the inside of her cheek.

She might have. It would have stung and hurt and it would have been another dark burden for her to carry for the rest of her life, but she might have. If things had gone a shade differently. She might have.

“It will take you time to process what has happened to you,” he says, infinitely steady. Something about him makes Harrow think of black holes. Silent. Roaring. Infinite centers of gravity. Terrible and sublime. “Do not over exert yourself, do not push yourself into what you do not yet understand, Nonagesimus.”

“No, lord,” Harrow nods.

He sighs, and she thinks she is not imagining the smile in his voice when he continues, “Do not push yourself into something you believe yourself to understand, either.”

Harrow’s fingers curl into her palms, hidden in her sleeves.

Harrow knows perfectly well what she’s gotten herself into and what she’s doing. It’s Gideon who’s being an absolute blockhead about it.

“Griddle,” Harrow hunches over the table with her immaculately laid out skeleton, “I am not trying to undermine your idiotic heroism. Don’t be petulant just because your heroics and your supposed final last stand are not as final as they would have appeared to be. I think everyone would acknowledge that you’ve gone and finally been true to yourself and gotten yourself killed in the most spectacularly reckless way possible. So get in the damned bones.”

Nothing. Nothing at all for the past hour. Days. Weeks.

Harrow’s fists shake with the force with which she’s digging her nails into her palms.

She closes her eyes, headache pounding in her temples.

She reaches down into herself once more, searching Gideon out, running her fingers over the fine line that snags as Gideon Nav.

She digs her fingers into that crevice and attempts to rip it open. She can feel it resisting, wavering.

Harrow focuses on Gideon’s hair. She conjures to mind Gideon’s cocky smirk, with and without the paint that marks a member of the Ninth House. She traces the marblesque lines of Gideon’s arms as she takes up a sword, and the curl of her fingers and the press of her broad palm. Harrow breathes in deep and fills her ears with the sound of Griddle’s incessant chatter, even when she isn’t being talked to directly.

In her minds eye she traces her entire life back. An entire life filled with Gideon Nav — front and center, off to the side, in the background. A life with Gideon Nav, the walking dead who refused to die.

Gideon was called to die thrice, and died only on the third time.

Gideon Nav.

Gideon Nav, Cavalier Primary of the Ninth House. Your adept calls you.

A shuddering gasp of breath. It feels like her entire body has been thrown through fire and smothered in ash. Every breath is laborious, and her throat is simultaneously wet and dry. Her lips are cracked. Everything feels like it needs a few dozen washes and then an extra dozen goes in a sanitizer.

Sore is an understatement.

Her fingers twitch and she groans. She feels the groan more than she hears it, throat so dry that breath stings.

Something at her fingertips clatters and it takes forever to slowly turn her head — each slight moment a terrible jostling feeling as she looks down at whatever it is she’s touched.

It’s those damned stupid glasses.

She feels a defensive spark, faint hurt and a touch of amusement, but overall sullen. They aren’t stupid.

Watch it, I like those glasses. I look hot in them.

Harrow’s eyes fly open as she gasps, knees weak as she stares out in front of herself, not quite seeing the skeleton on the table in front of her, and not quite seeing what the dust and the grime and —

There was no body. There was no damned body.

“Gideon?” Harrow’s eyes feel like they’re going to pop out of her head, she almost loses the fine thread that connects her to her cavalier. Is this relief? “Where the hell are you?”

Gideon’s entire mind is like a cacophony of bright screaming sound-color-tastes that slam against Harrow like several thousand pounds of stone on all sides, bludgeoning and pummeling her into almost losing her grasp on Gideon.

She can feel the burn of wounds all over Gideon’s torso, fractures in her bones, bruising in her muscles, the shuddering hot pain with every breath.

Gideon’s gaze slowly travels until the irons are in sight.

“You mean to tell me that all this time you’ve been right there?”

Gideon’s mind is a riot. Like a sputtering fire. Harrow can hear her snapping “Where the fuck else would I be?”

“No one could find you!” Harrow knows that Griddle can’t hear her, not exactly — it’s a miracle that they’ve even managed to form a connection from this far away. But Griddle has always had an uncanny knack for putting words in Harrow’s mouth, that while lacking in the quality of their diction have always managed to convey the same general idea or tone as what Harrow herself would use.

Gideon’s field of view slowly moves further and Harrow can now see that while Gideon is with the object of her demise, that object is no longer where Gideon’s assumed death had taken place.

The stone cliff must have crumbled in the aftermath, when Harrow was unconscious. Gideon fell. And as improbable as it would sound, survived.

Well. Of course. Gideon Nav can’t die. Of course.

Gideon Nav would be so inept that she would fail at dying. Harrow’s heart curls tightly in her chest, and her eyes sting. You can’t kill Griddle. Not even Griddle can kill Griddle.

That would explain why Harrow has been unable to establish the same connection as she had back at Canaan House. It raises some worrying questions as to whether she is actually a Lyctor or not, but Harrow would rather have this than that.

Harrow feels the questions building up in Griddle’s mind, just as many and pressing as her own.

The most important question being — how does Grideon get back to her adept? To Harrow?

Harrow’s en route to…some sort of school. Or training ground for new Lyctors. Gideon’s somewhere in the shattered wreck of Canaan House. There’s leagues and leagues and leagues between them, now.

She doesn’t know how to get this ship to turn around. What does she say? Turn around, Gideon Nav is alive? Despite all odds, the Ninth House Cavalier Primary is alive and waiting for them — for her? Who would she even speak to?

How long would it take for them to get back? How long can Gideon last? No food, no shelter, no water, no access to medical equipment — she was impaled. She was buried under rubble. And before that she had blown out her arms and legs fighting a centuries old Lyctor possessing the body of a walking eternal thanergic generator.

Harrow clutches her chest, vision doubling as Gideon’s battered lungs wheeze. Griddle’s wet hacking sounds like a rapidly deflating balloon as she laughs. Harrow squeezes her own eyes shut as Gideon slowly rises to her feet, struggling to remain upright.

“What are you doing?” Harrow hopes that every portion of her dread goes through to the cavalier. Because, knowing Gideon, there’s only one thing she can be doing.

“Well. If you can’t get to me, I guess I’ll have to figure out a way to get to you.”

Harrow imagines that this comes along with much more colorful and coarse language, but she already has the idea of it.

“How? Griddle, you’re a mess of broken bone held together vaguely by skin that somehow hasn’t burst apart at the seams.”

A mental shrug.

“Be serious, Gideon.”

Whatever the mental equivalent of blowing a raspberry would be, Gideon does it.

Every step and movement Gideon takes sends spikes of sharp pain through Harrow and she has no idea how Gideon is being so flippant about all of it. Harrow’s feeling it by extension, Gideon’s the one living it.

“Do you actually want to be dead?”

Gideon’s mind lets out a loud and empathetic fuck no.

And then, softer, more smug and pleased and confident, everything Gideon Nav right down to the stupid glasses —

One flesh, one end, dumbass. Can’t do that if we’re on separate planets.

A faint memory flickers at the edges of Harrow and Gideon’s mind.

If I could figure out a way off of the Ninth, where you were actively trying to stop me, I can figure a way off of this planet.

True.

Harrow closes her eyes, focusing on Gideon’s vision as she feels the connection between them waver and thin.

Don’t make me wait overly long, Griddle, Harrow thinks at her.

Right, because you’ve never been known for your patience. Chill, boo, I won’t even give you time to miss me. Smell ya later.

#heartsfic #gideon the ninth

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dcschain · 4 years

Text

ALTERED REALITY SENTENCE STARTERS. | accepting.

@cllgood said: Little towns late at night when no one is awake and the only lights on are the street posts.

He stops by the side of the water. The river was maybe once a river, now carried the memory of it: little more than mud where the animals could drink and try to remember what summer and spring would taste like. Enough, to wash his hands and face, to cleanse his neck.

The rustle makes the breath change and the air move: at the bottom of his vision, on the edges of it, he sees a deer or what perhaps used to be a deer. Like the river it remembers the memories of its shape but fails to recollect the details. It is what a child might think a deer to be. It is what a man would draw, if he had only ever been described a deer and never seen it.

Like so much in their shared world it’s dead and breathing on borrowed air. The leaves it moved, the dead things underneath Roland’s boots, are ghosts. And it is a ghost also, the skin of its face translucent, transparent. It was born with no throat and the infection of its exposed skin has been eating away at the lungs. It leans down further upstream, its head bows. Roland sees the water, the mud-stained stench of water, drip down its throat in rivets. It barely swallows, it’s missing the parts that make swallowing possible.

Still its flesh, what little isn’t eaten away by its cancer, will make for good meat. He can use the teeth to barter with the old man, half-blind himself, that perhaps lives in these woods and perhaps drew the deer he sees in front of him. The man ate god, he’s sure of it, and now knows the true name of the wind. He can eat the meat of this not-deer, and it can sustain him until he reaches the town by the desert. In Princetown he will buy a mule and hopefully it will sustain him past Tull and until he reaches the mountains.

After that, he will see.

He is very slow as he leans down, wet hands, to grip the sandalwood. The not-deer does not notice. Drinks and drinks, head pressed to the stream as it drops more water than it can swallow. Ravenous. Thinking that the more water it drinks the slower death will remember its name.

One bullet. Through the eyes. The dark leaves spatter with darker brain matter, red blood turned black by the moonlight. Death watches it softly for a few moments as it flails. Perhaps there is a second brain, a pocket of cancerous cells that turned into a machine of consciousness. However brief. A flittering of thoughts made transparent, blue butterflies against the grain of the darker, more pressing doom. Death soon. Death now.

Death aims again and this time for the heart. Whatever secondary brain there is, without blood it is just cells. The second bullet hits. It freezes. It falls, into the water, and the water turns pink and red downstream.

Roland walks to it surrounded by its own gore washed away in the mud. He leans down and picks it up, moves it to the banks, a dead hunk of meat he drags to someplace dry beside his fire. In the light that is red like the deer’s blood will never be again, he skins it as best he can.

The wordless eyes still open stare at him as he does. He feels its ghost behind and beside him. It waits for the moment he will let his guard down and then it will remind him wailing of what this world has lost. He was born in a world already lost. They all were.

He is the only one left who can see, who can understand. Time has given him context if not memories, and context here in the thin neck of the Great Western Forest is as valuable as freshwater rain. He sniffles when, while gutting, he finds the cancerous mass in the deer’s abdomen, the remnants of what perhaps dreamed of being a brain. He holds it in his hand. The size of a ripe apple. No dreams, here. Barely any conscious thought. Perhaps a cross-fire, the answer to the seizures that would rack its body and bring it to its knees without it understanding why.

The only dreams it ever had were the ones safe behind its bulging eyes. He drops that mass of cells and gifts it to the wolves that will come once he moves on.

He finishes transforming the animal from body to flesh and then leaves the carcass on the forest floor. In time, it will learn how to bloom, violets and moss and mushrooms, though he has never concerned himself much with the business of flowers. That was his mother’s kingdom. That was Cuthbert’s dancing grounds.

The flesh he sets above the fire to slowly dry. It will become meat as he rests for a few hours before the sun rises and he begins again, this dance. The last thing he does with the deer is take its teeth.

Only a few days ahead of him, darkness laughs. It blooms red in the water as he cleans his hands.

It’s the rustling that wakes him. It catches the edges of the dream he was about to sink into, the smell of someone’s hair, their name just beyond his reach, and yanks it from underneath him. He wakes with a start, hand to his father’s dagger and to the gun beside his head.

He expects a wolf, already eating the carcass. But he opens his eyes and there’s no wolf. The noise is further than he thought.

He moves silently and traces it back to the stream. On its banks, something drags itself in the underbrush. He sees it as dawn traces its shape, in the light, in a heartbeat.

Much like its mother the fawn is a fawn only because language has not yet found any easy words to describe it. Cain reborn and redeemed, it carries Abel on its back, the vestigial remnants of a sister conceived dead it tried to absorb in the womb.

And it screams.

For its mother, stripped of her identity and lying in the leaves with what’s left of her skin and her body – unlikely, although the thought briefly crosses Roland’s mind before he’s able to smother it. For the pain – more likely, as its skin melts away on its legs to reveal raw, bleeding muscle, the effects of radiation poisoning. Body burning body, body folding over itself, body eating itself, body stripped of signifier and signified. It screams the way its mother tried to drink: like it will keep it alive.

It screams because it waited for hours hiding in the bushes for its mother to return and then she didn’t so it grew hungry and thirsty. Barely deers, yet behaviour always remains the same. Some rules take too long to be broken: some rules stay even if the bodies enacting their rituals are barely what they used to be. The memories of deer.

Not-deer.

Roland watches it for a moment. They are both orphans. It is the briefest of connections. They are both orphans, and they were both orphaned by the same gun Roland uses, now, to put the fawn out of its misery.

It only takes one bullet.

Its blood bleeds red into the sky, the sun crawling slowly past the clouds. He smokes a cigarette to watch it, before returning to camp, packing the dried meat up, rinsing his mug to make himself bitter chicory coffee with the water in his waterskin. When it’s done, and he’s finished his second cigarette, he kicks the fire out and packs the rest of his gunna and crosses the stream, leaves the mother and her children behind.

He spends the night in the old man’s hut.

Screaming, beyond the woods, wakes him from a lighter sleep. The man is sitting by the fire and his head is tilted. He is listening, also. They wait with each other for the screams to die down. They do not.

Roland goes back to sleep.

He thinks he will reach Princetown by nightfall. If not, he will reach it sometime in the morning.

He walked all night without noticing he did. The ground he covered slipped off the sky like flesh off an old bone now rotting and hummed, low, steam rising from it as if it had rained. Maybe it had. Rain and time were close, bedfellows, and perhaps it had rained and simply hadn’t reached the forest past the trees. Or perhaps it had already rained and he hadn’t noticed.

His clothes aren’t wet. Perhaps it had rained before but then time had decided to turn away from that crack in the world. Perhaps it had rained, but time hadn’t cared long enough to let it linger more than an afterthought. All it had given was the steam, sweet as whiskey.

A memory of rain, the steam. It curls in the morning air shrill with its own rage. Losing itself like blood loses its colour when mixed with seed.

The bleating scream comes behind him, then. Something that must be heard and not seen. Some secret of the land and the earth now fully revealed to him. He had thought it a coincidence the night in the old man’s hut. Now he knows it better, and knows also that this world does not breathe with coincidences anymore, does not ride in their wild, mad hunt. Coincidence is antiquated.

Here there is only concatenation. A chain to hold a tower down.

He pauses. The sound, repeated, scrapes against his bones, rutting for marrow. His grip around the strap of his gunna tightens. Cain behind him carries Abel. His footsteps are lighter despite himself now that he knows he has a walking companion.

Sometimes things, here, take a little while to die and stay dead.

When he reaches Princetown the morning is still too young to be called day. It tinges the sky a malevolent green, further down towards the desert and then the mountains barely sketched out in the mist and the clouds. The steam has gone.

Down the street, cracked tarmac and all, he sees the lamplighter slowly snuffing the lights out. One, and then one, and then one. The scream again. She does not seem to notice, intent in her solitary work.

One of the last big cities left alive, if alive is a word that can be used at all. Little more than a ghost town. Little less than a cemetery dance. Drawn by a hand that knew, perhaps had even seen, what Gilead once was. Too old to remember all the beauty of it.

But the oil lamps, so much like the gas lamps of a world strung high with its throat cut to bleed. The gas lamps, slowly snuffed one by one as the woman and her long pole with its old hook come closer and closer. He has stopped on the outskirts as a town mostly boarded up rises like some great slumbering beast to greet a new morning in its own radioactive haze. Its own dust more ash than earth.

He looks over his shoulder and sees the reflection of the world he was not supposed to see. It is a flicker, a candle-flame, the shimmering, leftover shape of the fawn that had died wrapping itself around his bullet. Welcoming the lead in its mouth as the blood bubbled terrible and black past its teeth. He blinks. It’s gone from his sight, and the sound of its pain leaves the air feeling emptier still.

Princetown before him. Behind him, the old forest and its old secrets. The desert has different creatures. The desert, terrible waste-land, has no creatures at all.

Sometimes things, here, take a little while to die and stay dead.

#cllgood #answered.#drabbles.#verse. let this darkness be a bell tower. (the dark tower)#arc. good and wrecked and here and here and here. (the quest)#IIA –– DINH MAL.#gore //#body horror //#animal death //#i guess i followed the prompt if you squint

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