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mononijikayu · 20 days

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night we met — ryomen sukuna.

Feeling the gravity of this moment, he tightened his grip on your hand. You looked down at him and smiled—a gesture that sealed his newfound faith in this bond. At that moment, Ryomen Sukuna felt as though he had been reborn. No longer just a boy lost in the festival's chaos, but a person with a role, a duty, and a place in the world. His life, from that moment forward, was to be lived for you, in devotion to the path you would guide him on. You had become his guardian, his mentor—his goddess—and he, in turn, devoted himself to be your loyal follower.

GENRE: Heian Era to Shibuya Arc, 2018;

WARNING/s: Alternate Universe ─ Canon Divergence, Romance, Emotional Hurt, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Domesticity, Friends to Lovers, Character Death, Grief, Mention of Depression, Mention of Mourning, Depiction of Physical Touch, Depiction of Mental Anguish, Depiction of Violence, Depiction of Death, Depiction of Harm, Heavy Angst, Heavy Pining;

masterlist

listen: the night we met by lord huron

note: i finally got a break after two exams. i still have one more. but i wanted to pop in and give this to you before i disappear into my books again. i hope you enjoy this little thing~ i love you~

FATHER THOUGHT THAT THERE WOULD BE MORE NEED FOR RETAINERS TO COME WITH THEM. As they navigated the bustling streets of the city, Ryomen Hiromi couldn't shake off a palpable sense of tension, despite the festive atmosphere. The warm glow of lanterns illuminated the cobblestone paths, and the air was filled with lively chatter and laughter. Yet, an underlying unease lingered—perhaps a whisper from the gods, you mused, familiar with the capricious nature of the divine. Your lips tightened into a straight line, your hand unconsciously drifting to the hilt of your sword. Beneath the surface festivity, an undercurrent of anxiety was palpable.

This might explain why your father had insisted on bringing as many men as possible. The Ryomen family was never short of loyal retainers, and Masaomi had been eager to accompany you. Your father's protective instincts weighed heavily on you, his warnings echoing in your mind. As the sole remaining heir of your distinguished family, his concerns were magnified by the elders’ incessant uproar. Though you understood the necessity of your high profile, it sometimes felt stifling.

As you continued through the lively streets, the festival's atmosphere was electrifying. Lanterns hung from every post, casting dancing lights over the faces of the revelers, each absorbed in their own joyous celebration. The air was thick with the scents of street food and a cacophony of laughter and music, creating a chaotic symphony. Yet, despite the jovial chaos, a tug of unease pulled at your consciousness.

You maintained an even pace and a neutral expression, blending seamlessly into the crowd. The presence of your uncle Hiramu was reassuring; his experienced hand rested nonchalantly on his sword, his eyes scanning the crowd with practiced vigilance. His readiness to protect offered comfort and a reminder of the ever-present potential for danger.

Ryomen Hiromi experienced the weight of the festival differently. While others were drawn into the spirit of celebration, your senses were heightened, alert to any discord. The subtle narrowing of your eyes and the stiffness in your shoulders might go unnoticed by an ordinary onlooker, but they were clear indicators of your tension. The flickering shadows cast by the lantern lights seemed to hide potential threats, and every burst of laughter could be masking whispered conspiracies.

You knew you couldn't afford to let down your guard, not when the stakes were so high. This mission was critical, especially to you, marking a step towards your heir’s role, and the weight of this responsibility was heavy on your shoulders. The festival, with its mask of tradition and celebration, might well be a veneer for more sinister undertones.

Navigating through this sea of faces, your gaze occasionally met those of strangers, your deep hazel eyes searching for any hint of recognition or malice. Being with your uncle Hiramu brought some peace, tempering the anxiety that gnawed at your heart, but the persistent unease remained. Something was amiss, and you could not yet pinpoint it. Your instincts screamed for attention, urging vigilance as the night promised to stretch long.

Reports of strange occurrences and unexplained events had been increasing, stirring unrest among the populace and reaching the ears of Lord Isamu. Typically, such critical missions would fall to your elder brother, Akimu, the designated heir tasked with maintaining the safety and stability of Hida's heartland in your father's stead. But now, with Akimu unable to lead, the weight of responsibility had shifted onto your capable yet burdened shoulders.

Each step felt heavy under the scrutinizing gaze of the moon, illuminating the bustling night with a mocking smile. You took a moment to gather your scattered thoughts, steadying the swirling emotions within. As you lifted your gaze, your eyes began to sharpen, honing in on the play of shadows cast by the lantern light, looking beyond the immediate spectacle to the hidden corners and fleeting movements that might betray underlying threats.

This mission was about more than following in Akimu's footsteps; it was about proving that Ryomen Hiromi could stand firm on uneven, unfamiliar ground. You were determined to command respect, to show that despite your gender, you were every bit the Ryomen heir as any man could be.

As you moved away from the main festivities into quieter, dimly lit parts of the town, Uncle Hiramu finally spoke, his voice low and serious, “Little niece, do you sense it too? There’s a heaviness in the air tonight. It must be what your father was speaking of.”

You nodded, your sharp gaze scanning the shadows. “Yes, I feel it. It's as if the air itself is thick with whispers of the past. There’s a disturbance, not just a vengeful spirit, I think. Something older, deeper.”

Hiramu’s eyes narrowed as he looked ahead. “We should be cautious. These kinds of spirits are often bound to old grudges or unresolved tragedies. The festival’s energy could stir it more than usual.”

You turned into a less crowded alley, where the noise of the festival faded into a distant hum. Your elegant robes brushed against the cobblestones, your attire blending traditional beauty with practicality. The layered silk of your fine kimono was dyed in deep blues and purples, embroidered with silver threads that caught the light, mimicking the night sky. Your obi was tightly cinched, supporting the small dagger hidden within—a necessity for any noble venturing into uncertain situations.

Your father insisted that you dress appropriately. It was outlandish, you supposed. The choices were far too simple for taste, unsuitable for any young beauty of such noble stock. But this was as comfortable as it was safe. Pretense of trade being your desire here in these parts, was much easier than to be quite obvious. Anything more than this would have attracted as much attention as retainers.

“Do you think it’s tied to a particular location or event?” you asked, your voice steady despite the creeping chill that seemed to cling to the edges of the night air. “It’s getting me curious…”

“It could be,” Hiramu replied, his hand never straying far from his sword. “These spiteful little cursed spirits often attach themselves to physical locations where significant emotional events occurred. We’ll need to explore the some sites around here—old battlefields, abandoned shrines, places of great loss or betrayal. Someone is deeply angry, little niece."

Your mind raced, piecing together knowledge with the clues of your current environment. “There’s an old well not far from here, sealed up after a great tragedy struck a hundred years ago during a similar festival. A fire had broken out, and many lives were lost. It was said that the well was cursed thereafter.”

Hiramu’s gaze sharpened, his lips just as sharp when he smiled. “That’s a good place to start. Lead the way, little niece.”

IT HAD TAKEN SOME TIME TO FIND THE CURSED SPIRIT. As the moon ascended, bathing the lively festival in its serene, silver luminescence, you and Uncle Hiramu pressed on with your diligent investigation. The festive air, alive with the thrum of activity and the laughter of revelers, contrasted sharply with your growing tension. Underneath the celestial glow, the reality of your mission slowly began to crystallize, taking on a new urgency as unexpected developments unfolded. It had begun with something ever so simple and from there, unpredictable fate intervened and soon enough, the chaos ensued.

The moment of realization struck you with unsettling suddenness. You patted down the side. There was nothing but panic as you looked to the side of the obi and found nothing. One look was enough to confirm that eager suspicion: the coin purse was missing. You looked up towards Uncle Hiramu. You knew that he was trying not to laugh, but his eyes were too obvious. You smacked your uncle which prompted the laugh to bellow from his belly. All you could do was mope in the silence. You supposed that it was alright. Money was not a big deal. But… your eyes widened.

Without hesitating, your eyes swept across the sea of faces swirling around you. The atmosphere was charged with the festival’s energy, yet your focus was razor-sharp. It was then that you had spotted a distinct splash of color that stood out against the earthy tones of the crowd—a young boy with striking pink hair, weaving through the crowd with the agility and desperation of someone fleeing. You looked at Hiramu, and he nodded back at you.

It was then where your instincts kicked in. You tapped your uncle's arm and started mouthing instructions as subtly as one could towards the fleeing figure. Without needing further explanation, Hiramu caught the urgency and nodded. Hiramu took the other direction as you turned to the other.

As you navigated through the dense crowd, the distance between you and the boy closed gradually, you were certain of it. You could sense Hiramu’s cursed energy with each step below against the wide battered ground. You were certain that you were ever so close to bringing a close to the night. But first, you must unravel the night's mysteries. That boy was the key.

Ryomen Hiramu wasted no time as he dashed from stall to stall, street to street. He could feel it, he could feel it too well. That overwhelming power. His seasoned body kicked into high gear, and he swiftly maneuvered through the crowd, his eyes fixed on the pink-haired boy darting through the festival, speeding through the brunt of human bodies. Hiramu cursed under his breath. The child was too clever. With each step, Hiramu's determination as he ran through a corridor of small houses clamped together—one of the poorest sects of life in the quaint area.

As he closed the gap between them, Hiramu noticed an unusual, dark shimmer around the boy—an ominous aura that seemed almost palpable in the moonlit night. This was no mere act of theft; it was clear there was something far more sinister at play. The aura surrounding the boy twisted and writhed like a living thing, a visual manifestation of deep-seated emotional turmoil. It became apparent that this child was not acting alone; he was bound to a cursed spirit, a malevolent force likely fueled by intense feelings of anger, fear, and loneliness.

The realization struck Hiramu with a harsh chill. The spirit's presence suggested that the boy's actions were not entirely his own, that he was under the influence of these dark energies that fed on negative emotions. Such spirits were known to attach themselves to vulnerable souls, magnifying their darkest thoughts and driving them to act in ways they might not otherwise, turning their inner turmoil into outward chaos. Just as he drew his sword, you turned from the corner. Ryomen Hiromi threw that heavy bound haori away, looking at Hiramu.

“Shibaru One! Binding Fate!” you exclaimed, your voice clear and commanding as streaks of luminous energy surged towards the boy. He let out a sharp cry, writhing against the ethereal chains that now ensnared him under your control.

“Be careful!” Hiramu cautioned, moving closer to assist. “He's the source, he's entwined with that cursed spirit!”

You nodded, your focus undeterred by the boy's struggles as you tightened your grip on the energy that bound him. The spectral chains glowed brighter, each pulse of light strengthening the hold over the chaotic spirit within him. Your uncle's warning echoed in your mind, reinforcing your burning resolve to act with both precision and caution.

The boy’s eyes, wide with a mixture of fear and confusion, met yours. You could see the turmoil swirling within him, the innocent caught in the grip of something far beyond his control. “Hold on, just a little longer,” you murmured, your voice a blend of firmness and reassurance intended to pierce through the haze of his panic. A faint smile blossomed from your lips. “Trust me, okay?”

Hiramu understood the gravity of the situation—they were dealing with a phenomenon that was both a danger to the boy and to all those attending the festival. The cursed spirit needed to be dealt with delicately and decisively, for the safety of the boy and the peace of the community. There were too many people here that would not understand what was going on.

There was no need to make a bigger ruckus. With this understanding, Ryomen Hiramu pressed on, his resolve hardened, knowing that he and you must act swiftly to intervene and dispel the darkness that had taken hold of the young boy.

As Hiramu closed in, the cursed spirit sensed the threat and began to lash out, manifesting as tendrils of dark energy. You, realizing the severity of the situation, knew immediate action was required. "Start the purification ritual!" Hiramu shouted over his shoulder as he dodged a swipe from the spirit. "I'll hold it off! Just go and do your job!”

You crossed the tips of your fingers, your eyes narrowing deeper into the soul of the boy. You began to chant softly, the words of an ancient purification rite falling rhythmically from your lips. The boy looked frightened by all means, as the white light did what it could, purging one dark fabric from the boy one after the other.

The air around you seemed to hum with power as your words wove through the currents of energy emanating from your firm hands. The glowing chains tightened further, and the dark aura around the boy began to dissipate, sucked away into the void created by your spell. But as with all things, it tried to keep alive.

Meanwhile, Hiramu engaged the spirit, his sword movements precise, each strike intended not to harm the boy but to distract the spirit and weaken its hold. The sound of the boy’s screams pierced through over and over again, the cursed spirit overlaying against each agonizing echo. He could see the ritual's glow intensifying, the light beginning to engulf the boy, binding and suppressing the dark energy around him.

As the ritual reached its climax, your voice rose in a powerful cadence, your tender hands outstretched towards the boy, directing the flow of purified energy. The cursed spirit writhed and howled and fought over and over, its form becoming unstable under the ritual’s influence. Sweat permeated through your sleeves, your teeth gritted, your eyes narrowed, over and over the ringing of each of your ears continued as the boy continued to fight for his life.

With a final, desperate cry, the cursed spirit dissipated, expelled in one painful grip. All of a sudden, your white cursed energy also disappeared. You gasped out loud as your shaking knees fell to the ground, weary from it all. It was the first time you had used that purification technique. But it seemed that it had finally worked. You looked at the empty depth of your palm.

Your eyes shined. You had done that. Hiramu looked at you, rushing towards you. But you stopped him, coughing as you regained air. You pointed to the boy, sprawled on the pavement. Hiramu sheathed his sword back. Soon enough, Hiramu could only lift the boy in his arms.

The boy, now freed from the spirit’s grasp, collapsed, exhausted but unharmed. He was perhaps trying to catch his breath. He must have been exhausted. You, having returned to the plane of reality, rushed to his side, your own energy spent. You were certain that there was no bigger word than relief as you eagerly confirmed that he was safe. His eyes were both soft and weary as he looked at that boy. He lifted his head at you.

Hiramu's eyes remained narrowed, the wrinkles at the corners deepening as he surveyed the scene before him. Despite the successful expulsion of the spirit, his instincts told him there was more to uncover. His voice, barely above a whisper, carried a weight that drew your attention immediately. "Something is still not right," he said, his tone heavy with unease.

You nodded, understanding the depth of your uncle's concern. You gently placed your palm on the boy's forehead, feeling the residual heat of the ritual. "He's warm, uncle," you observed as your voice echoed tinged with worry.

"Purification techniques are painful to the body," Hiramu responded, his voice a low hum, soothing yet solemn. "It’s purging the worst of the soul, after all. Still, it must be said. You did well, little niece."

The corners of your mouth twitched into a slight smile, a rare break in your usually stern demeanor. "Such praise is rare, uncle."

Hiramu let out a soft snicker, his usual stern facade momentarily giving way to familial warmth. "I compliment you all the time," he claimed, though his smile betrayed the playfulness of his exaggeration.

"That sounds like a lie, uncle," you retorted, your weary eyes sparkling with a mix of amusement and affection.

"Yeah, yeah," Hiramu dismissed playfully, but his attention quickly returned to the matter at hand as the boy began to stir. You blinked, taken aback by the sudden movement. You had been so focused on your exchange that the boy's awakening caught you momentarily off guard.

"What do you intend to do with this boy, niece?" Hiramu asked, his tone shifting back to the gravity of your situation. His question hung in the air, pressing you for a decision, reminding you of your responsibilities. “You’re the only one who can decide the lad’s fate.”

“Uncle—”

“You are my better, even if I am your elder and uncle.” Hiramu added, watching you become flustered as he watched the young lady shift in her position. “What do you think is right?”

You took a deep breath, your gaze shifting from Hiramu to the boy who was slowly regaining consciousness. You could see the confusion and fear flicker across his young face as he came to grips with his surroundings. He seemed disoriented, his eyes darting around, trying to make sense of what had happened to him.

Your voice rang out with a firm resolve, words carrying an air of unwavering determination. You met the older man’s gaze with a steady intensity, your expression betraying no hint of doubt.

"We'll bring him back with us to the manor," you declared, leaving no room for argument. "I'll send word ahead to let them know."

Hiramu's response was laced with a sense of foreboding. "They won't like this," he cautioned, his words heavy with the weight of tradition and expectation. You understood exactly what he meant—the elders, with their adherence to protocol and rigid adherence to tradition, were unlikely to approve of your deviation from established norms. But your determination remained unshaken.

"That is a matter I will handle myself, uncle," you asserted, your voice steady and resolute. You were acutely aware of the potential consequences of defying the elders, but your concern for the boy's well-being outweighed any fear of reprisal. "Do not worry."

Hiramu sighed, a reluctant acknowledgment of your determination. Despite his reservations, he knew better than to stand in your way when your stubborn mind was set to its desires.

"Very well," he conceded, his voice tinged with resignation. At that moment, he placed his trust in your judgment, knowing that you would do whatever was necessary to ensure the young boy’s safety and well-being, even if it meant challenging the traditions of your elders. “What else?”

“We might stay a day longer, to make sure that this is the only concern.” You retorted back to him, pursing your lips together in a tight line. “I shall head off and see to it that barriers are strengthened. There need not be any more situations like this one.”

“Very well. I’ll go ahead and take him to our inn.”

“Make sure he’s well fed, uncle. And that he’s alright.”

Hiramu snickers. “You act as though I didn’t take care of you or your brother.”

"I’ll check on him when I return. We need to ensure he's truly free of any residual curse," you said tenderly towards the older man.. "We also need to understand who he is. How did he get here at all, past the barriers. And how did he get this powerful. This puzzle requires quite a bit of effort.”

Hiramu nodded in agreement, his face reflecting his approval of your thorough approach. "Very well," he replied, "We should also see if we can help him find his way. No one should be left to wander alone, much so not one who has been through such an ordeal."

You knelt beside the boy, offering a reassuring smile. "Can you tell us your name?" you asked gently, hoping to ease him into conversation.

As the boy's gaze met yours, his initially wide eyes began to soften, a subtle shift that hinted at his growing realization of safety in your presence. Despite this reassurance, he remained silent, a reaction you attributed to the lingering shock and confusion from the events he had endured. Understandingly, you accepted his quiet, knowing well that pushing him to speak before he was ready could only cause further distress.

You addressed him with a gentle, reassuring smile, your tone soft yet imbued with an underlying strength. "Take all the time you need, little boy," you encouraged, your words floating warmly in the cool air, offering him the space and time he might require to recover from his ordeal. Your smile, kind and patient, was meant to communicate that he was under no pressure to reveal anything before he felt comfortable.

Straightening up, you prepared to continue your duties, aware of the responsibilities that still awaited your attention beyond this encounter. You glanced towards your uncle, who had also been through a trying time, his vigilance unyielding as he supported your efforts.

"Get some rest. You too, uncle," you added, acknowledging his fatigue and your appreciation for his steadfast support. "I’ll return with haste."

As you turned to leave, the boy's eyes followed your every move, wide and contemplative. In the quiet aftermath of your promise, his gaze lingered on your retreating figure, a mix of newfound trust and lingering uncertainty playing across his features. His eyes, filled with a depth that spoke of both fear and curiosity, seemed to hold a thousand unasked questions.

As he watched you disappear into the crowd, there was a palpable sense of wonder about whether he could find his voice, not just to speak but to share his thoughts, fears, and perhaps his hidden stories. The boy was silently grappling with the idea of opening up, of letting someone else into his secluded world.

You, aware of his watchful eyes, felt a twinge of responsibility and hope. His silent scrutiny did not go unnoticed, and it reminded you of the delicate task ahead—not just protecting him from external dangers but also nurturing his trust and confidence to the point where he would feel safe to express himself. The boy's quiet contemplation as you walked away hinted at the significant role you would play in his life, potentially being the first to hear his voice when he finally chose to speak.

As you melded with the festivities, the distance between you growing, you carried with you the weight of his unspoken thoughts, hoping that when you returned, the boy would be ready to break his silence, allowing you into his world. Until then, he shuts his eyes. He lets the sleep take him to the nether world, where nightmares still come to follow.

HIROMI THINKS THAT SLEEP WAS ALL THAT WOULD FIX THINGS. Hiromi returned to the heart of the festival, your task of reinforcing the protective barriers around the periphery completed. Your work, involving the meticulous weaving of energy to strengthen the existing magical defenses, had left you sharp and attuned to even the slightest disturbance. The process was arduous, as you needed to locate and neutralize any lingering curses that could threaten the festival's sanctity. Each of these encounters, a dance of skill and arcane prowess, tested not only your abilities but also your mental fortitude and resolve.

The challenges were varied, ranging from minor nuisances that were swiftly dealt with, to more stubborn, malignant energies that demanded all your focus and power to dispel. Yet, you managed each with precision and control, your extensive training and natural aptitude shining through. With every curse you unraveled and every barrier you chose to further fortify. As Akimu ensured the festival grounds remained a safe haven, you would do the same. This land must always be free from the influence of dark forces.

This vigilant defense was crucial, not only to protect the attendees but to maintain the balance of energies within the festival area. Any breach could lead to chaos, potentially unleashing harm on the unsuspecting revelers. Your successful fortification of the area thus served as an invisible shield, one that allowed the festival to continue in joyous celebration without the shadow of malevolent interference.

As the sky began to lighten with the approach of dawn, you continued that prideful vigilance, keeping a watchful eye on the worshippers gathered for the festival. Amidst the joyous celebrations, you remained ever alert, scanning the crowd for any signs of disturbance or danger. It was in the stillness of the early morning hours that you noticed a subtle shift in the atmosphere.

Despite the dim light of dawn, you sensed a presence nearby, a stirring of energy that caught all of your attention. Instinctively, you turned your gaze toward the source and saw the pink-haired boy, his eyes open and alert. You approached him quietly, your movements fluid and deliberate. You could sense that something had changed, that your encounter earlier had left an impression on him. With a gentle smile, you greeted him, your voice soft but reassuring.

"Good morning," you said, your tone warm with genuine concern. "How are you feeling?"

The boy's gaze flickered between curiosity and caution as he studied you, trying to parse the intentions behind your unexpected approach. Despite the swirl of doubt clouding his young mind, there was an undeniable sense of comfort that seemed to emanate from your presence—somewhat a stability in the tumultuous sea of his current experiences. Sensing his hesitation, you understood his reticence; after all, to him, you and uncle Hiramu were nothing more than strangers who had suddenly entered his life under unusual and likely frightening circumstances.

However, you sensed a deeper narrative woven into the fabric of the boy's aura, a story that extended beyond his current fear and confusion. You were determined to unearth the role he played in the festival's strange occurrences, driven by a conviction that his involvement was not merely coincidental. This was uncharted territory, a situation that neither you nor the festival had encountered before. Yet, you believed that new challenges were always opportunities for growth and understanding, reminders that there is always a "first time" for every occurrence in life.

Respecting his silence, you chose not to press him further for answers. You recognized that trust needed to be earned, especially in such delicate circumstances. It was then, in a moment of frailty, that the boy's strength seemed to falter, his body leaning as if he might collapse. Reacting swiftly, you stepped forward, kneeling to catch him, your movements guided by a blend of concern and readiness to support him.

As he rebounded slightly, stabilized by your quick intervention, he blinked up at you, his eyes reflecting a mix of gratitude and bewilderment. In that brief exchange of looks, a silent understanding began to form. Your actions spoke louder than any words could have; they conveyed a promise of protection and empathy, laying the groundwork for a trust that might soon allow the boy to share his story and perhaps reveal the mysteries surrounding the events that had drawn you all together.

As you extended your hand toward him, he hesitated momentarily before his eyes blinked in a mix of confusion and curiosity. Observing his uncertainty, you offered him a tender smile, softening your expression to ease his apprehension.

"Are you alright, young one?" you asked, your voice low and soothing, cutting through the noise of the surrounding festivities.

In that moment, the boy found himself unexpectedly captivated by your presence. There was something almost ethereal about you, a radiance that seemed to emanate from within, casting a gentle, enchanting glow in the soft light of the festival’s lanterns—ones which still light up the dark morning glory. Your form appeared haloed by this light, lending you an otherworldly grace that was both comforting and awe-inspiring.

Your eyes, warm and inviting, seemed to draw him in further. They were deep pools of compassion and understanding, reaching out to him across the void of his own confusion and fear. As your eyes met, he felt a profound connection; it was as though you could see into the very depths of his soul, understanding his fears and yearnings without a word spoken.

The world around both of you seemed to pause, creating a bubble of serenity amidst the chaos. To the boy, this wasn’t just a simple meeting; it was a pivotal moment that would redefine his understanding of safety and hope. Even before he knew your name, Hiromi, he saw in you not just a protector or a higher power, but a guiding light, a beacon of hope illuminating his darkened world.

"What's your name?" you inquired gently, noticing his silence but undeterred by it.

When he remained mute, your smile broadened, radiating kindness and patience. "It’s okay if you have no name," you reassured him, your voice a soft anchor in his stormy sea of thoughts.

Upon hearing this, he looked up, his eyes wide with a mix of amazement and relief. Here was someone offering not just help, but a place and a presence in the world.

"I’ll give you one." you promised, a simple offer that nonetheless promised him a new beginning, a sense of identity and belonging that he had long craved. This simple gesture of naming was more than a label; it was a gift of a new life and a fresh start under your protective gaze.

You smile warmly at him, feeling the weight of the moment as you prepare to give him a name—a simple yet profound gift that could anchor him to a new beginning. When you smile at him, he thinks he found heaven. monsters like him do not deserve heaven. Yet the goddess you were, embraced him in the warmth of tender night. Names were important. In the family, it was. Sensing the importance of the choice, you think carefully, choosing a name rich with strength and history. The family histories had such good names to choose from, you think.

"Would the name Ryomen Sukuna suffice for you?" you ask gently, observing his reaction to gauge whether it resonates with him. “Now that you are with us, you will gain two lives. The past and now the future. Will you accept it, little one?”

The boy looks up, his eyes widening slightly as he processes the name. It's clear he is unfamiliar with its origins or meanings, but there is an undeniable flicker of intrigue in his gaze. Ryomen Sukuna, a name that carries echoes of a mystic and power to it. Entirely opposite of what he had known. The boy, now Sukuna, thinks this could imbue him with a sense of might and courage, perhaps reflecting the new path he might choose to follow under your guidance. And then, maybe then, he can serve you. With this new name.

For a moment, he remains silent, contemplating the name, rolling it over in his mind. Then, slowly, a tentative smile begins to form on his lips. It seems to suit him, or at least, he is willing to step into the mantle it could offer.

"Ryomen Sukuna," he repeats softly, testing how the name feels as it comes out of his mouth. His voice is unsure at first, but with each repetition, he seems to grow more comfortable, more accepting of it.

Seeing his acceptance, your smile broadens. "Yes, Ryomen Sukuna," you confirm with a nod, affirming his new identity. "It’s a strong name, one that I believe can help guide you to become whoever you wish to be."

The boy nods, a sense of new identity beginning to settle within him. The name, though ancient, now starts a new chapter in his life, one filled with potential and promise. You extend your hand to him once more, this time as a gesture of warmth. A future worth looking forward to.

"Now, you must be hungry, Sukuna," you suggest warmly, ready to introduce him back into the celebration, not as an orphan lost amidst chaos but as a newly named participant with a protector by his side. “There’s still some stalls open. Some are not yet done with the festival. Do you want something to eat?”

He looks at you for a moment and then tenderly nods. As he takes your hand, his grip is firm, and his initial hesitance seems to wash away with the rising sun. Together, you walk back towards the heart of where the fullness of the festival had been, your steps synchronized. Ryomen Sukuna, newly named and newly empowered, walks beside you, no longer just a passive spectator but a young boy with a nascent but growing sense of belonging and purpose.

Your role as his protector, and now the giver of his name, has created a bond between you, one that promises not only safety but also a future filled with the potential for transformation. As you both step into the bustling festival, the early morning light casts long shadows, yet for Sukuna, illuminated by the glow of the lanterns and buoyed by your supportive presence, the world seems less intimidating.

You had given him a name, securing a place for him in this chaos—a gesture simple yet profound. This act forged a tentative bond, knitting a fragile sense of belonging into his young heart. And now, for the first time, he truly belonged somewhere. On this transformative night, his heart was full of nothing but hope. He had a name—a name that was uniquely his, one his mother had never given him.

As you walked side by side, he looked up at you with eyes shining with admiration. Sukuna adored his new name, not just for its sound or its meaning, but because it was a gift from you. It symbolized a new beginning, a sign of your faith in him. In that simple name, he found a deep sense of identity and purpose. He hoped beyond hope that this newfound connection would last.

This rebirth was not just about a new name but a whole new existence shaped by the promise of guidance and protection under your watchful care. As the festival carried on around you, with its myriad lights and shadows, Sukuna walked confidently by your side, secure in his new identity and the journey ahead.

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ranboo5 · 2 years

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The Beeduo Meta

So, c!beeduo is unimaginably hard to analyse for the same reason the entire SMP is hard to analyse, especially in post-Doomsday DSMP when a lot more Offscreen Time became relevant: there are different backfilling assumptions. This is also complicated by the fact that it’s, well, a dynamic, and this fandom has an unimaginably hard time dealing with dynamics, because of “show me the clip” analysis being the norm. This kind of emphasis can be unsuited to dynamic analysis, because individual interactions cannot be taken as by themselves definitive of a dynamic without examining the framework they exist within.

My aim with this post is to establish the patterns we see in c!Ranboo and c!Tubbo’s interactions, to examine each successive one with the context of established precedent in mind, and to assert the thing I have known since February 2021: the framework assumed by the fandom and the framework that actually exists and makes sense to exist (regardless of authorial intent!) are incongruous, to put it lightly.

Will be dropping character tags from now on, but obviously all c! and /rp

Disclaimer also that this is very much coming from a c!Ranboo main – I am trying to do c!Tubbo as much justice as I can but being a boober is going to influence how I come at this, pretty obviously

Ranboo will be referred to with it/its pronouns in a couple places throughout, a) for clarity and b) because I want to

Under a readmore because it’s unimaginably fucking long there is a TL;DR at the bottom

Beeduo starts with imbalanced expectations because of the situation Ranboo shows up into and how Ranboo interacts w/ situations he considers high risk. In New L’Manberg, Ranboo quickly becomes functionally the only one in Tubbo's corner in several important respects. They are genuine friends, dgmw, and at this point it hasn't quite spiraled, but from the start the established dynamic is Ranboo thinking he has to care for Tubbo bc no one else will, and Tubbo ending up with Ranboo being the only one who really appears to respect him as president and stand by his side. Even before the cabinet actually has tensions in it, this is a suspected thing, which is evidenced in the manner in which the cabinet’s dynamics deteriorate as New L’Manberg wears on

Even before this deterioration, this setup is immediately extremely high stakes for Ranboo. One of their first interactions, while Ranboo is still calling Tubbo honorifics uncertainly (which Ranboo doesn't even do generally man is still throwing spaghetti at the wall in terms of how to interact with him), is Ranboo having to talk a tripping-balls Tubbo off a cliff edge while he's standing there high and rambling. Stakes of this kind are not immediately damning, but they can be something that complicates matters if handled poorly. They will be handled poorly.

This precariousness is also immediately dangerous for Tubbo, because Ranboo is a yes man. It knows it needs to comply, or appear to, to maintain its safety and autonomy. In other words, this is a tendency to partial duplicity and disingeniety in the interest of one’s own safety. Ranboo’s apparent alignment with anyone or anything cannot be assumed to be exclusive or even genuine. At this point he genuinely does think the best of Tubbo and his decision making, but this does not last, bc Ranboo takes ppl on good faith and gets disappointed.

As Ranboo befriends like 30 enemies of the state and is also repeatedly reminded of the danger he faces (the Butcher Army, the armor thing, "be loyal"), the stakes only get higher, especially as Tubbo gets more and more unpopular. This culminates in Ranboo’s statement on Doomsday about how he's literally expecting to be executed. This Is Indicative of the stakes he has been and continues to be living under.

Tubbo, meanwhile, has had it told to his face with receipts that Ranboo is a traitor... and immediately enters copium central, blaming it on Ranboo's memory issues. This is setting out a pattern that will continue all the way to Tubbo absolutely refusing to implicate Ranboo in Tommy’s death and beyond – Tubbo cannot consider Ranboo to have the capacity to be a threat. This will be bad for both of them.

For now we go into Snowchester. It is important to note Ranboo is actively afraid of Tubbo at this point. The urgency in his mind ebbs some by the time they get married, but at this point he is actively considering Tubbo a more-than-latent threat. The tower scene happens, which is a continuation of Tubbo being ableist to Ranboo, this time to the point of trying to experimentally cure its memory issues against its wishes – people will say Ranboo said yes technically, and it did, but again remember: Ranboo is a yes man, and it is residually afraid of what Tubbo might do to himself or to Ranboo if it missteps. Consent given under threat is not consent, and it is extremely indicative of what Ranboo actually feels about this happening from his initial resistance, his attempts to weasel out of the procedure/leave early throughout, and his reaction after. In true fashion of a yes man who is trying not to set off alarm bells while keeping his head, he is resistant without openly refusing throughout. To be clear: this is not Tubbo intentionally violating Ranboo's consent (nor are any of the other ensuing experiments and/or proposals). This is their heldover power dynamic. Tubbo is not evil or malicious or anything – the two of them just have a fucked set of expectations, and that set of expectations is not going to improve, because neither of them have the framework to challenge it. Even if Ranboo recognizes something is wrong on a conscious level (which he refuses to as part of the strat), he will not acknowledge it, because of aforementioned tendencies, and Tubbo will not recognize something is wrong, because Tubbo does not have the healthiest ideas abt individual consent and personhood in general, because when in any of DSMP history has anyone shown Tubbo that as a priority? In fact, What Tubbo Thinks about a situation has been repeatedly dismissed, and at this point he has long learned this. To the Joker Tubbo this is just a normal interaction, and he continues to see Ranboo as someone who is at least mostly reliably in his corner, and at least mostly reliably his friend (especially after Exile fucked up his relationship with Tommy), so he has no reason to believe this would be a problem. Bringing this up as an issue is a threat to the stability of their relationship and the surrounding circumstances, which is not tenable; Tubbo has been looking for stability this whole time and is not interested in losing it again, and Ranboo is staking a lot of self-convinced morality on the fact that he's being good to Tubbo technically, and also is still extremely afraid of what Tubbo might do if he isn't there to catch him.

(Literally catch him! There is a scene where Tubbo jumps off a roof shouting for Ranboo to catch him, which idk if cc!Tubbo thought he was in character for, but cc!Ranboo definitely was. You do not react with off-trailing closed-off genuine fear and worry to your friend maybe doing a clown in video games. I know my little guy’s voice that was c!Ranboo I know it was.)

In the absence of being able to unpack the problem, they go for the next best solution to this threat of losing stability, which is to codify that stability by getting married. Michael is part of this. We never got a deeply in character discussion for why they decided to adopt Michael, which leaves us with the interaction where Tubbo is (jokingly?) threatening to “commit adultery,” and Ranboo replies that he can’t because “Michael is our son, Michael is our adopted son." This is evidently news to Tubbo – unsurprisingly, because this is the first time Michael is referred to as anything more than a pet.

Again, absolutely do not get me wrong – both of beeduo are genuinely affectionate for and extremely attached to Michael (Ranboo has so much sentiment and love and kindness in his hearts). The aforementioned scene is also dubiously canon at best – I only mention it at all because the essence of it is consistent with the previous established dynamic and with how it keeps going. They care, and it’s absolutely ridiculous to pretend they don’t, but Michael’s ultimate importance outside the (again, very extant) sentimental aspect is as a prop in the game of house these morons are playing because they are so so so afraid of losing everything – in Tubbo's case, of losing everything again, and in Ranboo's case, of failing to be there for Tubbo and prevent whatever Tubbo does.

Including with the nukes! I didn’t forget about the nuke scene! We’re talking about the nuke scene!!

For those who do not remember the nuke scene, a summary: it takes place shortly after the silo’s inception, before the marriage. Tubbo, obviously jumpy and nervous, asks a visiting Ranboo out of the blue if he wants to see smth secret, and says he’ll just stress Ranboo out to make him forget it afterward. Ranboo, to this offer, says no, he would rather not be intentionally triggered into situational memory loss. This was, however, not an actual offer, as Tubbo ignores him and leads him into the silo anyway.

Tubbo’s literal world destroying weapons bolster the stakes I’ve mentioned earlier that Ranboo perceives in this dynamic; Ranboo, trying to hang on to what could become an extremely dangerous complicating factor, goes to write it down and Tubbo tells him to put the book away. When Ranboo hesitates, Tubbo threatens him. Tubbo is counting on Ranboo’s memory loss here to be able to trust him, after all, as he has before and as he will again.

In fact, this is relevant in the literal next arc beeduo have relevance, which is outpost arc.

I've gone off abt Ranboo's ideology 40 million times and I'll go off abt it more; for Ranboo to function safely he needs an environment where he does not feel surveilled/scrutinized, where he is not subject to others' whims, and where he is not expected to be specifically and exclusively allegiant. See earlier discussion of his yes-man tendencies – he doesn’t want to be that way! These are character flaws and he knows it! But he must keep yes-manning for the sake of surviving in a society that will not give him the ability to breathe!! Ranboo is a mf anarchist for a reason he needs his agency!!!

And you will notice this is not raising green flags for his dynamic w/ Tubbo. Outside of the implicit coercion elements, Ranboo has actual positive motivations to align with Tubbo: he shares Tubbo's desire for peace and stability, and he feels genuinely sentimental and affectionate to Tubbo. Both of them want the same things, because wanting to have a peaceful happy life is a generally appealing goal, and they want to have it together, because they’re friends and care about each other. Unfortunately, they have a radically different understanding of most everything about how to get there, including in regards to personhood. Including what it means to value someone. What it means to be happy. What it means to love someone.

Ranboo does not want to confront this, but outpost-burger arc beeduo is where this conflict makes him. This is the arc where it is made absolutely unambiguous that Ranboo and Tubbo have a dynamic where neither can love the other like the other loves him, because they have fundamentally philosophically different understandings of what that even means. "Maybe he built those walls to protect me" KILLING ME WOULD HURT LESS, RANBOOLIVE

(While we are here, and I am getting a glass of water to calm down, re: the love point: the romanticity, platonicity, queerplatonicity, etc. of it is not the relevant part the point is that it's philosophically in com fucking patible. Are we clear. Are we clear this is not relevant discourse. Good. Okay)

Ranboo is suffering increasing confusion and confabulation and stress as the arc goes on, almost certainly bc he is again in a political situation; he makes explicit that this is another instance of it "happening again", like he did at the worst parts of his spirals irt his situation in New L’Manberg. Tubbo is not the only factor in this; Ranboo has complicated dynamics w/ Quackity and the cookieduo (Ranboo and Slime) arc is also relevant, but Tubbo is Ranboo's first priority and Ranboo is putting his brain thru the blender for him! We do not see him in a comparable consistent state like this at any point except New L’Manberg! Ranboo is fucked up in outpost arc!! And Tubbo obviously is too; the entire arc is about his lash-out and he is obviously paranoid doing it. And both of these only make it clear that the unbalanced expectations the whole dynamic was built on, of reliance on Ranboo as specially in Tubbo’s corner, are still fucking there

Ranboo’s behavior is extremely worth scrutinizing here. When Q sends Fundy and I am pretty sure Foolish? to go check out the outpost and they trash it on the way there, Ranboo cleans it up (and leaves threats, which is not a Hinged Action and is something he knows is self-compromising, which goes to show his state of mind) w/ the explicit motivation of keeping it from Tubbo. Ranboo talks to Quackity abt Tubbo and repeatedly makes excuses abt how Tubbo is neurodivergent and a minor, and sure, it says the same thing about itself, but then it continues saying similar shit to rationalize Tubbo's behavior on its own. Ranboo has very expressed interest in portraying Tubbo, both to any audience it has AND to itself, as someone who is not responsible for his actions, because he’s Going Through A Lot, and it has been doing that since the mention of the experiments/tower scene in character.

Tubbo has to cling to the idea that Ranboo's treasonous tendencies are tied to his memory loss. Ranboo has to cling to the idea that Tubbo’s erratic and violent behavior all doesn't really matter bc Tubbo is ~ twaumatized ~, because he “has a lot of problems,” and they both have to cling to their ableist copium, because if they don’t, then each has to admit that his husband would hurt him, and in fact has.

Outpost arc is also where we get "you'd tell me if I was a bad person right" "yeah I’d tell you if you step out of line" – I talk about it in connection to the things I’ve discussed earlier more in depth here, but further: it’s extra chilling when you consider 1) Ranboo does not genuinely concur with Tubbo's philosophies, is not kept safe by them and he knows that when in his right state of mind as evidenced by his active ever-present weaseling-out-of-this maneuvers; 2) that Ranboo is demonstrably extremely good at aforesaid weaseling; and 3) that he is extremely ideologically critical and fiercely independent and arrogant, all the time! And this is the evidence point for what I say in the tags of that ask: Tubbo is the closest on the server to come to ever having control over Ranboo ideologically

Ranboo is so good at 5D chess. Ranboo outmaneuvered Wilbur and Quackity and Dream. Ranboo, increasingly freely, is able to disagree and bring up concerns to Phil and Techno (not fully obv but more than everyone else he talks to lmao), whom broadly he agrees with and has seen the benefit of the philosophies of, but still doesn’t think are Fully Correct, because he doesn’t think that about anyone but himself. But with Tubbo, Ranboo conceded so much that he could have lost the game if Tubbo hadn't proceeded to fold during the burger arc. And Tubbo didn't even know! He didn't even realize anything was off!!

That fold is the next relevant point in this torrid saga. Tubbo reaches a breaking pt with Wilbur's return; Ranboo gets even more visibly freaked out at all times bc of the complicating situation; it’s here when we get the conversation where Tubbo talks abt the outpost and having signed it over.

This hits Ranboo in a way Tubbo is going to miss, because, again, when has anyone on the DSMP given Tubbo a precedent for caring about that? He has literally 0 example reason to consider all the work™ that any individual put into a project as far as he’s concerned that’s not going to work. Ranboo, unfortunately, not only does, but also has RSD. This already hurts. And then Tubbo makes the to-him extremely innocuous statement that yeah, now that he has a job and a faction and a direction that he isn't buckling under the weight of losing, he's finally happy

Ranboo, who is extremely dubious abt LNV's labor conditions anyway, fully hears that Tubbo never needed him. Tubbo is finally happy in service to the exact construct that Ranboo has repeated concrete evidence fucks himself and everyone around him, Tubbo included, up. Ranboo hears that he has been soundly cucked by the concept of sides, to put it a little facetiously. He has been checkmate liberals’d.

(This, understandably, does nothing for his mental state.)

And before I continue I must mention again: Ranboo and Tubbo do care about each other. They do legitimately want the best for each other. They have legitimately bonded, and are genuine friends (&c).

But you also have to remember that Ranboo is extremely calculating, and if you’ll also recall, he is still in a high stakes and high delicacy political situation where he has to be making a lot of those calculations. Now, he's just heard that he was never needed for one of his primary goals. Yes, this hurts, but it carries an important second significance to those calculations: if keeping Tubbo stable was never Ranboo’s doing, this is a reason to deprioritize it.

And that is how we go into Hitting on Sixteen/The Wilbur Van. That is why Ranboo is able to snap at Tubbo in Ho16/TWV. The sheer contrast between the "I'll tell you if you step out of line" agreement and Ranboo dismissing and yelling at Tubbo in this is the biggest and clearest indicator – and the deciding difference is that in Ho16, Ranboo has the goddamn burger van interaction in his information bank, the one where Ranboo was told that his concerns were useless and could be deprioritized. He has been functionally dismissed from his post – he no longer has to worry about appearing good and trustworthy and respectful to Tubbo, and with greater things hanging over his head than maintaining those appearances, he goes full mask off. He prioritizes mitigating Wilbur over mitigating Tubbo in that scene, and he feels bad about it bc he likes Tubbo, and he feels bad for yelling at him, especially considering he is lying – dismissal of everyone who isn’t himself aside, Ranboo knows just fine that Wilbur is dangerous and doing something harmful! He is lying!!

But that's the thing with Ranboo. Ranboo will lie to fucking anyone. It will lie to your motherfucking face with full confidence, and then it'll feel soooo bad about it later, it'll tear him up inside, and you will hear about none of it, and he'd do it again, because it'll be another calculated concession. Because Ranboo is a yes man and a survivor and a political agenda haver and is balancing like 478363 conflicting priorities at any given time because he has to

So it lies. It mansplains Wilbur Soot to Tubbo (and I do not use that word as a joke I use it as shorthand) and it lies and it can do this so immediately because it did not have to lose or shake a long-standing respect for Tubbo – at that point, its initial wisps of respect for Tubbo had been disintegrated and gone for months. He was never trustworthy to Tubbo – Tubbo put his trust and his reliance in a liar and a traitor, because Ranboo's lies were the only semblance of respect and understanding he got, and it was against what both of them wanted for Tubbo to realize that ever. Tubbo is married to a motherfucking stranger.

Tubbo appeals to a better person that Ranboo isn't, to a loyalty Ranboo never really had, and bc Ranboo doesn't have to pretend to respect him anymore Tubbo gets berated and condescended to, again. Like I cannot emphasize this shit enough! Ranboo was shit to Tubbo in that scene, and even if he had sacrificed himself for Tubbo, it wouldn’t have done fuck anything to address how awful he was in that moment and why it was so deeply such. And Ranboo didn’t even “sacrifice himself”! People made that up!

Yes, Ranboo's political motivation was in large part that Tubbo, someone he cared about, was being repeatedly endangered and used as a prop from where Ranboo was standing, and Ranboo found that kind of mistreatment of a person he cared for the wellbeing of untenable. He cared about that, genuinely, because he cares about people and about their individual safeties, and even when he hurts them it’s, again, a concession. It’s something he wants to avoid. So Tubbo is in danger and Ranboo acts in the capacity of his care for Tubbo and gets Tubbo out, makes sure that materially his loved one is safe – and then, having dealt with the danger to people, turns around and deals with ideology.

It's not for Tubbo that it kills itself, because Ranboo, again, cares about people. Ranboo killing himself did nothing for Tubbo, and it fucking knows that; Ranboo’s critical eye is extremely good at seeing past the notion that benefit to some ideology is necessarily the same as benefit to some person without being able to draw a clear line to the effects that ideology has on that person. The division between effect on people and effect on system – the concept that the ideologies one live under affect people rather than breathe as them, and that they thus have to justify that effect being good rather than having symbolic gestures take priority over individuals – is the whole motherfucking point of people not sides.

Ranboo killed himself as a symbolic gesture in service to a rhetorical point he was making to Wilbur and Quackity. Ranboo killed himself to win at 5D chess. Ranboo thoughtlessly made it so his husband watched him die, because after saving Tubbo, he had bigger things to worry about.

Ranboo killing himself is, extremely intentionally both in universe and out, evocative of Wilbur doing so because in a sense it was for Wilbur, and it was thought out. Ranboo’s suicide was not nonsensical revenge; it was not emotional protectiveness; it was the callous, cruel, condescending, twisted logic of a man who has shown this flaw in its ways of thinking again and again and whose lack of sleep the night before was specifically emphasized. Ranboo reaches drastic action and violence when he finds himself when he finds himself desperate and alone in the corner he’s backed into, and left with his own mind and only his own mind, he thinks himself into the deranged awfulness of the brainspace he was in when he made the decision. Though the choice itself was likely spontaneous, it was a culminating manifestation of a thought process that had been building for this kind of opportunity the whole time.

Yes, Ranboo is emotional; yes, Ranboo is sentimental; Ranboo does, however, think with his fucking head. He does it too much, in fact, and here he thought with his head into deprioritizing Tubbo, and functionally leaving Tubbo behind while he pursued his own agenda – which is really what he had been doing all a-fucking-long; he'd just been lying about it out of worry and fear, and Tubbo had believed him out of desperation.

The love was there, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the need, and the desperate belief from both of them that the other could fulfill that need.

TL;DR: - Beeduo is based on a fundamentally imbalanced dynamic where Tubbo trusts Ranboo to be in his corner in a way no one else really is - This is bad because of the expectations it places on Ranboo and because of the way that it’s not something that Tubbo can actually rely on - The second Ranboo was no longer coercively held to pretending, everything fell through - Both of them clung for the longest time to ableist copium that dismissed the other’s capability to harm him to get away from the fact that they have already hurt each other and continue to - While they care about each other, their understandings of personhood, love, relationships, agency, and happiness are fundamentally at odds

TL;DRTL;DR: Ranboo is a liar and Tubbo is an auth

#Dream SMP #Tubbo #Ranboo #beeduo #c!beeduo critical #c!Ranboo critical #c!Tubbo critical #you are not immune #for the approval of the forum #FINALLY. FINALLY AFTER ALL THIS TIME #SEVENTEEN MONTHS. 4.1K WORDS.

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babybluesquid · 11 months

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3 and 7!

3. Dealing With Trauma Unhealthily Award It is immensely difficult to pick between Dagne, Nux, and Vaeren for this one. So allow me to make my case for each.

Dagne is a mess and remains such throughout the entire campaign. They start off with a heavy dose of trauma due to the amnesia, being undead, the Last War, and their father figure Iura Josan dying in The Mourning, which they handled by drinking and trying to maintain control over everything, expecially their sense of self and purpose. The way Dagne saw it, they were a martyr of the Blood of Vol with no soul, only existing to protect the living, to their own detriment if necessary. When their control over the situation broke down and the stakes got scary, as is typical in a D&D game, they tried to break up the party over it. Also they're a liar and a rude asshole who doesn't trust anybody, very unpleasant to talk to and deal with, expecially for the NPCs. When they found out they had been intentionally killed and made undead to be a prophecy token, Dagne became incredibly despondent and lost sight of their reason for existing for a while.

Nux was forcibly entered into a warlock pact with Kyrzin and then their Whisperer cult tried to sacrifice them in a ritual. So they have a complex of guilt over not doing their duty (dying) and for the people they unintentionally killed during their escape. They were constantly dogged by the cult, who still want to complete the ritual, and demons from the Killing Cold, which wished to create a new pact with them. Nux lashed out a lot verbally and physically, especially early on in the campaign, and tried to cut a mark of Kyrzin off their own arm. Nux particularly had a strained relationship with Dagne, due to their distrust of authority. Nux saw Dagne trying to impose their will over the party as cruel and unreasonable, sometimes rightfully so.

Vaeren is the youngest child of an Aereni family where everyone becomes Deathguard, and as such had extremely high expectations to live up to. When they broke the rules and entered a dangerous part of the woods adjacent to a Mabaran manifest zone, they were blinded by a dark creature which they barely defeated in battle. Rather than having their vision healed, they were left in this state as punishment and given a spirit idol, the spirits within would act as their eyes. This made them very dependent on the Deathguard, and they had difficulties with making decisions and asserting their own opinions. They usually spoke in terms of "we" instead of "I."

The three of them all improved over the course of the campaign. None of them got all the way better, and Dagne especially got worse before getting better. I cannot decide who wins the award they're all so messed up in different ways.

7. Who wins Outstanding Plot Fucker Upper? Dagne, 100%.

There are numerous times where Dagne really fucked up, but the worst one has gotta be near the end of the campaign. They were sent to retrieve a coautl weapon from the Age of Demons, Garthir, in order to kill Mordakesh the Shadow Sword with it. However, on the way, Mordakesh killed Nux using a demon weapon, also from the Age of Demons, Saraskha. Saraskha trapped Nux's soul in it. Once Dagne had Garthir and learned that Nux could not be revived because their soul was not in Dolurrh, they were approached by a rakshasa lieutenant of Mordakesh that they knew as Valtis Redeyes. He offered a simple trade, Saraskha, with Nux's soul in it, for Garthir.

Dagne took the trade. They were able to use Sarsakha to revivify Nux. Unknown to them, the demon weapon was already corrupting their mind, thinking in their thoughts. Dagne became convinced that Saraskha was a workable substitute for Garthir, and that they could use the soul storing properties of the weapon to kill their enemies without actually killing them. It appealed to their oath to protect the living and their need to not kill anyone. Nux, horrified by Dagne's plan, got the weapon away from them and the rest of the party helped them convince Dagne that using Saraskha was a very very bad idea.

#answered ask #consequences of karrnath #my post #dagne #nux #vaeren #mordakesh #rakshasa #eberron

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facelessfrey · 2 years

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I’m thinking about Roswell and Motherland Fort Salem again....haha

I just feel like Motherland works in so many ways that I wish Roswell did, that it has/had the potential to but wasted it.

Like obviously I’ve been talking about how I feel like Motherland handled Raelle missing for half the season compared to Roswell and Alex. And now that we have Raelle back and her and Scylla are engaged, I know what I want to happen from this eventual Malex reunion. But just...all along, it was so much better with everyone knowing that Raelle was missing. I mean, granted Raelle is the lead of the show really and Alex is clearly not that according to Roswell writers, but you know, he’s not. But still, having everyone know Raelle was missing and even though they had a lot else going on, there was always some sense of urgency to get Rae back, especially from Scylla. We’re getting it a bit from Michael now but imagine if we’d had that all season long. Imagine if he had gone undercover with Bonnie and Clyde to try and find clues to where Alex was. I just feel like it would have made a lot more sense and felt less like stalling. If they actually built Alex’s disappearance into the mystery of what Bonnie, Clyde and Tesca were up to, that would have maintained his presence in the narrative and kept some sense of urgency, even if it took a while to unravel all the clues. I don’t know, they better have one hell of a reunion when we get to it.

But aside from that aspect, I just feel like Motherland excels in other ways too. A big frustration of mine with Roswell has always been the lack of threat against them, the lack of real stakes, the pacing. While I liked Jones, I think the biggest threat they ever had was Noah just because they knew so much less and the violation of body/mind control felt the scariest. But they had Jesse Manes and did next to nothing with him. Sure he supposedly had a bomb to kill aliens at the end of season two but there was so little real story leading up to that. No one was worried about such a thing until the last two episodes. It was such a weak story in a mess of a season. But he could have been such a great villain rather than just a despicable man. Project Shepherd could have been a real ongoing threat instead of just Jesse in his bunker or his severely understaffed prison with just Flint for a lackey. There’s never been a real threat to the aliens being found out by the government etc. And then you have the supposed Dark Triad where two out of the three are...not a threat and the third is just...dull?

With Motherland, the Spree in the first season were genuinely frightening with their suicide balloons and infiltration and face changing. And while we knew they were fighting against conscription of Witches there were so many more layers to unpack there and then they were getting confused with the Camarilla, who are genuinely terrifying witch hunters.

The Camarilla who are a very real threat and have infiltrated the government, putting the lives of our main characters and all witches in danger. And Hearst with his vocal chord stealing and using against them and Silver becoming President, the stakes are super high, especially going into the final two episodes with our main unit turning themselves in.

I just...I feel no such stakes from Roswell and never really have aside from maybe a few points with Noah and a tiny bit with Jones. But Project Shepherd or fucking Deep Sky could have been real genuine government threats the way the Special Unit was in the original show and they just...weren’t. And it’s a shame. I’ve never once felt like our aliens were in real danger of being exposed aside from maybe in the teen flashback when Rosa died. And that feels like it should be integral to the story, especially since they do bring it up a lot for it never actually being a real problem in the narrative.

And then there’s the relationships. Raelle and Scylla are the main ship of course in Motherland so they get all the good angst and focus, but they, like Malex, have been apart a lot but they’ve never tried to bring in third parties for extra unnecessary drama. And they’ve always let them have these great reunions that feel so earned even if they’ve spent entire seasons technically apart. And then Abigail and Adil are technically a more secondary ship but they’ve had plenty of focus as well and so much growth both individually and as a couple, even including Khalida feeling like family to Abigail at this point. It’s all really well done. And aside from the romantic relationships, the unit are so close and their friendship and sense of found family is so strong in a way that Roswell just fails on so much, and characters like Adil and Scylla and Anacostia and even Alder etc just slot into that so well.

Maybe it’s because there’s more of a sense of character hierarchy that makes it work because all of the Roswell characters are kind of fighting each other for screen time instead of naturally slotting into their rightful places. But even when all of the Roswell characters, particularly this season and last are working together, they still all feel so separate and their are so many individual friendships that are lacking.

Liz and Maria should be best friends, they should constantly be checking in with each other and they have maybe like one or two crumbs of scenes together a season. Liz and Alex are supposed to be friends and they’ve had like five scenes together in four seasons. Maria and Alex are supposed to be best friends, which they did okay with in the first part of season one and then made it weird and then never really repaired that friendship in any meaningful way on screen. It took till literally this season for people to actually acknowledge that Michael and Alex are a serious thing. Max and Alex literally didn’t have a scene together until last season. Kyle and Alex’s friendship was done so well in season one and then has just disappeared entirely since. Maria rarely interacts with Max. Maria rarely interacts with Kyle. They made such a big thing of Rosa being Kyle’s secret sister and then they’ve had like maybe four scenes together. Rosa and Michael are great but they rarely get to interact. I don’t think Rosa and Alex have ever had a scene together. Even like Maria and Isobel and Rosa had such a great thing going last season but basically nothing this season. There’s just such a lack of consistency, it’s infuriating. It makes any kind of relationship arc really hard to track or invest in.

Whereas on Motherland, there are such distinct journeys for all of the relationships. The romantic ones obviously, but also Raelle and Abigail, the Bellweather unit as a whole, Tally with Alder, Abigail with Alder, Petra with Alder, Abigail and Scylla, Tally and Scylla, Khalida and Abigail, Anacostia and Scylla, Anacostia and Alder, Anacostia and the unit etc etc. And it feels like all of that is coming together in the final season. Anacostia is using Scylla’s work, Tally and Abigail are trusting Alder, Abigail and Tally are letting Scylla in and boding with her etc.

The characters on Roswell are so good and the relationship are there to work with and yet....I’m constantly shocked when Liz actually talks to people other than Max...

Sigh...I feel like there’s about four people who might actually crossover with both shows and understand all of this but I just...have feelings. And I don’t want either show to be ending but I’m grateful to Motherland for being as good as it has been with what it’s had to work with.

(also...the mythology and world building on Motherland...so much better and less messy than Roswell. At least they bothered to create a witch language rather than name people Jones and Bonnie and Clyde and call an alien planet the Oasis)

(also, Motherland only has ten episodes to work with instead of 13 and they usually do better to tell a much tighter story that doesn’t feel like they just drop things half way or rush other things)

Okay...I’m done with my rant now.

#roswell new mexico #motherland fort salem

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rickchung · 2 years

Photo

Fakes (prod. David Turko).

Starring local actors Emilija Baranac and Jennifer Tong and explicitly set in the suburbs of West Vancouver, the CBC/Netflix co-production is a real treat to watch. Revolving around the premise of a pair of high school best friends starting a fake ID empire on a whim, episodes find them getting deeper and deeper into trouble in mostly comical fashion.

What’s most remarkable about the generally lighthearted fun had is the sense of actual stakes when the mid-level but still serious criminal elements start to build. Furthermore, both lead characters have key family and personal details that flesh out their ill-advised motivations and taste for danger. Fakes remains surprisingly sophisticated while maintaining a breezy sense of situational comedy.

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ladyhindsight · 2 years

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I was thinking about it again today. I think maybe it would work if nephilim have some serving age - time period you have to serve in war. Maybe 15 years since 18, it would mean they would retire at age of 33 and then pursue other career or decide to stay in active forces. Then we would have people to do all the crafts needed for running Alicante. Older members of society pursuing traditional family crafts or careers they choose for themselves. Hereditary occupation was common in history and the children of smith were smiths too. Today it's probably more free choice of individual. I'm curious how they learn their job after they finish service. They would probably need to study at University at some point to learn more complicated things like architecture. Whixh bring us back to Shadowhunter Academy and not very sufficient curriculum.

It would make sense why some families raise children in Alicante and some in institutes, despite the increased dangers. Nephilim are paid for fighting demons. If they don't want to fight while not disabled or ending their duration of service, they aren't paid and they must pay high taxes. Poor families are forced to raise children in institutes, because they don't have money to live in Alicante.

It would explain why were Hodge's family poor. Maybe he was child of single parent and the parent had some mental issue. Which wasn't recognized by Clave as disability and therefore they were forced to live from old money they had and it wasn't much. It would add interesting layer to Hodge's character. It's suitably grim to fit realisticaly into the theme of the world.

I didn't know Clare removed it from later editions! I thought it was interesting for women not to fight and it was a way to explain how the society may work. I prefer the version where women in history learn to fight, some women are very talented and they are active fighters, but most women were craftsman, maintain city, raise children and were their main educators. It create interesting historical duality. Men as fighters, politicians and healers. Women as scholars, teachers and craftsmen. It bring interesting light on Charlotte and Henry. She's in traditionally male role and he's in traditionally female role. Beginning of gender and sexual revolution which happened in later years.

I think their society was sexist, because they still wasn't completelly separated from mundane world and they marry mundanes much more often. Maybe they were even encouraged to marry mundanes to increase the genetical diversity. They didn't pay much attention to wellbeing of recruits and probably just said you weren't worthy of Raziel blood if you died during ascension. Look how deeply rooted is sexism in society today. Hard to uproot sexism from society.

She didn't invest any thougth into other races. What we know about vampire and werewolf politics? All the races are rather unimaginative. Clare would probably say nephilim don't pay much attention to lowly races. Which is completely unrealistic, if they want to live in peace with them, they have to pay attention to political situation and relationship between different clans.

I really love the idea of Praetor Lupus, because it's at least logical organization. What I don't understand it doesn't have any ties to Shadowhunters? No support in history, when they should want to support it - better control over unruly downworlders, less dangers, less conflict and it would improve their public image. They should at least support them with finances and monitor their work and progress. It's supposed to be FIRST organization among downworlders. It was created in 19th century. What did everybody do before? I can't believe this is the first organization dedicated to helping downworlders in history.

I agree killing Julian and Emma would be harsh considering the genre. Therefore I would let them kill Livvy in their true nephilim form. I don't see a point in killing Livvy other than raising stakes and the problem of too many characters. If Emma and Julian killed her when she tried to stop them, it would have serious impact.

Thank you for all your praise, I'll start blushing. 😊

Oh, you’ve earned it. These are all details that would make the Nephilim culture more alive.

I don’t know the exact time the change was made but I noticed it in the 2015 edition of the book. It was probably because the idea of Shadowhunter women not fighting until relatively recently wouldn’t have aligned with The Dark Artifices, mainly Charlotte and Jessamine. Major part of Jessamine’s character was how she resented her having to fight and kill demons just because she was born a Nephilim. Or maybe Clare in retrospect no longer liked the idea of the Nephilim culture being that sexist. Or both.

It’s just weird because this wasn’t the only change made in later editions of the books and none of them were really ever addressed, at least to my knowledge, which is just being sneaky. And oh yes, Clare gave no shits about vampires or werewolves. A little bit more about the faeries it seems though. I expressed this somewhere along the way when I was going through City of Glass, but the whole idea that Raphael (in absence of Camille, of course) would be the spokesperson for all vampires about the Council seat or anything ever. There must be clans that don’t give a damn about some Daylighter and what some Raphael Santiago from New York thinks. It’s just isn’t realistic that they all supposedly agree or that only the New York vampires are running the whole show for everyone.

I feel like Praetor Lupus has completely disappeared from the series. It comes up in the latter half of TMI and in TID because of Woolsey Scott. But it definitely didn’t leave a lasting impression to me. I feel like it was still left someone vague, the whole concept of it.

Ohh, but if they had killed Livvy, the angst would never end! Though it would’ve been a serious impact indeed. It definitely would’ve been something they could not just come back from, but of course that also means Emma and Julian could not have their happy ever after. I’d have to give a longer thought so that I might actually come up with something, but right now off the bat I don’t think Emma’s character really has anything going for her that she could really lose that would impact the story or the character similarly as Clary losing Simon or Tessa losing Jem forever. Everything I can come up with would just end up (realistically) her and Julian’s being ostracized. And of course that just can’t happen.

Sorry for taking a bit to answer, being busy with work and things again. :')

#Series discussion #Reply

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shihalyfie · 3 years

Note

You’ve touched on it before, but could you make a post analyzing the differences in how the Zero Two kids manifest their respective traits differently than their seniors?

This is not going to be as long as you're probably hoping it should be since this is one of the more abstract things that I think is better summarized fairly succinctly, but I'll do my best! I don't want to get redundant, so just implicitly assume I'm also referencing from my earlier post on Crest meanings; please refer to that for more elaboration.

Taichi vs. Daisuke on Courage: The thing is that while Daisuke seems to have an aggressive/abrasive personality at first, all of that is just a very, very thin outer layer, and Daisuke actually spent the beginning of the series not really having a lot of nerve to begin with, nor having experience in dealing with dangerous situations. He didn’t have any of the assertiveness Taichi had at all; he had to prove his capacity for it as things slowly started escalating and he showed off his traits for being the core heart of the group. 02 episode 20 has him commented on as being “perfect for leading the charge”, but remember that, despite his ostensible temperament, this really was not the case in prior episodes, when he was constantly getting strung around everywhere because he was never putting his foot down. It’s only throughout the course of the series he starts displaying proper resilience. In contrast, Taichi always had that from day one -- arguably too much, to the point you could argue he was too willing to tackle situations without enough depth of how dangerous they were or how high the stakes could be, so it’s basically an opposite approach to the issue.

Yamato vs. Daisuke on Friendship: I think this one is the one where the similarity is actually closer among these of the group; both of them have a somewhat abrasive external layer but actually are among the most compassionate in the group (I still maintain that Daisuke is arguably far more like Yamato than he really is Taichi). The difference is mainly just one of nuance; Yamato was obsessed with being independent and capable of taking care of himself at the beginning of Adventure, and had to learn to trust others, whereas Daisuke was already openly friendly and arguably even a bit dependent on others’ presence, but had to work a little harder on understanding others’ feelings (which he ends up being one of the best at by the end of the series).

Sora vs. Miyako on Love: Sora and Miyako were both capable of being doting and affectionate and emotionally supportive from day one, but their lack of recognition came in different ways; Sora considered herself too incapable of it and arguably even “above” the whole idea of taking responsibility at first, whereas Miyako considered her messy, chaotic personality to be an obstruction and something that made her a bad person instead of recognizing her own strength in this respect.

Mimi vs. Miyako on Purity: I cover this one a lot because it’s the one where even the nuance of the Crest itself is most different; Mimi’s is more about lack of malice and treating others without condescension or acting to hurt others (being true to those feelings in that sense), whereas Miyako’s is more about being honest about her own feelings and not trying to force herself into being something she’s not.

Koushirou vs. Iori on Knowledge: Also one I’ve covered a lot before; Koushirou’s is about pushing on further to widen one’s understanding of things and not letting gaps in his knowledge go, whereas Iori’s is about understanding his own lack of understanding of the world -- especially about humans and human behavior -- and pursuing the desire to fix that and understand better.

Jou vs. Iori on Faith: This one is another one that’s fairly similar at first glance; Jou’s is more about keeping promises and fulfilling one’s duty to others, especially in the sense of helping them when they’re in need. Iori’s is more of a complex examination of what it means to be honest to one’s principles, and what it means to exercise that duty to others in the light of his aforementioned limited understanding of things (which means that sometimes he needs to be a bit more flexible).

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #shiha's ask box #ree-fireparrot

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musings-from-mars · 3 years

Text

Neurodivergent Weiss Schnee

Evidence (heavily influenced on my own experiences and me projecting a tiny bit):

Struggling with emotional expression + being raised in an emotionally abusive household = Volume 1 Weiss very rarely expressing any vulnerability and mostly expressing anger or contempt for others as a result of emulating those around her and for fear of being seen through (something high school me did a lot). She has a deep fear of being seen as inadequate.

Fascination with big organizing projects such as the Vytal Festival (she expresses her wonder with how much planning goes into it) and all the effort she put into planning the dance in Volume 2. She’s even seen trying to straighten a flower on a centerpiece as the dance is going on.

She lacks a sense of danger. Even in the heat of battle or during a crisis, she still seems to speak with such an even keel and will throw herself into danger, like in her and Yang’s fight with Team FNKI in Volume 3. (A common symptom of ADHD is lacking a sense of danger.) Especially in more recent volumes, I’ve noticed how remarkably calm and collected she seems during high stakes situations.

REHEARSING HER SMILE IN THE ELEVATOR IN THE CCT BEFORE TRYING TO CONTACT THE SDC (Volume 2).

Her Mirror Mirror motif has a lot of interpretations, so allow me to throw mine in about how she struggles to view herself in the same way as she is expected to be seen by others.

I would argue her ballet-like flair to her fight style is a sort of way for her to stim while fighting. All those extra movements help her focus and maintain her confidence.

She struggles to comfort others and freezes when loved ones are upset or angry. An example I can think of is in Volume 8 when Ruby breaks down crying after Salem taunts her. Weiss looks stunned, like she doesn’t know what to do. Also in Volume 5, she does her best to diffuse the argument between Yang and Raven because she doesn’t want to be involved in a shouting match.

This list is far from exhaustive but these are examples I could think of just off the top of my head. Fellow neurodivergent folks feel free to add!

#weiss schnee #rwby #autistic weiss schnee #adhd weiss schnee

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wizkiddx · 3 years

Text

worst case scenario part 3

umm so, never ever intended it to be this long but here we are. again this is v dark so please please read the warning!! also [and obvs] this is very medically inaccurate and just a work of my head aha

[part 1] [part 2]

warning: mentions of death / hospital / mentions of childhood abandonment too- please don't read if this could affect you <3

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His heart was thundering in his chest, so much so it drowned out all other sounds making all the doctors words fade into the background. Conciously, he really was trying to listen to what the doctor was saying; consciously he knew she was trying to prepare him to see Y/n; consciously he knew she knew he wasn’t okay. But really? It didn’t matter, and as they drew closer to his fiancé Tom felt an urgent sense of relief purely know she was there. She was there and she wasn’t dead…yet.

Only two people were allowed to go up, just because the nature of the ward - everything was meticulously controlled, including the comings and goings of visitors. If you’ve never been in an ICU it’s a pretty hard environment to describe. Really, it’s just another hospital ward, with capacity of about 20 beds. Each bed has much more equipment surrounding that the average and a nurse is stationed per patient, monitoring every possible variable that the machienes are measuring, so any trend (either positive or negative) can be identified at the earliest point. Though in everyones head, it seems as though ICU is a common place ending up for some unfortunate sod when something bad happens, it’s actually really rare for someone to be so ill and dependant on medicine to maintain normal body functioning. Only the most severe trauma, infection of the most dangerous microorganism, surgery of such high stakes normally make an appearance on the ward. And ,on average, between 8-20% patients that are admitted to an ICU never make it out.

And those grim figures were unignorable to anyone. As soon as you walk through the doors, the atmosphere is intense and ineffable. It’s not spoken, but is so incredibly morbid it makes anyone shiver.

Dom felt this, squeezing his sons shoulder as he followed Tom and the doctor, just a pace or so behind them. Having offered to go with Tom, whilst Harrison took Nikki to see the baby, Dom was now feeling just as clueless as his son did. Except he was actually listening to what the doctor was trying to warn them about and it scared him. The three, made it to the door and with a swipe of her ID card the doctor admitted the Holland men in. Gratefully, none of the staff took any notice of who was walking in, they were much too busy for that - Dom was incredibly relieved, had someone recognised Tom when he was in this state, god knows what would’ve happened.

The doctors pace was with purpose, perhaps so that the two couldn’t spend too long ogling the other patients in the beds - who all looked almost unhuman with the amount of tubes and wires coming out and into them. But then, she slowed up, halting infront of a bay about 5 or 6 down the ward. Spinning on her heel and with a subtle nod to momentarily release the nurse from her post at Y/n’s bedside, to give them a bit of privacy, she looked at the two men.

“You can touch her, just be gentle with the wires.”

Shellshocked and terrified, Tom was frozen those 2 metres away from the bed barely able to see her face over all the equipment. Yet undoubtedly, it was his finance’s delicate visage lying on the white pillow, with a thick white mouthpiece and tube covering her mouth and stuffed into her nose. Not able to move, both Dom and Dr Goodwell sensitively waited - it was an adjustment to say the least, seeing someone you knew so well look so different. With quiet tears starting to roll down his eyes, Tom eventually started to inch toward the bedside, taking his time to try and absorb everything of this frankly ridiculous situation. He couldn’t get over how, even considering it all, above her nose it just looked like Y/n. Like she was asleep in their bed, eyes closed as if she had once again fallen asleep infront of a random Netflix movie Tom had bugged her enough to watch in bed. And it was, ever so slightly comforting. That was still her, that was still the love of his life lying there. And she was still alive - which given the last few hours, was enough.

Reaching the bedside, Tom naturally reached out and stroked the top of her head delicately, pulling into place a few rogue strands that seemed to have a mind of their own - she had always hated when her hair got frizzy. The picture had Tom’s mind casting back to their first holiday, a serene if quick few days in Fiji- though Y/n didnt know this , that holiday had been one of the most important times in their relationship for Tom. Until then, given the nature of his job, the couple had only ever managed brief periods together. They spent time together as and when they could in between Tom’s busy schedule but it was never as long as they’d like. Somehow though, he’d managed to squeeze a few days away to surprise Y/n with the trip.

It was everything he’d ever hoped it would be and more. In fact it was then Tom was oh so sure he would be spending the rest of his life with her. This thought crossed his mind on the last morning, when he had for once woken up before Y/n - her head mere cms away from his on the pillow. Just like now, her hair had been all over the place and her sparkling green eyes locked shut. Contrastingly though, in Fiji the sight had made him smile softly; now it just made him cry again.

“Would you like a minute alone Mr Holland? We will just wait outside?” Not even turning round to properly respond to the doctor, Tom just nodded violently, not taking his eyes off his fiancé - waiting till he heard his Dad and the doctor leave the bay; then the curtains be completely drawn to a close, before he shakily cleared his throat to whisper.

“Hey darling… you um-you’ve scared me shitless today… and… and I’m supposed to be the dramatic one in the relationship.” Chuckling wetly, Tom clasped his other hand in Y/n’s - still mindful of the IV port coming out of the top of her wrist. Not that he was expecting any sort of response, yet the lack of her squeezing his hand back still had his heart sink. “Look I…I love you so bloody much and I really need you to get better okay? You’ve never listened to me before but I really am begging you to now, I just.” Swallowing thickly, he shut his eyes momentarily and delicately rested his forehead on hers - his touch feather light. Just needing to feel her. “I just really need you and I really love you., okay?”

Unsurprisingly he didn’t get a response. The rhetorical question hung in the air alone, safe the mechanical whir of the ventilator and various chimes of the machines and monitor, till his Dad came in. Grasping and squeezing his shoulder lightly, Dom provided the stimulus for his son to unfold from over the bed, standing upright, as both men just took in the sight of Y/n lying there for a minute or two.

“I need her Dad. I-I-“

“I know Tom.” Speaking so quietly it was barely audible, Dom’s eventual agreement at what Tom was saying was in a way a relief. Haz and his mum had both either been saying or implying that they would be okay no matter what - which came from a good place but was so infuriating. Because god forbid, if this situation got worse Tom knew it wouldn’t be okay. Nothing would ever be okay again. So his Dad’s simple acknowledgment meant a lot, causing Tom to turn round and embrace his slightly shorter father.

Dr Goodwell silently watched the exchange for a short while and once the men eventually pulled away she stepped forward to give some more information. She went through what all the biggest and scary looking tubes and wires were doing for Y/n, before explaining the next steps.

“Now as I said before we are sedating her at the moment, while we wait and see if she gets any complications from the surgery that are better treated while she is asleep. By this afternoon we will have a clearer idea and by that point we may choose to withdraw that sedation. It’s important that you are aware though that she might not wakeup immediately. Sometimes some people that have suffered similarly to your fiancé will be unconscious for a while in what I’d presume you’ve heard of as a ‘coma’. Now it’s not as dramatic as you see on TV shows, it’s just Ms Y/l/n’s brain giving her body a chance to recover. It’s often a longer process, which I know is something you don’t want to hear, but I have to be honest.” The doctor was stern but in a softer and from-a-caring-place. “These patients are suggested to possibly recover quicker if they have a steady support network behind them, which it seems like she does. That means that you need to look after yourself so you can help her sir, especially in what could be a long process. It’s not going to be helpful for Yn if you’re killing yourself trying to be here all the time… It seems like Y/n already has quite a big group of you here for her, so please remember you’ve got all of her care team here and everyone else to help you too….Does that make sense sir?”

“Tom” His Dad, in a gentle but firm warning tone, urged Tom to speak and to listen. Properly listen.

“Yeh… I-yeh It’s just all a lot right now.”

“Of course… and we promise that if anything changes with her condition, you will be phoned straight away. You are welcome to stay as long as you want - the only rules are two at a time, no flowers, sign in and out and then sanitise your hands pretty excessively. If you need anything, Ms Y/l/n’s nurse will be your first port of call.”

“Thanks for everything” Dom nodded in a gracious manner, which the doctor seemed to massively appreciate - apparently, for the job they do not receiving a hell of a lot of thanks.

“I’ll pop back in a little bit.”

And for a couple of hours everything everything felt like a bit of an anticlimax, nothing happened, not a lot changed. Just Tom and Dom sat next to Y/n’s bed in silence; Harrison and Nikki downstairs with the baby, till Dom got a phone call from Nikki asking them to meet at the neonatal unit - which was limited by visitor numbers unlike the ICU. Thinking it’d be simple, the elder man gained Tom’s attention with a call of his name, explaining they should go down to meet up.

“I’m not going down there.”

“Son, I know you’re worried by Y/n isnt going anywhere right now. The doctors said they’d call you if anything happens.”

“It’s not-“ Tom stopped himself, biting his tongue and looking away from his Dad. “I just don’t want to go down there.” Slowly, Dom was more and more realising Tom’s thought process and honestly… it scared him. In the hopes this was just a big misunderstanding he offered a different option - hoping Tom would equally refuse that. Dom suggested going down to the cafe instead, which most unfortunately Tom agreed to. It wasn’t leaving Y/n that was the issue, it was being near the baby.

Tom’s daughter. Unnamed and apparently abondoned by both parents.

Anyhow, Dom resigned to playing into Tom’s choice, perhaps Nikki and Harrison would be able to swing him round, to see sense. It still took Tom getting the nurse to triple check they had his correct number on record , just in case, before Dom could tear him away from the bed. Fortunately the pair found a quiet and secluded corner table, where Tom was still yet to be recognised, while Nikki and Haz found them too.

What followed was Tom answering all his mum and Harrison’s questions about Y/n’s condition, in a blunt and emotionless manner - without Tom returning fire by asking any questions at all about his beautiful little baby girl. Eventually Nikki braved it, someone had to bring it up.

“Well it sounds like littles going to change for a while… maybe you should head home for a bit? You’ve been up half the night and you look shattered love. You don’t have to go back to yours… you could stay in your old room for a bit?” Tom being by himself at the moment sounded like the most incredibly stupid idea ever, Nikki was offering it as a choice - when in reality there was only one option.

“Maybe later this evening I will? Just don’t want to leave her alone yet.”

“It’s already 7 love, you’ve not eaten all day, you got to look after yourself too.” Harrison and Dom sat awkwardly while Nikki tried to delicately encourage Tom into what was the only sensible plan, watching him nurse the small hot choclate in both his palms. Time really had lost all meaning at this point, for him it felt both years since he’d first arrived with Y/n and at the same time barely 10 minutes ago. It felt weird.

“We can take shifts? If-if you want someone with her I mean… I don’t mind staying for a bit longer if it means you head back to your parents.” Harrison really truly didnt mind, in fact he sort of wanted to. He wanted to see Y/n’s face definitely alive, wanted to feel reassured by the monitors. Shockingly, Tom slowly nodded his head, surprising everyone with his lack of argument. None of them could work out whether it was a good thing him not putting up much arguement ; either he was heeding everyones advice of taking care of himself - or he had just given up. Harrison, as much as he didn’t want to, was favouring the latter.

“Okay” Nikki declared optimistically “So maybe you and Harrison go up so you can say good night to Y/n, then we can all go and pick up the baby?” She opened the plan to the floor, allowing for input but got nothing - except maybe Tom’s jaw unconsciously tensing uncomfortable at the latter part of her statement. Dom noticed.

Not one noticed but knew what it meant. His son blamed his granddaughter. His son, right now in that moment, hated the unnamed and totally helpless baby girl.

part 4?

#tom holland #tom holland x reader #dad!tom #tomholland #tom holland angst

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aesthbaby · 4 years

Text

Her Secret

Summary: We’re all aware of Emily’s untold secrets that she took to the grave with her but what about Lauren? The one thing both woman have in common is you, and the memories they took with them in both of their deaths

Pairings: Emily Prentiss x Reader

Prompt/request: None, just an idea I’ve had in my head for a while.

Warnings: Cursing | Death

Wordcount: Almost 4k

Master List

AN: Time line might be a little spotty because the show did not give many details but I promise its still comprehensible.

Its beautiful for a sad event. The white flowers are such a stark contrast to her personality. The color reminds you of a time before, before they knew her and before all of this happened. One of your eyes feels kind of funny so you reach for it, pulling back to examine the small drop of water on your finger. You compose yourself and push the large, black, sunglasses up your nose. Maybe you shouldn’t be here. You were dressed in all black with a black umbrella. Despite it being a sad day, it was unnecessarily sunny.

You spot her team making their way down the walk way. Three men carrying the dark coffin with one Caned man in the front and the women in tow. You take a step back into the shadows as they near the podium. As the service progresses the amount of speeches and tears are--overwhelming. Images of Emily, once known to you as Lauren, flash across your mind as you hold back any and all emotions associated with this event.

You knew she wasn't really "dead," she couldn’t be. Emily Prentiss is invincible and would never go like that. You saw the woman known as "JJ" glances your way but she says nothing about it. Probably assuming you were another one of Emily's secrets taken to the grave.

Emily’s not dead. Emily wouldn’t die like that.

You kept repeating it in your head.

Italy - 2004

The violets surround the mansion like a protective field. Their peaceful existence mocking your volunteer imprisonment. You only took this job because you and this other agent were the only ones who spoke fluent Italian. She was supposed to take it and you were the understudy or whatever but then she got knocked up so here you are. Being mocked by fucking flowers. Your thoughts are interrupted by Doyle approaching you with his brunette arm dealer on his arm. You turn away from the balcony upon his approach.

“Lauren deve restare qui mentre scappo. Per favore, tienila d'occhio.” Lauren has to stay here while I run out. Please keep an eye on her. He’s always been so bossy, and for what? To make himself seem more powerful than he actually is? We’re all aware of the danger working for him provides.

“Si signore.” Yes sir. You turn to acknowledge the woman in front of you but she speaks first.

“Perché? Non posso venire con te?” Why is that? Can't I come with you? She whines.

He gives her a look and she backs down. The Captain heads out with his guards behind him, leaving you alone with his lover.

You’re not sure what to do with her. Is this a form of babysitting?

She clears her throat. “I know.”

Hearing her speak English was a surprise but it makes sense, there was always something different about her. You arch an eyebrow and reply, “Sai...che cosa?” You know....what?

She holds up a finger for you to give her a moment. She turns around and sticks her head out the door; then closes and locks it. “You’re not really from Tirana, are you?” Who is this woman? You maintain a neutral face while she continues. “The fact that you never eat with us was a dead give away. You’re always held up in this room.” She gestures to the large room filled with files, records, and books. “Like you’re trying to avoid something. I’d also like to point out how you rarely present any Albanian customs.” Where are you going with this Reynolds... “At first I thought, ‘Maybe they’re one of Doyle’s assassins that I’m not supposed to know about.’ But then I started paying attention and realized you’re nothing like that.” You let out a sharp breath. “Its okay.” She takes one of your hands. “I won’t tell Ian. There’s already enough death in his life and I wouldn’t want to see you be one of his next victims.”

You’re stuck in the moment and words are hard to form. All of your training is slipping through your fingers. For all you know she could be bluffing, trying to get you killed. You go with your safest option because you don’t know this woman at all. You pull your hand from her and take a step closer. Peering into her eyes for any sign of fear and when you find none, you proceed. Leaning in as close as possible to her. “Non farei acquisizioni così pericolose se fossi in te.” I wouldn't make such dangerous acquisitions if I were you. You whisper. You could never be sure if your suspicions were correct but this, this was all the confirmation you needed. What’s that old saying? Takes one to know one. “Agente.” Finishing off that last word you brush past her.

Virginia - present

Being back in The States with Doyle still running around is unnecessarily risking. Emily’s defeat is the only reason you’ve come back. To watch her team grieve over the coffin is saddening but having to hide is the shadows is unfair. Am I not allowed to publicly grieve? Are my tears not worthy? The grip on your umbrella tightens. She’s not dead. Emily doesn’t loose. Emotions are running high and the speeches are getting long. Last time you talked, she claimed to be alone. No family and no fiends but clearly she was wrong. What you’d give to be laying under a plum tree on a wool woven blanket with her head in your lap. Eating pastries you raided from the kitchen and telling the Captain that you needed her to help analyze costs. What a fool.

You were so entranced with the memory that you didn’t notice when the pale, dark haired agent approached you. Aaron Hotchner, the unit chief if I’m not mistaken. “Agent.” He acknowledges.

“Sir?” You mumble.

“Your profession was easy enough to guess, though I’m not sure of your name.” Those knitted brown sweaters and golden, dainty necklaces. The short chestnut hair with soft curls that smelled of honey shampoo. The way she’d nudge your foot during dinner while casting discreet glances. Its all gone. “Agent?” He calls again. “Are you alright?”

Before you say anything you make sure your voice is clear. “Tell me Agent Hotchner, did she suffer?” That question didn’t need to be answered but you just had to know. A favor was called in on your behalf by Lieutenant Parks, he gave very few details about her death but you’ll take that over nothing at all. This was the one question you didn’t have an answer for. With nothing but silence from the man, you have your answer.

Reaching for your pocket there’s a small clear box; inside of the plastic is a handful of pressed violets. Without looking you hold the slim box out to him. “Please, make sure she gets them.” After he takes them you make one last note of the sight in front of you. All of her friends, family, and coworkers gathered in one place with Emily’s grave as the centerpiece. You turn to finally face the man, tilting your shades so he can see a bit of your eyes. “Dead or alive.” And then disappearing in to the back of the cemetary.

Italy - Spring of 04′

Two months ago you were staring off of Doyle’s Spanish-styled balcony thinking, “What would happen if I called it quits?” You had enough evidence and entail for him to never see freedom again. So what was stopping you?

Her. She was making you second guess.

After having her call you out for being a spy, you were very careful about what you did and said around her. Its not like she had any definitive proof but at the same time neither did you. What you said that day was a total bluff. Its a miracle you’re still alive. You were left with only two conclusions: one was that she herself is a spy, or two, she’s one of the smartest people Ian has ever brought home.

Then came a day where the boys went out to wherever and it was just you, her, and the maids. Most of them are Russian and speak poor Italian so they usually keep to themselves. You’re at the dining room table pretending to run numbers since that’s literally your job- well that and vetting backgrounds of sellers and buyers. Essentially a secretary with dangerous patrons. The position is mind numbingly boring but it does allow you to remain invisible while observing the operation. Think about it, who’s going to notice the secretary while discussing millions? They’re idiots. They allow you to sit in on every single meeting because you’re just the person who runs numbers. A debatable perk to this job is the amount of free time you posses. Usually its spent digging around the operation, sending information back to HQ, or actually enjoying small aspects of the city. That brings you to right now where you’re doodling random shapes on the bottom corner of the paper.

Lauren is on the couch wearing a button up satin dress, quite short for Ian’s taste so you’re surprised to see her wearing it. She’s read something you’ve never heard of, not that it matters. With no idea why she’s in here with you, you retreat back into your own mind.

“The maids have left.” You suddenly hear beside you, nearly jumping out of your skin.

“You scared me!” At the realization of your chosen language you gasp and watch as Lauren smiles widely. You shoot to your feet repeating no over and over. Actively trying to take back your words while she looks rather amused.

“I knew it!” She points at you all accusingly and shit. You keep shaking your head no and trying to get her to be quiet. “I was right about you!” And here’s the perfect time to have a maid to walk in. Lauren says something to her but you’re too wrapped up in your head to translate. All your years of training, expierence, undercover work has just been thrown away over your stupid mistake.

They’re going to kill me. They’re going to have my head on a stake in the middle of the garden for the world to see- or worse! I’ll be tortured for my crimes by one of Doyle’s men.

You’re pulled out of your thoughts by the brunette waving her hand in front of your face. “Don’t worry,” She say softly as you notice the house keeper is no longer with you. “I told her they could take a break...” At your confused face she continues. “So now we can talk.”

Virginia - present

To say you had no idea where you were going, was an understatement.

You hadn’t been to Virginia in years so everything felt unfamiliar. You took quick peaks at your surroundings as the rented porshe pushed through the traffic. Everything hurt, not the traditional pain you experience over a broken toe but the emotional kind that coursed through your entire body.

Is this what a broken heart feels like?

You kept telling yourself she wasn’t dead; couldn’t be. Not your Emily, the woman you know is a fighter. She’s fucking invincible and would never let herself die at the hand of that monster. If she was really dead, wouldn’t you feel it? Wouldn’t you feel your connection to her sever?

At the reorganization of the build ahead of you, you pull the car into the left lane.

Italy - Spring of 04′

She is so fucking clingy. Always starring at me when no one is watching and going on less missions with Doyle. Speaking of him, the man likes to take her everywhere; calls her “Ho il mio portafortuna” his good luck charm. She usual goes out with him whenever he’s traveling but lately she’s been making little excuses on why she wants to stay for the day. Instead of spending the day recuperating from a headache (like she’s told him) she’ll bother you.

That accent and the way she pronounces her R’s makes you wanna melt, but then she starts asking you a million and one questions. What’s your favorite food? When’s your birthday? Have you ever broken a bone? Do you enjoy reading? Its always something with her. I think she’s trying to annoy me. So far you’ve been answering her questions in Italian to insure that you don’t fuck up again.

Doyle is none the wiser, he still sees you as a secretary and her as arm candy.

But you must admit that Lauren is growing on you. She hasn’t said anything in English to you lately or exposed you to Doyle. You’re rarely ever alone but when you are, she gives you one of her finished books and sits in the room quietly. Its comforting. Today she’s given you Niccolo Ammaniti with a note scribbled in pencil on the 5th page, “Hang in there.” Smart woman, writing it in light pencil so I can easily erase it without leaving a trace...also paranoid woman but rightfully so.

Virginia - present

You adjust your shoe so as not to slip before going into the building and suck the shades into your pocket. The giant letters, I. O. D. S. stare back at you in Ariel font.

Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. Just accept her death and move on.

Inside of Investigations of Death Services you nod to the secretary, an ex of yours, and continue on to your destination. While in the elevatored your vision feels blurry but now isn’t the time for tears. Arriving at your floor, you spot his office and walk in without so much as a knock or invitation.

“One second,” he speaks into the phone. “Can I help you?” His dark eyes look angry, like he doesn’t recognize you. You take a step forward, offering your closed palm to him. “What? What is this? A fucking magic trick?” You slowly open your palm towards him, revealing the silver clover pin. The suited man looks like he’s just seen a ghost. “Shane, I’ll have to call you back.” He hangs up the phone, then reaches from you hand. “Where did you get this?”

Snatching you hand back and putting the silver back in your pocket. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”

He narrows his eyes on you before answering. “Can’t say I do.”

“Back in 03′ you knocked up Carin and proposed I go on assignment. Granted I was the only person who was fluent in Italian--or so I thought. Come to find out there were five other agents who could’ve been assigned there. You chose me because I was up for your job.” Your anger is boiling over quickly. “You were a shitty employee and they were ready to fire you.” You take a daring step forward. “Until you proposed infiltrating Valhalla with one of the foreign operative agents. You told them there were only two fluent agents. Back then we had never met but I knew who you were, Hell, we all knew how much of a screw up you were. Guess you don’t recognize me anymore? I mean in your defense its been years and I’ve lost a few pounds due to the stress you caused me but that’s for another day. How about we go back to 2003.” For a man with toxic masculinity issues, he looks pretty scared. “You couldn’t just out right suggest me so you have to offer up someone else. Coincidently Carin got pregnant right around the time she was starting her training, by you I might add, and could no longer go.” A wide smile starts to grow on your face. “Bet you were counting on my death, huh?” Awe poor baby seems to be shaking. “No...you’re too much of a pussy for that. I bet you were hoping I’d go to Italy and screw things up for the whole operation.” Now you’re toe-to-toe with him. “Mess up so bad that they’d have pull me out and demote me. Or! Reveal myself and hope Doyle’s men killed me or I’d go sprinting home with my tail between my legs.” His silence is starting to irritate you. “So which is it, Mark? Hmm? Cat got your tongue?”

“I’m sorry!” He yells with a reddened face. Out of the corner of your eye you see his co-works looking through his glass walls but you couldn’t care less. “I’m sorry, y/n. What do you want from me? I’ll do anything!” Now we’re getting somewhere.

You push the pin into his face “Where is she, Mark?”

“Where is who?” He’s still fucking shaking.

“Asking me another stupid question and there will be hell to pay.” You’re not really going to hurt him but considering the circumstances, this is justified. The man put your life on the line over some stupid position, a bit of threatening wouldn’t hurt.

“Okay okay. All I know is that after you left she was taken by ALPHA and later faked her death. When Lauren Reynolds died, Emily Prentiss got to go home and Ian Doyle went to a North Korean prison.”

“And now...”

“Last I heard she was working for the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the FBI but was recently killed under suspicious circumstances.” At your expression, he continues. “We know she died during a scuffle with Doyle and there was a funeral but we are yet to have a death certificate on record. Sometimes it take anywhere from a week to a month for us to receive proper records on agent deaths. I thought that-”

“Stop, talking.” You cut him off through gritted teath.

Italy - Autumn 04′

“What is your problem, Lauren?” You’re out on the patio in front of the pool on a warm day. Lauren has a four course meal on the table, courtesy of the chefs.

“Nothing...” She shrugs with a mouthful of strawberry.

“You want me to leave.”

Another fucking shrug.

“Be serious.” You’re trying to stop yourself from stomping your foot.

She puts down her food and clasps her hands together. “Yes I want you to leave.” You watch as she gets up and smooths her skirt; taking your hands in hers. “Your time is thinning and you’ve been her a lot longer than me.”

“And leave you here alone? No way, I know you’re invincible but even Superman had his down fall.”

“Superman?” She loops you in closer. “Why not superwoman? Awfully sexist of you.”

“Oh, shut up.” You nudge her back a bit. “But wouldn’t you miss me?”

She gives you one of her wide smiles. “Let me show how much I’d miss you.” She leans in for a light kiss against your lips. You pull away quickly so as not to be seen. El, like the letter, picked out a blind spot that’s covered partially in shadows. “I have to leave in 15 minutes but until then...” She trails with a very telling expression.

“Where?” You laugh. “Not in the second floor bathroom again because that was...tight.”

Her perfectly plucked eyebrow arches upward, “And you were loud!”

You hop past her to sneak a grape. “Hey! You do know that was mine, right?”

“What are you going to do about it, Superwoman?” You turn to grab another grape, while doing so you feel her presence behind you. “Don’t start something you can’t finish, L.”

“Oh why not?” She lightly trails down your backside. “It’ll be so much fun.”

You turn back to her. “Ten minutes?”

“In the library?” She smirks and you nod along.

Virginia - present

This four hundred dollar airplane ticket is going to serve its purpose but paying it back is going to suck. Your government salary was nice and all but $400 is still a lot.

Just two days before, you rushed around you place to pack all of the essentials for a quick flight to Paris; charger, hygiene, two outfits, and the pin all tucked into a stylish backpack.

That brings us here, standing in the streets of downtown Paris alongside the buzzing mopeds weaving through the streets. In front of you is the little café Elle would go on and on about, naturally this is the first place you could think to look.

You didn’t even know what you were looking for. The woman you fell for was a brunette with light curls and bangs.

You were looking for Emily. The woman Lauren introduced you to. The woman you grew to love in the same way you love Lauren, but Lauren is dead. Has been for awhile, now its time to find Emily. Your Emily.

You find nothing, no one who even slightly revels Emily on your first day there. So you find a hostel to lay your head in and continue on the next day. Again and again with the same routine for five days straight.

You wasted all of your time here for what? A memory? A dream? Two woman who no longer exist on the same astral plane as you?

That’s when you see it, a head of dark brown hair a few tables ahead of where you’re standing. With all hope lost you almost think its a mirage.

You sit a few tables ahead of her, careful to keep your face hidden. When the waiter comes around to take your order you give him very specific instructions.

Emily’s POV

Being a dead woman is lonely and isolating...at least the coffee is good. The waiter who dropped off the hot beverage not too long ago has circled back with a cheese croissant in hand. That’s odd, I hate cheese croissants. “Cette personne là-bas m'a demandé de te livrer ça.” That person over there has asked me to deliver this to you. He points over his shoulder to a person who’s face I can’t quite make out. “Ils m'ont également demandé de vous donner ceci.” They also asked me to give this to you. He reaches from his front pocket and softly places a silver clover pin that I haven’t seen in years, and a pressed Violet. I can feel the air drain out of my lungs at the objects in front of me. “Merci beaucoup.” The only person who knows what these objects mean are Doyle and-

At the sense of being watched my head shoots up at the source. At first there’s nothing there but then I spot the familiar figure. Its been weeks since I’ve actually seen them, it can’t be. I must be seeing things. Closing my eyes and taking in a deep breathe, I open them to see that they’re gone.

“Boo.” I hear in my right ear; looking up to see y/n standing beside me with a bright smile.

“You scared me!” Realizing how loud I am, I take a breath.

“Miss me Elle?” I left you behind, twice. I died twice without letting you know. You’ve had to start over too many times and its not far.

“Y/n, how did you find me?”

“Really, Elle. Did you really think I’d fall for that party trick you pulled at the BAU? I’m not dull, and besides,” Y/n/n gently puts their hand over mine on the coffee mug. “You’re my Superwoman, you’ll never die.”

*･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･'･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･**･゜ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･'･*:.｡. .｡.:*･゜ﾟ･*˚✧₊⁎ ⁎⁺˳✧༚ ﾟ･*:.｡..｡.:*･ﾟ･*:.

@beyondprincess @confused-and-really-hungry @millipop18 @supercorp8388 @groovygoob @emilyprentisswife@covetedcoven @justaghostmonument @rabid-wild-misfits @nomit16 @afuckingshituniverse @mys2425 @fanfictionfangirl04 @aaron-hotchner187 @lisztomaniacalice @thestrawberrygirl @miidguardian-exe @criminalmindsmoodrn @ssacandice-ray @davidrossiismydad @garcias-batcave @ssaemxlyprentxss @andreaxxg13 @emilyprentissistoocute @mortallythoughtfulgurl @iamyouknow-yours @aesthbaby

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eldritch-elrics · 3 years

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svsss: journey through the mausoleum (plus, zhuzhi-lang is a himbo)

got to chapter 65 last night!

as usually i have a lot to say i guess jkdhgsds i think putting stuff under cuts makes people scroll past these posts more? but also i don’t really want to be too annoying with my Many Reactions so cuts are a good way to go

tldr: loved the mausoleum arc, big fan of tlj, communication is good, and i have a new favorite scene in the book

binghe is extra as FUCK for bringing in all those rhino pythons

so i maintain that tianlang-jun should have been foreshadowed more/is introduced too late in the story, but other than that i think he’s a really fun villain and i’m a fan

for one - he’s the only one who’s able to hurt binghe :0 harm the protagonist...

which creates some Very Good Tension

count number one of zhuzhi-lang being a himbo: trying to sacrifice himself for tlj while being threatened

“is zzl really a himbo” you ask. well, yes. is he dumb? very much so. is he nice? absolutely. is he hot? well, i have no idea. i forget if he’s described as attractive or not. but, i think he can be if he wants. does being a little bit evil negate his himbo-ness? idk! i’m sticking with my assessment

i think i have a bit of a soft spot for evil henchmen

zzl also protects sqq from the corpses <3 good for him

it’s always fun to me when the system is like “wooo yay you fixed the storyline! cut the filler!” because 1. love seeing sqq lay waste to pidw and 2. the implications?? once more i am wondering WHY is the system so interested in making pidw a better story. (and the fact that it’s still calling his adventures in this world a story.) are sqq’s adventures being written down and serialized in the real world? are we as readers supposed to believe that scum villain, as a text, is a direct result of sqq’s “editing” of pidw?

uh, back to the plot

binghe wasted spiritual energy trying to preserve the mushroom/plant body :( come on man...

i really like the whole stretch of plot when binghe’s unconscious. it’s just so tense!! really well-done in my opinion - this is the first time in a while we’ve got a sense that lbh is in danger, and sqq is also running low on energy and stuff, so they’re both in bad places and the stakes are high

PLUS the hurt-comfort of it all. sqq trying not to hurt lbh’s body :(

the whole part in the coffin!! excellent. and the convo with meng mo... sqq calling himself lbh’s shizun finally...

cuddles <3

dying at lbh’s fuckin. boner. and the system’s REACTION it’s so EXCITED i am just. holds my head in my hands. i can’t deal with this novel

the confrontation with qiu haitang and the old palace master was very cool and intense. though i have to say i’m not really a fan of either “angry unreasonable woman” or “bitter disabled person” as tropes/archtypes (especially how sqq was reacting to the palace master’s condition). and poor qiu haitang! i have no idea if there’s any way to set her mind at ease other than revealing the whole transmigration thing. i do hope she’ll turn up again and get a better ending?

so the plague city sqq callout party is once again not directly lbh’s fault! the old palace master is the one to blame!

SO ONE OF MY FAVORITE PARTS IN THE BIT I READ LAST NIGHT. is. sqq realizing that he could utilize lbh’s plot armor to his advantage. but then deciding that he doesn’t want to take that risk. doesn’t want to use lbh’s body as a prop!!!

character development :D

he’s really starting to see lbh as a person as opposed to a character! and being less selfish/survival-oriented...

man. sqq, almost beaten, lying on the ground holding binghe in his arms........ :(((

so is the implication that lbh injured/took revenge on the old palace master because the palace master was being creepy to him about his mom? it’s a bit vague but that’s my theory. weirdo old man...

speaking of people lbh killed. maybe it will be revealed that gongyi xiao is actually alive too :( i’m still salty about that

SO MUCH DEMON BLOOD. poor sqq

so i don’t think i got how sqq was able to free himself from zzl’s blood manipulation? was it because binghe woke up and subdued it?

binghe waking up was a lil deus-ex-machina-y lol i would have liked to see some sort of trigger for it (even a cheesy one). like i get why he’s ok and no longer hurt (protagonist powers!) but like, gimme a reason for the shift to happen at that precise moment...

but AAAAAA FINALLY THEY ARE TALKING

lbh realizes how much sqq went through to save him :( and he’s so happy he didn’t get abandoned!!!! aaaaaa my poor boy

i like crybaby lbh much more than i like cold/cruel lbh lol

i do agree with sqq’s assessment though - lbh keeps doing the thing where he cries and apologizes but doesn’t actually change. he’s slowly getting better about it but that’s some development i’d like to see

so tlj.... DOESN’T want lbh’s body? i stg his motivations change every 5 minutes. that’s one other thing i don’t really like about him. is the “trying to steal lbh’s body” thing just gonna go nowhere? f...

ALSO SQQ GETTING OUTRAGED ABOUT TLJ CALLING HIMSELF MORE HANDSOME THAN BINGHE

binghe dumbass moments <3 gave him the sword...

..........zhuzhi-lang vore.......

zzl, while healing sqq’s plant arm: don’t worry i don’t want to fuck you unlike LUO BINGHE.

sqq: OKAY??? THANKS

i really hope there exists shipfic of sqq and zzl. like i don’t ship them at all but they just get into so many Situations that i cannot help but think about it. like it would make a funny crack premise

you know what? sqq deserves his own harem. it could consist of lbh, lqg, sqh, zzl.....

SQQ CANNOT CATCH A BREAK. TLJ IS A FAN OF RESENTMENT OF CHUNSHAN

modern au tlj is the dad who is way way way too supportive and thinks sqq would just be a wonderful husband for his son~~

interested in tlj’s intention to unite the human and demon worlds. like on the surface it sounds like a good idea right? peace and harmony and reconciling differences and stuff. but tlj’s plan is certainly not well-thought-out, and i’m sure his intentions also skew towards a sort of “merge them so they’re both easier to rule over” thing - which i don’t think is confirmed or anything, it’s just my suspicion

both tlj and lbh have a sort of entitlement thing going on - “i’m powerful so i can do whatever i like / take for myself something i love (whether that be humans or sqq).” which is then backed up by the power the system allows them as final boss and protagonist respectfully

speaking of lbh taking whatever he wants: stop kissing sqq without asking him aaaaa!!!! we know you love him and it’s sweet but please bro

him going all that way to reunite with sqq though <3

and then zzl comes in and i just.

this scene is simply the best

the slapstick of it!!!! i wanna see it animated so bad holy shit

the scene was good when it was just “sqq hides lbh under the bedcovers and he’s having none of it” but then it just kept escalating...

sqq and zzl’s convo is so suggestive too...

zzl himbo moments again?

AND THEN TLJ WALKS IN

“no need to explain, i understand everything” OK BRO.

LIU QINGGE IS HERE <3

tlj fanboying over him a little lmao

tlj, upon realizing that lbh had been in the bed with zzl and sqq: oh, you guys were having a threesome?

i cannot deal with this. i’m gonna do some sketches from this scene it’s so funny

#my post #svsss #finn reads scum villain #svsss spoilers

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the-lightning-strikes-again · 3 years

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Personal Thoughts on Pacific Rim: The Black (2021)

I watched season 1 of Pacific Rim: The Black, which released to Netflix on March 4! I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting much, after disappointments with the movie sequel. But the Pacific Rim franchise means a lot to me, so I wanted to give it a try. I’m very pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this new show and connected with it in various ways. And given how wild my own life has been lately, it was really nice to get lost in something that validated the importance of different kinds of connections, and to not close down when the going gets tough or hard to explain.

PRTB is a pretty emotional, angsty story, and it’s not afraid to explore that over the full 7 episodes. The stakes are high, involving the loss of friends and family. So the characters have a real investment in what they’re doing and why they’re fighting.

The grittier tone of the show is a deviation from the movies, which maybe some people would like or dislike more. I think the seriousness helps to balance out having (yet again) inexperienced teenage protagonists. But the show does still get some fun scenes and quips in, and our main jaeger has a snarky AI who provides both humor and critical thinking checks for our protagonists, which is nice.

I liked the 2013 movie because it showed all of humanity coming together to fight a common enemy. Here, there’s enemies and allies on both sides of the Kaiju war, and even some who are in-between. This is a stronger nod to reality while decreasing the fun fantasy violence of the 2013 film. I don’t think this is inherently a bad thing for this series to do, because a series has a lot more space/time to fill than a movie, and even the 2013 film showed that there were significant cracks in the so-called “unity” that the Pacific Rim universe outwardly celebrated. In the midst of the 2013 movie’s talk about countries setting aside old rivalries, we still had politicians who didn’t care, criminals capitalizing off pseudoscience and unsanctioned nuclear weapons deals, religious sectors rising up to worship the title enemy, people being forced into dangerous jobs to keep from starving to death, the rich and powerful experiencing minimal lifestyle impact vs. poor people being abandoned to die or surviving through precarious means, and even toxic hero worship and intriguingly, the glorification of violence for entertainment and toy sales. So in this new show, we’re really seeing the movie’s cracks expanded and focused on. It’s even more front and center, given that the rest of humanity sees Australia as a lost battlefront and has deemed so many left behind as worth less than the effort it’d take to rescue them. So maybe a part of me misses the cool concept of human unity from the first movie, but even that movie was trying to tell people that unity is an illusion. Here, it’s just so front and center that it can’t be ignored in favor of robot fights, and I actually liked that immediate boldness.

(review continued under the cut)

Some of the details feel AU or divergent from what I remember of the movies, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing to me, so long as the show itself can be internally consistent. Transformers franchise spent forever trying to created an aligned continuity to no avail, so it’s not a detraction for me if Pacific Rim franchise wants to just flail in its own playground too.

The animation style grew on me as time passed, as it worked well for animating jaegers and Kaiju even if humans seem a bit stilted. It better captured a sense of scale compared to the sequel film, and the jaegers felt actually integrated in the animated physical space (something I really struggled with in Uprising). The sense of scale is not as good as the 2013 film. But then this show has a significantly lower budget and is a very different medium, so it was easy enough for me to accept it for what it is and to be glad that we got anything halfway decent, really.

The pacing could have been better across the different points of conflict, but honestly if no adult questioned or tried to undercut a couple of teenagers piloting the last active jaeger on an entire continent, that would have felt even more jarring and unbelievable to me.

I think Pacific Rim as a franchise has never been about reinventing the wheel when it comes to characters. But I was definitely interested in the topical similarities between the movie’s Mako Mori and the show’s Hayley Travis. They both do things in want to help/prove themselves, which results in an incredible backlash that they have to emotionally work through and overcome. In comparison, Raleigh Becket and Taylor Travis are both fairly static supporters, but when their hope drops out, it’s Mako and Hayley who kick in with other options, more energy. If we get a season 2, I’d be curious to see how the show further differentiates and humanizes these new characters.

The 2013 movie had main characters who were very significantly traumatized. So having protagonists in the show who are very significantly traumatized as well didn’t feel like a distraction to me but instead just a nod to the franchise and how it’s closely tied with struggles to obtain mental health and connection. I’d be more worried if the teenage protagonists were people who consistently don’t think of consequences or who don’t take an apocalypse or immense power from a jaeger seriously...

PRTB definitely earned its TV-14 rating. It can be gritty and dark at times, but coming out of several TV-MA shows, the way it’s visibly handled on the human side is a nice break and sometimes even more emotionally effective than if extremely gory scenes were shown. I’m a little hesitant to get too emotionally attached to any character for future seasons, though, given this rating.

Some scenes were more personally engaging to me than others, but I’ve watched several shows lately where I couldn’t stand to actually finish them or was checking to see how much more time was left. With PRTB, I kept wanting to see what happened next, and time really flew by with some episodes.

The Kaiju shown are incredibly diverse, with some really cool designs. There’s something in here I’ve been wanting to write a fic about/daydreaming about since 2013 and this show actually does the thing in its own way, so I was personally excited about that.

If this show gets a season 2, I’d love to see our protagonists meeting up with more people from all walks of life and exploring various ways people have survived and maintained or redefined a culture in this post-apocalyptic world.

There’s an element of “connective regret” in this show that really personally spoke to me, given that I’ve lost a lot of people in real life suddenly. Like, you assume people will always be there until suddenly they aren’t, and that fact of life can really destabilize a family or found family. This show doesn’t shy away from trying to validate that stress, or from validating how important healthy connections still are in the face of loss or decoupling from other toxic relationships.

Mental health relapses, trust issues, and survivor’s guilt are also a thing in this show, which I found really interesting, and that was something we really only had time to see in small measure in the 2013 film.

I still have some worldbuilding questions, but honestly I clicked on this show hoping for a good time to lose myself in—and I feel like I received that in this season. So I ended the show feeling like, actually excited to talk about it with other people.

There’s plot twists and characters I want to flail about so bad, but that would involve dropping very significant spoilers here, so maybe I better hold off for now.

But yeah, if anyone else watches this show, please feel free to reach out and flail with me about it!

#Pacific Rim #Pacific Rim: The Black #PRTB #Lightning rambles #I ended up watching the season twice in one day lol #No regrets #whoever said this show feels like Mad Max meets Godzilla #it does feel that way sometimes LOL

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yukipri · 4 years

Note

How do you think the ASL brothers would change if it was Ace that was separated and Sabo stayed with Luffy on Dawn Island?

Hey there! I’m so sorry for taking my time with this ask! It’s a really great question and I wanted to take my time thinking about and typing out my answer...and well. It got LONG ^ ^;;;;;

Bc oh man do I think things would change a LOT, but in order to answer this question, let’s first sorta picture the scenario itself. How did Ace end up the one separated?

This could go a number of ways, but here’s one that comes to mind.

The boys are running back from causing mischief in High Town, when Ace overhears some gossip.

Did you hear, the marines are coming! Apparently they found a terrible, terrible criminal, hiding right here in Goa, and they’re coming to get rid of him before the Celestial Dragons arrive!

A terrible criminal?

Oh dear, what terrible crime did they commit?

Well, nothing, apparently, or at least nothing yet.

What do you mean?

They say he’s the son of the most wanted, most terrible man in history. But don’t worry, the marines’ll take care of him before--

Ace feels like the world’s suddenly gone black and white. He feels numb, barely hearing Sabo shouting at him to hurry, barely registers Luffy tugging his hand and looking up at him with worry.

They’ve come for him. He should have known. Gramps may have tried to hide him, but there’s no escaping Gol D. Roger’s infamy.

Ace knows once he would have sneered, said See, Gramps? I knew this would happen. But now, he feels fear.

Ace doesn’t fear death, and will look it in the eye and punch it when it comes for him. But fear grips him now, as he stares blankly into the campfire Sabo’s set up, finally registering that Luffy’s calling his name and still tugging at his arm.

He doesn’t fear death for himself. But when they come for him, to end his life because of his blood, will they spare Sabo and Luffy? Will they spare the brothers of the Pirate King’s son?

Somehow, Ace doubts it.

And so he knows he’s got to go. He’s got to leave now, before they find him, before they find Sabo and Luffy, before they can steal away his family.

An adult Ace, looking back regretfully, would lament the timing of his brash actions. But Ace had never been a thinker, more of a doer, and he couldn’t bear the thought of losing his brothers--even now, he can’t.

And he couldn’t have known back then that the island had had two boys considered the sons of the worst criminals in history.

So he doesn’t blame his younger self for writing a sloppy letter, tucking it under Sabo’s head, and then fleeing into the night to steal a boat that he’d use to leave the island on come daybreak. Running away, leaving his brothers behind, making Sabo vow to continue looking after Luffy like he always had, until one day, the three of them could be reunited once more.

Young Ace doesn’t even know what a Celestial Dragon is. All he knows is that an enormous ship, the likes of which he’d never seen before, is approaching--

And then everything is FIRE, and then, blank.

Dragon and the Revolutionaries had been in the area, but not just to rescue people from the Gray Terminal fire. They had intel, and Dragon had reason to believe that the marines may have found Luffy, and his connection to Dragon. The commander of the Revolutionary Army kept his distance from his son, but he wasn’t going to let the child get slaughtered for his relation to a father he’d never even met.

He’d briefly run into Ace while he was stealing a boat. He hadn’t stopped the child, but had been curious about his raw desperation, his bitterness towards his blood, and his determination to protect his found family.

Dragon is surprised to find the boy in the wreckage of an utterly destroyed sailboat.

The boy is terribly burned, and has no memory of anything, not even his own name--but he is immediately terrified at the suggestion that they return him to the island, shouting that he doesn’t know why, but he can’t go back there, they’ll find Them and kill Them if I go back there, and it’ll all be my fault--!

He decides to let the boy stay. His name is Ace, they think, the name found among his belongings. With the Celestial Dragons come and gone, marine presence on the island also fades, and Dragon concludes that Luffy is safe for the time being. He sends a coded message to Garp to be careful, and then disappears back to Baltigo with his new charge.

After regaining his memories, adult Ace grudgingly admits that while he still wishes it’d never happened, there were some perks to memory loss.

For one, he’d completely forgotten that he was the son of the late Pirate King. He still had a weird fixation towards fathers, but after getting attached to Dragon, and Dragon accepting his protege’s need for a father figure, the desperation fades.

While not the best at studies, Ace is physical strong, and takes to Revolutionary Army training like he was born for it. He masters both Armament and Observation Haki by fourteen, and with his private training sessions with Dragon, is becoming terrifyingly proficient with Conqueror’s Haki as well.

Ace is still learning, but the power he exudes when unleashing Conqueror’s Haki makes Dragon curious (and some of their peers, nervous). He’s only ever heard of one person exhibiting the kind of power Ace seems to have the potential for.

There are also other perks to being a member of the Revolutionary Army. Dragon isn’t the most wanted criminal in history for no reason. The location of the Army headquarters in Baltigo is a tightly kept secret, one that the World Government has desperately been searching for ever since it was built, but to no avail.

Even as the Marines track the rumors of Gol D. Roger’s child, as long as Ace remains in Baltigo, it’s like he vanished into thin air. And should they have discovered Headquarters, the Pirate King’s son would have been the least of their concerns.

And so Ace grows strong, no longer shackled by self-hatred of his blood, but also haunted by nameless whispers that keep him up at night, a sense of foreboding and aching longing that he’s forgetting something vital about himself, something that he both needs to remember, and doesn’t dare to touch.

On Dawn Island, on that fateful day, Sabo wakes up to find a letter written in a child’s familiar sloppy hand. He tries not to panic, knowing that Ace’s long gone, and tries to think rationally on how he should move next. Even with Ace’s clumsy words, Sabo understands what his brother had been trying to say.

They’d discovered Ace’s parentage. Ace felt that he would endanger Sabo and Luffy by staying with them. So Ace left the island early, by himself, entrusting Sabo with their younger brother.

Sabo doesn’t know how he can possibly tell Luffy that Ace left to protect them, and to convince him that they need to stay.

And then Sabo suddenly doesn’t need to, because suddenly there’s shouting below the tree house, and Luffy’s blearily sitting up.

Ace is dead.

Sabo tries to maintain a level headed facade in front of Luffy (even if he cries, screams his lungs out for Ace in private). He needs to support their little brother, now more than ever. Ace is gone. Ace entrusted Sabo with Luffy.

Sabo will not lose Luffy.

What next?

There’s the chance that Sabo would act as Ace did, continuing training and then leaving the island at seventeen as promised.

But what if he didn’t? Seventeen is a number that Sabo chose, because noble-born children become fully fledged nobles at eighteen. But now there are other, more important things at stake now.

Given what happened to Ace, and the possibility of the marines returning, Garp tells Sabo about Luffy’s heritage (he hadn’t told Luffy yet, at Ace’s request, Ace not wanting Luffy to hate himself as Ace did. Garp doubted Luffy would react that way to Dragon, but he lets Ace have this, this attempt at protecting his little brother).

Knowing that Luffy’s the son of a man rapidly growing to be as infamous as the Pirate King kicks Sabo’s overprotective instincts into overdrive.

Sabo will not lose Luffy.

From here out, there’s three possible routes. The first two routes assume that Sabo’s parents never end up coming for him (they forgot about their son for five years, who says they wouldn’t for more).

1) Pirates Route:

Sabo swallows his pride, and agrees to join Luffy’s crew, much to the younger’s delight. The thought of being captain of his own crew now seems pale in comparison to keeping Luffy safe and also keeping his last promise to his lost brother. And so Sabo vows to stay at Luffy’s side as his guardian. They leave the island to become pirates together.

2) Marines Route:

Sabo demands that Garp take him and Luffy to be trained as marines. Sabo feels nothing for disdain for both the marines and World Government, and has every intention of taking Luffy and ditching as soon as they’re safe. But right now they can provide several things that he wants and needs:

1) He feels it’s too dangerous to remain on Dawn Island with potential government eyes on them, and Garp is a relatively secure way of ensuring they can leave. They know too little about the outside world now, and carelessly leaving on a boat and getting blasted like Ace is the last thing they need.

2) He wants training for both himself and Luffy, not just combat, but on how to survive at sea. The marines, at least, should be able to provide plenty of that experience.

3) Sabo doesn’t want to be caught unawares ever again. Ace fled because he’d overheard a rumor. If Sabo had known, perhaps the outcome would have been different. Sabo’s always been the thinker, the planner among the brothers, and he wants information, especially if there’s a chance that the government will make a move on Luffy. Sabo’s goal is to work his way up the ranks until he not only has access, but is in charge of investigations hunting the Revolutionary Army, and more importantly to him, the existence and location of the Commander’s rumored child. As Chief of marine intel, Sabo will be able to control what information goes to the higher ups, and which information needs to be quietly eliminated.

(and if his investigations into the Revolutionary Army leads him to become curious about the powerful fire logia user who is their Chief of Staff...)

3) Royalty Route:

Sabo’s parents find him, shortly after Ace’s “death,” and demand he returns to High Town and his noble heritage. With Ace gone, abandoning Luffy to a life by himself isn’t an option, but neither is letting his little brother be killed. So Sabo decides that he’s got to do what he must. Protect Luffy at all costs.

He strikes a deal with his parents. He’ll return to them, and he’ll be their perfect little noble son, but ONLY with the condition that Luffy comes with them. His parents are unhappy with the deal, but grudgingly agree, warning that if Sabo doesn’t truly impress them, they have no problem with, ah, eliminating both Sabo and his tag along because they have Stelly as a perfectly viable replacement.

Sabo can excel when he puts his mind to it, and although inside he froths with rage and hatred, he will do anything to keep Luffy safe.

Luffy is his one and only saving grace who keeps him sane. Luffy, who is now trapped in this birdcage alongside Sabo, and it’s all Sabo’s fault. He’s called Sabo’s “servant,” despite being incapable of doing chores, and is ignored by the entire household other than Sabo.

And while Luffy’s clearly uncomfortable, he doesn’t complain. He senses Sabo’s pain, and his suffering, and takes it upon himself to soothe his older brother, to keep him company, to love him. Luffy will never leave here, if it means leaving Sabo. Because nothing is more terrible than being alone and Luffy knows that best.

So Sabo keeps moving forward, vowing to Ace every night that he’s going to protect Luffy, no matter what. If this is the hand that he’s been dealt, Sabo will just have to make do. Sabo wonders how far up the hierarchy he’ll have to climb in order to guarantee Luffy’s safety.

(or, Sabo eventually becomes King of Goa, and Luffy is his “servant.”)

Are just some possibilities I came up with! To anyone who made it to the bottom of this post, thanks for reading!

Do any of the three scenarios I came up with sound interesting? Which is your favorite/do you think is most likely? Should I write a follow up??

EDIT: >> Follow Up

❀ ❀ Send YukiPri an Ask! ❀ ❀

#One Piece #ASL #Monkey D. Luffy #Portgas D. Ace #Sabo #YukiPri replies #sunsetsearcher #Text Headcanons #longpost #long post

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whocalledhimannux · 4 years

Text

now that I’ve had some time to reflect on Return of the Thief, I have some more thoughts that are... slightly more critical, in both the thinking-deeply and not-entirely-praiseworthy ways. I’m not going to tag this post because I don’t want to harsh anyone’s buzz, but I’ll just say return of the thief spoilers and rott spoilers right now, and hopefully the blacklist will catch those, and if not the rest of the post is going under a cut

okay so like first off, I want to say that I still think this was a very well-written book and it’s very satisfying from a character standpoint. there are so many great interactions, indications of growth, etc, and the layered writing of the first person POV is, as always, stunning. my main character complaint is not enough Costis and Kamet (or Costis/Kamet)--but even that, upon reflection, I think is colored slightly by my anticipation for a blatant Comet moment. When you’re waiting for a big payoff, and the story isn’t designed to have that, it’ll feel like a bit of a letdown. But from a different perspective, the ending of TaT can be a perfectly satisfying narrative ending, establishing that Costis and Kamet’s storylines are now thoroughly and primarily wrapped up in each other; their contributions to the wider plot from thereon out are mostly incidental, because sailing off to be together is their bigger ending.

side note: a character development I actually loved was us seeing Eugenides teetering dangerously close to a breaking point and being pulled back. I think...... from what I have seen of the fandom in general--bearing in mind I was never a part of Sounis and have dipped in and out of the discord without being majorly involved--based on my general impression of the tumblr fandom, I think there is a tendency among QT fans to let the Thief characterization of Gen affect our reading of him in later books. I think there’s sort of an assumption that he’s everybody’s favorite and that his choices are, by default, correct and sympathetic, even as the series progresses and he makes more, increasingly difficult and sometimes pragmatic or even cruel decisions. and I think RotT really, really challenges that kind of view. Eugenides is under immense strain in this book, and several times he lashes out in ways that are indefensible. Sometimes, even if he’s not being cruel to others, he’s being risky to the point of masochism, and the revelations about his backstory also suggest that quirky innocent Gen of The Thief is also not all he seemed to be.

and I think that was resolved in a very enjoyable and narratively satisfying way. The threats to the Braels had a real edge to them. God!Eugenides was terrifying, in a noticeable step up from the ways regular!Eugenides is terrifying, and it felt like payoff for the increasing role of the gods in Eugenides’s storyline up until now. And I really appreciated the subtleties of Sejanus saying that he won’t tell Eugenides the conspirators because it will damage him in the longrun, and the way Eugenides ultimately decides to forgive and trust Pheris and Sejanus anyway--those scenes, imo, were great followups to the scenes in QoA, KoA, and ACoK that discussed how rulers can maintain their moral center in difficult situations.

but... the Medes. plot-wise, I’m struggling with the conclusion to this storyline.

I made a different post already about What the Fuck is going on with the secretary of the archives, because it totally feels like shit is missing there, and to some extent I’m okay with that? it felt to me like a stylistic choice--like, Pheris the historian is writing specifically about the Mede invasion, so maybe the full story of Baron Orutus, and Relius, wasn’t actually resolved til years later and he thought it was an overlapping but ultimately separate story. fine. I actually did kind of like the parts where that was done more blatantly, like his comment that two of the queen’s attendants became famous later on for unrelated reasons. it helped with the framing of the story.

but I don’t feel that way about the Medes plot. For one thing, we’ve spent a couple of books now harping on the fact that Ghusnavidas (sp? I’m tired and my book is too far away to check, y’all know who I mean) is dying and that the primary threat is going to come from Nahuseresh’s brother, Naheelid. Costis made a point of saying last book that if the Little Peninsula could hold out for a year against Naheelid, not only would they win but the entire empire might be in danger of collapsing.

So... they spent ~a few months fighting a single army at a single battle site, with the Big Threat Guy not even present, and that’s it? everybody goes home and the Medes aren’t a threat anymore? it’s not even clear to me how many troops the Medes lost--their principal losses were in the form of Bu-seneth, Nahuseresh, and Baron Erondites, who, yeah, were key officers, but if the Medes lost, saying, 30% of their troops or less, what’s to stop Naheelid from hiring more soldiers and better officers and coming back in a year? it totally makes sense to me that an army that saw Eugenides call down lightning is willing to pack it up early, but inevitably that’s going to be dismissed as rumor and distortion so idk how it’s supposed to be a lasting deterrent. it may not be super realistic, because the downfall of empires takes time, but I think a bunch of us were expecting that the Mede Empire would, at the very least, but conclusively beaten by the end of the book, and I don’t think we got that.

Also, speaking of Big Bads: Nahuseresh. Oof.

I know part of the point of TaT was that Nahuseresh’s situation was becoming kind of sad and pathetic but... I think he went downhill too quickly in this book. and tbh I think part of it is the fact that we’re getting this from Pheris’s POV, and Pheris for one doesn’t have a whole lot of close contact with Nahuseresh in this book, and for another didn’t have any contact with him prior to this. His little “I will be king of Attolia!” outburst honestly made me cringe a little bit, and while I’m not entirely opposed to the idea of Nahuseresh being killed by an anonymous soldier--it has a very “reality ensues, war isn’t a series of epic meaningful confrontations” feel to it--I do object to the fact that Eugenides spent a significant amount of time in KoA and ACoK nursing a grudge against Nahuseresh and then barely got to do anything with it. and a lot of what he did get to do, the reader barely sees.

I think there were ways to make Nahuseresh’s actions in this novel a bit more satisfying without fundamentally changing them. for example, bringing in more commentary from people who knew him before. if there was a passage where Eugenides looked at Nahuseresh and realized that his beard was raggedy, and he looked thinner, and there was a manic light in his eye and he just seemed pretty pathetic and honestly more comical than the villain Gen’s been building up in his head for years--I think that would go a long way towards establishing tone. it would feel more like the anticlimax is intentional and be more about Eugenides’s own character growth, whereas now it just feel like... Pheris doesn’t have a whole lot of personal stake in this conflict even though the reader has been waiting for it for so long.

(although I do find it interesting on a narrative level in contrast with Sejanus, who seems disproportionately important in this book imo--from my perspective, the threat of Nahuseresh has been a constant behind-the-scenes presence for the last four books and Sejanus stopped being important after KoA. and I get why the opposite would be true for Pheris, but I still... want more.)

anyway, I just feel like the villains in this book are a little--warped, somehow. like the huge enormous threat of the series up until this point actually isn’t all that bad and can be wrapped up in relatively little time. it’s a weird sensation for me wherein I’m glad where everyone ended up and I enjoyed the experience of getting to that end, but like... it just feels a little off. slightly anticlimactic. I mean, for a lot of us this series is All About the characters and from that perspective I’m mostly satisfied, but I feel like in previous books the plot has come together SO well that my expectations were really high, and this resolution didn’t really meet them.

and damn does it feel strange to be writing this. feels like I just cobbled together a few of my hottest and most controversial takes and like I need to throw in about twenty more disclaimers about how much I love the books overall, but I’ll resist.

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reyescarlos · 4 years

Text

we found each other in the dark

chapter 3/4: heavy in your arms; word count: 6.6k || read on ao3

And is it worth the wait? All this killing time? Are you strong enough to stand Protecting both your heart and mine?

Eddie expected to have an eventful first day at the 118 but he couldn’t have possibly imagined the night would end like this.

Bobby had told him this morning that each shift was like playing Russian roulette. Some calls were minor, scenarios that the team could get through quickly enough without anyone’s life hanging in the balance. But the flip side to that were high stakes moments where one bad decision could mean death.

Eddie was used to working under pressure. He was certain that nothing could be more daunting than trying to save someone’s life and maintain his own while in the middle of a war zone. By comparison, the streets of L.A. would be milder, easier to tame, he figured. So, to find himself now staring down at a 40 mike-mike is startling, bringing his mind back to his tours in Afghanistan. How crazy, he thinks, that he would leave the military behind only to be faced with the weaponry in his civilian life. It’s a lucky thing, Eddie supposes, that he’s here for this now. He has a particular skill set that can very well save this man’s life.

Bobby calls it in to the hospital as they wheel the gentleman across the lawn and get him loaded up into the back of the ambulance.

“We have a 65-year old male with large shrapnel in his right thigh. Femoral artery damage…”

It’s hard not to get caught up in the belief of destiny when this is the kind of call he responds to on his first day with the team.

The gentleman, Charlie, is essentially a ticking time bomb and as he speaks his fears of dying tonight aloud, Eddie is grateful to have Buck with him now. As he gets the drip set up, Buck is there to settle the older man down, assuring him that he’s going to survive the night. Buck glances to Eddie and in his eyes, he sees Buck’s confidence in him. Eddie isn’t expecting such faith from the man seeing as though they’ve only just met but it feels good, he won’t deny, to have someone believe in his capabilities.

More often than not Eddie feels as if he’s stumbling through his life just hoping for something to stick but situations like this are ones he tends to thrive in. The irony doesn’t escape him. Day-to-day life is a challenge. Matters of life and death bring out his sense of calm.

Eddie assesses the damage, quickly working through the best course of action. Charlie’s words slur and soon he’s under, giving Eddie and Buck the chance to work in absolute silence.

“Tell me what you need me to do,” is all Buck says as he settles in beside Eddie, looking to him expectantly.

Buck takes a backseat and follows Eddie’s instructions to the letter, clearly realizing that even though he’s been with the LAFD for however long, it’s Eddie’s experience as a military medic that can decide the fate of this man. It’s quite the test for them to have on their first day but Eddie is relieved to see they’re able to meet the challenge head on and work so well with one another.

Buck is good at reading the terrain and anticipating what he’ll need next, an invaluable skill to have in a partner, Eddie notes.

Eddie can feel Buck’s eyes boring a hole into him as he tries not to disturb the grenade too much. One false move and all three of them won’t make it. With clear knowledge and practiced hands, Eddie works carefully as he extracts the grenade from the man’s leg, with Buck continuing to keep pressure against area to prevent Charlie from bleeding out. Eddie has been through much worse, much more intense situations than this controlled environment but this scenario is still grave. He feels confident, however, in his element somehow and that clears his mind enough to successfully dislodge the grenade.

“Get that box open,” he says, though Buck is unsurprisingly already flipping open the lid beside him. They’re still not in the clear yet but the second he hears the contact of metal against metal, Eddie can’t help but to let out a shaky breath of relief.

Buck is beaming at him, a mix of wonder and disbelief on his sweaty face.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Buck says.

“I can’t believe you’re still holding that thing and we’re still in here. Let’s go.”

Buck’s laugh is hearty and Eddie feels the timbre of it somewhere in the pit of his stomach, along with a strange tug of some kind. Eddie chalks it up to adrenaline and opens the door to the ambulance to make the hand off to the bomb squad.

“Hell of a first day, huh?” Buck notes as the ambulance pulls away, that playful smile on his lips again.

It’s growing on Eddie already, the way Buck acts as if the two are co-conspirators who share some kind of secret. It manages to draw him in and make him feel included in something even though this is all still so new. It’s been far too long since Eddie’s felt close to anyone, or even felt the inclination to let someone in. He’s used to keeping the world at an arm’s length but in just one day, Buck has managed to ease past those walls he’s been putting up. If he’s to keep to his objective for life in L.A., Eddie knows he has to do things differently this time around.

If that means forming a friendship with new his co-worker, he supposes it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to open himself up a bit more. The purpose of his move was to start over, to reinvent himself and grow. Eddie liked the idea of creating a new kind of family for himself. Judging by this trial by fire experience, Buck seems like the perfect starting point.

“Good work you two,” Bobby compliments as the pair take off the vests given to them by the bomb squad.

Eddie looks over at Buck and smiles. “He can have my back any day. I couldn’t have asked for a better a partner in there.”

It’s the honest truth. From their calls earlier, Eddie had gotten the distinct impression that Buck thrived off the high of rescuing people, of the danger in this profession. But when it came time to dial back and let someone take control of the wheel, he’d done so without question. They strike the perfect chord with each other and for Eddie, that bodes extremely well. Good chemistry was hard to come by but for them it’s organic. It feels like it’s been a lifetime since Eddie’s instinctively clicked with someone to this degree.

He supposes maybe this feeling is due largely in part to the fact that their kinship was just forged by fire. But if there were ever a measurement by which to set such a thing to, Eddie feels safe in saying this experience would bond them for a long time to come.

Buck smiles back at him, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

“Or, maybe, you could have mine,” he counters. He gives Eddie’s shoulder a light squeeze. “Welcome to the 118. We’re damn lucky to have you.”

But Eddie hears a different set of words behind the ones Buck has just uttered.

Welcome to the family. This is where you belong.

~*~*~

As they hang around the loft between calls, Buck and Eddie settle around the table grabbing a quick bite. Eddie takes his phone out of his back pocket and sets it on the table. The screen comes to life and Buck’s eyes immediately take notice of Eddie’s lock screen. The image is of Eddie with a young boy, their cheeks pressed tightly together to fit into the frame. He doesn’t mean to be nosy but that’s a hard thing to miss.

Eddie notices, his expression soft as he looks at his phone.

“That’s Christopher,” he says. “My son.”

Buck sits up at this bit of information. Of all the things he’s been trying to imagine about Eddie, he hadn’t expected him to be a dad. Eddie unlocks his phone and pulls up a new photo and hands it to over to him.

Buck takes the phone, his smile almost as bright as Christopher’s in the photo. Chris has got a big grin on his face as he stands with the Ferris wheel at the pier in the background on a cloudless, sunny day.

“He’s ridiculously cute. How do you keep from spoiling him rotten?” Buck laughs, grinning at the photo for a beat longer before looking up at Eddie. “How old is he?”

“Just about nine actually. I can’t believe the years have been going by so quickly.”

Buck sucks in a breath. He’s been haunted by that precise length of time. It’s too coincidental not to mean what he thinks it does. Buck has been allowing himself to dive in slowly to the idea of claiming Eddie as his soulmate. Between the rush he felt when they first met to how natural they are with each other to this discovery that nine years ago Eddie had created a family supports his budding theory. This would explain perfectly why nine years ago he stopped getting updates to his marking.

It’s all matching up perfectly into place like a key in a lock. Buck just wonders what’s waiting on the other side of the door for him when he eventually pushes on it.

“Nine? That’s a fun age, right before the double digits kick in. Kids are such a blast,” Buck says, sitting back in his seat and handing Eddie back his phone.

“You like kids?”

“Oh, I love them. They’re way cooler than adults, that’s for sure. I like how they see the world, you know? They’re just taking it all in and learning about things for the first time. It’s awesome. Plus, they’re hilarious and rarely ever have a filter. You’ve got to respect that kind of honesty.”

Eddie smiles at him and Buck can’t help but to think his response passes some kind of test. Eddie looks satisfied with his answer, setting his phone back down and picking up his fork again, spearing a piece of fruit on the prongs.

“Judging by that picture I’m guessing he’s liking Cali a lot, huh?”

Eddie laughs. “You could say that again. He barely even mentions Texas. All he wants to do is explore the city. It’s been great for us, the move. I still have a few loose ends to tie up though.”

Buck raises a brow. He doesn’t want to push the matter too much but the statement intrigues him a bit.

“I’ve almost got his school situation figured out. I had a meeting a few days ago with the school coordinator but...,” he trails off, looking away. Buck isn’t sure he’s going to continue until he clears his throat and speaks. “They need to speak with Chris’ mom first. She has an interview with them tomorrow. If that goes smoothly, he should be enrolling with them.”

Buck shifts in his seat, his head erupting with questions about Chris’ mother. Whether they’re still together is the most pressing of them all. From Eddie’s tone and hesitancy, Buck can tell they aren’t on the best of terms. Eddie called her Chris’ mom, not his wife or partner. It’s a stretch but Buck is flexible enough to make it work.

“I haven’t seen her since the divorce but this is important. I really want Chris to get into this school. It’s perfect for him.”

Buck’s thoughts are split evenly in two, torn between the sheer relief in he feels in hearing Eddie isn’t married anymore and the concern he feels in seeing how worked up Eddie is over Christopher’s schooling.

“I’m sure her talk will go well. I know there’s a lot riding on this but she has to know that too and I’m sure she’ll crush the interview because of it.”

Eddie stares at him for a moment, his brown eyes meeting with his blue. Land and sea, Buck thinks, two components that make up a world.

“Thank you,” Eddie says simply but Buck feels the full weight of it.

“Anytime.”

~*~*~

Eddie’s fingertips drum an uneven beat against his knee as he waits for Shannon to show up. It’s ridiculous, he’s well aware, to feel this antsy over seeing a woman he’s known for almost half his life. But these last nine years, their relationship had risen and fallen like a heavy breath. Now that it was out of both their systems, Eddie isn’t sure how to function around her.

He keeps an eye out for her and rises awkwardly off the park bench as she approaches. He waves at her, trying to gauge what kind of mood she’s in from a distance. She’s got on a flowing yellow dress that makes her look like sunshine. Her smile is just as warm too.

Eddie relaxes at the sight of that and takes it as reassurance that this talk will go well. It’s strange seeing her now. She looks different to him and Eddie has to wonder if she sees changes in him too.

“How’d it go over at the school?” he asks as they both sit down.

Shannon sits back and stretches her legs out, letting them cross at the ankles.

“Pretty well. They seem excited to have Chris enroll. You picked out a great school for him.”

Eddie takes the compliment with a simple nod and a quiet word of thanks.

“How…how is he? Is Chris liking it out here?” she asks tentatively, dipping a toe into uncertain waters.

Eddie unclenches his jaw and nods. She’s making an effort and Eddie knows this can’t be easy for her, to be sidelined in her own child’s life. Even though she had made the decision to take time to find herself, Eddie can see that it’s taking its toll on her to be away from their son. He can extend a kindness, an olive branch of some kind by way of decent conversation.

“He loves it so much. I think he wants to live at the pier,” he muses. He’s taken Chris down a few times now just to watch the waves and enjoy the beautiful weather. “He’s doing really well here and honestly, it’s a relief,” he sighs.

When he’d told his family he was leaving, they’d gotten into his head a bit that uprooting Christopher from Texas could have a damaging impact on his son. But he knew better than they did about Chris’ resiliency and adaptability. Chris was the kind of person who could make himself comfortable anywhere. It was a trait Eddie prayed his son would never lose. He knew all too well what it felt like to struggle for a bit of semblance. Luckily, Chris didn’t seem to have that problem.

Shannon stays quiet and Eddie desperately wishes he could open up her mind and see the thoughts that live there. There’s an unnamed tension between them, an awkwardness that Eddie doesn’t know how to get around. He supposes, with their history, it makes sense but he wants better for them both.

He decides to switch gears. If they’re really going to have a clear road ahead, he needs to do whatever he can to show Shannon that they’re on solid ground now. It’s exhausting constantly being at odds with her. Now that they’re divorced and no longer confined to the box they’d shoved themselves into, they both have room to breathe and grow. Hadn’t that always been a wish he had for them? For the two to mend the bridge that had given way years ago? They are in a different place now and Eddie knows he has to adjust his outlook accordingly.

“I don’t want us to be angry or upset with each other anymore. I want us to…I don’t know, be better to one another than we have been in the past. I don’t think I can carry those feelings inside me anymore. It’s draining and I don’t have the energy for it. I never really did.”

This seems to be the right set of words because Shannon blinks back tears and smiles at him.

“I would love that.”

Eddie sighs in relief and this time the quiet that settles between them is comfortable.

“Can I ask you something kind of ridiculous and personal?” Shannon says, tucking one of her legs under her, fanning out her dress over her legs smoothly.

“Should I be afraid?”

She laughs and it feels good to be able to joke around with her again. These are tentative steps but it feels reassuring to think he could be on his way to getting his old friend back.

“Eh, it could go either way.” She pauses for a beat before continuing. “Have you met Eva yet? I’ve been thinking a lot about your move and imagining you finding her out here.”

Eddie thinks it says a lot about where their relationship left off that Shannon is so casual in discussing him with another woman, a soulmate at that. It’d been awkward for the both of them seeing the makings of names on each other that weren’t theirs. They’d never talked about it explicitly but Eddie figured it was just as strange for her to wrap her mind around as it had been for him during their nine years together.

“Actually, it’s Evan not Eva,” he drawls, trying to get used to the taste of the name on his tongue. His heart is racing with the confession. How much will this change the way she sees him?

Eddie doesn’t even look at her. He fumbles with his watch and takes it off, showing her the soulmate marking. They both stare in silence at his wrist. It had been a complete shock to his system when it appeared so he can’t blame her for being stunned over the news.

“Wow. Wow, that’s…I don’t have any other word,” she laughs.

Eddie turns to look at her then. She looks surprised, of course, but happy. Eddie’s brows furrow.

“Where’d you meet him?”

“I’m not sure exactly,” he says, flipping the inside of his wrist back over, pressing it against his thigh. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. I think he’s someone I bumped into outside of a coffee shop but I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since. I didn’t even see his face that day, actually.”

Shannon’s smile turns into a frown at this.

“Oh, Eddie. I’m sorry.” He can tell she really means it. “But at least you know he’s out there. Whenever you do find him, don’t let go.”

Eddie searches her face for a moment, looking into her eyes and for a fleeting moment his mind drifts to a different set of blue eyes, ones that he’s grown so accustomed to in the short time he’s been working at the 118. It’s a startling thought that seems to come from nowhere. Eddie does his best to cast it aside. Buck isn’t where his thoughts should be right now, despite the fact that the other man has been on his mind more and more as of late.

Shannon takes him in as well before she continues to speak.

“I know you, Eddie. I know you’re probably scared over the fact that this is actually happening for you. But please remember you deserve to be happy. Despite everything we’ve been through, or maybe because of it, all I want is for you to be able to let the right love in. Evan is your soulmate, whether you’re ready for it or not. When you meet for real, don’t run from it, please.”

It isn’t lost on Eddie that this is the second person in a little over a week to tell him not to be afraid of his destiny. The women in his life know him better than anyone else. There’s no hiding from his grandmother who always had a knack for understanding him since he was a child. And Shannon had cultivated a life with him. Eddie couldn’t avoid being known by either of them. He could hide and keep himself from the rest of the world but these two were in the rare category that could see through it all to the heart of him each and every time.

Eddie wipes at his eye and laughs nervously. “I don’t know if I’ll be good for him. I’m kind of still figuring things out these days.”

Shannon reaches out a hand and holds onto his, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

“That’s sort of the point of a soulmate though, isn’t it?” she says, peering at him, lifting a brow knowingly. “To love you unconditionally, no matter what kind of state you’re in?”

Eddie can’t refute this argument. He had always liked the idea of being able to turn to someone at the end of the day and speak openly about what he was feeling. He was able to do that with Shannon at times during their marriage, of course, but the tension between them made it hard for Eddie to cross the divide that lived with them sometimes. He imagined being with a soulmate would be the exact opposite, that even if they were upset with each other they’d still be a harbor for one another.

“I hate it when you’re right,” he jokes.

“You poor thing. Then you must be upset all the time,” she quips.

Eddie laughs, a real sense of elation he hasn’t had around her in some time solidifying in his chest. They still have a way to go but this first step was a crucial one and Eddie feels as if they’re finally moving in the right direction together.

~*~*~

Days like today have quickly become Buck’s least favorite. He knows he can’t expect to work every shift with Eddie but still, the times when they aren’t together begin to grate at him. He feels selfish for how badly he craves Eddie’s time and attention but he can’t help it. Soulmate or not, he’s genuinely been enjoying getting to know his new co-worker. The two have found an easy rhythm with each other since Eddie’s first day. Buck supposes nothing bonds two people together faster than saving the life of someone else.

With Eddie out for the day, Buck feels restless.

“Aww, is someone missing their new best friend?” Chimney teases as Buck flops back against the sofa in the loft. “Look at that pout, Hen. We can go diving off that lower lip.”

Buck tosses a cushion at him as Hen laughs at the two of them. Chimney lobs it back and jokingly flips him off, revealing his soulmate marking on his middle finger, the word Mad branded there. He thinks it’s the height of comedy. Buck has to agree it is pretty hilarious.

Hen nestles in beside him and pats the top of his head.

“Come on now. Buck up, Buck,” she muses. Chimney reaches over to give her a high five and Buck rolls his eyes playfully.

“A couple of comedians here.” He rises from his seat, ignoring their outcry for him to come back. They get over it quickly, starting up a new conversation by the time Buck makes it to the dining table.

They’re absolutely correct and Buck can’t even pretend to deny that. He’s gotten so accustomed to having Eddie around that a day without him just doesn’t feel right. He feels…unmoored somehow and Buck wishes he could have a definitive explanation for why that is. He has his theory, of course, but a proven hypothesis is what he longs for most of all.

The thought of asking Eddie outright what his first name is terrifies him. He doesn’t trust himself to have a neutral reaction if he were to hear it directly from Eddie’s lips. What he needs is a filter, a buffer of some kind to absorb his shock should his suspicion pan out to be correct.

Bobby is in the kitchen getting started on dinner.

“Hey, Cap,” Buck calls over as he goes into the fridge to grab a bottle of water. “What’s Eddie short for?”

As he closes the door to the refrigerator and looks to Bobby, the man has stopped chopping peppers and is standing still, looking at him.

“Why do you ask?”

Buck busies himself with twisting off the bottle cap but he can still feel Bobby’s eyes fixed on him.

“No reason; I was just wondering. I mean, I know I could ask him,” he says, hoping his tone is nonchalant. “But you’re here right now so…I figured you could answer just the same since you’ve seen all his paperwork and stuff.”

Bobby holds his gaze for a beat before returning to prep the meal and Buck is glad for it. Sometimes his captain just seemed to fix him with a stare that went right through him. There were so many things he didn’t want anyone else to see and Buck always had the feeling Bobby was skilled in noticing private things, even if he didn’t voice his findings out loud.

“His first name is Edmundo but, as you know, he prefers going by Eddie.”

Buck pretends not to notice Bobby’s eyes flickering up to him again. He just takes a sip of his water and nods.

“Cool,” he says, trying to keep his tone indifferent but inside Buck feels as if he can just about burst at any second. He isn’t sure which is racing faster, his heart or his thoughts.

Buck still can’t shake the feeling that he’s showed his hand in a way he can’t bounce back from but he couldn’t stop himself from asking the question. It’d been gnawing at him having this question mark dangling over his head. At least he could finally put that mystery to rest officially. If the cost of that information was making Bobby suspicious, it was a price he was willing to pay. Any bit of information that could bring him one step closer to certainty would be worth it, ten times over in fact.

But for the sake of not drawing Bobby’s eye too closely to the situation, Buck does his best to change Bobby’s train of thought, whatever track it may be on.

He reaches over the island and snags a piece of meat off one of the cutting boards. As he expects, the move is enough to shift Bobby’s focus. His captain swats at his hand and points his finger at him.

“What are you, a dog swiping scraps off the table?” Bobby jokingly reprimands, shaking his head. “You know, you really shouldn’t tick off the guy with a knife in his hand.”

Buck grins and wiggles his brows as he tosses the food into his mouth and walks away, successfully dodging a bullet and distracting Bobby from getting close to whatever conclusion he seemed to be gearing up towards.

It isn’t until he’s heading down the stairs, past Hen and Chim, and is safely on his own that his thoughts begin to spiral in earnest. His hands shake as he holds on to the railing to keep from losing his balance. He’s coming undone at the seams. This confirmation is too much for him and the worst part of all is that he has no one to talk to about it now.

Buck keeps moving forward, his legs working on their own accord to take him outside of the station. His body knows that what he needs is time to himself to process this information. Breathless, he presses his back against the side of the building, the surface hot but he doesn’t care. He needs the support of the brick wall to keep him standing. The question of who his soulmate was had plagued him for almost a decade and now that he has an answer, Buck isn’t even sure what to do with it.

He knew he felt drawn to Eddie, literally from the moment they met. He had sensed it. Buck was a personable guy; he got along well with virtually everyone but that instantaneous connection to Eddie felt different to him. Buck had wondered if he was just so keyed up on the idea that Eddie was meant for him, as if he had on rose colored glasses but the truth was, he had been seeing the situation for what it was exactly. That spark was a flare, an internal signal alerting him to the fact that something big was happening here.

Buck presses his fingertips against his ribs, the move so instinctual since the name first appeared. It’s like air to him now. He may not be able to see it but he knows it’s there. More often than not, it feels like the only thing sustaining him. Discovering that Eddie is in fact Edmundo is similar to learning the meaning of a word that you’ve come across often but never looked up. You’re aware of its existence but it’s abstract until knowledge is gained.

Buck’s eyes sting and he feels as if he could just scream. For as much as he hated the fact that Eddie has the day off, he’s glad to be away from him in this moment. He’s in no fit state to be around him now. He wouldn’t trust himself to keep from shouting the truth that’s desperately trying to claw its way free, demanding to be heard.

~*~*~

The station’s alarm blares, drowning out the sound of the simulation game Hen and Buck are playing. They drop their controllers and hop to their feet, ready to gear up.

“Hen and Chim, I need you two to ride over in the ambulance. Eddie and Buck, you’re with me. Let’s go, guys,” Bobby instructs.

The team doesn’t hesitate to fall into line with Bobby’s orders. Buck grabs his helmet and hurries to the rig, swinging open the door and climbing inside, Eddie right on his heels. Bobby has the truck pulling out of the station just a few seconds later.

As always when they’re sent out on a call, Buck’s adrenaline races wildly. He’s already trying to imagine what scenario they’ll find themselves in, coming up with tactics he could use to help those in need before even arriving at the scene. If he can be prepared in any way, even by way of a hypothetical simulation in his head, Buck will be grateful for it. Sometimes seconds is all it takes between making sure someone can return home to their families that day or them never seeing their loved ones again.

As Bobby cuts through the streets, his hand heavy against the horn at times, Eddie looks at his phone screen and purses his lips. Buck knows he shouldn’t pry but he can’t stop himself from speaking up, seeing how distressed Eddie’s expression is.

“Everything alright?” he asks over the headset.

Eddie glances up at him as if weighing what to say before he sighs.

“Not really. My aunt is saying she isn’t sure she can watch Chris next week like she thought she’d be able to. I need to find someone in case it turns out she can’t. I haven’t been meeting too many people out here and either way, I’d hate to have to ask that favor.”

Buck thinks for a second. “I know a woman who could help,” he offers up.

“Are you trying to play matchmaker?” Eddie jokes.

Buck resists the urge to grimace at this. Like he would ever deign to pair Eddie up with someone else, as if the man’s name hadn’t been branded on his skin for days now. Eddie was his, even if the other man was none the wiser. Buck wouldn’t compromise that for anything.

Regardless, that wasn’t even remotely close to where Buck was going with this conversation so he dismisses Eddie inquiry with a laugh and roll of the eyes.

“Not in the way you’re clearly thinking right now. Her name is Carla Price and she is possibly the most badass caregiver in the whole city.”

He skips over the details of how it is he came to know Carla. Abby hasn’t crossed his mind in ages and he’d rather not get hung up with her in the back of his thoughts.

“Wait, seriously? Do you think she’d be willing to meet with me?”

Buck nods and fishes his phone out of the inside of his jacket. He sends a quick text to Carla and she responds less than a minute later.

“She’s up for it. If you’re free tonight, she says she’s available to chat.”

The smile that washes over Eddie’s face makes Buck’s brain short circuit for a second. All he ever wants to do is keep Eddie in good spirits, to ensure his peace of mind however possible.

“Buck, I owe you. Whatever you want, it’s yours. Just say the word.”

Buck falters for the briefest of seconds before smiling to cover it.

“It’s nothing. I’m just glad I could help you out somehow.” His voice sounds different in his own ears but Eddie might be too distracted and overjoyed with the good news to notice it.

Buck bites back on the inside of his lower lip and glances away, unable to look at Eddie right now. He’s certain the truth of what he wants is written plainly on his face. He’s sick with want, filled to the brim with longing. It’s a wonder Eddie can’t hear the call Buck’s soul makes to his regularly.

He looks out through the small window in the back of the truck to see how close they are to the scene and to look at anything but Eddie. What he finds is that Bobby’s peering at him through the rear-view mirror before turning his focus back on the road. Buck can feel his cheeks flushing and is glad for the hot day to be the perfect cover for the sudden change in hue.

He wishes the comms had a private channel he could speak on. Bobby was too good at reading between the lines.

~*~*~

It’s the end of their workday and the team hangs about the station around their engine, recounting the day they’ve had. Hen is adjusting her shirt, her wife Karen’s name visible on her collarbone. Eddie wonders what it would be like to be that confident in showing his soulmate marking off. In theory he could do so at work but for nine years, Eddie has gotten into the habit of hiding it.

At first it had been to avoid throwing the reminder in Shannon’s face every single day. Now it’s just become second nature. If he’s being completely honest, there’s also a small part of him that isn’t ready to make that bold of a statement. He’s comfortable in his sexuality and clearly the 118 isn’t close-minded but he isn’t even sure what label suits him best. His soulmate marking calls into question a lot of things he’s suppressed over the years. Being in L.A. as a whole is dredging up those dormant feelings.

He’s had fleeting attractions to guys every now and then but these days he finds himself focusing on one guy in particular even though he knows he has no business feeling anything towards Buck. He’s his co-worker and nothing more. He can’t be anything else to him. Eddie’s already disregarded his soulmate marking once before. He can’t bear to go down that road a second time.

Sometimes, he’d try discreetly to see if by some strange miracle his name is on Buck’s body but to no avail. He’s constantly torn between thinking Buck is skilled at hiding it like he is with his own marking or that the truth is staring him in the face and they aren’t meant for each other. The latter is a terrifying thought, especially since Eddie has been quietly taking a real liking to the man already but it’s just as well. Eddie’s never been lucky in love. Why should that change now?

“You good, Eddie?” Hen asks, pulling him from his thoughts.

Eddie looks around at the group, their faces all expectant. He clears his throat.

“Yeah, just daydreaming, I guess.”

She regards him thoughtfully and her kind, concerned gaze is like a serum that manages to pull more words out of him.

“I just noticed your marking,” he says, pointing to his own collarbone. Hen breaks into a wide smile and places a hand over where her wife’s name is printed on her skin.

Eddie wishes he could have that sense of ease. The matter of soulmates has always been such a sensitive topic for him, a source of stress.

Hen must see something in his face because her head tilts a bit to the side.

“Have you gotten yours?” she asks.

Eddie glances around at the group. These people are supposed to be his family after all. He can trust them and speak as freely as he’s comfortable with.

“Yeah, but I don’t think it makes much of a difference either way.”

Buck looks affronted as Chimney and Hen share a glance.

“Why do you say that?” Chim asks, leaning a shoulder against the side of the truck.

Eddie shrugs, struggling with the right words as he always seems to do any time he talks about something so personal.

“It feels a little too good to be true when you stop to consider it. Maybe for some folks it works out perfectly, like for you and Karen. But, I’m not so sure that’ll be the case for me. My soulmate and I have already gotten off on the wrong foot, I think. It’s…complicated,” he settles on saying.

“Like a Facebook status?” Chim interjects.

Hen presses her fingertips to her forehead, dropping her head down. “You’ll have to excuse him. His foot has a habit of landing in his mouth. There’s no cure for it, unfortunately.”

Eddie laughs and shakes his head. “I’m just not in a rush to find them right now is all. If it happens, great. If not, it’ll be alright too. I guess I’m good with just playing it by ear, you know? Whatever happens, happens.”

That’s the mantra he’s been adapting for himself now. Evan has been elusive since the man’s name first appeared on his flesh. Every day he’s had to look down and see it plastered on his skin but still he is nowhere near closer to finding him than he’d been on day one.

Chimney shrugs and nods in understanding. “I get that, too. I mean, they’re our soulmates, right? They’ll turn up. I’m just happy to know it’s going to happen,” he laughs, looking at the budding marking on his finger.

Buck rises from off the back bumper of the truck suddenly, making everyone in the cluster look over at him.

“I really gotta get going, sorry, guys,” he mumbles, saying something else Eddie doesn’t catch.

Eddie frowns, unsure of what to make of Buck’s changing mood and apparent hurry to get home. Hen and Chimney look just as confused too as Buck hooks his duffle bag onto his shoulder and starts to walk straight ahead.

“See you tomorrow?” Eddie calls after him but he doesn’t think Buck hears him for the man does not reply.

#buck x eddie #buddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #sulkybbarnes #rafasilvas #bisexualbuck #starlightbuck #athenagrantt #userbones #tylerhunklin #captainstennerstar #maysgrant #userkinga #kimmy writes

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