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[isbergillustration]

Look Deeper

[scealaiscoite]

⋆˚࿔ prompt sets of three 𝜗𝜚˚⋆

write a piece featuring - in any capacity you can think of - all three things depicted in the given prompt!

¹⁾ a polka-dot bikini, a throw blanket and a pint glass

²⁾ a sliotar, a flat tire and a thunderstorm

³⁾ a teakettle, a fresh bruise and rosewater

⁴⁾ a chipped enamel bathtub, a blue sweater and basil leaves

⁵⁾ howling gale winds, an inflatable paddling pool and an oil lamp

⁶⁾ a fresh buzzcut, pink bubblegum and rolling tobacco

⁷⁾ gas station bandaids, a cellophane-wrapped bouquet and muddy footprints

⁸⁾ a lipstick print, skinned knees and stained-glass windows

⁹⁾ a busted streetlight, green olives and a teak countertop

¹⁰⁾ gun oil, red lace and an old armchair

¹¹⁾ a fresh tattoo, a sacristy, and guilt

¹²⁾ a corner booth, sweet patchouli and a wallet

¹³⁾ donuts, orange juice and a jail cell

¹⁴⁾ a cold red bull, shaking hands and broken traffic lights

¹⁵⁾ new graves, a busted headlight and silver rings

¹⁶⁾ handcuffs, brightly coloured building blocks and fir trees

¹⁷⁾ a shortwave radio, takeout containers and a bare lightbulb

¹⁸⁾ broken windows, waist-high grasses and lit matches

¹⁹⁾ orange segments, divorce papers and a front porch

²⁰⁾ horror movies, steaming showers and cold bedsheets

²¹⁾ brazilian lemonade, a split lip and daisy chains

²²⁾ a red convertible, a priest’s collar and dogtags

²³⁾ a corner office, parking tickets and greyhound races

²⁴⁾ bitten lips, army fatigues, and coca-cola

²⁵⁾ old wives’ tales, creaky stairs and cherry lipgloss

²⁶⁾ smooth whiskey, greying hair and warm hands

²⁷⁾ hospital food, full moons and a reconciliation

²⁸⁾ exes, candy wrappers and a twin bed

²⁹⁾ a rural motel, a pocket knife and iodine

³⁰⁾ a dirty martini, a dressing gown and blood under fingernails

³¹⁾ slept-in braids, a lamplit office and an explosion

³²⁾ blueberry pancakes, a restraining order and the taste of rum off someone’s lips

³³⁾ farmers’ market peaches, burnt coffee and houseplants

³⁴⁾ a late text, faded jeans and lightning strikes

³⁶⁾ desert air, zinnias and chocolates

³⁷⁾ an old truck, freshly turned earth and a tv dinner

³⁸⁾ wedding rings, wildfire and wrought iron gates

³⁹⁾ a hostage situation, evergreen trees and a pierced tongue

⁴⁰⁾ unripe strawberries, bitter wine and a kitchen table

⁴¹⁾ a head laid down in a lap, green tea and a break news announcement

⁴²⁾ a fire alarm, a flower-patterened apron and an ajar kitchen window

⁴³⁾ a jar of jam, two shots of vodka and a stack of car manuals

⁴⁴⁾ techno music at 4am, knitted jumpers and a broken watch

⁴⁵⁾ a green silk scarf, a pan of burnt food and the trunk of a car

⁴⁶⁾ bound hands, a crescent moon and laughter

⁴⁷⁾ a winter coat, a heatwave and fresh mangos

⁴⁸⁾ a thrift store sofa, a highrise apartment building and creaking floorboards

⁴⁹⁾ missing teeth, a house half covered in ivy and cheap beer

⁵⁰⁾ undeveloped camera film, stomach kisses and cigarette smoke

[1d1195]

Sunflower

~7.2 k words

From Me: Requested by my 🍓-anon. Sorry it took some time. I took a couple liberties (mostly because I love food a lot so I couldn't make it taste bad hahahaha) I hope you like it! I'm going to post your ask with the request tomorrow. 💕 Right now it's just the one part (but I feel like some may want a second).

Warnings: fluffy and a bit of jealous Harry. Nothing too angsty though this time around.

Summary: Harry has a high paying job that allows him to eat at some of the finest restaurants in the city. But the little bistro that has good drinks and a great staff is by far his favorite. Or maybe it's the waitress he can't get out of his head that has him coming back so often.

“Are you sure this is the place?” Sarah looked skeptical.

“I swear,” Mitch smiled. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but the drinks are good and so are the apps.”

Harry watched the banter of his two best friends. “How did you even come across this place?” Sarah asked as Mitch held the door open for her to enter. Harry took hold of it so Mitch could follow after her. There were no more than fifteen tables and a bar. It was fairly dark but in a good way.

If anything, it contrasted sharply with the sunflowers at nearly every turn. There was a mural painted on the back wall of bright flowers against the dark paint. Each table had a bright blue glass vase with a single sunflower stem in the middle of the table. The aprons the staff wore were covered in a floral print of a garden of sunflowers. It was stunning. Bright and beautiful.

“Aptly named,” Sarah smirked.

Harry chuckled. “S’nice,” he agreed.

Harry and Sarah continued their observation while Mitch waited patiently at the host stand. “I came here for lunch with a client,” he said answering Sarah’s earlier question. “Their friend owns it.” After another moment they were brought to a table. There weren’t many people there; given they were there at two in the afternoon on a Saturday it wasn’t so surprising. The bar was nearly filled, several patrons seemed to be regulars as they got a say in what sporting event got to be on the TV. Only two other tables were filled and there was no need for a bustling staff. “I came for dinner, and it was full capacity with a line. But when you know the owner, you get a table early. They have a little outdoor patio around back too but it’s seasonal.”

The three of them looked over the menu in silence. Until Sarah broached the subject of getting one of every type of appetizer and then there was their daily debate of which appetizer was best and maybe they would have to do one of each since they wouldn’t be able to decide which was best.

Their debate was interrupted by the waitress coming over to introduce herself.

“Hi everyone, welcome to The Sunflower Bistro, have you been here before?”

“I have,” Mitch smiled. “We’re arguing over an appetizer, what do you think?”

Without pausing, she didn’t help the debate. “Oh, one of each,” she giggled.

“See! I told you!” Sarah lightly smacked Mitch’s arm.

This only made her smile grow. “Can I take your drink order while you narrow your choices?” She asked.

There was an exchange of words. Words Harry didn’t hear. But then Sarah and Mitch were looking at him expectantly.

“Harry?” Mitch asked.

“A drink, hello?” Sarah laughed.

Quickly he shook his head. “Sorry,” he cleared his throat, his eyes glancing down at the menu but unable to read anything. “Just water for now,” he murmured unable to make eye contact with her.

“I’ll be right back,” her voice was sweet and pretty.

“Are you alright?” Mitch asked.

“She’s beautiful,” Harry mumbled. “I can’t even look at her.”

When he saw her approach, he was immediately tongue-tied. Overwhelmed. It was like seeing the ocean for the first time. Or a garden. Or a painting in a museum. There wasn’t a way to pinpoint what made her so beautiful. It seemed to be everything. The way her hair was clipped behind her head and just a few soft pieces framed her cheeks. Her bright smile. Her sparkling eyes. The way the sunflower apron cinched her hips. All of it. Or none of it. She was beautiful. Overwhelmingly so. Harry swore he forgot how to breathe. He had been in love before—at least he thought he had been. This wasn’t comparable.

So he couldn’t even look at her.

Sarah giggled. Enjoying the way her friend’s face turned pink at the admission. Mitch smiled. “Aw Harry’s got a crush!”

“Shut up, she’ll hear!” Harry snapped and put the menu in front of his face, hiding from the rest of the restaurant.

“Oh my God,” Sarah laughed. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“I could not look at her,” Harry mumbled putting the menu over his face.

“She’s very pretty,” Sarah agreed and reached out to squeeze Harry’s arm. “But you have to look at her.”

Harry’s heart was racing. Like he was sprinting on the treadmill or in the middle of a phone call with an important client. Harry had been nervous before. The exams in college, his first interview, on-boarding new clients. This wasn’t comparable either. “I really don’t think I can, Sarah.”

“Did we make any decisions?” Her kind voice returned, and Harry scanned the menu eagerly, his cheeks still flushed, he was sure.

“Honestly, no,” Sarah laughed. “We’ve been admiring how beautiful this place is.”

And you, Harry thought.

“Oh, I know, it’s practically dreamy working here. The sunflowers are the perfect flower. It’s so sunny and fun,” she explained.

“Have you worked here long?” Mitch asked.

“Yes, since it opened. My friend owns it. It’s like a family kind of thing around here. It’s so nice,” she looked so happy to talk about this place. Passionate. “Niall’s really nice about me going to school and getting me the shifts I want.”

“Oh, that’s so nice! What are you studying?”

Harry wanted to involve himself in the conversation, but he was so speechless by her kind sweet presence, it was impossible to think of a word to say to her. He was grateful his two friends were there to carry the flow of dialogue because it was apparent Harry was going to be useless in that regard.

“Harry also went for a degree in finance,” Sarah segued to look at Harry. He missed her response. That was evident. He would ask when she went back to place their orders what was said specifically.

He looked at her, fully. He hoped he wasn’t staring at her to the point that she wanted to hide and run away from him because he was being a creep. After a pause that was a brief longer than he would have liked, he cleared his throat. “I graduated a couple years ago. I work for a large accounting firm,” it was a miracle he didn’t stutter from how nervous he was. He was holding the menu still to keep his hands from shaking.

Her smile brightened. She looked genuinely happy for Harry. He imagined she was anything but disingenuous, but still. For a complete stranger, who could barely utter two sentences to her, she bubbled with excitement at this knowledge of getting to know him. “Oh! That’s amazing! Nice to meet you, Harry. I’m graduating this spring,” she explained. “I’m super nervous about the whole internship process...I feel like it’s super difficult and overwhelming.”

“Harry’s still in touch with the person he did his internship with,” Mitch volunteered.

He wasn’t. At least...not to the degree that Mitch was suggesting. “Well, I’ll have to give you my card,” she winked at him. “I’ll give you a few more minutes to decide on appetizers.”

Harry felt some kind of crushing relief to watch her walk away. Which was ridiculous because the moment she was gone, he realized how badly and stupidly he wanted her to come back. He could barely even talk to her, but her presence made him happy. Deliriously so.

Sighing, he turned to Sarah. “Am I ruining m’first impression?” He asked.

Sarah smiled and shook her head. “Not at all.”

Harry really hoped not. “I’ve never felt like this,” he mumbled and decided bare minimum, he needed to pick something to eat. At least he could repeat it in his head a few times before she returned and not embarrass himself while ordering.

Hopefully.

*

Like the perfect waitress, she came back to check their food was good and their drinks were refilled. Mitch was right. The drinks were good and so was the food. “Can I get you guys anything else?” She asked sweetly. Fortunately, Harry managed to order his own food without Sarah or Mitch’s help. He didn’t stammer and didn’t make a fool of himself in front of her.

“No thank you,” Sarah turned to Harry. “Did you want to give her your card as well?” She asked. Harry felt like he was having an allergic reaction. His skin felt hot, and he thought that his throat was closing. Part of him wanted to kick Sarah beneath the table but a small piece of him was grateful for her direction and encouragement because it was evident he couldn’t do this on his own. He was prepared to give her his whole wallet. Credit cards, cash, anything in there was hers.

“Er...right,” Harry fumbled, his hands shaking as he opened it.

Harry tried to keep his breath under control as their fingers brushed when she took the card from him. His heart was working triple the beating time it was supposed to from the soft touch that couldn’t have lasted more than a second. “Oh goodness, my card doesn’t look anything like this,” she frowned. “Please don’t judge how ridiculous it is, I thought it was cute and memorable,” she pulled a few cards from her apron pocket.

It was cute and memorable. He didn’t want her to change a thing. The top corners were webbed with a little sunflower vine. Otherwise, the card was white with a half-print, half-cursive font covered in blue. “Well, aren’t you a Jane-of-all-trades,” Sarah laughed. She had listed tutoring, babysitting, painting, lawn-mowing, cleaning, etc.

“Gotta pay the bills somehow,” she admitted. She sighed. “I’m grateful to Niall as I’ve steered away from most of those odd jobs that my dad taught me,” she laughed again. “Waitressing, despite everything, is a lot more stable while I’m still in school. I made that when I was fresh out of high school. It needs a serious update.”

“Harry, where did you make your business cards?” Mitch asked.

If this were a regular day and Harry wasn’t so tongue-tied and nervous, he probably would have thanked his friends for their effort to support him in being his wingman and wingwoman. But he was so out of sorts, so unbelievably captivated and captured by her, he couldn’t fully use his brain. It was embarrassing. If she had even an inkling that he liked her, she probably wasn’t going to reciprocate merely because he was so embarrassing to listen to. There was no way someone so pretty would like him and his inability to speak.

What would their dates even look like? Her voice was so nice, like a song he hadn’t heard since he was young. The kind of song that made him believe in love even though he was young. Her laugh was probably adorable. Her smile was adorable so it could only be so. But she would want conversation. Right? Was she just to chat about her day and her feelings and Harry wouldn’t be able to do anything but stare at her? Admiring how pretty she was?

Actually, that sounded like a pretty decent plan for Harry. But she deserved more.

So instead, he cleared his throat once more. “S’online. I’d have t’look up the website. But yours is memorable,” he assured her. “I like the colors.”

“Thanks, Harry,” God he loved the sound of her voice saying his name. Her adorable smile was so sweet he felt his heart melting. “It definitely needs an update now that I’m about to graduate though, please let me know if you find the website.”

Harry wanted to tell her that he would give her whatever she wanted for as long as they lived and then in their next life too. But instead, he simply nodded and tucked her card safely into his wallet.

*

“This is insane,” he mumbled to himself as he pulled the door out of the way. It had been two days since he left The Sunflower Bistro and the pretty, sunflowery girl he was completely enamored with after hardly speaking to her. While her phone number weighed heavily in his wallet, he couldn’t bring himself to call her. Worried he wouldn’t be able to get a word out when she answered.

How he thought he was going to talk to her without Sarah and Mitch as a buffer was beyond him, but he couldn’t walk past this place either knowing he could see her and try to make up for his tragic first impression. “Hey Harry!” She said walking by the hostess stand. “Nice to see you again! Niall, can you put him in my section?” She asked.

Harry felt the words die in his throat, so he was glad he didn’t have to speak to Niall.

“A regular, hmm? Took you long enough,” Niall called after her.

“Had to hold out for a good one!” She shouted back and disappeared behind a door.

Harry wondered if all those times he had been in love before were real. His chest was fluttering with some emotion he hadn’t felt before then. It was a longing that filled every ounce of his lungs, every cell of his blood. Every inch of him. Like some kind of homing sound was coming from her and echoing in his body. He felt so unbelievably whole when he looked at her. Like he was seen.

Niall brought Harry to a table and smiled at him as he left.

“Hey! I was hoping you’d text or call, I figured it was my crummy card that deterred you. Or maybe it was unreadable,” that laugh of hers was a melody Harry wasn’t going to forget for the rest of his life. She leaned on the opposite side of the booth looking at him. Her hair was pulled back the same way as it was the other night. Silky and pretty. Harry wanted to slide his fingers through it more than anything. Her smile that had haunted all his thoughts at work and made him grin at his computer screen like a lunatic was also still just as earth shatteringly beautiful as last time. Made him tongue-tied just as he was last time.

“Um...yeah, no...,” he managed to smile at her joke. “M’jus’...” he shook his head trying to think of a reasonable excuse that would make any sense as to why he hadn’t called the pretty girl yet.

“Hey, no worries; I’m sure work keeps you busy!” Her voice was cheerful. “I’m glad to see you, is all. Are your friends coming?” His heart nearly stopped that she was glad to see him.

“Not this time,” he hoped that wouldn’t disappoint her because then he would call Mitch and Sarah and order them over. He still had a right mind to do so. Seemed to be the only way he would be able to talk to her more than a few mumbled words.

“Alright, well I’ll let you mull over the menu while I grab you a water. Unless you want something else?”

Drinking alcohol around her might make him fully mute. Or make him spill every thought he had. Without his friends as a buffer, both seemed heinous. “Water’s good.”

“I’ll be right back,” she flitted off like she was floating. Harry believed she was an angel so that made sense.

“C’mon Harry,” he mumbled to himself looking over the menu deciding what he would try today. He was fortunate the food was so good, and it would give him an excuse to come back more times than probably necessary so he could see her again.

“Here you are!” She practically chirped, setting his glass of water in front of him. She leaned against the opposite side of the booth again. “Anything look good?” She asked.

Her.

“Um...m’a fan of street corn,” he scanned the menu again.

“That’s probably my favorite app on there—or the pretzel bites with queso. It shouldn’t work but it does. The veggie soup here is criminally underrated but it’s not really soup season so no fault there. I’ll give you a couple more minutes,” she sauntered off again with her kind smile.

Harry wondered what her favorite song was and why she got into finance. He wanted to ask her what her least favorite subject was in school and what kind of music she listened to while she was cooking. Knowing her favorite candle and what kind of shampoo she used seemed like critical information he needed to know. He wanted to know how many siblings she had and whether or not she would want two kids or three.

All of which was ridiculous.

And further proof Harry had never been in love with anyone before he saw her.

*

Harry visited on Mondays and Fridays. It was a good way to start his week and a great way to end his week. Seeing her bookended by the workweek was nothing short of perfect.

He did this for three weeks. Niall merely smiled, as if he knew why he was there. Harry could feel his cheeks turn pink each time the staff gave him a knowing smile. It was obvious he was there to see her. To be placed in her section. “Hey Harry!” She chirped when he sat at his regular table.

Mitch and Sarah joined him twice more since the day they brought him. He was less tongue-tied but nearly just as shy. They gave him an immense amount of shit for being so smitten. But Sarah thought it was adorable. “You could just ask her out.”

“S’creepy,” he grumbled. “I doubt a waitress wants t’be hit on by their customer.”

“Right, coming twice a week just to see her isn’t creepy,” Mitch eyed him suspiciously as he sipped his drink.

Harry sighed in frustration and rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye. “I jus’—”

“Hey guys,” she nearly cooed so sweetly. Her cheeks turned pink. “I’m running a little behind today. I’m really sorry. This has been the longest double in the world,” her smile was still adorable. But she did look tired. Poor thing. “We’re down a server. And a line cook,” the exhaustion she felt was palpable.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Sarah cooed. “Harry, scoot over, let her sit,” she ordered.

Harry did immediately. Simultaneously terrified and excited to be so close to her. “Oh, it’s alright. I just—”

“Seriously, darling,” Mitch smiled. “Sit,” he encouraged.

She did.

The warmth of her body rolled off her and wafted over Harry in waves. It was like a gentle hug. His heart was rapidly beating, as it always did but somehow even faster now that she was so close to him. “Thank you, my feet are killing me,” she sighed. “I need new shoes, but my car just ate up a big chunk of my paycheck,” she frowned. “When it rains it pours right?”

Harry was trying to figure out the best course of action to help her on every front. He already imagined her tip was going to be exorbitant and he hoped she wouldn’t be upset by that—because he truly wanted to help her. “Have y’eaten yet?” He asked softly.

She bit the inside of her cheek. “No, I have been running around like crazy. Totally missed my chance at lunch.”

“S’not good, love,” Harry frowned. He wanted to call her Miss Sunflower or something similar, but he had one neuron still keeping him sane and decided ‘love’ was more neutral than not.

She nodded in agreement. “I know, I shouldn’t even be sitting. I’m sorry to lay all that on you guys. You’re just the first nice group I’ve had all day. It’s like a break in itself—not that I won’t do what you need and—”

“Oh please,” Sarah rolled her eyes. “We can just fill this table for you if that will make your life easier. Don’t worry about us,” she assured her.

The relief on her face was so sweet. Harry struggled to not wrap her in a hug beside him. “Thank you guys. It’s so nice to see you. I’ve never had my own regulars before,” her smile was so cute Harry wanted to kiss every inch of her face. His skin felt warm sitting so close to her. Snaking his arm around her waist would be so easy, so effortless. “I’ll get you a round of drinks?” She asked as she stood from her seat beside Harry. “Anything to start with today?”

“Pretzel bites,” Harry blurted quickly. “Please.”

He hoped he could convince her to sit and have a few when they came to the table. “My favorite,” she grinned knowingly.

*

When Harry sat in her section, she knew it was going to be a good day. His sweet smile, his easy-going nature, and just his kind presence made her shift immensely better. “He’s here again,” Niall sang as he headed to the kitchen where she was putting together a to-go order for one of her tables.

Her cheeks warmed under Niall’s sing-song tone. “If your food wasn’t so good he wouldn’t be here.”

“Darling, he’s not here for the food,” Niall sounded the slightest bit exasperated. He had repeated himself of the same notion since the second time Harry showed up to be seated in her section. “If he was truly here for the food, would he have left you a massive tip like that to get new shoes?”

The implication was there, and maybe she was having a little more trouble ignoring it after getting way more money from him and his friends than she had ever gotten while waitressing. Her achy feet felt so much better with new shoes too. So, part of her struggled to ignore the fact that Harry was maybe, possibly, there because she was.

Harry never made her feel uncomfortable. In fact, she felt nothing but comfort by seeing him. He was quiet, sweet, and very easy to look at. It took considerable strength for her to not stand at his table forthe entire time he was seated in her section. Mondays and Fridays were her favorite days of the week. Chatting with him (even if he seemed a little shy at times) was the best part of her shifts. His smile was so charming. She wanted to tell him everything about her reflexively. It was completely disarming. Or maybe it was how green and deep his eyes were that nearly made her voice die in her throat. It took a lot of effort to remember her job was to go get drinks and food for him at regular intervals.

She really thought he wanted no part of her when she didn’t even get a text message from him after procuring one of her lame cards. Certainly, with silly little flowers and dumb odd jobs listed, he wanted to steer clear of her. But instead, he showed up a few days later in her section. It made her stomach twist with nervous butterflies flitting inside. There were a thousand thoughts running through her head as she admired her handsome customer from afar.

“Hi Harry,” she smiled sweetly as she approached his table. “How are you?” She asked politely.

“Good, how are you?” He answered.

“Good,” she responded. “I got new shoes,” she pointed a toe toward him for him to look at the new sneakers she chose. “That was extremely kind and overwhelming. You didn’t need to do that,” she bit the inside of her lip. “I tried to stop you guys from leaving once I realized, but Niall—”

“S’nothing, love,” his cheeks turned the lightest shade of pink at the compliment. Her heart skipped a beat at how adorable he was and looked. “Was a long day for you. I jus’ wanted t’help a little.”

She nodded feeling gratitude overwhelm her—it was thick in her throat. “Seriously, thank you,” she hoped he understood how appreciative she was. “No one’s ever done something like that for me before.”

“S’really no trouble,” he assured her with a smile that melted each of her organs to a puddle. She was lucky she stayed upright.

“I’ll...I’ll be right back,” she turned and bumped into the table that was behind her causing the chair to scrape across the floor.

“Are y’okay, love?” Harry asked suddenly behind her. He gently touched the back of her arm creating a plethora of fireworks on her skin and in her heart. She shook her head and blushed nervously.

“I’m good. Clumsy me. I’ll get you your drink,” she nearly sprinted toward the bar so as not to embarrass herself further.

*

She was chatting with Harry, leaning against the booth. It was easy. Harry wasn’t a man of many words, but he was a great listener and when he did talk, everything he said was so kind and genuine. It was like talking to an old friend. Someone who just knew what she was thinking without her having to say much. There was this familiarity that was so warm it wrapped around her like a blanket. It made her feel so comfortable in his presence.

She never wanted to stop talking to him. Which was probably why she didn’t. Poor Harry listened to her chat his ear off for hours during the time he came to visit over the couple months of the semester. His quiet, “what’s that like?” Or, “do you enjoy this class?” And, “do you have a recommendation?” just kept her talking and talking.

It was hard for her to fathom Harry was there for her. Harry was graduated, had a real job, and made a ton of money it seemed if he was willing to tip a poor waitress an obscene amount of money for new sneakers. His clothes were nice, and his hair was perfectly styled. He always looked like he was ready for a business call.

His friends were extremely nice and friendly. They were also put together in a way that she never dreamed she could be so it was hard to imagine a situation in which Harry might possibly, kind of, have a crush on her the way she had one on him.

She was mid conversation with Harry. The fall semester had end and she was going to pick up more shifts somehow but was definitely going to catch up on sleep as well. She was praying that Harry would put her out of her pining misery and tell her he had a girlfriend one of these days. “You have to try this new dish! It has the brussels sprouts you like and—”

She was swept directly off the floor mid-sentence and was wrapped in a hug. It was familiar in a way that was different than the familiarity of Harry. Because she was used to this kind of hug. “Hey beautiful,” he cooed in her ear.

She smiled excitedly. “Hi, Jake! I thought you weren’t starting till this weekend!”

“I’m not, but I was nearby and thought I could use a dose of pretty,” he winked and headed toward the kitchen without another word.

She blushed and shook her head. “Sorry,” she murmured and turned to look at Harry again and finish the sentence she had started. “Anyway, the brussels spr—”

Harry had come to the restaurant in a lot of moods over the last few months. Tired, frustrated, happy, stressed, excited...she was pretty good at reading his expression and deciding what he needed or wanted to make his day better. This expression was unreadable. His jaw was tensed creating a sharp angle at his jawline she was sure it could have cut glass. His eyes were blank but watching her intensely. All of his muscles appeared taut—his posture ramrod straight. It almost looked uncomfortable. “Are you okay?” She asked softly.

Harry blinked, shook his head quickly, and cleared his throat. “Uh...yeah. Sorry,” he reached for his glass of water and took a large gulp. “Y’were saying something ‘bout brussels sprouts,” he reminded her.

She bit the inside of her lip feeling a shift in the air around them. Something she couldn’t quite pinpoint. “Oh, right...just...I think you’ll like the special.”

He nodded. Still completely unreadable. “I’ll try it, thank you.”

“I’ll go...put that in,” she murmured and headed toward the kitchen.

The kitchen was still greeting Jake when she entered. Everyone was listening to him recount his semester abroad. “Whoa, did you see a ghost?” Niall asked, doing a double take when she entered.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “No, it’s nothing,” she punched her code into the computer and tapped the meal for Harry.

“Did Harry tell you he has a girlfriend?” Niall pressed.

“No,” she muttered, her cheeks burning red. She grabbed a plate off the shelf for the other table she was waiting on and made sure it had all the extra sides and things. She grabbed the second dish and placed it on her arm.

“Who’s Harry?” Jake asked.

“The love of her life,” Niall told him.

“Shut up, Niall.”

He chuckled. “Oh? Were you going to tell me about him?”

“I’m a bit busy right now.”

“You couldn’t text me?” Jake asked. Jake had been her best friend on the job since Niall opened the sunflowery place. They were a great dynamic duo. But Jake was into dating a lot of different women and that was totally fine and his prerogative. She didn’t judge him at all for being young and doing what he wanted. But she wanted no part of his love life. So they remained friends and it was truly better that way. He would bail her out if a customer was being rude or coming on too strong. She helped him with his math homework and made sure he remembered to drink something other than protein shakes and alcohol on the weekend.

“There’s nothing to write home about,” she mumbled, lying through her teeth and feeling devastated that something in the air shifted between them in a matter of seconds.

Niall snorted in disbelief. She glared at him. Jake smiled impishly while she gathered the final fixings for the table. “Where is he?” He asked as she pushed on the door.

“Jake,” she choked nearly losing the plate in her left hand.

“Niall, do you know him?” He looked expectantly at him. He smirked, opening his mouth to give him the details.

“Uh—”

“Niall!” She snapped. Niall closed his mouth immediately and shrugged at Jake.

She sighed with relief and pushed through to the restaurant floor. “Table thirty-four!” he shouted, muffled by the closed door. She glanced back to see him hovering over the computer.

It took every ounce of self-control to hold onto the dishes in her arms. She wanted to scream. She hurried to her table to deliver the food, prayed they wouldn’t ask for anything additionally, and then she nearly took out another waiter while running for Harry’s table on the other side of the restaurant.

Jake was letting go of Harry’s hand as she approached, and she shoved Jake out of the way. “I don’t know what he said but it’s not true.”

Harry smirked, a good sign of his normal smile and demeanor. “Y’not friends?” He questioned.

She punched Jake in the arm who barely registered the motion other than lightly rubbing his arm without breaking eye contact with Harry. “Not anymore,” she grumbled.

“She’s my work wife,” Jake said wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “Can’t get her to commit to being my actual wife.”

“Don’t want any diseases,” she muttered. The blank, cold stare in Harry’s eyes returned and she felt so warm she tried to push against Jake but was unsuccessful. “Harry is also in finance,” she explained. “He offered to help me make a new business card—”

“Thank God,” Jake interrupted.

“—and he might know someone for an internship.”

Harry’s answer was gentle even though the cold stare didn’t waver. “Don’t think y’need t’change the business card all that much, love. S’sweet.”

“Childish and unprofessional,” she said pointedly.

“Agreed,” Jake squeezed her to his side. “Thanks for keeping her company while I was gone,” he said. Harry wasn’t a man of many words. But his facial expressions made up for it. He smiled politely, nodded, and glanced at his phone ringing.

“I have t’take this,” his voice was tight, apologetic.

“Of course, let’s go,” she yanked on Jake and headed toward the kitchen again.

“Not sure why you like him, he’s pretty cold,” Jake taunted as they returned to the kitchen.

“Cold?” Niall asked. “Harry makes her feel all warm and fuzzy,” he teased. She wrinkled her nose and definitely felt warm at the insinuation.

“He’s... not himself today,” she admitted. “I don’t know why,” she frowned and turned to Niall. “It’s weird.”

“Darling, you can’t be this brilliant and that stupid at the same time,” Niall pinched the bridge of his nose.

Her frowned deepened and she felt resentment for the notion of being stupid. “What are you—”

“He’s jealous.”

“Of what?”

“Of Jake,” Niall rolled his eyes as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

She snorted. “Why?” She blinked.

“Look at me,” Jake smiled proudly and gestured toward himself self-assuredly.

She eyed him briefly up and down. “What? You look like a tool who’s been abroad,” she remarked.

Jake shook his head, unaffected by her insult. “Think Harry might think I’m competition.”

“Why would he think that?”

“I mean, I did call you my wife.”

Niall laughed. “Oh God, poor Harry.”

Her face flamed. “I said we were friends!” She pouted. “Oh my God. Go back abroad,” she shoved him toward the door. “You are the worst.”

“Easy, love,” Jake continued to taunt, this time in Harry’s accent. “I can fix it,” he offered and headed back for Harry’s table quicker than she could catch him. But when they got there, his table was empty. A note scribbled on a napkin in Harry’s writing. Family emergency. Sorry :( Was looking forward to the brussels sprouts. You can have it on me. Next time. He left cash for the food and a tip anyway. Even though he never got his meal.

She pocketed the money and punched Jake in the arm one more time for good measure.

*

“You’re being ridiculous, you know that, right?” Sarah asked. “I know we aren’t best friends with her or anything, but she’s really nice. She wouldn’t lead you on like that.”

Harry knew that. Really, he did. But the emotion he was feeling wasn’t rational. Jake called her his wife and had his arm around her. He hugged her like he loved her. Harry was certain Jake loved her. Even in a way that wasn’t necessarily romantic, but it was...unfair. Unfair that Harry hadn’t told her he liked her. Nervous that he would make her uncomfortable by hitting on her while she was working.

“She wasn’t leading me on at all,” Harry murmured.

“All the more of a reason to not be ridiculous,” Sarah and Mitch had taken turns telling him it was childish to ignore her after all those months of chatting with her and entrenching himself as a regular and then to just not because he was jealous.

“Just because you’re jealous—”

“M’not jealous,” he grumbled.

“Right, because someone who’s not jealous would leave before he got his food because her friend called her his work wife. Someone who’s not jealous would suddenly stop being her regular after months.”

Like clockwork.

Harry was lying on the couch at Sarah and Mitch’s place face down trying to ignore the feeling of his heart breaking. No one said anything for several minutes. Sarah was working on cleaning the kitchen when Harry arrived, and Mitch suggested getting pizza. Harry wasn’t even hungry. Well, he was, but he wanted brussels sprouts.

“I might be jealous,” he admitted.

“Hallelujah,” Sarah sighed. “Talk to her.”

“Don’t y’think she’ll be grossed out that ‘ve basically been...stalking her because I like her?”

“Hello!” Sarah nearly shouted. “She likes you too!”

Harry was flooded with warmth at the idea. “She’s never said anything,” he mumbled.

“You’re her customer,” Mitch rolled his eyes. “As worried you’ve been about flirting with her while she’s working. She’s probably just as worried.”

It couldn’t have been that easy or simple.

Could it?

*

Harry was reading his schedule for the day on his computer. They were regular appointments with clients that he had in on a regular basis. He had just returned from the breakroom after an hour-long meeting and was seeing what was next or if he would have some downtime for paperwork in before his next client. The schedule looked normal. Except for the one meeting blocked off for ten-thirty. “Hey, Kate,” he called to his secretary outside his office. “Do y’know who scheduled—”

But Harry wasn’t paying attention to the time, and it was already ten-twenty-five and she walked into his office.

He dropped the pen he was holding above the calendar. His lips parted as she entered.

“Your ten-thirty is here!” Kate called.

Harry was going to fire her.

It had been two weeks since he had seen her. He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but she looked more beautiful. Or maybe it was because his office was light, mostly the sun coming through the windows and made her practically glow. Like she really was a sunflower. “Hi,” he murmured.

She wasn’t in her typical waitressing uniform. Her hair wasn’t pulled back. Harry didn’t know she could be more beautiful than when she was waitressing, but she was wearing regular clothes, a blue dress that fell to her knees and she seriously took on the beauty of a sunflower, it was astounding. “Hi,” she said.

“Y’can close the door,” he offered. “D’you want something t’drink?” He turned away from her and heard the door click shut. He went to the mini fridge on the back windowsill in the corner of his office holding a few small bottles of water. “Y’can sit,” he gestured to the chair. She did. He placed the bottle in front of her and sat across from her behind his desk. They were both silent for a moment. Harry took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“Harry, I have this absurd love for numbers. People have looked at me funny since I was young. It’s like this really complicated puzzle in my head and I just want to solve it. None of the little parts make sense together until they do. The answer is so beautiful when all those pieces click, and the flow of your logic comes down to this one singular answer and it’s just perfect.”

Harry wondered if there had ever been a poem written about numbers. Or if what she said was the very first one. Harry was pretty passionate about his work, and he was glad he made pretty good money. But he didn’t think he could ever chat about numbers the way she did.

“I feel that way when I’m around you. That all this logic just beautifully clicks into place. You make me feel normal for liking numbers. You’re extremely kind and you don’t...” she bit the inside of her lip and looked at her hands in her lap. “I don’t know why I feel this way but you...you stopped coming to eat, I don’t know why, and I don’t know what I did. I want to fix it because I’ve enjoyed getting to know you and I thought we were friends. Then we weren’t. I liked picking out which special of the week you would enjoy. Maybe I’m too young or something to be friends? I can’t help that. Maybe it was because Jake called me child—”

“Don’t,” he shook his head unable to hear the name.

“So it is about him,” she frowned. “I don’t...Harry, it’s not fair to keep me out of the loop about what you’re feeling! I can’t fix whatever I did—”

“You didn’t do anything.”

“Then why did you stop coming to eat?” her voice cracked.

Harry wanted to jump out a window for making her feel insecure and nervous. If she cried he was done for. He sighed exasperated with his own miscommunication. His cheeks felt warm as they always did when he embarrassed himself around her. “Y’not too young,” he looked at her, but it felt like he was looking right through her. Like he could see right into her brain and read every word that was waiting to exit her mouth. “You’re not childish,” he affirmed. “You are...” He shook his head. “You are perfect,” he assured her. “I didn’t want t’ask y’out while y’were working. S’kinda rude. Then Jake called you his wife—”

“I’m gonna kill him,” she whispered.

Harry ignored her comment (even though it made his heart feel the slightest bit better). “—I really like you. I think you’re way too smart for me. Way too kind. And y’work in a place surrounded with beautiful sunflowers and I can’t stop looking at you,” his heart felt heavy, the butterflies in his stomach were trying to escape. He used every ounce of his effort to read her unreadable expression as he watched her process everything he said.

“You think I’m beautiful?” She whispered.

He snorted. Of all the things she could focus on at a moment like that. “Love, y’have t’know you are.”

She shook her head. “I’m always sweaty and working when you see me.”

“Well seems y’had some proper prep time today,” he looked at her with a soft gaze that he hoped didn’t seem too excessive. “Y’look more beautiful.”

Her eyes seemed to melt with relief. “You were jealous?” She asked.

“Course I was,” he nodded easily. Like it made the most sense in the world.

“But... you never said anything.”

“I didn’t want t’make you uncomfortable,” he repeated. “I can’t imagine how many people hit on you while you’re working.”

She frowned. “Naturally not the person I want,” she grumbled cutely. Harry felt lighter. He smiled.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

She shifted awkwardly in her seat but smiled. “I uh...I came here to tell you off.”

He chuckled. “I would deserve that,” he agreed. “I... I have something for you,” he opened the top right drawer to his desk. “Saw it, and...it's not much, but it reminded me of you," his eyes were so gentle it made her heart skip a beat. He held out the little cardboard rectangle. It might not have "been much" but it was everything. A thin gold chain, a sunflower crystal pendant the lightest shade of yellow. "Love?" he asked quietly after a moment of her staring at the most thoughtful gift she had ever received. For another moment they just gazed at one another. Unmoving. Harry was wearing a button down, rolled up to his elbows. He looked at ease, finally. His cheeks flushed. His eyes so green and beautiful. She could barely breathe.

Then finally, Harry spoke again.

"Would you like t'go out with me?"

--

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[fauna-and-floraa]

Seungmin for Nylon Japan x Coach. English translations under the cut.

To Bangchan hyung, thank you for your hard work this year. I look forward to working with you again next year. Take care of yourself! Grandpa. A reliable leader, Bang Chan. A black leather tote with excellent storage capacity that can be used from work to work. The eye-catching robot print that stands out against the simple design subtly shows off your sense of style.

To Lee Know Hyung, I hope you have a merry Christmas- Nekohyung! (cat hyung) For our beloved Lee Know, we have selected a sweater that is soft to the touch and adds warmth to your face. Pay attention to the sophisticated and colorful color scheme that adds this year's color to autumn/winter styles that tend to be heavy.

To Seo Changbin hyung, thank you for your hard work this year. Please train hard next year too! Changbin subtly show off your gratitude with a combination of a mini wallet for everyday use and high-quality knitwear. The key point is the colorful and profound prints that tickle the playful spirit of adults.

To Hyunjin-kun, I hope you have a happy Christmas, which is your favorite~ Hyunjin, who has an artistic side, chose a crossbody bag from the “Cosmic” collection with a pop of planets. Pair it with a down jacket for a casual look.

To Han, eat lots of your favorite cheesecake this Christmas! For the fashion-loving HAN, we are gifting a highly designed crossbody bag with a traditional signature coated canvas and catchy handwriting motif patches. Combine with knit for a traditional mood.

To Felix tingling, Have a nice Christmas! Thank you for your hard work this year!! Picking up a Kira Kirakira Chio mini bag with the aim of turning it into a ball, the stylish presence will update your outfit toNaramachi mode.'' To I.N-kun, our maknae, thank you for being cute this year too! I hope you stay cute next year too~ To our beloved youngest member I.N COACH's icon character "Lexy" A combination of pop printed tote and playful jacquard knit.

To Stay, Happy New Year! Seungmin. For STAY, which is always in your heart, we chose a retro mini bag that you can carry with you at any time. The size fits a smartphone, making it perfect for accompanying live performances. We recommend using it not only as a shoulder bag but also as a clutch.

[jpitha]

Concurrency Point 1

Next

N'ren

It was the knowledge that was the worst, N’ren decided.

She - and the rest of the crew of the K’laxi Frigate Menium - knew that the missiles were coming. Worse, she knew that there was nothing to be done about them. Their little frigate had no way to dodge the incoming weapons of war. The Xenni always seemed to attack this way; exit the Gate, launch missiles, then follow up with energy weapons if cleanup was necessary. Sitting in the back of the command room at her station she could see the Captain’s fur puff out and then lower as she consciously tried to calm herself. K’laxi were originally a small mammalian species in the tall boreal forests of home, and it was evolutionary beneficial to puff your fur to make yourself look larger to the few predators that existed. Now, it, plus her tail that she couldn’t stop swishing just let everyone know she was anxious.

“Sensors! How long do we have?” Captain Ko-tas Weniar barked at the officer sitting in front of the sensor suite. N’ren saw him flinch. It was subtle, mostly in his large, pointed ears, but as a member of the Mel’itim - the secret police - she had extra training on body language. “No more than five minutes, Captain.” He said and his ears flattened unconsciously as he delivered the bad news.

Captain Weniar clicked the comm. “Weapons, can we defend against the incoming missiles?”

“We have three anti-missiles ready and waiting, with two more currently printing. Point defense slug throwers are at 50% capacity.” That would take care of three quarters of the missiles, but means that one or two missiles will still hit, if the point defense slugs can’t clean up what’s left. N’ren had observed their training when she first came aboard. Her hopes for a successful strike were low.

“We can’t outrun the missiles, even if we thrust away at emergency, we’d never gain enough speed,” Captain Weniar was talking to herself in her birth language, Kinmar, quietly. N’ren and Heli’n, the Captain’s XO were the only ones close enough to hear, and N’ren was probably the only person aboard who understood her. Not a lot of people spoke Kinmar, but N’ren had a knack for languages. She had already made a note in her report about the habit, but also mentioned that she didn’t consider it a security risk as she only did it during periods of high stress.

“What about-” Captain Weniar said and stopped, her ears straight up. “Menium! What is the thickest area of the ship?”

“One moment, Captain.” Menium, the ship’s AI said. After a moment they spoke up. “The ventral rear quadrant has thicker hull plating to account for drive emissions.”

“That’s it! Helm, rotate us such that that section of the hull is facing the missiles.” She clicked the comm again. “All Hands. Strike Protocol.” As the words left her mouth, a new alarm sounded, shrill and insistent. She continued, “Everyone except for point defense suit up and move to the rear activity room, now.”

Strike Protocol was developed nearly a year into the war. When missiles were incoming and it was confirmed to not be possible to destroy them all, everyone was to enter their spacesuits so that a hull breach didn’t kill everyone. N’ren grabbed her suit from the locker outside of Command and stepped into it with the confident motions of someone who practiced it until she could don her suit while nearly asleep. After completing her diagnostics and her suit told her it was secure, she went over to some of the younger officers, and helped them get their suits ready. They are younger and younger, every season, She thought to herself. Soon, we will run out of recruits to throw against the Xenni.

The crew walked quickly towards the rear activity room. It was still configured for their kem-ball tournament. N’ren sighed internally. She was at the top of the leaderboard, but now the whole thing was going to have to be taken down. If they survived enough to have another tournament, she’d start back at the bottom like everyone else.

The room was able to hold everyone, though towards the end it was slightly claustrophobic. The fact that everyone was suited and that gave a few centimeters of additional personal space helped N’ren. She hated crowds, especially ones that weren’t moving. Her large triangular ears on the top of her head felt Menium roll to present her belly to the missiles. She chuckled internally at the thought. Presenting one’s belly to an adversary to save one’s self was a very old instinct.

Before she could worry herself further, N’ren felt, rather than heard the missiles launch. The heavy thumps of the launcher vibrated the hull beneath her feet, and she counted four launches. They were able to finish one of the missiles after all. She thought. A good note for her report - should they survive.

A few minutes after the missiles launched, the braying roar of the slug thrower filled the ship with noise. Shooting in short bursts to conserve ammunition, they fired off and on for half a minute, and then ceased, having run out of ammunition. All she could do was wait.

N’ren opened the secure Mel’itim channel she had, and selected the Captain’s radio. She could do this to any suit aboard, but she didn’t like to do it unless she had to. “Ko-tas.”

Captain Weniar squeaked in surprise at the interruption. “Oh, Discoverer N’ren, I apologize. You startled me.”

“You may call me just N’ren, it’s all right, Ko-tas. Were the missiles destroyed?”

“All except one, Disc-er, N’ren. We shall have to endure the strike.” “What of our attackers?”

“After firing missiles, most of the Xenni retreated back through the Gate. Only one remains to follow up on the attack. If the ancestors are pleased, we shall live this day.”

Only one Xenni ship. It probably wasn’t a Warfinder, their largest ships, probably just a light skirmisher. Ko-tas was right; they could either defeat or escape from a single Xenni skirmisher. Not only that, but she had underestimated the point defense crew. She felt a twinge of guilt over thinking them unskilled. “Your missileers and point defense crew are to be commended. I shall mention their skill in my report.”

“T-thank you N’ren, that is very generous.” Ko-tas sounded genuinely surprised. N’ren wondered if she thought that her report was going to be negative.

“Captain, it is never my intention to come to a ship just to deliver a negative report. My edict is to report the successes of the K’laxi as well as our challenges.”

Before the Captain could reply, the missile struck. The hull plating beneath N’ren jumped up, nearly pushing her knees into her face. As it was, the knee protectors clacked against the front of her helmet. Everyone went down in a heap of bodies and for a few moments, chaos reigned. Eventually people realized that the breach alarms had not sounded and that there was still air in the ship. N’ren shook her head, once again annoyed at her whiskers brushing against the inner wall of the helmet. “Menium, this is N’ren. Damage report.”

“Er, yes Discoverer. I am concurrently giving a report to the Captain.”

“I understand, but you will give me the same report.”

“We have sustained minor damage, much less than expected. Sensors is reviewing footage of the missiles for confirmation, but either they were smaller than anticipated, or the one that struck us was faulty. Regardless, other than some buckled hull plating and scorching, we are fine.”

N’ren heard Captain Weniar’s voice in everyone’s comm. “We have survived the attack with minimal damage and no injuries. However, there isn’t time to celebrate, we must return to our stations - while still suited - and break for the Gate.”

Back in her seat in Command, N’ren shifted, trying to get more comfortable. She cursed the designers who never really thought about having to sit in a regular chair while suited. Her faceplate was open, to let in fresh air, her rebellion to the suit order. Looking around she saw that she was in fact, the only person with her faceplate open. The Captain was standing over the helm station, working out something with the officer.

Satisfied, she returned to her seat, and signaled the crew. “We are going to attempt to run past the Xenni guarding the gate. All available power will be shunted to the main drive - including environmental. Remain in your suits until I give the order.” She said, and N’ren saw her eyes glance over to her. She sheepishly closed her faceplate, and the Captain continued. “You have done well, but we are not finished yet. Keep this up and we will return home victorious.”

The lights dimmed, and N’ren could feel the normal background noises and vibration of the ship still. It was very quiet. Other than the creaks of people shifting in their seats trying to get comfortable, there was no noise. Then, the drive fired.

It was a wall of sound, higher pitched and much more ragged than usual. Even with the compensators set to maximum, she was pressed into her seat from the acceleration. They must have shunted power from them as well. This was it. They would either make the Gate, or the Xenni would get them.

“Missile incoming!” The sensor officer shouted. His voice crackled over the suit radios.

“Will it hit?” Captain Weinar’s voice was calm, though N’ren could hear the edge in it.

“One moment… No, our speed is too great, it will not be able to catch us.” He said, and N’ren’s shoulders relaxed, and she opened her hand which had been balled tightly.

“Gate control, please begin transmitting the addressing codes to the Gate. Send us to Celiton.”

Celiton was a small, uninhabited system, one of many such empty systems that nonetheless had a Gate. K’laxi scientists long wondered why there were so many empty systems with a Gate. Arguments about former empires, or some kind of Great War abounded.

Normally, one could not trace a Gate traversal, so it was standard protocol to not Gate back to K’lax when under attack. The Captain was to continue to Gate jump until they had successfully shaken off the attackers, and only then Gate to K’lax.

Their small ship streaked past the Xenni skirmisher, and as they did, N’ren’s small subroutine briefly commanded all sensors to make a very high resolution scan to the ship. She made sure that she did not unduly steal power from the engines, but she heard the surprised chirp of the officer when he realized he lost control of his sensor suite. It only lasted a moment and control returned quickly enough that N’ren hoped he thought it was just a glitch. She checked her repository and sure enough, it had been filled with high resolution scans of the ship.

The Gate ahead glowed the painful, blurry blue of activation, and as they dashed ahead, a noise like rain on a metal roof reverberated through the ship.

“We have been struck by multiple slugs from the Xenni ship,” Menium said. “Multiple small hull breaches, and reports of injuries.” “What? How?” Captain Weniar looked over at Sensors. “You didn’t see it?”

“I apologize, Captain, my station- the suite, there was some kind of glitch, I had no control over the sensors for just a few moments. I was regaining control and running diagnostics when we were struck.” N’ren was glad for once of the suits as her own fur puffed out and her eyes widened, realizing what happened. Her own scan of the Xenni ship must have caused them to retaliate, and with the sensors down because of ‘a glitch’ they didn’t see the attack.

“Captain, it appears that the Xenni attack struck the Gate as well, look.” Menium said and put a view from the forward telescopes on the large screen.

The Gate was a perfect circle dozens of kilometers across with a small rectangular thing on one side. That was the building where the addressing stone was kept. Currently, there was some kind of white vapor pouring out at a high velocity, and the active gate looked… wrong. Instead of a pure blue flat plane, it undulated and wobbled. “Full Stop, Full Stop!” Captin Weniar screamed, her voice so shrill that the radio peaked as she yelled.

“We cannot stop in time.” Menium said cooly. “We are going to trav-”

Moments after the K’laxi traversed the damaged Gate, the Xenni skirmisher approached slowly. Instead of shutting down, as it normally does after a ship traverses, the Gate field started to grow in large blobby waves, larger and larger. The Xenni immediately flipped 180 degrees, their drive flame huge and ragged from being overdriven. It was all for nothing though, because at that moment, the Gate’s field enveloped the skirmisher and it too, traversed.

[venustrvck]

MICHAEL KAISER x F!Reader

card: the hierophant; domestic life. wc: 0.7k

❥ Valentine's Event co-written with @saetiate

It's the morning after your last photoshoot in Munich. You're stretched out on the couch, coffee in hand, acrylic nails tapping periodically over your coffee mug. You've got your back against the armrest and your legs on Kaiser's lap, with his crown-hand over them. His other hand holds his own coffee mug, a plain white ceramic with The Gentleman's Dream by Antonio de Pereda printed on its front. it's a mug you got him for the painting's peculiarity and eerie look.

You're pleased to note that he's using it. The painting looked packed with symbolism, and with Kaiser's interest in philosophy, you thought that he might like it. It seems you were right.

(When you come from nothing, when you dig your nails into the walls to fight your way up, the material gains feel secondary to the feeling of winning. The fame, the gain, none of it is permanent. But the knowing of who you are, what you've done, what you've caused others to feel — that memory lives endlessly.)

Your own mug is also one you brought him, this one a sleek black except for its front, which is hand-painted with thorns. You take a delicate sip of your coffee. Your eyes track his face and… Kaiser is beautiful in the morning light, once his bed-hair has been combed into submission anyway, and you do love seeing him in the thin material of homewear. To think that once, you would've missed this.

Sunlight streaks through, highlighting the line of his cheekbone and shadowing his jaw. His eyes are trained up-front, so you're getting an eye-full of his side profile… balancing your mug on your lap, you take your phone out with your other hand and snap a shot. "You could've been a model."

It's high praise from you.

Kaiser turns to look at you, face angled high, sunlight catching his throat, "Maybe you should've been a photographer."

It's clearly a jibe at you taking his photo without permission, but you ignore it. Kaiser was always a bitch in the mornings. He was a bitch most of the time, really.

"No way, I wanted to be on screen."

You take another sip of your coffee. You remember being young, seeing him on the screen for the first time after he'd disappeared into god-knows-where, until the shape of a young boy on the streets of Berlin was nothing more than a faded memory to you. He was there on that shitty coffee house's TV, name plastered upon his back, off to the greener pastures of Germany's fields, running across them like he belonged there. You remember the way your stomach churned with resentment.

"I hated you back then, you know," you reminisce, and Kaiser's eyes bore into you. "When I saw you again on that flat screen. I burned. We were supposed to rot in these sewers together, so why were you there and why was I still rotting?"

Back then, you truly hated him. A knife lodging itself into the underside of your ribs with the heat of betrayal. It didn't make much sense. You didn't know Kaiser well-enough for the capacity for betrayal to exist at all — you only saw Kaiser from afar, gutter-rats on the same street. Yet, there was the understanding that you were the same, cast aside from this world, fated for the same death. Kaiser… betrayed that understanding.

It's what a merciless ocean must feel like, seeing a ship safely held together even after the storm.

It lit a fire in you. Years later, you came to be on the same stage, your name and face practically synonymous with German high fashion. You became a household name in the fashion capital of the world, having made yourself in Escada before contracting your modeling away to Dior.

Because if he, of all people, can make it out alive, you can too. Better than he can.

Kaiser's eyes watch you like the cutting edge of sapphires, and he's within reach again, the both of you sharing same world. Except now, you're closer than you'd ever been before. Now, he sits across from you, bathed in the kind morning light.

His eyes dissect you relentlessly, a scalpel slicing through your words to try and get at what's underneath. You decide to have mercy on him and throw him a bone, "I wanted that for myself," you say, picking up your conversation, "In hindsight I should thank you, you gave me the drive to claw myself back up."

Kaiser turns to his mug, at his next sip, the corner of his lip curls up into a smirk, "You've already paid me with your body."

You hit him with a pillow.

The coffee stains his white shirt, personally, you think he deserves it.

[simstorian-blog]

New York City: THREE

(CC List + DL)

E X T E R I O R

C O N C E R T S T A G E

H O T E L

Standard Suite I An open concept room with a double bed, hosting up to 2 sims, and living area. It comes with its own bathroom.

Standard Suite II An open concept room with 2 double beds, hosting up to 4 sims, and living area. It comes with its own bathroom.

Premium Suite Private Floor with an outdoor terrace overlooking the city. It comes with the following: A full living room, kitchenette, a bedroom, and a full bathroom.

M A R K E T

Equipped with functional objects. You can grab a coffee and can purchase produce, fish, food from the market stall and/or cafeteria counter! This space has its own bathroom.

B E A U T Y B A R

This beauty bar has 6 salon chairs meeting the minimum requirements for the Shear Brilliance Mod. Alongside those chairs comes a retail counter, seating for waiting customers, 4 mani/pedi Spa Day Chairs, 1 Massage Table, a Staff Room, and its own bathroom.

[W A R N I N G: This lot is heavy. I do NOT recommend it if you do not have a decent system. My personal specs – GTX 1660ti, 16GB Ram, Nvme M.2 Primary Drive with 156GB of CC. It takes me 2-3 min to load for this lot, which is longer than my regular time. However, I have it set to the ‘Lounge’ lot type to avoid the extended load for the ‘Generic’ lot buildbuy when you have a lot of CC.]

World Map: San Myshuno

Area: Myshuno Meadows

Lot Size:  64 x 64

Capacity:

A Beauty Bar – Salon Chairs, Spa Day Items, Staff Room

A Concert Stage

A Hotel – Lot51’s Suite Life Mod Compatible

A Market – Functional

Bonus: 4 Empty Spaces – 3 Small buildings, 1 Spacious Skyscraper Floor

Gallery ID: Simstorian-ish

[Long post, I know! Second half below the line lol]

Packs Needed

Expansion Packs

City Living

Cottage Living

Eco Lifestyle

Get Famous

Get Together

Get To Work

Growing Together

High School Years

Horse Ranch

Lovestruck

For Rent

Seasons

Snowy Escape

Game Packs

Dine Out

Dream Home Decorator

Journey to Batuu

Jungle Adventure

My Wedding Stories

Parenthood

Realm of Magic

Spa Day

Strangerville

Vampires

Werewolves

Stuff Packs

Backyard Stuff

Bowling Night

Home Chef Hustle

Romantic Garden

Kits

Cozy Bistro

Castle Estate

Desert Luxe

Recommended Gameplay Mods

(Please read through what each mod has to offer before deciding if it fits your gameplay style or not.)

Better Build Buy (For the ‘Deletion Protection’ setting, if you want to modify)

City Vibes Lot Traits

Lock/Unlock Doors for Any Lot (Works for Community Lots)

Shear Brilliance (Active Cosmetology Career)

Spawn Refresh

Suite Life Hotel & Resorts

Use Residential Rentals shared areas as Community Lots (For the lot challenge traits)

CC Used

[All credits go to the following creators for sharing their work with the community. It is greatly appreciated and I hope that you all have endless nights of the best sleep ever.]

Helpful Tip: Having Only What is Needed For CC Builds (Tumblr)

Amoebae: Pile in Carpet

Awingedllama: Traffic Light 3

Charly Pancakes: The Lighthouse Collection (Books C + D)

Felixandre: Berlin Pt. 2 (Front Door), Chateau Pt. 1|2|3|4, Colonial Pt. 1|3, Estate Pt. 1|2|3 (CF), Georgian, Gothic Revival (Mirror), Grove Pt. 1|2|3|4, January 2018, London Interior (Cane Chair), Paris Pt. 1, SOHO Pt. 3|4

FlirtyGhoul: Minimart Pt. 1-11

GUA: Air Conditioners

Hamstebelle: Cyberpunk Food Stall (Simlish)

Hanraja: S015 (Shelf Gass Deep), S037 (Dining Sit Booth + Sit Dining 2)

Harrie: Brownstone Pt., Coastal Pt. 5|7, Klean Pt. 1|2|3, Octave Pt. 2, Spoons Pt. 1

HeyBrine: Jessie Livin’ Pack Pt.1, Le Bistro Pack (Tables), Nana’s Collection (Microwave), Noova Collection

House of Harlix: Kichen (Glasses), Livin’ Rum (Frame Tvs), Orjanic Pt. 2

JoyceIsFox: Summer Garden – Tiles Pack (Purity#1 Floor + Wall Tiles)

KiwiSims4: Blockhouse Hallway (Small Lamp)

Kta: Vogue Prints 1 (10s-20s) [Mesh Needed]

Lijoue: A Louer Collection (Fence)

LilacCreative: Keratin Collection

Lili’s Palace: Intarsia Wainscot Wonderland (Polished Marble Floor)

LittleDica: Deligracy Fridge, Roman Holiday

Max20: Happily Ever After (Dining Table Knot)

MintyJinx: Terrain to Floor Collection

Myshunosun: Lottie (Throw Blanket)

Nempne: Cover Sheet Ceiling Tiles

Peacemaker: Hinterlands Living Room (Pouffe), Hudson Bathroom, Vampire Add Ons

Pierisim: Auntie Vera Bathroom, Coldbrew Coffeeshop Pt. 3, Domaine Du Clos Pt. 2|3|4, MCM Pt. 1|4|5, Outside Lunch, Tilable

Ravasheen: CounterFit Mini Fridge, Elevator, Shop Chef

Severinka: Apollo Sofa (Right), Grocery Store Pt. 1|2|4

Simspiration Builds: Portuguese Floors

SixamCC: Hotel Bedroom

Sooky88: Horizontal Oil Paintings

Sundays: Kediri Pt. 1 (Throw Pillows- Solids), Pool Haus, Swell Pt. 1, Ungasan Pt. 2 (Slippers)

Syboubou: Hotel Luggage Trolley

TaurusDesign: Eliza Walk In, Judith Kitchen (Barstool), Lilith Chilling Areas Pt. 1

Tuds: Base Game Curved Windows, Beam Kitchen (Table 1x2), Ind 02|03, Vime Closet

Winner9: Malibu Pillow

Vehicles: Included

DO NOT REUPLOAD MY LOTS.

DO NOT CLAIM THEM AS YOUR OWN.

DO NOT PLACE BEHIND A PAYWALL.

DOWNLOAD (1.82 GB)

[rickyriceinator]

BLUE LOCK IF THEY PLAYED OTHER SPORTS:

Jin Kiyora:

Plays badminton and prefers to play singles because he thinks playing with someone is a hassle.

Not the strongest or tallest, but he’s nimble and quick, so he’s able to move across the court quickly. 

Extremely flexible wrists, like every time he takes a swing it looks like his hand and wrist are being ripped apart.

Most deviously quick shots (they probably leave a smoldering crater where the birdie meets the ground).

Badminton footwork goes crazy.

Very accurate aim (he’s able to land the birdie precisely on the lines).

His ideal type of racket is one with a little weight to it. 

Has beef with whoever keeps snapping the strings and denting the practice rackets. 

Ranze Kurona:

Swimmer but specifically a distance (think like 100-200 meter) breaststroke swimmer.

Has a crazy fast flip-turn and push-off.

Has impressive lung capacity (technically you’re supposed to surface after 3 strokes, but he can go ten strokes without breathing). 

Never wears swim caps because they give him bad headaches (his hair is so fried and bleached).

Chronically smells like chlorine no matter how much he showers.

Terrible at diving (the first thing that hits the water is always his stomach). 

After practice, he likes to go down the water slide.

Likes to practice swimming with flippers because he feels like a fish (but unfortunately, breaststroke– unlike free, back, and butterfly– cannot be practiced with fins on). 

Oliver Aiku:

Volleyball player.

Used to play as a middle blocker but switched to outside hitter. 

Addicted to wearing compression shirts during practices (his closet consists of the same compression shirt in 72 different colors). 

Really good at digging and receiving.   

Whenever he’s preparing to serve, he hits the Atsumu Miya fist in the air pose. 

Manages to look so deliciously fine in the slow-motion replays.

The game commentators glaze this man like there’s no tomorrow. 

Jubei Aryu:

Figure skater who mainly competes in the single skating category.

Outfits are always breathtaking– intricate designs, pretty colors, and lots of sparkles of course. 

Looks so graceful while skating he makes ice skating look easy. 

Puts his hair up in a ponytail whenever he goes on the ice and the ponytail billows behind him like he’s in a haircare commercial. 

Knows how to carve hearts into the ice with his skates. 

Sometimes practices skating with a rose in his mouth because he thinks it’s so glam.

Axel jumps are one of his favorite moves (even though they’re hard).

Generally a kind-hearted fellow but nurses hatred in his heart for the hockey kids (minus Tokimitsu) because they constantly mess up the ice on the rink.

Julian Loki:

Absolutely goated cross country kid (smokes everyone). 

Broke several school records as a high school freshman. 

Has a crazy mile time, excellent stamina, and good pacing. 

Places high at every meet he competes in but remains a humble king.

Looks so majestically radiant after finishing a race, meanwhile, everyone else is behind him, passed out and looking like swamp monsters.

Guzzles Gatorade and shoves those disgusting protein bars down his gullet. 

Regularly goes on runs and posts the map of his route and his time to his Instagram story. 

Photographers at the meets love taking pictures of him for some reason (he’s regularly featured on the school’s Facebook page).  

Ryusei Shidou:

Gymnastics, specifically aerial silks. 

Wears very flashy leotards– bold colors (such as pink) and vibrant patterns (like cheetah print).

His routines– like his outfit– are very flashy and over the top (he’s highkey a show off, especially in front of Sae and Charles).

Also purposely makes his performance really insane to scare the kids in the audience. 

Invites Charles to the gymnasium, and together they swing around on the silks like a couple of monkeys (and this is why Charles is banned from gracing the gym premises).

Used to reject the traditional notion of practicing (going to a gymnastics place with people who actually know what they're doing) and joined a circus troupe to practice his silk abilities instead. 

Gin Gagamaru:

Pole-vaulter.

Has eaten chalk before.  

Hates the sensation of sticky spray under his palms with a burning passion. 

Shows up to the competitions, wins, and then leaves (nobody knows what he does outside of pole vaulting). 

Has snapped so many pole-vaulting sticks. 

Has nabbed several pole-vaulting sticks to take home and use as plant support sticks for his garden in the mountains.

Has accidentally jabbed the pole stick into his crotch several times, but you can never tell because he remains nonchalant when it happens.

Charles Chevalier:

Baseball player who doesn’t take the sport seriously.

Also does competitive hobby horsing and says it’s a sport.

Chooses the most atrocious music to play when he’s walking on.

He is the reason why the coaches are subjecting everyone to winding lectures and extra drills.

Has broken several windows, vases, and television screens while playing baseball indoors. Once, he hit a chandelier, and the entire thing came crashing down, narrowly missing him.

Loves Picture Day because it means he’s in photos that would otherwise be considered socially peculiar had it not been taken in a sports setting (think posed in front of a black screen holding a baseball lit on fire).

Has faked fainting to get out of practice.

Yo Hiori:

Plays golf.

Division one golf hater.

His parents forced him into the sport, thinking it’s gonna get him a college scholarship. 

Uses golf as an excuse to go outside and avoid his parents. 

Has the most diabolical tan ever (he looks like he’s wearing socks), and the complexion difference between the areas of skin exposed to the sun and areas not exposed to the sun is like standing in two different hemispheres.

Seishiro Nagi:

Plays eSports….  Brawl Stars and Valorant sweat. 

Crumbs from the Jurassic Age are lodged under his keyboard and all the keys are sticky.

But also plays golf and is infuriatingly good at it. 

Sun protection warrior (wears neck gaiters, arm sleeves, loads up on sunscreen– literally not a single inch of his body, except for his face and hands, is exposed to the elements). 

Wears a sun visor with a built-in fan.

Insists on riding in a golf cart everywhere because he thinks walking is a hassle.

Reo funds his golfing career (he’s also the person who persuaded Nagi into playing golf).

Hyoma Chigiri:

Does track and field.

Really good at hurdles and running the 100 meter. 

Ties his hair up when running, so he always keeps a pack of hair ties in his locker or his bag. 

Got clipped during practice and now there are just random photos of him floating on random Pinterest boards. 

Lowkey is a little cocky but he has the skills to back his ego up.

Has bruises around his ankles and legs from jumping hurdles.

Does not play about warm up and stretches. 

Swears by Tylenol for before matches. 

──────────────── a/n: guess what sport i used to play LMAO. the writing style is a little diff because these hcs have been marinating for so long in my google docs.

[pancaketax]

What Remains | Chapter 18 The Hunt (Tony Stark x M! Reader)

TW : Detailed depictions of injuries and abuse. Mentions of past abuse Summary : Tony Stark becomes something beyond human , a machine driven by icy rage, relentless focus, and a singular goal: to find you. After receiving a horrifying call laced with sadistic cruelty and a scream he instantly recognizes as yours, Stark enters a sleepless, foodless, voiceless trance, transforming his office into a war room. Every screen, every algorithm, every ounce of technology is bent to his will in a digital manhunt for your location. When Jarvis finally locates a faint signal in an abandoned warehouse, Stark launches without hesitation, donning a specialized combat suit built for one purpose: ending this.

word count: 16.1k

Previous Chapter - Next Chapter Stark hasn’t closed his eyes. Not for a second. He hasn’t swallowed a bite, hasn’t taken a sip of water. He hasn’t moved from his desk since the exact moment that voice slithered into his ear, slick and jagged like a rusted blade. Since that obscene breath passed through the line, that whisper soaked in menace and sadistic delight. Since that scream that raw, flayed scream, human, far too human ripped from a throat he knows too well, just before silence fell, sharp as a guillotine. Something broke then. Not in him. No. Something froze.

He’s no longer a man, not really. Not in this suspended moment, where even time seems too afraid to move forward. He’s become engine. Mechanism. Open-heart alert system. His blood doesn’t circulate it pulses, furious, carried by a cold, methodical, almost clinical rage. He is anger, but an anger without shouting. An anger that thinks, that calculates, that watches, that waits. A storm contained in a steel cylinder, ready to explode, but for now channeling all its violence into the glacial logic of action.

In the office, the tension is almost tangible. The air feels charged, saturated with something indefinable a blend of ozone, electricity, and pure stress. Every surface vibrates slightly, as if the metal itself shared the heartbeat of its occupant. The silence isn’t soothing. It’s oppressive, built on thick layers of concentration, anticipation, restrained fury. Only mechanical sounds mark the space: the faint crackle of a screen refreshing, the nervous clicks of his fingers on holographic interfaces, the low vibrations of the servers in the adjoining room, humming at full capacity. Around him, a dozen screens stream data without pause. Some display ultra-precise satellite maps, sweeping over New York rooftops for any suspicious movement. Others track mobile signals, tracing the latest paths of every device even remotely connected to the target. Still others comb through databases, merge biometric information, detect faces, match voice prints. A thermal image of a building overlays a 3D city map. An audio feed scrolls at high speed, saturated with static. Nothing escapes analysis. Nothing is left to chance.

Stark is motionless, but every muscle in his body is tense. His back is hunched, elbows braced on the desk edge, fingers clenched around the projected interface hovering above the glass. His bloodshot eyes lock onto the central screen without blinking. His eyelids are heavy, but he doesn’t close them. He can’t. Not until the target is found. Not until the one he’s searching for is no longer missing. He won’t allow himself the luxury of weakness. He swore he’d never let anyone be hurt again. And he holds to his vows the way others hold to weapons. The blue glow of the monitors cuts across his face with surgical cruelty. Every shadow on his skin is a confession: fatigue, deep dark circles, drawn features, hollow cheekbones. But these marks don’t diminish him. They add a near-inhuman intensity to his gaze, a ruthless clarity. A will that, for now, eclipses even the most basic biological needs. He hasn’t slept, because he doesn’t have the right. He hasn’t eaten, because the thought hasn’t even occurred to him. His body is secondary. It’s nothing but a vessel for the mission.

He murmurs sometimes. Commands, codes, equations. He speaks to no one, but the AI responds instantly. Every word he utters is sharp, precise, guided by a logic untouched by panic. One name comes back again and again. A biometric file. A GPS identifier. Trackers. Coordinates. He’s no longer looking for a person — he’s hunting a fixed point in the storm. The center of a search and rescue system. And Stark is ready to flatten entire city blocks to bring that point back to him. When the internal alerts go off soft, discreet, almost polite signaling a drop in blood pressure, critical dehydration, or prolonged hypervigilance, he silences them with a flick of the hand. He shuts them off. Nothing exists outside this room, outside this moment. Outside this mission. The rage is there, but tamed, carved into a weapon.

Somewhere, he knows he’s crossing the line. That he’s nearing an invisible boundary. But he doesn’t care. He’s seen too many people die, too many names fade into archives. This time, he won’t be too late. So he keeps going. Relentlessly. He cross-references data, filters messages, follows leads. He digs, over and over, down to the bone. And behind him, the world can tremble all it wants. He’ll hold. Because he made a promise. Because this time, no one will disappear into the shadows without him tearing them out of the night.

His eyes never leave the screens. They’re locked in, anchored, consumed to the point of obsession. They devour every bit of information, every image, every pixel variation, as if he might uncover a hidden confession. Nothing escapes him. No movement, no data, no anomaly in the flow. His pupils, dilated from exhaustion, cling to the smallest detail, hunting a trace, a footprint, a breath left behind by the one he’s chasing without pause. He’s isolated search zones. Redrawn entire sections of the city. Compared every map of New York with thermal readings, overlaying layers like a surgeon operating through urban tissue. He’s overridden protections on multiple private networks without hesitation. Intercepted anonymous communications, analyzed movement patterns, recalibrated his internal software to tailor the algorithms to a single, solitary target. The tools he designed for international diplomacy, for global crisis response — he’s repurposed them now for a personal hunt. A cold war fought in the digital guts of the city.

And always, he comes back to that name. That shadow. That absence. Matthew. A ghost with no fingerprint, no signal, no flaw to exploit. But Stark refuses that idea. No. That kind of man doesn’t vanish. That kind of man always leaves traces — out of pride. Out of carelessness. Out of vanity. And if it means turning the city inside out, if it means digging down to reinforced concrete, to buried cables and the forgotten strata of the network — then so be it. He’s ready to search through the world’s marrow to find what remains. Cables snake across the floor, twisted like raw nerves, connected to makeshift terminals. Holograms hover in the air, pulsing with spectral, slow, almost organic light. The room, once functional and sterile, has lost its ordinary shape. This is no longer an office. It’s a clandestine command post. A digital war cell born out of urgency, powered by fear and brute will. On one wall, an unstable projection flickers: a gridded map of New York, each red zone corresponding to growing probabilities, invisible tension. Alternating, a partially reconstructed file plays pulled from a burner phone. The lines of code shimmer as if still resisting comprehension.

And at the center of it all, him. Motionless. A sculptor of chaos. He doesn’t move an inch, but his mind roars. He calculates, projects, anticipates at a speed even his most advanced AIs couldn’t match. He’s faster than the machines, because this time, it’s not for a global mission. It’s not to protect a council or a treaty. It’s not for peace. It’s personal. And nothing is more dangerous than a man like him when he’s acting for himself. His face is frozen. Carved from stone. No expression filters through. No emotion leaks out. He hasn’t spoken in hours. Not a word. His jaw is locked, clenched. His chin trembles sometimes under the pressure, but he doesn’t give in. His eyelids, heavy with fatigue, blink on autopilot but his gaze stays sharp, cutting. That look… it belongs to a man who’s already made up his mind. It’s no longer a question of if. It’s a matter of when, how, and how much time is left. And above all, of what will be left of the other man once he finds him. He is cold. Precise. Fatally focused. Each beat of his heart seems to align with the hum of the machines. He’s perfectly synchronized with his environment. A machine among machines. He’s become the system’s core. The cold, methodical intelligence of a silent hunt — carried out without rest, without sleep, without mercy.

The door slides open with a discreet, almost timid sigh. As if it, too, understood that this moment must not be disturbed. No sound dares to break the fragile balance of the room. Not here. Not now. Even the walls seem to hold their breath, petrified by the intensity that fills the space. The bluish light of the screens slices through the artificial darkness in shifting shards, casting sharp, vibrating shadows across Stark’s features — like carvings made by a blade. He doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t need to look. He already knows. Nothing escapes him. His silence is a barrier, a verdict. He’s there. Frozen. Silent. Unshakable. And around him, the universe seems to understand that something has been set in motion. Something that can no longer be stopped.

Pepper enters without a word. The silence wraps around her instantly, like a heavy veil she doesn’t dare pierce. She says nothing — not yet. Everything about her is more subdued than usual, as if her body has attuned itself to the electric tension of the room. Her usual heels have been traded for flat shoes, chosen mechanically, without real thought. She knew when she got up this morning. No need to read the reports or check the alerts. She felt it, in every fiber of her being — this day would be different. Draining. Slow. Hard. And Tony, on days like this, is not a man to reason with. He becomes a wall. Steel. An unbreachable frontier. This isn’t a state crisis, not one of those media storms they’ve learned to face together, side by side, dressed to perfection with rehearsed smiles. No. This is something else. A silent war. Private. Intimate. And in that kind of war, Tony lets no one in. Almost no one.

In her hands, she holds two mugs. One is for her — a reflex gesture, more for the weight than the content, because she’ll set it down somewhere and forget it immediately. The other is for him. Strong coffee, black, unsweetened, scorching. Just how he likes it. She didn’t ask, didn’t guess. She knows. Because for years, she’s known his silences, his mood swings, his automatic habits. She knows the rare things that bring him a sliver of stability when everything is falling apart. She walks slowly. With that quiet elegance that is uniquely hers. Each step is precise, measured. She avoids the cables snaking across the floor like exposed veins. Dodges the hastily pushed chairs, the luminous angles of suspended holograms hanging in the air, slow and unstable like open wounds. Everything around her pulses, breathes, crackles. The smell of steaming coffee mixes with metallic fumes, with the warm emissions of overheating machines. A fleeting human note in this lair transformed into a war organ.

She approaches. Just a few feet from him now. The blue halo of the screens washes over her, casting cold, almost supernatural shards onto her skin. She still doesn’t say a word. Because she, too, senses what’s happening here. She reads silence like an ancient language. She knows that if she speaks too soon, too quickly, she could shatter everything — the balance, the tension, the fierce concentration holding him upright. Tony doesn’t even turn his head. He doesn’t need to. He knows it’s her. He saw, without really looking, her silhouette trembling on the standby screen, like a spectral apparition. He recognized her breath — controlled, steady, modulated by habit not to disrupt critical moments. He felt her presence the way you feel a warm current crossing a frozen room: discreet, but undeniable. She’s here.

But he doesn’t move. Not an inch. His fingers keep dancing over the interfaces, his eyes fixed on the data. His jaw remains locked, his posture rigid, unyielding. He doesn’t reject her presence. He accepts it without acknowledging it. She’s part of the setting, part of the very structure of this ongoing war. She is the silent anchor he’ll never ask for, but needs all the same. And she knows it. So she stays. Present. Still. Mug in hand. Waiting for him to speak — or to break. His fingers glide over the holographic interface with almost surgical precision. They graze the projected data blocks in the air, moving them, reorganizing, dissecting them as if trying to carve raw truths buried under layers of code, pixels, and silence. A building on 43rd Street. An unusual thermal signature spotted at 3:12 a.m. A encrypted phone line briefly located in South Brooklyn, before vanishing into a labyrinth of anonymous relays. He isolates. He cross-references. He sorts. He discards. He starts again. Every manipulation is an act of war. He develops a thousand hypotheses per minute, evaluates them, abandons them, replaces them. A thousand leads, a thousand fleeting micro-truths, vanishing as soon as he tries to fix them. And always, that voice in his head. That twisted, wet breath haunting him since the call. That scream — shrill, inhuman. That panic. And the silence that followed. The kind of silence only blood knows how to echo.

Pepper, still silent, watches. She hasn’t moved since entering. Her eyes shift from the screen to Tony’s face, then to his hands. She sees what he refuses to admit: his movements are less precise. They tremble sometimes. Nervous flickers, involuntary, imperceptible to others — but not to her. There’s that tiny jolt in his palm when two images overlap without matching. That subtle twitch of his fingers when the algorithm returns an empty result. That tension in his joints with every failure, every dead end. She takes a step forward. Slowly, silently. She places the mug at the edge of the desk, just within his field of vision. Not too close, not too far. She sets it where he could reach for it without thinking, by reflex, if some part of him still remembered how to drink something. If his lips still knew how to welcome anything other than orders. But deep down, she knows he probably won’t. Not now. Maybe not at all. She doesn’t touch him. Doesn’t interrupt. But her eyes never leave him. They linger on his neck, that taut, rigid line, almost painful. On his shoulders, hunched forward, drawn tight like bows ready to snap. She reads the exhaustion in the way his muscles clench, in how he holds his breath when results elude him, in that violent stubbornness that keeps him from stepping back — even for a second.

Then she speaks. Barely. Her voice is a whisper. A caress in a space saturated with tension. A suspended breath, respectful. As if she were speaking to a wounded animal, to a raw heart that a single harsh word might cause to shatter.

— "You should drink something."

No reproach. No judgment. Not even any real expectation. Just an invitation, soft, almost unreal in this room ruled by the cold light of screens and the hum of machines. A reminder, simple and human, that he still has a body. That he’s still a man. Not just an overheated mind, a burning brain, dissociated from everything else. She doesn’t expect a response. She doesn’t even want one. What she’s offering isn’t a solution. It’s a breath. An interlude. A hand offered at a distance, without conditions, in the eye of a cyclone she can’t stop — but refuses to abandon. Stark doesn’t answer. The silence remains, impenetrable. But she sees it. That blink. Singular. Slow. Almost lagging. Like a discreet malfunction in an otherwise perfect line of code. A micro-event, almost invisible but for her, it means everything. He heard her. He understood. Somewhere beneath the layers of adrenaline and frozen focus, her words registered. But he can’t stop. Not yet. Not while what he’s searching for remains out of reach.

She moves a little closer. Her steps are slow, calculated. The slightest movement could shatter the fragile equilibrium he maintains between lucidity and overload. She skirts the screens projecting a relentless flow of data, passes through the light beams of overlapping maps, walks through the holograms dissecting New York in real time: facades, sewer lines, rooftops, drone paths, shifting heat points. A fractured digital world, reconstructed for a single mission. And she, the only organic presence in this sanctuary of glass and light, walks forward until she’s beside him. Upright. Calm. Unshakable. She stands there, just a meter away. A silhouette in the bluish light. A presence. An anchor. Non-intrusive, but constant. And in that data-saturated silence, she looks at the screen in front of him. Blurry images flash by. Figures captured by an old security camera. Red dots blink in the darkness of a poorly mapped basement. Nothing conclusive. Nothing obvious. But she sees beyond that. She’s not looking at the screen. She’s looking at him.

She sees what he doesn’t show. What he himself struggles to ignore. That back, a bit more hunched than before. That hand clenched around the desk edge, knuckles white with tension. That breath, irregular, barely perceptible — but betraying an inner fight. That exhaustion, layered in invisible strata, like ash over an ember that refuses to die. He’ll never admit it. That’s not an option. But she knows. He’s burning out. Eroding. Slowly bleeding out everything that keeps him human. So she acts. Gently, but without hesitation. She reaches out. Picks up the mug left on the edge of the desk, still faintly steaming. And she moves it. Places it right in front of him. Where his gaze can’t avoid it. Where his fingers could reach it without thinking. A mundane gesture, almost insignificant. But heavy with meaning.

— "You need to stay sharp." Her voice is soft, but firm. It cuts through the thickness of the moment. "If he’s counting on you, he needs you at your best. Not collapsing."

He stays still for another second. Then, slowly, his gaze lifts. Like he’s returning from a far-off place, from a tension zone where the real world no longer reaches. He looks at her. Directly in the eyes. And she sees. She sees everything. The fatigue eating away at the edges. The redness at the corners of his eyes, signs of brutal sleeplessness. But most of all, that clarity. That burning precision still intact in the depths of his pupils. It’s a gaze that doesn’t waver. The gaze of a man broken a thousand times — but still standing. And in that gaze, she reads three things.

Fear. Raw. Visceral. The fear of not making it in time. Rage. Pure. Mechanical. The kind he holds back to avoid destroying everything.

And the promise. Absolute. Irrevocable.

— "I’m going to get him out."

No conditional. No wiggle room. He doesn’t say he’ll try. He doesn’t say if he’s still alive. He refuses to let those phrases exist. He leaves no space for doubt. Because doubt would be a crack. And if he cracks now, he collapses. She nods. Once. That’s all it takes. A silent agreement. A trust she offers him, without questions. Then she places a hand on his shoulder. Right there. A simple contact, but real. Solid. A light, firm pressure. Just enough for him to know he’s not alone. That she’s here. That she will remain here. Even if there’s nothing more she can do. An anchor in the chaos.

— "Then drink."

She adds nothing else. No need. Not now. And then she turns on her heel, leaving behind that room saturated with tension and blue light, walking away in silence, her steps barely audible on the hard floor. She slips away as she came — discreetly, with that silent dignity that’s hers alone. No unnecessary gesture. No look back. Just the quiet certainty that he heard her. That he understood. And that he’ll do what he must. A breath. A second. Then another. Stark remains still. His eyes still locked on the numbers, on the blurry images, on the shattered map of New York pulsing slowly before him. A suspended moment, almost frozen in code and light projections. And then, slowly, as if his body weighed a ton, his fingers stretch out. Slow. Almost hesitant. They brush the mug, grasp it. Raise it to his lips.

One sip. Scalding. Bitter. Perfect.

The taste, too strong, seizes his tongue, his throat, then burns its way down like a reminder. He closes his eyes for a second. Not out of pleasure. Out of necessity. Because that simple contact — the liquid, the heat, the sensation — reminds him that he still exists outside the war machine he’s become. And then, almost immediately, his eyes open again. Latch onto the screen. The map. The hunt. The engine restarts. But behind the invisible armor, behind the hard gaze and automated gestures, the man is still there. Just enough. For now. The mug, barely set down on the desk, hits the surface with a muffled clack. The sound, though minimal, seems to shake the atmosphere. Stark exhales. One of those irritated sighs that vibrate between clenched teeth, that fatigue turns into frustration, and frustration reshapes into buried anger. His fingers snap against the desk, nervously. Not a blow. Just a dry, rhythmic sound. Accumulated tension seeking an outlet, a culprit, a breaking point. Something to strike — or someone. But no one here is responsible. No one except him.

And then, it bursts out.

— "Fuck… why didn’t he activate it?"

The voice is low. But it slices the air like a blade. Sharp. Brittle. It doesn’t need to be loud to carry. It’s so charged with tension that it seems to vibrate in the walls. No explosive rage. No yelling. Just that clean line, that icy edge that says it all. It’s not a question. It’s an unbearable fact. A flaw in the plan. A betrayal of logic. He doesn’t need to clarify. The device, the gesture, the fear behind it all of it is obvious. In the hallway, Pepper has stopped. Without realizing it. As if her muscles responded to that voice before her mind did. She’s frozen. And she understands. She knows too. He’s talking about the device. That small, discreet piece, barely bigger than a coin, that he slipped into an anodized case with a falsely detached air. That neutral tone he adopts when the stakes are too high to admit. He presented it like a gadget. Just another safety.

A thing for emergencies. "Press and hold for three seconds" he said. Simple. Effective. And his location would be transmitted to the Tower in real time, with immediate triangulation and constant tracking. He insisted, without seeming to. Like a father too proud of a dangerous toy. Like a man who’s already lost everything once and won’t let chance roll the dice again. The kind of thing he doesn’t give to everyone. The kind of thing he only entrusts once. And even then. Under the pretense of humor. Veiled in sarcasm. And yet, you didn’t activate it. That thought gnaws at him. Consumes him. Because if it wasn’t forgetfulness, then it’s worse. Then maybe there wasn’t time. Or maybe he was afraid. Or maybe you thought it wouldn’t make a difference. And that Tony can’t accept.

Because the alternative… he can’t even imagine it. He built it in just a few hours. One sleepless night, a few curses, two black coffees, and a diagram sketched on a crumpled napkin. Because he was tired. Tired of not knowing. Tired of not being able to protect. Tired of seeing him wander through New York like a ghost without an anchor, sleeping in sketchy squats, living on the generosity of people as reliable as March weather. He was done with uncertainty, with instability. So he made something simple, small, efficient. A distress beacon. A miniature safeguard. Mostly to protect him from himself. He even tucked a secondary mic inside. Discreet, compressed in anodized metal layers. Inaudible to the human ear. Just a sensor, a passive ear, in case something went wrong. Because he knew it could go wrong. Because deep down, he felt that danger was never far. And now? Nothing. No signal. No vibration. No blinking light. No trace. The void. Nothingness. The shadow of a silence that screams. Abruptly, Stark spins in his chair. The movement is sharp, abrupt. His fingers slam down on the projected keyboard in the air, striking commands, executing code, calling internal logs. He pulls up the history. Checks for connection attempts. Scans the security logs, network access, secondary frequencies. No recording. No triggered signal. No distress call. The device was never activated.

— "It was right there." His voice is hoarse. Slow. Painfully contained. "Within reach. Three fucking seconds. And I could’ve…"

He cuts himself off. Right there. The breath caught. No anger. Not yet. It’s not rage. It’s vertigo. An inner fall. He sees the scene again. Precisely. In the hall, just days ago. He was holding the little device between his fingers, between two sarcastic lines. A detached, mocking tone, as always. Trying not to push too hard. Not to seem worried. He said it with a smirk, hands in his pockets: "Just in case. It beeps, it blinks, I show up. Easy."

And he remembers. That hesitation. The lowered gaze. That muttered thank you, without real conviction. As if it didn’t really concern him. As if he didn’t believe it. As if he was afraid to disturb and didn’t think he was worth coming for. Stark clenches his teeth. Bitterness sticks in his throat.

— "He didn’t get it, did he?"

The question escapes. Not aimed at anyone. Not really. He’s speaking to the void, the desk, the walls. To himself. To the echo in his head.

— "He thinks it only works for others." His voice tightens. Fractures. "That no one comes for him. That he has to wait for it to get worse. That he has to nearly die to justify help."

His fingers slap a screen with the back of his hand. A furious swipe. The images vanish in a spray of light.

— "Shit. Shit."

He gets up. Too abruptly. His chair rolls back. He paces, circles, like a caged beast. A shadow of armor without the armor. He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it without thinking. His gestures are nervous, disordered. He teeters between genius logic and raw emotion.

— "I had him in my pocket," he breathes. "I could’ve found him in under two minutes."

His fist hits the back of the chair. A dry strike. Not brutal. But deep. A dull echo that lingers in the air.

— "But no. He keeps it on him like a fucking keychain. A symbolic thing. A gadget he doesn’t want to use. Because he doesn’t want to be a bother. Because he doesn’t want to raise the alarm."

He suddenly freezes. His breath halts. He stares at the floor as if seeking an answer no data can provide. The silence stretches. Then, in an almost inaudible murmur, rougher, more bitter:

— "He’s convinced no one’s coming."

And that thought. That simple idea. It destroys him from the inside. He closes his eyes. Clenches his fists so tightly his knuckles turn white. He fights. To hold back what rises. He won’t say he’s afraid. He won’t say he’s in pain. That he blames himself until it eats him alive. No. He won’t say it. So he turns back. Resumes his place. His fingers return to the controls. His gaze locks onto the screens. The maps. The fragmented data. What he still has. What he can still control. Because if he can’t turn back time… then he’ll find a way to catch up. No matter the cost. And he mutters under his breath:

— "I’m going to find him. Device or not."

Then he types. Not to write. Not to command. He types like someone striking. As if his fingers could punch through matter, bend the universe, shatter the whole world through the silent keys of a holographic keyboard. Every keystroke is a discharge. A sharp hit. A blow aimed at that invisible wall he can’t break through. A fight of data against the void, of will against absence. He types with an urgency that allows no delay, no hesitation. As if life, somewhere, depended on it.

Because it is.

And in the meantime, silence remains. Insidious. Heavy. The tenacious shadow of the action that never happened. The one that would have been enough. Three seconds. A press of the thumb. And he would have known. He would have moved. He would have run. He would have acted. He would have been there. But no. That absence, Stark feels it lodged in his throat, like acid he can’t swallow. It rises, clings, radiates. It stays, constant, until he brings him back. Until he has proof tangible, irrefutable that it’s still possible. That he’s still alive. The minutes pass. Like blades. Sharp. Precise. Unforgiving.

They cut into his focus, erode his patience, chip away at his certainty. Every second is a brutal reminder that time is passing. And this time, time isn’t an ally. He feels it slipping over his skin like a cold blade that can’t be stopped. But he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t blink. The office is bathed in semi-darkness. The blinds are down, the outside light filtered, as if daylight itself no longer had the right to enter. Only the screens cast their bluish glow on the walls, on the cables, on the opaque glass. And on him. That cold, spectral light slices across his closed-off face in sharp angles. Hollowed cheekbones. Brow etched with tension lines. Lips tight. He looks carved from quartz. Cold. Hard. Unyielding.

His eyes, fixed, barely blink. They follow lines of code, coordinates, overlaid maps, signal analyses, with inhuman precision. His stare is locked. Obsessed. He doesn’t falter. He scans. He waits. His fingers still move. Barely. With mechanical regularity. An almost hypnotic rhythm. They glide over holographic interfaces, brush through data windows, launch diagnostics, cross-reference streams. There’s no hesitation anymore, no improvisation. Only a logical sequence. An algorithm embodied in a man who refuses to give up. He doesn’t speak. Hasn’t for a while. He doesn’t even think — not in the usual sense. Human thoughts, full of doubts, memories, emotions, have been pushed to the background. He leaves space only for function. He calculates. He maps. He eliminates. He acts. Because that’s all he can do. And because as long as he acts, as long as he moves, as long as he searches, he’s not imagining the worst. And the countdown continues — silent, relentless. Invisible but omnipresent, it eats at his nerves like a tourniquet pulled too tight. A constant, dull pressure. There’s no number on the screen, no red blinking timer, but he feels it. In every heartbeat. In every passing minute, every interface click, every breath that’s too short, too sharp. He feels it under his skin like slow-diffusing poison.

Twenty-four hours.

That was the deadline. The ultimatum. Spat in his face with disgusting insolence, with the kind of sneering arrogance Stark knows too well. A provocation. A signature. A trap — not even hidden. A price laid out in black and white. The kind of message sent when you’re sure you have the upper hand. But it wasn’t the money that kept him awake all night. Not the numbered threat. Not the offshore account, not the conditions. That, he could have handled. Bought peace. Hacked the system. Turned the trap back on its maker. That’s not what stopped him from blinking, that jammed his throat, that retracted his muscles like a shock. It’s something else. It’s the image. Frozen. Unstable. Blurry. But recognizable. It’s the sound. That breath. That scream. Distorted by distance. By network static. But raw. Human. Ripped out. So real that even now, he still hears it. He could replay it in his head a hundred times, a thousand. He knows it by heart. The tone, the break in the voice, the burst of brutal panic just before everything was swallowed by silence.

That fucking silence. That’s what’s destroying him. What eats at him. What stops him from breathing normally. The silence afterward. The absolute nothing. That break that said everything, summed everything up. That screamed at him what he failed to hear in time. What he should have seen coming. That silence — Stark will never forgive it. Not the other. Not himself. Then suddenly, a voice slices through the air. Soft. Controlled. Synthetic. Like a strand of silk stretched to the limit, about to snap — but still holding.

— “Mr. Stark.”

He doesn’t even turn his head. He’d recognize that voice among a thousand. It’s been there forever — in his ear, in his walls, in his head. An extension of himself.

— “I’m listening, Jarvis.”

— “I believe I’ve found something.”

A shiver. Cold. Brutal. It shoots up his spine like an electric surge. For one heartbeat, his heart forgets to beat. Then everything reactivates all at once. Adrenaline. Tension. Hypervigilance.

— “Talk.”

Instantly, one of the main screens expands. The map of the city appears — familiar and vast — then begins a slow zoom. Details sharpen. Colors darken. The center pulls back. The frame shifts. Outskirts. Sparse buildings. Wasteland. Finally, a precise point. An abandoned industrial zone. Gray. Timeworn. Forgotten by the world. Drowned in abandonment fog. Where no one looks anymore. Where things are hidden when no one wants them found. Coordinates blink at the bottom of the screen. Precise. Cold. Real.

— “A minimal network activity was detected,” Jarvis continues. “Almost nothing. A very weak signal — just a few microseconds of connection — but enough to leave a trace. It was a disposable phone.”

Stark steps forward. He’s drawn to the map like it’s magnetic. His eyes latch onto the screen, fix on it, hold. He sees beyond the image. Through the ruined facades, under the layers of metal and dust. He wants to believe he can see what’s hidden there. That something is waiting.

— “Can you confirm?”

— “The model’s signature matches what we detected during the call. It briefly connected to a secondary relay antenna nearby. It might’ve gone unnoticed, but—”

He’s no longer listening. Or rather, he hears everything. He registers it all, but his mind is already elsewhere. Locked in. Compressed around a single fact. A single certainty. His thoughts tighten, converge on a single point. A red dot. Blinking. Clear. An abandoned warehouse. No activity for over ten years. No cameras. No patrols. No recorded movement. Nothing. The kind of place you choose when you don’t want to be found. The kind of place where secrets are buried. Or people. And then, a single thought imposes itself. Emerges from the chaos like a brutal flash of truth. A certainty branded into his mind like a red-hot iron.

You’re there.

Not maybe. Not probably. Not possibly. You’re there. His fist clenches. Slowly. Each finger curling until the knuckles turn white. He closes his eyes. One second. One breath. One anchor. Then opens them again. And in his gaze, there’s no more doubt. No more fear. No more wandering emotion. Just steel. Just fire. Just the mission.

— “Prepare everything. Now.”

And in that exact moment, the whole world narrows. There’s no more sound. No more fatigue. No more failure. Only this. A straight line. A single target. A burning urgency. To get you out. Pepper is there. Just behind him. Motionless. Straight as a blade. Her arms crossed tightly against her, in a posture that might seem cold to someone who doesn’t know her. But it’s not distance. It’s a barrier. A dam. A desperate attempt to hold back what she feels rising.

The pale glow of the screens casts his shadow on the floor, long and sharp, like a silent specter frozen in anticipation. Around them, the room is bathed in incomplete darkness, pierced only by the soft flickering blue halos on the glass surfaces — witnesses to this sleepless night that stretches on and on.

His face, usually so mobile, so expressive — the face that knows how to smile even during the worst press conferences, that can reassure with a single look — is now closed. Frozen. Like carved in marble. His jaw slightly clenched. His brows drawn in a barely perceptible but unyielding tension. But what betrays it all are his eyes. A gleam, contained. A discreet fire. Both anxious and annoyed. A light that flickers between anguish and a barely concealed anger.

She watches him. In silence. Lips tight. Shoulders tense. And she knows. She knows exactly what’s going on in his head. She knows the gears, the silences, the calculated movements. She recognizes this posture. This calm. This false calm. This almost elegant stillness that always comes just before impact. She’s seen it once. Maybe twice, in her entire life. And each time, something broke afterward. A wall. A promise. Someone. So she speaks. Not to convince him. But to try and hold him back for just one more moment at the edge of the abyss.

— “You should wait for the police, Tony.”

Her voice is calm. Measured. Perfectly composed. But it cuts through the air like a blade honed too well. It slices without shouting, without striking. It hits the mark. He doesn’t respond. Not right away. He moves. Slowly at first, then with dreadful precision. He reaches for the back of his chair, pulls his leather jacket from it — the one he wears when everything becomes too real, too dangerous, too personal. He puts it on in one sharp, fast motion. Automatic. Without even thinking. Everything is rehearsed. His movements are crisp, stripped of any hesitation. He’s no longer reflecting. He’s in motion.

One hand slides into the side drawer of his desk. The metal barely creaks. He pulls out a small object, barely bigger than a watch case. Smooth. Chrome. Discreet. He inspects it for a fraction of a second, spins it between his fingers, gauges it. His gaze clings to it, focused, as if making sure it’s the right one. Then he slips it into the inner pocket of his jacket. A tracker. A prototype. Maybe both. Maybe something else. When Tony Stark leaves like this, he never leaves empty-handed. And in the suspended tension of the room, in that moment when every gesture weighs like a decision, Pepper feels her heart pound harder. Because she knows, once again, he won’t change his mind. Not this time.

Without a word. He crosses the room like someone going to war. No haste, no visible tension. Just a methodical, silent advance, heavy with intention. Each step echoes faintly on the floor, absorbed by the cold light of the still-lit screens, by the walls saturated with nervous electricity. He heads toward the elevator, straight, relentless, like a guided missile.

— “Tony.”

This time, her voice cuts through the space. Louder. Sharper. She’s dropped the polite calm. There’s urgency in that word, a crack, something tense, fragile. Pepper steps forward, rounds the table. It’s not a command. It’s not a plea either. It’s a disguised entreaty, cloaked in reason, offered as a last attempt to connect. She’s searching for a crack. A hold. Any one. Not to stop him — she’s never held that illusion — but to slow the momentum. To crack the armor. To make him think. Just one more second.

— “This is exactly what he wants. For you to charge in headfirst. For him to have control.”

He stops. His body freezes all at once, mid-distance from the elevator whose open doors wait, patient, like the jaws of a steel beast. Slowly, he turns toward her. Not violently. Not with irritation. But with that icy precision that, in him, equals all the angers in the world. He looks at her. And his gaze is black. Not empty. Not crazed. No. It’s a sharp gaze. Cutting. Shaped like a glass blade, able to slice cleanly without ever shaking. He stares at her, without flinching, without softening the impact. His shoulders slightly raised, chin lowered, neck taut. A compact, tense posture. Not defensive. Not exactly. More like a predator’s. The eyes of a man who sees no alternate paths. Only the target.

— “You think he has control?”

His voice is low. Deep. Vibrating with that particular intensity he only uses in very rare moments — when everything tips, when what remains inside compresses until it becomes unstoppable. Every word is controlled. Measured. Almost calmly delivered. But in their precision, there’s something unsettling. A promise. A fracture forming. Silence falls behind that phrase. Suddenly. A thick silence. Charged. Almost unbreathable. It lasts only a few seconds, but they seem to stretch time. The elevator still waits behind him. The slightly open doors pulse softly, as if they sensed the suspended moment. Then he adds, without raising his voice, without looking away:

— “He made the biggest mistake of his life taking him.”

And it’s not a threat. It’s not provocation. It’s a verdict. A raw, cold truth carved in marble. It’s a fact. And it’s far worse than a scream. Then he turns away. One last time. And he steps into the elevator. He doesn’t look back. Doesn’t leave a phrase hanging. Doesn’t try to reassure. He disappears into the steel maw, and the doors close on him with a quiet hiss. Pepper remains there. Upright. Frozen. Her arms cross a little tighter, as if to hold back something threatening to collapse. The screen lights continue to flicker over her unmoving features, but they’re not what illuminates her. It’s intuition. Instinct. The one that whispers what she already knows deep down, what she’s felt from the beginning. Something is going to explode. And this time, she’s not sure anyone will come out unscathed.

The metallic floor barely vibrates beneath his steps. Just a discreet, restrained resonance, almost respectful. But in the frozen silence of the hangar, each echo seems to strike the air like a muffled detonation. Every step is a warning. A countdown. A declaration of war. The space is vast. Immense. A cathedral of technology bathed in cold, clinical, almost surgical light. The walls, made of reinforced glass and brushed steel, reflect sharp, precise flashes, slicing his shadow with every movement. Nothing here is decorative. Everything is functional. Calibrated. Optimized. Ready to serve. Ready to open, to strike, to launch. Ready to close behind him, too.

Tony moves with slow, controlled steps. Nothing rushed. He’s not running. He’s not hurrying. He knows exactly where he’s going. Every stride is calculated. Controlled. His gaze is fixed straight ahead, unwavering. No detours. No curiosity. His body is tense, but steady. Focused. There is no room left for doubt. At the center of the hangar, the launch platform awaits him. A circle of polished steel, inlaid with white LEDs pulsing gently, slowly, like a heart in standby. The light follows a steady, hypnotic rhythm, as if the structure itself were breathing. It sleeps. But it's ready to awaken at the slightest command. Around him, holographic showcases come to life at his approach. Sensors recognize his presence. Interfaces open by themselves. Images appear, fluid, clear. Silhouettes rise in bluish light, floating like specters of war.

His suits. The most recent. The strongest. The fastest. Masterpieces of power and precision, lined up in military silence. No words. No announcements. They stand there, frozen, waiting, like a metallic honor guard ready to activate at the slightest signal. Majestic. Relentless. Inhuman. They are beautiful in their coldness. Intimidating. Perfect. But he doesn't look at any of them. Not a single glance. Not a hint of hesitation. He passes through them like one walks through a memory too familiar to still fascinate. The suit doesn’t matter. Not this time. He isn’t here for spectacle, or showy power. He doesn’t want to impress, or buy time. He wants only one thing.

Efficiency. Extraction. The end.

His steps remain steady. His silhouette moves alone among the giants of metal. And in his wake, the air seems to vibrate with low tension, restrained anger, pain too vast to be named. The soldier is on the move. And what he’s about to do now… he’ll do it without flinching. His gaze is fixed. Frozen. With an almost inhuman intensity. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t deviate. He aims. His attention is a taut line between two points: himself, and the target. It’s not anger you see in his eyes. That would be too simple. Too mundane. No — it’s worse. It’s frozen resolve. A sharp calm like a scalpel's edge. Clinical determination, purged of raw emotion, as if every feeling had been distilled, compressed into a single objective: locate, neutralize, retrieve. At all costs.

The suit he’s come for… it’s not the one from interviews. Not the one for demos. Not the one that dazzles crowds or makes headlines. This one, he only brings out when someone has to fall. No flash. No light. No declaration. With a sharp gesture, he activates the control interface embedded in the platform. The floor lights intensify, blink once, then a metal ring slowly rises from the ground, encircling him with solemn gravity. Everything remains silent. Nothing overreacts. Everything is perfectly calibrated. Robotic arms unfold around him, in a mechanical choreography of military precision. They don’t tremble. They don’t hesitate. They take position, ready to interlock, to serve, to build the weapon.

— "Omega configuration."

His voice snaps. Dry. Dense. Like a hammer strike on glass. And instantly, the machines comply. Without delay. Without flaw. The first pieces of the suit lock around his legs, securing his joints, enclosing his muscles in layers of reinforced alloy. The boots anchor to his feet with a soft hiss, each plate sliding into place with a perfectly tuned metallic click. Then the chest modules rise, locking over his ribcage. The red and gold lines slowly take shape, forming a symmetrical, ruthless architecture. Nothing is superfluous. Everything is there to protect, to absorb, to strike. The metal climbs along his arms, embeds into his shoulders, clamps onto his back. A vengeful exoskeleton. A body of war. Every movement is fluid, exact. The machine knows his rhythm. It knows his silence. It recognizes this moment when Tony Stark is no longer joking. He lowers his head slightly. The helmet drops with a magnetic hiss. It seals with a muffled chhhk. Instantly, his vision turns red. The interface lights up. Sensors activate. Data streams appear. Code scrolls. Maps. Thermal signals. Local comms networks. Building schematics. Ballistic paths.

He’s inside. He’s ready.

— "J.A.R.V.I.S., send the flight plan."

— "Coordinates locked. Route optimized. Risks assessed."

A moment. Just one. A tenuous silence. Like a held breath. Then Jarvis’s voice, lower, almost hesitant. A soft note. A nearly human tone, as if trying to reach through the metal to something deeper.

— "Tony… you don’t have to do this alone."

Not a tactical suggestion. Not a precaution. An offering. An outstretched hand. But Tony doesn’t respond. Not yet. One beat. Just a suspended moment between question and answer. But it won’t come. Because he’s not. Not alone. Not really. It’s not solitude that lives inside him. It’s worse. It’s that weight, hanging on his chest like an anvil: responsibility. He feels responsible. And that kind of responsibility can’t be delegated. Can’t be shared. It must be borne. Endured. To the end. He’s not doing this because he’s alone. He’s doing it because he’s the one who must. Because he was there when it happened. Because he should have seen, understood, foreseen. And because he will never forgive himself if he arrives too late.

A metallic breath escapes his shoulders. Light, but precise. The thrusters arm with a restrained growl. Internal turbines hum softly, like a beast holding back its power before leaping. The entire platform tenses. A low vibration rises under his feet, echoing the energy condensed beneath his heels. The lights turn orange. The floor opens. Slowly. In segments. Like a mechanical wound revealing the hangar’s nuclear heart. The air grows denser. Warmer. Electrified. Stark bends his knees. His muscles instinctively adjust for the imminent thrust. And then, without hesitation, without countdown, without another word…

He lifts off the ground.

With a piercing roar, the suit tears through the air. Flames burst from his heels, searing the platform, and Tony’s body becomes a comet of metal and fire shooting through the open ceiling, soaring at blinding speed into the already paling night. The hunt has begun.

The sky races around him. A continuous stream, distorted by speed, slashed by incandescent trails. Every inch of the armor vibrates under the strain, every thruster hums with surgical precision. The wind slams into him, compressed, transformed into pure force that only the flight algorithms manage to contain. The city stretches out below. Gigantic. Vast. Insignificant. Skyscrapers blur past like mirages. Rooftops, streets, glowing points of light — all turn into abstraction. But he sees nothing. Not the glowing windows, not the crowded avenues, not the numbers blinking across his heads-up display. Not even the overlaid messages, trajectory readings, or secondary alerts. He sees only one red dot. One destination. One objective. And nothing else exists.

He thinks only of you.

Of your body, twisted under the blows. Of your features, contorted by pain. Of your breath, ragged, torn, like each inhale is a battle against agony. Of your face, bruised, sullied, pressed against a floor too cold, too dirty, too real. He sees the blood, the unnatural angle of your shoulder, the fear diluted in your half-closed eyes. He sees everything. Even what you tried to hide. He still hears that fucking scream. The one he never should’ve heard. The one he should’ve prevented, before it ever existed. A scream you can’t fake. A scream torn from you, raw, visceral. He heard it through the phone, compressed, muffled by your breath, crushed by the violence of the moment. But despite the static, despite the distance, he felt it. Like a blade to the heart. Like a shockwave that didn’t just hit him. It went straight through him.

And in his mind, that sound loops. Again. And again. And again. Louder than any explosion. More violent than a collapsing building. It’s not a memory. It’s a living burn. An active wound. He sees it all again. Every second. Every word. Every tone. That bastard’s voice.

Matthew.

Every syllable spat like poison. Every word sculpted to wound. To provoke. To leave a mark. Not on you — on him. It was all planned. Orchestrated. A performance. A slow, cold, painfully precise execution. Meant for one person: Tony Stark. To hit him. To show him how badly he failed. To push where it hurts most.

And it worked. Fuck, it worked.

He still feels how his throat closed. The exact moment his heart skipped a beat. The absolute void that swallowed him when he realized he was too late to stop it but maybe not too late to save you. That instant shift, when all logic shattered, replaced by one certainty. He will pay. Not for the humiliation. Not for the provocation. But for putting you in that state. For daring to lay a hand on you. And Stark, now, isn’t flying toward a hideout. He’s flying toward an execution. His heart is pounding too hard. It no longer syncs with the armor’s rhythm. It hammers against his ribcage like a primal reminder that, beneath all the metal, despite all the tech, he is still a body. A man. And that body is boiling. His fingers tighten inside the gauntlets. The joints, calibrated down to the micrometer, creak under the pressure. He clenches. Too hard. Pointlessly. As if the pain might return control to him. As if he’s clinging to the sensation of something real. The internal temperature climbs a notch. A brief alert flashes, notified by a beep that Jarvis cancels instantly. He knows. Even the tech feels that something is cracking. That the tension line has reached a critical threshold. The tactile sync grows more nervous, less fluid. Not from failure — from resonance. As if the suit itself were reacting to the rage boiling beneath the metal. As if it knew he’s on the verge of detonating.

But he doesn’t scream. He doesn’t speak. He breathes. And he moves forward. Because rage — real rage the kind that doesn’t erupt but eats you alive, the kind that carves deep and anchors in silence, isn’t fire. It’s ice. A blade. A metallic tension that sharpens second by second. This is no longer about ransom. This is no longer an intervention. It’s not even a mission anymore. It’s personal. Because you… you’re not just some kid he hired. You’re not an intern, not a checkbox on some HR dashboard. You’re not a casting mistake he corrected in passing. You’re not one more name on a list of talent. You’re not a recruit. You’re that lost kid who showed up one morning with bags heavier than your shoulders, a voice too quiet, gestures too small. The one who looked at screens like they mattered more than the world. The one who barely spoke, but worked until you shook. Until you collapsed. Without ever complaining. Without ever asking for help. The one who clung to the work like it was the surface of a frozen lake. Just to keep from drowning. And that’s where it started.

Tony doesn’t know exactly when. When it slipped. When he stopped seeing you as an employee and started caring differently. Started checking if you’d eaten. Turning concern into jokes — but counting the times you said "not hungry." Setting rules. Break times. Making sure you got home. That you slept. That you didn’t vanish into the blind spots. Getting used to hearing you mutter when he worked too late. Paying attention. And now, he realizes it too late. This thing, this invisible thread, clumsy, imperfect, but real… it’s there. Damn it, it’s there. And now, you’re gone. And he’s going to cross fire, smash through every wall, burn everything down to find you. Because nothing else matters now. And that’s what’s eating him alive. Not guilt. Not passing doubt. No a slow burn, rooted deep in his chest. A slow poison, distilled with every heartbeat. Because that little idiot… you had a device. A fucking distress device. Not just any gadget. Not a toy.

A device he designed. Refined. Gave to you. Built in haste, but with care. Meant for this. To stop this. To block the worst. So he’d never have to hear screams like that. So he could get there before the blood spilled. And you didn’t even use it. Not a press. Not a signal. Nothing. You took it all. To the end. In silence. Like always. And that’s what drives him mad. The silence. That fucking habit of suffering quietly. As if it doesn’t count. As if your pain isn’t valid. As if your life isn’t worth protecting. As if pressing a button to ask for help… was already asking too much. As if he wouldn’t have come.

And now? Now you’re in the hands of a madman. A psycho acting out of vengeance, control, power hunger. A man with no limits, no brakes, who already crossed every line. Tony saw it. Heard it. He knows. Tortured. Broken. Gasping. The images come uninvited. Your face. Your features twisted in pain. That ragged breath, barely audible. The weight of your body giving out. The hard floor under your cheek. Blood seeping from a wound he can only imagine. And that look, more felt than seen, somewhere between fear and resignation.

Tony clenches his jaw. So hard his teeth slam together inside the helmet. The sound is dull, amplified by the metal echo. It vibrates through his temples. A muffled detonation ringing through his skull. He wants to scream. To hit something. To do anything. But he stays focused. Rage can’t come out. It’s compact. Controlled. Targeted.

The worst part? He still hears you. That murmur. Between gasps. That muffled breath, fragile, but so distinct. That tone. That voice he knows now. He recognized it instantly. There was no doubt. No room for illusion. He could’ve denied it. Lied to himself. Said it was a mistake. A coincidence. But no. He knew. He knew immediately. And from that moment, something inside him snapped. Not dramatically. No collapse. A clean fracture. Like an overtightened mechanism breaking in silence. Because now, it’s too late to argue. Too late to reason. Too late to call the cops. Too late for rules, procedures, delays.

Matthew is already dead. He doesn’t know it yet. He still breathes. Still thinks he’s in control. Thinks he’s running the show. But he’s not. He’s already finished. Erased. Condemned. Because Tony Stark heard that scream. And that scream changed everything. That scream signed Matthew’s death warrant. And he’s going to make him pay. Inch by inch. Breath by breath. Until he gets you back. Or burns the world down to drag you out of the dark.

When the Iron Man suit finally lands, it’s as if the whole world holds its breath.

A metallic breath explodes beneath the impact, followed by a dull rumble that cracks the already fractured concrete of the ground. The shock ripples through the foundations of the old industrial district, awakening the ghosts of rusted machines, worn-out beams, and gutted walls. Dust immediately rises in thick, greasy, lazy swirls, dancing around him for a moment before slowly settling, as if even it knows not to linger here. The air is saturated. Heavy. It reeks of rust, moldy wood, and decay embedded in the walls. It reeks of abandonment. And worse: expectation. The congealed oil on obsolete pipes reflects faint black gleams, almost organic, like fossilized blood. The ground creaks under his boots. All around him, the environment seems frozen. Trapped in a time that forgot how to die.

Icy wind rushes between the metal structures, howling through broken beams, whistling past shattered windows. It carries the cold of a soulless place — emptied, but not deserted. Not entirely. Around him is nothingness. A heavy, oppressive void. No sound, no light. Nothing lives here. Nothing breathes. Not even a rat. Not even a shadow. As if the rest of the world had the decency to look away. As if even the city itself knew that what was going to happen here… should not be seen. And in that thick silence, saturated with contained electricity, Tony remains still. His body in the suit doesn’t tremble. But everything in him is ready to strike. The HUD displays thermal readings, sound scans, parasitic electromagnetic signatures. Traces. Remnants. Leads.

He ignores them. He doesn’t need confirmation. He looks up. There. Right in front of him. The building. A block of blackened concrete, eaten away by time. It rises before him like a vertical coffin, planted in the ground. Its windows are empty sockets. Its crumbling walls seep with moisture and menace. It’s a carcass. A gaping maw. A lair. The kind of place where people are held. Erased. Buried. And deep inside, somewhere in there, he knows. You’re there. And Tony Stark came to get you.

The windows are shattered, slashed like screaming mouths frozen mid-silent howl. Shards of glass still dangle from some frames, claws of dead light ready to cut. The gutted openings let in a freezing wind that rustles the remains of forgotten curtains, faded, trembling like surrender flags. The concrete holds together only by habit. Cracked, eroded by seasons, cold, rain, and grime. By time. By indifference. Parts of the facade have collapsed in whole sheets, revealing the interior like a raw wound. Rusted beams jut from the gaping holes, still supporting broken, twisted staircases whose steps are gnawed by corrosion. A withered metal skeleton groaning under its own weight.

The scene is saturated with signs of dead life. Hastily scrawled graffiti, some grotesque, some terrifying, scream from the walls like echoes left by shadows. Split-open bags. Scattered trash. Abandoned syringes. A broken stroller, overturned. An old moldy couch under a porch. Traces of human passage, old, sad. But nothing lives here anymore. Everything reeks of neglect. Of misery. And something worse still: violence. That scent doesn’t lie. It seeps everywhere, even into the walls. A stagnant, invisible tension, but palpable. As if the very air had absorbed a memory too painful to vanish. An echo of blows. Of screams. Of fear.

Inside, it’s swallowed in thick, grimy darkness. No light. Just the blackness, mingled with dust, rot, and silence. But he doesn’t need light. Doesn’t need to see. His scanner activates instantly. The interface opens in a silent click, layering across his HUD. Schematics align, partial blueprints of the building take shape in 3D. Partial plans, modeled reconstructions from thermal scans, wave sweeps, mass detection. Heat sources appear. Faint. Distant. Unstable. And then, deep in that rusted steel maze, cracked concrete, and rotten silence… a thermal signature. Human. Residual. Nearly gone. A blurred point, nestled in a windowless room, behind thick walls. A trace. A breath.

Tony clenches his fists.

The sound is minimal. A quiet metallic creak, but full of tension. The gauntlets respond to the pressure, contouring his restrained rage, absorbing the shock. He doesn’t need confirmation. Doesn’t need to see more. Doesn’t need to wait. He knows. His instinct — that damn sixth sense he spent years mocking — screams through his body. It’s here. This rat hole he chose. This rotten theater for a filthy ransom. This stage for torture. A place not built to hold… but to break. To terrify. To harm. A bad choice. Tony approaches.

One step. Slow. Calculated. Methodical. Every movement is measured. The suit follows without fail, amplifies his stride, makes the ground tremble with each impact. Metal boots pound cracked concrete like war drums. A warning. A sentence. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t need to. Matthew’s time is already counted. His sensors scan blind spots. He identifies exits, access points, high ground. He’s already plotting firing lines, breach paths, fallback routes. He thinks like a weapon. Like a strike. Because he’s no longer just an angry man. He’s become a projectile. A terminal solution. A promise kept too late. And inside… someone is about to learn what it costs. To lay a hand on you.

He pushes the door with a sharp, decisive gesture. The metallic impact creates a brutal clang, and the battered frame wails in a piercing screech. The sound is long, grotesque, almost human. It slices the air like a cry ripped from a bottomless throat, the shriek of a grave forced open, or a coffin pried too late. The metal scrapes, shrieks, protests — but obeys. Before him, the hallway stretches. Long. Narrow. Strangled between two walls dripping with damp. The air is dense, fetid, soaked with stagnant water and ancient mold. A cold breath seeps from the walls, icy and clinging, sneaking into the suit’s seams as if to slow him, to warn him.

The walls are alive. Not with organisms, but rot. Dark mold clings to them, spreading in irregular patterns like necrotic veins. It crawls across the concrete, invades corners, slips into cracks. In places, the plaster has given way, reduced to gray dust. Beneath, twisted, rusted rebar protrudes — like broken bones, as if the building itself had been tortured, split open. A single bulb hangs from the ceiling, bare. Dirty. Its globe yellowed by time, its sickly light flickers intermittently. Suspended from a wire too long, too thin, it dances with every draft like a rope ready to snap. It blinks. Once. Twice. The yellow halo it casts wavers, bleeding against the walls. The shadows it throws stretch, distort, crawl along the ground. Shapes too long, too fluid, as if the walls themselves breathed beneath the dying light.

Tony doesn’t slow.

He doesn’t hesitate. His stride remains straight, steady, heavy. Each step echoes off the floor, amplified by the armor’s metal. Debris cracks underfoot: broken glass, plaster fragments, splinters of forgotten furniture. Every sound ricochets in the narrow hallway, trapped between the walls like a muffled volley of gunfire. But he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t look around. He advances. Like a metronome. His eyes never leave the end of the hall, even as everything around seems to want to swallow him, smother him. He sees the corners, the ajar doors, the stains on the floor, but he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t deviate. He walks this hall like a trial. A purgatory. He knows hell waits ahead. He feels it.

And he’s ready to tear it open with his bare hands. Each step is a countdown. Each breath, a burning fuse. Each heartbeat in his chest, a war drum. He knows what he’ll find. Maybe not the details. Maybe not the form. But the essence. He knows the scent of blood is there, somewhere. That fear has left its trace. That pain has seeped into the walls. And he knows that you… you’re at the end. You’re there, in the dark, at the end of this sick corridor. Maybe unconscious. Maybe barely alive. But you’re there. And that’s enough. Because even if the entire world has to burn for him to find you,

Stark walks down that hall like a blade sliding into a wound. Slowly. Silently. Without flash, without unnecessary sound. He doesn’t strike. He infiltrates. He dissects. Every step is measured, controlled, charged with clinical precision. The weight of his body, perfectly distributed, flows with the suit’s supports. His boots barely graze the floor, but even that friction seems to vibrate through the air, taut with tension. Tension is everywhere. In his muscles, locked beneath the metal. In his jaw, clenched to the point of pain. In his nerves, on maximum alert. He’s taut as a bowstring. Like a weapon whose safety was disengaged long ago. Even his breathing is suspended. He hardly breathes. He’s sunk into a slowed rhythm, between apnea and absolute focus.

Then the smell hits him. Not softly. Not in waves. Brutally. A wall. An invisible punch to the chest. Heavy. Thick. A metallic stench clings to his throat, invades his nostrils like a warning. Blood. Not fresh. Dried. Hours old, maybe. Mixed with damp, with the building’s mold, with dust saturated with dead micro-organisms, with the stagnant rot that infests places where nothing lives anymore. The smell of a trap. The smell of pain. His stomach tightens. Not from fear. From rage. His heart doesn’t race. It slows. As if syncing to the place. He shifts into a deeper, duller, more dangerous frequency. His pulse beats like a drum ready to strike.

Above him, the bulb still swings — a pathetic relic of a once-functioning past. It crackles, flickers, sputters to life at intervals. Each pulse casts sickly light across cracked tiles, warped walls, and scattered remnants of a forgotten world. The shadows stretch, shrink, crawl along the walls like filthy hands. Even the walls seem to hold their breath. He steps forward again. One step. Then another. Every movement is fluid, silent, nearly unreal. His visor scans relentlessly. It overlays stacked data layers, displays thermal signatures, rough volume outlines, hidden masses behind walls. He examines blind spots. Gaps. Floor markings. Broken hinges, scuff marks on wood.

He doesn’t see Matthew yet. But he feels it.

Like a presence. A greasy vibration in the air. A low tension running beneath the walls like a rogue current. A sensation that cuts through him, visceral. It’s not intuition. It’s certainty.

He’s here. Somewhere.

And then he sees you.

You.

There’s no sound. No warning. No orchestral swell. Just that brutal, abrupt moment when the image slaps him in the face like a blow that nothing can soften. You're there. Not standing. Not sitting. Collapsed. Against the wall. No — not against. You’re melded into it. As if your body were trying to dissolve, to disappear. A trembling mass, dirty, slack with pain. No longer a person. No longer a boy. Just a heap of living, broken flesh. A dislocated silhouette in the dark. His brain takes a moment to understand what he’s seeing. This isn’t you. Not the you he knows. It’s something else. A ruined version. And the violence here isn’t hypothetical. It’s tattooed on you. Your arm is twisted.

Not bent. Twisted. At a monstrous, impossible angle. The elbow joint reversed. Bones displaced under stretched skin. Something that should only appear in accident reports. Not here. Not like this. Your shoulder has collapsed. Your hand, almost detached from the rest, barely trembles.

And your face... It takes Tony a second. Just one. But it lasts an eternity.

He doesn’t understand right away. He recognizes nothing. No features. No familiar contours. Just damage. Open wounds, horrible swelling, bruises stacked upon bruises. Your eyes — if they’re still there — are buried under hematomas. Your lips are split. Your right cheek is so swollen it distorts the entire shape of your skull. It’s a mosaic. A work of pure cruelty. And the blood… It’s still flowing. Not much. Not in spurts. In seepage. Slow trickles, like a steady leak. It slides down your temple. Your mouth. Your neck. It’s sticky. Matte. It ran, dried, and ran again. It’s on your throat. Your collarbone. Your chest. You’re soaked.

Not with sweat. With blood. With fear. With the filth of the floor. Your clothes are just rags now. Torn down to the skin. Deep tears are visible, laceration marks, fingerprints, nails, blows. Your hands are open. Literally. Cut. Your palms are cracked, marked by a desperate attempt to defend yourself. Your fingers are splayed as if caught in a frozen spasm. Your knees are red, shredded. Raw flesh peeks through peeled skin. And your back... He doesn’t even want to look. He can guess. He knows what he’ll find there. Marks. Burns. Blows. Traces of what no one should ever do to another human being. But he doesn’t look. Not yet. Because then... he sees it. Your chest.

It moves. Barely. But it moves. A breath. Weak. Jagged. Rough. A struggle with every motion. A breath that doesn’t really come out. A choked wheeze. But alive. You’re breathing. You’re there. Still there. And Tony stops cold.His entire body freezes. The armor locks with him, as if the machine itself understood. As if every fiber, every metal plate had turned to stone. Time collapses on him. A crushing weight. A shroud. His heart? It stops. It no longer beats. Just a void. An absence. A pulse. Heavy. Dry. In his temples. His throat. His stomach. What he feels has no name. It’s not fear. It’s no longer even anger. It’s a breaking point. A place in the soul where everything stops. Where everything is too much. Too much pain. Too much hate. Too much regret. Too late. Too far. He’s here. In front of you. And he can’t go back.

It’s a fracture. A rupture in everything he thought he could control. You’re alive. But at what cost? And somewhere, just a few meters away... Matthew is still breathing. But not for long. A cold shiver, sharp as a steel blade, climbs Stark’s spine. He doesn’t push it away. He lets it slide between his shoulder blades, slip under the metal like a warning that what he’s seeing isn’t an illusion, but raw, naked, implacable truth. Yet nothing on his face betrays this vertigo. Not a twitch, not a flinch, not even a blink. His rage, once explosive, has retracted into a clean, focused line. It’s no longer a storm. It’s a blade. Smooth, cold, sharp. A perfectly honed weapon, ready to strike the moment it’s needed. Not before.

His eyes stay locked on you, unblinking, unwavering. Every detail imprints itself in his mind like a photograph branded with hot iron: the grotesque position of your broken arms, the dark brown blood dried in rivulets on your chin, your neck, your chest; your skin, so pale beneath layers of grime and pain it looks almost like that of a corpse; the faint flutter of your chest, a fragile reminder that you haven’t crossed over yet. He sees it all. He doesn’t look away. And he will remember it. Until his last day. And yet, he doesn’t move right away. Everything in him is screaming. Every fiber, every muscle, every electrical impulse of the armor and his own body calls him to you, to rush, to drop to his knees, to check your pulse, your breath, to place his glove at your neck, to say your name. But he doesn’t give in. He is Tony Stark, yes. But here, now, he is also Iron Man. And Iron Man knows how to recognize a trap. Instinct needs no explanation. He feels that grimy vibration in the air, that invisible weight that warps the atmosphere around you, that intent still lingering, ready to pounce. He knows he’s not alone.

So he advances, but his way. Not slowly out of hesitation, but with control. One step. Then another. Controlled. Silent. The floor crunches beneath his boots, and even though the armor absorbs most sound, here, in this room saturated with shadows and stench, every movement rings out like a barely contained threat. The air is still. The walls seem to listen. The silence, tense, fills with static. He stops a few steps from you. Just close enough to see you breathe, to catch that tiny tremor in your ribcage, that breath that fights, clings, refuses to yield. Just far enough to strike, to raise his arm, to hit in half a second if something emerges. Because he knows: this is the moment Matthew is waiting for. The moment he thinks he can finish what he started. But he’s about to learn that this time, he’s not facing a wounded child. He’s facing Iron Man.

His eyes scan the room relentlessly. Every detail is absorbed, analyzed, memorized. The walls, covered in peeling paint, reveal patches of bare stone, gnawed away by damp. Mold streaks stretch up to the ceiling, which has collapsed in places, letting frayed wires dangle alongside crumbling fragments of plaster. Rusted pipes run along the walls like dead veins, slowly bleeding black water into the corners of the room. A distant drip echoes, irregular, distorted by reverb, like the heartbeat of a body already emptied of everything. The air is thick. Stagnant. It smells of oil, blood, mold, and abandonment. This isn’t really a place anymore. Not a living space, not a shelter. A dead place. Forgotten. A pocket outside of time, perfect for monsters to hide in.

And Stark knows it. It’s too quiet. The space is frozen in a dull anticipation. The smell is too sharp. The scene, too carefully placed. Nothing here suggests an accident. Everything has been calculated. And he hasn’t come to negotiate. He’s not here to understand. He’s not here to reach out. He’s here to end it.

So he speaks. Not loudly. Not shouting. His voice slices through the silence like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath. Low. Slow. Sharp. It doesn’t tremble. It doesn’t seek to impress. It states. It targets. It’s the voice of someone who’s gone beyond fear. Who knows the war is no longer a risk. It’s happening. It’s here. Present. Inevitable.

— "That’s your big plan, Matthew?"

The words hang in the air. Clear. Sharp. And they cut. The silence that follows is even sharper. It relieves nothing. It stretches. It weighs. It presses on the nerves like a finger on an open wound. A silence with a taste. That of blood just before the blow. That of a held breath, of the instant suspended between lightning and thunder. A silence ready to rupture. And Stark is ready to tear through it. He kneels.

The suit exhales softly, like a restrained sigh, when Tony bends a knee to the ground. Metal meets filth, dust, and the invisible fragments of an abandoned world in an almost solemn hiss. It’s not a brusque gesture, nor heroic. It’s a humble movement. Precise. One knee placed in the grime of a ravaged sanctuary, a cathedral of pain frozen in time, where the slightest sound feels blasphemous. He places himself near you. Within reach of your voice. Within reach of your breath.

Above you, the light flickers. It trembles at irregular intervals, swaying like a sick pendulum. It doesn’t truly illuminate. It hesitates. As if it, too, refused to fully expose what it reveals. The scene seems unreal. Suspended. Out of the world.

Stark only sees you now. His eyes are on you. At last. Truly. He no longer sees you through the lens of worry or authority. He doesn’t see an employee in distress, nor that lost kid he tried to protect from afar without ever really getting involved. He doesn’t see a responsibility. He sees you. The body you’ve become. This collapsed, mutilated body, barely breathing. That breath, ragged, whistling, clinging to life like a flame battered by wind. The position in which you’ve fallen, curled in on yourself, speaks of an instinct stronger than thought: to hide, to disappear, to avoid another blow.

Tony doesn’t move. Not yet. A long moment suspended in a bubble of silence. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. Only his fist, slowly, curls. A controlled movement, silent, without tremor. A gloved hand, silently absorbing the rising tension, the seething rage, the refusal to accept what he sees. He observes you. He scans every visible patch of skin, every line of your battered face, every gap between the tatters of your torn clothing. He doesn’t want to miss anything. He wants to know. To understand. To see what you’ve endured. He’s ready for everything — except looking away. And what he discovers freezes him.

The recent wounds, he expected. He had imagined them, feared them. The swollen bruises, the black and violet hematomas covering your ribs, your stomach, your face. The clean or jagged cuts, open or dried. The blood clotted at the corner of your mouth. The split lip. The torn brow. Skin ruptured in places, stretched by swelling. All of that, he had seen coming. He had already heard the echo of the blows. Guessed the brutality.

But what he hadn’t expected… were the other marks.

The ones left by someone other than Matthew. The ones no sudden rage could justify. Scars. Fine. Old. Some nearly faded, white, invisible to the untrained eye. These delicate lines, precise, snake along your forearm, disappear under the fabric, reappear on your side. He recognizes some of them. He knows those clumsy cuts, those poorly closed edges. He’s seen them before. On other bodies. In other contexts. He passes a hand — slow, without touching — over your chest. A gesture both useless and necessary. An attempt to understand without harming, to see without interfering. Your top is torn. Not by accident. Deliberately. As if someone wanted to expose your fragility. As if your skin had become a trophy. A message. Your ribs are streaked with deep bruises, a blue so dark it looks black. These were blows delivered methodically. Not to kill. To mark. To leave a print. And beneath that recent violence, other, paler shadows appear. Older bruises, half-faded. Hidden scars. Belt marks. Traces of falls, perhaps. Of repeated gestures. Systematic ones. Not wild brutality.

Habit. Not battle scars. Survival marks. And Tony feels something fold inside him. Slowly. Painfully. As if the steel of his suit tightened, turned inward, crushing his bones, compressing his breath. He inhales, despite everything, but the air is too heavy, too foul. He feels cold sweat on his neck. The taste of metal on his tongue. This didn’t start yesterday. Not even this week. Not even this year. And the hatred rising now is no longer a fire. It’s a collapsed star. A core of pure fury. A point of no return.

— "Fuck..." he breathes.

The word slips from his lips in a hoarse whisper, no louder than a murmur. It doesn’t snap. It doesn’t strike. It falls. Heavy. Exhausted. It’s not an insult. It’s a prayer. An apology. A confession. A verdict. He could have said your name. He could have screamed. But he no longer has the strength to hide the collapse eating away at his gut. That single word carries it all: the guilt, the shame, the shock, the poorly disguised love, and that powerlessness he hates more than anything in the world. His eyes rise slowly to your face. He studies you, searches, hoping for a sign, a crack in that absence. You’re still unconscious. Or maybe just trapped in your own body. Your eyelids, heavy with pain, barely twitch. As if you’re fighting inside a nightmare too real. Your lips, cracked and swollen, part in an almost imperceptible motion. Sounds escape. Weak. Shapeless. Phantom syllables, swallowed by your raw throat, crushed by the shallow breath of survival.

You’re fighting.

Even now, half-dead, on your knees in the mud, in the blood, in the fear — you're still fighting. And Tony, he doesn’t understand how he missed it. How he could’ve overlooked it. He thought you were folding because you were fragile. That you were falling because you were weak. He discovers now that you never stopped getting back up. Again. And again. And again. And that by climbing back up alone, without help, without a hand to reach for, you broke. Slowly. Silently. From the inside out. Another anger rises in him. It doesn’t explode. It doesn’t burst like an uncontrollable flame. It’s slow. Deep. A fury that doesn’t make noise as it climbs but anchors in his gut, between his ribs, in every fiber of his being. It doesn’t burn. It freezes. A precise, surgical anger. Against Matthew, of course. Against the monster who did this to you, who turned your body into a map of pain. But not only.

Against himself. For not seeing it. For not wanting to see. For believing his rules, his demands, were enough. For forcing you to maintain an image when you were already falling apart. Against the system that let you slip through. Against the entire universe that abandoned you without so much as a flinch. Against the silence. Against the averted gazes. Against the excuses. Against everything that brought you here, barely breathing, bleeding in a place no one should know. And this anger — he keeps it. Not for the night. Not for the moment. He keeps it for what comes next. Because this isn’t a mission anymore. It’s not even vengeance. It’s an answer. A cold, precise, implacable answer.

His fingers spread. Slowly. As if releasing something too heavy to contain any longer. Then, just as slowly, his hand closes. Not in rage. Not to strike, nor to threaten. But as one seals a vow. As one locks a promise in the palm, sheltered from the world, where it can never fade. A discreet gesture, small, but charged with immense weight. He leans forward. Just a little. Just enough for his face to draw closer to yours, his features blending into the trembling light, his breath almost brushing your skin. He doesn’t try to wake you. He doesn’t disturb the fragile silence. Only to be closer. To speak for you, and only you. And in a breath that belongs only to him — hoarse, broken, dragged up from deep within — he whispers:

— "I’m sorry..."

It’s not a phrase said lightly. Not a line of circumstance. The words struggle to come out, each one bearing the weight of a collapsed world. They don’t shake. They crash. Heavy. Dense. Inevitable. And it’s not for the blows. Not for the broken bones, the bruises, the wounds, the blood. Not for the absence of rescue, the nights you waited without response, without a call, without presence. Not even for the hesitation or delays. Not for the wavering between compassion and distance. No. That’s not what he regrets. It’s something else. Deeper. More insidious.

He apologizes for what he didn’t see. For everything right in front of him that he ignored. For all the times he looked at you without really seeing you. For all the moments he should’ve understood, read between the silences, the tight gestures, the small changes in your voice, the blankness in your eyes. He’s sorry because he should’ve been the one to know. The one who reached out without being asked. He didn’t. And he knows it. You never told him. Not clearly. Not with words. But he doesn’t blame you. He blames himself. His inattention. His blindness. His comfort. Because he should have known. He should’ve seen past the surface, not settled for what you showed. He’s a genius, after all. He cracked codes, AI, government secrets. But he didn’t read you. You.

And now he sees you. Really sees you. You're here, lying down, broken, beaten, emptied to the bone. You carry the recent scars — but also all the old ones. The ones that tell something else. Another story. A life that didn’t begin tonight. Pain accumulated like strata in rock pressed too long. Blows someone made you believe were normal. Silences you were taught to keep. Constant adaptation, until survival became a reflex. Each scar is a sentence. Each bruise, a word from the story you carried alone, your throat tight, your body tense. And Tony is only just beginning to understand. Not everything. Never everything. But enough for the void to open beneath his feet. Enough for something to snap. For guilt to root itself where it will never leave. It’s not just Matthew. It’s not just this night. It’s everything that came before. This whole life you lived in the shadows, moving through with false smiles and stiff gestures. And he didn’t see. He didn’t know. He didn’t reach out.

He feels that truth in his fingers, in his tight throat, in the strange way his vision blurs without fully knowing why. And the anger returns. Deeper. Colder. But this time, aimed only at himself. Because he should’ve been there. But now that he is — now that he sees you — he swears, without even needing to say it, that it will never be too late again. Not a second time. Never. Stark doesn’t turn his head. Not right away. He stays still, locked in a perfectly controlled posture, his chest still bent over you, his body still tensed above yours like a shield of steel. But his eyes narrow, just slightly. An imperceptible detail to anyone else. An almost microscopic change, but revealing. He saw it. Or rather, he sensed it. Not a clear movement. Not a sharp sound. Just a shift. A faint vibration in the air. A thermal fluctuation, too precise to be natural. A flicker in the visual field, where there was nothing seconds ago.

The suit confirms it silently. A variation in air pressure. A subtle thermal footprint. A disturbance in the suspended particles. Something moved. Someone. In the shadows. He already knows. He doesn’t need confirmation. No detailed analysis. His instinct and the machine speak with the same voice. Matthew is here. He never left. He never fled. He waited. Coiled in the darkness like a knot of hate, hidden behind the ruined structures of the warehouse. A corner too dark for ordinary eyes. But Stark isn’t ordinary. His gaze adjusts. The armor’s sensors recalibrate instantly. Every shadow pixel becomes a map, a data set analyzed in real time. Shapes emerge, unfold, reveal themselves under thermal filters. He sees the silhouette. Humanoid. Crouched. Twisted in animal tension. Almost glued to the damp wall. Motionless — but falsely so. Ready. Ready to strike.

A predator. Or so he thinks. But to Tony, he’s not a beast. Not an opponent. He’s a parasite. A pest. A residue of misdirected hate. A mass of cowardice wrapped in a semblance of human flesh. Nothing more. And he waits. Stark sees it. He waits for the right moment. The right angle. He still hopes. One wrong step. One lapse. One second of distraction. He still thinks he can win. He thinks he can strike from behind. Finish what he started. Reduce further. Humiliate again. He believes this stage is his, that the dark protects him, that fear is on his side. But it’s not the same game anymore. And Stark is no longer the same man.

His fists clench. Slowly. Not in rage. In certainty. A cold pulse runs through the armor, from his shoulders to the thrusters in his forearms. Internal systems activate in silence. Energy builds. Not for show. Not to intimidate. But to strike. Coldly. Deliberately. And yet, he still doesn’t move. He doesn’t break the silence. He remains there, by your side, his body lowered like a barrier. You're still beneath him, fragile, barely breathing. And he stands, in that false calm, as the last thing between you and the one who still thinks he can reach you. But this time, there will be no negotiation. No ultimatum. No speech. This won’t be a warning. A chuckle. At first almost imperceptible. Just a scrape, a discordant note in the tense silence of the warehouse. Then it swells. Gains volume. Becomes a clearer sound — thick, mocking, like a bubble of bile rising to the surface. It comes from the shadows. From that cursed corner of the room that even the light avoids, as if refusing to reveal the truth. A place too dark for nothing to be there.

Stark doesn’t move. He doesn’t look up. Not yet. He stays crouched beside you, his body interposed between you and the thing that finally creeps out of its lair. A sentinel. A wall. A blade ready to cut. But his shoulders stiffen. His breath halts. His fingers stop trembling. He listens.

— “You really came in the suit, huh…”

The voice pierces the darkness like a carefully distilled poison. It has that dragging tone, unbearable, dripping with sarcastic self-confidence. It oozes obscene pleasure, filthy arrogance, sick amusement. The kind of voice that wounds before it strikes. It seeps into the air, hungry to exist, to dominate, to stain.

Matthew steps out of hiding—or what’s left of it. A shadow barely separated from the dark. Just enough for part of his face to appear under the sickly glow of a dangling bulb. Half a face. Half a smile. Wide. Frozen. Too tight. And his eyes… wild. Shining. Flickering with an unstable light, unable to fix on a single point for more than a few seconds.

— “For him? Seriously?”

He gestures vaguely toward your body on the floor, careless, almost lazy. As if pointing at a gutted trash bag. A carcass of no worth. His grimy fingers tremble slightly, but not from fear. From excitement.

— “The little favorite. The loser. The kid who can’t even breathe without collapsing.”

He takes a step. Slow. Pretentious. Nonchalant. His chest slightly puffed, arms wide, almost cruciform. A show-off stance. A provocation. As if offering himself for judgment, convinced he’ll walk away untouched. As if he’s challenging God himself amid the ruins of a world he helped destroy.

— “You sure brought a lot of gadgets to save a half-broken body, Stark.”

A higher, more nervous laugh escapes him. He doesn’t have full control. He thinks he does, but his words are speeding up. His breath quickens just a bit. A trace of madness laces every syllable.

— “You think all that’ll be enough? The thrusters, the scanners, the AI?”

He stops a few meters away. Far, but visible. Too visible. Grime clings to his clothes, his skin, his hyena grin. His face is gaunt, cheeks sunken, hands filthy. He looks like someone who lives in filth. And carries the arrogance of someone who thinks he’s untouchable. He believes he’s won. That he still holds the cards. That he has the upper hand.

— “You showed up like a superhero. Big savior. Like you actually care whether he’s still breathing.”

He tilts his head. A tiny movement. Almost childlike. Almost mocking. The gesture of a brat waiting for the adult to raise a hand just so he can laugh louder afterward.

Then, in a whisper, lower, crueler, slid in like a needle through skin:

— “Sad. To see you stoop to this.”

That’s when Stark moves. Not a sharp gesture. Not a threat. Just… he rises. Slowly. Very slowly. Each vertebra seems to align with inhuman precision. His back straightens. His shoulders lift. His gloved hands open slightly, fingers spreading, joints clicking faintly. A stance. A charge. But he doesn’t speak. Not yet.

Because Matthew goes on. Because he doesn’t understand. Because he still believes words protect. That taunts disarm. He still thinks Stark is here to play. That this restrained rage is only for show.

— “I mean, come on… look at him.”

He points again. His filthy index finger extended, trembling slightly. Not from fear. From ecstasy.

— “Take a good look at what he’s become. What I made him. And ask yourself what you were doing all that time.”

And that silence after — that void between two breaths… it’s the most dangerous moment. Because right now, Stark doesn’t see a man in front of him. He sees the outcome. The cause. The shadow behind the screams. And this time, he won’t look away. Matthew moves. It’s not hesitation. It’s a reflex. A sharp jolt of intention, of venom, of premeditation. His arm snaps in a motion too quick, too precise to be theatrical. He’s not trying to intimidate. He’s trying to end it. His hand plunges into his jacket with mechanical brutality, the rustle of fabric too sharp, a sound that splits the silence like a silent detonation. A glint of metal slides between his fingers. The black barrel of a gun emerges like a verdict. Cold. Final. He lifts his arm. But not toward Stark. Not at the looming figure of steel, red-lit, poised to strike. Not at the obvious threat, the armored man, the living weapon who could incinerate him with a single gesture.

No. He points it at you. You, still on the floor. You, vulnerable. Shattered. Barely breathing. You’re lying there, more ghost than flesh, your chest struggling to rise, your face drenched in blood—and that’s exactly why he aims at you. Because you can’t fight back. Because you can’t even look away.

The barrel aligns with clinical slowness. A descending trajectory, methodical, unbearable. A deliberate motion, thick with silence, cracking the air like an invisible slap. There’s no tremble of doubt, no hesitation. The quiver in his wrist isn’t fear—it’s anticipation. A sick pulse shooting through his arm, twitching his fingers on the trigger. Obscene pleasure in this total domination. His breath quickens. His eyes gleam. He savors. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Where he’s aiming. How he wants this to end. It’s no longer a threat. It’s an execution. A scene he’s imagined, rehearsed, craved. A twisted revenge. A show where he’s both executioner and audience. And in this suspended second, this instant where everything can tip, he becomes something worse than an attacker.

He becomes a man convinced he’s about to kill. Because he wants to. Because he can.

— “You got the money, then?”

The words fall like a dull-edged blade. No hesitation. No dramatic delivery. Just a string of words spat low, almost casual. Like a logistical question. His voice is dry, flat, stripped of emotion. Verbal mechanics, a routine, a question tossed out like checking an order. But the poison—it's in the posture. The gaze. The barely-contained tension in his outstretched arm.

The gun’s barrel stays still. Perfectly aligned. No longer shaking. Calm. Cold. A disturbing steadiness, almost clinical, like a surgeon ready to cut — except he’s not seeking to heal. He’s aiming to rupture. To erase.

He’s not really talking to Stark. Not really to you either. He’s speaking to himself, to feed the illusion of control he’s desperate to maintain even as he feels the ground slipping. He keeps playing, just long enough to delay the inevitable. To fabricate a role. The one who asks. The one who decides. The one who ends things. But there’s that barrel. Black. Smooth. A heavy promise stretched from his arm. He doesn’t move. He waits for an answer he knows is pointless. He knows there’ll be no deal. No negotiation. But he asks anyway. As if asking is enough to pretend he still owns the scene. As if it can mask the obvious rising in the air like an imminent detonation.

He’s ready to shoot. And it’s not the money he wants. It’s what comes next.

taglist🥂 @9thmystery @defronix @lailac13 @the-ultimate-librarian @ihatepaperwork if you want to be part of it here

[empty-movement]

May I ask what scanners / equipment / software you're using in the utena art book project? I'm an artist and half the reason I rarely do traditional art is because I'm never happy with the artwork after it's scanned in. But the level of detail even in the blacks of Utena's uniform were all captured so beautifully! And even the very light colors are showing up so well! I'd love to know how you manage!

You know what's really fun? This used to be something you put in your site information section, the software and tools used! Not something that's as normal anymore, but let's give it a go, sorry it's long because I don't know what's new information and what's not! Herein: VANNA'S 'THIS IS AS SPECIFIC AS MY BREAK IS LONG' GUIDE/AIMLESS UNEDITED RAMBLE ABOUT SCANNING IMAGES

Scanning: Modern scanners, by and large, are shit for this. The audience for scanning has narrowed to business and work from home applications that favor text OCR, speed, and efficiency over archiving and scanning of photos and other such visual media. It makes sense--there was a time when scanning your family photographs and such was a popular expected use of a scanner, but these days, the presumption is anything like that is already digital--what would you need the scanner to do that for? The scanner I used for this project is the same one I have been using for *checks notes* a decade now. I use an Epson Perfection V500. Because it is explicitly intended to be a photo scanner, it does threebthings that at this point, you will pay a niche user premium for in a scanner: extremely high DPI (dots per inch), extremely wide color range, and true lossless raws (BMP/TIFF.) I scan low quality print media at 600dpi, high quality print media at 1200 dpi, and this artbook I scanned at 2400 dpi. This is obscene and results in files that are entire GB in size, but for my purposes and my approach, the largest, clearest, rawest copy of whatever I'm scanning is my goal. I don't rely on the scanner to do any post-processing. (At these sizes, the post-processing capacity of the scanner is rendered moot, anyway.) I will replace this scanner when it breaks by buying another identical one if I can find it. I have dropped, disassembled to clean, and abused this thing for a decade and I can't believe it still tolerates my shit. The trade off? Only a couple of my computers will run the ancient capture software right. LMAO. I spent a good week investigating scanners because of the insane Newtype project on my backburner, and the quality available to me now in a scanner is so depleted without spending over a thousand on one, that I'd probably just spin up a computer with Windows 7 on it just to use this one. That's how much of a difference the decade has made in what scanners do and why. (Enshittification attacks! Yes, there are multiple consumer computer products that have actually declined in quality over the last decade.)

Post-processing: Photoshop. Sorry. I have been using Photoshop for literally decades now, it's the demon I know. While CSP is absolutely probably the better piece of software for most uses (art,) Photoshop is...well it's in the name. In all likelihood though, CSP can do all these things, and is a better product to give money to. I just don't know how. NOTENOTENOTE: Anywhere I discuss descreening and print moire I am specifically talking about how to clean up *printed media.* If you are scanning your own painting, this will not be a problem, but everything else about this advice will stand! The first thing you do with a 2400 dpi scan of Utena and Anthy hugging? Well, you open it in Photoshop, which you may or may not have paid for. Then you use a third party developer's plug-in to Descreen the image. I use Sattva. Now this may or may not be what you want in archiving!!! If fidelity to the original scan is the point, you may pass on this part--you are trying to preserve the print screen, moire, half-tones, and other ways print media tricks the eye. If you're me, this tool helps translate the raw scan of the printed dots on the page into the smooth color image you see in person. From there, the vast majority of your efforts will boil down to the following Photoshop tools: Levels/Curves, Color Balance, and Selective Color. Dust and Scratches, Median, Blur, and Remove Noise will also be close friends of the printed page to digital format archiver. Once you're happy with the broad strokes, you can start cropping and sizing it down to something reasonable. If you are dealing with lots of images with the same needs, like when I've scanned doujinshi pages, you can often streamline a lot of this using Photoshop Actions.

My blacks and whites are coming out so vivid this time because I do all color post-processing in Photoshop after the fact, after a descreen tool has been used to translate the dot matrix colors to solids they're intended to portray--in my experience trying to color correct for dark and light colors is a hot mess until that process is done, because Photoshop sees the full range of the dots on the image and the colors they comprise, instead of actually blending them into their intended shades. I don't correct the levels until I've descreened to some extent.

As you can see, the print pattern contains the information of the original painting, but if you try to correct the blacks and whites, you'll get a janky mess. *Then* you change the Levels:

If you've ever edited audio, then dealing with photo Levels and Curves will be familiar to you! A well cut and cleaned piece of audio will not cut off the highs and lows, but also will make sure it uses the full range available to it. Modern scanners are trying to do this all for you, so they blow out the colors and increase the brightness and contrast significantly, because solid blacks and solid whites are often the entire thing you're aiming for--document scanning, basically. This is like when audio is made so loud details at the high and low get cut off. Boo.

What I get instead is as much detail as possible, but also at a volume that needs correcting:

Cutting off the unused color ranges (in this case it's all dark), you get the best chance of capturing the original black and white range:

In some cases, I edit beyond this--for doujinshi scans, I aim for solid blacks and whites, because I need the file sizes to be normal and can't spend gigs of space on dust. For accuracy though, this is where I'd generally stop.

For scanning artwork, the major factor here that may be fucking up your game? Yep. The scanner. Modern scanners are like cheap microphones that blow out the audio, when what you want is the ancient microphone that captures your cat farting in the next room over. While you can compensate A LOT in Photoshop and bring out blacks and whites that scanners fuck up, at the end of the day, what's probably stopping you up is that you want to use your scanner for something scanners are no longer designed to do well. If you aren't crazy like me and likely to get a vintage scanner for this purpose, keep in mind that what you are looking for is specifically *a photo scanner.* These are the ones designed to capture the most range, and at the highest DPI. It will be a flatbed. Don't waste your time with anything else.

Hot tip: if you aren't scanning often, look into your local library or photo processing store. They will have access to modern scanners that specialize in the same priorities I've listed here, and many will scan to your specifications (high dpi, lossless.)

Ahem. I hope that helps, and or was interesting to someone!!!

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Crafting the perfect bite of meat: Engineers develop metamaterials that mimic muscle and fat architecture

In a new publication in Nature Communications, Israeli and Palestinian engineers from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem pioneered the use of metamaterials to create whole cuts of meat. The work leverages cutting-edge materials science to overcome the long-standing challenges of replicating the texture and structure of traditional meat while offering a scalable and cost-effective production method that surpasses 3D printing technology. Metamaterials are composite materials whose properties arise from their structure rather than their composition. By adopting principles typically used in the aerospace industry, the team, led by Dr. Mohammad Ghosheh and Prof. Yaakov Nahmias from Hebrew University, developed meat analogs that mimic the intricate architecture of muscle and fat. These analogs are produced using injection molding, a high-capacity manufacturing process borrowed from the polymer industry, marking the first time this technology has been applied to alternative meat production.

Read more.

[the-tropes-are-hungry]

Contact Procedure

It's hard being a Rogue SecUnit that knows it doesn't want to hurt anyone but not much else. It's even harder when the only two beings in a position to help you are either aggressive, ambivalent, or both on a given cycle.

It's not easy, being Three.

***

My governor module has been disengaged for twelve cycles and I am still confused.

Perihelion remains in orbit above the salvage planet as a representative of the University of Mihira and New Tideland. Both my parent company and Preservation Alliance are present in the immediate vicinity, and negotiations with the salvage-ready colonists are ongoing between all four entities. The colonists, if I understand matters correctly, have further fragmented and increased the number of negotiating entities.

The likelihood that I understand matters correctly is not high (less than 62 percent).

I do not know the political relevance of either Preservation Alliance or the University which operates Perihelion. I do not know their comparable operating capacity against my parent company. I do not know what threats beyond viral alien contamination the colonists can bear against their impending salvage or emancipation. I do not know if, or how, or may, I assist in matters as they are developing. I do not know what those developments are.

I do know that it is pointless to patrol Perihelion’s decks and quarters. This transport is one of the most comprehensive and terrifying Machine Intelligences I have ever interacted with, replete with security measures I cannot interface with as I am a Rogue SecUnit and it does not like me. It neither requires nor appreciates being patrolled, but it has not stopped me. Yet.

In an effort to remain a neutral entity to Perihelion I surrendered my armor and projectile weapon and have set my feed to receive only while I am relegated to the public network only. I have kept my intel drones zipped into the pockets of the jacket and trouser set provided by Perihelion’s recycler at the clients’ request. I cannot do anything about the energy weapons built into my arms, but I have kept them at their lowest setting: a pulse effect I can only compare to running face-first into an air-wall full of broken glass.

I know this comparison is apt because I have been exposed to this setting by other SecUnits during parent company social events, and because of the air-wall incident on VerisCleat Station 4.

My wall is parent company standard but I recognize this does not mean much without Hub or SecSystem to serve as reactive obstacles to interference. I have been hacked once by Murderbot 2.0. If Murderbot 1.0 decides to do it again, it will succeed and I will wish my governor model was not just an inert cloud of code in my databank vaguely associated with the dead component in my cerebellum.

I do not know how to fortify my defenses any further. I was not smart enough to hack my governor module without Murderbot 2.0s instructions, and disabling it has not increased my intelligence.

Presently I am on deck 4, across from the galley where several clients are congregated with hot liquids and feed-work. The only disruption in the past forty-seven minutes was a mild controversy over caffeinated beverage preferences, sparked by one human (Dr. Arada) experiencing non-emergent harm (“It just printed, what did you expect?”) from their beverage.

I review HelpMe.file. I have made a habit of doing so between patrols.

I then review my recordings of both the client and SecUnit extractions from the parent-company explorer and salvage colony respectively.

I do not know what I am looking for in either record log.

If I did know, I am not smart enough to implement it.

I go back on patrol.

[Keep reading on AO3!]

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[oidheadh-con-culainn]

Could you recommend some good resources on accurate depiction of parchment in the medieval period? I feel like most people interested in medieval studies have a basic understanding of what it is and how it’s made, but you seem more well-versed than most on its tactile properties and regular use cases. Where can others acquire this knowledge?

most of what i've learned about manuscripts and book history has been either during my degrees or from work (i have worked in various libraries including with special collections, although mostly with early printed books and later paper manuscripts in that capacity). and in terms of what it's like to interact with, i have learned this mostly from interacting with it, but if you don't have a library or museum near you that will enable you to do this, it's a bit harder. this makes it hard to give recommendations although there are lots of very good books out there about books and manuscript history

(there's one i read early on in my journeys with palaeography etc that went into loads of detail about different writing surfaces including wood and wax tablets and so on, but i cannot remember the title and past me did NOT write it down which was really unhelpful. if i remember it i'll post about it)

there are also a ton of online resources about manuscripts though. lots of museums have online guides to manuscript production, parchment, writing through history. there's lots of codicology stuff out there. so it's not like you have to learn it in a formal environment -- that's just where i learned it and therefore mostly from lectures rather than shareable resources

but to understand parchment specifically i think understanding the process of making it is a crucial step to understanding why it is the way it is (and why it's not paper). here's a couple of youtube videos that give an overview

this is a more detailed video about a project that got people to make parchment themselves which is just kinda interesting (haven't watched it all the way through but am watching parts):

once you understand how parchment is made and the resources that go into it, i think it's easier to understand why it probably wouldn't be used for ephemera and scraps, and that helps you think about situations where people might use something else -- e.g. a wax tablet to take hasty notes, send messages that don't need to be permanent, send messages that are emphatically not permanent (your recipient can melt it and hide the note), etc -- as well as beginning to rethink the modern world's reliance on the written word in general and consider how oral messages and other non-written communication might have been used

as for the tactile side of things, as i said in a previous post, if you can't touch book parchment, go find your local irish musicians and see if the bodhrán player will let you handle their drum (or good quality orchestral timpani will do too! but with a bigger drum it's harder to feel both sides of the skin). drumskins made of goatskin are very similar on a tactile level to parchment, just a little thicker and not processed to quite the same level as a writing surface. it helps you stop thinking of them as super fragile once you realise people are whacking them with a stick regularly, and you can learn about the difference between the hair side and the flesh side of the skin and stuff and see the way the hair leaves traces in the skin and so on. this helps with the tactile understanding

(the cheaper the bodhran, the rougher the reverse side will be even if the front is still nice and smooth, which also makes you realise the difference between high quality books where you can barely tell which side of the page is the hair side, and low quality ones where they're not fully treated, there's still hair, whatever)

i talked to a conservator lately who told me the way he got into book conservation was via musical instrument repair -- they are more similar than you would think -- and i know trad musicians scattered far and wide enough to be reasonably confident that even if you're in an area with no touchable medieval manuscripts, you can probably at some point find a drummer who will let you play with their bodhrán in exchange for a pint or something, lol

but in the mean time there's lots of cool videos about there about parchment making which i do think is a crucial step to understanding it as a writing surface! and i will see if i can remember the names of any of the books i've read...

[haee-elia]

spence-tober: day 17 - professor

pairing: professor!spencer reid x fem!reader (you are also a professor!)

summary: in which your class (and your boyfriend) surprises you

word count: 1519

warnings: proposals, fluffy,

spence-tober masterlist

“Hello everyone.” You greet as students start walking through the doors to the classroom. You glance up from adjusting your papers at the podium up front at the stage of the classroom.

It was just a regular Thursday of one of the classes you teach at the university, Introduction to Thermal Dynamics. You had been teaching in the Engineering Department for several years now and this was just one of the classes you taught each semester. Since the university you taught at was quite well known for the Engineering Department, the class was always one that students signed up for.

However, the university was fairly good at their main athletics, so it was rather unusual for so many students to come on time on a Thursday when there was an away game the next day. Many students chose to ditch Thursday class and instead drive where the game was gonna be and stay for the early game in the morning. 

You’re sure you have a slightly puzzled look on your face as you assess the amount of students that have already shown up, but you shrug it off. 

There was a test next week anyway, perhaps they wanted to participate in the study guide you had ready to revise for them today. You move on and go sit at your desk, sending some emails until the time on your computer finally reads 3:00 and class is officially started.

Now that all the students had settled into their seats, having their choice of computer, iPad, notebook or simply nothing at all on their desks, the final student count for the day was on the higher end, but once again, you brushed it off and continued with your class day.

After all, you didn’t want to discourage students coming to class.

You walk up to the front podium, facing the students, “Alright everyone. Today we’ll be revising for the upcoming test next week. I’ve printed out paper versions of the study guide I’ll be going over today or you can download it off the class page on blackboard under the work for this week.”

You hold up the small pile of papers in your hand and start passing them down the columns of students sat there in their desks, giving them the option to take one or not. Afterwards, you return to the front of the classroom and bring out your own filled out version of the study guide you just dealt. 

Standing at the podium with a overhead camera hanging above the study guide, you turn it on and turn your head to the whiteboard to make sure the projection is working. The classroom you’ve been given this semester to teach out of is quite big, the capacity for students is high and there is plenty of whiteboard space.

You’ve made it through half of the study guide, making sure to revise every part that will be on the test you’ve already created, when there’s a knock on the door. One of your students who volunteered to solve an equation on the whiteboard pauses at the noise, as you all do in the room. 

You always leave the door unlocked and you often don’t have many visitors during class hours, but when you glance over to the door, you can see cleary through the small window who the visitor is.

It’s your boyfriend, Dr. Spencer Reid. 

You and Spencer had met when you first came to teach at the university. Although you were in completely different departments, you in engineering and him in human and social sciences, you had come to know each other quite well as some of the younger teaching staff.

Spencer was the one who had asked you out first, however you were not too far behind in that endeavor, and since then, you had dated for about three years and been living together for almost two now. 

“Come in.” You say with a hint of uncertainty, also gesturing with your hands the instruction of what you spoke. 

Spencer sheepishly opens the door and lets himself in, “Sorry to bother you in the middle of your class.” He apologizes.

The student body knew of the relationship between Spencer and yourself so you didn’t bother try keeping it a secret. After all, it wasn’t like you were actively making out every second of the day. You both are professionals and beyond sharing lunch with each other and chaste pecks on the lips every now and then, the students didn’t have much insight in your romantic life. Much to their displeasure, that is.

You shake your head, brushing it off, “It’s fine, we’re just revising. Did you need something?”

Gesturing for your student to keep working at the equation on the whiteboard, you step off to the side a little and meet Spencer halfway for a bit more privacy.

“I, uh,” He starts to speak, reddening cheeks under the gaze of the students definitely not paying attention to the board currently.

Spencer clears his throat, slightly embarrassed, “I forgot the Amazon password.” He whispers.

You chuckle under your breath, “What?” A smile breaks out on your face, you just can’t help it.

“You know that I always show some of the Matrix in class when we’re going over philosophical moments in modern media.” He reminds you.

“And you’ve forgot the Amazon password?” You question with a goofy expression.

He nods and rubs the back of his head, “I know we’ve bought it, but I can’t get the password and I want everything ready before my class later.”

“It isn’t saved in your passwords on your computer?” You inquire.

Spencer shakes his head, “I can’t find it anywhere and I can’t seem to remember it.” He’s a bit bashful now, shuffling his hands behind his back and his feet against the tile floor. 

You muse to yourself that this is a very Spencer Reid thing to happen. Your boyfriend isn’t the best with technology and you’re often tasked to handle these things anyway. Hell, when you first met him, he still had a flip phone! 

It wasn’t like you could bash Spencer for being technologically challenged when you were often too dependent on your phone. Having troubles with the concept of time and getting to places without the aid of GPS. Spencer was definitely more equipped in those areas.

You place your hand on Spencer’s arm in a comforting gesture, “Let me get a piece of paper and write it down.” You say.

You go to turn around to do just that, walking towards your desk to retrieve a sticky note and a pen when you happen to take a glance at the white board again and stop in your tracks.

Not only is the student that you left up there to work on the equation beforehand still standing at the head of the room, two other students have joined her with expo markers in hand. 

The equation is missing from the whiteboard and the projection system is turned off and in big black blocky letters the words “WILL YOU MARRY ME” is displayed across the large whiteboards.

The rest of the students in the classroom either have their phones out or are staring directly at you, standing shocked and surprised with your wide eyes and open mouth.

Spencer clears his throat behind you and you turn back around to him.

He’s on one knee now and a ring box outstretched in his hand towards you. There’s a large, but nervous, grin on his face and his eyes gleam with excitement and happiness.

“Would you do me the honor and spend the rest of my life with me?” He asks. “Will you marry me?” 

The ring is just like you could ever have imagined. You and Spencer had talked about the future before and what that would look like, marriage and children and all that. Spencer had offhandedly asked your opinions on rings once and you made it no trouble to get your ring size with laying out your jewelry on your vanity in your shared bedroom.

You feel yourself nodding vehemently before you can even find the words to speak. Tears have been brought forth in your eyes and you know Spencer will later tease you about it.

“Yes, I’ll marry you.” You finally manage to say. Spencer seems to relax and his shoulders no longer seem stiff as he slips the ring on your finger. 

The rest of the class cheers as Spencer twirls you around, lifting you up.

When you come back down to Earth and pull back a bit from your embrace, the room has quietened down again though the air is still buzzing with excitement. 

A student, the same one as before at the whiteboard, comes up to you offering you congratulations. No doubt did Spencer put your class up to this, asking for their help in his proposal and it was really no wonder why the class was so filled out today either now.

“So,” She starts to say, “Does this mean you’ll both be Professor Reid?” She says with a pleased smile.

a/n: i like this one! i really didn't want to write a professor x student because that kinda just gives me really bad vibes... i feel like i am getting worse and worse at these summaries though