Kind of a rant with full offense but I genuinely despise all the hate Geeta gets as a champion. Yes her battle was a pushover. You have exactly 1 fire type which could totally be your token “overleveled starter” and she’s basically done for. But as a character? She’s not that bland— not from everyone else’s standpoints. Specifically the gym leaders.

First of all, everyone forgets she’s not even the final battle of the Victory Road storyline. Second of all, the fact that in the post game when you rematch all the gym leaders, many of them seem to react somewhat brashly thinking that you are Geeta (as far as I remember. Cause like. I think they’re supposed to have some sort of meeting I guess but Geeta sends you to take care of matters instead.) Many of them mention Geeta having a weird aura— a bewitching aura even (quote taken specifically from gym leader Tulip.) and she seems to rub a lot of the gym leaders the wrong way mentally. People seem to forget that she’s blatantly supposed to be a character shrouded in mystery but everyone and their mom wanna pin the blame on the rock flower she sends at the end of her battle for why she’s a bad champion. Y’all are focusing on the wrong material. Yes, her battle is pretty decently hyped and is a let down because yeah, she’s got a weird ass team and doesn’t use Kingambit or Glimmora’s ability the “right way” and that “Gamefreak doesn’t know how to make a good game” as if most of y’all weren’t crying at the mere concept of Arven’s whole motive for his storyline. Y’all ain’t slick.

Glimmora as her ace is genius. Not because of the battle standpoint— in that regard, it’s of course used very poorly considering it’s hazard setting gimmick. This is introducing the importance of this Pokémon and the lore of Paldea as a whole. Glimmet and Glimmora have something to do with the origins of Area Zero. The way it’s found in large abundances— the emphasis on the Pokémon in general in the endgame. It’s supposed to display it’s importance and not much else. Maybe even give way to whatever is going on in the DLC. It’s called “The Hidden Treasures Of Area Zero” for goodness sake! I firmly believe that when the DLCs come out, we will be getting some major answers to some questions. Why does she battle so carelessly? Why does she emit such a bewitching aura? Why is Nemona oblivious to this? Why is Geeta just… like that? What! Is! Geeta’s! Deal!?

Geeta is a character with so much opportunity for open speculation. She is a character we are supposed to be theorizing on. She’s a character we are supposed to be learning more about as time goes on.

But all y’all wanna focus on her easy ass battle. Hmph.

Trust Fall - Ch. 5 | Lee Minho

summary | character profiles | masterlist

Pairing: Lee Minho/Lee Know x Reader

Summary: Chan and Changbin encourage Minho to continue to continue building your trust...or your relationship. And as another task dawns near, your heart yearns to give in; only if your mind would let you.

Genre: Secret agent/spy au, romance, angst, action

Word count: Approx. 6.1k

Warnings for this chapter: None

A/N: Perhaps we’ll have more moments here? Who knows? Maybe you’ll need to read through it first hehe~ Anyway, this is a rather calm chapter that I wrote for the sake of character development and building relationships. Still, I hope you enjoy reading. As usual, don’t hesitate to send an ask if you have any questions or comments!

The unusual tension in his body refused to leave him. Well, “unusual” wasn’t the best term since it was normal for his muscles to tense up especially after missions.

But right now, Minho was antsy - the male couldn’t sit still, nerves in his body buzzing with an unexplainable adrenaline. Maybe he needed to let off some steam. The previous interrogation was a bit vexing on his part, and if Chan didn’t hold him back, he probably would have disfigured the target’s face.

After getting whatever information they needed from the target, Chan handled putting him in the detainment center where he could be captured and locked up. Changbin went to the labs, and Minho, surprisingly, decided to go to his room. He usually spent more time in the main building instead of the living quarters, but this was a rare occasion.

He was filled with tension after that, and he was still filled with it after waking up.

As he relentlessly punched the punching bag that hung on one of the areas of the training center, sweat dripped from his bangs and trailed between his furrowed eyebrows. His punches were stronger than usual, little grunts escaping his lips.

“Go easy on the bag, man.” Changbin lightly chuckles as finishes sipping from his bottle.

Minho lands one last punch before huffing out, “I am.”

“What’s up?” Chan says, taking a seat on the bench next to Changbin, “You seem preoccupied.”

Minho hums nonchalantly, adjusting the bandages that wrapped around his fists. “It’s nothing.” he replies, readying himself to punch the bag again.

As he starts training again, Changbin looks at Chan with a knowing look, to which the elder responds with a nod and light chuckle. He stands up, going towards Minho and stopping the bag from moving on the other side. He tilts his head to peer at Minho, flashing a small smile, “Come on Min. We know you too well. What’s wrong?”

Changbin sing-songs, “You’re not usually this high-strung. You’ve always been the most chill between us three.”

Minho’s jaw clenches, and Chan knows better to not push Minho when he’s stressed. So, he returns to the bench and pats Changbin’s back as if telling him to pull back as well. With a warm smile, the eldest agent says, “Why don’t we head for the target range? It’s been a while since we went, don’t you think?”

At that, Minho stops punching the bag and turns to face the two, “Fine.”

“You just want to show off your sharpshooting skills.” Changbin raises an eyebrow playfully, and to this, Minho lets his lips curl into a smirk.

The three agents then walk towards the inner part of the training center and enter a particular sound-proof room. There, they put on the necessary equipment and select a gun each from the weapon rack. They press a button on each of their shooting booths, and soon, they each have moving targets bustling about in the range. As expected, Minho manages to hit most if not all right in the middle, displaying his skills indeed.

Chan and Changbin aren't surprised and whistle at their friend, causing him to sheepishly wave his hand in dismissal...and embarrassment.

Chan laughs, getting ready to reload his pistol, “So, now that you’re more in your zone, wanna talk to us?”

“What’s there to talk about, Chan?” Minho inquires, eyes already locked onto his own targets.

While he fires away, Changbin returns his pistol and leans against the metal table, “Ever since the interrogation, you’ve been on edge. Even more so when we asked you about Dr. Song.”

Minho fires his last shot and hits the target on the head before calmly putting the pistol down. He sighs, removing the headgear that protects hit ears. “It’s just…” he trails off, leaning against the table beside Changbin, “Her behavior is just...odd. I can’t place my finger on it, but she’s just...you know. I’m usually good at reading people, you know that. With her, I can’t.”

The eldest agent adds teasingly, “I thought you both were starting to get along...you aren’t the most subtle with those fond gazes, Min.”

The agent in question feels heat rising to his cheeks as he shoots Chan a glare. “I do not have a fond gaze. Is your eyesight bad already?”

Chan laughs heartily, crossing his arms as he leans against the wall perpendicular to them, “Is she still annoying you? Being rude? Difficult? ‘Cause besides us field agents, she seems pretty nice with Jisung and Seungmin. Jeongin tells me she was fairly civil with him the other time.”

Minho shakes his head, “I understand the ‘difficult’ part since we did bring her against her wishes. We should be thankful she even stayed and stays despite what we make her go through. It’s just…”

“You don’t trust her?” Changbin guesses, looking at the older agent earnestly.

Minho nods his head before shaking it. He then just chooses to run his hand through his hair, messing up the already messy strands, “I want to trust her. To get her to trust us, we need to show her that we trust her. And...I really do want that, but it’s just...a part of me is giving warning signals.”

“Warning signals?” Chan tilts his head, “How so?”

“It’s telling me to be careful and wary.” Minho tries, “You know?”

“Why though? Besides her hostility towards you in particular - I don’t know why though - what else is there?” Changbin asks again.

The second eldest agent sighs, his sharp eyes closing as if he was exhausted. “It’s just a hunch. I just feel like...she’s deliberately hiding things from us - things that could be useful.”

Minho's mind then brings to light what he felt in the jacket’s pocket when he consoled you yesterday.

Chan hums, chewing on his lip to curate his thoughts and words. After a moment, he speaks again, “Well, we do have to see it from her perspective. As you said, she’s here against her will. She’s here and working, but she doesn’t necessarily like it. People like that tend to be more aggressive and hostile. It’s like cornering an animal, per se.”

“Yeah, and I can only imagine the turmoil and stress she’s under after what happened in the seaport and interrogation room.” Changbin points out.

“Maybe you can take this as an opportunity to get her to open up, Min.” Chan suggests with an amused smile, “As her ‘partner’, go check on her and see how she’s doing.”

“I’m not a babysitter.” Minho deadpans with narrowed eyes, “Dr. Song is an adult; I don’t think - ”

“Do you not want her to be more trusting, Minho?” Chan smirks, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes, but - ”

“You have to build trust, Minho.” Chan says warmly, “We’re field agents, so we’re better at gauging who to trust and not. Y/n isn’t, and she’s closing herself off because she’s vulnerable. With people like that, you need to be the one to reach out and build that trust for them.”

“Since when were people this tiring?” Minho sighs in mild irritation, running his hand through his hair once more.

Changbin laughs, patting his back, “You got this. You’re the one and only Lee Minho, right? Agent Lee is the best!”

“Gee, thanks Bin.” Minho fakes a smile, but the younger agent is very much aware of the warmth in his eyes.

With that, Minho returns his gun to the rack and playfully salutes at the other two, “See you for dinner then.”

“See ya.” Chan waves with a chuckle.

Changibn salutes back, and when Minho leaves the room, the younger agent smirks, “You think he’s like that because he’s much too worried for y/n?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised.” Chan returns his gun as well, “She’s too much like her.”

“You’d think Minho would be totally distant and uncaring after what happened, huh.” Changbin muses.

The older agent hums, looking up at the ceiling, “Well, Minho did make a shell of his own because of what happened back then. That’s why he has the whole ‘cold’ facade going on. It’s nice to see him genuinely caring for someone other than us. He’s probably the best person to be there for her when she needs it. He did it before.”

“I’ve never seen Minho this puzzled over something...or someone.” Changbin chuckles in amusement before his smile fades into a small frown, “Well, at least besides...yeah.”

Chan nods, a gentle smile on his lips, “He’s learning. For all his skill and intelligence, Minho hates dealing with emotions the most.”

“True.” Changbin nods, “So...sparring training today?”

“Sounds good.”

You’re alone in one of the lab rooms, sitting by a table and reading a folder of random files you found in the lab archives. This particular room was empty, no equipment and items in sight - just a typical lab table, some stools, empty shelves and windows. Your eyes are much too focused on the files for you to have noticed a figure walking into the room.

“Jisung said you’d be here.”

You look up from your position to see Minho leaning against the lab room’s door frame, head slightly tilted to the side to display his nonchalance. You gently nod your head, “Yeah, if you guys need the lab tests from the stuff we brought back, they’re with Seungmin.”

“That’s fine.” Minho responds, “We already had Hyunjin bring it up to Jung.”

“What else can I help you with then?” you say, mirroring Minho’s tone of disinterest.

The agent walks closer until he’s standing beside you. He leans against the table, arms crossed as he fixes his eyes on the white floors. You study his behavior and mannerism, taking into account the way he chews on his lip and blinks his eyes repeatedly.

Almost as if he was nervous.

Was that even possible? Someone like him...nervous? You have to bite back the urge to giggle and smile, so you look away and awkwardly cough. “If you’re here to interrogate me about...that time...then I have nothing to tell you.” you say softly, fiddling with your fingers on the table.

Minho clears his throat similarly, “I...I came here to ask you if you’re alright. I mean, if you’ve been doing alright. Since...that time.”

You feel your cheeks blush with a warm, pink hue; you aren’t sure if it’s embarrassment over your behavior last time or flusteredness over his concern. Nonetheless, you take a deep breath and reply, “I’m sorry, I must have caused a ruckus. I’m...alright, thank you, Agent Lee.”

Minho’s body visibly relaxes as he turns his body to face you better. He places his elbow and arm on the table to lean sideways, tilting his head as he speaks. “I do have to ask though...it’s part of my job.”

Of course.

He continues, “That man seemed to have known you. And I know you said you didn’t know him - ”

You cut him off, eyes staring at the files in front of you, “I don’t know him. This I can promise you. I don’t even know how he knows me or my name.”

“This I can promise you”? Minho thinks to himself, but he puts it in this back of his mind to ask, “Then...Dr. Baek? Does it ring a bell?”

At this, you involuntarily shudder and take a deep breath. “One of the former scientists involved with the incident back then...that’s it.” you say softly.

“Then why does he know you? How?”

“We worked on things together.”

Minho doesn’t push. He stays quiet, now his turn to observe your behavior; he takes in how you refuse to make eye contact with him, shoulders tense as if guarding yourself from him. He senses the agitation in your nerves, a clear form of lying. Still, he doesn’t push and instead releases a sigh.

“You know...if I’m being completely honest with you, it was surprising to see you be more talkative back when we were in the car on the way to Gimpo.” he says.

You face him, raising an eyebrow, “Is that why you had the audacity to smirk at me?”

At this, Minho’s eyes brighten, “Oh, so you caught that?”

“I’m not blind or stupid.” you deadpan, narrowing your eyes, “Of course I did.”

“Well…” Minho trails off, resting his cheek and chin on the palm of his hand, “it’s just that you aren’t very talkative and open to begin with. I was just...pleasantly surprised to see you talking about more personal things.”

“What I did in Gongjak as a doctor is hardly personal, Agent Lee.” you say with a purely confused expression, “It’s a very professional topic, if you ask me.”

The male agent shrugs, a small smile on his lips, “Then tell me about this Dr. Kang. Dr. Choi kept mentioning him and about how he looked up to you.”

“Dr. Kang is just a doctor, like I said.” you nearly stutter, “Why would you need to know anything about him?”

“Maybe he can actually give us information about certain things? Who knows?” Minho shrugs.

You narrow your eyes again, “I’m not convinced, Agent Lee. I’m sure you have connections who can do that for you.”

“Hmm. Perceptive.” Minho smirks, “I just wanted to see your reaction when his name is mentioned. When Jisung asked, you seemed pretty flustered.”

“I was not.” your eyes widen, “And why would you do that?”

“To get a feel on what you’re like as a person? To get to know you?”

“You don’t get to know someone like that…” you mutter.

Minho shrugs, “Maybe. But you aren’t exactly willing to let us - let me - get to know you, y/n. Maybe teasing you like this will help you warm up. You’re still closing yourself off.”

“I…” you look away, sighing, “...sorry. It’s just not easy for me.”

“But I promised you, right? That you’ll be ok as long as I’m with you.”

“That’s what they always say, Agent Lee. Lying and deception comes easy for agents like you.” you say in a soft voice, “It’s part of your job, right?”

You remembered all the times Chan, Minho and Changbin came up with lies and excuses while on the field operation with them. Sure, they had to do it for the sake of the mission, but whatever they called it - it was still a lie. And you hated the fact that they got what they needed and wanted with lies.

“Agents and organizations like SKZ are built on trust, y/n.” Minho says calmly, his gaze piercing and strong, “Given that we ‘lie’ when needed, the trust we have with each other is stronger.”

“I can’t say that for myself, Agent Lee.” you look at him tiredly, “I had no one to trust back then.”

“Did you not have Seungmin and Jisung?”

“They weren’t there when - ” you stop yourself, looking away from the man.

Minho takes a step closer, bringing a finger to your chin to make you look at him. His voice is low and almost raspy as he whispers, “Weren’t there when what, y/n? What about the past are you so hesitant to share?”

Your lip trembles in the slightest, and if Minho wasn’t this close to you, he would have missed it. “You can’t trust anyone but yourself.” you breathe out in a whisper, “That’s all I have to say about it.”

Minho knows you aren’t going to say anything, so he takes Chan’s advice and approaches you carefully. He drops the matter at once, pulling his fingers away from your chin. Instead, he offers a small smile and stretches his hand out, “Fine, but will it kill you to put a little trust in us? Or at least in me?”

You stare at his hand and swallow hard. After a moment of deliberation, you take his hand; the male gives yours a gentle squeeze, and you end up looking directly into his eyes. At this moment, the mysterious haze that clouds his eyes somehow disappears. A thin sheet of mysteriousness still swirls within, but it’s a tad bit clearer, and you see a small speck of stars.

Minho can see the ice slowly breaking away in your own eyes. It’s far from being gone, but there’s a small crack he knows will eventually spread out if he played his cards right - if he, in Chan’s words, built the trust himself.

Despite being dull and cold at the moment, he knows your eyes have a dazzling warmth and color to them.

Just like -

He doesn’t realize that he’s staring - peering - into your eyes so deeply until you tilt your head and ask, “What?”

Minho snaps out of his daze, blinking twice before letting go of your hand and shaking his head with a small smile, “Nothing.”

You chew on your lip a bit awkwardly, slowly turning your attention back to the files you were reading. Minho clears his throat, gaze back to being fixed on the white floor. There’s a thick tension in the atmosphere, but it isn’t all bad. It’s just awkward.

Awkward but light as if the universe was saying “there’s potential”.

As if you were in highschool as two teenagers innocently but awkwardly skirting around each other before realizing one was right there all along.

Thankfully, you’re saved from the atmosphere when you both hear a light knock on the wall. You both turn to the source, only to see a smiling agent waving at you. “Hey guys, Jisung said you were here.” he says.

Minho offers a small smile, looking at the said agent with a fond gaze; it kind of makes you melt. Kind of. “Hey Jeongin. What’s wrong?” the older agent asks.

Jeongin shakes his head softly, “Nothing drastic. Just here to tell you that Jung has another operation for you. Technically it’s you, me, Chan and Hyunjin on this one, but Jung is asking if Dr. Song would like to come.” the younger male then chuckles, turning to you, “Dr. Song, if you’re interested to hear Jung out, you can come with us to the briefing session.”

You look to Minho who merely gives you a small smile. You then sigh, nodding at Jeongin, “Ok.”

“Cool.” Jeongin smiles, “Be at the briefing room in 15 minutes.”

With that, he waves at you and Minho before turning on his heel to leave. Once he’s gone, Minho turns to look at you, an eyebrow raised, “What a surprise. You’re interested?”

You half-pout-half-glare at the male, huffing out a deep breath, “Don’t get used to it. I just need to know as much as I can to get this job over and done with.”

“Alright.” the agent chuckles, gesturing towards the door, “Let’s go.”

You and Minho enter the meeting together, and Hyunjin and Jeongin are already inside, seated on the chairs. Jeongin waves warmly while Hyunjin flashes a bright smile. “Nice to see you again, y/n.” he bows his head.

You bow as well, offering a small smile, “Hyunjin.”

“Why are you calling Hyunjin by his first name and not me?” Minho grumbles playfully as he pulls a chair out for you, “Hyunjin of all people.”

You take a seat and look up at him, tilting your head, “Because you’re the agent assigned to me, so I felt like addressing you with ‘Agent Lee’ was more appropriate.”

Minho looks at you un-amusedly as he takes a seat next to you. You look at him with a mischievous glint in your eyes, “Calling you ‘Minho’ is still a bit too personal.”

Hyunjin laughs, eyes wrinkling at the sides as he does so, “Well, Agent Lee, looks like you need to work on that.”

“Ah...Hyunjin.” Minho sarcastically smiles at the other agent, and they both erupt into sarcastic yet amusing laughter.

Jeongin watches, smile wide and bright as he mutters under his breath, “Not again…”

As the two continue to bicker with each other, the door opens and Chan and Jung walk in. Hyunjin and Minho stop arguing in an instant, bowing their heads in greeting. Chan smiles and takes a seat next to you while Jung acknowledges everyone with a wave of his hand; he takes a seat at the end of the table.

“Ah, y/n.” Jung smiles lightly, “Good to see you.”

You only nod, unconsciously leaning towards the side where Minho was seated. The male agent rubs your back, the touch gentle but fleeting; there one second, gone in the next. The head then clears his throat and speaks immediately, “This operation requires you to head to Gangnam. There’s an underground district there, but as per our intel gathered, it’s covered up by a luxurious facade.”

“Undercover mission?” Hyunjin asks, and you don’t miss the sparkle in his eyes.

Jung nods his head, “The previous scout team tells us that there’s going to be a gala of sorts tomorrow in this particular ‘underground hotel’. Keep in mind that it’s a luxury hotel on the outside, but a lot of...things happen in the underground aspect of it. Be careful. Now, the gala is supposed to be for some socialites celebrating the hotel’s founding anniversary, but intel tells us that some Cle members will be there. We don’t know yet for what purpose or reason, but it’s your mission to find out everything you can. Maybe get some data and evidence.”

The agents nod in unison, but Jung notices that you’re silent; he even takes note of your body language - the fact that you’re somehow leaning towards Minho, and the fact that Minho rubs your back one more time.

“Dr. Song,” Jung starts, “I wanted you to hear this because you’re free to join them, but you can also stay behind here if you wish. The only reason why I’m permitting you to go with them is because you might recognize some familiar faces - doctors, scientists, esteemed people, etc. - while there. But again, you don’t need to go with them.”

You ponder for a moment, running all sorts of scenarios and pros and cons in your brain. You briefly glance at Minho before turning to Jung, subtly nodding your head, “I’ll go with them.”

You can see Jeongin smiling widely, Hyunjin making little claps, and Chan mouthing “huh? What did you do to her?” to Minho, to which the latter responds with a surprised expression. Jung smiles warmly, nodding his head as he looks to each person in the room, “Very well. Rest assured, y/n, you are in good hands.”

The man then dismisses the meeting and excuses himself for other matters with the authorities. When he’s gone, Chan rests his elbows on the table and chuckles, “Wow, y/n. I didn’t think you’d want to come after the previous time. I’m glad you’re coming though.”

You clear your throat, avoiding their gazes, “As I told Agent Lee, I’m doing this to hasten the progress of finding a solution so I can get it over and done with.”

Hyunjin leans back on his chair and smiles, “Well, doesn’t matter as long as we get the job done! Y/n, you can count on us.”

Jeongin laughs, tilting his head endearingly, “Don’t mind him, he’s just excited to be able to do a mission where he dresses fancily.”

Chan laughs, “Speaking of which...since this is happening in a hotel, Jung had Felix arrange for accommodations. Everything will be ready for us there, including the attire. I’ll double-check to make sure they have something for you too, y/n.”

You nod and a few seconds later, Chan tells everyone to get ready to leave for tomorrow - rest and up train and do whatever to prepare. With that, everyone leaves the room and goes their separate ways.

Sometime within the day - specifically in the afternoon - you return from the lab and enter your room in the living quarters. As soon as you step in, your eyes land on your bed and the black jacket laying on it - Minho’s jacket.

You forgot to return it to the male the other day, having brought it back to your room; you’re surprised he hasn’t asked for it. With a sigh, you take the jacket and resort to return it, thus heading back to the elevators.

You don’t feel like calling Minho on his phone yet, so you end up asking the other agents for his whereabouts. “In times like this before operations, he’s either in his room or in the training facility” Felix says when you bump into him in the main building’s lobby. He then offered to take you there, and when you both arrived, the freckled male smiled and wished you luck as he made his way.

You navigated the training center nervously, making it a point to ignore all the training rooms and training agents. You check the target range where, as Felix says, is Minho’s favorite, but the agent is nowhere to be seen. Instead, you see Changbin. You lightly tap his back, and when he turns around he offers a small smile. “Chan or Minho?” he asks, “Or maybe Jisung?”

“Huh?” you tilt your head.

“Who are you looking for?”

“Oh, Minho.”

Changbin chuckles, “Over there by the gym area.”

You thank the male agent before heading over to the gym-like area. As Changbin said, Minho is there, having just finished one of his workouts. He runs his hand through his sweaty hair, gulping water from his bottle. He turns his head to your direction just as you walk closer, jacket carefully bundled in your arms. The agent tilts his head, and once you’re standing a few steps away from him, you hand him his jacket.

“I forgot to return it the other day.” you say, avoiding his gaze. There was something about the way his sweaty strands of hair clung to his forehead, sweat dripping down the perfect slope of his nose.

Minho offers a small, thankful smile nonetheless, taking the jacket from you, “Thanks.”

He then puts the jacket on a nearby bench and crosses his arms. He speaks with a playful tone despite the neutral expression on his face, “So, now that you’re here, do you want to learn how to defend yourself?”

He sees the panic flash across your eyes and lets out a light chuckle, “I’m just kidding.”

“I’d rather not do anything physical, thank you.” you deadpan.

“What about the shooting range?”

“I said no.”

“Hmmm...martial arts?”

“What about ‘nothing physical’ do you not get?”

“Physical...physical…” Minho pretends to hum innocently, before his eyes twinkle with a not-so-innocent glimmer, lips curling into a teasing smirk, “Physical - ”

You already know what he has to say, and upon realization, your cheeks burn up. You slap his arm, eyes wide as you yell, “Hey! Not that kind of physical!”

Minho laughs the loudest you’ve heard him since you arrived at SKZ, and if you weren’t so embarrassed, you would have thought it sounded lovely. He brings a hand up to the area you slapped, giving you a small smile, “At least I know you can hit pretty hard.”

“What was that for?” you yell, still flustered.

The agent chuckles, “I don’t have to worry about you defending yourself if things go south.” he then shakes his head, “Though we’ll try our best not to get to that point.”

You scoff in disbelief, cheeks still very much pink and hot. You put your hands on your hips, “You! You really are testing me!”

“And you passed.”

“Agent Lee!”

Minho laughs lightly before gesturing forward, “Anyway, you should have dinner and get your rest. Chan wants us to leave tomorrow morning.

“Whatever.” you mumble, shooting one last death-glare which Minho merely laughs off.

With that, you turn on your heel, almost stomping your way out of the training center. Minho watches your retreating figure, a small smile still splayed on his lips. He notices Changbin approaching, and the younger agent grins, “What’s with the stupid grin?”

Minho shakes his head, fixing his eyes on the jacket you returned, “I’m not sure if I should be amused or unsettled.” he starts with a soft smile that eventually fades into a frown, “She’s so much like her.”

Just as you are about to reach the living quarters, a sudden random yet entertaining idea popped into your mind. You pull your phone out, going to your contacts list. Once you spot the name, your fingers freeze before even getting to tap the call button.

It shouldn’t be a problem, right?

No one ever explicitly said anything about you going out to eat or take breaks right? And technically Minho did tell you to get dinner before resting…

And you did need a little respite after all the stress...

Not wanting to get swayed any further, you tap the call button. The other line rings for a few seconds until someone picks up, a familiar voice responding, “Y/n? Hello?”

“Hey, Hyunbin.” you breathe out, “Are you on duty now?”

“Kinda. I just finished a few rounds and have a short break for dinner.” Hyunbin answers with a chuckle, “Why?”

You shrug, a small smile on your lips, “I was about to go get some dinner for myself. Do you want to...tag along?”

“Sure. It’s been a while.” the male doctor laughs heartily.

“Great. How about the usual cafe near Gongjak?”

“Sounds good.”

And that was how you ended up exiting the headquarters’ compound. Technically, getting out was alright since there were some SKZ members who didn’t live in the living quarters and opted to go to their own homes. Thankfully, none of the security questioned your leaving. However, a certain freckled male notices your figure exiting the gates.

“Oh? Does Minho…”

And so he runs into the main building in search of a certain Lee Minho.

Meanwhile, you’re seated in a cafe with Hyunbin, eating your respective pasta meals for dinner. The male doctor swallows before laughing lightly, “I just heard from the director that you were given an offer to participate in some organization’s research project. Didn’t say much ‘cause it was apparently classified stuff.”

You sigh, offering an apologetic smile, “Yeah...it sort of is. Sorry I didn’t get to say bye and all. The head of the project kind of wanted me in the facility as soon as possible.”

“Well,” Hyunbin smiles it off, “now that you’re here, what’s it like? You don’t need to tell me if it’s really classified. Just tell me if it’s more stressful than what we do in Gongjak!”

You laugh, sipping from your coffee. “Well, it is stressful…”

You trail off when your mind goes to Chan, Felix, Jisung and Seungmin who have been nothing but friendly to you.

To Changbin, Jeongin and Hyunjin who have been welcoming despite you being difficult.

And to Minho who has been mysterious, yes, but also very patient and silently caring.

You sigh, closing your eyes before continuing to speak, “Stressful but you kind of just have to deal with it for the sake of the job.”

“Ah, yeah. Hyunbin grins, “Knowing you though, you’ve got this handled.”

“Ah, I hope so.” you laugh lightly, “I’m going to Gangnam tomorrow for more research purposes. I don’t think we’ve needed to travel to other cities when doing research in Gongjak.”

“At least you get to sight-see.” the male jokes.

“I mean...that is true.” you laugh, “I just prefer staying in. You know me. I hated the monthly parties the director hosted for us doctors and researchers.”

“Ah...all the throwing up from their drinking.” Hyunbin pinches the bridge of his nose, pretending to look distraught.

You smile and laugh softly, “And having to drag them home from the bar...”

After a few more minutes of talking, Hyunbin walks with you for a little more, but you make sure not to let him tag along the entire way just in case. A few meters away from the cafe, you suddenly freeze in your spot, eyes met with another pair of icy, steely ones - very sharp ones in fact.

Hyunbin was talking about a certain senior citizen patient before he noticed you’ve stopped walking, so he stops as well. “Y/n?” he tilts his head.

You gulp, unable to respond to Hyunbin or even move a muscle when the other figure approaches the two of you. Hyunbin also notices the newcomer and goes “oh, your colleague?”

“Minho…” you trail off quietly, wide eyes on the agent.

The way his icy glare is quickly masked by faux warmth sends chills down your spine as he smiles at Hyunbin. “Hi, yeah, I’m y/n’s colleague.” the male agent then turns to you, “I was wondering where you left off.”

You clear your throat and slowly nod, “Yeah, ok, sorry. Let’s...let’s go.”

Minho sends another sweet smile towards Hyunbin and says a quick “nice meeting you” before placing his hand on your back and ushering you to walk away. Hyunbin still has his eyes on you two.

After you and Minho are a few feet away, the male agent hisses, eyes narrowed sharply, “Who gave you permission to leave HQ?”

“Don’t tell me I’m supposed to be locked in there like a prisoner.” you snarl back with a glare.

“Then you should have at least told me.”

“For goodness sake, Minho. I’m an adult. I don’t need to tell you everything I’m doing, do I?”

Minho grabs your upper arm, tugging it so that he can turn your around to face him. He’s a bit closer than usual.

“Under the circumstance that you’re working with us, yes you do.” his voice starts to raise, “I hate to break it to you, but we can’t have people running in and out of HQ as they please. Plus, we can’t risk you accidentally talking about what we’re doing in there.”

“If you want me to trust you, can’t you trust me on this?” you scoff, “What makes you think I’m going to blab about it?”

You would probably laugh at yourself for saying that. If only Minho knew that you took one of the samples from the lab the other day when you returned from the black market and seaport.

No way he’d trust you if he found out.

Minho laughs, his voice a strand of hair away from shouting, “Stop being so stupid, y/n. You know you’re involved with something top-secret. Don’t go meeting people behind my back. Not even with your little boyfriend.”

You grit your teeth, eyes wide with anger, “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Before Minho can respond, Hyunbin is by your side, his eyebrows furrowed in concern, “Hey, I heard shouting. Are you ok?”

You look at Minho’s now-calm expression before smiling at Hyunbin, “Yeah, don’t worry. We were just...joking around.”

Wow. Lying came easy to you now too.

Hyunbin smiles lightly, eyes trailing to where Minho was holding your arm. At that, the agent raises an eyebrow in challenge, and it prompts Hyunbin to back down. “Alright, see you around then, y/n.” the male doctor then wishes you a good evening before turning on his heel and walking away.

Minho then clears his throat, letting go of your arm as he mutters for you to follow him. You do, not wanting to anger the agent any further. As the two of you walk back to his car, a thick silence envelopes you two. Even inside the car, the tension is suffocating.

When he stops at a red light, he finally breaks the silence. “I’m sorry.” he says abruptly, “I didn’t mean to call you stupid. That was out of line.”

You carefully glance at him, noticing how flushed his cheeks were. It softens your heart a bit, and you choose to look out the window. “It’s ok. I probably deserved that.” you admit.

Minho hums before replying, “You didn’t, but I need you to understand why we can’t have you going out and meeting people. It’s not about trust - ‘cause I do trust you. It’s about keeping you safe. You might not get why, but - ”

“Minho, it’s fine.” you turn to face him, and though your expression is bland, your eyes are apologetic, “It’s not your fault.”

Minho stares at you, the red light from the traffic light reflecting against his perfect face and painting him in a dark yet soft light. “I’m also sorry about the boyfriend thing. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

You blush, chewing on the inside of your cheek before replying, “That’s ok, I overreacted.”

“Alright.”

“He really isn’t my boyfriend though.”

“And you’re telling me this because…?”

“Nothing. Drive.” you cough, “The light’s green.”

Minho laughs, his lips curling into a genuine smile with you for the first time ever. You look at him warmly before snapping away, leaning your head on the window and shutting your eyes.

Your heart wants to trust him but your mind doesn’t.

And as a scientist and doctor, the mind always prevails.

please god let me overanalyze this literal five second bit for christmas

Zhao’s Demise but Actually I Talk About Why He’s a Viable Candidate for a Redemption Arc

—

So, Zuko offers his hand, Zhao refuses, his pride becomes his own downfall. Done deal, no need to read further into it.

Most people arrive at the conclusion that his arrogance is cause for that ultimate look of ‘eat piss’ on his face... I’m most people. I’m not arguing that. What I didn’t notice the first time around was the penultimate expression, one I believe is meant to convey something slightly more human. People have made note of this too, called it a moment of recognition or humility, anagnorisis. I’ll throw up the screencaps, second for second, and walk you through. The reason I do this is, considering how much time and effort goes into animation, I will be treating each and every frame as if it has earned its place in the episode’s run time, 100%. Bryke are the masters. I am but a humble consumer.

Two parts encapsulate Zhao’s final moments. The first, before cutting away to Zuko’s outstretched hand, has nothing to do with vanity or hatred. Rather, it’s the farthest emotion from both, and more importantly, it’s genuine.

He turns to look at him, at the banished prince he’s hunted and ridiculed relentlessly. Zhao doesn’t sour on the onset, at the mere thought of being rescued by someone he regards as a failure and disgrace. Instead it conveys surprise, expected of Zuko’s offer in spite of the heated rivalry they share. It’s everything he doesn’t understand, a merciless man shown mercy, a poster child for rage and grudge given a chance to live by a scarred boy with every right to hate the world around him, and get rid of his competition to achieve the only ends that will restore him. It cuts away after this look, face buried in the ocean spirit’s massive hand:

Looks almost repentant, if the context were switched up a little. Doesn’t it? ;p

The next part is, maybe, even harder to digest in its entirety without really slowing it down. Instead of the dramatically retracting his arm and delivering that lasting, withering look designed to ring with absolute contempt and self-absorption... Zhao reaches back.

His hand moves closer to the lower lefthand corner of the screen. His fingers curl inward, and for a terrifying instant it looks as though he intends to grab Zuko and drag him down with him. The anger fades again, however, and with no reason or motive to not maintain that facade, I assume the next few shots are also authentic, human.

Zhao’s hand falters. It moves back, and the slant of his eyebrows is not so severe. This doesn’t quite come off as the beginning stages of a royal ‘fuck you’... so what’s up?

And there you have it. The most baffling expression to witness on one Admiral Zhao, personally speaking.

It’s as if his hand has gone limp. His eyes are grave, and his anger has dissolved. Into what, is up to interpretation - easily the core of Bryke genius. I see it as mercy. Something Zhao only learns in his last moments, from an adversary, no less, and returns by refusing Zuko’s hand. Either Zhao believed himself worthy of more than damsel-esque rescue from the treacherous enemy of his nation... or he believed in the exact opposite. It’s that kind of realization, which, in my opinion, renders the expression above.

And so, he ends on a characteristically haughty note of dismissal, superiority. His iconic, scathing features return, and like most soldiers, choosing death is in and of itself an act of defiance, and at the same time a display of servile, unimaginable loyalty. Dying for honor or a cause is no light topic... if anything, this scene reveals the extent of Fire Nation nationalism. And we know how it’s repaid, how his story finally ends in a maddening, eternal fog.

So, Redemption Arc?

Yeesh, grim portrait of such a scoff-able moment. But bear with me. Redeeming Zhao deserves an entire post of its own, but I’ll lay down the bare bones of such a hypothetical.

Consider any other ATLA villain that shows such drastic change in their character - a brief, shining moment of humanity, vulnerability, or conflict. Zuko aside, and the crazed Azula, there’s little to nothing to work with. Long Feng, Combustion Man, Firelord Ozai - stagnant, little backstory. There’s a moment in Zuko Alone where we see Ozai standing over the turtle duck pond, regarded as an attempt at processing Ursa’s loss. It’s even said that the royal family was truly happy once. Scant, but plenty to expand on, right? Except Ozai remains the worst father in the history of fathers, and status as a genocidal maniac is generally seen as a hard pass.

Take Zhao, then. Complicit, or a pawn? Arrogant ass, or a brainwashed soldier, raised on the wrong ideals? We’ve seen Fire Nation schools. We know our own history. In both occasions where he’s on the verge of killing a minor, something that immediately lands a ticket to Irredeemable Land - he fails, embarrassingly so. Are his hands clean? Certainly not. Show-wise, however, he’s depicted as a laughable fool, his shot at greatness reduced to insignificance... just like Uncle Iroh’s heart of gold takes precedence over a history of warmongering. It’s framing, and it’s deliberate.

In the end, I leave anyone still reading with this.

If Zhao could learn mercy and return it in the last split-second before his defeat, if he genuinely saw Zuko, for the first and only time, and made a radical choice in light of it... what’s to say he couldn’t learn - or unlearn - more? That he couldn’t make another good choice, and another, if his mind wasn’t being rotted out by fog? *suspicious shrug emoji*

At the foundation of his character is a soldier. Someone hungry for glory, sworn to serve. He hunts the Avatar, he attacks the Blue Spirit, he besieges the Northern Kingdom and yes, takes the moon out of duty - a distorted notion of honor and destiny, and a destructive root to firebending influenced by a century of war. Seems to carry the faintest hint of PTSD. Any chance the show might contain such a hint?

Ah...

You can STAY- Part Three

F/M Pairing: Y/N x Lee Felix (side pairing: Y/N x Stray Kids)

Word Count: 5.2K

Warnings: Language

Genre: Fantasy AU; Scarlet Heart AU; OT8 SKZ

Previous Parts: Part One, Part Two

Summary: Y/N has another unexpected confrontation with Prince Felix. But he’s also not her biggest problem, especially when she uncovers a potentially devastating plot that could completely unravel the royal hierarchy.

Taglist: @angelphantomlove​ @moonlightracha​ @staycarat0801 @jjabbur​ @pinkchcn​ @smolchild-lol @straykidbaby​ @moonnstars90​ @choisaemi @dru-shadow​ @skzooyeet​

It was still early that morning when I woke-up to the sound of someone knocking on the door to my bedroom. For a moment, I was too disoriented to respond, but the sound grew louder with the force of whoever was insistent about coming inside. Finally, I gave in and walked over to answer the door with a nonchalance that I’m sure reflected my drowsiness.

“Jeongin?” I questioned, surprised to see the younger standing on the other side.

“Hi, Y/N,” he said, and it was a timid greeting as he shuffled anxiously in the doorway. 

“Did you need something?” I asked, wondering why one of the King’s sons had went out of his way to visit me in my small dungeon bedroom.

“I, uh, wanted to make sure you weren’t busy today,” Jeongin said. “I'd like to visit the market again and try to sell my paintings.”

The request took me off-guard, and I didn’t know which I was more surprised to hear: that Jeongin wanted me to accompany him, or that the King’s youngest son made trips to the market to sell his artwork like he didn’t already have enough money. “I guess I can go with you,” I said.

“It’s mostly for protection,” Jeongin said. “Cuz’ of your powers and stuff...”

I grinned at his awkward conversation because it was strangely adorable to hear him stumble over his request. “I’d love to, Jeongin,” I said. “Let me get dressed and I’ll meet you outside on the bridge.”

Jeongin nodded in agreement and I gently closed the door to prepare myself for an impromptu trip into town.

It certainly sounded like a better prospect than resigning myself to another day of medicinal experimentation - searching for the cure that would alleviate Ella’s suffering. Ever since my encounter with Chan’s wife, I had been relentlessly searching my manuals and the records kept neatly arranged in the Castle’s library. However, despite my efforts, I was no closer to finding the answers than I had been during our first meeting.

Yet, I could never give-up on something that might help someone else in need, so I maintained my confidence that I just needed to look harder. But one day out of the confines of my bedroom couldn’t possibly hurt, especially since I had experienced an excruciating headache during the previous night after spending all afternoon hunched over my desk.

I nodded in self-determination, swiping my brush through my hair one more time before I left my room, walking upstairs alone with the company of my thoughts as I tried to focus on the task at hand. If Jeongin trusted me enough for protection, then I would do my best not to disappoint him. I had worked hard to fine-tune my powers for any case that might arise while I served the royal family, and I considered my fighting skills to be an enormous source of pride.

“You should feel privileged to walk so freely without care.”

I paused at the top of the staircase at the sound of an all-too familiar voice, and I frowned when Felix came into view while wearing an arrogant smile. “Forgive me, miss,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of a proper introduction.”

“Then what do you consider our last meeting?” I asked him. “If I recall correctly, you insinuated that I would bring ruin to this Castle.”

“Of course not,” Felix said. “It was rather premature of me to base my opinion on a foolish disagreement with Seungmin.”

“I agree,” I said, keeping my tone neutral as I watched him come even closer. “Do you not believe such things anymore?”

“I find you perfectly elegant, Y/N,” Felix said. “You seem to prioritize your morals above everything else, and I can sense a profound loyalty for my family despite only just arriving a few nights ago.”

“Not so much your family,” I corrected him. “I serve the kingdom, and that means honoring those who lead it.”

“How righteous,” Felix said. “Consider me impressed by your character.”

“I wish I could the say the same,” I said, and I was pleased when Felix’s smile vanished.

“Have I done something to offend you?” Felix asked. “I apologized for my actions. Please don’t tell me that you intend to hold a grudge?”

“Consider it more of a casual suspicion,” I said, watching his green eyes narrow. “I’ve learned a lot about you since my arrival.”

“Is that so?” Felix asked, and I could tell that he was not appreciative of my comment.

I nodded as I remembered my conversation with Chan on the same afternoon when I met his wife - how he willingly opened up to me about his red-haired brother in exchange for a tentative promise to help his wife.

“I know that you aren’t wanted here,” I said. “I was told that your own mother tried to kill you when you were merely a child.”

“Where did you hear this?” Felix asked, but his tone wasn’t angry like I had been expecting; instead, he seemed unusually morose while he looked at me with sad green eyes.

“Does it matter?” I asked him. “How else should I look upon someone whose own father hated him so much that he sent him away to another kingdom?”

My words triggered a brief silence between us, and it seemed like they had a great affect on Felix, but I was still stunned when he reached out to grab my wrist - directing my hand over his heart. “Do you feel that?” he asked, and I slowly nodded. “I’m human, Y/N,” he continued. “This opinion you have of me matters because it’s made you forget that I’m flesh and blood like you. And I expected someone with your moral integrity to know better than to treat an equal as lesser, or to believe nasty rumors without understanding the whole story.”

I could feel my mouth fall open in shock, and I looked at Felix for the first time without a single ounce of judgment. But I still couldn’t help but remain stuck on one word in particular: “Equal,” I repeated.

“Do you not consider that accurate?” Felix asked. “As far as I’m concerned, we both live and breath and share the same experiences. And to address your other offense against me, I’d like you to understand that my mother is a wicked woman who has always favored her eldest son. She held him to the utmost regard while I was nothing but a mistake that she always regretted...Yes, my mother did try to kill me, but it wasn’t out of a sense of righteousness to rid this world of a perceived evil. And when she wasn’t successful, she gave me this scar that I hide from the rest of the world.”

I swallowed hard when Felix removed the black mask obscuring the left side of his face to reveal a diagonal line of jagged edges. “In actuality, she would’ve done anything to ensure that Chan had no competition to stand in his way of the throne. But look at how well that worked out for them both. Chan decided to marry a peasant girl and defy our father, and he deserves his lowered status because he needs to finally understand that his actions have consequences that can last for a lifetime.”

He finished his tirade with a heavy exhale before securing his mask back into place. “Look at us, Y/N. We’ve both decreed presumptive judgments of one another, and they’re entirely inaccurate.” He then lowered his gaze when he infiltrated my personal space - far closer than what might be considered appropriate. “Forgive me for all that I’ve done that forced you to seek these lies. Perhaps in the future, we can hold a civil conversation together.”

I closed my eyes, reeling from the onslaught of his confession. “Why are so insistent on defending these perceptions, Felix?”

“Because you came here with no outside bias against me,” Felix replied. “I refuse to see these royals feed you misinformation just for you to turn against me as well.”

“I suppose it almost worked,” I said. “But I’m still confused after listening to an entirely different side.”

“It’s my side,” Felix insisted. “Seek the truth for yourself, but keep in mind that the people in this Castle are all looking out for their best interests.”

“Aren’t you doing the same?”

“Yes, but you’ll hopefully come to find that I never speak untruths,” he said. “My mother is an insane liar, and her clever tongue managed to keep Chan in this castle after his marriage, even though the king decided to deny him the opportunity to take the throne. I’ve seen her behave this way for my entire life, and I once vowed to never be anything like her.”

He finally stepped away, and I was able to inhale without restriction. His grin returned as he observed me. “Despite what you’re thinking, my return to the castle was not predicated on ill-conceived intentions. There’s no reason to doubt me, Y/N, and for the record, I’d like you to know that you’ve fascinated me from the moment I saw you at the choosing ceremony.”

His final declaration rendered me speechless, and I found myself trembling when he offered me a discreet wink before returning in the direction from which he had arrived.

By the time the sun was at its highest point in the sky, Jeongin and I were carefully walking around the outskirts of the market - searching for the perfect place to set up his paintings. “I do this all the time,” Jeongin reassured me with a cute smile that was impossible to deny.

“Okay,” I agreed, admiring the usual bustle of the market as eager patrons searched for the best prices on the goods they required.

“Over there,” Jeongin suggested, pointing to an empty stall, and I followed him with a selection of his paintings secured under my arm. “Let’s organize them,” Jeongin said, and I carefully followed his instructions while also admiring the beautiful creations that he had crafted. 

“These are gorgeous,” I said, and he brightened at the compliment.

“Really?”

“Of course,” I said, tracing my fingertips across the texture of an oil painting. “They look so real.”

“My mother thinks it’s a waste of time,” Jeongin scoffed, gaze hardening for a moment as he stepped back to admire our efforts. 

“I think it’s creative,” I said. “It makes you stand out from the others.”

“Exactly,” Jeongin agreed. “Everyone else already has something that makes them unique, and I wanted my own thing.”

“Well, you certainly found it,” I said, pausing when I noticed an elderly woman approaching our collection.

“How much for this one?” she inquired, indicating a rather gorgeous recreation of the surrounding mountain range.

While Jeongin started negotiations, I took my time perusing the remaining pieces that he had brought with him. I could tell that he had put his heart and soul into faithful adaptations of the most random subject matter: everything from scenic portraits to little drawings of his family members. It was a fascinating dynamic to his character, and I wondered how long the prince had been painting because these looked far too advanced considering his young age.

“Are you serious!?” a hostile voice growled, interrupting my musings with a tone that alerted me to possibility of an impending confrontation.

“What’s going on?” I asked, coming to stand next to a fuming Jeongin as he glared at the man who was holding one of his paintings.

“This little brat thinks he can swindle me out of my money!” the man said. “The cost of this shit is worth more than my house!”

“Oh, I’m sure he’d reconsider the price,” I said, stepping closer when I sensed an opportunity to appease the tension.

“I won’t!” Jeongin declared. “That piece is incredibly valuable!”

“Of course, the bastard thinks that his royal blood makes everything he touches turn to gold.”

“That’s enough,” I said, lowering my tone. “You can look elsewhere if you can’t afford his price.”

“For your information, bitch, I’m looking in exactly the right place,” the man said, and I noticed him reaching for the sword secured at his side. 

I took a deep breath when I noticed that the men he had traveled with were also advancing on the two of us - raising their own weapons into the air. I narrowed my eyes and willed their swords to fly out of their hands - shocking both of his partners. “You might want to reconsider your stance,” I said to the first man, but his accompanying smirk caught me off-guard - like he wasn’t intimidated in the slightest by my magic.

“Maybe you need a lesson in manners too,” the man said, and I could barely formulate a response before I heard Jeongin shriek my name while a pair of arms wrapped around my waist. I could feel the breath escape my lungs, and then there was a hand over my eyes, preventing me from seeing what was happening, and I started thrashing around in the limbs holding me hostage. “Let me gut this stupid girl first,” the man said, and I could hear Jeongin calling for help as the sharp point of a sword teased the side of my throat. 

But the man never followed through on his promise, and I only realized a moment later that he had been compromised when I fell to the ground with a grunt. My hand went to my throat because I could still feel the phantom effects of the sword’s blade, and my eyes blinked rapidly as I saw two figures standing at the front of our stall - waving their swords with impressive skill and growling out insults. Apparently, Jeongin’s call for help had actually been answered, and I was relieved to see both Prince Chan and Prince Felix warding off the opposition. 

“Your business here is done,” Felix said, appearing nothing short of intimidating with his mask and sword.

“They should be so lucky,” the first man snarled, but he knew better than to continue a fight that he was destined to lose.

I watched him walk away before I realized that Felix and Chan were both hovering over me with matching expressions of concern. “Y/N?” Chan asked with a gentle tone.

“Thank you,” I managed to respond, flushing when I noticed that both Felix and Chan had outstretched their hands for me to take. But instead of forcing myself to make that decision, I rose at my own autonomy, glaring at Felix when he chuckled.

“They might not be so lucky next time,” one of the men called back, and he must’ve still been riding the waves of adrenaline when he chanced a step back in our direction.

“Get the hell out of here,” Chan snapped at the burly man who had helped attack us, and he grumbled in complaint but obeyed nonetheless. “Y/N,” Chan repeated, shoving Felix out of the way as he came closer. “Are you okay?”

I nodded while Felix scoffed. “What the hell were the two of you doing causing trouble like that?” 

“We weren’t causing trouble,” I said, and Felix smirked.

“Good,” he said in response. “After our conversation earlier, I would hate to discover that you had lied to me, Y/N.”

Chan frowned at that - glancing between me and Felix with a curious expression. “Let’s just get everyone back to the castle,” he said, and I agreed with one last glare in Felix’s direction.

The next morning, Anna woke me up early with a bright smile. “Good news,” she said, starting for my wardrobe. “The King has requested your presence at the tea ceremony today! They’re honoring Minho for his selection.”

I groaned around the exhaustion holding me captive. “Is this a request or a demand?”

Anna hesitated as she laid a dress across my bed. “Well, I wouldn’t ignore the King.”

“Of course,” I said, forcing myself to abandon the comforts of my mattress. “When will it take place?”

“This afternoon,” Anna said. “You should hurry and get dressed.”

I nodded quietly in easy compliance, watching Anna leave me to my own volition as I forced myself to put on the dress that she had left behind for me. It was fairly modest, but the sleeves had a very delicate lace lining them. I also spent a few moments in front of the mirror to check my appearance, which I never normally allowed, before I left my room to walk upstairs. 

It was suspiciously quiet in the corridors, and I found it strange because I remembered that the King’s wives lived in this area of the Castle. But it was pointless to assume anything, and perhaps they were already waiting at the ceremony with their sons.

However, my senses went on high alert when I heard two voices intermingling towards the end of the passage, and I pinpointed the noise coming from a single bedroom. Subsequently, I paused outside the room, glancing through the space between the door and the entryway to see Changbin and Queen Seo speaking together in low voices.

“You’ll be next to the King,” Queen Seo said, and she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she examined Changbin’s outfit. “Do you remember the plan?”

“Of course,” Changbin replied. “I shall look for the handmaiden.”

“I’ll have her deliver the tea,” Queen Seo explained. “Once Minho drinks it...” She trailed off with a maniacal grin, reaching out to adjust Changbin’s hanbok. “My son looks so handsome,” she remarked. “Like a true leader.”

Changbin sneered at her words. “He thinks that Minho could possibly do better than me?”

Queen Seo shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it either. “Don’t trouble your mind. Tonight, we shall change his perception after we kill that little bastard.”

The promise held dangerous implications, and I stumbled backwards from the door in surprise. It was my sworn duty to protect the rulers of this Castle, and I had barely given the plot any further consideration before I was returning to my quarters.

Because I would ensure Minho’s well-being, even at the cost of my own position.

I was late to the tea ceremony as a result of my efforts, but I only received a stern reprimand from Ms. White before she escorted me to my seat next to Seungmin and Jisung. It also offered me an appropriate vantage point of Minho who I kept within my sights as everyone spoke around me with joyful tones. I had nearly forgotten that it was a celebration, and I found myself narrowing my eyes at Queen Seo and Changbin as they laughed together with the King like there was nothing wrong.

“You seem distracted.”

I slid my gaze away from Changbin - locating Seungmin as he leaned in closer to be make himself heard over the noise. “What did you say?”

“You know, Y/N,” Seungmin said, propping his chin against his hand. “I happen to like this color on you.”

I was surprised by his strangely flirtatious tone. “Excuse, me?”

But instead of replying to my query, Seungmin shot me a discreet wink and turned to Jeongin who offered his brother a friendly smile. The whole encounter was decidedly unusual, and I wondered if everyone in this Castle was startling to lose their minds.

“Don’t concern yourself with him,” Jisung said while nodding at his brother. “He’s a rare breed.”

I found myself smiling at the jest in spite of my concerns. “What can you possibly mean by that, Prince Jisung?”

“It’s his way of impressing you,” Jisung said.

“Impressing me?”

“He’s convinced himself that you only fight with him to hide your true feelings,” Jisung revealed. “Seungmin thinks you’re harboring secret affections.”

“I might’ve helped,” Hyunjin added from across the table, and I grimaced at the idea before reclining back in my chair.

“How remarkable,” I said. “He didn’t seem to like me.”

“Seungmin always acts that way around strangers,” Jisung said. “But he warms up to them eventually.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Hyunjin said. “And try not to hold it against him. He really does like you.”

“But why shouldn’t he?” a new voice contributed, and both Jisung and Hyunjin flinched when Felix suddenly entered the room - pausing at the end of the table. “Y/N is very interesting.”

I turned away from him, fanning my hand across my chest because my heart was doing something peculiar inside my chest.

The King, however, was furious. He stood and glared down at Felix with narrowed eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Why shouldn’t I come?” Felix returned. “I’d like to celebrate Minho’s ascension to the throne. It’s what a good brother should do.”

“It’s alright, father,” Minho said, and I’m sure his words were shocking to most of the people at the table. “He can sit with us.”

“Very well,” the King relented, but he never took his eyes away from Felix as he sat down next to Hyunjin. “We shall begin.”

The King’s command summoned several handmaidens who brought inside the ceremonial tea for our consumption. Because of what I had discovered earlier, I kept a close eye on the handmaiden who served Minho - it was poisoned tea, and I had taken a potion earlier that should stop its effects. Since the potion contained a powerful chemical that was effective against all the traditional poisons I had studied, everything should be fine.

But there was a small risk that the queen had chosen a poison that could defy my potion, but I doubted that she would go to such great lengths.

“In honor of my son, Minho,” the King announced. “We shall drink to his health and vitality.”

I held my breath when everyone lifted a tea cup into the air, and I chose that precise moment to make my move.

“Your highness,” I intervened, coming around the table to grab Minho’s cup - ignoring the gasps of horror that echoed from the queens. “Shall I try it first?”

Minho blinked in surprise, looking at me like he couldn’t believe that I was standing over him. “I-I suppose.”

“In your honor, of course,” I added hastily before lifting the rim of the delicate cup to my lips. 

I could taste the poison as it slid down my throat, but I emptied most of the glass before wiping the remnants with the back of my hand. I sat the cup back on the table, swallowing hard when I felt the effects swim through my system. Thankfully, they were quickly assuaged by the potion that still lingered in my bloodstream. It worked just as I had imagined, and I reached out for Minho’s chair to overcome a brief bout of dizziness.

Everything was silent around me, but I forced a smile as I bowed to the King who was regarding me with a peculiar look. In the meantime, I was determined to finish the rest of the tea so that I could pour Minho something untainted. But I never anticipated further interruptions:

“I’d like to have the honor as well,” Felix said with a smirk, and I glared at him when he rose from his seat.

“It’s not necessary,” I insisted, but Felix jerked the cup away from me with an acute speed.

“But I insist,” Felix said, and he gave me a knowing look - one that said he was aware of the situation.

“Felix-” I tried again, but he had already lifted the rim to his lips - downing the rest of its contents with a sigh.

“Is this funny to you?” the King growled, and Felix simply chuckled.

“I’ve caused enough mischief for one afternoon,” he said, and he stumbled on his way to the exit. 

“Fool,” I whispered because I knew that Felix could potentially die without treatment. Thus, I bowed once again to the king before running out of the room in search of him.

It didn’t take me long to find him - collapsed in the remote corridor outside of the room.

“Prince Felix!” I gasped, and I ran the remaining steps before dropping down next to his crumbled form. “Are you insane?”

Felix rolled over onto his back, chest heaving, as he fixed me with a familiar smirk. “How is it fair that you get to have all the fun?

“You knew,” I hissed, cradling his head on my lap as I reached into my robes for the extra potion. “Drink this,” I insisted, holding the vile up to his pale lips.

Felix obeyed, consuming the potion before grinning up at me. “Are you furious with me, Y/N?”

“You absolute fool,” I said, resisting the urge to jostle the prince too much while he still fought to recover. “Why would you do something like that? It was poisoned.”

“But nobody would’ve ever known,” Felix said. “I do admire you, Y/N, but is it wise to stop the efforts of one plot when the same person might conceive of a dozen others?”

I sighed when I realized the wisdom of his words. “It’s a complicated matter,” I said, and the Prince narrowed his eyes.

I didn’t like the suspicious gleam in his gaze, especially when he leaned most of his weight against me for a closer examination. “You know who it is?” he asked, and his nose brushed against mine. 

“Don’t do this,” I pleaded with him because I knew that we were teetering precariously over dangerous ground with consequences that went beyond what either of us were prepared to face. It was a personal mattered that involved one of the King’s wives and her son - an issue that would lead to radical conflict.

“You won’t tell me,” Felix stated simply, and I thought I was in the clear until the prince opened his mouth again. “It must be very sinister. I’ll have to assume that it involved someone in that room.”

I swallowed hard and Felix smiled because I had just inadvertently given him the confirmation that he was seeking. “You shouldn’t meddle,” I warned him, shivering when his fingers traced along my lips.

“What I wouldn’t give to see inside that beautiful head of yours,” Felix said, and we both continued to stare at one another in awe.

But the moment was broken by the sounds of approaching footsteps, and I moved away from Felix just in time to see several guards running in our direction. “What’s wrong with him?” one of the guards demanded, and I hesitated because I had also noticed that most of the princes were arriving on the scene. 

There was every opportunity to stick to my original plan and keep everything incognito, but then Felix gave me a meaningful look, and I reluctantly relented. “He’s been poisoned.”

“Poisoned!” one of the guards exclaimed, and there was only chaos that followed. Just as I had suspected. But there were also Felix’s green eyes, and they managed to anchor me to the moment, even amidst all the noise and screaming. 

They were somehow reassuring, and I clung to them desperately when the King demanded my presence in the Throne Room.

It was an intimidating sight: kneeling before the King as he leered down at me from his throne. “Do you understand that you have no right to decide the fate of this Castle?”

I shivered at the underlying threat in his tone. “Your highness,” I said. “Forgive me. I thought it was best to solve this issue on my own as deemed by my duties.”

“Is this an admission of guilt?” The King asked. “Did you know what would happen before stepping inside that room?”

“Yes,” I said, closing my eyes and wondering if this would be my last day in the Castle.

“You knew of this plot but refused to speak up?” the King growled, and I lowered my head before him.

“Forgive me,” I once again requested softly. “I was afraid that revealing the complexities would cause the perpetrator to act out far more rashly.”

“My son almost died,” the King said, and I could see Minho shift in his seat from my peripheral vision. 

“My intention was to save him,” I said. “I wanted to let the assailant know that their plots will never work while I’m around to protect the royal family.”

The King was silent for a moment after my confession, and he considered me with a strange look. “I see,” he finally said. “I cannot punish you mage because your efforts saved Minho, but I must also give you a warning: the next time you learn of something so consequential, you will come to me and reveal everything.”

“Yes, your majesty,” I said, and I stood once more at his command. “I shall remember your words.”

“Very well,” the King said with a dismissive hand. “You may retire to your quarters.”

I made sure to offer him a polite bow before I was rapidly making my way out of the Throne Room - mind working a mile a minute. The brief intervention had allowed the the rare chance to speak to the King without his wives - one of which remained guilty of the plot to kill Minho. I could’ve spoken out against her, but there were far more complications to such an innocuous action.

Who would really believe me over the word of the Queen?

More importantly, would Felix say something about my hidden knowledge? Because he had somehow figured out that I was aware of the guilty party involved, and I had no doubt that he would question me in the future.

Yet, there were also more pressing matters to consider, such as the unexpected arrival of Minho who had somehow escaped the King’s notice. “Mage,” Minho interrupted, stopping me outside the throne room. “Could I have a word?”

“Of course, your highness,” I said, and I followed Minho as he led me further down the corridor to a quiet enclave.

“This is more private for our conversation,” Minho explained, and I was struck by the smile he gave me.

“I’m all ears, your grace,” I said, but Minho surprised me further by laughing, and he crowded me against the wall.

“I know you drank the tea to save me,” Minho said, and I startled when he reached out to touch the side of my face.

“Your highness,” I said, flushing at the unexpected contact. “W-what do you mean?”

“You don’t have to be coy with me, Y/N,” Minho said, and I gasped because it was the first time that he had ever used my real name. “I may not understand love, but I can tell when someone is trying hard to catch my attention.”

I nearly spluttered around my words when I caught onto his implication. “Y-you misunderstand-”

“Please don’t hide anymore,” Minho said, and I faltered at the desperation in his tone. “Perhaps when we get to know one another, I’ll consider bringing the prospect of marriage before my father.”

Marriage!? 

“You’re serious,” I said, and I struggled to form a single coherent sentence following Minho’s passionate declaration. 

“Shall we start tonight?” Minho continued as if I had never spoken, and his fingers burned a trail down the side of my face. 

It was obvious that he was lost to whatever perception he held of me, but I glanced to the side when I heard a noise that had not originated from myself or Minho. My eyes scanned the darkness, and I froze when I found myself caught in the snare of an intimate gaze. But I hesitated when I realized that those green irises belonged to Felix, and the look in his stare was impossible to discern.

ZKDD Day 30: Forever Family

Title: If One of Your Soulmates Told You to Go Jump in the River, Would You?

Rating: T (cussing, mentioned past character death, brief mention of infanticide)

Summary: Zuko always believed his destiny was tied to the Avatar, he just never thought it would be in this way. (Fruits Basket!AU)

Note: A/N can be found on AO3 (including a chart to figure out your atla zodiac lol) Also! I would appreciate feedback because I’m thinking of expanding on this idea more for the Zutara Big Bang :)

@zkdrabbledecember

A long time ago, the Avatar lived together in harmony with their twelve friends: the shirshu, the flying bison, the tiger seal, the jackalope, the dragon, the koi fish, the ostrich horse, the koala sheep, the winged lemur, the turtleduck, the polar bear dog, and the badgermole.

Unfortunately, those idyllic days did not last forever. Strife was brewing between the Spirit and Human Worlds, and only the Avatar was capable of restoring balance. There was no choice, but to leave the Spirit World and to live among the humans. The Avatar was heartbroken to be separated from their closest friends, but they knew they must do so, or great calamity would befall the world.

The Twelve understood why the Avatar must go, however, they could not bear to be parted from the one that had brought them all together.

“We will follow you. We will join you in bringing balance to the Spirit and Human Worlds,” the Twelve told the Avatar.

“Let us be together forever,” the Avatar responded with joy. “May we always find each other in every life.

From that day onward, the Avatar has always been accompanied by members of the Twelve. For there is nothing on this planet that is more powerful than the bond between the Twelve and the Avatar. They are destined to be together. Forever.

___

Everyone had always thought he was a fool for choosing to pursue the Avatar.

Zuko had been given two avenues to regain his honor, and he had opted to search for the mythical figure that had been missing for over a century. His crew detested his decision, and Uncle… Uncle was apathetic towards his efforts at best; most likely disappointed he could not relive his glory days through his nephew.

He knew others thought that he had given up, that he had never planned on returning to his place in the Fire Nation, that he was too weak and too much of a coward to hunt members of the Twelve. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

He would gladly struggle and fight for as long as possible because he knew his destiny. His destiny was to capture the Avatar, and the airbender’s reemergence had proven him correct. It was only a matter of time now.

The first few attempts had gone astray, but Zuko had a good feeling about collaborating with the pirates to capture the waterbender to use as bait. It didn’t matter that Uncle did not agree with his methods, and that Zuko had to set off by himself with only a small squadron. He would prove Uncle and everyone else wrong; he had to.

___

When you were one of the Twelve, touch was the most intimate of things. Any form of embrace would trigger the transformation, so most Zodiac members learnt to dance around it; learnt how to get out of the societal norms that would so often lead to falling into other’s arms.

But Katara thrived on it. She patted heads, held hands, bumped shoulders, and kissed foreheads. She loved to touch others; to get as close as possible. She knew it was dangerous, but she loved it. She wanted others to know that she cared for them.

Before Aang, she had only ever been hugged by her family. Some of her favorite memories were of when her mom would let her transform and spend the whole day cuddling together in the furs. (Only under duress would she admit that Sokka carrying her around like a polar dog pup were also some of her favorites).

For her whole life, an embrace had only ever been a signifier of the utmost trust and affection. Hugs and cuddles were sacred, not a thing to be feared.

However, that was before Aang and before leaving the Southern Water Tribe and before seeing the wanted posters of rumored members of the Twelve.

That was before Zuko had snuck up on her, said that spirits awful line, and sent her careening back into the arms of one of the pirates. That was before time stopped for a moment and her stomach dropped and she thought to herself: fuck .

___

Katara expected to see a few things when she opened her eyes:

The puff of smoke from her transformation? Check.

Her pile of clothes on the ground? Check.

Pirates and Fire Nation soldiers charging at her? Check.

What Katara was never expecting to see —not even after a thousand years — was a poof of smoke similar to her own clearing up, and a turtleduck emerging from a pile of red and gold armor.

Before her mind could even form the question of what in the Four Nations just happened, one of the soldiers shouted, “Prince Zuko is a traitor! Seize him and the tiger seal!”

“Oh no you don’t,” the Pirate Captain sneered, “We’ll be the ones gettin’ the reward for the turtleduck and tiger seal.”

And then all hell broke loose.

With all of her might, Katara bounced her way between the fighting pirates and soldiers, biting and tail whipping as she went. She needed to get to the river; outswimming them was the only plausible method of escape.

She was almost there, the water practically touching her flippers, when she heard a familiar raspy voice command, “Get back! I’m your Prince!” followed by hisses of pain.

Zuko.

Her enemy. The boy who relentlessly chased them around the world, trying to kidnap Aang and destroy any chance at peace. And the boy, who apparently was one of her soulmates. One of the people she had shared countless lifetimes with maintaining balance. The boy who was near the water, but was too busy breathing fire at the advancing troops to notice his surroundings.

She didn’t know why he spent so long pursuing them when he could have joined them, but she did know that he needed some help. And Katara never turned her back on people who needed her.

So she screamed, “Zuko! Go jump in the river!”

___

Zuko did not know what was happening.

He did not know why one of his men stumbling into him caused a tiny explosion. He did not know why he’s suddenly the size of a cat. He did not know why he appeared to have a beak and a shell now. He did not know why his men were calling him a traitor.

Zuko only knew one thing: the spirits hated him.

So he ran because the men chased him. He screamed because they further besmirched his honor with lies. He breathed fire because they attacked him.

He was disconnected from reality; the only thing that felt real was the pounding in his ears and the churning of his stomach.

“Zuko! Go jump in the river!”

It was the waterbender. The tiger seal. She called to him from the river bank, slapping her fins against the water for emphasis. “Jump in the river!”

So he jumped.

___

There was a saying in the Fire Nation navy: A decent sailor knows the changes of the tides; a great sailor knows the cycles of the Twelve .

As important as the knowledge contained in the official seafaring manual was, it did not bring glory to their homeland. Any average Lee could spew off the fuel consumption rate of a Fire Nation cruiser; only the greatest of men could present the Fire Lord with a member of the Twelve in chains. And even then, only the best of them would be permitted to carry out the execution themselves.

Captain Zhao had been granted this honor thirteen times. In fact, he was the most successful hunter of the Twelve in the history of the Fire Nation. Not even the Dragon of the West, with a measly count of three kills, could compare to him. There was a reason the old man was wasting away on a dilapidated rust bucket, and Zhao was being heralded as the Zodiac Killer.

Yes, Zhao was quite proud of his accomplishments, but he wanted more. He had brought thirteen members of the Twelve to their knees before the people of Caldera City, but four of those had been repeats. And where was the glory in that?

No one had ever managed a complete set, but Zhao would most definitely be the first. The jackalope, koi fish, and turtleduck were the only ones left.

The jackalope was still at large in the Earth Kingdom, but was most likely under the protection of Omashu’s Mad King. After dealing with the Northern Water Tribe, Omashu would be the next stronghold to fall to the Fire Nation.

The koi fish had always been the trickiest of the Twelve to catch. This was not due to the koi fish being particularly intelligent or skillful, but simply because it was a creature cursed with terrible luck. Most parents were terrified when their newborn transformed into a fish, and by the time they realized what was happening; their fish child had already suffocated. As a result, it was impossible to know for sure how many incarnations of the koi fish had been reborn since the start of the Hundred Year War.

The koi fish of the Zodiac would be an excellent addition to his collection, but Zhao had it on good authority that there’s an even better prize in the Northern Water Tribe. Besides, it’s been at least two decades since the North had presented the Fire Nation with one of the Twelve, perhaps Zhao would come across a pleasant surprise during his expedition.

And then there was the turtleduck. After confirmation that the previous turtleduck had been an Earth Kingdom warrior, Zhao had been scouring the Poles for rumors. He had assumed the next would be of Water descent, but oh how shortsighted he had been.

How could he have forgotten how often Earth liked to mix themselves with others? The warrior had not been an Earth incarnation, but one of Air.

The current cycle was Fire. And after reading the memo on his desk about reports of pirates seeing a scarred boy transform into a turtleduck, he knew exactly who to look for.

Zhao had always enjoyed the hunt, but this was shaping up to be his favorite. It’s not everyday you get to kill a prince, after all.

A Defense of Cait Sith

Plushie Princess Saga:

A Hundred Ways to Put the WRO Back Together

A Hundred Ways to Wreck Shinra HQ

Reeve’s Adventures in Babysitting and World Saving:

And Take a Stand at Shinra

While There’s Still Time

On Plushies and Oppenheimer:

A Defense of Cait Sith

~

“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent.” - J. Robert Oppenheimer

I was eight-years-old when I played Final Fantasy VII for the first time, exactly one year after its release. Like many 90’s gamers, FFVII was a turning point into the world of RPG’s from which I’ve yet to recover. Kids today will never understand the coming of age that occurred somewhere between Yoshi’s Island and grappling with the ethos of Avalanche blowing Sector 1’s reactor sky high. It’s no surprise that my 3rdgrade brain found an essence of familiarity to cling to amid the existential dread and ecoterrorism that was the greatest game ever made.

Cait Sith was the cute, cuddly party member that validated my love of cats and ignited my adoration for moogles. I would relentlessly make room for him in my party, despite his terrible combat stats, and hurl endless Phoenix Downs every time he fell.

He was quirky, he fought with a megaphone, his limit breaks were oddly sparse compared to the rest of the cast, and his home base of Gold Saucer looked like a unicorn threw up all over a casino. What’s not to love?

According to recent Reddit threads, Youtube comments, and rage bloggers, apparently a lot.

The advent of the long awaited FFVII remake rightfully caused a massive revival of the excitement first felt by long time fans of the franchise. The release date has been confirmed for March 3, 2020 – two days before my 30thbirthday. Not gonna lie; feels like the universe aligned to bless the official passing of my youth with this nostalgia bomb.

It’s with this love of all things FFVII in mind that I’d like to formally pose a defense of the game’s most hated character.

Cait Sith/Reeve, this one’s for you.

The Laughter

We first meet the lively, dancing robo-moogle and cat combo in Gold Saucer and we’re not quite sure if this strange entity should count as one party member or two. Either way, he joins your crew as the quintessential comic relief with nary a backstory in sight. That’s right; you are now the proud owner of Cait Sith. A “fortune teller” by trade, Cait Sith’s motivations remain as murky as your party’s future.

At first glance, it’s easy to pass Cait Sith off as a filler character, the cute one added for giggles. The one the writers never bothered to flesh out because, let’s face it, that moogle is mostly fluff anyway. The “most useless character” title isn’t entirely unjustified.

If this was where Cait Sith’s story ended.

I still remember the day my older brother announced that he’d read ahead in the player’s guide (this used to be a thing, kids) and discovered Cait Sith was a Shinra spy. I’m pretty sure I went through all the stages of grief before settling on denial and assuming he was playing a joke on me. Surely, my favorite slot machine loving companion couldn’t be a traitor.

Enter Reeve Tuesti, the man behind the moogle. He’s the head of Urban Development at Shinra Electric Power Company. He wears a signature blue suit to work everyday. He hates board meetings. He’s not fond of his coworkers. Like Tifa, he’s an introvert. And he’s the guy who engineered the Mako reactors.

If Hojo is Dr. Frankenstein, Reeve is Oppenheimer. The tragedy of the monsters we create is always greater when it’s a monster we loved. Where the other Shinra execs are motivated by greed, power, and a desire to play God, Reeve is the only Shinra higher up we encounter with genuine empathy and a sense of advocacy for the people. It’s easy to assume that Mako reactors would improve lives, but as Marlene so eloquently asks, “isn’t that because we were taking away from the planet’s life?”

When faced with the guilt of a design gone horribly wrong, those in authority have two choices; own the guilt or double down. And Reeve doubles down.

I’ve never been a fan of the way modern RPG’s have everything clearly spelled out and spoon fed to the gamer. The reason we don’t need further backstory for Reeve is because his character arc is already apparent if we do a bit of digging. I was surprised to learn that the common conjecture behind the exact mechanics of Cait Sith involved him being a remote controlled, autonomous but non-sentient robot. Given that assumption, it’s fair to say that Cait Sith is a worthless character who lacks emotion or consequence.

One opinion I’ve seen trending is why not simply make Reeve join the party, sans the giant stuffed animal? After all, we’d get to see how he grapples with his role in Shinra and eventual betrayal of Avalanche.

Two words; cognitive dissonance. You have to question what kind of 35-year-old executive creates a plushie cat proxy to begin with. See I’ve never thought of Reeve and Cait Sith as separate. The gritty psychological mechanics that are Reeve have always been there, plush or human. Reeve has developed an alter that’s effectively a form of escape. The assertion that Cait Sith lacks consequence isn’t false – a robot carries out its duty, incapable of harboring guilt, blame, or moral repercussion. That’s a pretty darn good way to remain detached enough to stab your party members in the back!

Cait Sith is also an outlet for everything Reeve’s repressed executive life lacks. As Cait Sith, he’s silly and carefree, though not completely unfamiliar. Glimpses of Cait Sith’s witty quips are echoed in Reeve’s mock nicknames for his colleagues – “Kyahaha” and “Gyahaha” respectively. When life is tough to take, we laugh so we don’t scream.

Plus, the idea of Reeve controlling Cait Sith in real time, much like an MMORPG avatar, is just plain hilarious. I’ve always imagined him as the kind of guy who rolls up to his 9-5 office job, pops open a spreadsheet to look busy, and boots up Cait Sith in the other tab. He’s the OG Aggretsuko, the guy making Jim Halpert faces at the camera every Shinra board meeting.

And I get you, Reeve. Really, I do.

The Tears

Cait Sith’s sacrifice was a cop out for killing off a real character. Why didn’t Reeve just die instead of the plushie?

First of all, how dare you.

Second, not all deaths need be literal.

A pervading theme throughout FFVII is the concept of identity. Are we born into an existence we have no control over or can we choose who we are day by day? It’s easy to want to be someone else, the First Class Soldier who sweeps in, keeps his promise, and saves the girl. Our reality is often less of a fairy tale and riddled with our own failures.

By the time the party reaches The Temple of the Ancients, the line where Cait Sith ends and Reeve begins is blurring. Reeve speaks more often as “himself” through the plushie and the nuances in their speech and mannerism are blending. It’s no accident that this shift happens as Reeve becomes more at ease around Avalanche, ultimately switching sides.

I’ve heard a lot of criticism on the seeming lack of motivation to Reeve’s redemption. If we examine the cognitive dissonance theory that governs his character, the switch is far less sudden.

Cait Sith’s death is necessitated by Reeve’s accountability. The innocent plushie alter isn’t working anymore. It’s not enough to keep him from recognizing the horrors he’s been complicit to. Sacrificing this part of himself is the ultimate acknowledgment of culpability. It’s arguably a more important death than if Reeve actually martyred himself. Like Cloud, he no longer needs to be “someone else” and has started down the path of doing what only he, and not Cait Sith, can; stopping Shinra.

There will be more wonderful, fluffy moogle-cat plushies, but the need to disassociate completely is gone. He’ll confront whatever comes without a crutch – or in this case a teddy bear. Reeve reminisces that the original doll was “special” and we end with Cait Sith reminding him(self) not to forget this.

The Silence

In 1953, J. Robert Oppenheimer was denied all security clearance and effectively blacklisted by the McCarthy administration for his strong opposition to nuclear warfare.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a place we never hoped or expected to be in, surrounded by people we despise, and convinced the world is going straight to heck. We can either get out of dodge or stay.

If Reeve had indeed sacrificed himself rather than Cait Sith, this would simply have been yet another escape. He stays. He works. He gets Marlene and Elmyra out of Midgar. He spies on Shinra. He finally tells Gyahaha to stick it. He goes on to head the WRO and never stops advocating for the people.

Reeve’s not a fighter. He can barely get by with a handgun in Dirge of Cerberus and Cait Sith’s megaphone is no Masamune. Despite this, he takes a big risk by being the only insider on the team. We’re pretty sure Shinra doesn’t share Reeve’s opposition to capital punishment either.

Maybe this is why I’ve always loved Cait Sith/Reeve. I’m intrigued to see if Square Enix will add any further insight into our favorite plush moogle-cat-spy, but if they don’t, that’s alright too. Cait Sith is still a pretty solid character. After my brother spoiled one of the game’s major plot twists for me, I ended up reading the player’s guide for myself. And he was right. But he was also wrong. I recall marching proudly into the living room to declare that while yes, Cait Sith was a traitor, he was also a hero.

So fight your fight. Fail and fall. Hurl some Phoenix Downs and get right back up again.

Forbidden

PART FOUR - FINAL PART

Sirius x reader Post-azkaban Sirius Lives Word count: 7900+

Warnings: swearing, smut, 18+ NSFW Disclaimer: all characters are assumed 18+

A/N: WOWEE! Apologies if you were expecting a ‘quick’ read. I loved writing this and workplace romances gahhh! as always feedback is most welcome. I hope you enjoy my loves. xx

A workplace romance cannot possibly go awry, can it?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next few weeks followed a similar pattern for you and Sirius. You both acted polite and professionally towards each other at work, saving all your pent up frustration for the evenings.  

It was glorious. Sirius was not as disciplined as you at keeping his hands to himself. He was often stealing kisses behind closed doors, letting his fingers brush across your arms, waist, arse, whatever he could reach as he passed you in the corridor even circling your thighs with his thumb under the table as you were seated next to each other in a meeting.  

You were fairly ‘harsh’ on him regarding these indiscretions, saving his punishments for the evening by teasing him relentlessly and holding out until you literally had him on his knees begging.  

You had a sneaking suspicion that he quietly enjoyed this due to the fact these ‘punishments’ did not stop him pushing boundaries at work.  

~~~  

Things at work weren’t all rosy however. Antheia was getting suspicious. You never had time after work anymore and she was closing in to the fact you must be dating someone. She was also complaining that Sirius always seemed to choose you to to come to first for questions, issues, PR briefs even though you had requested he do the opposite.  

You almost told her countless times, always faltering at the final moment. It had gone too far and nothing you thought could soften the blow that you were sleeping with Sirius.  

Truth be told you weren’t only sleeping with him, you had been on dinner dates, weekend activities and spent a few Saturday nights getting to know his friends.  

However hiding the truth from Antheia was eating you up. It all came to a head one evening at your flat. The guilt had turned to anger at yourself and with no one to take your anger out on you turned to the nearest person: Sirius.  

It was a stupid argument, the catalyst: his toothbrush. You found it in your bathroom and realised he must have brought it intending to leave it here.  

Filled with mixed emotions of longing and turmoil at what was essentially turning into a forbidden relationship you picked a fight, did your best at pushing him away suggesting things were moving too fast and you think you should slow down and see other people, Antheia being the subtext of that argument. It was an avalanche of irrationality. It started small but the more you got going the bigger your argument became until you couldn’t see what you were saying or what it meant – you were blind to your pain and just wanted it out.  

“What do you mean?” Sirius had sat up, stiff backed and turned white.  

“I don’t know!” You huffed out. “I mean you are still free to see other people, this can’t last whatever it is – we are just work colleagues after all.” You could see that had stung him.  

“Just work colleagues? If this is about the toothbrush I can remove it?”

“No it’s not about the stupid toothbrush!” You were in full flight now – tears streaming down your cheeks, he tried to reach you but you shook him off.  

“This fucking hurts Sirius.”

“What does, I don’t understand?”

“You, me, us! We are not supposed to be together!”

“What, why?

You were shaking with sobs now. You couldn’t tell him why - the karma of hiding this from your friend had finally turned up and it was a big one. Anguished and thinking of Antheia you yelled, “I wasn’t supposed to be with you, I have ruined everything!”

Blanching and swallowing  hard Sirius scrapped together the only conclusion that made sense to him, “Is there someone else?”

Technically there was: Antheia but not in the way he was thinking however you nodded sadly not registering that colossal mistake.  

“Right.” He said his lips tight.  

Waiting for a berating you deserved you closed your eyes. Instead Sirius got up walked out the front door slamming it shut. You heard the roar of his motorbike as he sped off into the night.  

~~~  

You didn’t sleep a lot over the next few weeks, and from the looks Antheia gave you across the board room table each morning, your heavy concealer was not doing anything to dampen the dark circles under your eyes.

It was killing you to stay away from him and stomach this hurt but part of you knew that this is what you deserved for getting into a forbidden situation.  

To dilute the pain you focused on work , turning up early after not enough sleep and staying late. Your boss was delighted but stopped by your desk more than necessary for ‘a quick chat’ you knew she had noticed your change in demeanour  and was checking up on you. This would have made you smile if you weren’t so numb.  

“Y/N?” She cautiously approached your desk. You looked up and saw her eyes, a maternal concern in them. “Not that I’m not grateful for all the long hours you are putting in but I seem to be missing some reports for the Auror office?”

“Oh.” You stumbled. “Those are with Antheia, I gave her the briefs I had in exchange for finishing the budgeting quarter.”

“Got it, but now that you have finished the budget could you please help Perenna with the Auror briefs? They have been piling up this week.”

Oh shit.  

“Yes sure, happy to.” You gave her an exhausted smile.  

You stood up. Ok. It’s ok you can do this. Yes you have probably, definitely, irreparably broken any kind of friendship, camaraderie, or rapport with Sirius but you had to put work first. You couldn’t very well get a new job, could you? Or could you? No! No, don’t be dramatic.  

You were brought out of your inner monologue by Antheia calling your name, “Y/N! Guess what?!”

“Shoot.” Feigning interest you turned to her.  

“I’m going out for drinks with Sirius tonight!” She looked ecstatic.  

Your stomach dropped to the floor and you were barely able to squeak out an “Oh…ok you are… that’s…great…”

She shook your shoulder too excited to see the blood draining from your face.  

“Yes I took the bull by the horns and asked him.”

“Oh you did? I thought you wanted to play it coy?” You needed to sit down soon.  

“I did but if I don’t go for it I will never have the chance, he’s cutting his contract short – just heard it from Moody this morning.”

Ok you really needed to sit down.  

“He’s what??” Feeling the room spin now.

Oh no no no no no was this because of you?

~Yes of course stupid! What else would it be?~  

Your conscience was really not holding back.

“Yeah Moody tried to talk him out of it, has asked him to take the weekend to think it over.” She gave you a soft smile and moved over to her desk.  

Before you could control it, your legs were walking you towards the elevator and your fingers were pushing the buttons directing the lift to Sirius’ floor.  

The Sirius you know wouldn’t give up so easily but then again, he did have a dramatic streak. You had only found that out during one of the weekends you met his friends and a tipsy Remus Lupin had told you what he was like when he lost any kind of card game. Wanting to see this for yourself, the next day you suggested a game of poker and boy the man could pout!

His office door was open and he was sitting at his desk reading a memo. You knocked and he looked up. His expression was unreadable – he didn’t invite you in let alone utter a greeting so you hesitantly entered, moving tentatively towards his desk.  

“I heard you are leaving.” Breaking the silence you stood before him willing him to speak.  

He nodded so quickly, if you had blinked you would have missed it.  

“I hope that is not because of me, Sirius?”

He said nothing and continued to stare at you.  

“Because if it is, I think I need to tell you something…” oh how to even begin. You stared at the floor and when he didn’t tell you to leave you took that as a sign to continue.  

“I am so sorry if I disappointed you…no I know I did – you don’t deserve it – I definitely do….and being with you had been the best months of my life. You really, you made me… no make me…” you collected yourself clearing your throat to stop your cracking voice and corrected yourself.

“You make me…” Argh, you closed your eyes hating the words for making you stumble.  

“But I shouldn’t have…it wasn’t right – not you!” You hastily added. “You were so right but it was killing me.”

“Because you are seeing someone else, I get it.” Sirius had finally spoken and his voice was soft and clear.  

“What? No!” You so desperately wanted him to understand but for all the wrong you had felt you had done to Antheia you couldn’t and wouldn’t break at least one promise to her by telling Sirius she likes him.  

“I’m not seeing anyone else.”

He looked genuinely very confused at this point. “But you said there was someone else?” Sirius’ voice was rushed now, he had stood up behind his desk and looked at you intently, eyebrows furrowed. God he was sexy when he was stern.  

“There is but not in the way you are thinking.” You ran your hands through your hair in frustration. Why? WHY! You should have told Antheia all along and save yourself, but mainly him, from this torture.  

“Y/N, I’m not here to play games, are you or are you not seeing someone?” Sirius had moved round his desk towards you.  

“No…but I” But you never finished your sentence. A piercing alarm went off signalling an emergency situation and all Aurors needed to move and be briefed.  

Sirius gave you one last look before shaking his head and saying: “I can’t, I’ve got to go.”

Holding back tears you nodded swallowing a sob.  

~~~  

“AH FUCK IT!” Antheia was fuming when you returned to your office.  

“Typical! I finally get a date with Sirius and suddenly a dragon gets loose in Shoreditch dragging all the Aurors away!” If you weren’t so upset you would have laughed at her enraged face.  

“A dragon? Surely that’s Magi-Creatures department?” You questioned.  

“It is but the Aurors have to go check for foul play.”

“How do you know this anyway?” You asked her.  

Strangely, Antheia blushed before answering. “Melvin told me, he just sent a message – he was there before dealing with a mishap – apparently that’s how the dragon got out.”

“What’s going on with you two?”

“Well nothing, we have caught up a few times and I guess we talk a lot…he’s nice.”

You looked at her, “then why do you want to go out with Sirius, sounds like you have a dreamboat already?”

She looked down at her desk and shrugged. “ I don’t know, I’ve lusted over Sirius since Christmas I guess, before I met Melvin, I didn’t really think about it.”

You sighed smiling at her, “Well, lucky you having two men to choose from.”

Antheia frowned at you. “Aren’t you dating someone?”

“No, no one.” You responded sadly.  

“You’ve been MIA of late, I thought you were seeing someone?”

You just smiled weakly at her,  turning back to your desk and said over your shoulder: “Don’t worry, you’ll still have your date – I’ll take care of any PR situation for today.” Godric, it was the least you could do you thought to yourself.  

~~~  

BANG! BANG! BANG!

“Mmfph.” You rolled over in your sleep.  

BANG! BANG! BANG!

It was getting louder. You rubbed your eyes and looked at the clock: 1230am

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Someone was knocking, none too gently, on your front door.

“I’m coming! I’m COMING ahhh.” You yelled as you fumbled around in the dark looking for clothes. Since you and Sirius had started to sleep in the nude, you continued to do so liking how the sheets felt over your skin.  

Stubbing your toe twice and hitting your head on the bed post you managed to pull on an over-sized shirt of sorts as you made your way downstairs to the front door.  

It had occurred to you that the bagging could be from burglars or bad wizards but what kind of thieves or nefarious characters announce themselves before they rob you? Curiosity got the better of you and rubbing your sore head you opened the door to see Sirius, clearly drunk, leaning against the doorway, his hand steadying him.  

Seeing you he moved his hand to your shoulder shifting you aside as he stumbled into your flat.

“Wherrriss he?” He slurred.

“Where is who?” Fuck he was drunk.  

“Your ‘fancy man!’” He said the words ‘fancy man’ in a high pitched Victorian accent before hiccuping twice.  

“Sirius What?” You held your hands out to try and steady him but he pushed you away and made to move upstairs.  

“I wanna word.”

“Sirius, there is no one here!”

“Yiss theris look! You’re even wearing hisss SHIRT!” He yelled the last word while making a swiping gesture at the air in front of you and stumbling back into the banister then trying to find the start of the staircase.  

“Oh Merlin…” You palmed your face, trying to reason with a drunk person was a nightmare you best just follow him and try to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.  

“C’mere!” Sirius was climbing the stairs two at a time looking like a baby gazelle. If you weren’t so shocked at his sudden appearance you would have found the sight of Sirius Black casing your flat, pissed as a fart, looking for a mystery man rather funny.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on a date with Antheia?” You called out after him following his route into the bathroom.  

“Don’t change the subject!” Sirius called back, looking around finding the bathroom empty and moving towards your bedroom. He burst through the door and yelled ‘Expelliarmus!’ at your bed.  

Turning on the light you folded your arms leaning against the door while you waited for his eyes to adjust to the brightness. “When you have finished disarming my bed, can you please sit down? I’m worried you are going to fall over and hurt yourself..or worse, break something of mine…”

“Ha. Ha. Ha.” He deadpanned “there is s’mone here, you’re wearing hisss shirt. Wherisss ‘he?’” Sirius sat, unceremoniously, on your bed looking up at you.  

“Ok first of all, you and I are the only ones here, this is YOUR shirt – you must have left it here, and ‘he’ is nowhere because he doesn’t exist.” You paused looking at Sirius’ softening expression. “I meant what I said, I am not and have not been seeing anyone else but you.”

Sirius screwed up his face like the act of thinking was painful.  

“But then why did you break up with me?”  

As soon as he said that you realised that clearly, whatever it was between you and Sirius was more important to him than you originally thought.  

“It hurt, it hurt so fucking much Y/N!”

You sat next to him and rubbed his back. You were just starting to understand that you had kept the wrong secret and not told the correct one. Taking a deep breath you turned his face towards you and said: “I didn’t do it because I wanted to Sirius, I did it because I am a terrible friend.”

Seeing him open his mouth to query you, you pressed on, “Antheia Sirius, Antheia! She has gone on about how much she likes you basically since you arrived. I was supposed to help her date you, instead…” you swallowed. “Instead I fell for you and dated you myself.” Looking down you clasped your hands together. “I couldn’t take it anymore- things were starting to get serious and I panicked. The guilt flooded in and I felt so wretched. I’m so sorry for hurting you – I understand if you never want to see me again but please don’t leave work, you are so good at what you do and you have made it better for all of us. If it’s that bad I’ll ask to move departments.” You looked at him frantically, willing him to understand.  

Sirius’ face had not changed from that of shocked confusion since you had started talking. Now you had stopped and looked at him he opened his mouth to speak.

“Y/N?”

“Yes Sirius.”

“Y/N…I” he lifted his hand to reach for you, then dropped it adding “Y/N I think I need to lie down.”

You sighed helping him on the bed. You removed his shoes and placed your duvet over him. Turning off the light you climbed in beside him and closed your eyes. It had felt good to let all that had eaten you up out. Wondering foolishly if adding the part about falling for Sirius was a mistake, you listened to Sirius’ drunken snores, doubting if he would remember anything in the morning.

~~~  

When you woke the memory of last night and Sirius’ visit came crashing down. You turned over quietly so as not to wake him only to find the other side of the bed empty. On further inspection he was not in the bathroom nor in any other room of the flat. No note, just emptiness that the lack of his presence caused.  

You wandered aimlessly around you flat for the next hour –  too early to get ready for work and too late to go back to sleep.  

You wondered what Sirius was thinking; was he embarrassed about his outburst or just disgusted at finding himself in your bed? Did he remember anything? Not paying attention to how you were dressing yourself you half heartedly made an effort to finally get ready for work not distinguishing clothing items as you dragged them over your body. You were focusing on what you had to do – finish the confessions of last night and tell Antheia.

~~~  

“Antheia, can I have a word please?”

She looked up at you as you stood in front of her desk. “Yes sure…are you ok?”

“Just come with me.” You turned and led her towards the supply closet at the end of the hallway. Opening the door you gestured for her to follow you.  

“Y/N I repeat, are you ok? I’m only asking this because you look like you haven’t slept in eight years, you’ve just lead me to the stationery closet and you are wearing two shirts.”

“Ah shit.” You replied noticing she was right – two items of the same piece of clothing was becoming a trend for you.  

“I got dressed in the dark, there are no meeting rooms free, no I’m not ok and I don’t want anyone to overhear us.” You pinched your nose between your fingers and took a deep breath.

“Antheia, I have been seeing Sirius, it started a few months ago when we went home together after the Christmas party. I tried not to get involved but I did and I couldn’t tell you.”

Antheia lifted her eyebrows her mouth opening slightly.

You bulldozed on wanting to get the confession out of you like spitting poison, not stopping to let her speak. You told her everything right down to the part where you expected her to disown you and how truly awful you feel. “I fought against it since you told me you were interested and I was doing well until well that night then it sort of snowballed. I’m so sorry – for what it’s worth, I haven’t ever felt this bad.”

Antheia considered you for a moment. “I know.”

“You..What?” You spluttered, appalled.

“I mean, I figured. The way he looks at you and last night, our ‘date’” She signed quotation marks with her hands as you rushed, “oh my gosh yes, you had a date – listen I won’t stand in the way -I hope you can be happy and have fun…” She silenced you, waving her hands in front of your face in a ‘shushing’ gesture.

“As I was saying our ‘date’ he mainly talked about you. It was clear he is into you…if not love.”

“I’m so sorry Antheia, I ruined your date, I know you were looking forward to this.” You started to silently cry. Antheia’s face softened and she placed a hand on your shoulder.  

“Y/N, you had every right to like him but you should have told me, I went on about him and now I feel a fool.” She shook her head. “If you had told me I could have figured out sooner that the spark wasn’t there between Sirius and I…maybe I could have perused other interests.” Her eyes glazed over at this point until you sniffed bringing her back to the reality of you both standing quite close in a small store cupboard at work.

“It’s ok.” She looked at your tear stained face, “I will get over this but I may be a little annoyed for a while – you really should have just told me.” You nodded dropping your head.

“Is there anything else? I have a coffee date ahhh meeting with Melvin.” She corrected herself and blushed quickly opening the door and stepping back into the hallway.

You knew Antheia, she didn’t hold grudges but you could tell she was disappointed in you – that stung far more and you had half hoped for an angry outburst.  

Wiping your face, you brushed the front of your two shirts smoothing them out as an act of collecting yourself to head back to work.

Antheia turned back to you and caught your wrist. “For what it’s worth I think you should see Sirius, he really likes you. Drinks a bit though?” She hummed curiously before striding off.  

~~~  

“He’s not here.” Moody abruptly told you when you found Sirius’ office empty, moving to Moody’s to ask where he was.  

“Well right, I did work that part out Madeye. Judging by his empty office. When will he be in?” You smiled sweetly and a little dangerously at Moody subtly telling him not to fuck with you today. Moody eyed you for a brief second then said, “he won’t be, called in sick.” Before swiftly turning away leaving you confused and slightly panicked alone on the second floor corridor.

Your mind worked in overdrive: -no no no he can’t leave this is your fault -did Moody say he was leaving though or just not in today -he has until Monday to decide -has he decided already and written his job off? -no he is hungover, remember -but he can take a draught for that -what if he’s mortally injured? -then he wouldn’t be calling in sick would he? -well then why…?  

Your whole body sagged as the awful and most likely reason zinged through your brain: he just doesn’t want to see you.

The day moved on so slowly it was almost If the clock was in slow motion. You had performed all of your assignments, tripping through meetings, breaks, and tasks on auto pilot. All with one confused dilemma bouncing around your head: You needed to see Sirius, but you were sure he didn’t want to see you.  

By the time the clock finally hit 5pm you were out of the office like a shot, dodging colleagues and questions of Friday night pints as you raced out the door and onto the street. Too bad if Sirius didn’t want to see you, you wanted to explain how much he meant to you and how idiotic you had been so at least he didn’t leave his contract thinking you were someone you were not. Hopefully he would hear you out.

You had decided to call round to his house and ask to see him knowing that if Sirius refused to come to the door, Remus who was staying with him as he did once every month, would.

Remus indeed answered the door, appearing with a pallid complexion causing you to wince at his obvious illness. “Hi Remus, how are you? You look….well…” you trailed off.  

He smiled kindly, “nice to see you, Y/N what can I do for you?”

“I’ve come to speak with Sirius, May I?” You pointed inside; wordlessly asking entry to the house.

“I’m afraid he’s not here.” Remus looked at you with a strange expression, was it pity? You looked away before it could fully form on his face not wanting to break down in front of him.

Oh. So he didn’t want to speak with you.  

You dropped your head for the second time that day, nodding slowly and turning to leave. Before you had taken a step, Remus added “he mentioned something about visiting a haunt from last night.” Remus winked at your hopeful expression. You replied a quick thanks before rushing off.  

Which bar was Sirius at last night? Antheia had asked him so perhaps she had suggested the bar? You knew of three favourite watering holes of hers and set off to the first as fast as you could.

After several hours of aparating to every possible establishment Antheia could have taken him too last night with no luck you trudged slowly home. It was dark, cold, and you were near starving having not eaten all day.

Shoulders drooping slowly with no energy to apparate inside your flat you dragged your feet around the corner of your street and headed towards home.

As you lifted your head, nearing your house, street lamps illuminating only a few metres in front of you, you saw a figure sitting on your stoop watching you.

Hand on your wand you drew nearer, eyes adjusting to the sight you stopped and your breathing hitched.

There, sitting patiently in his black leather jacket was Sirius Black.

“Hullo Y/N.” Your legs had moved of their own accord again, you stood before him taking in his features as he stood drawing up his full height: his dark wavy hair, grey penetrating eyes, stubble rough on his sharp jaw, chest hair peeking out from his shirt which was undone quite low for an autumn night. Tight jeans shaping his athletic legs…realising you were literally looking him up and down you blushed, forming words of hopefully a greeting, “Sirius…I..I’ve been looking all over for you. Remus said you were…” his smile took you off guard, “I know, he sent me a message – he’s too cryptic sometimes he knew I was here.” He continued to look at you waiting for you to speak.

You had spent the entire day overrun with things you wanted to tell Sirius but at the moment he stood before you, everything shed from your mind and you continued to stare at his beautiful form.

Finally mustering some sort of cognitive control you muttered, “you weren’t at work today?”

“Ah yeah.” He ran his hands through his hair looking bashful. “I wasn’t feeling great and Remus had a bit of a bad night, I wasn’t there for him and he needed some help. He actually ended up helping me.”  

“Oh.” You replied eloquently.  

You both stared at each other again.

Sirius broke the silence, “what did you want to tell me?”

What you were going to say to Sirius was to explain again now he was sober, why you behaved that way you did that night. At best you hoped for Sirius to know how wonderful he is and how much he deserved. At worst, well that didn’t bear thinking about, but now him looking at you intently with his beautiful face captured in the moonlight, lips drawing you in you could only stare at him in awe. However a thought had just occurred to you: “why are you here?”

“You went looking for me everywhere to ask me why am I here?” He looked slightly amused at your confused expression.

“No I wanted to tell you, to explain to you that…well…I need you to know that…I love you.”

His eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline as he opened his mouth in shock.

“No, wait, what?!” You were scrambling.  

What the actual fuck! After hours of going over everything you wanted to say to him you went with: I love you???

Your brain was smoking, you love him? Well sure you admire him, he’s kind and clever and funny, the best shag you’ve ever had but love him? Well of course you only want to see him happy but that’s normal right? And ultimately he has made you the happiest you’d been in a long time and you couldn’t picture your future without a Sirius figure popping up…ahhh. Yep love. Great.  

“You love me?” Sirius whispered.  

Bloody heck, timing Y/N! “Yeah about that, look can we go inside please and I’ll explain?” You didn’t give him a chance to answer, and swiftly moved past him opening your front door and crossing the threshold before he had even turned around.  

You decided to stand in the kitchen fumbling with cups and a kettle.

“Y/N” Sirius called softly moving slowly towards you,

“Tea?” Not looking at him you switched the kettle on and searched for tea bags in your kitchen cupboards.

“Y/N.” He was right behind you now. You dropped your hands and let him steer your shoulders, turning you round to face him.

You stole a glance at him. He was looking at you so tenderly, a look that held compassion and kindness deep in his gaze. He opened his mouth to speak but you deftly pressed a finger to his lips halting his speech.

“Don’t.” You couldn’t take the rejection right now. Not before he knew how sorry you were for this whole mess. “Don’t speak, I know.”

“You know?” He muffled onto your finger. The vibration of his voice and friction on your skin from his stubble opened a flood gate in your nether regions which were obviously not picking up the severity of this situation.  

“I know you don’t feel the same. You can’t possibly! I have caused too much turmoil already.” You took a deep breath.

“You told me last night I hurt you and I am so sorry for that. I didn’t think you would be hurt and I certainly never assumed you would want to leave your job. I have admired you from a far ever since we met. I never imagined that you could possibly have any interest in me so I kept my feelings hidden. By the time you did, Antheia had talked my ear off about you and you were essentially forbidden, but I kept going because I started falling for you. I fell hard and when I thought about the future everything exploded, I didn’t want to start a relationship lying to you or my friend…it felt wrong and I thought the only way was to end it but you have left a gaping whole in my life and it hurts every time I move…I mean” You screwed up your eyes in pain. You didn’t want to guilt him into loving you. “…no I It doesn’t matter how I feel argh all I want you to know is that you are the most amazing, loving, incredible man, you changed my life and I will always be so grateful to have known you.” Exhaling with the effort it took to try and coerce your feelings into any semblance of meaning.

Sirius had not looked away during your admittance and he didn’t now. The seconds ticking as the silence grew was palpable.

You allowed yourself to search his eyes and found a multitude of emotions swirling: fear, surprise, lust, surety.

You had dropped your hand from his lips during your speech and in an absent-minded way lain it against his chest.

“You want me to go?” It was a question, he asked as he cupped your hand in his own holding it in place, not letting it move from his chest.

“No! No Sirius not at all, unless you want to?” He shook his head.

“I came here to apologise for my behaviour last night.” He paused looking at you. “I thought about apologising this morning but I couldn’t bear facing you so I left as soon as the dawn appeared.”

“Sirius do you remember what we talked about”

“I do.”

“So you are aware that there isn’t  and never was another man, just you…and I guess Antheia who I was referring to.”

“Yes. I am sorry for barging in. I don’t know what came over me.” He gave a side smile at this.  

“It’s fine, I deserved it.”

“You really believe that don’t you?” He asked concerned.

You didn’t reply, just nodded tears forming in your eyes.

“Ok, come with me.” Sirius took your hand and rushed out the door.

“Sirius, where are we going?”

“Last night I accepted a date with Antheia but I was not on my best behaviour…I drank too much as you soon found out.” You smiled at this remembering him attempting to climb your stairs.

“I was still upset with you and wanted to drown my sorrows. It wasn’t fair on Antheia but I don’t think she really cared.”

“What do you mean?”

“Apparate us to Antheia’s house and I’ll tell you.”

“What?”

“Come on.” He nudged you playfully. “I don’t know the address so hurry up!”

Nothing but the twinkle in his eye could have convinced you – it was addicting and right now you would do just about anything to keep it sparkling.

Appearing with a pop on Antheia’s doorstep you watched Sirius walk towards the door and knock loudly.

There was movement inside and some scrambling before Antheia opened her door looking startled. “Y/N! Sirius! Ah how can I help?”

“Y/N here still feels compelled to get you and I together even though I told her our date didn’t go well.”

What the fuck was Sirius saying?

Antheia laughed and replied “Y/N I told you today that it’s fine, I’m a big girl, you can stop punishing yourself over this if you are.” You shook your head sadly and she continued.  “You are not a bad person just be open about it – and be honest with your feelings and your friends. You know for a communications executive you aren’t very good at communicating!” She laughed at you opening and closing your mouth at this jab.  

“But you’re…” your thought had died in your mind as you became distracted at movement inside Antheia’s flat. “…you’re not alone?” Looking at Antheia fully you just realised she was wearing little clothing, a mere tee shirt over bare legs on a cool April evening.  

Antheia rolled her eyes and opened the door wider to reveal another scantily clad person.  “Melvin!” You yelled in surprise.  

“Hi Y/N, Sirius.” blushing red, Melvin moved out of sight and you looked back at Antheia.

“Yes Y/N my date didn’t go well with Sirius because I actually didn’t have feelings for him, I like Melvin – it took for our date for me to realise that and now, we’ll I don’t intend to hold back.”

Sirius chuckled and winked at Antheia.

“Ok Y/N, Sirius it’s been lovely but I have to go now, I’m…busy.”

Laughing at your perplexed face she added: “I can see this is going to take some time. We’ll talk about it Monday morning Y/N – you’re buying the coffee Ok?”

You nodded eagerly as Antheia returned Sirius’ wink and gave you a genuine smile before closing the door.

You turned to Sirius, “you knew Melvin was there? How?”  

Sirius chuckled again, grabbing your arm and disapparating you back to your living room. “Lucky guess- last night I mentioned I had seen her with Melvin a few times, she blushed so red I almost asked her if she was choking! It only took a bit of prodding from there for her to start realising her feelings for him are real and for me just a self made ideal. She seemed excited at the prospect of telling him this the next day: today.”

He looked at you intently.

“You see that’s what has happened on all of my dates after Azkaban. Everyone was expecting the idea of the me they made up in their head, no one took the time to see the reality inside and couldn’t understand when they didn’t feel the spark.” He paused and ran his finger down your cheek. “It was different with you, you see me the real me and still stick around. That’s why I decided not to give up on you even when I thought you were with someone else.”

“What are you saying Sirius?” Feeling lighter that you had in months, hope lifted its head in your mind and created flickering waves of shocks rooting you in place unable to look away from him.

“I’m saying I think I love you too, or at the very least am truly. Madly. Deeply. Falling for you.” He punctuated each word with a kiss on your cheek, neck, and jawline as he removed your coat.

Eyelids threatening to flutter shut in divine bliss and happiness at his words, it took great effort to keep them open to smile at him, cheekily saying,” I think those are song lyrics, Sirius!”

“Bugger.” He breathed. “Here I was thinking that was so smooth.” He had taken your waist in his hands and dropped more kisses on your collarbone and shoulder. You tilted your head allowing him more access as the kisses turned to licks and bites.  

Your response to his words was a loving, slow moan and he smiled into your neck uttering, “I’ll just have to prove how smooth I am in another way.”

He ran his hand down your stomach and moved it under your shirts faltering only for a split second as he noticed the double layer then shaking it from his mind. Softly stroking your abdomen, he undid your pants and inched his hand lower and lower until it came into contact with your clit. Hearing your sharp intake of breath, he circled the sensitive bead with his thumb as he pressed his middle finger against your perineum sliding it forward into you and back.  

“Fuck Sirius!” You gasped. How did he hit the right buttons every time? He quickened his pace biting your neck in the process then licking the spot he bit.  

“Godric Y/N, how are you so wet for me?” He moaned into your neck.  

Feeling alive at his touch you purred, “Oh Sirius, trust me it is never dry when you are around.”

He growled removing his hand picking  you up and placing you on the kitchen table as he feverishly devoured your mouth. Hungry, panting kisses, tongues swirling while his hands worked quickly taking off every piece of clothing in sight; yours and his.  

He gripped you to him like you were his life raft and he was a drowning man, lost at sea.

Your hands ran all over him, tracing his pectorals, his muscled biceps, scars and lines as you explored him dropping your hands down to feel his erection; hard as a rock and already dripping with desire.

He let out a sharp hiss as you took him in your hand and began to massage slowly along his shaft.

“Two can play that game, Y/N.” He growled looking at you before reaching down and resuming his touch on your clit, adding a long finger inside you and curling it at just the right angle. “God you are beautiful.” He was one had holding your waist, the other quickly bringing you to the brink. He twitched every now and then as your hand on his cock was revving him up in the most incredibly way.

You noticed he was holding himself back. You had had enough experience with Sirius to tell. He was teasing you, torturing you slowly. He had twice now got you to the edge of orgasm only to stop his movements on your clit to pause and kiss you or flick your nipples with his tongue. The third time he did this you caught a mysterious glint in his eye and he couldn’t quite suppress a tell tale smirk. He was ruining you and enjoying every second of it. A sweet, excruciating punishment perhaps for time spent apart.

You loved it when he did this. When he took control, he was a natural dominant and you were only too happy to play subservient, especially when his role sent you to heaven and back often three times a night.

But tonight, you decided, was the night to turn this arrangement on its head.

“Stop!” You cried.

Sirius let go of your nipple from between his teeth, looking up at you with concern.

“Y/N is everything alright?”

“No Sirius! But it will be if you follow me.” The dominant tone in your voice got his attention but before he could say anything you took his hand, placed it firmly on your arse and squeezed it forcing him to grip you painfully. Merlin, it felt good.

“I want you to stop teasing me or I will make this very very hard for you.” You firmly gripped his cock as you said this and it throbbed beautifully.

“What do you want me to do?” Sirius’ voice came out as a rasp and looking into his eyes you could see the pupils dilate until his eyes were almost black with desire.

“I want you to take me right here, right now. I want to feel you deep inside me as I know only you can go. I want to rock against you as you fill me up taking every inch of me with you and I want you to come inside me as you scream my name.”

If there was any grey left  in his eyes it was gone now, they had blown dark with incredible desire. Sirius had always relished being loved by women but never had someone nearly made him come with just words. He so rarely was not in control during sex and the fact that you were reducing him to a dripping, shaking mess was thrilling.

Giving him a helpful nudge you guided him by his cock closer to you, tilting your hips upwards. His actions were instant; the hand gripping your arse pulled you to the edge of the table and your folds to the tip of his cock which was aching.

Leaning up to lick his earlobe you whispered: “now fuck me, Sirius.”

He slammed into you, gripping both you and the table for resistance.

“Oh fuck!”

You loved the exquisite feeling of Sirius being inside you, the way he pumped in and out, touching you everywhere and completely satisfying you.

When he wasn’t kissing you sloppily he was panting in your ear telling you how tight you were, how good you felt, and how much he missed you.

“I missed you too Sirius, oh Godric you feel good!” You clenched your walls around him as he thrust, rocking back matching his rhythm. “Yes keep doing that, right there!” He was hitting a spot that was building inside of you. Growing stronger and stronger, higher and higher until…

“OH FUCK! SIRIUS!” You came, sparks flashing in front of you as you clung to him experiencing a climax that wasn’t stopping. “Oh God, Sirius it’s still going…” knowing how your pleasure turns him on and that this might push him over the edge too, you kept talking, your words barely distinguishable amongst a nonsense of moans until he heard you say: “please come for me Sirius, I love it when you come.” Hearing your voice seductively encouraging him mixed with the motions of your body, and your mouth on his neck threw him over the edge. He gripped your body, causing what you were sure would be delicious marks on your skin.  He couldn’t hold you close enough when he stilled inside you yelling your name as he came.

He was still coming seconds later when you clenched, tightening your walls around his cock causing him to jolt, groan, and bite your neck as the last spurts of his come stopped.

He stayed there, biting and kissing your neck, hands still clutching you as he rocked slightly inside of you before pulling out.

Panting heavily, not trusting your legs to hold you up, you stayed seated on the table. Sirius had his head resting on your shoulder, arms propping  him up either side of you as he shook away the spots dancing in front of his eyes.

Breathing slowly coming back he looked up at you, your glistening forehead, chest rising and falling with every pant, you looked like a dream.

“Y/N, that was…Oh wow…it was…”

“Fuck!” You exhaled.

“Yes!” He laughed, straightening up and only wobbling slightly.

He took your hand and you jumped off the table as he pulled you to him. Holding you tightly and kissing your head.

You were both still standing like that several minutes later and would have continued to do so had your leg not started to cramp.

Breaking apart and rubbing your thigh you announced: “I need tea, Sirius tea?”

“Sure.” He walked slowly around the room picking up various items of clothing until he found his jeans and shirt popping them on.

Excusing yourself to the bathroom you returned in new underwear and a tee shirt to find him splayed out on your couch, two teas on the coffee table, hot and steaming.

Looking at the strip of abdomen visible as his shirt rode up and following that to the obvious bulge in his pants you licked your lips. God! You had just had sex, mind blowing sex and here you were still longing for the man.

He noticed and smirked, “like what you see Y/N?”

“You know it.” You winked at him, grabbing a tea and situating yourself half on his lap and half on the couch. “If you lose the pants and shirt I could possibly be persuaded to letting you stay the night!”

He laughed, sat up and placed his arms around you kissing you deeply before looking at you and clearing his throat.

“I meant what I said Y/N, I am falling for you,  if I haven’t already. It wasn’t said to make you feel better, I really meant it.”

You stroked his hair. “I know and I meant what I said, I love you. It feels good to say how I feel so I’m not taking it back. Hmmm…” You sipped your tea, contemplating, “being open when you are scared of the reaction is actually quite liberating.”  

“Mmmm you should do it more!” Sirius teased you.

“Well Ok then…” you also cleared your throat: “Sirius, that was the best sex of my life and I would quite like it to happen again and again for the foreseeable future as well as seeing you, but first…” there was a knock at the door. “Excellent timing, first we need to eat so I ordered us some food.”

A huge grin broke out on Sirius’ face as he watched you get up and make your way to the door, “Oh Merlin Y/N, if I didn’t love you before this would do it!”

You laughed as you opened the door and accepted the order, not noticing you were still in your underwear and giving the delivery man an indecent view.

You were so happy however that even if you had noticed, you wouldn’t have cared.

---

Tag list: @evyiione @belladonnarey @virgilwrites @emmamass24 @sirius-lysad @riddikuluslypotter @mylovelykelsifer @sly-vixen-up2nogood @ashkuuuu

Omae Gotoki: WN review

 To put it simply, Omae Gotoki is a masterpiece. I’ll try to keep this short review spoiler-free, there’s a high probability no one will ever read it but damn even if just one person reads it two years from now I’ll feel like my job is complete.

Omae Gotoki began as Web Novel on naoru by kiki, the author posted relentlessly and completed the story in a very short time, then they began publishing it in LN format and it eventually got a bimonthly manga adaptation by non other than Minakata Sunao, author of Akuma no Riddle and many yuri doujinshi. The LN, WN and manga have some differences in the story and style, the LN is definitely more polished, but I’ll talk about the WN since it’s complete.

The setting is a classical medieval fantasy with RPG elements thing, characters and monsters have stats and one attribute, some of them are common and some other are unique, there are also items that modify stats; common gear doesn’t really do much, while uncommon and up gear usually boost stats and have special effects, there are also cursed items that decrease stats and have special effects as well, but these are always things like ‘increases the user’s pain sensitivity’ or things that straight up kill the user, so yeah, no one uses them. The overall power of a character is calculated by adding all stats together.

The main character is Flum Apricot, a country girl who has the unique attribute ‘Reverse’ and whose all stats are 0. She somehow got summoned by Origin, the god of that world, to partake in a crusade against the Demon Lord, along with other people who either have an unique attribute as well or are have made a name for themselves through hard work. Most of that info and more you can find by reading the synopsis in any LN/WN site, so I’ll just concentrate on telling you why it’s so great. Omae Gotoki is the perfect combination of action, fantasy, eldritch horror, romance and slice of life. It’s a dramatic WN with very vivid depictions of gore, detailed and entertaining fights, interesting characters, a heartwarming love story and just a touch slice of life, which is there to remind us what is Flum fighting for. The plot becomes darker as the story advances forward and the characters develop accordingly. If I gotta choose one thing that I absolutely loved is how the main character is not an all-loving heroine, nor is she an edgelord who hates everything and everyone. She goes through some fucked up shit and some events have a massive psychological impact on her, she grows and learns from her mistakes, she’s scarred by some things and people and still decides to move forward and grasps on the strands of hope along the story, nonetheless her might is not unbreakable and other characters, in particular her love interest Milkit, are the ones who push her forward on those times. Something I’d love to explain further is how her sense of morality’s just... not something you would expect from a character like her, and it’s made evident and is even commented by other characters time and time again on the story, but I think I’d have to spoil some plot points if I go further than that. Now, for the love story, I’m gonna go ahead and admit I’m not a big fan of love stories in action/horror/whatever because I feel like it sidetracks the plot and sometimes doesn’t even add anything. But boy, do I love the main romantic subplot in Omae Gotoki. I’m calling it a subplot, but it’s actually integral part of the story, a lot of the plot would change drastically if it was omitted, and in my opinion, it would change for the worst. Milkit and Flum make such an amazing pair, they always support each other, but because of both of their scarred mental states their relationship is very co-dependent. They have one of the most accurate co-dependency relationship I’ve ever seen in any medium, it depicts two persons who can’t be separated anymore because only they are capable of understanding each other since they’ve both been through hell. It’s stated their relationship is not normal, fruit of the horrible things they’ve lived together. Their interactions and view of each other are commented and analyzed by other characters and the author themselves. I need to point out it’s a super slow-burn romance, but even so it’s super interesting to read, sometimes it’s tragic, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s heartwarming and since they’re teenagers trying to figure out what the heck this doki doki in their chest is, they also have their awkward teenager moments, which I found both adorable and hilarious. Now for the warnings: as mentioned before, this story depicts gruesome and violent fights, body horror, gore, lots of blood, borderline eldritch abominations and it gets worse the more the story advances. There are also some heavy scenes involving suicide, torture, homicide and/or abuse. Finally, two of the side couples depict relationships that some people could have trouble with. To put it simply, there are some underage characters that get paired with much older characters, nothing explicit is ever shown on the WN, but for one pairing there are some heavy implications they engage in sexual activities. So yeah, if you can stomach most of that, I’d strongly advice reading the WN which is complete. The LN is being released and has been licensed, the English translation of the first volume will be released on October 2020. So far, English translation of the WN cover up to chapter 24. I read it using Google Translate and a Japanese-to-English dictionary over a year ago. It took a long time and a lot of patience to finish it, but let me tell you it was absolutely worth it.

I’ll leave some links here: List of translated chapters (WN) https://www.novelupdates.com/series/do-you-think-someone-like-you-can-defeat-the-demon-king/ List of WN chapters (completed, Japanese) https://ncode.syosetu.com/n5361em/

SnK 118 Thoughts

Zeke gets shot, Falco gets a hug, everyone who makes sense is out of jail, and for a brief time, everyone is united in being perfectly fine fucking Marley right the fuck up.

Minus the characters who live there.

But all told, for the first time in months, it’s a happy chapter. :)

:)

:)

In a rare turn of events, I think I’m going to specifically aim to talk about things out of order. I say this with no real sense of how I usually construct these posts, I just make blanket assumptions about how they’ve probably gone in the past without corroboration.

SO WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT CUTE KIDDOS HAVING FEELINGS AND BEING DUMB.

The ones who aren’t legal adults, to be clear on the definition of ‘kiddo’ as used here.

Falco.

Gabi.

You get to go back to the hellscape that is your brainwashed existence, I’m so happy for you both.

The complications of Falco and Gabi fighting so hard to return to a world that doesn’t give a damn about them are things that... honestly, I just don’t want to do that this month. It’s a disaster. Marley’s fucked. Paradis is fucked. No one cares about the right things. Every decision is going to blow up in everyone’s face.

But Falco gets a hug from his big brother.

The youngest characters we’ve followed through this are treated with kindness.

This whole chapter is a breath of relief in the sea of unending horrors that we’ve been dragged through to get here. More on the rest later, but for the moment, we’ve got the two little ones.

Nile doesn’t even hesitate to treat Falco as a child before an enemy.

In the outside world, a man Falco tries to help is scared of being touched by him because he’s an Eldian.

Sasha’s family is still worried about the two little Marleyans they picked up and lived with for a time.

After first contact, no one needs to tell Colt not to shoot Nile. He calls the man who hands his brother over “the enemy,” and is shocked by Gabi’s actions, but Colt runs with Gabi and Falco without looking back.

Nile doesn’t follow.

Nile’s the sort of man who looks at Falco and thinks this assault might be about saving a little boy.

Colt’s the sort of young man who thinks Falco being someone who might be affected by Zeke’s scream is somehow relevant to whether or not it happens.

This story, lately, has been relentlessly cruel.

Gabi and Falco run away from home on a suicide mission to avenge and protect their loved ones after they witness the ruthless destruction of their home. Gabi watches people trying to protect her get gunned down. Falco, the kind boy who delivers letters for a wounded soldier, is the spark that enables the entire tragedy.

They reach Paradis, end up in jail because no one knows what to do with them, escape, and have to live under the constant pressure of their guilt and worldview being challenged. The destruction of Reiner’s psyche that takes a sustained undercover operation over the course of years is inflicted on Gabi in weeks, and Falco has to watch the girl he likes suffer over crimes that he aided.

Gabi watches Falco help her over and over again, and when things really start crashing down, there’s not a thing she can do for him.

They’re separated from everything they know and everyone they love, and then each other.

They make their way back to each other.

The world looks at these two tiny, traumatized children, and refuses to let anything happen to them. The world takes Gabi’s hate and uncomplicated joy in being a good Warrior and deconstructs it with kindness. The world takes a little boy like Falco, who only ever tried to help people, and lets him find his brother.

The reveal of Falco being the one who helps Eren isn’t a mark of betrayal. It’s a shared bond of pain that comes from good intentions being unfairly manipulated by people who didn’t care to be kind.

So they’re at least kind to each other.

In a tiny pocket of all this violence, things aren’t complicated. There’s a little girl and a little boy, and they deserve safety. A child who grew up in an internment camp designed to manufacture and slaughter Eldian children dreams of a world where the girl he likes won’t die, and they’ll get married and be happy.

Falco has always been kind and stable to the point of parody, but that’s honestly fine. Good. That should be allowed to exist, even if it doesn’t make total sense. The good things should be allowed to survive.

Gabi’s arc here ends with the realization that her hurt isn’t all there is to the world. Other people--other sides have their own, and they aren’t evil for that. They aren’t devils.

Falco’s trip to Paradis ends with him finally confessing why he followed Gabi to begin with.

There is something so sweet to the way Falco describes it. I hope it’s a faithful translation, because it’s my favorite thing this series has done in some time.

It isn’t just about Gabi not dying. It isn’t just about her having a long life. It isn’t just about them getting married.

Falco’s dream is for the girl he likes to be happy forever. He likes her, but the core of his dream is that she’ll live as long as she wants, and she’ll be happy through all of it.

Nothing Falco has seen in this world should give him hope for any of that.

He hopes for it anyway.

And Gabi rips off his armband.

The Yeagerists’ perverse mirror of what Marley has always done to them--what Gabi has accepted into her life in her fierce chase of changing it--and Gabi rips it off.

Their world isn’t kind. It’s cruel, and harsh.

People are kind to them.

That’s the only thing that saves them.

Naturally, it’ll be devastating when the bad things keep on coming for them, and no, sorry, this is not their finale, it’s just the finale of all the potential happiness they can have, but for right now.

For right now, kids shouldn’t be on the battlefield. So everyone fighting tries to get them out of it.

Look.

Standards.

We spend time with characters with standards this chapter.

It’s. It’s so strange. What is this.

Also, the fact that our time is spent on this instead of letting Eren and Zeke touch makes me astoundingly nervous for what’s coming next. There are very. I don’t want to say few. Uh. There are, thanks to the Founding Titan, potentially many ways for things to end not poorly.

I would say the likelihood of any of them traveling smoothly is. nil.

For instance, the entire scheme Armin concocts to explain away Eren’s behavior in this! Sounds good, sounds nice. Sounds destructive, sounds impulsive. Sounds vaguely understandable by the horrifying standards we’ve come to expect.

Sounds okay. Ish.

Still involves Eren sparking a national incident that brings a big army into their island so they can kill them all using a destructive power we’re only kind of confident in him using safely.

With the side effect of all his friends being in the splash zone.

I realize that even Armin’s kind of on the fence on that making real sense, but it’s not a bad explanation for everything. Eren’s backed into a corner when Yelena does her reveal. He’s held hostage by it, but hey, by playing along, he’s found a way to make things okay.

Even in that elaborate AU Armin came up with on the spot--

--things remain less than good.

Unless we consider most of the MPs and other top brass, the majority of veterans, and assorted civilians turning into titans and possibly dying--unless we consider all of that a good thing.

There’s a school of thought where Eren can just magic touch everything back to Okay, but the levels of Not Okay being pounced in with reckless abandon are a bit. uh. geez, what’s the word...

Bad?

There is a very good chance that this is all very bad, and running might be in their best interests.

In the non-AU version, all of Eren’s friends are scrambling to keep him alive because he has fucked them all over so horribly that literally their only chance at not dying slow (or very fast), brutal deaths comes from protecting the fucker who fucked them over.

And Armin, realizing this, digs down deep to try and find some of that good ol’ fashioned Friendship Power to bullshit all of them into agreeing to this plan of attack for reasons beyond generously optimistic pessimism.

While kind of wondering if Eren maybe wasn’t kidding about killing everyone.

Armin’s whole role in this chapter is embracing a truth that he secretly thinks might be a lie so that his friends have a prayer of feeling positive about this fuckery.

You’re trying so hard, Armin.

I am so sorry for you.

And Connie.

Like, good grief. Falco gets a hug. Someone needs to give Connie a hug. There’s been a serious shortage of Connie hugs since Sasha died, and I realize how that works, but it should really go the other way around.

Realistically, I am so happy that Connie’s the one who’s at his breaking point. He’s always been a team player, and over and over, it turns out that the people he thought had his back weren’t on his team. He’s a simple guy. This is a simple problem.

So, simply, fuck everyone who has anything to do with it.

Connie is Best Boy.

Onyankopon’s okay too.

This is the meta commentary on Yelena qualifying as a serial killer that we deserve. She is so great. All of you new characters with your new disasters are so great.

It’s a little on the nose, because bless this series, it is not subtle about most things, but thank you Onyankopon for injecting some hecking positivity in this here jail cell.

The concept of a future has been humanity’s fight all along. A better world.

Then Paradis met the rest of the world, and was all, “o fuck.”

“o fuck,” has interlaced every inch of the plot in the current day. Whatever hope there was, Eren’s decisions in Liberio tarnished them, and the rise of the Yeagerists threw it into the trash.

This chapter is kind enough to bring it back.

This is what the heroes of this world do.

They look at the impossible odds, and choose to fight. Because to do otherwise means that this is the way the world stays. This is what they’re left with, and that is unacceptable.

We’ve strayed a bit from that point, lately. It’s a relief to have it back in plainspeak.

Then there’s Mikasa, and. Aaaaah.

Armin only truly starts championing the possibility that Eren can still be a force for good when Mikasa comes back to his words about her Ackerman blood. Really, I think he does it for both of them. He refuses to believe Mikasa’s life doesn’t belong to her, so Eren has to be lying, so things have to be salvageable.

Mikasa knows him too well. She knows there’s room for doubt.

She leaves her scarf behind.

Mikasa is someone of great principle. She has a deep sense of responsibility that has been present from day one. She takes charge of Eren. She takes charge of other recruits. She feels the weight of the entire world, and fights for it. Her focus on her family has never made the burdens everyone shoulders disappear in her mind.

I don’t think she has a better explanation for why she can’t let go of Eren than the one he’s provided.

He’s killed children. He, by Connie’s word, laughs when he’s told about Sasha’s death. He abandons them and runs off on his own, risking all of their lives. He spits hateful vitriol at them and throws them in prison, where they would have likely died without someone going behind his back.

How can wanting to protect someone like that be natural?

Her very first argument to Eren is that he wrapped the scarf around her. When the world went cold, he brought warmth and a home back to her.

How does that compare to what he’s done recently?

How could she feel warm at all when she just watched Eren murder people? How, when by his command, she killed for the first time?

She has a genetic predisposition to comply with something like that.

Doesn’t that make more sense than loving this monster?

Children are dead.

Eren killed them.

Her first instinct is still to protect him.

That can’t possibly be right.

Mikasa doesn’t defend monsters. She slays them. That’s who she is.

If she’s defending this one, there must be a reason. Something deeper than just loving her family with all her heart.

To which I’ll say, for my personal stance... sorry, Mikasa. Your love does run that deep. It’s always been at war with your principles. Protecting Eren and Armin at the expense of everything else has always put you in pain. Being willing to let Armin go during the Serum Bowl is almost as agonizing to her as watching him die.

Mikasa’s strongly held principles and strongly held love have always been in conflict, but in the background. In side remarks about overprotectiveness, interspersed with her guilt over what that overprotectiveness has led to.

Eren’s cruelty gives her the excuse.

Here’s how she can be both; one isn’t real.

Whether she fully believes it or not, it’s what makes sense, for a person like her. She shouldn’t still care so much for the fate of this monster. Caring so much is why Reiner is still alive. Caring so much is why Bertolt lived long enough to char Armin to a crisp.

Mikasa learns. Always.

She should be fast enough at taking down the monsters now that they can’t hurt anyone first.

In case I’m not putting this clearly enough, Mikasa is better than anyone in the history of ever, to the point that even she can’t believe how strongly she hold on to things.

And my last comment on the chapter is that Yelena and Armin’s song and dance continues to be firing at max cringe on every cylinder, one of you drop the pleasantries and pull a gun already.

It’s funny, but in the way Jean pretending to be a knife-wielding maniac is funny.

Just stab each other like normal enemies. Please.

So since things are hitting the boiling point here, I guess next month we’re doing a shift in perspective?

Levi and Hange try out their Super Mario 64 skills in not drowning. The results my surprise you.

Nothing good can come from any of this, but you know? Falco and Gabi got to be cute. Plus Colt and Falco hugged. It could and has been worse.

Congrats, ELLIE, you have been accepted to AL for the role of SEVERUS SNAPE (FC: aneurin barnard). HOLY CRAPOLY, ELLIE! This app was absolutely fantastic! I couldn’t pull myself away from reading it and was just seriously BLOWN AWAY. This is everything I ever could have dreamed for in a portrayal for a character as central to the plot as Severus is! You truly have a gift and I’m so excited you’re here! Please send in your blog (no sideblogs for first characters, please) in the next 24 hours and be sure to take a look at our new player checklist. Welcome home (once again), we’re so excited to have you join the family!

OOC

name — ellie. age — 20+ pronouns — she/her. timezone — GMT. activity level — i’m not a very fast writer tbh, but i don’t have any other hobbies or rl obligations to keep me from rp atm so i should be able to maintain more than 3 paras a week.

IC Overview

name — severus tobias snape. faceclaim — aneurin barnard, louis garrel, richard harmon. age — 26. gender — cis male.

sexuality — demisexual, biromantic. He lacks the terminology for it, and simply regards sex as yet another social endeavor for which he is ill-equipped.

patronus — doe. yes, it still works. no, he doesn’t understand why or how. he is most certainly not pure of heart. the memory he calls on to summon the patronus is his first dinner with the evans family, where mrs. evans piled his plate high with steak and mashed potatoes and peas, and lily snuck her broccoli onto his plate discreetly while trying not to make a face, and petunia was spending the night at a friend’s house across the street and too far away to ruin the lighthearted atmosphere. they joked and laughed and cleaned the dishes afterwards. it was the first proper family dinner he’s had in his life.

boggart — voldemort. Not, specifically, for the man himself although he is a rather striking figure on his own – but rather for what the man represents to snape. Voldemort represents how far snape’s ambition and thirst for power and knowledge will take him if left unchecked. He represents a hungry and gaping and greedy part of snape that will take and take and take, and grow hungrier and greedier still, uncaring. Losing control in such a manner – allowing himself to be led astray by a mad man and his mad men, doing their bidding and spreading pain and grief and loss, thinking himself so righteous and vindicated – the worst parts of himself, unvarnished, laid bare for him to see. Snape has long since discarded any illusions of himself he may have entertained before the war. He knows the parts that make him up. He knows what he does and why he does it. He knows how far he will go without an anchor — and he fears being unmoored and unrestrained most of all. Fears what he will allow himself to do, without a pragmatic set of rules and ethics to keep him in line.

IC In Depth

personality traits —

+Loyal: snape’s loyalty is difficult to earn, but impossible to lose. He has a thorough, comprehensive, all-or-nothing approach towards loyalty. You either have it or you don’t. All of him or none of him. He will give you his soul – his strength, his work, his honour, his dignity, his life, his word – or he will give you nothing. Thus far, the only people who have earned his loyalty are lily evans and albus dumbledore.

+Sharp: snape is clever and perceptive, his intelligence owed in large due to the many hours spent in his mother’s company as a child, listening to her stories and her theories and her careful instruction. She was not a pleasant woman, nor a kind mother, but she taught him the power of knowledge at a young age, and the sharp glint of intelligence in his eyes matched hers.

+Hardworking: say what you will about snape’s character flaws – of which he has plenty, and of which there is quite a lot to say – but his work ethic has always been and will always be impeccable, beyond reproach. He never does things by half. He is a hard worker who spares no efforts once he sets his mind to a task.

-Antagonistic: he holds firm to an unpleasant disposition and hostile countenance. It is his nature to be wary and suspicious and to hold others in low esteem until proven wrong. Snape takes most attempts at social interaction with a grain of salt, expecting mockery and insolence and responding swiftly in kind.

-Bitter: snape’s biggest motivator is spite. He’s a man of well-groomed grudges, what can he say? growing up in poverty with a bitter mother and an unpleasant father, both of whom were uncreative in how they let out their frustrations and rather liberal in tossing about blame for everything that had gone wrong in their lives, had left him with quite an armful of ill-advised coping methods and a less than stellar personality overall.

-Selfish: it’s not that he’s incapable of love and affection. He is demonstrably and regrettably capable of both. He has, as well, displayed a certain capacity for selfless action when it came to his precious few loved ones. Sometimes. But, well. Well. It’s not his default. He spent many years with his head firmly stuck up his ass, seeing and caring about nothing but his own interests and his own ambitions and dreams finally being realized — and nearly lost the only thing in his rather pathetic life that held any meaning whatsoever. And he is still selfish by nature. Even in the years since he’d come to dumbledore to yet again pledge his allegiance to yet another all powerful and all conniving old wizard – the irony of which was not lost on him, not for a moment, rest assured – selflessness is still an installed feature that he must think consciously of before implementing. And, most of the time, it is not something he chooses to do.

-Deceptive: if snape was the sort to keep count of such things – and, as a spy, he most assuredly is – he would truthfully disclose that, in every relationship he’s built in his life since he was old enough for hogwarts, there is a layer of deception that must be adhered to at all times. An intermingling web of lies and half truths and omissions that must be observed with careful attention, lest the whole thing unravel and spill out his doom. He’s a spy. At least now it’s become part and parcel of who he is. At least, he now has a quasi-noble purpose to attach to the rather sticky threads of which he is – secretly – fond. He can admit, if only to himself, that he doesn’t know how to build a relationship without some form of deception to maintain throughout.

character biography —

PROLOGUE.

he stands on his tiptoes over the wooden chair, stirring with the ladle in both hands. clockwise, clockwise, counter-clockwise…. let the ladle rest against the side of the cauldron for thirty seconds. the liquid is two shades off. he adds a pinch of powder, and the color adjusts.

mam’s sharp eyes follow his every move. she nods, stiffly. tension uncoils from his shoulders. “when you get to hogwarts,” she says, brusque, “you’ll be at the top of your class.”

it’s not explicit praise, told more like a command, really, but it’s close enough. emboldened, he asks, “will i ‘ave friends at ‘ogwarts?” he looks up. watches. “lots and lots o’ friends?”

mam blinks. the silence stretches. she pats his head, drops her hand down to his shoulder. “of course, sev. lots and lots. now help me pack everything away before your dad comes home.”

ACT I.

can a place be both hell and home?

well, if it can be — if it’s possible to love and hate a place with equal intensity, if it’s possible to feel like a jigsaw puzzle slotting into place at last and still look over your shoulder and jump at every sound — if it is, then to severus, hogwarts was that place. the home that was unsafe, the home with danger at every corner, the home with no way out. no way out but through.

it’s not s’pposed to be like this, he’d thought, eleven and still a touch naive. this can’t be right. but what did he know about homes and safety, anyway? was Spinner’s End not the same, except smaller and with less magic? did he not look over his shoulder and watch his every step just the same?

being a halfblood matters, more than he thought it would. and being a slytherin matters, but not in the way he’d thought. a poor, dirty, halfblood slytherin with a nasty attitude and an uncouth accent stood out like a rotten stink. hogwarts was magical and whimsical, but it was just a place, just like any other, and the students were just students, and the bullies were just bullies. and sev was still sev, wand or no wand. hogwarts did not fix him and make him better. it did not give him friends on a silver platter.

what it gave him, instead, was knowledge. yes, he spent years the target of relentless bullying, made more enemies than friends and few acquaintances who were in between, but the library was his home. He devoured knowledge with a single-minded intensity, filled with such joy at learning new concepts and spells that it made everything else he had to put up with worth the effort. He badgered his teachers relentlessly with increasingly complex questions, and often times concerning lines of inquiry, and experimented with new spells and potions early on — first with lily, then without — filling notebooks with ideas and information and half formed thoughts. At the age of thirteen, he’d begun working on his own grimoire, writing down his own potions recipes and his modifications to existing potions. All the great potions masters have their own grimoires, why shouldn’t he start his own now?

He isn’t sure when his views began to shift. Somewhere along the way, the facade he’d put on for his housemates began to seep through the cracks and into the boy underneath. it became so much easier to hate muggles and then muggleborns, to blame them for everything that went wrong in his life, to use this hatred as an outlet for all his frustrations he already had with his own life.

By the time the dark lord called, severus was well and truly indoctrinated. It didn’t take much to convince himself that this was the right thing to do.

ACT II.

He takes the mark.

Things… escalate.

They ask him to do terrible things, and he does them fastidiously. He does not feel satisfaction or pleasure when killing and torturing, though he hardly lets that stop him from doing exactly as he’s instructed, to the letter, and sometimes beyond. Vying for the attention and approval of the man who held his soul in the palm of his hand, indifferent to it’s fate, careless in his handling unless the little halfblood proved himself useful. And he did. He proved himself clever, gifted, loyal, ruthless. He worked hard to earn his place, knowing the alternative.

It’s not like he doesn’t know he’s in a genocidal cult. At some point, even the most indoctrinated could see what this was. The dark lord wanted servants to do his bidding, not allies to share in the glory and the power. The dark lord was strikingly clever, imposing and powerful, and stark raving mad.

But severus was marked. He couldn’t put himself at risk, couldn’t think of stepping out of line with his master’s mark upon his arm. The only way out was through.

severus was thorough. he followed instructions to completion, with a single minded focus. he did his work with a professional detachment, a nonbeliever in the guise of a devotee.

And then, he came upon a prophecy.

ACT III.

The dark lord’s fall is a gift that severus doesn’t know what to do with. He’d spent so long treading a worn thread like a tightrope over the brink of hell itself, that the thought of letting his guard down for even a moment sends his every sense screaming DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!

He feels like a man who’s been running full pelt, nonstop, like he was running his whole life and suddenly the ground is pulled from beneath him and he’s free-falling into nothingness. Lily is safe. Unhappy, but alive, and for that he is more grateful than he could’ve ever imagined.

But he is alive, too. And for all his plots and schemes, it didn’t occur to him that he’d make it to the other end of this war in one piece. Not since he turned spy.

The question mark hangs over his head all the way through the chaos following the dark lord’s fall. Severus, sitting through trial after trial, feels as though his ears are stuffed full of cotton and his senses are veiled through with fog. Only in the aftermath of his own trial, when dumbledore rests a hand upon his shoulder and grants him a proud smile does severus begin to hope.

Dumbledore saves him. He gives him a home, a job, a purpose. He guides him through the darkest hour of his life.

Even through the fog, Severus can see it: the headmaster’s true intentions. He knows he must be of some use to the headmaster still, that dumbledore is simply working to gain his true loyalty. That all severus had really done on that stormy night was trade one master for another.

But dumbledore, for all his machinations, is still a good man. There are worse masters to grovel to, as he very well knows. And lily is safe, just as promised. It’s only right that severus pay back his due.

ACT IV.

Once he finds his footing, severus gets busy. He integrates himself with the remaining loyal death eaters as seamlessly as possible, works to maintain at least civil relationships with high ranking order members — with a few notable exceptions — and begins to, brick by brick, build his life from the ground up.

The following years are filled with quiet self reflection. Severus grows more critical of himself, of his actions, of his beliefs. He pulls apart his motives and his reasons for joining the dark lord, inspects his role in the war unsympathetically, the impact he’s had on the lives of others. He does not like what he sees. but he does not look away.

He’s created violent and dark spells for the dark lord during his service. Spells with no counter, or a secret one. Spells the death eaters all knew and used. If he had died in the war as he’d come to expect to, these spells would’ve been his only legacy. His only contribution to the wizarding world. unparalleled violence.

This is who he is. This is what he’s done. He cannot undo it, he cannot be forgiven. but he can strive to be… better. And he does.

beyond the waiting and watching and listening, severus shifts the bulk of his focus upon his work. He creates and tests potions with the needs of the wizarding community in mind, puts his brilliance to good use. He follows a strict code of ethics, to the letter, holds himself to task when it is not properly adhered to. He takes responsibility for the things he releases into the world. He builds himself a respectable reputation in his fields of study, his articles and discoveries published in peer-reviewed journals and papers, his work talked about in academic circles with something like respect.

As the whispers spread and the death eaters prepare for their next move, severus shifts to a ready stance. He has more to fight for — more to live for, now — than he had five years ago. He is ready.

plot ideas —

oh, god, i’m SO excited to explore what snape post-war would’ve been like if he didn’t lose lily. what happened in the books is that lily’s death and his role in it sent him down a spiral of self loathing, guilt, and suicide ideation – and he wallowed in his grief and his guilt for the rest of his life. the trajectory of his life after lily’s death shifted to protecting her son and serving dumbledore. he stopped thinking of his own ends and started viewing himself as a means to an end, that end being the physical safety of lily’s boy (disregarding, of course, the mental wellbeing of potter’s spawn) and while there was growth in his own views over the years i can’t help but think it was greatly stunted by his own grief.

what i want to explore with snape is growth. realistic, nonlinear, steady growth over the years after the war, where he becomes more critical of both himself, his motives, his thinking, and the impact of his actions on other people and the world. he grew up a precocious child with no proper adult guidance, and all his life lessons he’s learned through first hand experience. and like any other 17-year-old, he thought he knew everything. He was reckless and arrogant, and he made terrible choices confidently, with no regard to the greater consequences. post-war snape is painfully aware of his own shortcomings, is trying to be better, not for the sake of being a good person but for the sake of proper self discipline and self control. he never wants to lose control of himself and allow his ambitions and his greed to take him to such lengths again. he wants to have a more positive impact on the world around him, even if he himself is still an objectively bad person, even if he himself is still selfish and deceptive and eaten up by greed.

so how can a bad person be good? by doing good things, even if he’s doing it for the wrong reasons. and snape is doing it for the wrong reasons, he’s well aware of that. He doesn’t have the intuitive grasp of right and wrong that lily always had. He can’t simply do what feels right, as that never turned out to be the right thing at all. Instead, he does what he calculates as having the most positive impact on the biggest number of people, regardless of whether or not it feels right to him. He acts in the interests of the greater good.

It’s a very utilitarian approach. Not dissimilar to dumbledore, who took snape in after the war and was more or less his mentor figure the years following. but unlike dumbledore, snape does not disregard or dismiss the individual lives of people he comes across, is very mindful of his own personal impact in the individual lives of the people around him. in canon, snape is horrified at dumbledore’s plan for harry. dumbledore asks him how many men and women he’s watched die, and snape’s response to that is ‘lately, only those whom i could not save.’ this interaction perfectly encapsulates the differences in morality between the two men. snape is capable of making sacrifices for the greater good and strives to work towards ending the war, making moral compromises towards that end. but his faith in the greater good is limited. When it comes down to it, snape is loyal to people, not causes. And often, since he’s made the conscious decision to become a better person, risks his life for the sake of others.

Another thing i want to explore with snape is his interpersonal relationships. Because, god. Come onnnnnnnnn. His two best friends are lily evans and lucius malfoy. For fucks sake. Lily who cut ties with him when they were 16 and whose husband he is partially responsible for sending to an indefinite coma, yikes, and lucius, for whom he feels the most straightforward affection and who he’s actually quite prepared to stab in the back when the time comes. And it will come, soon enough.

He has….. Complicated relationships. And complicated views on intimacy. He has a tendency to separate his feelings from his duty, which sometimes leads to him doing terrible things to people he cares about. Lying, stealing, manipulating, etc etc etc. it does not mean, to him, that he cares about these people any less. Regrettably, he cares too much, and can’t stop caring once he starts. It does not mean the people he cares about are safe with him. And i want to explore that, especially in his relationships with lily and lucius, as well as his fellow death eaters.

Speaking of the death eaters. Snape was already a high ranking death eater before the dark lord fell, and he’d worked very hard the last five years to integrate himself irrevocably within the ranks of the remaining death eaters. He’d observed their dynamics and worked to make himself seem as loyal and irreplaceable as can be. No doubt he formed many a bond with many a member, not all of them built on lies. And he would take special interest in the hesitant, wavering loyalties, poking and prodding to see how he can use them to further his own position within the death eaters ranks. There’s a lot of potential for inner-politics and sabotage within the DE.

extra —

Mockblog @ sevsnpe.tumblr.com

headcanons:

Snape had a thick manchester accent growing up that was very quickly packed away and replaced with ‘respectable speech’ a few weeks into his stay in the snake pit. When he’s angry or emotional he speaks very slowly and deliberately, his voice dropping in octaves and growing very soft and precise. it becomes very difficult for him to keep control of his speech. He slips on occasion when he and lily are alone.

Eileen sold wonderful ailment-soothing ‘tea’ for her neighbours. severus helped her brew these concoctions regularly as a kid, when he was still too short to reach the tabletop without standing on a chair.

Snape looks up to dumbledore and seeks his approval. It infuriates him to no end, that so much of his own decision-making hinges on the older man’s opinion of him, that he cares what albus thinks of him at all. But after the dark lord’s fall, snape was lost and fumbling, trying to make sense of the world, of himself, of his next steps. He desperately wanted to be a better man, but had neither the tools nor the guidance to do so. if albus hadn’t taken him under his wing, he doesn’t know where he’d be now.

he’s a heavy smoker. he picked up smoking post-war and is not in any hurry to quit. he can stop whenever he wants to anyway.

he maintains a private library in his rooms at hogwarts. he’s as possessive of it and as territorial as a dog. he’s accumulated a very impressive collection of rare books and journals over the years, and a long list of contacts in the private book collectors and book sellers circles to go with. a disproportionate number of his books are highly illegal and officially labelled ‘dark’.

the bulk of his focus, after the war, is split between two things. integrating himself further into the remaining circle of death eaters, and his own personal research into the mind arts, potions, and dark magic, which he conducts in his capacity as potions master and professor at hogwarts. he’s made several discoveries in potions study and published multiple articles in academic journals over the last five years, building himself a respectable reputation and body of works within his field. beyond the fact that such academic pursuits are his passion, his work gives him tangible proof that he is capable of positive contributions to the world around him. that he is capable of doing good, even if he himself is a bad person. his work and his growing reputation gives him something to look forward to after the war. it’s something unrelated to the death eaters and to lily, it’s something completely his own. he is very defensive and protective of his research.

Once or twice a month, snape visits muggle london and spends a few hours in a public library. It’s calming, reading books to simply pass the time. He won’t admit this to anyone, but the connection he has to the muggle world is something he’s learned to accept and even take comfort in from time to time.

What if Misery Loves Company part 1 included the 6 Baudelaires?

THIS IS A SPECIAL WHAT IF POST:

Today, I was asked by @totallyhumanperson123​ ‘How would Lilac, Nick and Solitude fit into Misery Loves Company?’

And after asking @unfortunate-stranger-losers​ if I could use the three extra Baudelaires to make this post I have thought extensively. (I may do this for each part if @/unfortunate-strangers-losers is okay with it).

PLEASE NOTE: THESE ARE MY INTERPRETATIONS OF SOMEONE ELSE’S CHARACTERS AND HOW I WOULD WRITE THEM IF I HAD INCLUDED THEM IN MY FIC. ALSO, NOTE THAT IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE ENTIRETY TO MISERY LOVES COMPANY PART 1 THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS.

So first let’s discuss Lemony and Beatrice:

Lemony would have two daughters: Lilac Emily and Violet Malina. The difference between this is: The timeline would have been Bea and Bert were on the island when Bea was pregnant with Lilac. When they come back to the city, they meet up with Lemony and get back into their polyamorous relationship resulting in Violet.

Beatrice and Bertrand realize that living life on the run alongside Lemony and two kids is no way for the girls to live. So they break up with Lemony. Leaving Lemony alone.

But they’re still very involved with VFD so they ask Lemony if he can watch over Lilac and Violet, with the same letter, same meeting place, same expectation.

Life on the run gets in the way so Lilac and Violet end up in Lemony’s ‘custody’ like Violet does in MLC.

With Beatrice and Bertrand:

Their first children are twin boys (around two years after Violet’s birth). Nick Liam and Klaus Louis. Nick is thirteen minutes older than Klaus. (Klaus eventually gets taller than Nick obviously). At this point in time, they are devastated that they lost their two daughters and Lemony, so they try to defect from VFD with little to no success (so they settle for barely participating in it because they blame VFD for them losing their daughters and their would-be husband.)

Years later they have Solitude Theodora much to both boys disappointment (but mainly Klaus’ because Nick teases him about being the middle child).

By the time Sunny is born, Nick is besties with Solitude and Klaus is still very unhappy about having more siblings. But soon becomes besties with Sunny after six weeks.

Background and BAD BEGINNING:

Beatrice and Bertrand would send all four of their children to the beach that dreadful day. They had made BOTH Nick and Klaus promise to take care of their younger sisters (B&B also privately talked to Nick and explained to him that since he is the older twin, he needs to watch over Klaus as well because Klaus is babey.)

So Lemony is raising two daughters, which is not easy since they’re only 11 months apart. So they’re always bickering. Both girls have lockets with a picture of their mother and their sister in the locket. Both Lilac and Violet cherish their father and even though they fight relentlessly, they are each other ride and die. Lemony made the same mistake as Beatrice and when Lilac was around 5 and Violet was 4, he asked Lilac to promise him that she will always look over Violet no matter what. Lilac promised without delay because she loves being the eldest.

Lilac looks more like Lemony than Violet does. Violet looks more like Beatrice. Lilac has Beatrice’s smile, while Violet has Lemony’s eyes. People mistake them for twins all the time though. Which annoys both girls.

Violet is the one who begins to feel suspicious of Lemony and Lilac tells her that she’s overthinking it. Violet wants to get to the bottom of it. Both girls desperately want to meet their mother.

The four Baudelaires take a liking to Strauss and an immediate dislike towards Poe and Olaf. Cause fuck Poe and Olaf. NICK is the one who has the breakdown about the one bed and offers it to Klaus, who offers it to the girls. Klaus is the one who tells Nick that his breakdown is freaking Soli and Sunny out, to which makes Nick calm down. Nick is hell-bent on figuring out the mystery of the fire while Klaus is still the one who holds on to the spyglass because he fears Nick will lose it. BOTH Soli and Sunny cuss out Olaf and bite him, relentlessly. Although Soli is still a herpetologist in training.

Li and Vi make an invention together, they both have that soft moment in the taxi explaining that they don’t hate Beatrice they understand her reasonings. Lemony desperately wants to help their brothers and sisters. Keeps the secret from both of them.

Soli suggests poisoning Olaf which Nick is totally down to do, so is Sunny. Klaus is like you guys...that’s murder and Nick straight up would be like so? you’re outnumbered. But they can’t find any poison so they make pasta puttanesca. Olaf still grabs Sunny and lifts her too high up, which results in Nick grabbing Soli and holding her tight. Klaus, on the other hand, is now down for murdering when he hears his baby sister’s cries and remembers the promise he made. KLAUS is the one who talks back to Olaf resulting in him getting slapped. But instead of Sunny biting his hand, Nick puts Soli and Sunny in a corner near Klaus and walks up to Olaf CASUALLY and PUNCHES HIM STRAIGHT IN THE FACE. “DON’T HIT MY BROTHER YOU FUCK!”  this results in Nick getting his ass kicked by Olaf until Klaus tries to stop him but Fernald is the one who stops him. The next morning, Olaf still demands an apology. All four kids tell him to fuck off, resulting in him lifting Nick (who’s holding Soli) and lifting Klaus (who’s holding Sunny) by their necks towards the wall. Realizing that he doesn’t have an extra hand to do anything he waits til the boys are slightly purple before releasing their necks, causing the boys to fall and drop their sisters. (their sisters know they didn’t do that on purpose).  Nick is the one who hears Olaf’s dumb train plan and explains to Olaf that he is a dumb shit cause he won't get shit if the four Baudelaires die.

They go to Poe, this time with Klaus’ cheek bruised, Nick, having multiple bruises on his legs and arms (which he willingly shows to Poe), They even show the small bruises on their necks from when Olaf was choking them, Poe still claims it’s loco parentis. Which causes Nick to go ballistic and cussing Poe out as Klaus drags him out (with Soli carrying Sunny the best she can). Soli and Sunny MAKE NIck and Klaus tell Strauss, who simply talks to Olaf. which doesn’t do shit for the kids.

Lemony does all his usual shit with VFD, Jacqueline, Gustav, and Larry. (none of this changes really except he’s keeping two daughters a secret).

Nick is the one who stays up all night with a book but doesn’t tell Klaus because he doesn’t want Klaus to worry. He confronts Olaf explaining how Nick was right and Olaf would get shit. Olaf tells him to go tell his siblings, Nick wakes up Klaus but he can’t seem to find Soli OR Sunny.

Olaf tells the boys that if they don’t become good obedient little boys, he will drop both toddler Soli and infant Sunny from the tower room. He tells the boys that good news, if they mess up once, at least they have another sister. Olaf explains that he’ll have them choose who he drops first if they piss him off. Both boys want Olaf dead. Nick feels defeated and blames himself while Klaus is not giving up just yet.

Chapter 8 is still Klaus’ chapter where Olaf tortures him. Klaus still gives blankets to both his sisters while Nick is sleeping, he tries to save his sisters but he is caught. Olaf does not drop either sister because he rather hurt Klaus. Klaus tries to scream to get Nick to help him but Olaf keeps his hand over the boy's mouth. When he’s done, Klaus goes upstairs, he is still given the first aid kit, but he has NICK there to help him. He tries to do it himself but he wakes up Nick by crying and Nick wants to MURDER Olaf for sure at this point. Nick does the best he can while he is literally hating himself for letting this happen.

Lemony tries to save the kids with his CPS disguise, to no avail. Because Olaf is holding both girls and the boys know if they say anything its over.

violet starts the kitchen fire and when Lilac’s trying to fix it, it gets worse, both girls cry as Lemony holds them. They’re blaming each other but he tells them he does not give a shit because his purple lemons are fine. (also lilac also calls him Lemon Man or Mr. Lemons, although Violet is the one who started the nickname when she was a toddler). When Lemony leaves abruptly, Violet tries to convince Lilac that something weird is happening. Lilac tells her that she’s bored and she’s just looking for troubling shit. Violet ignores her and continues questioning their father.

Nick and Klaus are under constant watch, although Nick is super protective of Klaus. when the police are at the door, Olaf grabs Nick and throws him against the wall and threatens to kill him. Klaus kicks Olaf in the groin as they race to the tower room to save their sisters. Olaf grabs Nick’s ankles and Klaus grabs Nick ignoring Nick when he stells Klaus to get the girls. Olaf promises to return.

Klaus makes Nick promise not to tell the girls, Poe or the authorities what Olaf did to him, Nick is reluctant at first but agrees once Klaus tells him that he’d prefer if Nick was the only one who knew. this makes Nick feel validated as an older brother.

REPTILE ROOM:

Nick and Klaus are worried about Uncle Monty, while Soli is excited. Nick is the idiot who asks what kind of scientist Monty is which Soli responds Snakes! Dummy! Sunny still corrects Poe about what the road smells like. CAuse she’s a mini chef in training.

Monty is sweet and naive like he is in book, movie, show, and MLC. Both boys tell him that he can’t get the fortune until their 18, Monty responds with not giving a fuck about the damn fortune. both soli and Sunny are rude to Poe because EVERYONE SHOULD BE.

The boys beg Monty to allow them to all sleep in one room. Monty doesn’t understand why they wanna be 4 to a room but he allows it. he has enough things for each child.

When Lemony has his first nightmare, Lilac is the one who hears him. She questions him. He lies to her stating that he had a bad dream about someone taking his girls. Lilac believes him but only partially. Violet wakes up demanding to hear all about their mother. The girls fall asleep with putting their heads on the other’s shoulders as Lemony rambles on about Beatrice.

Nick wants to kill Monty for 10 seconds when he believes that Ink is deadly and bit Sunny. Soli, on the other hand, starts laughing as Sunny is bitten and even tells the snake “my turn!” The snake bites her, nearly causing Klaus to faint until Monty explains that Soli’s assumption is correct. The snake is harmless.

Klaus has a nightmare that night, which wakes all his siblings up. Soli and Sunny ask Nick wondering what’s wrong with Klaus. Nick lies and wakes his brother up. Monty offers tea to Klaus and Klaus only agrees if Nick can come with. After this, both boys warm up to Monty.

Violet begins her investigation, with Lilac saying count me out. Violet makes her promise, not to tattletale, which Lilac only agrees to because Violet was threatening her coffee machine. Violet keeps offering to let Lilac help but Lilac swears she wants nothing to do with it. violet reads the contents of the drawer aloud which piques Li’s interest but Lilac doesn’t like snooping. When Violet is nearly caught by Lemony, Lilac stops this from happening sneaking a smile to Violet that she’s in. Because she catches her dad in a lie.

Klaus and Nick see that the maze in Monty’s backyard relates to Olaf just as Olaf arrives. Nick is the one who tries to slam the door in Olaf’s face, but he pulls out a knife. He steps in front of his three siblings. (handing Soli to Klaus). Olaf pokes him with a knife telling him that “if Nick doesn’t behave, it’ll be HIS turn). The girls don’t understand what this means, but Klaus and Nick sure do.

Monty asks Klaus to take the canoe off the jeep with Olaf, Nick tries to tell Monty but Olaf is threatening Klaus with a knife.

Violet eavesdrops on their father, Lemony leaves and Violet explains that she’s going to follow him. Lilac, acting on her promise, is like NO you’re not. Violet starts disguising herself. Lilac helps her and disguises herself because she refuses to let her sister go alone. The girls are both mimes because Violet is like mimes and Lilac is like what? Their disguise names are Anna (Emily Browning’s character in Uninvited) and Rebecca (Malina Weissman’s character in 9 Lives). They’re both crept on by Stephano. Lilac tries to watch the movie and understand it as Violet is watching their father.

After the movie, Olaf grabs Soli from Nick and tells the other three no funny business as he tries to kidnap them. Monty reappears, they all go home. Monty rips up the idiot’s ticket, Klaus and Nick are carrying the lamp upstairs and Klaus still tells Olaf about the ripped ticket. even though Nick was yelling at him to STFU.

Nick and Klaus discover Monty’s body. Olaf has Sunny in one suitcase and Soli in one of those wheeled suitcases. When he stabs the suitcase that doesn’t have either sister, Nick screams in anger and he's the one thrown into the jeep. Klaus is blaming himself for Monty’s death.

Nick and Klaus are confused as to who Kronk is and what he wants. Sunny still has the idea of jumping out the window. Nick is totally down for it and he and Soli go first. They get down perfectly. Klaus and Sunny still fall because Klaus has panic attack. Kronk helps the kids back in the reptile room. The boys research, Klaus still sees how Monty had bought books about how to help kids with PTSD. Klaus starts crying, Soli and sunny look for Ink. When the kids are ushered away again, Kronk says he needs Nick and Klaus’ help as Soli and Sunny are hiding. Sunny’s teeth are sharper so she still opens the suitcase. Soli is the one who plays with Ink to get Poe to see he’s harmless.

Olaf grabs Nick and decides to take him, but Ink attacks saving the kids. Nick decides to follow Olaf in the maze. Both boys feel defeated again. Nick still wants to solve the mystery surrounding them.

Soli drags Sunny to help her release Ink and a few other reptiles because Soli is a herpetologist.

Lilac and Violet question why their father smells like horseradish but he lies to them bringing them both home their favorite foods.  both beginning to not trust him. Every night when he's asleep the girls start brainstorming ideas about everything just like Violet does in MLC. Lemony’s nightmare consists of Olaf murdering one of his daughters and keeping the other one for the fortune. He wakes up freaking the fuck out. Klaus and Nick question Mr. Poe about Jacquelyn.

WIDE WINDOW:

The Baudelaires are still taken to Josephine’s by Kit via taxi. All four kids can’t stand Josephine. Thinks she’s crazy, rude, and annoying. NICK has the disassociating moment in the fridge because that’s his thing, not Klaus’.

Nick gets angrier at Josephine than Klaus when she won’t answer their fucking questions. He gets the cards, Klaus gets the train. Soli gets the doll and Sunny gets the rattle as gifts. Klaus still thinks they should get Josephine out of the house.

Klaus is the one who bumps into Olaf but NIck is the one who pushes him down when he sneers at Klaus.

Lilac suggests they redial the phone number and see who Lemony is talking about. Both girls go to the bank, they’re arguing about directions so that’s how they meet the Quagmires. Isadora and Lilac immediately are blushing while Quigley and Violet are immediately blushing. Duncan still finds this fucking hilarious. They get to the bank and both girls question Jacky just like in MLC. Lilac says her name is Magenta as Violet still says her name is April Mallahan. Violet wants to punch Lilac for her dumbass disguise name. Jacky tells them to meet somewhere else. The girls accidentally eat peppermints. Both girls have immediate allergic reactions. Lilac can’t speak and Violet is incredibly itchy. Violet and Lilac ask the same questions, get the same answer. When Jacky realizes they aren’t Mallahans. They admit their names are Emily and Malina (instead of staying Magenta and April). Lilac asks Jacky if she’s dating Lemony hoping that her dad isn’t lying about that. but alas, he is. This is where Lilac officially does not trust him. (Violet’s already been there).

Klaus answers the phone hangs up on Olaf. Nick tries to explain to Josephine who Olaf is. When Olaf says the business card line, Klaus corrects him. and he starts backing Klaus into a wall which causes Nick to run up to Olaf and attack which causes Olaf to throw him towards the wide window. he hits it, but it doesn’t break. soli and Sunny try to attack.

Nick and Klaus break into the safe (although Soli has the correct combo). They collect the same documents and photos as Klaus and Sunny do in MLC. Klaus, Soli and Sunny sleep as Nick stays awake watching his siblings sleep. He has Sunny and Soli in his lap and he’s sitting as close to Klaus as possible taking turns rubbing each of their heads whispering happy thoughts to Klaus as he sleeps in hopes of keeping his dreams nice. Nick hears the window break and wakes his sibling. Klaus discovers the note and Nick immediately says: there’s....a hidden message. Klaus thinks he’s crazy (this happens cause in the movie they solve it faster than the show or book).

Klaus tries to explain to Poe what’s happening, even though Nick and the girls were against it entirely. They go to lunch with bastard man. Sunny has the plan to eat peppermints. Nick and Klaus get both the swelled tongue and the itchy hives while Soli gets the swollen tongue and Sunny gets the hives.  Klaus looks for baking soda for him and Sunny as Soli and Nick tackle the note. Nick figures it out rather quickly and then the house begins falling apart. Klaus is the one who flips and dangles out of the window. Soli and Sunny bite on to doorknobs during this. Nick is dodging the fridge and stove at this time. Trying to reach all his siblings. Nick grabs pics from Ike’s study room.

When the house breaks. Soli and Klaus are on the safe side while Sunny and Nick end up on the platform. Klaus starts crying as Nick lays down defeated praying that he and Sunny’s death will be quick. Soli and Sunny start tying their little hair up. When asked what they’re doing, Sunny replies “Vi” aas Soli replies “Li” which confuses their brothers. Sunny and Soli figure out how to get Sunny and Nick back to the Klaus and Soli. The boys think this is crazy but they go along with it. Nick does what he’s told and pushes the anchor, he grabs Sunny as Klaus picks up Soli. The four make it out of the house.

They meet up with Steve Barkin, who Nick and Klaus don’t know if they can trust entirely.  He brings two coats  (one for Klaus and one for Sunny since they took off their coats in the house). He brings a yellow raincoat for Sunny, a blue raincoat for Klaus, a green raincoat for Nick, and an orange raincoat for Soli (he has the red one). Soli and Sunny take a nap as Klaus and NIck have the heart to heart with Steve Barkin who takes them to Curdled Cave.

The flashback where Violet almost got kidnaps, turns into Lilac and Violet almost getting kidnapped. When Violet ran ahead of her father and Lilac, Lilac ran after her (trying to keep her promise to her father even though Lemony was calling for both of them to get back here). When Lilac realizes they can’t find their father (because both girls can’t agree on what his disguise looks like, LILAC bumps into Fiona and both girls giggle. Fernald comes running and checks over Fiona and then when Fiona tells him that Lilac and Violet are lost, he offers to help. Lilac pushes Violet behind her and she asks if he’s a kidnapper. while Violet (behind her sister) says: ask him if he’s a child hurter, too, Li! there’s a difference!” Lilac tells her to shush and that’s there is no difference. He laughs and tries to help them find their father. Widdershit tries to recruit them both because he’s a shithead. Fernald and he argue. and He PICKS UP Violet and demands for Fernald to pick up Lilac. Lilac starts crying begging for her sister back and Fernald takes Violet from Widdershit and when they are distracted. Lilac tells Fiona and Fernald goodbye as she runs dragging Violet with her. They then meet the duo which the man with the beard and no hair grabs LILAC this time and Violet starts SCREAMING STRANGER DANGER as loud as she can until Lilac can struggle out of the man’s grip, again grabbing violet’s hand. The girls huddle together holding each other tightly, crying. Lilac starts calling for her father by his real name as she hears LILAC EMILY!!!! VIOLET MALINA!!! Violet rushes to her father and hugs him but Lilac is nervous. She feels like she failed her dad. He’s holding Vi and waiting for Li to run to him so he can pick up both his girls. Lilac starts crying and throws herself to the ground apologizing. Lemony gently picks her up and reassures her. Once they tell him what happened. He looked to both of them and says: You BOTH did well today. You took care of each other and that’s what counts. He then realizes both sides of VFDs schism tried to kidnap his daughters so they run home and relocated. Lilac thinks it’s all her fault no matter how many times Lemony tells her otherwise.

in the present day: LILAC puts these pieces together as Violet gets angry. Lilac is becoming SADDENED by her father's lies and secrets while Violet is getting MAD. Both girls HATE VFD.

The four Baudelaires try their best to convince Josephine to come back with them. Nick is frustrated but Klaus is like I got this. He does his dramatic eyeglass wiping thing and convinces Josephine. The boys' question Josephine about the photographs, documents, and the book they lost.

Leeches attack. Nick tries to sail as Klaus tries to start a fire. Soli has the idea of using Klaus’ glasses and the spyglass as she puts Sunny on her lap to protect her baby sister. Nick and Klaus get a fire to work and all four kids assume that Steve is saving them.

Captain Sham teases the kids telling him that only ONE can get on his boat. Nick declares that no Baudelaire is getting on his boat. Sham says they’ll change their minds. He then threatens Josephine. Klaus guards Josephine and Josephine pushes passed him making him fall on Nick so she can hand Soli over to Olaf. Klaus and Nick start CUSSING JOSEPHINE OUT as Olaf snickers saying: Soli is the lucky Baudelaire who gets to inherit the fortune for him. Nick jumps on the boat telling him to fuck off and he takes his sister back. Klaus is STILL cussing out Josephine as he hands Sunny over to Nick. Nick puts Soli and Sunny in the corner making sure he is standing between them and Olaf. Klaus is trying to get across on to the boat and Olaf starts making the boat wobble. Nick pleads with Olaf to let Klaus on the boat. Olaf asks Nick if he’ll behave which causes Klaus’ panic attack making him even more wobbly. Nick agrees as he grabs Klaus’ hands and pulls him on the boat holding him close.

Josephine tells Olaf he can do whatever he wants with the kids to where Nick straight out says he hates Josephine while Klaus is trying to get her to realize that she’s their guardian she shouldn’t be doing this. She corrects Olaf, he kills her and mocks the kids who are begging her to jump (even Nick cause Josephine is better than Olaf as a guardian).

When he calls himself their father. Klaus tries to push Olaf off the boat. So he grabs Nick and dips his head on the side of the boat where the leeches AREN’T at because they’re busy eating Josephine. Olaf explains to Klaus if he tries that shit again, Nick is going in the water with Josephine. Klaus nods his head and sits down.

Sunny is the one who bites the peg leg after her siblings pleading doesn’t with Poe doesn’t work. Klaus suggests running away but Nick tells him that that may not be the best idea. When Olaf escapes, Nick hands Soli to Klaus and starts running after his car but Olaf after promising to return speeds up. Nick starts crying. Lemony vows to murder Olaf. During Lemony’s nightmare, while Larry is near, he screams Violet and Lilac’s name.

Lilac and Violet discover more pieces of the puzzle which has them accusing lemony of kidnapping them from their mother. Lilac is in shock and tears repeating: no, no. he wouldn’t. no. While violet is in angry shock. Lilac breaks down and Violet tells her she can’t act like that when he’s around or he’ll know. Violet wants to surprise him. Lilac is mad at her for snooping in the first place and ruining their perfect lives. Violet gets mad saying their lives are LIES not PERFECT. They figure out his combo is LVS for (Lilac Violet Snicket)

MISERABLE MILL:

Nick and Sunny question Poe on why a lumbermill is a good place for 4 children to live. While Klaus and Soli just stare at the pictures that they found. Klaus and Nick are annoyed when Poe won’t let them try to pronounce Sir’s name. Both Soli and Sunny cuss out Poe and Nick and Klaus are annoyed cause they can. Klaus sees the optometry building and says fuck it who cares about our parents' mysteries lets get the fuck out. Nick tells Klaus that he’ll protect them and they have to stay and figure out shit.

They’ll meet Charles and they like him. They meet Sir and Nick is a little shit to Sir. Nick and Klaus argue about the fact that if Sir and Charles are their guardians why should they work for them. Also, after Sunny explains to Klaus that sir and Charles are gay (by saying Duncan), Klaus still doesn’t get it. Nick annoyed at their situation yells. THEY’RE GAY DUMB ASS.

Sir makes 12-year-olds, toddler, and baby work in the lumbermill. They meet Phil, they like him although everyone but Soli thinks he is a tad bit annoying cause he’s an optimist.

Klaus still says Olaf returning is a GOOD thing, Nick looks like he could kill Klaus for simply saying that. Soli is the only one who slightly agrees cause she does not want to work at a lumber mill but she doesn’t say anything seeing Nick and Sunny telling Klaus he is a dumb ass.

Nick is ready to kill the mill workers who say his parents are arsonists. When Soli and sunny are sleeping Klaus and Nick whisper asking each other if the girls are asleep. Klaus tells Nick he wants to run away and Nick tells Klaus that he thinks they should stay and clear their parents' name. Klaus replies with: once again you and I are on the wrong page bro.” which hurts Nick but he doesn’t show it.

Lemony feels tension from Violet and sadness from Lilac. He doesn’t understand why one daughter looks ready to murder and the other looks ready to break down. He asks they don’t answer. He promises to find their mother to hopefully calm them down, both girls slightly believe him.

Klaus and Nick get too stimulated in the lumbermill because of the noise and Klaus starts crying. Nick tells him to man up and just suffer through. Once they clear their parents' names the four off them will take their earnings and run away.

Soli and Sunny do better at debarking than the boys. Nick flips out on the millworkers when he is told they will not be getting paid and their lunch is gum. Klaus now really wants Olaf to return so they can leave since Nick won’t listen to him. They all discuss how shit their lives are nowadays as they try to sneak to the library, they’re caught and Sir demands them to go back to work. Charles uses the lame excuse of Sir having a terrible childhood to justify his actions towards the kids. Nick and Klaus simultaneously replied: we are having a terrible childhood right now. as they carry their sisters back. Klaus tries to tell Nick he assumes that Olaf is the foreman just for Nick to ignore him like violet did in the Netflix show.

the Foreman breaks his glasses so he’d have to go to Orwells. His siblings freak the fuck out when they’re told that the eye-shaped building is where Klaus is going. Klaus tells them he’ll find evidence there.

Klaus’ FIRST optometrist’s appointment goes as written in MLC. Nick is the one who does most of the researching not Sunny. Sunny and Soli find the dictionary and their father’s handwriting (like in Netflix). The three overhear Sir and Charles talking about a cover-up. Klaus does not SEE Olaf but he hears him (like IN MLC). He is then hypnotized.

Nick, Soli, and Sunny go absolutely insane while waiting for Klaus back. Soli decides to sleep the anxiety away, Sunny cooks with Phil and Nick paces back and forth flipping out. Blaming himself like Sunny does in MLC. All three siblings have no fun, but mainly Nick. He is losing it. He feels like he has broken his promise to his parents. He promised to keep Klaus and the girls safe and he failed. He thinks Olaf has Klaus and is torturing him because unlike Sunny, HE KNOWS what Olaf did to Klaus and he HATES himself so much right now. He doesn’t let a sleeping Soli out of his sight and he begs Sunny to check up with him every ten minutes when she is cooking with Phil.

When Klaus comes back, the girls are asleep and Nick thinks Klaus is just messing with him and he tells Klaus that he is not funny at all. Nick tucks Klaus in and puts Sunny and Soli in his bunk because he can see something is wrong with Klaus. He cries himself to sleep as he holds his sisters because he blames himself.

Klaus nearly kills Sunny by nearly dropping her into the lumbermill machine, Nick had to take her from him and Klaus tried to grab Soli from Nick but he told Klaus to back the fuck off.

He’s unhypnotized and his glasses are delivered. Nick does not trust Orwell at all and he’s confused as to why Klaus is so chill, he knows that Klaus hates optometrists. (also with that flashback, Nick continuously teased Klaus about getting glasses but when it came to the appointment, Klaus wanted Bea or Bertrand to sit with him and Bertrand did until the doctor explained that Bertrand was too big to sit with Klaus so Nick VOLUNTEERED to sit with his brother for the appointment. The doctor allowed that and Nick let Klaus sit in his lap to calm him down.).

Klaus causes the accident which nearly got Nick (because when Fernald whispers to him, he tells Klaus to try to use the machine to hurt Nick, the only reason he missed is that Phil pushed Nick out of the way.

Klaus is unhypnotized because of Sir and Nick and the girls are relieved. Sir warns them that they can’t fuck up anymore. Foreman trips Klaus again and Nick tells the foreman that Klaus is not leaving without his siblings. The foreman tells him too bad so Klaus starts walking blindly alone but his siblings reach him and Nick places his hand in Klaus’ and hands him Sunny telling him: it’s just us. Who cares what the foreman says. We got you, bro.

Violet and Lilac find the letter about how Beatrice wanted to share the custody. How Lemony was only supposed to be babysitting his daughters and he shouldn’t have gotten full custody. This BREAKS Lilac who just starts crying and throwing things across the room and Violet tries to calm her but Lilac pushes her away. Violet’s inner core begins to heat up. She was ready to tell off Lemony. Lilac tries to convince her to be rational. let him explain. Lilac refused to believe that Lemony would kidnap them but Violet doesn’t know what is true or not so she’s done.

When Lemony comes home, Vi is sitting down with the evidence while Lilac is leaning against the counter wiping tears from her face. She calmly says: Lemony, we need to talk. When Lemony questions what she just called him, Vi says: sit down, Lemony.

The whole chapter goes as is, but with Lilac’s sad/mad questions and reactions. She’s trying to side with Violet but also sides with her father. She begs Violet to calm down because Violet’s making her too anxious but she is also begging her father to stop lying. When he won't and he tries to leave this is when Lilac loses her cool and both girls at the same time yell that they hate him. Which breaks him. Violet finally breaks down crying and as she falls to the ground, Lilac catches her and they both are an angry crying mess until they eventually fall asleep.

The four Baudelaires debate whether or not to just run away but Klaus explains that he needs his glasses if they’re going to survive on their own. Nick tries to apologize but Klaus tells him it’s not his fault. Sunny, Soli, and Nick once they SEE Shirley starts flipping the fuck out. Nick shoves his sisters into Klaus’ hands (who is confused as fuck cause he can’t see shit, but he’s shaking) and Nick has his fists ready to fight Olaf.

Olaf laughs and Orwell sweetly puts the girls on the couch and tells Nick to sit down and have some cookies as she takes Klaus to get new glasses. Nick interrogates Olaf as he guards his sisters. When Olaf described cutting Klaus until his blood bleeds out like a waterfall, instead of scaring Nick, he INFURIATES Nick and Nick demands his sisters to stay on the couch as he starts walking towards Olaf with MURDER in his eyes. He’s cursing and threatening Olaf as Olaf begins to throw cookies at Nick. (Soli and Sunny are catching the cookies as they laugh cause Olaf is scared of a 12-year-old boy). Olaf runs in the exam room and locks Nick out. Who starts trying to open the door.

Orwell tells Klaus she’s working with Olaf (the scene from MLC goes as is except with the mentions of Nick banging on the door and Klaus can hear Nick pleading to get in. Klaus tries to scream to Nick but Olaf and Orwell won’t let him. Orwell is annoyed through all of this. Klaus has the worst panic attack ever because Olaf is trying to scare him and starts describing what he plans to do with Nick, Soli, Sunny, and Klaus once he has them back in his custody. Klaus gets rehypnotized and Orwell gives Klaus back to his siblings. Nick jumps on Olaf and tries to kill him once he sees Klaus’ grey eyes again. Orwell pulls him off Olaf and tells him to get back home. Nick takes his sisters and his brother and walks out. Cussing both of them out. He realizes that Klaus is hypnotized.

Nick, Soli and Sunny try to research how to unhypnotized Klaus (like in the book) while they leave Klaus in the Baudelaire bunk in the dorm. Sir explains to them one more mess up and Shirley will be their guardian but Nick tries to explain to Sir that Klaus is hypnotized. Charles is also hypnotized cause of course.

Violet and Lilac wake up and question each other on whether or not all that shit happened. Violet tells Lilac that it did and this causes Lilac to feel like shit. Tell ing Violet they have to apologize the next time they see him. Violet is like no! we’re right. Lilac explains that with his enemies out there, one of these days they could lose him without warning so they need to watch what they say. Violet agrees although she still believes they have every right to be mad and Lilac agrees that they do.

Nick, Soli, and Sunny interrupt Olaf’s plan. Nick puts Soli and sunny on the ground to try and push Klaus away from the controls but Olaf orders a hypnotized Klaus to knock Nick out. Which eventually he does. (yes, Olaf would do that if this was 6B MLC).

Soli and Sunny try to figure out the word that will unhypnotize Klaus as Soli shouts fire to unhypnotize the rest of th mill workers when Fernald uses it to unhypnotize Charles by accident. Sunny tries to free Charles and Orwell starts sword fighting with BOTH Baudelaire babies as both girls try to say the word (Soli is almost able to say it but she still can’t.) Orwell demands Klaus to not listen to his sisters since they’re saying lucky and demanding him to stop from killing Charles.

Sunny continues to sword fight as Soli sees a green smoke, Sir, she tries getting who she believes is Sir to say ‘inordinate’. Lemony does. Lemony checks on Nick, who is slowly waking up. When he’s doing this, his smoke clears. Allowing the Baudelaires and Olaf to see his face (the same scene happens except) Olaf grabs Nick and Klaus and demands to know which kid is Lemony’s. Lemony explains that their twins and their both Bertrands. Nick, not thinking, begins correcting Lemony about how twins can be from different fathers until Klaus tells him to shut the fuck up. Olaf asks him which boy is his...Lemony tries to explain to Olaf that neither child is his. Olaf then questions Lemony about Soli and Sunny who are hiding behind Lemony’s legs begging Lemony to save their brothers.  Olaf keeps looking from Nick and Klaus and finally, he looks at Klaus and says: it’s your lucky day, four eyes. You look more like Bertrand... and he throws Klaus to the ground as he glares at Nick. he says: But you....you don’t look like Klaus or Bertrand. But yet your his twin... Nick starts pleading with Olaf that Bertrand is his father and he doesn’t know this man. Lemony is also pleading with Olaf explaining that NIck looks like Beatrice but Olaf isn’t listening. He is slowly moving closer to the giant saw with every intention to throw Nick into the saw. The three younger Baudelaires plead with Olaf, all of them sacrificing themselves for Nick. Olaf calls Nick, Nicholas Snicket and Nick and Lemony both yell that he’s not a Snicket. Before Olaf has a chance to throw Nick into the saw, Olaf is thrown to the ground by Klaus who jumped on Olaf and Nick. Olaf wrestles Klaus off of him as Nick gets to his feet. The Baudeboys hide behind Lemony as Olaf has  a fucking meltdown. The lumber mill workers begin to break in as the real Sir comes out of nowhere. Lemony apologizes quickly and leaves the kids as Olaf vows to kill him and then as Olaf escapes he promises the Baudelaires he’ll be back but he calls out to Nick saying: Especially YOU dear Nicholas.

Nick thanks Klaus for saving him and they let the millworkers attack Sir. Sir tells them they’re out. Nick, Klaus, Soli, and Sunny are okay with that. Nick tells his siblings to sleep as he waits up and watches.

EPILOGUE:

Klaus and Nick don’t know what to do about helping Soli and Sunny change. They don’t like the idea of Soli being the protector (which she suggests), Isadora pops up and offers to help. Nick and Klaus aren’t the happiest about this idea but what can they do. Isadora escorts the young girls to the girls' bathroom and asks the boys to tell her brother to hurry up.

NIck and Klaus change. Nick can sort of tie a tie (better than Klaus and Duncan).

When Klaus references Peter Pan, Nick mocks him but Duncan explains that he thought it was cute because he loves Peter Pan too. Klaus and Duncan are cutesy and Nick is just smirking like an evil big brother. He keeps making sly comments to Klaus about Duncan ESPECIALLY when Duncan is tying Klaus’ tie. Klaus is dying of embarrassment and Nick is having the time of his life. Isadora sees this and she has the same reaction as Nick. Nick even says to her: you and I are going to become good friends.

Lemony rushes home, Jacky is worried about ‘Emily’ and “Malina’ and makes Violet and Lilac go ahead of him. Both refuse and demand answers. He looks to Lilac and says remember your promise which makes Lilac break. She begs him to go with them. He hands Lilac his wallet and looks at Violet and says: I need you to promise to look out for Lilac...and not give her too much trouble. This causes both girls to break and they each hug him separately and then hug him together. EVERYTHING THAT HE SAYS TO VIOLET HE SAYS TO BOTH OF THEM. all of that cutesy soft angsty shit he says to both.

Violet and Lilac have to drag each other to the store. They wait, the shopkeeper keeps talking to them in code. They see the firetrucks and run. When Lilac hears a voice, she grabs Violet and they hide behind a dumpster and hear Olaf (they don’t know it is him yet of course). Violet and Lilac build a grappling hook together. Lilac breaks the window and Violet breaks the door. They both go to save their father. The same scene just add Lilac. Both girls are begging the other to stay close. Lilac falls to the ground first because she can’t breathe, Violet begs her to not die on her too. Both girls are desperately searching for their father when the building shakes, Violet refuses to leave but Lilac begs her that they need to leave. They need to keep the promise. They have to keep their promise and keep each other safe. both girls fall to the ground and they both think they’re dying. So Jacquelyn and Larry burst in and save them. Larry grabbing Violet and Jacquelyn grabbing Lilac. (scene follows, they blame themselves they hate themselves. they watch the building collapse and beg to not be indicted into VFD. Lilac says if they have to indict someone make it her just leave Violet alone. Jacky asks if they’d be comfortable staying with her for a night and Larry and Jacky take the girls to Jacky's apartment.

link to my fic: Misery Loves Company part 1:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20307649/chapters/48143287

link to Connie’s Six Baudelaires part 1:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18371576/chapters/43501190

what are your thoughts on revolver and how did you react/what did you think when it was confirmed that revolver was yusakus special person and was the one who called the cops etc and how he regretted it due to the impact it had on his dad making him blame himself for what happened to his father.

An ask about Revolver? You have no idea how delighted I am to have an excuse to talk about Revolver. I hope you like character analysis because now you’re getting REVOLVER ANALYSIS.

Because Revolver is definitely one of the most complex and dynamic characters Vrains has. Revolver is a character that has grown and changed a lot over the course of the first season, but for the most part you can divide it all up into four phases: Mission Rev, Obsession Rev, “I’m taking you with me” Rev, and “It’s not that easy” Rev. 

Mission Rev was focused solely on his father’s mission, and patiently and relentlessly pursued its completion. He was driven and confident but also patient and calculating. He had everything under control, hatched nefarious plots, and progressed the mission. 

And then he lost to Playmaker, and becomes Obsession Rev. And suddenly, he’s not so in control, and not nearly as confident. He’s nervous around his father, and feels like a disappointment. He’s distracted by his need to find Playmaker and have a rematch. He descends into obsession, puts off the mission to buy time for pursuing Playmaker, and scrambles his priorities. 

And then his father dies, even deader than the rest of his family and allies, and Ryoken’s failed everyone he cares about. But it’s not too late to not fail humanity, and so we meet “I’m taking you with me” Ryoken, who is rather suicidal, extremely be-grieved, and is lashing out. He’s tired too, but determined to see everything through to the end and die, taking Yusaku and the Ignis with him.

And then he loses, again, and Yusaku is insisting that things can be different. And so “It’s not that easy” Ryoken gets on a boat and runs away because Yusaku represents Ryoken’s every single failure and he really can’t face him a moment longer.

Ryoken is a man shaped by his failures.

Now, I theorized Revolver was the special person pretty early on in my watch of the series. The time he listed three reasons Playmaker would bring the fight to them was certainly a start, but the real nail in the coffin was how he reacted to Yusaku saying “I have three reasons to defeat you”. He outright gasps and seems shocked beyond words. After Yusaku reveals his connection to the Lost Incident, Rev calls him “THE one” not “one of the six”. At that moment it was pretty clear that Rev was thinking of the specific victim that got the three things spiel. Further evidence was Yusaku’s dreams: we usually saw him dreaming about the voice and the whitewashed place, but after their first master duel, Yusaku dreamed about Rev. So I was pretty sure Rev = the special person was inevitable. 

That said, I was delighted when it was confirmed. It brings such a fascinating element to the series. What I hadn’t realized he was the one that let the kids go, however. I had always figured the project was deemed complete and the kids were let go. But Ryoken betraying his father and saving the kids is so much better, and says a lot about who Ryoken really is, under all that guilt and self-loathing. 

As for Ryoken’s feelings about it all, that’s one of my favorite topics to explore and analyze. I put most of my study on Ryoken into my fic Acid Rain, but it’s about time I made a post about Ryoken and the complexity of his guilt. Ryoken felt guilty about the torture the children were going through, and apparently went behind his father’s back to regularly converse with Yusaku. I personally suspect that there wasn’t actually a function of the rooms for speaking with the kids; I think Yusaku only heard Ryoken’s voice through his Link Sense, which is why we see that strange eye inside the network of the research center. Ryoken’s voice went through that, and Yusaku’s developing connection to the network was able to pick it up. We know Ryoken spoke with Yusaku on various different occasions through this method, because Yusaku’s memories of the voice are quite varied. Ryoken reaches out to Yusaku who knows how many times over the course of the six months, but that wasn’t enough. Even with his support, we see Yusaku’s eyes start to deaden; and almost immediately, Ryoken tells Yusaku he can go home and makes the anonymous call. 

Ryoken making the call may have been a direct result of Yusaku finally completely breaking.

And so, Kogami gets taken away, and Ryoken loses his father. And that’s where the real hell starts for Ryoken, because it sets up a system of sacrificing someone to save someone else in Ryoken’s mind: the idea that sacrifices must be made. He exchanged his father for the children, maybe even specifically Yusaku. This is the source of Ryoken’s guilt, his great failure and regret. It’s heartbreaking that he regrets doing something to selflessly good and kind, and it starts him on the path of darkness. Ryoken starts to think its better to hurt people for the greater good, he stops trying to be a good person. 

During this time, Ryoken returns to research center and finds Spectre. And this encounter was probably just as poisonous for Ryoken as it was for Spectre; that one of the kids came back probably partially justified all his fathers crimes, and also probably worsened Ryoken’s guilt over making the call. Spectre’s perspective of the incident confirmed all of Ryoken’s regrets: further convincing him that he should have let the project continue. 

Under his fathers digital direction, he becomes a cyberterrorist and hurts countless people, all in the name of preventing some absurd hypothetical conflict. He wants to be his dad’s perfect soldier, the savior of humanity. Revolver was directly born from Ryoken’s guilt over doing the right thing; Revolver was driven by his regret over Yusaku, while Playmaker would eventually be driven by Yusaku’s gratitude to Ryoken. There’s a neat, sad little parallel there.

And then Ryoken realizes Playmaker is the same child he reached out to, and he descends into obsession. Yusaku is at the center of Ryoken’s guilt and self-hatred, the living representation of the choice he regrets making, but is also someone Ryoken clearly cares about a great deal. For episodes Ryoken obsesses over finding Playmaker IRL, to the point of delaying his fathers plans and endangering his family. And then Ryoken finally sees Yusaku’s face, and he smiles.

At this point, we’ve seen the Knights hurt people pretty indiscriminately, and that they have the capacity to drag people into VRAINS through their dueldisks. Knowing Yusaku’s identity, Ryoken could have easily done this and taken Ai. He could have done any other amount of things to take Ai from Yusaku. But he doesn’t, and instead he pretends he still doesn’t know Playmaker’s true identity. Ryoken outright shelters Yusaku from the Knights by doing this, in the name of getting a rematch.

And this rematch is essential to Ryoken’s very psyche, because defeating Yusaku in a duel means defeating the choice he made as a child, deafeating the person he resents the most: his younger self. Defeating Yusaku is very much about Ryoken defeating his own weakness, his mistakes. It’s something he HAS to do himself. But that he chooses to do so in the most honorable, fair way available says a great deal more; despite Playmaker representing almost everything Ryoken regrets and hates himself for, Ryoken doesn’t want to hurt Yusaku. Even in their second speed-duel, Ryoken still tries to get Yusaku to hand over Ai: the only way Ryoken can get Ai without the consequence of feeding Yusaku to the Tower.

But Ryoken can’t beat Yusaku, and his dad dies because of it. Once again, Ryoken has failed and it’s again Yusaku’s fault. Ryoken’s fixation on Yusaku, in the past and the present, got ALL of his family killed, and potentially could also lead to the downfall of humanity in Ryoken’s mind. That’s what their final duel is really about: the completion of the Tower would kill them both, destroy the ignis, and save humanity: finally fixing the mistake Ryoken made ten years before.

And Ryoken fails all over again. His dad died to give him a chance at victory and he botched it.

And that means we can probably expect the triumphant return of Ryoken’s guilt complex sometime this season lol.

Survival is a Process {1}

Characters: Oda Sakunosuke/Mafia!Dazai Osamu (platonic), Port Mafia, Armed Detective Agency, Ango. Rating: Teen and Up Genre: Angst, canon-divergence  Pairing: (platonic) Odazai Warnings/Tags: Mentions of suicide, suicide attempts, alcoholism, depictions of violence, canon violence, language.  (AO3 link)

Hospital 01               There are little pieces of him everywhere. Carmine splatters clinging to Dazai’s pants and shirt sleeves. The tips of his hair are dip-dyed scarlet, crusted to the back of his neck. His coat, beige and smelling like gunpowder and smoke, sits draped over Dazai’s knees. Two holes frayed at the edges where the sash ties to his waist like two blossoming flowers. Dazai’s hands feel warm from the scrubbing and his bandages are still wet from the sink over flowing.                 It’s been eight hours now, nine if you count the screaming on the phone and the car ride and the twenty-two minutes Dazai spent with his gun down a doctor’s throat. The blinds are drawn shut but sunlight finds its way through and scatters over the off-white tiles. It’s too bright for him, Dazai thinks, but Dazai can’t move. There’s safety in this miniscule space by the bed. He’s been here since the start and nothing terrible had happened. The thought pushes a sarcastic snort through his chapped lips.               Except everything was terrible.

               Seconds drag by. The edges of his teeth grind on his bottom lip until it begins to bleed. Hours become unrelenting demons taunting him with deafening silence. Pale fingertips scrape the tattered fabric burnt onyx by two bullets; Dazai can hear metal tearing through the air as his thumb slides over a single burnt thread. Automated machines click in patterns; Dazai has them memorized. Dripping IV fluids become environmental reminders that Odasaku is still breathing. Plastic tubes stretch from his dry, spit caked mouth down to a mess of wires and lines hardwired into boxed machinery. Up and down and up and down the life line of luminescent green bounces to the drumbeat of a broken heart (still alive). Dazai loses control of his breathing and gags on oxygen. Trembling lips fight to inhale; the memory of smoke and charred flesh returns like a reel of an old horror film stuck on a loop.                  Dazai’s fingers curl to his palm at the sound of his cell phone ringing for the tenth time in half an hour. The garbage can rattles against the floor as the phone drops, he should have crushed the thing. Yet the consistent ringing battering against his over-sensitive ears poses as a miniscule distraction. Moments slip away too quickly; within a minute the quiet beeping of medical devices consumes the air. Dazai fidgets and switches his left leg with his right. The ball of his foot bounces over the tile. Exhaustion tugs at him to close his eyes just for a minute.                   But what if he dies while I’m sleeping?                   He can’t hold on to air. Fervency causes his fingers to shake as he pulls the black tie from his neck. Dazai counts the tiles on the floor, but his heart refuses to fall back to a natural rhythm. He can feel the overstrained muscle pounding in his ears. Bloodshot eyes flit from corner to corner; Dazai tries to laugh at himself—his throat is too dry. Anxiety crawls on him, leeches. He can feel them holding on to his skin, scurrying beneath his bandages, making his heart beat louder. It’s a war drum pounding in his head. The taste of blood fills his mouth, his bottom lip is throbbing. The muscles in his legs squeeze as he eyes the corner of the bathroom.                   If he moves the world will end.                   Bile rumbles in his stomach. It’s been twelve hours; he can’t feel his entire body. The edges of the world start to shimmer. He counts the spots of colors rapidly changing in front of him. Part of him, a quiet part that used to rule the forefront of his mind, tells him to breathe—there’s no oxygen going to your brain, you’re going to pass out. Dazai tries to pull the voice forward. Reality has become unrecognizable. He reaches for Odasaku’s hand as his head falls to the fluffy white blanket covering his friend’s lower half. Odasaku’s fingers twitch under the touch.                  Dazai counts to five, exhale.                  The mattress groans but Dazai can no longer hold himself upright. There is a weight resting on Dazai’s chest trying to drag him down like quicksand. Immovable, untouchable, unrelenting. A hand reaches to touch the back of his neck. Instinct screams at him to move, but there is no strength left in his legs. Half-heartedly he reaches for the gun at his side. The nurse backs away at the sight of metal. Dazai smirks a bit as his hand falls to his side, empty.                  “You should rest s-“                 “I don’t want to hear your voice unless you have information on why he hasn’t woken up yet.” Dazai says coldly.                                                              ______________________                   He counts the tiles again, but by twos this time. Then four, and then he counts backwards from the bathroom towards the front of the room. The door shuts quietly; nothing has changed. He shifts his knees up to his chest as he counts. He’s far too tall to fit comfortably like this, but he can’t stand the way the cold hospital floor feels under his feet. Brilliant orange fills the window as violet trickles down from the highest part of the sky.                  Odasaku once mentioned he loved this time of day, the combination of remaining daylight and growing twilight. Brilliant swirls of dark blue contrasting through puffy cotton-candy clouds—Dazai couldn’t understand his fascination with it. Odasaku was never one to prattle on about the vitality of a sunset (he mentioned it once but Dazai changed the subject), yet his nature to stare in awe at the swirling hues did not leave him. Silently as they walked Odasaku would glance up every few minutes at the sky until the moon hung lover over the city. Dazai always thought it was the alcohol that fueled Odasaku’s child-like lust for a painted sky of oranges and blues.                   But now he wondered if his friend just enjoyed something brilliantly simple, and Dazai was not a good enough friend to listen.                   Dazai was the mouth piece, that fact he knew, but it never occurred to him the bulk of conversations revolved around Dazai’s subject of choice. Relentlessly picking on Chuuya, over-dramatizing situations where he nearly died (he waited and waited but it never happened), the affections of a woman he met at a bar the previous night. There was an endless list of things forever growing in the back of Dazai’s mind, but he couldn’t pinpoint when that list first formulated. He could recall the first time he bothered Chuuya about his hat when they were younger, and it made the boy turn red instantly. Chuuya punched him hard in the stomach (Kouyou made him apologize right after).                   It had been the first time Chuuya talked to him on his own volition. He was shy, quiet, and always hiding behind Kouyou especially when Mori was around. At times Chuuya would wander through the hallways but never spark conversation, and he called Dazai weird one time under his breath. He liked the way Chuuya’s face strained when he was angry; he could understand it. And so he kept going and going and going. So much that now Dazai could map out the way Chuuya’s eyes narrow when he’s really angry, or how one brow twitches when he’s trying not to let Dazai get under his skin.                                       At least it was something—he was a person to Chuuya; even if Chuuya hated the person he was. Forced partners, but it was okay sometimes.                     Mori never showed the slightest bit of emotion on his features regardless of what happened; except once. The knife in his hand glimmered beneath the moonlight, and his eyes had grown just as wide as the source of the light. Dazai watched his face contort to a man who had finally found the grasp of power he’d been searching for. His motive, his movements, they were calculated down to the finest detail. Mori knew Dazai would never speak of this, yet he found it necessary to mention it aloud. His voice was cold iron against Dazai’s skin. It had been the first and last time Mori made his skin crawl.                    There was nothing left after that—Mori and himself weren’t people, to each other, to most. Prodigy and master, as expected from Dazai (the demon). That was okay, he supposed.                     Odasaku—he was simple; but Dazai still found him puzzling. The sheer blasé words that came from his mouth sounded incredibly strange given his background. A man in the Port Mafia, a killer who chose to stop, to adopt orphans, to be good. But, he still rested on the side of darkness. He drank with the prodigy of Yokohama’s criminal elite, but spilled no blood. An oddity of the Port Mafia, like Dazai, perhaps this is what fused them. But, Dazai could never understand the motives behind pure selflessness. What it felt like to breathe life for someone else, for anything else, was not something Dazai bothered to miss. For as long as he could remember he never had a thing in the world to hold close to his heart. What would he even want?                     Humans were endlessly selfish, and that he understood. The logistics of self-elevating, self-serving. Of winning. Dazai always won—he was good at it. Perhaps Odasaku’s simplicity allowed him to choose the manner in which he lived, or maybe he was too good at hiding from people who would have taken him in. Would Mori have brought him to the Port Mafia if he’d found Odasaku at that age?  Dazai shivers at the thought of a young Odasaku covered in blood with empty eyes staring back at him. Would he have seen past Dazai’s demonic reputation? Doubtful. Their encounter was chance, or fate, because fate was always an incredibly cruel beast.                    Weakness is not a familiarity. The waning strength in his shoulders and ache in his back do nothing but irritate him even more. As the clock ticks forward Dazai’s mind continues to dwindle down to a blank canvas. The simplest of movements take extreme amount of energy to even put forth minimal effort. Heavy ink-colored bags hang below his eyes. It’s close to ten pm. He fights the urge to glance towards the garbage where he’d thrown his phone earlier. Surprisingly it had remained eerily silent, and none of Mori’s subordinates had stopped to talk to Dazai or tell him to leave.                      Nobody had come by at all.                      It was better this way. Just the two of them suspended in time; waiting and waiting and waiting. Dazai’s arms cross over each other as he leans his cheek onto his left wrist, elbows expanded over Odasaku’s stomach. For a man who’d been sleeping for over a day, Odasaku looks overly exhausted. Even from a distance Dazai can see the drooping beneath his eyes like someone had come and tugged the skin hard enough to permanently alter its elasticity, leaving behind saggy darkened bags. Instead of his usual soft expression there is a hardened furl of his bottom lip that drags wrinkles across his chin. The look he wore, a man with anger and with guilt, when he left Dazai in the parking lot of the restaurant remains etched in his features even as he sleeps.                        Fragile moonlight streaks over Dazai’s back illuminating the gentle rise and fall of Odasaku’s chest. The warmth from his skin begins to lull Dazai into a half-sleep, but something inside him snaps. A siren, a rush of fear sweeping him up like a tidal wave pulling him to the blackest part of the ocean. Air is sucked from his lungs leaving him gasping with trembling shoulders and enclosed hands. Nails dig crescent moons into his palm; get a fucking grip. Dazai counts the ticking of the clock by twos until his vision levels out and the fog clogging his mind dissipates. He matches every miniscule inhale with Odasaku’s until their heartbeats syncopate.                        Memories fade in and out like ghosts. Dazai’s state wavers on the line of conscious dreaming and exhaustion. He can hear the music playing softly through the worn speakers. Low hanging lights casting a halcyon glow over the amber liquid swirling in his glass. Ango’s blood-red tomato juice filling the cup; Odasaku’s genuine interest in Dazai’s experience with a machinegun mounted truck. The picture they took resides in his pocket still; he can hear it crinkle as he slumps further on to Odasaku’s stomach. Haunting him. Fueling him to burn the entire city to the ground.                          The scent of death mixes with whisky. Ango’s office felt musty and dark. Rows and rows of books neatly organized on shelves with far too much dust collecting on the edges. Odasaku let Dazai prattle on about Ango’s odd habits without rolling his eyes or telling him to quit. Ango’s nose scrunched up the closer Dazai got to his desk. Immediately Ango furled back into his chair shouting that he smelled terrible and how could he go to a bar with all this work? But what if he smelled like us? Odasaku played Dazai’s game happily (even if it was childish).  Their tab was enormous and the night was warm. Summer had sprawled over the city and Dazai had thrown his jacket in Odasaku’s fridge before passing out on the couch.                            “Because he is my friend.”                            Mori’s eyes narrow but every other detail remains upright. He can see through Dazai’s bandages and skin and façade of childlike antics as the cogs in his mind start churning. Problem solving was something Mori enjoyed unfolding. Like a paper crane deconstructed back to its original form. Dazai worked backwards from the simple words Mori spoke to the events from days and days before.                            Sunlight burns red over Yokohama. Dazai’s men drive too slowly for his liking. His heart pounds as his shoes smack against blood soaked tile. The scent of metal and burning flesh overtakes the natural musk of the forest. Heat scorches up his back and constricts his throat; a ball of smoke lodges itself in his lungs. Door after door there are bodies littered on the floor wailing in pain, calling out to him, to Gide, to death. Shards of glass decorate the floor in shimmering glitter as the moonlight gleams in from the cracked skylight.                             “He is my friend.”                              Dazai jolts upright. Panicked hands crawl to Odasaku’s stomach and his chest, eyes strained and blurry from fighting against relenting darkness. His lips tremble, the name falling from them as though the mere utterance of it would send the entire world crashing down on him. The resonating beep from the monitor does little to satiate Dazai’s blossoming anxiousness. He only recoils his hands after counting Odasaku’s heartbeat twelve times. Two am and there is no more light peeking through the blinds. Shadows overlap as Dazai’s eyes adjust to the darkness. He buries his head on Odasaku’s stomach once more. Cheek turned slightly to feel muscle twitches and radiating thumps of his heart pumping blood through his organs. His eyes retrace Odasaku’s wearied expression.                             A good man forgives, and Odasaku was a good man. Better than Dazai could ever hope to be. There would be no situation in the entire world where Odasaku would not have stopped Dazai from chasing revenge. He would have stalled him, stopped him, helped him. Dazai was not a man of righteousness or selfless acts of kindness. He was not the type to see pain and reach out to help. Instead he allowed his friends to blindly go and rely on their own skill, much like Dazai relied on his own skill to keep him alive (ironic).                           Dazai was not a good friend to Odasaku. He was not a good man; he was not a good person (or a person at all). Bred into darkness with sadism threaded in his blood. Their friendship was neither fate nor chance it was a fluke in every way possible. Blossoming only to wither and die on the vine. Had he chosen to follow instead of retreat they could have ended their lives together, but even the thought of lying with Odasaku in death’s grip did not sit well in his stomach. Self-sacrifice was not in Dazai’s nature either. Born to play puppet master in a devil’s playground. What else could he possibly offer Odasaku?                             He was never bothered by it all. By the radiating sadistic nature in which Dazai performed. The Spartan-like training Dazai heaved at his subordinates and their casual disposal when their talents never came to fruition. Friendship was unethical, but the truest form of care. Or, what Dazai presumed was the care from one human to another. A gentle breeze following a storm; a radiant glow of new life forming after a fire destroys an entire acre of land. Perhaps this mixture of the two of them sought to balance out the roles of their paths; but all that seemed entirely too simple of an explanation. No, Dazai thinks, there is nothing deeper than the random encounter of two men finding themselves in the same place at the same time.                           Then why did it feel like a hundred knives were plummeting into Dazai’s chest at the thought of never meeting Odasaku? The image of him writing Dazai off as an annoying, pessimistic devil built for nothing but destruction? King of death, ruler of Yokohama’s underworld. He did not rightfully merit Odasaku’s unfathomable devotion. Wandering aimlessly to the void of nothing, searching for any retched sliver of something to grasp, only for it to be pulled from him the moment he discovers its worth. This was the end he’d always seen, always experience. He deserved it; but Odasaku did not deserve this ending.                           Pained sobs clog up his chest. Teeth burrow to the bottom of his lip and tear open old scars from hours before. A mess of exhaustion and turmoil Dazai flattens his face against the blanket and bites at his lip. His toes curl inside his shoes as every muscle contracts. Exhaustion tapers off to vehemence. Teeth grind hard enough to crack. The barrel of his gun is beginning to look extremely appetizing.                         Odasaku begins to cough. The tube down his throat chokes him; Dazai freezes. A world stuck in slow motion abruptly speeds up. Dazai feels dizzy as he stumbles from the chair to press the button to call a nurse. They swarm him. Without realizing Dazai walks backwards towards the window, the chair he’d been residing in for a day left on its side near the doorway. Saliva drips from the clear tube as it’s pulled from Odasaku’s throat. Silence is broken by questions and strained coughs. Nurses move like ethereal beings leaving trails of their existence like blurred starlight.                          Dazai sinks to his knees. The door shuts behind the last nurse as she reminds Odasaku to rest. Bandages cover his upper half and wrap lazily down his right arm. A new scar buried under stitches sits on his left cheek. Odasaku’s eyes are hauntingly empty. For once Dazai is hyperaware of the sound of his own breathing. Like a child discovering movement Odasaku experimentally wiggles his fingers. His eyes roam over his legs; Dazai swallows a lump in his throat and averts his eyes to the clock hanging on the wall. Four am.                          Odasaku peers at Dazai as if he’s trying to reconstruct him from the ground up. Piece by piece memories reconnect like building blocks. Dazai watches the way his eyes grow from grey, hollowed ashes to burning whips of emotion. Odasaku’s back straightens. Dazai can’t figure out how to move back to his feet. Hidden instinct forces Dazai to reach his hand forward though the distance between them leaves nothing but space for his fingers to touch. Shadows blindly run over Odasaku’s face leaving slivers of fading moonlight striped down his torso from the blinds. His eyes bore into Dazai’s but he’s looking passed him, at something, at nothing. His voice is heavy and raw, it scrapes over Dazai’s ears.                       “You should have let me die.”                      

♡ summary: Since long ago the seven kingdoms of Lentavia have worked together as one, sharing their resources and prospering because of it. Each kingdom has its own prince, each a beautiful man who rules fairly, caring for their people and distributing their resources amongst the kingdoms. The seven of them are much like brothers, having grown up together in their joint castles that sit in the middle of the island. They are free to rule as they please and do what they wish, as long as it is harmonious within the kingdoms. They must, however, follow one rule. At age 26 they must marry a person of their choosing in order to fully take the throne and become a king. The eldest prince, Seokjin, is 2 days from the date he must choose his betrothed and has yet to even suggest someone as an option.

♡ pairing: Kim Seokjin x fem!reader

♡ chapter: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | ? |

♡ series warnings: blood mention, injury mention, swearing, anxiety, death mention, depression

♡ series genre: fluff, smut, slight angst

♡ series rating: Mature

♡ word count: 1977

♡ posted on: AO3

♡ chapter three: flicker

♡  A/N: This au is kind 18th-century esc but I do what I want cause it's my au so it may not be 100% accurate! Hope you enjoy this lil update <3

The smile you received from Seokjin when you accepted his proposal was the brightest you’d ever seen. He had giddily walked you to one of the rooms in the castle, then bid you goodnight. The room was huge, bigger than your cottage itself. A huge beautiful bed with silken black and gold sheets, a wardrobe, a desk and chair, all made with beautiful dark wood. You’d never been in such an extravagant room, you wandered around it touching the smooth furniture. There was a bathroom attached with a large tub in it, various nice smelling liquids set along the side. You looked at yourself in the mirror and wondered how you had ended up here.

Settling down on the bed you realized all of your things were still at the cabin including a change of clothes to sleep in. You sighed, you had a tendency to rush into things without planning and now you were dealing with the consequence of one of those decisions. A knock on your door startled you from your thoughts. “Miss L/N? His Majesty Seokjin has sent me with some sleepwear for you.” You smiled, he was such a considerate person, to even have recognized the problem you had gotten yourself into. Opening the door, you accepted the clothes and thanked the servant for bringing them to you. Slipping off the dress you were wearing, you folded it and put it on the box at the end of the bed. You put the simple white nightgown on and climbed into the big bed, snuggling into the soft sheets and giving in to sleep.

~

You woke up just before the sun began to peek over the horizon, as you did every morning, and went to the bathroom. After using the toilet and splashing some water on your face you returned to the room and put the dress from yesterday back on. Luckily you had a good memory as you were able to find your way out to the garden. You walked amongst the flowers, touching the leaves and petals with a delicate hand. The garden's energy was extremely pleasant, the plants were all well cared for and so they were happy.

It was strange to not be in your cottage practicing spells or tending to your own garden. Usually in the mornings you would go out to the forest to collect herbs or visit the creatures who lived there, but today you were exploring the castle gardens. You wondered what marrying the prince would actually entail. A wedding was probably a must, when would it happen? Did Seokjin expect you to sleep in the same room with him? You vetoed that thought, the prince hadn’t shown any intention of anything besides fixing both of your problems. What was going to happen to your cottage? You made a mental note to ask Seokjin about it when you saw him.

That was another thing, what did the princes even do all day? You had never really thought much about them, and only ever knew that they were handsome. There was a lot of mystery surrounding this whole world you had somehow stumbled into. You sighed, you would learn eventually you supposed. Luckily, you were a pretty good judge of character, and you always had your magic if something turned out bad. You trusted Seokjins kindness, and truth be told it was getting tiring to be constantly attacked by the townsfolk. They had been amping up the vandalism and verbal threats recently and you were afraid of what might happen if they went through with any.

You were always terrified of hurting other people with your magic, so you never used it against others. Even when you had been attacked a few months ago and they had been kicking you relentlessly, you refused to use magic in fear of injuring one of them. Instead, you let them get out there anger and then whipped up some healing balm to help with the pain once you’d made it back home. It had been terrifying and hurt a lot, but you knew you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself if you ever caused someone pain with your magic.

Continuing your garden stroll you hummed softly for the flowers, they always liked being given music. “Y/N!” The somewhat panicked shout startled you and you turned to find Seokjin running towards you. “Please don’t leave! If I or my brothers said something to offend you please tell me, I will fix it, just, just don’t leave.” You couldn’t contain your laughter as the prince stared at you, face full of confusion. “I’m not leaving, I’m just walking in the garden.” Relief washed over Seokjin’s handsome features. “Thank the Gods! I asked a maid to check on you and she said you were gone, and it was so early I assumed you must’ve snuck out to run away…” Seokjin admitted sheepishly, scratching his cheek.

You smiled, “I always rise with the sun, and I like to be with nature often, so I just figured I’d go for a little explorative stroll. I’d never just up and leave with no warning, I can assure you that.” The prince smiled back gratefully, “In that case, good morning to you, shall we get some breakfast then see about fetching your things?” You agreed and followed him back to the castle and up to the dining hall.

~

Once the two of you had eaten, Seokjin called for a carriage to take you both to your cottage. You stared at your hands sat in your lap during the short ride, pondering what you’d like to bring with you to the palace. As you neared your home the smell of ashes and smoke caught your attention. You poked your head out the window, worried about some kind of forest fire hurting the animals but instead you were faced with the burning remnants of your life. A cry tore its way out of your throat as you jumped out of the still moving carriage. Ignoring the harsh impact of the ground, you stood and ran towards the flaming cottage, ignoring the Prince’s call for you to stop.

Without an ounce of hesitation, you pushed through your door and into the smoke-filled room, wincing at the heat. The ash clung to your throat and burned your lungs and eyes, but you ignored it as you dashed to your bedroom. You pulled back at the sharp pain from the searing hot handle of your door, then steadied yourself and opened it regardless. Throwing things across the room, you began pulling things out from under your bed, desperate to find what you needed. A firey beam fell atop your bed, narrowly missing your crouched body, you wiped the pooling tears out of your eyes and snatched the bundle of cloth you’d been searching for.

Coughing heavily, you barely managed to throw yourself out the open door before the whole thing collapsed behind you into an inferno. Arms were suddenly around you, holding you tightly to someone’s chest as the carried you away from your home. You sobbed in the persons hold, clutching the bundle you’d risked everything for to your chest.

Next thing you knew you were sitting on a white cot whilst a gentle woman assessed your injuries. She tried to take the cloth from you but you just held it tighter against you, making her sigh. “I won’t take it anywhere, child. Let me make sure you’re alright? It’ll be right next to you hm?” Her kind words and soft eyes, convinced you as you slowly nodded and let her take it and put it beside you as she’d promised, before continuing her examination. She wrapped your burnt hand with some herbs and then a clean cloth. A damp cloth was used to wipe the ash and soot off of your body, then you were dressed in a simple golden brown striped gown atop a white frock . The kind woman who had been watching over you, Hejin, had then left but was quickly replaced by an extremely flustered and angry Seokjin.

“Y/N! Thank god you’re alright! How could you be so reckless? Nothing is worth losing your life over! We can replace anything, why would you run in there like that? You could have been seriously injured, or worse! Why would you do that?” You looked into his anxious brown eyes as your own grey ones began to water again. “What is it? Something hurts? I’ll get Hejiin again-” You placed your non-injured hand atop Jins, effectively stopping his tangent. Then you slowly unwrapped the cloth Hejin had set beside you. Inside it was a photo of a woman with big beautiful curls just like your own, her face a bright smile as she held a little girl with matching locks. “My mother…” You managed to say, voice hoarse from smoke inhalation.

A look of sad understanding fell across Seokjins features, and he pulled you into a gentle hug. “I’m sorry for yelling, I was just worried. I’m glad you’re alright.” He said softly, not breaking your embrace. You gripped the fabric of his shirt tightly and bit your lip in an attempt to not cry anymore. “It’s ok, I got her so it’s ok.” You whispered back to him. Reluctantly, the Prince released you and surveyed you with his eyes. “I’m so sorry Y/N.” You gave him a weak smile, “It isn’t your fault that I’m hated, and you weren’t the one to burn my home down.” Seokjin frowned, “But-” You held up your hand to stop him, “No buts, I am ok, I have what matters to me most and I will heal from my injuries.”

The Prince gave you a pointed look but dropped the topic, “I’ve asked Jimin to order some clothes for you, he knows lots about clothing.” You opened your mouth to protest but Seokjin stopped you this time, “No buts from you either, you’re my fiance so of course, I will provide for you.” He explained with a wink, making you smile for real. He offered his arm and took you out of what you assumed must be the infirmary wing, “Let’s get your Mother somewhere safe then.” When you two returned to your room a servant was waiting with a golden frame, which you gratefully accepted. You set the picture into the frame and then put it at your bedside, facing the window.

“She always loved to watch the sun rise and set. New beginnings and happy endings she’d say.” You smiled at the memory, running your hand along the frame gently. Seokjin crumpled his hand into a tight fist. He couldn’t believe people would do such horrible things to such a kind and warm person. He rarely got mad, but right now he was furious and hiding it as best he could for your sake. “Hejin said you should take it easy for a few days since you took in so much smoke, and your hand…” The prince trailed off. “Nonsense.” You said with a shake of your head, “I just need to go collect some herbs from the forest and then I’ll be right as rain.” Seokjin gave you a look of disbelief making you chuckle softly. “Witch, remember?” You said plainly, gesturing to yourself.

Seokjin blanched. He had, in fact, forgotten this bit of information, so wrapped up in your accept of his proposal and the morning’s events that it had slipped his mind completely. “Ah, right. Then I will accompany you to the forest later, but for now, you should have a small rest at least?” You couldn’t deny the sweet request and so you bid him farewell and laid atop the bed. You tried your best to have a nap as wicked flames licked at your dreams, turning them to nightmares in an instant.

Well if you ever want any tips on how to be more convincing on your next round, which I'm sure has already been put in motion, there are 3 telling tells that most exposed you.

I'm not sitting here dwelling about it all day but I admit I'm still in shock. I mean I know it's my fault and all for choosing to be ignorant and not admitting to myself who you really were, but I didn't really have a choice and you knew that. I knew you had control issues but there were a handful of redeeming qualities that had me hoping it'd be manageable. And so I swept it under the rug, chose to accept you as you are (as I would want too) and took the "friendship" one day at a time. I told myself that at the end of the day, things could be a whole hell of a lot worse. If being misunderstood or exploited or slandered or even abandoned by a bitter friend is the worst I've got it, I've got a pretty damn good fucking life and I better shut up before I'm shown just how bad it really can be.

Same goes for you-- a fact I think you toss around in your head at times too. So you lost the 500,000 and broke a few ribs and your kidnapper lives next door and, well you know the rest best. What does winning a woe-is-me contest do?

You think I walk around-- no, you think I float around, in some fairytale fantasyland with this magic wand up my ass turning everything I touch into glitter and gold (or believing I do.) First of all, perspective is everything and you'd have to be pretty fucking far down for me to be able to pull off that trick. And secondly, I hate fantasy. Reality is all mankind has ever strived to know and yet it still holds the status as the most incomprehensible paradox boggling our itty bitty brains. Why would I spend my short 80something years dicking around in a fantasy when reality is so much more alluring? Exciting? Challenging? Mysterious? Not only that but isn't it our responsibility as humans individually and collectively to contribute in our own ways and work relentlessly to figure this place out? While helping each other up when we stumble?

There's plenty for me to study and experiment with before I can have any kind of opinion about the "truth" or what's "right" or "fair." All I can know is my own truth and lying about it would be nothing but counterproductive.

Would you like a glimpse of my flaw list? Yes my Flaw List that flashes before my every decision on the daily:

11) I am of weak character to be 31 and afraid of the outside world

12) I am of selfish and weak character to choose anorexia over health

13) I am a disappointment to my parents for not learning the first time

14) I am resented by my parents for costing them a dime

15) I am naive 

16) I am a pushover

17) I worry too much

18) I am selfish and cowardly for choosing not to have kids

19) I am a poor judge of character

20) I am unrealistic and overambitious

21) I am OCD about my physical appearance and living environment

22) I am a burden

23) I am too sensitive

24) I make things too difficult

25) I give too freely and clumsily

26) I am self destructive 

It's not so much in my interest to convince you of who I am, because regardless of what's true, you'll see what you believe. I'm moreso frustrated with the time already wasted being opponents when there's so much more we could be doing with what each of us bring to the table. You've opened my eyes to a much deeper and more disturbing level of darkness-- which was necessary, but then call me needy and childish and mentally ill for panicking when you vanish.

Fortunately for me my skin has thickened up a bit more each time, so now it mostly comes in waves, ie upon first waking up and by default expecting to see you here. Or these reminders of how much you love to make me wait and feel unwanted. Or when I wanna talk but no one is up to share 3am thoughts with. Yes, it's uncomfortable to know how easily disposable and probably replaceable I am to you and how little of me you value. It's insulting that you've only stuck around because you feel responsible. But most of all it's disappointing that you perceived my caring for you as weakness, because as I've said before, it took all my wobbly knees had to accept your every strike behind them for a purpose bigger than myself.

Out of all people Ric* I seriously thought you'd be the first to understand that. And encourage my resilience. And have the guts to fight for something to believe in. But you don't care to try anymore. And I guess I'm at that point too.

I think you know what I'm saying.

Our Holy Little Lives (Faith at the Movies: Little Women) - preached 1/19/2020

Movie Summary (spoilers – but if you don’t know the basics of Little Women 150 years after the story was published, I think it’s a bit late for spoiler warnings!): Little Women is based on Louisa May Alcott’s novel of the same name, and tells the story of four sisters coming of age in the 1860s. Their father is serving as a chaplain in the Civil War, so their wise and patient mother heads the household. The four sisters each have unique personalities: from oldest to youngest, they are Meg, who’s beautiful and traditional; Jo, who rejects tradition, longing to be independent and a writer; Beth, the peacemaker of the family; and Amy, the youngest, who loves art and longs to be rich. The family starts a friendship with their rich neighbor and his grandson, Theodore Laurence, whom they call “Laurie.” Meg falls in love with and marries Laurie’s tutor; Jo refuses Laurie’s marriage proposal and instead goes to New York City in search of adventure. Amy travels to Europe with the girls’ wealthy maiden aunt, while Beth’s health fails back at home. Before her death, Beth begs Jo to keep writing stories for her. Jo realizes she longs to love and be loved, and second guesses her refusal to marry Laurie – only to discover that Laurie has married her youngest sister, Amy. Jo ends up falling in love with a professor she met in New York City, who encouraged Jo to push herself beyond writing fantastical stories and instead capture the beauty of real life.

  As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.  But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” (Luke 10:38-40)

   I always hated Amy March.

 Maybe it’s because I was the youngest in my family, too, so I saw a little too much of myself in Amy, the youngest sister, desperate to stand out, longing for attention and a chance to outperform her older siblings.

 But I always detested Amy March. The four sisters are each unique: there’s Meg, the oldest, smart and sensible; there’s Jo, fearless and bold – often to the point of foolishness; there’s Beth, the shy sister who sits quietly in the background and asks why everyone can’t just get along – and then there’s little Amy, whiny selfish Amy, fiercely and relentlessly ambitious Amy.

 The March family is far from wealthy; though they do get glimpses of neighbors who are much worse off, they also live in the shadow of their rich neighbor’s estate, and more often than not, the family goes without. And so Amy is bound and determined that she won’t be poor forever; she is going to be a rich woman, no matter who she has to marry to get there.

 Amy is vain, perhaps because she knows her beauty is her one greatest asset in capturing a rich husband; she yearns to be popular in school, and she hates being left behind. So when her older sisters leave her behind to go out for an evening of fun, Amy yells, “You’ll be sorry!” – and then with anger and intention, she takes her older sister Jo’s masterpiece, her handwritten manuscript, the novel into which she’s poured her heart and soul over many sleepless nights – Amy takes Jo’s one precious labor of creative love, and she burns each page away.

 The sisters get in an actual rolling-on-the-floor, fists-flying and hair-pulling fight that night. And when Mike and I watched that scene – both sisters sobbing with anger, both sisters certain she was the one who’d been done wrong – when we watched those sisters yelling and rolling and fighting, I looked at my husband and said, “Isn’t it nice to know that sisters are the same in every generation? Some things just never change!”

 No matter what age we live in, we fight most passionately – and hurt most deeply – the people whom we love most dearly. Maybe it’s a simple matter of proximity. Maybe it’s because we reserve our civility for those people we can keep at an arm’s length. Or maybe it’s because deep down we believe that love will persevere – they say that’s why children will behave beautifully for teachers and neighbors and strangers, but as soon as their parent shows up, everything goes off the rails… the experts say it’s because our children know they’re safe with us; they can let their guard down, and let their sadness or anger or exhaustion show, and they know we’ll still love them, no matter what.

 Maybe. But – when we’re honest – there are plenty of days when we make it hard to love each other. And that’s what happened for the March sisters the night Amy threw Jo’s masterpiece in the fire. Even when she repents and apologizes, weeping, the damage is done, and Jo proclaims, “She doesn’t deserve my forgiveness. I hate her. I’ll never forgive her. Never.”

 It’s only later – only after Amy chases after her older sister, begging for forgiveness, her cries falling on deaf ears until the splash, until Amy falls through the ice and nearly drowns in a frozen lake – it’s only later that Jo relents, rushing to her sister, pulling her to dry land, wrapping her in Jo’s own warm dry clothes, and forgiving her at last. Jo realizes, in that moment, just how quickly things can change; she realizes that even more important than irreplaceable manuscripts are irreplaceable people. Jo realizes what matters most – and, as she later says to a grown-up Amy, “Life’s too short to stay mad at your sister.”

 And I know that Jo is right – I spend my whole life talking about grace after all. But I’m not sure I’d be so quick to forgive. I never really liked Amy to begin with, and this whole scene especially reveals just how selfish and ungrateful she can be. And I know, in my rational mind, that people are always more important than things. But still, the heart struggles to forgive sometimes.

 I never could stand Amy. Then again – and this may be close to blasphemy – but I never really liked any of the March sisters. I loved their story; I loved to visit their chaotic little household, but the sisters themselves had a way of getting on my nerves. There’s Meg, who gives in to peer pressure when the rich girls adopt her as their pet… and who rather enjoys playing the part, until she gives into pressure from the neighbor-boy to put her airs away. And Meg is always just a little bit too earnest, too good; she gives up her own dreams for the sake of love.

 Then there’s Beth, who never really has many dreams or much of a voice, just meekly letting the story pass her by – Beth, the one whose own sisters even think she’s just a bit too good to be true.

 And even Jo, the plucky heroine who bucks tradition, clinging to her independence, determined to keep her voice and make her own way – even Jo ends up compromising, giving up her freedom to marry in the end. Jo made me furious growing up: she is so determined not to marry that she breaks the heart of the neighbor-boy, turning down his proposal, even though he would have been such a perfect match… but then all of the sudden she changes her mind and marries anyway, marrying somebody else whom we, the audience, hardly get to know or have any chance to approve. Sure, I could make an argument that the whole arc of Jo’s story, the essence of her character, is that she doesn’t give in to other people’s opinions of what her life should be – she won’t be pressured into compromising her choices just to meet someone else’s expectations, so perhaps it only makes sense that she doesn’t care whether I approve of her decisions, either.

 Maybe. But my goodness, it was always just so annoying to watch this fiercely independent woman throw her whole personality away.

 So that’s the family: four irritatingly flawed sisters, and their mother – Marmee, who’s more than just a little bit too good, Marmee who bravely heads the family while father is away, Marmee who believes in educating her daughters to be independent women, who teaches them not just ambition but compassion for their neighbors, Marmee who is infinitely patient with her wild girls and somehow always knows the very right and perfect thing to say.

 It’s altogether a bit too much – which is, I think, why I appreciated this newest telling of the March family story. This film humanizes the March family and, in many ways, redeems them. Instead of saccharine perfection, wise words and quick forgiveness, we see more of the conflict and chaos. We catch glimpses of the struggle that patient Marmee faces when she confesses that she is angry every single day. We see that Meg, who achieves the perfect domestic little life, who pledged that she’d rather marry a poor man for love than anyone else – Meg marries her poor man for love, but still is the young woman who loves fine things, and struggles at times to be content. Beth the wallflower becomes a bit bolder, more of an actor in her own story, and in many ways the thread that holds the others together, even after her death. And we see a Jo who doesn’t forget herself for a man, but who instead clarifies her own priorities – and chooses to live, in her own ambiguous way, happily ever after.

 But most of all, we get to meet a kindler, gentler Amy. We see Amy not as a spoiled brat but Amy who’s lonely and longing to be loved. We meet an Amy who has grown up in the shadow of hardship and war, of poverty and death, and who is desperately afraid she will die unimportant, unnoticed, that she will die without ever really getting a chance to live. And we meet an Amy whose marriage, in the end, is not so much a greedy manipulation but is an extension of her love for her family, and her grief, and her longing to be loved for herself, and the pressure she’s always felt to be the one who finds a way to provide for all the rest .

 In this modern Little Women, each of the women are doing their best to make their way in the world – each choosing a different path, and each stumbling along the way to figuring out what love and happiness means. We find that none of the sisters is the caricature we’ve reduced her to; we find that none is so flawed nor so perfect as they’ve seemed – this new incarnation of the March family is not quite so pure, and for that reason, it’s so much more real.

 Because that’s what Incarnation means: it means in-the-flesh, in the real world of flesh and blood and sweat and tears. And that’s where the Incarnate Word, who put on flesh and lives among us, that’s where God meets us – not in some patient, perfect, harmonious universe, but in this one where we really live.

 It’s a bit peculiar, watching a movie knowing you’re going to preach on it in a few days. I’m always trying to take notes, jotting down the best lines and the things that really make you think – but this time, I found that my favorite scenes were the ones I couldn’t capture in my notes, because they were the moments when the whole brood of sisters are talking over each other – in joy, or excitement, murmuring words of comfort or exclamations of praise – and in those amazingly chaotic moments, there is just so much warmth and so much love.

 And when the March family ultimately loses one of their members, when quiet Beth really and truly fades right away, that’s when the sisters realize just how not-invisible Beth really was – how much her very presence meant – and more than that, they realize just how precious all those ordinary little moments of their ordinarily little lives always have been.

 Meg always longed for her own household, and Amy wanted riches, and Jo yearned for grand adventures – but when they lose Beth, they realize that what matters most, the grandest and richest adventures, came in quietly, in ordinary moments: in family newspapers and attic dramas, in family breakfasts and hair disasters, in missing gloves and burnt dresses and secret mailboxes and singing around the piano by candlelight… they learn to find the beauty and value in all that ordinary stuff.

 I imagine that’s why Jesus sought the company of sisters like Martha and Mary, whom we visited again today, on what was undoubtedly not one of their finest days. But Jesus the wandering rabbi was a man without a home, looking for a place to let down his guard and rest – and in his presence, even sisterly squabbles take on the air of something holy. Have you ever considered how remarkable it is that we know this story at all? That the story of two sisters fighting over housework was considered so important that it actually becomes part of the gospel – the story of salvation, the story of heaven come to earth, the story which was preserved and passed down through the generations? It’s not just crowds and miracles and sermons and speeches, but we find that the chaos of our daily lives is holy, too. Even when we’re not at our best, even when we get on each other’s nerves, love is there, and God is, too.

 Little Women is of course a story about a family of remarkable women, but there is an honorary brother in this family, the rich and lonely boy next door. And when that boy first encounters the chaotic bustle of noise and affection inside the March household, his face reflects his longing – a longing to belong to a crazy and boisterous and loving family like theirs. The arguments and embraces are holy, because they are bound together with a thread of love – and having everything means nothing if you have no one to share it with.

 Jo spends the whole novel trying to write great stories; she writes about kings and princesses, about murderers and star-crossed lovers and great and mighty battlefields. Jo writes stories about scandal and passion and gore – but what she realizes in the end is that the best story, the greatest and most important story, is her own.

 Beth begs her sister to keep writing, even after Beth herself is gone. And in the writing, Jo finds that the stories are holy – in the writing, she finds that her sister lives on. Love doesn’t end with death: we know it, we proclaim it, and Jo learns it – not by facing down a dragon on a battlefield, but by discovering the love that has been with her all her life through.

 That’s the beauty and the genius of Louisa May Alcott’s book – she who identified with Jo, who searched for a great story and found her story very close to home. Alcott’s characters reveal to us that every day is a holy day, and ordinary moments can be the holiest of all.

 And this is a message which is very personal for our family. Many of you know that we lost our son to leukemia when he was just one year old. Shortly after our son passed away, we sat with a friend of ours sharing photos and watching videos and telling stories through our tears, and our friend asked us, “Is there one memory, one moment, that you really treasure most of all?”

 And we said, “Honestly? It’s the stupid ordinary everyday family stuff: the stuff that we used to take for granted.” It’s the afternoon when our kids drummed together on the bottom of a garbage can, or the nights we actually all sat around the same dinner table, or we shared snuggles and had a tickle-fight at bedtime – it’s the seemingly ordinary moments that matter most. Carl’s big sister trying to “read” him a book. Going for a walk around the neighborhood. Playing with my parents’ dog. Crying in the carseat. Laughing as he spins around and around in an office chair. Holding him while he naps. Stupid, ordinary, everyday family stuff.

That’s what matters. That’s why the March family story endures: not just because each sister, in her own way, learns that the most important thing in life is love – but because, for all their grand dreams and ambitions, they discover the real adventure and the best story is our own. One of the sisters muses, “Do you really think anyone would care about our little domestic struggles and triumphs?” The answer throughout the years has, of course, been yes – because we are reminded that the real stuff of our daily lives matters, too.

 Friends, what is your story? Who shares it? Where has God been revealed in your life? What do you want to remember forever - not just the best days, but the ordinary ones? What legacy are we going to leave behind?

 Our little lives matter. This day, this day right now, is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. And may we find that this day is a holy day – flaws and squabbles and all.

  God of our greatest adventures, God of our ordinary every-days, we thank you for the gift of this day. Help us to see the beauty in the chaos of our lives: in moments we take for granted, in laughter and in tears, in all those things we don’t know enough to treasure until they’re gone. Teach us to value people above everything else; teach us to forgive, and help us especially to remember that what matters most is love. May we not just long to be loved, but to love, with courage and with grace. In the name of Jesus, who joins us in our messy world and turns all the ground we walk into holy ground, we pray; amen.