#and yet despite this it's so very very hars Not to root for him

[syncrovoid-presents]

Alastor's Deal (Thoughts, Theories, and some Predictions)

This won't answer the who, but aims to dig into the why, and plausibly narrow down the terms of the deal. Long post ahead!

Evidence

First off, the finale was incredible! But what Alastor's song showed was that his ""death"" against Adam wasn't entirely a surprise, but rather planned. Alastor's song revealed that he was looking for a loop in the contract, a way to slip past the deal without having to directly break it. He already made a deal with Charlie for a favour, but that might have been a safety net of sorts, something to guarantee himself a fighting chance if his "dying for the hotel" plan failed.

His surprise was at how fast it happened, not that he nearly died. Alastor craves control, he wears his smile for control, he makes deals for control, his magic highly influenced by controlling others too. His Modus Operandi is control, and he faced the battle it started with him being in control. He was outwitting Adam, he was faster, sneakier, even kept his hands behind his back while dodging just to show how little effort it took. But Adam's weapon sending an angelic beam of power? That wasn't in his plan, that wasn't in his control.

Control is something Alastor seeks over everything, which is why the deal is so brutal for him. The deal takes control from him, and his constant smiling and jokes and contained urges for violence is him trying to have some sort of freedom. It's highly implied that, unless it's for the hotel, he hasn't used his magic for his own reasons. He hasn't eaten or killed anyone unless it is for the hotel, and even that was implied to happen only during the Mimzy incident. He hasn't gotten to make any deals either, at least no real deals, no deals for souls.

I'm far from the first one to say that his deal is forcing him to help the hotel, but it's only now that we see the true extent. Alastor's entire personality, goals, and being has been changed against his will. He is now a tool for the hotel, the sword and shield, the magical provider, bringing them whatever they need to succeed despite the odds. Without him, it would just be Charlie, Vaggie, and Angel Dust. Sir Pentious wouldn't have joined, repairs would've taken far longer, the staff would've been just Charlie and Vaggie, et cetera. Even his deals are just him trying to gain something out of helping the hotel.

Alastor is bound to the hotel and his powers are also bound to the hotel. He cannot be selfish, he cannot do anything unless it's for the hotel no matter how desperately he wants to do otherwise. And yet it seems like his powers are limited too.

Alastor has immense levels of powers, so much that he was taking down a large portion of the angel army single handedly. Had Adam not been there, it's not outlandish to claim that Alastor could have taken down the angel army by himself. This is why he was feared. This is why "no one crosses the radio demon". If these are his powers when their limited, imagine just how powerful he truly is?

The last evidence I'll state before moving on is that Alastor didn't return back to the hotel until it was rebuilt, yet still didn't use his magic to cause chaos.

To simplify, on his end the deal forces him to use his immense power for the benefit of the hotel. He cannot actively do anything to bring harm to it, and he cannot use his magic unless it's for the good of the hotel. And he cannot escape from the deal if the hotel is destroyed, so the deal isn't about the physical hotel, but rather the concept of it. As long as the hazbin hotel exists in the heart of those involved, Alastor is bound to help.

Why?

Now the why? I believe that, whoever he made the deal with him was, they want the hotel to succeed. Not only that, I believe that by forcing Alastor to stay there and help while limiting his capability for violence, they are also trying to rehabilitate Alastor.

Wherever Alastor was before the hotel opened, it was somewhere where he couldn't interact with anyone. He was forced to be gone, only until the hotel opened. If the theories of Alastor making a deal with Lilith is true, then Lilith's character is important to consider. From what we know she is powerful and worked to bring dekonkind together. And that she too disappeared 7 years ago.

It's confirmed that Alastor destroyed many of the worse evils that existed in hell, the only ancient overlords that remain are civil and take part of overlord meetings. They are controlled, contained. There's more structure, and the only truly out of control, dangerous demon to remain would have been Alastor. It's possible that Lilith realized that she could use him to "clean up hell", waiting her time until Alastor was the last remaining biggest threat. That was when she pounced, seven years ago to capture him in a deal. We don't know why he would accept such a limiting deal, but I'd wager that it could have been for his life (either she was threatening him, or he nearly died and made a deal for his life).

Now that the deal is made, Alastor can't bring mindless chaos. If anything he is doing the most to help demons be saved from the extermination either through redemption or protection (we also didn't see him prior to the last, so perhaps he's also bound to protect during the extermination too?).

All while Alastor is handling and ensuring the success of the largest and most helpful demon-centered support system, Lilith is on vacation. Almost like Alastor is acting in her role, a mimicry of a spiritual successor of sorts. He's helping rally the demons together, helping shape Charlie into a better leader, helping prove demons can be redeemed. All while Alastor is either witness, participant, or manager of the strategies used to redeem sinners. Alastor is only a few steps away from taking part of the redemption program himself.

If Alastor's deal was with Lilith, then she's getting everything she could want. All the uncontrollable evils/overlords destroyed, a muzzle on (one of the most) powerful sadistic demons, someone to help guide her daughter, help demons redeem themselves, protection for her citizens from being killed or further tortured, and she finally gets a vacation. She'd be getting everything she could want, with the bonus of possibly rehabilitating Alastor in the process.

It's no wonder Alastor is so desperate to break out of the deal, to find a backdoor in the contract. This goes against everything he stands for. The stories of him broadcasting screams? Of killing overloards and owning soul after soul after soul? That is the real him, and it isn't exaggerated. If Alastor wasn't chained, he'd have the power and strength to destroy large swaths of hell himself. If he decided to do his own extermination with angelic weapons? He could kill as many demons as the angels do and more, because he wouldn't be limited by a single day period.

If his deal is with someone else? We simply don't have enough information yet to name them then. Whoever it is, they would have to believe in demonkind's potential for improvement, and possibly fear what Alastor is able to do.

Predictions

The last thing I want to touch upon is how Alastor might be able to escape the deal. First is what he tried, which is "dying" for the hotel. Or, more precisely, for everyone involved in the hotel, it was as if he died, so why would they still depend on him?

Next would be for the hotel to be destroyed, and considering that we don't know if Alastor was briefly free while he recovered or if he was just hiding out somewhere new because he couldn't stay in the hotel because it didn't exist, this one is still iffy. If part of his deal is staying at the hotel to actively protect it, the he was temporarily freed from that condition. Yet once it was rebuilt Alastor returned, proving that the destruction of the hotel building wouldn't free him.

The next possible way could be the death of the hazbin hotel spirit. If Alastor (or outside forces) were able to destroy Charlie's hope for the hotel just like Lucifer's dreams were crushed, perhaps Alastor would be freed. Considering how the finale went, it would take a lot for this to happen.

My final idea, and the one I predict will happen, is that Alastor outfits the person he made the deal with. He doesn't find a true "out", but rather will manipulate them into giving his power back. And this? I believe that Alastor's deal with Charlie was made for this reason.

If indeed the deal was with Lilith, and part of the deal seems to be ensuring Charlie's dreams come true, then Charlie is a delightful way for Alastor to manipulate the situation. How? Who knows, but I think that this will be a large part of the conflict of season 2.

[freedomfireflies]

Wake the Dead*

Summary: An iFall for Harry blurb for Halloween Kinktober, Freaky Fun

The one where you and Harry sneak into an abandoned cemetery at night.

And things get a little spooky.

Can be read as standalone!

Word Count: 2.1k

*Contains Mature and Explicit content! Please only consume what you feel comfortable with!💞You are so much more important!*

“Har…Harry—”

“Shh. Gonna scare the ghosts, ladybug.”

You pout playfully while Harry grins and continues his vivacious sucking on your neck. “Har...what if we get caught?”

“Then we run.”

You whimper deep within the back of your throat, sighing when his tongue darts out to swipe under your jaw. “We’re...we're gonna be late. What if Patrick comes looking—”

“He won’t,” Harry retorts calmly, tightening his hold on your hips while continuing to grind you down against his cock. “Now hush, you’re ruining my fun.”

Left with no other choice, you oblige his request. Eyelids growing heavy with lust as you look off into the dark, empty cemetery. The sound of the wind echoes between the trees; an ominous addition to your frantic and somewhat lewd make out session. Yet despite it all…you feel at peace.

It had been Harry’s idea to come for a leisurely stroll through the cemetery in the first place. Claiming it was perfect Halloween fun – and he knew a shortcut.

 But five minutes later, he had you down on his lap, his hands under your shirt, and his tongue tangled with yours.

Not that you really care to complain. You enjoy the spookiness and the secrecy. After all, you don’t always tend to get such private moments with a man whose face is plastered on almost every billboard across the world.

But in times like tonight – when it’s just you and him – you realize how badly you need them.

And how grateful you are that you texted that wrong number all those months ago.

“Har,” you whisper again, fingers tangling in his roots as you tug. “Baby, there’s cameras—”

“So?”

“So,” you exhale, “if they recognize you, you could get in trouble.”

Harry merely hums. A soft, dangerous sort of sound while his thumbs swipe beneath the swells of your breasts. “Don’t care.”

“Well…you should—”

“But I don’t,” he repeats coolly. “Only care about you.”

You feel your insides twist. “Just…don’t want you to get in trouble.”

He smirks at this. Amused with your nerves and enamored by your care. He leans back, now nudging his nose against yours. “I won’t, baby,” he whispers. “S’nothing wrong with me lovin’ on my girl, is there?”

You smile yourself. “No. But that’s not all you had in mind, is it?”

His grin grows a bit more wicked. “I don’t know. Depends.”

“On?”

“If you like an audience.”

Confused, your brows furrow.

He nods his chin toward the dark graveyard before you, gesturing at the headstones with a devious gleam in his eye. “Heard ghosts like to watch.”

Now you understand, chuckling beneath a quiet breath as you readjust yourself over his lap. “Is that right?”

“Mhm. Kinky little fuckers.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean, not that I really mind,” he continues, nuzzling his way back to your neck. Dancing a trail of kisses down to your shoulder. “Kind of feel bad for them, y’know? Bet they never see any action anymore.”

Your lashes flutter. “Yeah…”

“We’d probably be doing them a kindness.”

“Mmm…”

“Let ‘em watch…let them listen…let them feed off your pretty, little screams.”

He suddenly tugs on your hips, forcing your cunt against his hardened cock, and it makes a breath hitch in your throat.

“Guess…guess you’re right,” you exhale, head rolling to the side. “S’only fair.”

He smiles. “Guess it is.”

You whine again as his cold hands smooth across the expanse of your stomach, easily slipping down to your waistband. “Har…”

“What?” It’s a gentle hum but filled with concern as his eyes flick to yours. “We don’t have to, baby, I promise. We can leave right now and go back to the hotel, yeah? Finish what we started there. Honest.”

It’s a kind thought. Considerate and so very Harry that it makes your heart wrench.

But it’s not what you want, and you begin to giggle quietly as you shake your head and lace your fingers around the back of his neck. “No, I don’t wanna go. Want you to fuck me – right here – and let all the ghost’s watch.”

The energy shifts instantaneously as he bursts out into a wide, excitable grin that fills his whole face. Putting those familiar dimples on display as you kiss him hard and with an overwhelming rush of adoration. 

“That’s my girl,” he groans, returning to his work of slipping your zipper down. “Okay, but we gotta be quick, yeah? Don’t want you to catch a cold.”

“Wouldn’t care if I did,” you admit, fingers fumbling with his belt. “Just wanna feel you, Har—”

“I know,” he breathes, moaning some when his thumb finally finds your clit. “Shit, I know, ladybug. Got you all worked up, hm? Like it when I tease you, don’t you?”

You can say nothing, instead nodding again as you pull his cock from his boxers. He’s hard and heavy in your hand. The tip slightly swollen and sticky with pre-cum as you work him in your palm.

“Fuck—” His forehead drops to your collarbone, lips buried into the skin not covered by your sweater. “M’gonna cum if you keep doing that—”

“Well, maybe I wanna tease you, too,” you retort. Watching the way he twitches between your fingers. “Know you like it when I edge you.”

He makes another noise – virile and animalistic. Tortured in a sense and it makes your cunt clench around nothing. “And you think I’m the sadist in the relationship.”

You smirk. “We share.”

After a few more coy pumps, you release him, and move to wrangle your jeans further down your thighs. Creating a bit more room and space before he’s bringing his cock to you.

Steadying your stance above his lap, you rise up onto your knees, and allow yourself to sink down onto him. Slow and easy – enough for you to both feel every second. 

And it’s everything – a rush of endorphins and euphoria that transcends this one singular moment. He’s the perfect stretch. No matter how many times you take him, it feels like the first. Enough to knock the wind from your lungs and make your mind grow fuzzy.

Once you’re finally sat, your arms loop around his neck, holding him to you. Keeping him warm inside your pussy as he curses and presses a kiss to your throat. 

“There you go,” he murmurs, hands cementing to your sides. “You okay, baby?”

You offer another weak nod. “Yeah…yeah, m’good.”

“Good girl. Do you want my help or do you wanna do it yourself?” he asks softly, taking a moment to glance over your expression.

You suck in a needy gasp for air and glance down. “Wanna…wanna do it. I can do it, I swear.”

He chuckles gently before loosening his grip. “Okay, lovie. But I’m right here, yeah? Do whatever you want me to do.”

You dip down and smash your lips against his. Kissing him to showcase your gratitude before you begin to roll your hips and set a steady pace.

It’s relaxed at first. Enough to ease you both into it – create a desperate need and worsen the ache until you’re both whining, frantic messes. 

And he allows you to create your own rhythm. Never rushing you or pulling you the way he wants. He merely wants to enjoy you. Enjoy the sound of his cock slipping in and out of your greedy cunt that sucks him in so well.

The cemetery has grown quiet. Almost too quiet, save for your anxious pants and pathetic whimpers. Occasionally a rogue crow will swoop from tree to tree, but it only makes Harry smirk. As if entertained by the reminder of where you are.

You feel his fingers move for your nipples. Tweaking them between the cold pads of his thumbs before he’s forcing your sweater higher so he can attach his mouth to the left one.

His tongue is warm – a stark contrast to the frigid outside air. But it’s perfect. Sensual and erotic as he sucks you into his mouth and moans.

Your mind falls into an exhilarated haze as you begin to bounce on him. Faster and faster, despite the ache in your joints. Needing to chase after that rush and the sounds he makes.

“So good, baby,” he praises between devious licks and harsh gropes. “Just like that. S’it feel good, lovie? My cock making you feel good?”

“Yes…yes,” you whine, head dropping back as he nips at the skin of your breast. “Harry, please—”

“What, hm?” He flattens his tongue against the aggravated skin. “What do you want, ladybug?”

You make another noise that becomes lost in a gasp, struck with a rush of pleasure from the way his cock strokes against your spongy walls.

“Is that it?” he asks, almost proudly. “Was that your little spot, honey? S’that what you need?”

You nod again and work to find it once more – angling your rolls until you feel it. “Shit…Har…feel so fucking good—”

“Yeah? Gonna cum on my cock? Right now, let ‘em watch?”

You mewl despite his teasing. Ghosts or not, there’s something tantalizing about the idea of him doing this to you in public. No matter how crass, there’s something about it that feels almost sweet. About the idea that Harry Styles – America’s Sweetheart – would be willing to taint his reputation and throw away his anonymity just for you.

His large palms suddenly move for your ass, cupping you firmly before beginning to guide you a bit faster. Seemingly overcome by the need for release the closer he gets. 

“Shit there you go…there you go, honey, fuck.” He’s groaning now – almost incoherent as his brows crease and his teeth grit. He’s so beautiful when he’s being fucked. “M’gonna cum, baby. M’gonna cum…and you’re gonna take it, yeah? Gonna take me in your pretty pussy?”

You stumble over a gasp and scratch your nails down his shoulders. Allowing him to move you exactly the way he needs as he begins to yank you all the way down. Burying himself inside your cunt until you feel him twitch.

“Keep going,” he exhales before it twists into a moan. “Fuck, keep going, lovie, m’almost there—”

“Please,” you whisper, pressing your forehead to his. “Shit, please, Har. Cum inside me, please—”

“God, baby. Gonna, I promise. Fucking fill you—”

“Please—”

“And you’re gonna take me, aren’t you? Keep me inside this sweet little cunt all goddamn night, yeah?”

“Harry, please—”

“Shit—”

It hits him then. Suddenly and with no warning as he releases a lewd groan and empties himself into your pussy. Wrapping his arms around your middle to keep you against his lap while he fills you with each drop he has to offer.  

It makes your fucking head spin, a warmth blossoming in your stomach as you weave your fingers in his roots and pulls his head against your heart. 

However, he doesn’t settle in your embrace for long, instead moving his touch down to your clit to work you toward your own release. Pinching and rubbing in small, practiced circles until you’re practically screaming. Unraveling by his hand only moments later as your pleasured sounds echo around the graveyard. Loud enough to wake the dead.

“There you go,” he murmurs, and it’s sweet like honey. Deep and comforting as he kisses your neck. “Oh, baby. Fucking soaking me, aren’t you? Can feel you all over my thighs, lovie. S’fucking perfect. Aren’t you?”

You feel your lips stretch into a lazy smile as you finally manage to catch your breath and slump against his strong frame. Allowing him to hold you up as you both succumb to the quiet night. 

You feel his fingers stroke against the skin of your hips. Another quiet reminder of his adoration that makes your stomach flip. 

“Did so good,” he praises, nuzzling his nose against your jaw in an unspoken attempt at asking for a kiss. He grins when you give it to him. “See? S’more fun with an audience, isn’t it?”

 You laugh, eyes trailing over to the row of tombstones just beside you. “Speaking of which…do you know what a ghost’s favorite cheese is?”

Instantly, a grin is exploding across his face. “What?”

You take a beat to build up the anticipation, fighting a smirk as you whisper, “Ghoul-da.”

He groans, amused and exasperated as he tightens his arms around your waist. “God, that was your worst yet.”

“What? You aren’t scared stiff?”

“Fuck off—”

“Are you gonna boo me?”

“Ladybug—”

“Well, you better fasten your sheet belt, cause there’s more where that came from—”

“All right,” he huffs playfully, tugging you closer until you squeal. “You win. And you’re insufferable.”

You chuckle. “Maybe, but…you love me.”

To this, he smiles, and your heart feels warm and fuzzy as he guides his lips to yours.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

~ iFall for Harry Masterlist

~ Freaky Fun Masterlist

~ Main Masterlist

~ Blurb Masterlist

Amazing divider by @firefly-graphics! 💞

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[cerastes]

I was wondering, are there any characters in Arknights that on the surface are jokesters, but anre actually immensely deep and powerful? I know about characters like Jaye and Nothing, but they aren’t particularly funny and casual. What I’m looking for is someone like Sans, basically.

"Nothing isn't particularly funny" oh we're just fundamentally different people then because I smile like a babe listening to jingling keys every time he's in the scene.

In the exact same regard as Sans, 1:1? Not really. Similar enough in some regards or in essence that they warrant mention? Yeah, I'd say so.

Aak is a good case, I'd say. Aak is a very casual guy, perhaps excessively so, referring to Doctor as "my dude" and in general having a very whimsical whistle to his steps, not to mention his seemingly jovial soul. Then you dig a bit deeper and you realize, well, despite the way he behaves, he takes what he does extremely seriously and is one of the most ruthless characters in the cast as a whole, in addition to being a medical sciences prodigy the likes of which Terra has seldom seen, and being infamous in the criminal underworld as a vigilante and executioner that has no qualms disposing of a mother fucker, if said fornicator of moms is a criminal and adversely affects others. See, the thing with Aak is that he, for the longest time, hated being so good at the medical sciences, because as he saw with his own twisted father, a brutal underworld doctor and criminal, curing illnesses doesn't begin to truly rid the common man of their suffering: There are always oppressors, abusers, those who selfishly make lives difficult for others for their own gain. Aak believes that to be a truly good "doctor", he needs to eliminate the root cause of the people's suffering: Criminals that will hurt them. Since his cooperation with Rhodes Island, his views have shifted a bit for the better (understanding people better, finding a good friend that shares his latent curiosity and love for the medical sciences and research in Warfarin), but it's still evident that Aak remains an unstable vat of fluoroantimonic acid waiting to bubble over, if the right trigger is present. He's not particularly powerful, with all his evaluations being "Normal" and "Standard", but his ruthlessness, his knowledge of the underworld, and his deep knowledge of medical sciences do make him quite dangerous despite "my dude"ing you.

Ceobe is the other one that comes to mind. Ceobe basically replicates the experience of having a big dumb loving dog, not just with Doctor, but with others as well, such as her canonical friends Vulcan and Sesa (Sesa being someone that also qualifies imo), and is in general a fun goober that livens up every scene she's in on virtue of, well, being a big dumb loving dog with all that entails: She WILL break into the kitchen even though she knows it's forbidden for her to do this, she WILL steal food, she WILL whimper and apologize, she WILL grow immensely defensive over her loved ones over things like "a loud vacuum cleaner" and WILL act over any perceived threat with maximum power; the entirety of Integrated Strategies 1, Ceobe's Fungimist, comes about because Ceobe gets high on hallucinogenic mushrooms she found in the jungle, and goes apeshit because she imagines this whole scenario where Villains have kidnapped Doctor and only she and whatever friends she can recruit on the way can save them, resulting in her beating the absolute shit out of numerous warrior tribes Dynasty Warriors style. Let's talk about that last part! She beat the absolute shit out of numerous warrior tribes Dynasty Warriors style while high as fuck on shrooms. She can do that! Because Ceobe is actually fucking shredded. Despite being a Funny Dog, Ceobe is a legitimately Arts genius, having no formal training and yet being able to use Arts with no problem, almost instinctively, as well as simply being able to harness pretty much any weapon she touches and empower them further with her Arts. Part of this is definitely because she's VERY Infected, but not even that explains just the sheer magnitude and expertise with which Ceobe seems to use her Arts. And speaking of? She dragged herself, across much of Terra, while incredibly Infected and with no care at all.

Ceobe, by all rights, should be dead. Not even the Medic Operator that wrote her medical file has a lot of faith, and her Oripathy is explicitly very grave and only getting worse. And even in this state, she dragged herself and the small arsenal strapped to her back across the world.

Her Physiological Endurance rank of Outstanding is no joke. Keep in mind, this is a rank equivalent to the toughest and most resilient characters we know of, such as Specter and Hoshiguma.

This is all stuff you'll only ever realize about Ceobe if you pay attention, because she's almost exclusively used for comedic relief, but the funny dog is actually a natural archmage and weaponmaster that just won't fucking die, if we were to use more fantasy adjacent terms for her.

There's more (like Sesa) but those two are the ones that jumped to mind.

[astrxlfinale]

Caelus centric drabble.

Amphoreus spoilers.

The life he once lived.

He found it.

Entrenched in the depths of ice, a cooling, pervasive force that now found itself as the very means to tear through the very barrier of static chaos that plagued him for so long. Unexpected, heavy, it was a form of disbelief that prompted Caelus to hold himself in a way he's never done before. Emotions that swell to the surface as the appropriate pieces are bringing themselves together tears him into an overwhelming stride.

There's knowing, then there's understanding. Similar to when he's witnessed their familiar faces. Hints of tenderness from some, an agreement that borders upon firmness on other ends, how there was ultimately a disconnect from each and every one of their lives that united them on this Stage. The self that savored these very experiences felt so incredibly muted in comparison. Strange as it was. It was familiar.

Yet with that familiarity comes a scathing feeling he can't quite put into words.

Underneath the all seeing gaze of the Remembrance, this moment, a purity unrivaled instance found itself glimmering like gold before his eyes. So where do these serrated, confusing edges stem from? Seeing the faces of Kafka, Blade, Silver Wolf and Firefly, why is it that some unknown sorrow wanted to strangle this very light? In this collision of a meticulous, mirror like web that spins endlessly, Caelus of the past and Caelus of the present were one.

If only for a moment.

What does he want to feel right now?

Upon the Astral Express, a vessel of the present serving as a door to the past, and even that finds itself locked within the folds of Memory itself. Past, present and Future were able to find convergence upon these very grounds. An unknown force, a voice was gradually expanding this understanding, keeping the pure fire that forged each and every one of these experiences cooled enough from burning him away. Just seeing their faces again, truly seeing them, it was a rush of such intensity that it just wanted to bring him to his knees.

Huh. Just like that. As much as he searched during off hours, how promises, scripts and as if some cosmic joke all stood upon his path on this very matter.

A sense of wholeness could gently be nurtured within him once again. A tender sprout once lost was found by freezing a relentless mental downpour. Days, times that went all past the eve he successfully blurred the divide of a human soul harnessing the Stellaron.

Even now, as uncertain but familiar steps guide him towards each of their faces. That haze of crystal radiance flickered across his vision as a reminder. What's held within his very hands right now was merely a new beginning, and a new end. A successful dive of his efforts were finally tearing away all limitations that wanted to cement that his experiences remained authentic.

Caelus in the present and past would have it no other way.

--Could it be called that?

Caelus is Caelus.

"--I was scared of betrayal?" Confirmation finds itself so prominent in the way his chest squeezes firmly. A visceral reaction, as if that past end threw forth a tempest of violent agreement. Even now that understanding is held that it wasn't some skin deep example. No, the closest connections, his soul felt as if he's been burned root deep by that acrid type of flame before.

How and why?

And why the hell does it matter now? When his current path now have so many wonderful people by his side?

...

Caelus embraces the depth of his memoria like frost, keeping it close, letting it cool the torrents deep within as he steps further in. This memory, these times with them, there would be no shyness in living in his past for just a bit longer.

Faint as it was, a tinge of a smile surfaces despite the heaviness in his eyes.

"Just what kind of parties did we share across bloodied battlefields?"

____

You have no idea HOW excited I was to have this revealed before me. Oh this is going to draw a spin of certainty upon Caelus's character.

And I have THOUGHTS.

[ask-healthy-light]

As soon as Light ended their message and their promise, the two Royal Sisters both smiled brightly, and they put their hooves to their chests when a gentle warmth surrounded their hearts, despite the different origins for the warmth; for although they were both relieved to hear back from the group, Luna felt a more deeply-rooted warmth, and she knew, even over such a great distance, how Nox felt.

When her eyes started to well up with tears, Luna put her hooves to her face, hoping that she would not be a bother to anyone else in the Centre, as she was struggling to stay quiet, until the warmth in her chest faded away; and she took a deep breath, cleaned her face, and leaned back in her seat, expecting her heart to grow cold again, and her concerns for the safety of their friends to return.

But just as Celestia sweetly embraced her little Sister with her wing, and quietly asked her if she was all right, Luna realised that the warmth only sank for a moment, since it had stabilised again; so she chuckled quietly, and solemnly nodded to her big Sister, before she politely asked her for a moment to send a message in return, to which Celestia smiled, and promised that she would be quiet.

In the Dragon Lands, Nox and Light finally managed to catch up to the others further down the Great Volcano, who all quietly sighed in relief, where they apologised for not letting them know they had stopped; but when Boom loudly laughed, and sarcastically told them that it was obvious why they had been waiting until they got far enough away, Inferno slapped him over the head with her empty claw.

It took a moment for Nox and Light to realise what Boom meant by his comment, and as bright blushes grew upon their faces, they tried to tell the others that they were sending a message back to their friends in the Empire, only to fumble over their words; but while Boom merely put his hoof over his mouth to muffle his intensifying laughter, Inferno nodded, and kindly told them to take their time.

After they took a moment to gather their thoughts and had cast out the unwanted, Nox and Light both took a deep breath to calm themselves down, before they slowly told the others that Light sent word to the Empire in a way that only few could harness; but it allowed them to speak to the Princesses, as well as a couple of other beings, whom they told of their arrival, and their travel to the East.

Though Boom had also managed to hear what Light spoke through the Void, albeit very faintly, it was drastically more amusing to him to tease his friends to see how flustered they got, even if it only led to him getting slapped in return; but since he figured their journey would take a long time, he told the others that he had plenty of jokes for them, and that they had to lighten up a little bit.

To the relief of Light and Nox, whose blushes had yet to fade, Captain Inferno shrugged, how seeing how easily Boom walked off a hit from her claw, before she took off her helmet, placed it on Boom's head, and hit it with the hilt of her sword; and her helmet rang like a bell, startling the others, and causing Courage to jump into Nox's arms, only for Boom to keep laughing throughout the ringing.

There was a brief moment of uncertainty when the sound of Inferno's helmet continued to echo around them, and the group did not dare move a muscle or make a sound until it finally died down, and they waited for a little longer; and when they could only hear the sounds of the wind and faint rumbling of the Volcano, they all let out the deep breaths they were holding in, and turned to look at Boom.

While the others worried about every step they took, the Green Unicorn, for whom they had travelled so far away, only ever appeared to think about himself, laughing as he made jokes at the expense of the others, and possibly putting them in severe peril; but they stayed calm, and sternly asked Boom whether he truly understood the risk they were taking for him, out of the goodness of their hearts?

In an instant, Boom stopped laughing, and said with a voice so cold it chilled their very bones:

"I know you worry a lot, I know the area, I know there is no danger for leagues. Trust me, I know."

(Thanks for reading! And if you enjoyed, please reblog! Thanks in advance!)

Send an ask or request! | Start at the beginning! | Next part!

Featuring: Nox Lunarwing from @nox-lunarwing Boomlord from @thedumbguywithaheart43

[formula1andbeyond]

A holiday to remember - M.S.

Pairing: Mick Schumacher x reader

Summary: While spending Christmas at your family cabin, you befriend the guy next door. Unknown to you, he’s not just the great skiier you think he is. He’d world famous

Wordcount: 3k

Warnings: A tiny amount of swearing and a bit dialogue heavy.

Notes: My first ever F1 fanfic. It’s set in Norway, and y/n is Norwegian, simply because I wanted Norwegian holiday traditions incorporated:) Enjoy!

You looked at the big, brown cabin. Located near a ski resort in western Norway, the cabin was just one of many nearly identical buildings surrounding you. And yet this one felt like home. It belonged to your aunt and uncle, and it was one of your favourite places to visit.

“Jeg sover på hemsen!” (I’m sleeping upstairs) your brother calls in norwegian as he runs past you with his bag. You roll your eyes at him. He’s sixteen, but behaves like a ten year old. It’s not like you want to share a room with him and your three cousins anyway. They’re fourteen, ten and seven. And really annoying.

“Y/N!” Your aunt calls, a sweet smile on her face as she greets you on the stairs.

“Hei, tante Jorunn,”(hi, aunt Jorunn), you answer her, and accept her hug. You take a deep breath as you walk inside, the sweet, homey smell of the cabin, mixed with gingerbread, fills your nostrils.

You feel excitement building. Two weeks here, spending time with your friends and family, skiing everyday and eating christmas food. It’s literally heaven!

----------

You and your brother spend the entire next day on the slopes, enjoying the fresh cold air, and the excitement of going super fast. It’s something you miss in everyday, student life. Late in the afternoon, when you’ve had your fill, and the lifts close, you reluctantly make your way back to the cabin.

It’s a luxury that you can ski the entire way. As you come to a halt outside the cabin, panting from having raced your brother there, you notice several cars outside the cabin across the road.

“Noen tyskere som har leid den, vist nok,” (Some germans have rented it, apparently) Your brother says, as you both remove your skis. You nod, and are about to head up the stairs to the door, when a young boy, or more man, opens the door to the other cabin.

He’s insanely handsome, you note. Blue eyes, light blonde hair, and high cheekbones. Despite the several degrees below zero, he’s only wearing jeans and a thigh t-shirt. The guy’s fit, you note..

It’s like he feels you watching him, because his eyes meet yours, and he grins.

“Were the conditions good?” He asks, his english slightly affected by an accent. You blush from his intense eye contact. Luckily you're wearing several layers of clothes, and a wool balaclava that covers most of your face.

“Huh?,” You ask, before realizing what he said. You blush deeper, and answer in english, “the light was flat, and the snow was icy. But it’s supposed to snow tonight, so I bet tomorrow will be better.”

He nods, and smiles, before he opens the car door, and grabs a bag.

“Perhaps I’ll see you out there,” he says, before he returns inside the cabin, closing the door behind him. After a second, you break out of your slight trance, and gather your skis, wobbling up the stairs in the clunky alpine boots. You’re very glad the guy went inside, because this is the most un-sexy you’ve felt in ages. When you close the door behind you, your brother is removing his ski pants.

“Han var såååå søøøt” (He was sooo cute) he says in a teasing voice. It’s like you plumet from several meters back into your body. You turn your head and look at your brother.

“Skal vi snakke om Maiken?” (Should we talk about Maiken?) You ask, sweetly. Your brother blushes to the root of his hair, quickly shaking his head. You roll your eyes. “Tenkte meg det.” (Thought so)

----------

You don’t see the handsome guy the next day, but you definitely tell your ski friends about him.

The second day after meeting him, you come outside at eight thirty, ready to head down to the slopes. Your brother decided to sleep in, but you don’t mind. A solo day at the slopes is pretty nice actually. It’s therefore a huge shock to see a tall, blonde and very grinning guy putting on his skis outside.

“Hi,” he says as he straightens, and looks at you.

“Eh, hi?” you say back, the scepticism clear in your voice. The guy’s smile falters slightly, but he's quick with the reply.

“I was wondering if I could join you and your brother today. I’ve never been here before.”

“He’s sleeping in, but, uh, you can join me, I guess.” The guy smiles again, and you can't help but smile back. Though you doubt he can see it behind your balaclava, helmet and ski glasses. You both push off, and skate down to the slope, coming in from the side of the slope, half way up. The guy is great at skiing, you realize, as you take off down the hill.

“Not bad,” You say with a smile as you reach the bottom, and slide into the line for the lift.

“Thanks”, he says. “But not nearly as good as you. That was insanely good.”

You're about to answer, when you hear someone calling your name. It’s your friend Kari. She waves, and lines up next to you in the line.

“Hvem er vennen din?” (who’s your friend) she asks, looking at the guy.

“Oh, this is- eh-” You stop, realizing you’ve never gotten the guy’s name.

“I’m Mick,” he answers for himself, extending his hand to Kari. She tells him her name back, just as you reach the front of the line, and take your seats.

Kari talks the entire way up, as she always does. You don’t mind, but you can see Mick getting slightly confused at times, casting you long glances. At the top of the hill, Kari leaves to join her parents.

You and Mick decide on the not-so-steep blue slope, just to get a feel of the snow.

It’s soft, but not so much that it slides away from you. Perfect, really. The two of you ski down several times. Each time in the lift, you talk. It feels easy to talk to Mick, and he makes you laugh a lot. He’s very nice, his blue eyes always shining towards you.

“Lunch time, maybe?” you ask after a few hours. Mick nods, and you race each other down to the cafe at the bottom of the lift. As you enter, Mick asks you to find a table, then he can buy food.

“I can buy my own food, Mick,” you protest, but he insists.

“I can afford it, trust me!” He says, and gives you a look that shuts you up. With a smirk, you nod, and waddle off to find a table. There’s one in the back, and you sit down, removing your helmet and balaclava. It’s warm inside, and your jacket quickly follows your helmet onto the bench beside you.

With a content sigh, you lean your head on your shand, and look out the window. It’s starting to snow, thick flakes falling down and adding to the magical feeling of christmas. You’ll have to go backcountry skiing soon, with all this powder adding up.

After a few minutes, you seem to hear your name getting called. You look around confused. A few meters away from you, Mick stands, holding a tray. You call his name, waving your hand slightly. His eyes widen, and he walks over slowly.

“Hey,” you say, as he puts the tray on the table. “You okay?”

“Uh, eh- yeah. I just didn't recognize you without all the clothes. You’re, well, uh- you’re not like I imagined” He says with a blush, as he removes his own skiing gear. You blush, a little self conscious. It hadn’t even been on your mind that Mick had only ever seen you with a balaclava and helmet on.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” you say, and push some hair behind your ears.

“Don’t take that the wrong way. It’s meant the very right way. Or- like, you're pretty. Very pretty.” He blushes deeper. You both look into the table, not able to meet eathoters eyes. When you finally look up, Mick gestures weakly to the food.

“French fries and burger to both. And a cola to share. And a hot cocoa to you, and coffee to me. Or we can switch if you don’t want hot cocoa. Also, food in Norway is expensive” He says, as he hands you the food. You smile.

“Yeah, it really is. And I’ll keep the cocoa. I hate coffee.” Mick’s eyes widened.

“How can you hate God’s nectar to the people? This is ambrosia, black gold, everything good in the world!” You scrunch your nose and shake your head. Mick sighs, and shows a fry into his mouth. You laugh, grumpy Mick is cute.

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

The next three days pass in a blur, with lots of skiing and laughing. Mick makes you smile a lot, but you’re definitely ignoring the warm feeling in your stomach. You’ve known the guy for a week, for God’s sake!

In the lifts, you both talk a lot. He talks about his childhood in Switzerland and Germany, his annoying older sister, and his dad’s accident. He’s so open it nearly blows you away.

In return you tell him about Bergen (your hometown), what it’s like growing up in Norway, and about your studies. He listens so intensely to everything you say that you think he probably could tell it all back to you. It makes you feel important. Like he really cares.

Suddenly it’s Christmas eve. You spend the day in the cabin, watching Christmas movies with your brother (Tre nøtter til Askepott is a MUST*), and helping your dad and aunt with the food.

After lunch, where your youngest cousin, Eva, miraculously finds the almond and wins the marzipan pig (as if your aunt hasn’t planted it in her food**), you bring the two youngest cousins out sledding.

You wave at Mick as you pass their cabin. He’s wearing a blue button up shirt, and is wrestling what looks like a huge gift, out of a car.

“My sister is spoiled!” He calls with a smile, and you laugh. His smile is so infectious.

“So are my cousins,” you answer, gesturing to the kids you’re pulling on the sled. Mick laughs. When you return from the sledding, Mick’s gone. You brush the snow of your cousins, and you all pile into the hall, removing wet clothes. It’s time to change into your christmas dress, and before you know it, everyone is sitting at the dinner table, eating a massive feast of delicious food.

After dinner, gifts are passed out. From your parents, you get a new skiing helmet, as the old one is getting, well, old. You also receive some clothes from friends, and a pair of high heeled boots from your aunt. It’s honestly a pretty great evening.

Later, when you lay in bed, texting your friend and feeling so full you might never eat again, a message pings into your phone from instagram.

Mickschumacher has started following you.

You tap the message with a slight smile. How he found your account, you don’t know, nor care. Mick is clearly serious about staying in touch. Your eyes scan his account, as your brows crease. He’s verified, you notice. Then you gasp, and sit upright in the bed, clutching your phone with both hands. He has more than two million followers? Holy shit, Mick is famous!

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

You wake the next morning, still processing the information from last night. After seeing Mick’s account, you googled him. You had to. You read article after article. About him, his dad, and formula 1. It was insane! You have been casually hanging out with a world famous race car driver for days. How is that even possible?

Hi! You up?- It’s Mick, dm’ing you on insta.

Yup- you text back. You’re not sure if you’re mad at him or not yet.

I’ve managed to borrow some randonee skis. You wanna go backcountry skiing today?

Mad or not, you can’t say no to that offer. The conditions are too perfect, and you were already considering going. Half an hour later, you meet Mick outside, backpacks on, both of you ready for a day outside. Turning on your avalanche detectors, you start the long trek up the nearly untouched mountain behind the cabins.

“So- I googled you last night,” you burst out half an hour later during a little water break. Mick leans heavily on his ski poles and sighs.

“I figured you would,” he says. You just look at him, and shrug.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re famous?”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. He’s clearly thinking. You swallow hard. It does feel a little like betrayal. He’s clearly talked his way around a LOT of important subjects while telling you about himself.

“I guess- because you really had no idea who I am. Formula 1 isn’t that big in Norway. It’s nice to just be the boy next door. Not Mick Schumacher, famous driver. Not Mick Schumacher, famous son. Just Mick, the guy who likes to ski and enjoys doing it with a pretty girl.”

You swallow hard, and force your water bottle back into the backpack.

“I want to be mad,” You tell him sternly. His eyes get a familiar twinkle.

“But you're not?” He asks carefully. You roll your eyes, but shake your head. A grin overtakes his handsome face. And you can’t help but smile back. Mick seems to be floating the rest of the hike. Willingly plowing the path through the snow, he listens intently when you tell him things about the terrain, and the area. He knows this is your turf.

“One day,” he says, as you stand on the top of the mountain, removing the skins from your skis, “I’ll show you around the paddock. Then it’ll be my turn to explain it all to you.”

You laugh, but a knot forms in your stomach. Mick seems so sure you’ll keep in touch. But he’s famous, and you're, well, you. Not famous. Normal. You don’t say anything. But the whole way down, as you play the perfect powder, you feel the nagging thought in the back of your head. In a week, Mick is returning to Germany. And you’ll probably never see him again.

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

You don’t see Mick for the next two days. It’s a mix between staying away and genuinely being busy. Some friends who live in different places have all come up to the mountains for new years, and you're busy entertaining them. Your family travels back to the city on the second Christmas day, leaving you and your friends in the cabin. It’s a huge amount of trust, and you feel extremely grateful. This really proves they trust you.

On the third day of not seeing Mick, you can't help but crane your neck out the window, looking for him. The kitchen in your cabin is facing right towards his. You would see if he had left for the slopes.

“Kari sier du har fått kjæreste,” (Kari says you’ve gotten a boyfriend) Rebecka, your childhood best friend, says as she sits down at the table, a smirk on her face. You blush wildly.

“Han er ikke kjæresten min!” (he’s not my boyfriend) you answer stubbornly.

“Hvem har fått kjæreste?” (Who’s gotten a boyfriend/girlfriend?) Jostein asks as he enters, kissing Rebecka’s head before grabbing a piece of bacon from the table.

“Y/n!” Rebecka says just as you try to protest not having a boyfriend. “Vist nok er han tysk. Og en fantastisk skikjører. Y/n har ikke hatt noe tid til Kari.” (Apparently he’s german, and a great skier. Y/n hasn’t had time for Kari at all.)

You roll your eyes, and a sarcastic reply is on the tip of your lips, but just then the door on Mick’s cabin opens. You see Mick, and another guy you don’t know, leave the cabin. They’re dressed for the cold weather, but not for skiing.

“Er det han?” (Is that him) Rebecka shrieks, and runs to the window. Jostein, with Mia and Nora who were chilling on the couch, are not far behind.

“Jeg vil se!” (I want to see!) Marcus calls, and comes running down the stairs. They all flock around the small window.

“Hvilken er det?” (Which one is it?) Nora whispers. You sigh.

“Den høyeste. Han heter Mick, og han er IKKE kjæresten min.” (The tall one. His name is Mick, and he’s NOT my boyfriend). You finally groan. Marcus gasps audibly.

“Holy shit, y/n! Det er er jo Mick Schumacher og Dennis Hauger! Dette er helt sykt” (That’s Mick Schumacher and Dennis Hauger! This is insane!). You should have known. Marcus is a huge F1 fan.

When he turns towards the door, you have to physically restrain Marcus from rushing outside for an autograph. He pulls you along the floor, your wool socks sliding along easily. You’re still wearing your pj’s.

“No, no, no, no” You shout at him, as he pushes the door open. Then he turns to you with an evil grin. You can feel yourself go pale.

“Marcus, nei!” He picks you up around the waist, and you barely have time to scream before he has tossed you off the low balcony, into the huge pile of snow outside. You lie there staring up, as a familiar face comes into view.

“Hi,” Mick says. “Cute shorts. Probably a bit cold though.”

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

Your friends all fall for Mick’s charm as easily as you have. Marcus clings to his every word as if it’s gospel. It’s honestly a bit weird. Mick’s friend, Dennis, turns out to be a Norwegian formula driver. He’s sweet and polite, and you like him immediately. It’s cool that you have a norwegian driver. You weren’t aware.

“Eh, y/n,” Mick asks when you return from putting on proper clothes. “Can I talk to you?”

Ignoring your friends whistling, you nod, and lead Mick to your room.

“I just wanted to apologize. For lying. Or not telling the truth. I shouldn’t have done that. And you have every right to be mad at me, but-”

“Mick, I’m not mad,” you say, a little shocked. “I’ve just been a little busy. And well, I guess I’ve been a little distant. I’m just afraid that when you leave, you’ll forget about me and this christmas. I thought it would hurt less if I spent less time with you. I’m really sorry.”

He shakes his head, and lets out a small chuckle. Grabbing your shoulders, he pulls you into a hug, and mutters into your hair. “Trust me, y/n. I could never forget you.

That night, Mick and Dennis join your group for a board game tournament. You and Mick sit close to each other on the couch. Your thigh feels hot where it touches his. In the game Alias, you two destroy the others. The look he gives you as you do a little victory dance, makes you feel like the rest of the world could just disappear. Holy shit, you think. If only he could look at you like that forever.

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

It’s like you're glued together for the next few days. Skiing, both alpine and backcountry, in the days, and in the evening he joins you and your friends for games, jacuzzi (you nearly die seeing him shirtless), and for movie night.

He introduces you to his family one day. His mother and sister turn out to be the sweetest people ever, hugging you, and including you in the conversation.

You are slightly awed, meeting Mick’s dad. Despite never even having heard about Michael Schumacher before a week ago, there is something about his presence. He just feels like someone you should admire. And you do.

On new years eve, you and your friends throw a big party. You’ve invited several other people your age that are staying in the area. And Mick, of course. There is a giddy feeling in your stomach as you pull on the stunning silver dress you have bought for the eve. Hair styled, heels on, you grab your first cider, taking a slow sip.

People have started arriving, and the music is turned on. You take another sip of your far to sweet cider, as a pair of hands land on your hips.

“I barely recognized you,” Mick whispers in your ear. You grin, but a blush still fights it’s way forward and you turn in his arms. He’s wearing a green turtleneck and black dress pants. Hot. He smiles. “You look beautiful.”

“Thanks. You too,” You say, matching his smile. If it had been up to you, you would just stay there, gazing into his eyes for the rest of the night. But someone presses a beer into Mick’s hand, breaking the spell.

“Skål” (cheers), you say, as you tap his beer with your cider. Mick wiggle his eyebrow at you, and takes a sip. After a second, he makes a face that tells you he likes it. He offers you a sip, but beer isn't really your thing. Sticking to wine, cider and shots is safer.

The party is great. People are clearly having fun, and getting drunker by the minute. Someone shouts that it’s only five minutes until midnight, and you all scramble to get your jackets and move out onto the patio. You can feel Mick close behind you, his ungloved hand holding onto your waist. It’s nice, and you lean into it.

One minute left, someone shouts. You look up at Mick, and his eyes meet yours. It’s like they sober up instantly. Suddenly they’re much clearer, wide but determined.

TEN!

You smile carefully at Mick.

NINE!

His eyes take in your whole face, memorising it, it seems.

EIGHT!

You blink, feeling the alcohol drain from your head.

SEVEN!

The hand on your waist twists, pulling at your coat.

SIX!

You turn towards Mick

FIVE!

He swallows hard, gazing down at you.

FOUR!

“I’m gonna kiss you now” Mick whispers.

THREE!

You nod, “Okay,”

TWO!

His hands cup your face.

ONE!

His lips feel so unbelievably soft, even as they crush yours in a hungry kiss. You kiss back with just as much vigour. God how you’ve waited for this!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

He softens his lips, but doesn’t let go of yours. You hope he never will. The butterflies in your stomach are doing cartwheels like crazy. You want to feel like this forever. Your hands grab onto his hair, pulling softly. All around you people are cheering.

“Yeah, y/n! Get it girl!” Someone shouts close by. Blushing, you pull away from Mick. The look in his eyes makes you pant. Pupils dilated, he can't seem to stop gazing into your soul.

“I definitely won’t forget you now!”

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

*The movie Tre nøtter til Askepott (Three wishes for Cinderella) is probably one of the weirdest Norwegian Christmas traditions. It’s a Czech movie from the 70’s, where Cinderella receives three magic nuts, and is granted a wish with each. The whole thing is dubbed by only one man voicing all the characters, from Cinderella and the stepmom, to the king and prince. It’s hilarious. I love this movie with all my heart, and it is literally one of the best traditions in Norway. My brother and I quote it to each other all the time.

** On christmas eve, or just any time during december, it’s tradition in Norway to eat rice porridge for lunch. In one of the bowls there is supposed to be an almond, but no one knows which bowl. The winner (the one who finds the almond) receives a marzipan pig as their prize. It's fun, but surprisingly often the youngest family member wins. Strange...

[draconic-ichor]

Between Dabbles

Heisenberg x oc

These are a little mess of a couple dabbles I had that didn’t quite fit with the final or epilogue but I still enjoyed

These bits happen between the final and them leaving in the epilogue

Warnings: blood/gore, medical gore, wounds, light physical trauma

While cleaning up after the Revolution:

Heisenberg cupped her face gently, looking over her with a critical eye.

Juniper pursed her lips, “I’m fine.”

“You’re clearly not…” he said simply. The left side of her face was very swollen, discolored with pooled blood and a few scabbed puncture marks. It throbbed when he touched it, sending spikes of pain through her skull.

He saw the pain in her eye as he probed, worry spurring him forward.

“I have to check if the eye is still intact.” His voice was firm.

Juniper gave a little nod, steeling herself up for what was to come.

Heisenberg carefully pried the flesh of her eyelid open despite her winces and mewls. He felt a wave of relief, seeing her eye still there. It was filled with blood and the pupil dilated but looked like it would heal. Only time would tell if her vision would be impaired on that side.

He pulled away a bit, asking, “Anything else I need to know about?”

“A bullet grazed my arm, and a have a few more holes on my side. Nothing got to my lungs. Lots of scratches and bites…” she trailed off.

“And?”

“I lost a tooth.” She frowned.

Heisenberg squared his jaw, “Open up.”

Juniper reluctantly opened her mouth for him, waiting as he retrieved a flashlight. He shined it in her mouth, seeing her first bicuspid on her left upper side completely gone. There was an angry, gooey hole left behind.

“Hmmm…” he tried to look closer, but without the proper tools, couldn’t do much more.

“Going to have to watch that, in case some of the root was left behind.” He pulled away, “In the meantime we’re gonna get you patched up and full of painkillers.”

“But I can’t.” She looked down, “I’m breastfeeding…”

“Not anymore, Love.” He was frank, “We already started him on mashed food and you need to rest and heal. You can’t rest when you fucking hurt like this.”

She grumbled.

~

Juniper crawled into the bed, collapsing once she was fully in its softness. She was covered in bruising, the side of her face and ribs tightly bandaged. Not to mention the few bullet wounds and lacerations she collected.

Her whole body ached terribly, she wanted nothing more then sleep away all the pain.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Teaching Baby Kolt to Walk:

“Come on pup.” Heisenberg sat on the floor a few feet away from the little boy. Kolt was standing, holding onto the table.

He looked from his place of safety to his father.

“Come on.” Heisenberg held out his hands.

“He’s not even a year old yet, Karl.” Juniper murmured, watching from a ways back.

“He can do it.” Heisenberg waved her comment away.

Kolt looked between them, making little gurgles that turned into, “P-pa, pa-p-.”

“Yea, Papa’s right here.” Heisenberg cooed, “Come here, pup.”

Kolt frowned making a humming sound with thought as he slowly turned, letting go of the table.

Heisenberg lit up, almost wiggling with excitement, “Come on, you can do it pup.”

Kolt met Heisenberg’s eyes, smiling big as he took a shaking step.

The room went silent, Juniper held her breath.

The little boy closed the distance with wobbly little steps before falling into his father’s waiting hands.

Heisenberg scooped him up, beaming with happiness, “You did it!” Kolt squealed and giggled as his father cuddled and tickled him.

“Did you see that love?!” Heisenberg exclaimed, holding Kolt up in the air, “The pup walked!”

He heard a sniffing sound, turning to see Juniper’s eyes watering.

“You ok, buttercup?” He asked, holding Kolt to his chest.

She nodded, a smile despite the tears, “He’s getting so big.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Growing Powers with toddler Kolt:

Kolt lifted his hands, concentrating on the large pipe in front of him. It started to vibrate and jitter. The small boy screwed his face up, thinking as hard as he could.

The pipe shook and started to levitate into the air. Kolt’s face split into a smile as it rose up multiple feet. He giggled, calling into the next room, “Papa! Look Papa!”

Heisenberg came through the doorway, curiously, “What’s going on pup?”

Kolt turned suddenly towards his father, sending the pipe flying through the air accidentally as he moved.

“Wha-“ Heisenberg made out before the pipe connected hollowly with his head. He made a sound, crumping to the ground unconscious from the impact.

Kolt shrunk back with fear, the pipe falling down with a clatter. He tentatively asked, “…Papa?”

When he didn’t answer he ran from the room wailing.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Juniper heard him screaming down the hall, turning as the small child burst through the metal door.

“Papa’s Dead!” He screamed.

“What?!” Juniper’s heart almost stopped. She scooped up her son, before going back through the door’s towards the far room.

Heisenberg was still on the floor when she entered.

“Heis?” She asked fearfully.

He groaned out a response, leg moving.

Juniper sighed with relief, bouncing her crying son.

“I-I’m fine.” He reached up, rubbing a bump forming on his forehead.

[crusherthedoctor]

Sonic Heroes: Sweet or Shite? - Part 1: SILVER

There are some heroes I like. And there are some heroes I don’t like. But why do I feel about them the way I do? That’s where this comes in.

This is a series in which I go into slightly more detail about my thoughts on the heroes in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and why I think they either work well, or fall flat (or somewhere in-between). I’ll be giving my stance on their designs, their personalities, and what they had to show for themselves over the course of time. Two things to keep in mind:

1. These reviews will be focusing mainly on game portrayals. Though alternate media will occasionally be mentioned, it'll be for the sake of adding onto a point if a portrayal is similar enough, or to compare and contrast if a portrayal is different enough.

2. These are just my own personal thoughts. Whether you agree or disagree, feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions! I don’t bite. :>

Anyhow, for today’s installment, I decided to challenge myself by starting off with a complicated one. Born from the future, and never content to stay put in said future, it's the saviour whose debut came from the most unfortunate game... Silver the Hedgehog.

The Gist: Once upon a time, in the distant future, there was an idealistic young hedgehog named Silver, gifted with the power of telekinesis for reasons unknown. With his amazing potential, he was truly destined for a wonderful, prosperous li-just kidding, it was shit.

“All two of us.”

For as long as he knew, the world was forever plagued by Iblis, the terrible Flames of Disaster. Cities stood in ruin, flames stood high, the floor was lava... it was a bitter life to be certain, all thanks to Iblis. Not even defeating the titular creature did much good, since it would simply come back to be a shitty boss fight another day. What was he - and his friend, Blaze, a character we definitely never saw before and definitely didn't have a completely different backstory before - to do?

Trust the first person he sees, of course. Even if they look like they might be related to the same Flames of Disaster that he fights so constantly.

If he had eyelids, he'd be winking at the camera.

This mysterious fellow, Mephiles the Dark, informed Silver that if he were to wipe out Iblis for real, he would need to take a trip into the past, and eliminate the root of the problem... Sonic the Hedgehog? That was what Mephiles claimed, yes. What was his proof? There was no proof.

That was good enough for Silver.

Oh look, it's Fleetway Sonic.

After an elaborate series of events, which should sound exciting but really isn't because it was just Silver going “Iblis Trigger grrr” in varying tones of voice, he was finally able to corner the blue hedgehog... twice! And despite having less fighting know-how than the hero who saved the world plenty of times, he effortlessly came close to killing the blue hedgehog... twice!

This looks like a jobbing for...

Why twice? The first time was halted by Sonic's friend Amy Rose, who Silver had met beforehand after she mistook him for Sonic, an understandable mistake that even the keenest of eyes would be forgiven for making.

The second time was also interrupted, this time by Shadow the Hedgehog. There's only room for one controversial non-blue male hedgehog in this franchise, sonny boy. Actually, his reasons were more benevolent than that: he wanted to show Silver the truth about what was going on, by time travelling to the incident that gave birth to Iblis. Why was one able to to this, so long as more than one Chaos Emerald was present? No one knew.

That was good enough for Silver.

“I challenge you to a dumb-off.”

As it turned out, Iblis was one half of a sun god called Solaris, the other half being the aforementioned Mephiles. The Duke of Soleanna wanted to reunite with his late wife by harnessing Solaris' power, which succeeded from a certain point of view since he's dead now too. The resulting blunder split Solaris into two halves. One half was all brawn, with little capacity for intelligence. The other half was Iblis.

Understanding the error of his ways, and after making peace with Sonic, Silver went back to the future to try something different, which consisted of doing the same thing he always did. Luckily for him, the script decided it would work this time, albeit at the cost of Blaze sacrificing herself... Maybe? Sort of? It’s not entirely clear what happened to her, and it’s not like this was the last we ever saw of her.

~La laaaaaa, la laaaaaa, la laaaaaa, heading to a better game, la laaaaaa~

But ohhhhh nooooo, turns out THAT didn't solve anything either! In the present, Sonic was killed by Mephiles, after the latter realised he should probably do that already if he wanted to make any progress at all with his plan. This incident led to Iblis being brought into the present, and they fused to become the omnipotent Solaris once more. Such power... such divinity... such devastation...

Actually, he was really easy. The antlion from Underground Zone was harder.

Manchild robots - 1, god of time - 0.

With their super forms in tow, Silver, Shadow, and the revived Sonic joined forces to defeat Solaris, with Sonic in particular going the extra step in retconning Solaris out of existence entirely. Since time itself reset, meaning Iblis was no longer a memory, Silver's timeline was given a second chance. What was he to look forward to in this new, promising future?

Shit.

The Design: Let's take a closer look at Silver's appearance, shall we?

Or rather, a certain thing that's wrong with it.

He's holding up fifteen fingers.

Yes, you all know what I'm pointing to: the hairstyle. Let it be known that I'm very aware of the intention behind this design choice. It's supposed to be based on the Japanese Red Maple Leaf, which holds a lot of relevant symbolism for Silver's character. This is a fine idea in theory, and I can respect the intent and the creativity.

But here's the thing: If it looks like a ganja leaf, people are going to say it looks like a ganja leaf. I know some fans will gnash their teeth at me saying this, but the fact of the matter is that intentions and ideas, no matter how good they may be on paper, don't always translate well into the final product. Unleashed Secret Rings Black Knight Sonic '06 in general is certainly no stranger to showcasing examples of that, and Silver's hairstyle is no exception. There are ways to incorporate symbolism in a character’s design without making them look like meme bait in the process, and no amount of “umm ackshually” will change that, I'm afraid.

That said, there's another reason why I'm staying clean of Silver marijuana: it doesn't work for a hedgehog character. With the other hedgehogs, their hairstyles are simple and get the point across: Sonic's goes without saying, Shadow's is more angular to befit a slightly rougher hero, and Amy's is a cute bob cut of sorts. But Silver? Even without the ganja, you've still got the two tentacles making up the back of his head.

I'd rather not be reminded of hentai quills, thanks.

“I thought Crusher-san would like it :’(”

I do find it hilarious that they went through numerous designs for Silver, and this was what they chose to go with. Some of his prototype designs may have fared better had any of them been used instead... but we didn't end up with any of those ones. We ended up with this one, therefore I'm judging this one.

But don’t worry, it’s not all bad with Silver...

The Personality: As far as actual character goes, Silver's personality is as straightfoward as most characters in the series, yet it's no less interesting, because it took a while for it to fully evolve to what it currently is. The seeds of his character - a good-natured yet awkward and rather insecure kind of guy, who doesn't fully understand how the present time works - have always been there, but it was often downplayed in earlier titles due to him being hungry for Iblis Trigger blood... or being an arsehole for no reason.

Although to be fair, everyone in Rivals is an arsehole for no reason.

Eventually though, after the writers gave him a Snickers, these traits got more opportunity to shine. Mostly in side media admittedly, but it's been noted in the games as well. With no Iblis to angst over, he's proven to be a surprisingly bubbly chap, who just wants to know how you're all doing, fellow anthro kids. And whereas his naivety was previously used for intended tragedy to benefit the evil plan of a guy who thought taking the -istoph- out of Mephistopheles would make him inconspicuous, now it's been used for a bunch of low-key contexts that do a much better job at endearing him to the player.

Finally, something I can relate to.

Hell, he even seems to have learned from the Mephiles incident, as he was quick to make it clear to the next shadowy deep-voiced anthro with demonic eyes he met that he wasn't gonna fall for any of them fibs no more, ya hear?

“YouTube and Twitter don’t count.”

All in all, it works well enough, in my opinion. His personality does pave the way for some funny and wholesome moments, and since they’re no longer trying to build him up like he’s Shadow 2.0, he's nowhere near as much of a tool as he was before. So I guess you could say... I like it?

Does this mean I can say that I like the character as a whole then, design and '06-induced idiocy aside?

Well, not quite...

The Execution: This is where the complication part comes into play. We know now that I like his personality, not so much his design, but that's only the half of it. It would be more accurate to say that I like his personality... and dislike everything else.

Aside from that, obviously.

For starters, the creation process for his character and story was summed up with, in their own words, “Think Trunks from Dragon Ball Z”. So he comes off as rather lazy and uninspired. Now I'm not expecting my Sonic characters to be 100% unique, there's always going to be similarities to other franchises no matter what you do, even if subconsciously or by complete coincidence. Taking inspiration in itself is no big deal at all.

But... was that it? Copying a DBZ character to such a blatant extent? Was there no other thought put into it?

Naturally, this ties into an overarching problem: the franchise's mid-00's habit of trying way too hard to be the anthro Dragon Ball Z. Sonic has had DBZ influences since the early days, with the Chaos Emeralds and Super Sonic, but it didn't assimilate itself into every waking aspect of his universe. It was merely an additional flavor that added to the complete package, in the same way that a Death Star with a moustache didn't mean the franchise was suddenly Star Wars the Hedgehog.

But come the turn of the millenium, nearly every main title in the series ended with Super Sonic and/or Super Shadow saving the day, while everyone else either stood around being useless, or only helping in ways that no one actually cares about. Including the in-universe President apparently, since only Sonic and Shadow were featured in the photo on his desk.

Amy smiled. “I guess the rest of us can go fuck ourselves, huh?”

This reached its peak with - of course - Sonic '06, with Silver in particular being an obvious result of this then-ongoing trend. And yes, it would be unfair to use him as a scapegoat, considering it was already a problem long before he turned up. But moreso than even Shadow, it's an era that Silver is forever a relic of, for better or for worse.

But it doesn't stop there. Since Silver is considered a mainstay character, his gimmick of being from the future also creates problems of its own, because in order for him to make further appearances, he keeps turning up for little explained reason, and thus he suffers the Deadly Six problem of being shoved into places where he doesn't belong, for fanservice's own sake. Take Sonic Colours DS for example, where he went back in time JUST to check out Eggman's theme park... Okay...?

On one hand, I’d visit it too, since it's made by Eggman. On the other hand, I’d stay clear of it, since it's made by Eggman.

And when there IS a justification with more weight to it? It's just recycling the '06 routine of trying to avert his ruined future, which isn't much better. The cause may differ depending on the story, but if his future is a permanent shitehole for one reason or another, he might as well cut out the middle man and stay in the present altogether, since that's where his friends are anyway. But they seem intent on not doing that, despite the future schtick being a noose around his neck at this point.

In hindsight, maybe this was a hint to how the rest of the arc would turn out.

And then there's his dynamic with a certain purple cat... No, not Big. The other one.

“I’m here, by the way.”

Simply put: I don't like this dynamic. At all. Or rather, I don't like how they keep milking it. Blaze's backstory was radically changed to justify her presence in Silver's future, and it really shows, since she barely even shows up half the time, as if the developers themselves forgot she was in the game. But her backstory has since been restored to her original alternate dimension interpretation, so hanging around with the grey hedgehog is all good now, right?

To be brutally honest, I probably wouldn't care for this dynamic regardless. But I would be more willing to tolerate it, and I'd refrain from groaning every time they're seen together... if they weren't intent on playing it up so much in spite of '06 being wiped out, sometimes with a bit of commentary involving their thoughts and memories, which only succeeds at making things more confusing. If Blaze is around, Silver will be nearby, and if he's not at first, he will be soon enough. This franchise does have a problem in general with restricting who's allowed to interact with who (I personally believe Sonic Heroes may have led to this, or at least it accelerated it), but I'd argue it's at its most insufferable here, with Blaze's potential and her entire world taking a backseat to being the sidekick of Ganja Man.

And you might say “Well, it's part of the franchise now, so you'll just have to accept it”. To which I ask: Have you accepted Two Worlds? Have you accepted Solo Sonica? Have you accepted Sonic's friends not doing much as of late?

Yeah. That's what I thought. “It’s just how it is” doesn’t mean you can’t criticise it.

Meanwhile, Marine is lucky enough to get so much as a shout out.

So yeah, I have quite an extensive list of grievances involving poor Silver. But... very little of it has to do with him, right? They're all indirect problems that he just so happens to be linked to, as opposed to someone like Chris Thorndyke, who is genuinely a shit character through and through. This is more comparable to Tails being bitchy in Lost World, or Amy being manipulative in Chronicles, or Sonic being a smug dumbass in IDW, or Shadow not wearing a Hawaiian shirt in Boom. Frustrating, regrettable, but not really the character's own fault.

Yet even after all that, there's one last kick in the teeth... How do you fix all this? And how do you fix it when he's since gained a sizable fandom, many of whom like him for these very attributes? If you leave it as it is, you're stuck with this big, awkward mess that everyone pretends to ignore. If you try to do something about it, you'll get complaints about disrespecting the True Silver Spirit, and you’ll get questions about why you didn't create a new character instead... And if you did use a new character for the sake of a clean slate, THEN you'd get complaints about not using Silver.

It's a tough call to be sure, and it's such a shame because like I said, I do appreciate his personality, so I can't say he's bad outright. But with all this... clutter, I can only put him in the average category. So, in he goes.

Crusher Gives Silver a: Thumbs Sideways!

Well, I'm glad this one's out of the way. Putting my thoughts into words with Silver was harder than it should have been. I do slightly regret starting this series off on a rather downer note, but rest assured, it's a lot more positive from this point onwards, since while I have higher praise for some heroes more than others, the hero characters as a whole fare a lot better than the majority of villains not named Eggman.

I guess you could say that I hope to show why Sonic's friends aren't as shitty as the haters would suggest. ;)

[butchshevik]

PLEASE elaborate on ur thoughts abt castlevania

This turned out insanely long so tldr; Castlevania was one of the best shows I’ve ever watched from seasons 1-3 despite being honestly pretty badly done, and then just plain bad in season 4 because its brutal, miserable, no-prisoners-no-happy-endings theme was the only thing keeping the engine running – and keeping it from running off the rails.

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never played a video game ever in my life and I don’t know one thing about the broader Castlevania universe, this critique is designed as if the show stands alone, as it was intended to appeal both to those who had played before and those who never had and have no interest in doing so (me).

Anyways, I think it would not be a mischaracterization to say that Castlevania is, generally, a somewhat poorly-done show, berift with pacing problems, massive plotholes, and offbrand-Whedonisms with a TV-MA rating. Its talented voice actors and delightful artistic direction make up for many of its flaws, but can only solve so much in terms of greater issues with delivery. Between these factors, you could arrive only at a midling show, of no particular note, such as, say, Blood of Zeus. However, I think that the reason that Castlevania was so lauded despite its obvious problems – particularly in the first three seasons – and why it was considered such a compelling, immersive, and just plain interesting show was because it adhered to a very particular theme, and all of its plotlines and diversions were in service to this theme, even when poorly done. To give it further power, Castlevania’s theme is very simple, but also has several streamlined points that are elaborated on to its great success over the first three seasons (and very much cast aside in the fourth, which is why I found the fourth deeply dissatisfying, though I couldn’t decide why at the time).

Castlevania’s general theme is as simple as the old axiom: power corrupts.

This is deceptively obvious, and requires no particular analysis to see in its various acts from season one through three. It is also an exceptionally common theme in scrappy-ragtag-bunch-takes-on-massive-armies cartoons. However, it also has three discrete theses in this theme that make it more unique, and therefore more resonant as the story expands across its runtime. They are as follows, in order of their specificity:

1. No power, at any level, is exempt from corruption,

2. Power is defeated by the weapons it fashioned turning against it, and

3. The corrupting influence of an evil power is not limited to those in power.

To find the basis for this analysis, one needn’t look farther than the first two episodes. Dracula is a power capable of great love, as we are shown in the opening scene. However, at the murder of his wife, he harnesses his power to be used for genocide – surely a great evil, with the only man yet standing against him being his own son (though we are formally introduced to Adrian/Alucard later in the narrative). The Catholic Church, on the other hand, is itself a great power, but here only operating on a local scale, where it kills Lisa as a part of its ongoing effort to root out the growing momentum towards sciences and ‘the old ways,’ thus consolidating its power. This practice is what sicks Dracula’s armies upon them, and thus seals their fall. However, it is not just Dracula and the Church at play. The people of Targoviste cheer the death of Lisa, not raising a hand to stop her execution, and return to the square a year later to celebrate the lack of punishment wrought down by their foe. They too are not innocent, neither in Dracula’s view, nor in the narrative framing of their actions. Peasant tavern-goers a few towns over lash out at Trevor Belmont merely for belonging to a house excommunicated by the Church during a time of dark magic running rampant through the land (yet another example of power begetting its own downfall, as the Church’s excommunication of vampire hunters left them unable to defend themselves at the onslaught of a vampire army) though there is no priest commanding them to do so. The surviving cityfolk of Gresit are frothing at the bit to execute the nomadic Speakers who have settled in their town for going against their religion, and by doing so will appease God into sparing them from Dracula’s horde – or at least, so they are happy to believe. The corruption of the power that governs them has corrupted them as well. This paints an uncompromising, bleak, miserable world, but one that operates on a spellbindingly tight logic that even the protagonists seem to be unable to rise above.

Season Two is really more of a continuation of Season One than a discrete entity, but the ongoing turmoil in the vampire court – the main narrative focus of the show at this point – also revolves around this same corruption of power through the manipulation and betrayal of Hector, the abject and unprecedented bloodthirst of the vampire lords even in the absence of a leader directing them, the castle’s primary power over space being commandeered by Sypha to trap it, and the eventual death of Dracula at the hands of his son and heir (and, of course, his ragtag group of friends). Most notably, though, Alucard and the gang don’t defeat Dracula outright through sheer force and skill – and perhaps are incapable of doing so in the first place. Instead, he realizes at the last moment the depths of his corruption and repents, not by vowing to change his ways, as would be done in a show with a lighter tone, but instead allowing his son to kill him. Even with this monumental sacrifice, however the damage to the world, his castle, and his son (not to mention the entire city of Braille, which is virtually leveled as Sypha wrests control over the magical keep) has already been done, and is in all cases irreparable, even if people try to pick up the pieces and knock the bowels from the parapets. This, perhaps, also illuminates a fourth thesis:

4. A corrupt power cannot be destroyed without massive collateral damage.

But let’s put a pin in that for the time being.

Season Three is easily the absolute best season, despite its many, many lows. Both the best and worst lines of dialogue are in S3 (most all of Isaac’s speeches among the best, and most all the dialogue of the Council or Taka and Sumi being among the worst), and despite a healthy serving of gristle and gore, the monster designs begin to lean strongly towards the colorful and silly instead of the sleek, black night creatures of S1. However, S3 also better explores the minutiae of its theses with smaller-stakes plotlines, now following the characters individually as their paths temporarily diverge. Trevor and Sypha find a corrupted priory with ex-Christian monks who have turned their backs on God after witnessing his inability to protect them from the scourge of Dracula, and now have turned to worship a night creature created in his image. Hector is now a prisoner who holds a key to great power, which four vampire sisters hope to strip from him. Isaac finds himself in the position of ‘the hand that holds the knife’ and begins amassing power for himself on the advice of other outsiders and at the necessity of facing down local authorities, who see him as a target or, later, a challenge to their own rule. Alucard, left to guard his father’s keep and Trevor’s ancestral home, is given to start understanding himself as an instructor for the next generation of vampire hunters, though the loneliness of his newfound responsibility and authority lead him to try to be both ‘teacher’ and ‘friend’ to his students. Each of these plots culminate in what I would genuinely call one of the most evocative and brilliant sequences of modern television – Trevor/Sypha and Issac in the heat of separate, horrific battles, and Hector and Alucard in the heat of intimate congresses.

These four scenes, typical separately in the gore-and-tits world of horror animation, are unique and genuinely compelling because they are all so closely pivoting on the same theme – even if the viewer cannot consciously describe why they can easily transition from Sypha blasting apart a demented monk under a blood-red sky to Hector being seduced by his vampire captor in a breath. Theme is preserved in every sequence, tying them together without a single character, location, antagonist, or force in common. Trevor and Sypha kill the night creature in the priory and stop the resurrection of Dracula, but the entire town is killed before they even can begin their battle, and they discover the town judge who was helping them was a murderer in his own right long before Dracula’s influence perverted the ascetic monks; Isaac storms the city of an opposing magician who has sacrificed a town to work as his slaves, and one by one he converts them into his own undead army, becoming the very power that he is actively destroying; Hector is seduced and ultimately entrapped by the youngest and most innocent of the sisters who captured him, his naivety in the face of her disarming politeness and beauty leading him to ruin; Alucard’s students take advantage of his loneliness and use his vulnerability to bind him and demand more of his knowledge, as despite him not leveraging his power against them, they have never known anyone who would not inevitably do so if given the chance, and Alucard is forced to kill them using that very same knowledge they wanted and feared. Power is corrupt. No power is exempt from corruption. Power is defeated by the weapons it fashioned turning against it. The corrupting influence of power is not limited to those in power. A corrupt power cannot be destroyed without massive collateral damage.

We leave the season finale with a demoralized ending. Trevor and Sypha burn the remnants of Lindenfeld to the ground and head out on the road, defeated despite their victory. Hector is a slave to his vampire mistress, who will compel him to raise an army in her and her sisters’ name. Alucard weeps in his childhood bed before mounting the bodies of his former students on pikes to will others away, becoming the very man he killed. Only Isaac, whose rise to power has been victorious, and whose desire in using it is yet to be determined, leaves the season with more than he started with.

All this previous summary and analysis is to say, to this point we have had three intensely tight-knit seasons of resonant, deeply moving storylines around a central theme with complex nuances, that has supported patchy scripts and poor pacing. There is also a clear indication of what is to come. Our central heroes are weakened and demoralized. In Styria, a vampire coven is forming an army hellbent on destruction. There are two wildcards in play– Isaac, a powerful forgemaster who can be relied upon to fight against Carmilla and Hector, but whose further intentions are mysterious even to himself, and Alucard, whose trauma at the hands of his pupils and friends has left him jaded, despondent, and apathetic towards humanity on the whole. The setup is magnificent. The drama that the close of S3 offers is palpable – how will these separate paths converge? Who will meet whom first? Will it be Trevor and Sypha with Alucard, their old friend, bodies hanging from his gates? Or will it be Alucard and Isaac, who are both canonically interested in men at moral crossroads and have complex relationships to Dracula and mankind? Will the three groups all team up against the Styrian threat, or will Alucard or Isaac defect? Will Isaac wipe through Styria and become the main antagonist himself, a new power quite literally built on the corpses left by the old, or perhaps form a secondary front in the Belnades, Belmont, and Tepes war against evil?

Here enters Season Four.

I want to make it clear that I did not expect much from this show. I wanted the four threads to weave together, and I was willing to put up with as many poorly-placed f-bombs and overpowered fight scenes as they could throw in to get it done. I wanted to see how they could make a satisfying ending out of a show that was premised on defeat, destruction, and misery.

Season Four, instead, turns its back on theme, consistency, or nuance.

Everyone, literally, every character, is happy at the end of Season Four. It turns out that Alucard just needs a cool bisexual girlfriend in a position of power that should have been treated with extreme skepticism after S3, and his trauma is on the mend. Sypha and Trevor bumble around in Targoviste for no clear reason, occasionally butting heads with some no-name vampires and the household guard to a now-dead royal family before finding a lot of cool weapons that are used one time, and become expectant parents. Saint Germain comes back, his somewhat odd role apparently not yet done, and something close to a sacrifice-is-required plotline almost emerges but falls flat as the deaths of the refugees defending the castle is hardly treated with the same horror as the deaths of the village of the previous season finale. Isaac disposes of Styria alone, never exchanging a single word with the main cast, but even Carmilla isn’t truly defeated as she commits suicide by her own hand to save her blood from being touched by someone unworthy. Hector is more or less fine with being a slave, actually, because he’s just that naive, and Lenore also just walks into the daylight of her own voilition, deciding that power just isn’t worth fighting for and it’s better to be dead. This neither bothers nor pleases Hector, her slave/lover, or Isaac, who ultimately kills neither Hector (against whom he’s pledged his revenge) or Lenore (against whom he’s pledged his conquest). The other vampire sisters – Striga, the military mastermind, and Morana, the immortal strategist – also decide fighting for their home against an unknown threat just isn’t worth beans, especially if their two less-martial, less intelligent sisters are presumed murdered at its hands, and leave to become mercenaries in parts unknown. Trevor’s great, final sacrifice against a manifestation of Death that frankly came straight out of left field – the closest thing the season has to a truly moving moment – is rendered moot, because Saint Germain spares him using the plot machine of the Infinite Corridor and he’s totally fine and makes his way back to the castle on a magic horse and will be in fighting shape again in two, maybe three weeks. (The corpses are also conveniently gone by the time Trevor and Sypha get to the castle.) Even Dracula and his dead wife come back to life, and she doesn’t mind that he killed literally thousands of people in her name, despite her pleas to him to not do exactly that thing while on her pyre, or that he almost murdered their son twice. Everyone’s happy. Everyone wins. Everyone smiles and hugs (except, of course, Isaac and the main cast, who have still never even been introduced and it is not entirely clear if they’re on the same side).

Before someone pulls the Ursula LeGuin quote out on me, I am not anti-happy-ending. I am anti-bad-writing. If the major theme of your work is that power corrupts, and that victory can only be bought with massive sacrifice, as shown in the analysis above, you do not set yourself up for a sunshine and rainbows conclusion to your heroes’ journey. Someone has to lose. Someone probably has to die, or at least, be altered beyond the point of returning to the status quo. The battle can be won, but it must be honestly and brutally fought. When the major idea of a story is that kings and absolute power are bad, King Isaac ruling with narrative impunity does not feel like a satisfying end. Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard becoming the founders of a new and bustling township and a happy family is… skeptical at best. There are no consequences for the deaths of countless thousands on Dracula’s shoulders – his wife doesn’t even chew him out, and they both get a free pass out of hell. Everyone is better off than they were even before hell literally rained demons down on the earth.

This season is particularly egregious, in my opinion, because it actually has better writing and pacing than the previous three. In order to fix the most common criticisms of the show, the writers turned their backs on what made the show actually good – its theme. Seasons 1-3 were flawed, deeply, and no one can deny it (“You are Treffy now” lives in my nightmares as a phrase even a 13 year old wouldn’t have written in a crackfic a-la 2012) but they were still compelling, powerful, and meaningful. They had a message, a purpose. But in order to make sure that every fan’s fave survived the ending – except Carmilla, who instead died gloriously – and no one would be disappointed, the writers forgot what made the show powerful in the first place was the feeling that there was no escape, that anyone, or maybe even everyone, might die. And, perhaps, that is its final great irony; the strength of Castlevania’s dark, dismal central thesis was its own greatest enemy, and eventually brought about its whimper of an end.

[bioticgoddess]

Summary: "Never said the plan wasn't complex, only that it'd work." - Nymue, a warlock, as she works on some paint touch ups to her ghost Merlin's shell.

Warlock Nymue, her Fire Team, and their friends within the Tower are several flavors of done with watching the slow and painfully awkward waltz that is Saint-14 and Osiris in a post-Sagira world. What else is there to do but hatch a plan...or several...to convince these (very) Old Men to do something other than continue on with their stumbling.

Pairings: Osiris/Saint-14 (O14) [Canon]

--

I. Outside the City, Mid-Afternoon:

She ambushed him. Dragging the senior Warlock out beyond the wall to a cliff overlook not far from the protection of the wall. It had served as an escape route for the then-lightless Guardians and civilians during the Red War. Despite being relatively unsheltered, it was- thanks to the patrol of her fire team - a safe place for now. Her ghost floated close enough that they could have rested on her shoulder. Voice filled with the smile it couldn't give, the ghost spoke, "Nymue, the others confirm, coast is clear."

"Thank you Merlin," she hadn't taken her glowing green eyes off the older Warlock. “Give Iothane and Verity my thanks.” The ghost bobbed like it was nodding at her. Iothane was a broad shoulder but bookish Awoken Titan. Their Hunter, Verity, had a penchant for getting into trouble - the kind that earned accolades and titles and an obscene amount of glimmer. Both had agreed without a second thought when the Warlock relayed her plan.

In his typically composed and regal way, the older Guardian didn’t balk beneath the younger woman’s glare. Behind the scarf that served as a facemask, he returns his own piercing glare. Golden-brown eyes locked with her own and were only visible beneath his Phoenix helm because of their height difference.

Her ghost dissolved away with the kind of groan that accompanied rolled eyes, disappearing for the time. Though they were likely gone to find Glint and Crow aboard the HELM. To warn them that one of the quiet Hunter’s favored Warlocks was going to be in a foul mood.

"I am going back to the City," Osiris snapped, breaking the tense silence that had fallen over them. He didn’t move or even pretend like he was going to. He remained rooted in place, challenging the younger Warlock to further explain herself. A challenge she’d expected.

“No, you’re going to hear what I have to say first,” she countered, arms folded over the black and violet of her robes. “Or I can get Iothane to come and set up a barrier until my persistence wears you down old man.” It wasn’t a threat, the gentle jibe at the end as glaring as the sunbeams that reflected off his helm.

Snorting he continued to glare, jaw tense. Nymue was certain that, if she squinted, she could see him grind his teeth. “Fine.”

“We’re worried about you. Saint, Zavala, Ikora, Crow, Amanda, our ghosts, all of us. Everyone whose lives you’ve touched is worried about you. None of us can even begin to imagine what you’re going through without,” she caught the narrowing of his gaze and the straightening of his shoulders before Sagira’s name left her lips but said it anyway. “Sagira. She was a part of you and there with you in a way that maybe Crow and Glint comprehend. But...you also broke every rule of temporal mechanics that I can think of in order to save Saint. I didn’t get to see you two together before losing her but...the way Verity describes it...well, she is fond of saying that she wants a partner who looks at her the way you and Saint looked at each other when no one was watching. Or at least when you thought no one would see.”

He swallowed and hung his head. Nymue persisted. “It’s not going to be easy, but...you can’t shut everyone out. It’s only going to hurt more in the long term. At least...don’t shut out Saint. No one can deny what and how deeply you feel for one another.”

The silence returned with the sun’s continued trek towards the horizon.

The Great Osiris stared down at his feet, presumably mulling over how to respond and if making good on his threat to storm off back to the Tower was the right plan all along. There was nothing she could do to stop him, not really, and the both knew it. Yet he stayed there, the focus of the younger Warlocks’ gaze while he (hopefully) thought further on what he could or would say and where to even begin.

Raptors called in the distance, hunting some rodent or warning other birds to stay out of their territory. He’d been doing that for months - posture and snapping at some of the other guardians in the tower. The Old Man’s way of pushing back those closest to him, keeping them away. Nymue had had enough after overhearing the conversation between Saint-14 and Osiris about the corruption that had seeped into the Trials. Sure, Saint had insisted that it wasn’t anything to be worried about but the way the Exo had shifted on his feet told another story. He was more upset, more concerned, than he dared share - with any of them.

Voice heavy and shaky enough that it sounded like he was crying or was about to cry, “I’m going to die Nymue. One day, I will die a final death and leave him alone. There is no Ghost in all the system who can bring me back when that day comes.” He toed the ground with his boot, “Saint is my everything. The only person who understood me half so well was Sagira. She kept me from despair during my exile and again when I did not think he could be saved and now…” He trailed off, hands floating up to hide his shaded face.

“Osiris,” this time the younger Awoken’s voice was gentle, “Talk to him. You know Saint better than any of us.” She rested a hand on one of his forearms, careful not to get caught in any of the wires on his gauntlets. “Let him be there for you. The both of you deserve the chance, no matter what the end may be.”

Head and eyes tilted up to her face. “When did you become so wise,” Osiris wondered. His brows relaxed and eyes, through red with tears that threatened to spill forth, no longer contained the storm that had been brewing for the last several months. It even looked as though he might have let a smile cross part way over his features behind that scarf of his.

“I had a good teacher.”

---

II. The Hangar Bay

He’d nodded. He’d agreed to be less closed off. Every time he looked in the hanger and saw Saint, however, his throat closed and heart hammered in his chest. It threatened to break free of his breast bone and ribs. How had Nymue convinced him to unburden himself out in the wilds? How? What damn fool sorcerery did the girl know that he’d missed in all his centuries!? Oh but she’d been right, damn her. He needed to talk to Saint, he owed him that much and more. No matter how long he had, he needed the Titan in his life. He always had. Then he caught his gaze, cheeks turning a deeper shade of brownish-red when his husband looked up in his general direction. Not for the last time was he thankful for the cover of his scarf.

Like a child caught in Ikora’s severe gaze, he gave a stiff about face and marched off back towards the market and his now Vanguard former pupil.

--

“Third time today; you owe me glimmer,” Verity grumbled from her perch atop her drop ship, watching Osiris scurry away regally. If he’d had a Hunter’s cloak to billow behind him it could have been comical. Instead his retreats bordered on depressing.

Turning her head up and to the left to see her team-leader, legs stretched out along the wing of the drop ship, the warlock grinned wryly, “Not yet. Crow and I have a plan.” Her Awoken skin sparkled with her air of confidence.

“You need to take your own advice when it comes to him,” the hunter rolled her eyes.

Iothane chuckled, raking a hand through his short cropped navy-blue hair, “She’s got a point. Talk to him.” The Titan was laid out on a work lift beneath the same wing serving as their Warlock’s chaise, fidgeting with a wiring harness.

Snorting and rolling her eyes, she glared, “First, shut up both of you. Second, I’ll think about it, after we fix this.” She waved her hand between where they could see Saint-14 and where Osiris had been.

Their ghosts floated overhead, looking between one another, shifting in what resembled shaking heads.

--

Crow and Nymue leaned conspiratorially against Amanda Holliday’s work station in the Hangar. The Hunter occasionally looked over his Warlock companion’s shoulder to see if Saint-14 had moved or if Osiris had returned to the Hanger Bay. “You sure this will work,” he asked the blonde shipwright.

She shook a hand dismissively, not looking up from the interface, “I don’t tell you how to fight, you don’t tell me how to reprogram the Transmat System. Alright?” Her tone was slightly indignant, offended even.

“Yes ma’am,” he stammered, elbowing Nymue when she laughed behind her hands.

After a few minutes of tapping and swiping her fingers across the screen, Amanda warned, “You two don’t want to be anywhere near the City when they get out of there y’know.”

“Got that covered,” the Warlock grinned. “We will be running a recon mission on Nessus with my Fire Team.” Crow nodded, straightening as he kept a vigil watch out for the two senior Guardians.

“And you’re sure Ikora and Zavala are okay with this,” the woman turned finally, rolling her shoulders several times to stretch back out from her stooped position over the console. A confirmation request screen glaring up at her, the work her co-conspirators had tasked her to complete not yet finished.

The Awoken woman rattled, hands waving as she recounted her last interaction with the Vanguard Warlock. “Zavala? No clue. Ikora, well, she said something about turning a blind eye before winking at me, which was weird, and going off to her Library with both Ophiucus and Geppetto.”

“Well, alright then,” Amanda chuckled, her attention returning to the screen. With a few final taps of the console, she finished her work. “We’re good to go. Good luck.”

--

III. The Tower Library: A Private Study

Saint-14 Pushed on the door again. It wouldn’t budge. His ghost Geppetto was nowhere to be found, he’d called for her several times in the hope that she could help them - Osiris and himself - find their way out of the room. To maybe go fetch Zavala or Ikora or anyone of the others and see if they could open it from the other side.

“It’s no use Saint, this room is like Ikora’s library - only one way in or out. Transmat,” Osiris sat with a huff in one of the plush chairs.

“Yes, Yes, but then surely we should be able to Transmat out of here,” the Titan countered. Then the it hit him, like an arc-grenade to the face, that was the problem. They couldn’t Transmat. “Oh no,” he whispered softly, raising one of his big hands to his face. Someone had set a trap and the two of them had walked right into it. He let silence fill the room, occasionally punctuated by a pensive huff or hum coming from his husband’s seat next to the tall skinny window - their primary source of light. It was, upon further assessment as he finally turned around, too skinner for either of them to hope to squeeze through.

Feet hitting the throw-rug laden floor heavily, Saint strode from the sealed mockery of a door to the chair opposite Osiris. Pulling off his helmet as he sat, the Exo asked, “So how were you lured into this trap?”

“Nymue,” The man groaned, his own helm perched like a bird on a stack of books to his left. Saint’s came to rest on the sad little window sill, half balanced on the table between them. “There was some text she and her Ghost were having difficulty with. One day,” he shook his head and sighed, “I’ll learn just how crafty my students can be.” It was applicable to Ikora as well, and every other warlock or Guardian he had mentored over the years.

“Her Titan friend Iothane,” he chuckled, recalling how the stocky Awoken man had come to him earlier in the day with a research request of great importance, or he speculated as such, to the City’s Titan. One that could only be filled by Saint, or so the younger Guardian had said before taking off at what was - in hindsight - a suspiciously brisk pace. How gullible he’d been, letting himself be pulled into such an obvious trap. “The boy has a silver tongue, convincing enough that I believed there to be something of great importance to Titans here.” He snorted.

Osiris laughed. It was a light laugh, not as sharp and dark as it had been of late. “I’m having a hard time picturing that,” he shook his head, “That boy is clever but he is not, as you said, silver-tongued.”

“He must have practiced then,” he was stroking his chin in thought, keeping his eyes on Osiris who sat at an angle that kept them from looking at one another. Some of the lines that had developed over the last many months were fading, thinning. He’d been furrowing his brow less and he seemed, from the other Old Man’s voice, that he wasn’t clenching his jaw so much. “Ay, not that it matters. We are still stuck here, the two of us.” Tentatively, his left hand slid across the table top, closing enough distance that if Osiris put his hand on the table they could meet half-way.

Nodding, his husband added, “Yes, I suspect we have to bide ourtime before the “children” are content to let us out.”

“You don’t think they did this on purpose do you?”

“Absolutely. Nymue ambushed me the -,” he stopped, voice knotting in his throat and body going rigid. Saint had felt the change in him before the Warlock’s shoulders squared and he knotted his hands in his lap.

To hell with this. If they were stuck in here then he was going to make the best of it.

The Titan stood, pivoting around the table so he could stand before Osiris. His shadow loomed over him, even without the cut of his helmet’s fin, he could be more imposing than Shaxx, Zavala, and Saladin combined. Despite his kindness, Saint-14 had earned a reputation on the battlefield. Shaxx’s nervousness over a decades old glint-debt hadn’t been without cause. His hands came to rest on the feathered pauldrons of the Warlock. “I should have been there,” voice soft, “Perhaps Sagira would still be with us.”

“It’s not your fault,” he repeated the well-worn refrain, “If you had been there it was just as likely we would have lost them both,” he spoke of Geppetto. Swallowing he shifted anxiously, pulling down the scarf so his closely shaven silver-white beard was visible. Brown eyes flitting up to meet Saint’s luminescent ones, “I told you, I am not willing to let time take you again.”

Giving a shrug of a nod he continued, “Very well, but you do not need to be an island my love. Is that not what you said to me once?” His head tilted to the left as he studied the other man’s face, making one of a hundred-thousand mental imprints of him. The sag of his face as grief that had been left to marinate pulled his lips into a sharp frown and attempted to drag his whole head so that he wasn’t able to meet the Exo’s intense gaze.

Still rigid, Osis nodded. The tightness of his body found its way into his voice, “But what if I do? What if I already am?”

“Then I will be the sea that surrounds and defends you and you will not be alone,” the Titan countered. Brows raised as he shook his head with a loving smile. In the time before Sagira’s loss, it would have made him laugh and earned the Titan a kiss from his husband. The kind that would have had both their Ghosts teasing them in the way that only they could. This time, all he caught was the briefest smile. It quickly disappeared and, voice sad but still kind, he implored, “Osiris, please, look at me.”

The Warlock slowly tilted his head up so his eyes were no longer locked on Saint-14’s chest. As if the movement had been his cue, the Exo’s palms skated across his shoulders and up his neck until they cupped Osiris’ cheeks and lower jaw. “You are not alone. How many times must I remind you of that? Or that I will always support you hmm? No matter how much time we have, you taught me that my Phoenix. And together, there is no obstacle we cannot overcome.”

Voice cracking, the tears he’d held back finally spilling over, Osiris asked, “Even when time takes it’s payment and I…”

“Especially then,” Saint was kneeling now, no matter what anyone ever said he was graceful when he wanted to be. Wedging himself between his husband’s knees so their foreheads could rest against one another he continued, “You will not lose me to time and I will not let you seal yourself away for grief. Sagira would never forgive us.” His nose bumped Osiris’ affectionately. “Besides, we should take advantage of what time is given to us.” He smiled broadly when the other guardians’ hands came to rest over the backs of his own.

The tears trailed down Osiris’ cheeks. His smile shaking as he spoke, “Then we do that. I will endeavor to be as strong a support to you as you have always been to me.”

“You do that every day,” Saint pressed a kiss to his nose, “We do this together then, hmm?”

“Together, habibi.”

[silverarmedassassin]

Home for the Holidays (2/2)

Bucky x Reader | Word Count: 5,661 | Warnings: None

A/N: Here is part two! Thank you to those who humored me and read this little mini story! Part 1 can be found on my masterlist, which is conveniently pinned to my blog 😬

This is part 2 to my holiday submission for @wonderlandmind4​‘s fall/winter writing challenge. My prompt was: Character B is very enthusiastic to introduce character A to all their traditions, but tries to be sensitive when A seems like they’re struggling to fit in/enjoy themselves.

Dividers by the lovely @firefly-graphics​

“You’re going to love it here,” you announce as you take the exit to your small hometown. The drive out of the city had been relatively quiet, the playlist you’d crafted specifically for the trip was only briefly interrupted a handful of times by you pointing out a landmark or attraction tied to childhood memories. Normally, silence on a road trip would make you uncomfortable, but not with Bucky. In the few months you’ve known him, you’d come to understand he was a man of very few words most of the time, so you rarely felt the need to fill the empty space with senseless words.

You’d gotten to know him a lot better in the few weeks leading up to Christmas. He had been making an effort to spend time outside of his apartment more, which often meant he would come down to yours to share a meal or watch a movie. It was nice, getting to spend so much uninterrupted time with Bucky and, if the offhand comments that Sam had offered the handful of times you’d seen him coming and going, Bucky was enjoying the time too. If anything, it was helping him open up again. And, if that’s all you could offer your neighbor, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, instead he continues to look at his window at the passing landscape. Driving home has always been one of your favorite things to do, as the concrete jungle of the city slowly tapered off into nothing but dense forest, hills, and nature preserves. As much as you loved where you were in life now, there were always moments in time where you questioned why you’d ever decided to re-root yourself in New York City.

Once off the interstate, it doesn’t take you long to reach town limits, and it’s only a few short minutes of driving to reach your parent’s home. As you pull your car into the drive, you see Bucky tense out of your peripheral. You’d had a feeling the reason he was being so quiet today was because he was nervous, but this subtle action reaffirmed that.

“My dad’s not home yet,” you state nonchalantly in an attempt to ease his anxieties a little. “It’s just my mom home. I told her to be on her best behaviour, so you don’t have to worry about a million questions.”

Bucky glances over at you and the look in his eyes tells you that statement has eased him just a little. The fact he was so nervous to meet you family made you feel bad for even inviting him in the first place. But you knew he didn’t have anyone, as Rebecca’s family was going on a cruise, and Bucky had shared Sam was spending the holiday with his mother out of state. Despite your wanting to help him feel less alone during this awkward time of transition and settling, you felt guilty for bringing him all the way here.

Before you can let that guilt settle uncomfortably in your chest, you pop the trunk and jump out of the car. You’re only going to be home for four days, as Bucky didn’t want to stay away for too long and you wanted to use the extra time off of work to finally finish making your apartment feel like your home. Due to that, you both only had a small duffle of clothing, so unloading your things was quick.

As you lead Bucky up to the front door, you’re suddenly reminded to alert him of one tiny detail that might make him uncomfortable. As you turn to tell him, the front door of flings open and your mom comes barreling out, arms wide open. “I forgot to tell you,” you say, voice slightly muffled by your mother’s arms, “Mom’s a hugger.”

“Oh hush,” your mom says as she pulls away from you, her sights already set on Bucky. “Everyone needs a good hug.”

That night, Bucky had an easier time falling asleep than he ever imagined. New places, mixed with the fear of having one of his nightmares typically kept him up, if not all night, into the wee hours of the morning. The non-prescription sleeping pills Sam had suggested, mixed with the calming effect you seemed to have on him, were likely to thank for the early night. He isn’t surprised, however, when he startles awake around three in the morning. As he sits up in bed, sweat-drenched hair sticking to the sides of his face, he tries to remember what exactly the dream was about. It was another little something Sam and the others had suggested he do, something about acknowledging the things that hurt us most or something.

After a few minutes of sorting through his brain and trying to pin-point exactly what was the cause of his sudden consciousness, he gives up. Bucky decides that, instead of attempting to fall back to sleep right away, he would refill his glass of water and attempt to clear his mind of any lingering shadows.

Your home is quiet, a kind of peace settles over the entire building that no place in the city could ever harness. He thinks that maybe one day he’ll retire, move someplace quiet like this, maybe have a family of his own. Bucky pauses slightly in his descent of the staircase, caught off-guard by his own thoughts. He’d never been one to think about the future, not since he woke up in it. Just living to see the sunrise over Manhattan another day was enough for him. But his mind hasn’t quite been the same since you came along.

As he rounds the corner into the kitchen, he expects to find it devoid of others, but instead finds your mother sitting at the small kitchen table you’d all been sitting around just hours before, laughing and sharing a lifetime of memories with an outsider.

“Trouble sleeping,” she asks without looking over to where he’s standing. Instead, she raises a steaming mug to her lips and takes a tentative sip.

“Ye-yeah,” Bucky says, voice still thick with sleep and disuse.

Your mom hums as she looks over to him, profile lit effortlessly by the early winter moonlight streaming in from the back door. “That’s nothing a good cup of tea can’t help fix. There’s still water in the kettle if you’d like.”

Bucky watches her a moment longer before accepting her offer. She directs him on where everything he needs is located and, before he knows it, he’s sitting down across from her, his own warm mug full of a lavender and something concoction. If anything, at least it smells good.

“I’m really glad Y/N brought you along, Bucky,” your mom says as she takes another sip of her own tea. There’s a glint in the corner of her eye that Bucky can’t quite place, and it admittedly makes him a little nervous. “I do have to admit that her father and I were a bit shocked when she said she was bringing someone home. And then finding out that someone was a...well, you. I guess you never expect your own kid to get mixed up in the affairs of a superhero,” she chuckles to herself.

Bucky takes a large drink of his tea, instantly regretting it as it burns his throat the entire way down. He doesn’t know how to respond to that. When it had sunk in that he was going to be visiting you home for Christmas, meeting your parents and seeing your hometown, it made him anxious. He remembered that, back when he was still the punk who ran the streets of old-time Brooklyn like he owned the place, when a girl invited you to meet her parents it meant you were going steady, or at least headed in that direction. He knew things had changed a lot in terms of dating and relationships in general between men and women in the eighty-odd years he had been under, but he couldn’t help but wonder if this - spending one-on-one time with his beautiful downstairs neightbor’s mom - still held the same implications as it did in the forties.

“I, uh,” Bucky isn’t sure what to say. He doesn’t want to make it sound like he is disinterested in you, he knew that you talked about him in some capacity with your mother, afterall. But at the same time he didn’t want to sound too overzealous on the off-chance that this entire trip meant nothing other than a friendly visit for the holiday. “I’m really thankful you opened your home for me.”

Your mom takes Bucky off guard when she snorts out a small laugh. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to...Listen, I don’t know exactly what is going on between you and my daughter, but whatever it is, it’s really good for her. Y/N is, as you’ve likely picked up, a giver and a caretaker. She never asks for help when she needs it, and rarely accepts it when it’s offered.

“She took the whole Snap thing pretty hard, harder than she let on I think. That’s when she really threw herself at taking care of others, so much so that she forgot to take care of herself sometimes.” She pauses and looks intently down at her mug. “Y/N needs to be taken care of sometimes, too. And, whether you know it or not, I think you do that. I haven’t seen my daughter this happy in a long time. So of course we would open our home for you. Now and whenever you may need it.”

Bucky’s unsure of how to respond to such a tender sentiment, but the way your mom is looking at him tells him no response is needed. It’s a look, he assumes, only a mother can give. One of knowing and mystery and tender loving. One that she so openly offered to him, a stranger, an intruder in her home and holiday season. He realizes then that, everything he’s gone through, everything he’s ever done both voluntarily and not, doesn’t carry as much as he’s been thinking. That, despite it all, maybe he is more than what HYDRA made him and that he is deserving of the good things that have come to him in recent weeks.

“Well, Bucky,” your mom says as she takes one final sip of her tea. “I’m going to try to get some sleep. I suggest you do the same. Christmas Eve is kind of a big deal around here. You’ll need the energy, especially if you want to keep up with Y/N.”

Bucky quickly learned that when your mom said that Christmas Eve was a big deal, she meant it. You had come knocking at his door a little past seven this morning, telling him that, if he did not get up, you would not hesitate to grab a handful of snow. Despite the too few hours of sleep he ended up getting and the desire to hide away just a little longer before facing your entire family again, Bucky pulled himself out of bed and plastered a smile on his face.

The morning passes in a flurry of Christmas activity. Cookie dough is beat and patted and molded into festive shapes while various Christmas melodies flowed through the home. It was tradition, you had said as you deposited a fresh batch of snickerdoodles into the oven, that Christmas Eve morning was reserved for baking and eggnog making and singing out-of-tune to Christmas songs. So, you taught him how to use a rolling pin properly, showed him the perfect amount of pressure to put on the cookie cutters, and even scolded him when he took a spoonful of dough all for himself. The uncooked sugary goodness was just as good as he remembered.

As the last of the cookies are placed on a rack to cool, and the eggnog is nestled neatly into the fridge to chill, Bucky feels his back pocket start to vibrate. His heart drops momentarily when he pulls his phone out and sees Sam’s name scrolling across the screen. Sam only called for two reasons: Avengers business or to coax him out of the hole Bucky sometimes digs himself into, and only one was pertinent to the situation at hand.

Bucky excuses himself and steps out onto the back porch where he can talk in private. “Is everything okay,” Bucky asks in place of a proper greeting.

“Merry fuckin’ Christmas to you too, bud,” comes Sam’s witty response. Bucky has never wished to reach through a phone and slap the grin he just knows Sam is wearing right off his face. “I was just calling to see how things were going.”

“They’re fine, Sam,” Bucky huffs out, crossing his metal arm across his chest. “I made cookies for the first time, I think.”

Bucky can’t help but crack a smile when Sam starts to laugh on the other end. “That must have been a scene. I would tell everyone not to eat ‘em, though.”

The easygoing banter continues for a few minutes before the topic shifts to how Bucky is really doing. He shares his past day - because really he’s only been away from the city for a little over twenty-four hours - and Sam updates him on the goings-on at his own family gathering. Bucky listens intently while watching a pair of cardinals take turns pecking at the bird feeder hanging just beyond the porch and the sunset looming just beyond the yard.

“You sound really good, Buck. I’m real happy this neighbor can look past your shitty moods and spend time with you,” Sam says before saying his goodbyes. Bucky would be lying if he said he wasn’t happy to hear from him. It was one of those little things that reminded him there were people out there that cared.

Instead of going back inside right away, Bucky decides to stay out on the back porch a little longer to enjoy the view of the setting sun and the tranquility that comes with being out of the city. It was rare that he found himself in a place as quiet as this, with a view unobstructed by skyscrapers. He wanted to savor the moment a little longer, appreciate the things he hadn’t realized he’d been missing for all these years.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” While lost in reverie, Bucky hadn’t heard you join him on the porch. He looks over to find you standing just to his left, already focused on the view. He admires the way the last rays of daylight streak across your face, takes in the way it makes you look like you’re lit from within by some ethereal, otherworldly energy. And maybe you were. After all, you’d somehow found a way to look past his flaws and broken pieces and settle yourself deep within his bones, whether you knew it or not.

“Yea, it is,” Bucky replies without taking his eyes off of your face. He’s not sure if he means the sun or you.

You look at him, then, the softest smile he’s ever seen planted on your face. He notices that under your left eye is a streak of flour that had found a home there at some point throughout the day. Without much thought, Bucky makes to wipe it away. “You have a little...” when he swipes his finger across the soft skin of your cheek, he swears he hears your breath hitch in your throat, but he tries not to think too much into it. He had unintentionally used his left hand, after all.

You both stand there like that for a moment, his thumb still lingering just under your lower lashes and you looking at him like he was the one responsible for this sunrise and sunset every day. The spell is broken, however, when a winter breeze blows through, causing your to shiver and curl in on yourself for warmth.

“Hey, so, if you’re up to it, we still have one more Y/L/N tradition that we have yet to complete.” You wait for a reaction, and Bucky’s not sure what you were looking for, but when he doesn’t say anything, you continue. “The city goes all out with the lights each year, and we usually go downtown to look at them. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. It’s usually kinda busy, and I know it’s cold and-”

“I’d love to,” Bucky smiles, and when he sees the unparalleled joy that spreads across your face, he knows then that he would say or do anything to be the reason for that look over and over again.

It’s just beginning to flurry when you make it to the main drag of your little hometown. Your parents lived just far enough away to feel like a quiet neighborhood, but close enough that you could easily walk downtown without immediately regretting your decision.

It comes as no surprise when you find the wider-than-normal sidewalks in front of the neat row of old storefronts crowded with other residents bundled up in their winter’s best. Despite the shoulder-to-shoulder situation in some sections of the street, you didn’t mind the crowd one bit. The unique and beautifully decorated window displays and intricately lit buildings and trees made the awkward shuffling and getting elbowed by strangers worth it.

At some point, you get separated from your parents and, when you turn to see Bucky’s reaction to the spectacle, you find he’s a good two couples away from you. You decide then that the only way you’re going to avoid being separated from anyone else is by looping your arm through his. He doesn’t fight it, and there’s only a slight moment of stiff awkwardness before he relaxes his arm and allows you to guide him through the crowd. Your cheeks hurt from the genuine smile on your face, and your throat is already feeling the effects of the amount of talking you’re doing. You have to point everything out to Bucky, though, from the horrifying, oversized light-up tooth the town’s dentist has put on display since you could remember to the ever-changing elegant light show that danced across the courthouse. You’re so enthralled in making sure you share every last detail of this special tradition that you fail to notice the way Bucky has closed in on himself.

Despite the glistening lights and the way the moonlight was catching on the large snowflakes as they fell, the light that usually shown in Bucky’s eyes had dimmed to barely the flicker of a candle. The smile that graced his lips was for your benefit and only appeared when you looked back at him to ensure he was still listening to you. As much as he loved watching your enthusiasm seep out of every pore, and enjoyed hearing the way the pitch of your voice got just a bit higher when you spotted something you especially enjoyed, Bucky wasn’t having a good time. The crowd, despite living in New York City, was making him nauseous. Every time he let you pull him down a side street, each seemingly smaller than the next, you felt the knot that had settled in the bottom of his belly tighten just a little bit more. At least when he was in the city, he felt comfortable, knew his way around most of modern-day Brooklyn, and had identified the perfect escape routes just in case a situation went south. Luckily, he’s never had to utilize such routes. But here? The place you were so excited to show him, share with him was foreign to him. The idea of not knowing what waited beyond each turn of the corner, who stood watching through the windows above the quaint storefronts took him back to his time on the run, back to when his days were filled with strict, careful routine, and he felt he was living on borrowed time.

“Earth to Bucky,” you laughed as you waved a hand in front of his face. He blinked a few times, pulling himself back to the surface before he could drown in his thoughts. You were looking at him, obviously waiting for an answer to a question he didn’t hear. “Where’d you go?” you laughed, blissfully unaware of the demons that were creeping in the shadows of Bucky’s still fucked mind.

“I, uh, got caught up in the lights, I guess,” he replied lamely, flinching when he realized just how stupid the answer sounds. He watches as an array of emotions flick across your eyes; amusement, questioning, concern. He had to look away before you could settle on a look of pity. Bucky couldn’t handle that.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” your probe, pulling him off to the side of the walkway into the entryway of one of the many buildings. “You don’t look so good.”

Bucky felt like kicking himself, wanted to scream at and scold his fragile mind for taking the joy and excitement you had been exuding just moments ago and turning it into worry, pity, anything but what you deserved to be feeling right now. “Bucky, please tell me if something’s wrong.”

He takes a breath before looking down at his snow-covered boots. “The crowds, being in an unfamiliar place...I still have problems with that, I guess.”

Your face falls even more at that. “Why didn’t you say something? We could have gone back home ages ago. Or not come at all. Or, or…”

“Y/N, it’s fine. Really. This is a tradition; I didn’t want to ruin it.”

You cross your arms and pout at that. He’s waiting for you to stomp your foot, much like Becca used to as a child when something didn’t go her way. The thought of his sister stings a little. She would have loved something like this, Bucky thinks, and that makes his uncomfortableness even more of a nuisance. He’s alive and able to see crazy Christmas displays and enjoy the things children growing up when he did couldn’t experience, yet here he is, broken and wishing he was anywhere else.

You pull him from his revere again when you start to tug on his metal arm. “Come on,” you huff, not out of annoyance or anger, but something else he can’t quite put his finger on.

“We’re not going back to your house,” he says, digging his heels into the concrete. This causes you to stumble a little and let go of his arm. “Please, don’t let me ruin this for you. I’ll be fine.”

“The only way you’ll ruin this is if you continue to be miserable while walking around. This is the same display as last year anyway,” you shrug. “I think I can skip one year.”

The two of you stand there for a moment, just looking at each other before Bucky sighs and relents. You loop your arm through his again, this time holding it a bit firmer and closer to your body, and begin to worm your way through the crowd. The further you get from the downtown streets, the quieter and emptier the sidewalks became. It wasn’t long before it was just the two of you walking along in silence. Despite the crowd-less walk, you don’t drop his arm.

“I’m really glad you came with,” you whisper after a few minutes. You’d lead him down the long route to your home, both for the fact it was sparsely traveled by foot and because you weren’t quite ready to lose the closeness of holding Bucky’s arm. “Even if I made you uncomfortable.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a moment, and you think he’s retreated back into wherever he goes when he’s feeling stressed, but then he replies. “No, thank you. This is obviously a special holiday for you and your family. And here I am, intruding.”

You snort and bring your free hand up to wrap around his metal forearm. “You could never intrude, Bucky. I enjoy spending time with you.”

Despite the chill in the air, Bucky has never felt as warm as he does when those six words leave your mouth.

When you return home, boots are quickly shed and coats are hung neatly in the closet. Bucky stands quietly by the door, waiting for your lead. Despite your efforts of making him feel comfortable in your home, his movements were still shy and timid as he glided over the hardwood floors.

“I’m going to finish putting the dishes away,” you say after a moment and nod towards the T.V.. “You’re more than welcome to turn something on, I’ll only be a second.”

Bucky nods his head and watches you disappear into the dark kitchen. He waits until the clatter of pans and ceramic bowls reaches his ears to head up to the guest room. He didn’t feel much like socializing anymore. The day, despite its laid back approach and festive touch, had been both mentally and emotionally draining for him.

Bucky gracelessly flops down onto his back on the borrowed bed. He’s contemplating sending a message to Sam, maybe do that video chatting Wanda enjoyed so much but he loathed. He needed the comfort of home, the familiar to drag him from the hole he could feel himself sinking into. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t even enjoy himself on Christmas fucking Eve. He sighs as he flips onto his side and listens as the faint sounds of you puttering around the kitchen, his enhanced hearing allowing him to hear your humming of a Christmas song he can’t quite place, travel up the stairs and wrap him in a warm embrace.

He’s not sure when he drifted off, or for how long, but you pull him back to the surface of consciousness with three soft knocks on the cracked bedroom door. “Bucky?” you say softly, not daring to enter his space without an invitation. “Is everything alright?”

“Tired, I guess,” Bucky says as he pushes himself to sit up. As he swings his feet over the side, you push the door open a little more so that you can see him.

“There’s a...We have one more tradition that I’d like to share with you, but I wanted to do it separately.” You timidly step further into the room, arms held behind your back. “We usually share one present on Christmas Eve. Typically pajamas, sometimes just a gag gift. And I, uh, I wanted to make sure you were included this year.”

Bucky watches you carefully as you make your way to sit next to him on the bed. As you settle in on the mattress, you rest a neatly wrapped package on your lap. He watches as you run your hands along the paper in a nervous attempt to smooth out the nonexistent impurities. When he finally looks up to your face, he finds that you are already intently watching him, your gaze unwavering as his meets it.

“But I don’t have anything for you,” he nervously blurts out. He can feel the heat of embarrassment as it creeps up the back of his neck when you offer him a soft laugh.

“That’s not the point, Bucky. Just...here.”

You shove the gift into his hands and, as he examines it, he can feel you practically vibrating with the excited but nervous energy you’re not giving off. This was always the worst part of receiving gifts - having to open them in front of the giver. It always made Bucky a little anxious, worried that he wouldn’t deliver the expected or desired reaction. He smooths his hands over the silver paper a moment longer before he digs a finger into a seam in the wrapping. He’s slow to unwrap your gift, a part of him wishing that you hadn’t gifted him anything at all. Bucky didn’t have anything for you, and, the more he thinks about the fact he showed up to a holiday without even a small gift for the one who invited him, it makes him want to leave and never show his face around you or your family again.

When the wrapping is finally discarded, a brown leather book sits firmly in his lap. His name, his full name, is expertly embossed across the front, and the corners decorated with a simply but intricate design. When he flips it open to the first page, a set of familiar faces are smiling back up at him. His ma, dad, and himself with Becca tucked neatly in what he remembers to be a soft yellow blanket - the photo of when they brought her home, the first photo he saw when he visited her just two short months ago.

“I wanted to give you something special, meaningful,” you say when Bucky looks up at you. “Your family helped too. They gave me copies of your old pictures, provided some of their own.”

Bucky looks back to the book as he continues to flip. He watches himself grow older with each turn of the page. Pictures his ma had taken, some from school, even some from his time as a Howling Commando. Articles, magazine clippings, and copies of book pages filled the middle of the book, all about him, praising him for what he did and what they thought he lost his life doing. He can feel tears start to prick at the corners of his eyes as he looks over previously unread words of kindness, admiration, and sadness, all for him.

He doesn’t think he could feel any fuller until he flips to a hand-drawn picture of himself and Bridget, signed sloppily but in the most loving way. He can’t help but let out a watery laugh, and he can hear you add your own chuckle. “She was very excited when I asked her to contribute. That little girl loves you so much already, you know?”

Yes, Bucky knows. He knows his worth in this world now, thinks he’s finally found his misplaced spot in this place in time, and it’s all thanks to you. His chest grows tighter the further he flips in the scrapbook. Pictures of his sister when on her wedding day, when his first niece was born. Graduation photos, birthdays, and family get-togethers just because all were documented for him to see, for him to live through these pictures because he wasn’t around to bear witness in person.

When he gets to the very last pages, he pauses. A face he hadn’t expected to see smiling back at him was tucked neatly in this book, and it filled him with a warmth he thought his poor, frozen bones would never feel again. A picture of you and him on the day of Becca’s funeral, all smiles despite the somber day. It looks like you’re mid-laugh and had only just looked at the camera in time for the photo to capture your face. He’d almost forgotten that a family member - name and relation lost to him at the moment - had insisted on getting pictures of all those in attendance, had mentioned something about never seeing each other outside of things like these so he had to take advantage. He was glad that cousin or nephew or third-something-twice-removed had pestered them into taking it, because, despite not wanting to look at his broken, mismatched self, you were there shining brighter than he thinks he’s ever seen any star.

“Bucky,” you whisper, clearly unsure of what to make of his silence.

“I...I don’t know what to say, Y/N,” Bucky swallows the lump in his throat in an attempt to keep the tears that have begun to swell in his eyes from coming out in his voice. “This is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever given me - done for me, actually.”

When he looks up at you, he tries to blink back the tears but it causes them to spill down onto his cheeks instead. “Oh, Bucky,” you gently laugh and raise a hand to wipe away his tears. When your hand makes contact with his cheek, however, you realize what you’re doing and make to pull it back. Bucky, however, is quicker and places his flesh hand on top of yours to hold it firmly to his fuzz-covered cheek.

“I lied,” he whispers and you give him a concerned and questioning look. “Earlier. I said I didn’t have a gift for you, but I do.” As he’s speaking, he slowly begins to lean in closer until your face-to-face, only a breath away from one another. “Only if you want it, though.”

You nod and bring your other hand up to fully cup his face as he closes the space between you, gently connecting your lips. It’s a slow, chaste kiss that has him craving more. More of the feel of your soft lips against his, more of your breath catching in your throat, more feeling your eyelashes butterfly across his own as you pull away just enough to rest your forehead against his. He opens his eyes slightly to get a peak of you. You’re already looking at him, a smile spread across your lips.

In that moment, he wishes he had the ability to read minds so that he could know exactly what you were thinking. Before he has the chance to say anything, you’re leaning back, this time pressing your lips more firmly against his own. If it weren’t for the fact he was so enraptured in the essence of you, he would be embarrassed by the low groan that rumbles deep in his chest. He feels your lips perk up into a wider smile before planting another quick peck to his lips before pulling away so that you could look him square in the eyes.

You brush a lock of his hair from his face and tuck it behind his ear before whispering, “Merry Christmas, Bucky.”

[desafia]

@neonrebirth​ dex sent: [ LOSS ]  for sender to attempt to rescue receiver only to be stopped by a serious injury

             the world grows cold,  distant to her senses.  but not quiet— no.  there is a ringing in her ears,  pounding of her skull,  which she wishes had no familiarity.  every time the disorientation begins to wear off it starts all over again.  bright flash,  pulsing energy shaking her to the core of her soul and then she feels empty.  no thoughts.  no invading images or whispered intuition.  just static strangling mind and frazzling nerves.  severity of the assault upon her senses nearly drowns out all the rest.  vice grip upon arms,  someone yanking at dark curls.  she tugs and she kicks and she screams,  but all attempts prove futile.  loathes how her shoulders sink.  muscles weaken and desire to submit begins to enter her system.  how is she supposed to fight when the tool to disarm her greatest weapon is closed around her wrists?  it’s new,  this tortuous device.  more she tries to harness abilities the more disrupter pulses and breeds agony.  she cannot even feel him there.  believes herself alone and it leads to despondent nature.  makes eyes close and willingness to give in draw nearer.  there was a time she would have done so more quickly.  acceptance of numbered days and impenetrable shadows.  she’s stronger now,  though.  he did that.  gave her reasons to not just remain upon this earth but to want to be here.  and she does—  god she wants it.  eyes glisten and bound hands ball into fists  (  it hurts,  to desire life  ).  might not detect the warmth of beloved’s soul,  yet she knows instinctively.  grasp upon her arms loosens.  ears ring and she does not hear the shot,  but she feels as body drops beside her.  lids blink rapidly to clear blurred vision.  she searches for him.  tries to see beyond the chaos.  foolishly tries to feel for him  (  instinct she does not rein in soon enough  ).  lips part as another pained cry tears from her throat  ❝  DEX—  ❞  with punishing grips voided renewed disruption of nerves causes her to stumble.  knees hit pavement and hardly sting as much as her very soul aches.  double vision clouds optics but still gaze finally settles upon him.  hope,  that ever dangerous poison,  dares to intoxicate her veins.  he's here.  of course he is.  despite pain and jarred nerves she smiles when he draws near.  could almost reach out and touch him if not for wrists held captive in disrupter cuffs.  nodding towards corpse beside her she stutters ❝  ke— key.  he has— ❞  words cut short as warmth splatters onto features.  blood.  it could be an eternity within itself.  moment between seeing where crimson spurts from his neck and truly comprehending sight before her.  she’s too shocked to react at first,  stunned and staring with wide-eyed horror.  watches as his palm presses to gaping hole,  sputtering incoherently.  ❝  amor?  ❞  no more than a whisper.  oh,  it wants to rise.  panic,  panic,  panic.  and it does.  but so does something stronger.  something more deep-rooted than any other emotion ever will be.  WRATH.  sage hues lift from witnessed horror.  find those responsible for adding to the tallies of his own suffering.  ❝  fantasmas.  ❞  ghosts.  their fate is sealed.   whether at his hands once risen.   or her own no matter what it takes.   she would take them all to hell even if she must join them to bring their wretched souls to the flames.  

[revchainsaw]

Bumblebee (2018)

Good Evening worshippers, and welcome! Today the Cult of Cult goes a little more mainstream than usual. It's been a while since i've tackled a big Hollywood superhero film. But I do believe that these sorts of films will be remembered fondly my small groups of people in the future, especially the smaller films that are being overshadowed by the big bad MCU, films like 2018s Bumblebee.

The Messsage

Bumblebee was originally released as a prequel to the Transformers franchise that had started all the way back in 2007. However, reboots had really hit the market as a way to breath new life into struggling franchises, and the Transformers series had already gone to just about every absurd extreme you could imagine. No changes were made to the movie as it was released, but with it's more childish and heartfelt tone, and a new aesthetic that was softer, smoother, and all around just generally more pleasing to the eye, I think it was a wise choice to rebrand Bumblebee as a new beginning.

Our story is of two friends from two very different worlds and how they came together. Our first character is Bumblebee, then known as B- number sign/it doesn't really matter. Not yet Bumblebee is a soldier set with securing a safe location for the Autobots to regroup and make their home as they suffer a pretty serious defeat on cybertron at the hands of the tyrannical Decepticons. Optimus Prime, here again voiced by Peter Cullen and looking so much more like himself, assigns this task to Bumblebee promising him that they will meet him there when the time comes. Then Optimus fucks off for the rest of the run time making way for our little hero.

Bumblebee lands on Earth and is immediately set upon by John Cena and his military goon squad. It probably would have been wise for Bumblebee to avoid John Cena but in his defense, he couldn't see him. Hardy har har. In his attempt to flee his voice box is damaged, he seeks sanctuary by taking the form of a run down little VW bug, and suffers from amnesia.

Then we have Charlie. Charlie is not like other girls. She likes cars, all the retro music, which wasn't retro when the movie takes place, so I'm supposed to just think she's a rocker but it kinda seems like she'll listen to just about anything. I think in 2018 liking Motorhead and The Smiths (who are used ad nauseum in this movie) is perfectly common, but I feel like in the 80s that was a much different and much older attitude to take.

Anyway Charlie's poor family lives in a super fucking nice house and are poor because the dialogue keeps insisting they are so it must be true despite all the shit they have that actually poor people would sell blood and teeth to attain, but hell, this is Hollywood and Hollywood poor is like regular people upper middle class. Charlies family is so poor that instead of giving her a one time graduation/birthday present to buy a part for a car she already has, they just give her a moped, She also spends all her time at a pull apart where the manager (who might be her uncle that wasn't super clear) is willing to just give her a Volkswagen so I don't understand why she didn't already have the project car up and running. Whatever, it's a plot contrivance. All you need to know is that Charlie is tenacious and hard around the edges cuz her dad is dead and she's not yet mature enough to process that in a healthy way. Maybe her character arch will teach her to let others in, we'll have to find out.

There's also a wacky nerd named Memo, and some bad guys, and John Cena. They are all also pretty archetypal and contrived and don't really do anything of note that isn't just filling a beat that this kind of movie needs to walk. Charlie starts Bumblebee up, discovers he's a robot and the two begin to bond. Charlie learns to make a friend, and bumblebee is learning about himself. They get into hijinks and get revenge on a bully girl who makes Regina George look like a saint, she pretty much only picks on Charlie exclusively for having a dead dad.

The moment Bumblebee is woken back up, some technology goof em up that both he and Charlie are unaware of brings two Decepticon baddies into the picture. I don't remember their names, but since I love The Venture Brothers let's say they can be "Jet Boy and Jet Girl". Jet Boy and Jet Girl are sometimes cars, sometimes various flying military vehicles, and they make friends with the deep state and plan to get all the adrenochrome from all the orphans, or just to go find Bumblebee and beat his ass good cuz their bad guys. Let me tell y'all though, Jet Boy and Jet Girl are so bad that they don't even care that the government is listening when they reveal that they are planning on bringing a Decepticon Invasion and after they rough up Bumblebee real good they are going to destroy all life on this planet. So they start by killing a military scientist.

John Cena is after Bumblebee and he's homies with Jet Boy and Jet Girl until the military scientist butt dials him and he hears the evil plan. John Cena goes from heel to face and helps Bumblebee and Charlie save the day. It's a giant CG clusterfuck climax a la any superhero film in the last 10 years and I basically stopped watching. BumbleBee pulls a Hellraiser on Jet Boy, and then he hits Jet Girl with a freaking boat. Charlie uses her diving skills do dive down and save him, but he's a Giant Robot and he was okay and it was literally pointless for her to to except as a way to show that her character has completed her arch by doing the thing that was representative of her connection with her lost father.

Bumblebee turns into the Camaro from the first movie, meets up with Optimus prime, and the stage is set for this prequel to squeeze more prequels out. So it wasn't very creative, but was it bad? Let's find out.

Please Stand to receive the Benediction.

Best Aspect: Transform the Franchise

Bumblebee was directed by Travis Knight of Laika fame and it shows. This movie marks a stylistic change in the transformers franchise, as in it doesn't look like utter dog shit, but it also represents in many ways a tonal shift. It does hold on to a lot of gross sleaze that has unfortunately been forcibly jammed into the DNA of the franchise but it also attempts to be a more heartfelt entry. The characters of Bumblebee might all be sort of a waste of time, but at least they are doing something with emotions, even if the emotions of the characters are only explored as deeply as a children's cartoon I'm glad they are there. In the previous installments the only thing the characters did between running from action piece to seizure inducing action piece was drool over underage girls like a bunch of chimpanzees at the facility where they test experimental E.D. meds. It was nice to see that at least somewhat tampered. This transformers movie feels more like it's for kids and young teenagers, and strangely that more friendly tone makes for a much less juvenile product.

Worst Aspect: Remember I Love the 80s from the 2000s

I hope you really like Stranger Things. I do, but because Stranger Things was so successful it' s going to be everywhere. Not true Stranger Things just 80s nostalgia porn. This 80s nostalgia is going to be forced on you whether you like it or not, and it's not going to be fun. It's gonna be in your shows, in your music, in your Sunday like Bacon in 2010. It's that or Marvel Franchise Brand Whedonisms. Bumblebee is that brave movie that says, "Why not both?" It would seem fitting that a property as quintessentially 80s as Transformers should feel completely comfortable doing a period piece set in the 80's but it's so fucking half hearted it's depressing. It wasn't done to appreciate the roots of the IP, it was done to cash in on a trend and it feels it. All they did was throw up a date and insufferably force an 80s soundtrack down your throat as if that was enough to convince you that this movie needed to be set during this time. Other than that you could have told me this film was set in 2007 and I couldn't tell you any different.

Best Character: Charlie's an Angel

I liked Charlie. Sure her Arc is predictable, her taste is dumb, and she isn't exactly a master of her own destiny to any degree. But at least she is a woman in a transformers movie who's got something going on. Sure she's defined entirely by grief, but that sure is better than pretending that being able to work on cars is a feminist character trait instead of a weird fetish thing. They certainly do that thing with Charlie, but at least it's not the only thing they throw at the wall. Bumblebee is by no means out of the woods in this department, but it garners a lot of goodwill for trying. Like a racist uncle who just started his journey out of ignorance, but hasn't yet realized he has to stop asking mortifying questions to the barista at Starbucks. Okay, maybe that's an extreme metaphor. I'm saying that perhaps Charlie is not a great character but she's a great character for a Transfomers movie.

Worst Character: It's JOOOOHHHNNNN CEEEENA!!!!

Why is John Cena in this movie? I don't hate the guy, but his character seems pointless. You could remove him from the movie completely and replace him with any one of the random military goons at any point and it changes nothing. What was with that dumb salute at the end? It seems like they put him in this movie in post and it was just to pump up cast list. I wish he was given anything to work with. I can't remember his characters name, and it's not like John Cena did a bad job, I was just annoyed every time they kept giving him hero shots. I felt like I was watching a trailer for a different movie.

Best Actor: Optimal Primo!

Every time Peter Cullen speaks I want to listen. There's a reason they haven't had Chris Pratt or somebody with a bigger name come in and take over the role at this point. He's why the audience keep coming back. Peter Cullen IS Optimus Prime, and there's no changing that. He also wins twice. He's the best actor in the movie AND he's barely in the movie. Good call Peter.

Worst Actor: Mean Girls 2, Meaner and Girlier

I don't want to be cruel so I'm not going to go into to much detail, but there's an actress in this film who's performance is so mustache twirlingly evil and stupid that it ruined my suspension of disbelief when i knew going in that i was about to endure a 2 hour toy commercial about robots that turn into cars. Beldar Conehead was a more convincing human being than Tina.

Best Effect: Goo Be Gone

I really appreciated when the bad guys shot the government nerd into a blast of snot. That was pretty fun for me. Best part of the movie hands down.

Worst Effect: Live Action?

Bumblebee is a cartoon. It's a great looking cartoon but it doesn't sell itself that way. If we were doing a Roger Rabbit thing I'd have no gripes. However, I think CG is just getting worse. I'm criticizing this and it's still lightyears better than the previous entry's on the franchise. No transformation or fight sequence in Bumble Bee had me straining to make sense of what I was looking at. I think it was a great idea to start using some basic shapes and outlines to these characters, and return somewhat to their 80s designs. But at certain points, especially when there were no humans in the shot, i was pretty convinced I was watching Clone Wars. There may not be anyway around this, as the Transformers concept might not be able to be pulled off in any more effective manner. It's a minor gripe, but I just didn't think it looked like anything other than a very expensive cartoon, and in this franchise that's a compliment, because it least it looked like SOMETHING!

Best Scene: Space Opera

I am not a Transformers fan. I missed the boat on the cartoon as a kid. I would sometimes catch it at friends houses but I was more into Batman, Star Wars, and Ninja Turtles. By the time I came onto the scene the world had moved on to Beast Wars. I did one day arbitrarily decide that my favorite Transformer was Sound Wave. He looked great in this. I am a big fan of the return to form with a lot of the character designs in this. They really did keep the things that worked from the other adaptations, and they are steadily removing the things that didn't. For this reason, the scenes on Cybertron, particularly the battle with Soundwave (i prefer for personal reasons) looked great and were exciting to watch. I remember thinking Cybertron used to look like a Marilyn Manson shot a music video from inside to dumpster. This is so much better.

Worst Scene: Blocking the Box

There's a scene in Bumblebee where Charlie's family decides the best way to save their daughter was to cause a pile up of vehicles in an intersection, and it's pure contrived writing that saved any character in that sequence from being killed in a horrific traffic accident. It was stupid, played for laughs, and it wasn't exciting as much as it was anxiety inducing. I also thought that there was no reason the covert military group covering up extraterrestrial life wouldn't just disappear this family of fucking morons in their little piece of shit car. The logic of the scene was just so childish like, "No they won't hit me, I'm a good person."

Summary

Bumblebee may be remembered fondly in a decade. I think especially if the Transformers franchise were to end here. It didn't get the publicity of the other films, and that really is a shame. For my money, this was the best Transformers movie so far. I was very tempted to give Bumblebee a C, it does just enough to right what was wrong from the other movies to make me appreciate all that work. This movie has heart, and if you are at all into Transformers then l think you should see it. It's still pretty stupid, and pretty basic. It's not offering anything new to the genre, and it feels like a commercial for more movies. I really wish we could just get movies that want to tell a story. I thought it over and decided that it wasn't fair not to grade Bumblebee on it's own merits. Bumblebee is substantially better than the films that preceded it, but that's not saying a lot, when the films that preceded it are joyless exercises in self abuse.

Overall Grade: D

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Power of cheering

The cab slowly pulled to the curb and let Mike and Wible out. Together they both began to navigate the massed throngs of fans as they shuffled into the stadium to watch the boxing match. Mike had to keep apologizing as he pressed through the crowds while Wible was easily able to navigate the packed mass of people. Wible was a Qwolland and the best way to describe him would be as if a gecko without a tail stood up on two legs and began to a act like a human. His body was seemingly able to change size at will and morphed several times to the point it almost looked like a packing tube had sprung to life.  After several more minutes the two were finally able to navigate to the front counter and buy their tickets and enter the stadium.   “Tell me again why your idea of fun is to watch two of your species fight each other to the death?” Wible asked as the two now waited in line for food. Mike sighed as he handed him the bucket of popcorn. “It’s not to the death Wible, we’ve been over this.” Wible shrugged and took a handful of popcorn before casually throwing it into his mouth as they made their way to their seats.    “It would be rare then to find a competition that you humans have that does not have a kill count attached to it.”  The dark interior of the stadium was lit only by the floodlights centering on the boxing stage in the middle of the vast expanse like an island in a sea of night.  Standing atop the stage were two humans stripped to their waists and fists gloved in strange material that bunched their fingers together and made the humans hands appear like single molds of flesh.  Wible watched as the two humans had pummeled each other for the last thirty minutes. The human wearing the blue cloth appeared to beg steadily gaining the upper hand as they unleashed a barrage of fast strikes against the red clothed human forcing them to give ground over and over.  Though he had been invited by his human friend Mike to witness human culture Wible had become increasingly bored by the one sided fight and had taken to casting his gaze across the crowd.  The stadium was fully packed and even though Wible could not make out the upper sections he could see the moving shadows of fans. Wibble saw some Predatoria closer to the front of the stage much to the displeasure of the fans now blocked from viewing by their massive forms. Looking to his right he saw a Zefillem still trying to make bets with a human bookie, no doubt with forged bills Wible thought to himself. To his left he was surprised to see a group of Wonta wearing shirts of some sort with the image of the red fighter on it. This actually surprised him as he had believed the Wonta to be a naturally peaceful people which was now a sharp contrast to the Wonta calling for the red human to “Break the blue man’s bones!”.  He kept looking across the crowd searching for another of his kind but could not find any. Wibble was a Qwolland and Mike had described him as “A gecko without a tail standing up on two legs.” He had yet to find out what a Gecko was but imagined it was a strong powerful creature of his homeworld.  So busy had Wible been with people watching that he was startled when the crowd let out a load roar and returned his gaze to the stage just to see the red human take a punch straight to the face and topple to the ground.  A striped human came over and began tapping the ground while shouting out numbers.  “ONE!”  Wible watched the red human and saw that he was not moving.  “TWO!” Assured that the competition had ended the blue human started raising their fists and circling the ring.  “THREE!” Wible was grabbing his coat and preparing to leave when Mike next to him grabbed him by the arm. “FOUR!” “Start cheering!” Mike said as the people around the two began chanting the red humans name.  “FIVE!”  “Wible looked unsure of what Mike meant. “What good will it do? The round is over.” “It’s only over if you stop cheering!” was all Mike shouted back before joining the mass of people.  “SIX!” The chanting rose several levels and now nearly drowned out the striped humans words as he continued his count.  “SEVEN!”  Looking at his human friend he saw him shouting his lungs out and felt something strange building inside himself. It could have been from seeing his friend so enthusiastic or being swept up in the mob mentality of the crowd, but Wible began softly cheering as well. “ Get up.”  “EIGHT!”  “Get UP.” Wible called out slightly louder. To his surprise he saw the red fighter’ s arm twitch slightly.  “NINE!”  “GET UP!”  Wible now had his hands cupped and was shouting the words over and over. The red fighter slammed their fist into the floor and slowly began standing up.  As they finally stood up on their two feet the entire stadium lit up with a cheer that shook the very building itself. The stripped human waved an arm and then stepped back as the blue human stepped forward to the red human again, clearly intent on fishing his opponent for good this time. Wible thought that the cheering would stop but instead it changed pace.  “PUMEL HIM!” “KNOCK HIM OUT”  “YOU’VE GOT THIS!”  The crowds cheers continued and Wible saw that the red human began acting differently from before. The blue human took a step forward and threw out a sharp right hook aimed right at the head of red. Rather than raise their arms to block like they had before the red human took a step forward and brought up their left fist in an uppercut.  Inside of the blue human’s guard he couldn’t block fast enough and the impact from red’s fist sent him back several paces as their mouth guard was spat out. The crowd let out a roar of approval and red carried on with the attack and began unloading a series of rapid punches of their own. With each strike the crowd cheered louder and louder and despite himself Wible couldn’t help but continue his shouting despite his throat becoming raw and sore. Blue attempted to recover and threw a hasty jab at left who hopped back a pace out of reach before driving back in with a powerful punch straight to the stomach. Blue spun about backwards into the ropes of the ring. He held on to them a few seconds while attempting to regain their footing before collapsing to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.  The stripped human once more approached and began counting down once more but even through his amplified voice the crowd drowned him out with their cheers and woops. Wible had seen the Predatoria in the front row toss up their food in joy at the final strike while the Wonta next to him were rocking back and forth in unison chanting the red humans name.  Upon reaching ten the stripped human grabbed red’  s left arm and held it aloft into the air and declared him the winner. The crowd roared with renewed vigor as the now champion raised his arm and turned to face the surrounding masses before collapsing to their knees. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was after the match Mike and Wible were walking back to the car when Wible felt he had to ask something.  “What happened in there?”  Mike smiled as he pulled out his keys. “We got ourselves a new champion is what happened!” He let out a “WOO” before coughing half way, his throat still sore from before.  “No, I mean what happened with that red human?”  “I don’t follow.” “Well, he was down on the ground and clearly beat; but as soon as the crowd began cheering for him he stood back on and pushed past his limits to victory.”  “You seem to have summed it up already, what’s there to understand?” Wible shook his head in confusion. “What changed for the red human?”  Mike shrugged and unlocked the car. “People started rooting for him.” “I still do not understand.” Wible spoke as he entered the car and applied the safety harness. Mike paused before turning the car on and considered his next words.  “Well cheering....cheering kinda helps put someone into a different mental state. It lets them go above and beyond what they think is possible.” He turned to face Wible. “Say you’re building a house right, just you. You’ll go at your own pace, do things at your own time, and though it may take longer you still know it will be finished.”  “Now take cheering as adding more people to help you.” Mike continued. “Now you’re not alone. Now you’ve got other people helping you and giving you encouragement. You’re not going to want to take as many breaks now because with all these people supporting you you’ll think you’re letting them down when they came out to help you. Not the entire world or a city or even a community; they came just for you. That kinda mindset makes you want to do more, push yourself more, move past your aches and pains regardless if your body can take it and make sure you don’t let those people down.”  Wible considered this as Mike engaged the engine and began driving away. “This is a new concept to me. I don’t believe it is seen among my people as much.” Mike smirked at that. “Probably because you guys don’t have any boxing champs like we do; but don’t worry, you’ll get some of your own someday.” 

[tipsycad147]

The witches familiar

by Crimsonwolf

The Witch's Familiar, Past and Present Author: M. Williams. Published on: May 1, 2000

The concept of the familiar has been a vital component of various cultures throughout man’s history. The Romans, for example, believed that each household was protected by a familiar whose job it was to keep the family from harm, and shamans and medicine men of various tribal traditions have long honored the spirits of animals for their wisdom and assistance in magickal workings. Yet despite these positive influences, when we think of a familiar the most common image is that of the evil witch with her fearsome-looking black cat. This archetype, straight from the fairytales of our childhood, has its roots in the fear and superstition of the Dark Ages, and it bears scant resemblance to the modern-day familiar.

With the infamous witch trials of the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods came an obsession with familiars—those hellish imps that took the forms of animals to assist witches in their evil deeds. It was believed that these imps were given as gifts from Satan to his faithful followers. The arrangement seems to have been a lucrative one for the devil, as when an imp wasn’t busy inciting the witch to greater evil, it was reporting back to its master on the comings and goings of his servant. It became common knowledge that witches often took the form of their familiars to travel unnoticed to their unholy sabbats, and that as a reward, they were given drops of the witch’s blood. At the witch trials, evidence for consorting with the devil oftentimes included accounts of the accused keeping company with an animal, and many a lonely old woman was executed as a witch because of her affection for her pet.

It’s interesting to note that, while witches’ familiars were considered evil during this period, the harnessing of spirits was acceptable in certain circumstances. Indeed, magicians often sold as talismans small vials or trinkets in which they claimed to have entrapped a spirit that would ensure the buyer’s good fortune. It seems that consorting with spirits was permissible as long as the spirits were considered to be benevolent.

While the familiar could take any animal form, right down to the smallest spider, the creature whose reputation suffered most from its role as the witch’s evil accomplice was, of course, the cat. This association may have come about because cats were plentiful and were often kept as pets to help control the rodent population, an ever-present problem due to the lack of sanitation. Black cats were especially targeted as familiars because the color black was associated with the powers of darkness.

Toads, too, were often identified as familiars, possibly traceable to the early Roman belief that they could predict, and even affect, the weather. Various parts of the toad’s body were thought to have magickal attributes. Their spittle, for instance, was said to confer the power of invisibility, and their horns, known as toad stones, were useful for detecting poison.

The dogs of the period got their share of bad press as well. Faithful follower, able shepherd, and ferocious defender, it was perhaps the dog’s unyielding loyalty to its master that earned it its place as a familiar. Legend has it that one of the most famous magic users of history, Cornelius Agrippa, had as his familiar a large black dog that accompanied him wherever he went. When Agrippa was accused of dabbling in the dark arts, the dog was quickly branded as a familiar. It is said that the magician, momentarily regretting his occult activities, ordered the dog to be gone from him. The animal immediately departed and was never seen again.

The image of familiars as evil demons in animal form reflects only the historical picture—one painted with the ignorance of past ages. Today’s witches view their familiars in an altogether different light. For the modern witch, a familiar can be any animal with which the individual feels an affinity. While these animals are not considered evil spirits, they’re far from being just a household pet and are treated as partners in the practice of magick.

Because animals are believed to be more sensitive to vibrations from the unseen world, they are useful to the witch as a kind of psychic sensor, indicating the presence of negative energy by their behavior. Familiars also bring added energy to magickal workings because of their close affinity with the spirit world and their attunement with their witch.

The finding of an animal familiar is a very personal thing, and often the witch will send out a psychic call to attract a suitable one. An immediate and overwhelming feeling of kinship between the witch and the animal usually signifies the discovery of the new familiar.

In some cases familiars are not confined to physical bodies. Although they play the same role as animal familiars, spirit familiars are more versatile in that they can move about more freely. The presence of these sprit familiars is often experienced as a voice, vision, or strong feeling of peace. If necessary, they can be associated with inanimate objects, such as a stone or piece of jewelry, to make contacting the spirit an easy task.

Just as the twenty-first century witch shares little in common with the frightening hags from our favorite childhood stories, so the image of the black cat as a demon from hell has lost much of its clout in the modern world. Like the medieval magician’s charms, modern-day familiars—animal or spirit—are benevolent by nature. At their best, they impart knowledge and offer guidance. At their worst, they offer companionship and love. Thankfully, in our enlightened age we can realize the importance of both.

https://crimsonwolfe.tripod.com/id57.html

[darkpoisonouslove]

“New Warmth to Weave in Your Garden of Shine”

Summary: New year is coming hand in hand with the cold of the season and the responsibilities even a celebration brings for a king and queen. Amidst the chaos and strict decorum it's Erendor and Samara's concern to find the time to welcome each other in their shared future.

I had to write one last fic to send off the year and since this one was the only one that cooperated, you get New Year on Eraklyon. I like the way this turned out as I feel like it is a peaceful (while sufficiently dramatic) ending to a very frantic year and also incorporated some of my wishes for a better next year. Here's to hoping!

Samara's body begrudgingly stumbled after him in his misstep slipping into an unnatural disruption of her graceful and calculated movements. Losing balance not his own would have dragged him down and left him splayed out on the floor if not for her dignified posture becoming the spine holding him above the stream of panicked shame spilling out of him under the pokes of the crown everyone's gazes drove in him like a sheaf of spears. A weakness was only fully fledged if you let it take root. Much like a weed, it was something to pluck out on sight.

"Erendor," Samara's voice emptied the ballroom in his mind to leave them twirling to the sound of her words, "tomorrow morning is already buried under unfavorable circumstances to stack too many glasses on top of it as well." She was ready to eradicate the perceived environment spawning the weeds in her garden even if her grip didn't change in gentleness. It was her teeth that always broke his ego like she were a tiny dragon his gear couldn't protect him from when she was already on the inside. She was the only one who'd witnessed him fighting the battles there was no armor for.

"I've only drunk enough to hold my warmth against the chill that wrapped my bones like vines today." Indulgence had long relented to duty but it had been tradition that had stranded him out in the cold for the better half of the day. Even his attire hadn't saved him from the bite of the weather outside the impenetrable walls of the palace that would fail to protect him too now that the damage was done and the endless heat of her proximity.

"Dancing ought to have taken over that function," Samara leaned closer – for his benefit or for the words' unclear but her hot breath hit his neck in a wave so pleasant it flooded his body with shivers inappropriate for the current venue. "Nobody says we have to put an end to the activity outside the ballroom." It was her own benefit she was after but that had no negative bearing on him without space between them.

"I would love to take this to the bedroom," a murmur had the strength to reach her even over the lively music that could have resonated through the whole kingdom if not for the vicious howl of the winds roaming the land outside like it was their own, "but the celebrations will carry well into the night regardless of the impending countdown." It was the last dance before the minutes left for his voice to segue the end of the year into the booming display of fireworks luring into colorful visions of the upcoming days. "Even a new year only brings the same old issues." They could dance to fill the hours stolen from their night but breakfast wouldn't move down the line because of the demand on their time or the sleep tugging at his body so harshly in contrast to her mellow touch.

"We'll have a whole new year to catch up on what we miss tonight and tomorrow," Samara looked at him as if to hold his gaze off the touch of a smirk to her lips that was almost shy in its presence. Almost probing enough to shoot down his spine a shiver from the cold metal covering her fingers like armor.

"Could I hope it would take you less time to relinquish your dominion over the covers?" She always cocooned herself in the heavy blankets like she wanted to hibernate outside the body heat next to her that wouldn't be there the following night. Coupled with her knack for transforming him into a careful heart within a paralyzed body when she'd wake up from a shift in his breathing, it left him sleeping with a whimsical force like the nature stone and glass strove to keep outside. "Say, once dancing isn't an option for preserving body temperature anymore?" The only difference was that Samara was much more terrifying in the dead silence she could turn her presence into unlike the wailing of the winds banging against the shut-off palace. Yet, she was the one he welcomed willingly by his side to shield him from the void of cold she filled effortlessly.

The smile widened on her lips to welcome her voice into the cool air of publicness around them and him inside the sound soaking his mind to the core. "Just keep your hands on me at all times and you should be fine." She adjusted her hand in his to ground him in the lightness of her softened grip now that she didn't need the gold on her head or fingers to hold her in his arms.

"I wouldn't argue with that but I have to make a toast in the near future. One I hope you will honor with me?" he didn't drop her gaze even for a moment as he dipped her in an end to their dance. The last few minutes of the old year were slipping between their fingers, the last few touches, the last few words they'd get to exchange before responsibility possessed their lives. It could be nothing but bad luck to shatter that by misdirecting his attention to the slap in the face she could deliver with his hands full of her instead of his own protection.

"I will," Samara's answer glided over the puff rushing out of her to reach him as he brought her back up into the proximity of their faces. "You already indulged me."

His gaze slid to the necklace outlining her delicate throat in the lack of her usual high collar and the silky gown that hugged the curve of her breasts tightly only to leave a generous amount of cleavage for the jewelry to contrast with, and, of course, the crown radiating light upon her head to make her the center of attention despite the companion piece he was wearing. It was the gift she'd given him that played in his mind, however.

Gravity pulled on the jewelry box in his pocket with every step as if to weigh him down and slow him on top of the time he'd already lost on changing out of his parade uniform and into his royal attire and stopping by the safe to get her gift. The echo of his hurried step drilled into his mind with the undeniable anxiety he couldn't pin on one easy to dismiss thing. His only chance was to hide behind the shine of the brilliance in his pocket until he could anchor himself in Samara's presence in the queen's chamber and avoid getting carried away by the memories rocking his being.

The history of the monarchy and his own family had been stained with a kidnapping that had cost the kingdom much more than his carefulness with Samara ever could. His mother had been abducted from the palace during his own birthday to leave an imprint on every future celebration. He had never forgiven his father for the helplessness he'd associated their family with in the eyes of the public and his own heart. It had been so easy to take the queen–a living woman and mother of children–let alone the crown meant to lay on his head and poking their affection away.

Every step was like the prickle of the needles he hadn't witnessed starting an embroidery that afternoon that he'd have to recapture in the next mosaic from the Path of Eraklyon. He'd doubled the guard like any other time they were all swallowed in the distractions of an official event but tradition still hadn't been in his favor. Samara had been left with her ladies-in-waiting while he'd been out on the obligatory gemstone hunt.

His dragon only hadn't thrown him off its back due to the long years of training it had undergone while it had been Samara's face in front of his eyes instead of the dragon's reactions to lead him to the largest diamond he could find without infringing on Isis' territorial claim to bring back to her.

She'd endured the ceremony of "capturing" the wild dragons that would be tamed into joining the palace's resources–they had been captured already a couple weeks ago and put through basic training to ensure safety during the official event–even though it prickled her the same way worry did him. Her knuckles had turned white from gripping the railing of the royal balcony so hard it had been visible from the arena below but to anyone without inside information it would have looked like concern for him and the soldiers attending to the dragons. His confidence in his skills and the performative nature of the ceremony left the truth shining from underneath the mask of rouge concealing the burn in her blood.

Taming was a word her dictionary was extremely unreceptive of and the sweet scent of the flowers blooming all over the reins the dragons attempted to melt off could have had bile rising in her throat if it could have reached as high up as the smoke did while the animals thrashed in dramatic attempts to breathe fire through the vegetation suffocating them with every new flare of heat. It was an ancient tradition and one she found quite distasteful as she watched the blossoms that were already doomed to withering away–they'd been plucked and fashioned into elaborate harnesses of winter turned spring by the smallest of sparks–being forced into their most beautiful. The hunt for jewels would have been more her speed but her schedule had been occupied with embroidery of the event he'd picked to mark the year they'd just left in Eraklyon's history. He'd had to leave her to it, alone in the palace with nothing but his planned defense against unexpected events to keep her safe while he was in pursuit of fulfilling a tradition as valuable as the gemstones he found would be without her waiting to receive them.

The wood of her door was hard and cold under his knuckles. It was like knocking on a block of ice, except it wasn't transparent and it left his pulse hammering in his ears to shatter the heavy, tense silence ready to bury him right there outside her bedchamber.

"Enter," Samara's voice was like warm water that unstuck him from the floor and had the frost crunching under his fingers as he pushed the handle and cracked the door open.

The sight streaming through the passage in her chamber he'd opened stopped him dead in his tracks in the doorway as if to plate him like a painting in a golden frame despite the fact that he'd returned to the palace with a ruby bigger than his fist. The bed was strewn with her jewelry, displayed for her to choose from. He'd expected a different chaos in the face of her maids catering to her high standards for her personal appearance and the glimmer of reflected sunset rays coming from her orchard of precious gemstones almost blinded him.

"Harvest time is over." He didn't bother elaborating what she was perfectly capable of deciphering when a diamond wouldn't be able to cut through her mind. Instead, he focused on putting one foot in front of the other and closing the door behind his back to settle in the self-created illusion that he was welcome in this shimmering kingdom obeying her will rather than nature's.

"I'm choosing the plant for next year," Samara confirmed his standing, not employing her energy into a warning glare that he was on thin ice. He was on solid ground and could breathe freely without fear of white crystals bursting his veins to pieces from the inside.

She reached into the sea of sharp splendor in front of her to pluck out a ring and slip it on her finger. The one with the two sapphires–a shade darker and more lasting than the evergreens poking the horizon outside to make space for them–he'd given her on their first anniversary was already on her hand. It was an exception for her not to wear it but it was always good to see it where it belonged. Even if the solid gold drew his attention to the prick in her delicate flesh above the ring's imperviousness.

The wound was so small that it would have disappeared in the expanse of skin around like a missing feather on a peacock but instead, it stood out like a gunshot in the intense red of blood on white marble. She must have pricked herself on a needle while creating the basis of an embroidery, depicting a success history would remember as his even if she had more claim over it than he did. It was her duty to draft on fabric the image he would later have immortalized in stone regardless of how skilled she was at it.

Her mother hadn't bothered to teach her what every girl in the kingdom could do in too common a craft to be considered a talent worthy of a beauty queen. Yet, the queen of Eraklyon was bound to it in tradition and she'd had to learn in the few months before her coronation. He'd watched her unravel as she'd failed to master it as if to use her own threads and make it easier for herself by manipulating her own matter to sew into the fabric. She'd bleed out if all the times she'd prickled herself and had yet to do it again were put together.

"I would've thought that is something you would have taken care of already?" Combining patterns was a second nature unlike creating them and jewelry was a passion she carried around with herself at all times. It was unthinkable that something as simple as a few drops of blood drawn from her could make it slip through her fingers.

"Normally, I would have but this is a little tradition of mine I keep to on the last day of the year," Samara pried his jaws open with strength that had slipped his notice to keep him from eating his own mind and put hers between them instead. It could be another diversion born out of the blood she'd smelled as well.

"What kind of tradition?" He hadn't had the chance to learn the previous years when the privacy of his bedchamber had provided her frame and her honesty but not the environment in which she thrived, hidden in the shade from his gaze.

"I lay out all my jewelry and pick to wear the most valuable pieces the year has provided." He'd seen her put a lot of work in admiring her ever growing collection so that wasn't hard to believe. It didn't much help to comprehend it, though.

"How can you tell which are the most valuable ones?" He'd grown up with both crowns in sight if not straining his sensibilities with their weight and he still couldn't tell their worth upon just looking. The dragons wouldn't be able to pick out the more precious stone between two just by sight. Maybe there truly was something more than just natural beauty to her.

"That was easy back in the day," Samara slipped away from him, diving after the sun that had set the sky on fire. If her life had been a day, he would have never seen a sunset caught in her irises, much less a sunrise. He would have met her in the dark hours preceding midnight to witness her beauty only in unnatural light or under the weak glow of the stars on a dusty sky at most. That was if the clouds hadn't swallowed her whole like she was made of fractured light unable to pierce its way out of their intangible mass. "I just had to remember how unbearable an experience had followed receiving each one of them."

"I don't follow." Not just because he'd drifted off into the void she'd outlined as her past. She'd practically tied her words to the strings of his mind as if she'd been born to do that. Maybe he could rewrite tradition to replace embroidery with tapestry to spare her from ever prickling herself again on anything that wasn't his crown. And that he could always take off himself to remove the last thorn in her way.

"The harder a role you need to play, the more intricate the mask you need to wear. And the more intricate the mask is, the more it demands – both in its making and its usage," Samara's voice was deceptively light as she glided on the surface of whatever depths she avoided broaching in her mind to keep them both dry in the freezing cold of the settling night. "The brightest jewelry I always got at the threat of the mask cracking right when it needed to be as impenetrable as possible." What had her mother put her up against on all of those stages she'd pushed her?

"Why would you need more reminders of that?" It had already gripped his mind, too, from where it had taken root in hers as she'd talked without being there with him. She'd spoken from the distance where she kept her gaze as well to not paint pictures of the past over the present regardless of them still haunting every image her eyes captured.

"I didn't. It was a statement of worth to others not to forget just because the reminders I already had were embedded where no one could see." Considering all the wealth they'd redistributed once she'd stripped her family of it, she'd failed. Her mother hadn't made it worth her troubles with everything she'd still had hoarded. But she didn't need the cold bucket of water on her nerves any more than he did. "It was also an invitation for the next year to bring something better," her hand balled into a fist as she grasped at the chance to run her thumb over the two sapphire beads adorning her finger before her palms slid over the skirt of her gown littered with dark blue gems that could have been cut from the lit sky above the palace as if they couldn't shred her fragile skin. Just scrub off the remains of her maiden name from her being. "But that is no more. Now I have no idea which ones are the most valuable. There are no masks attached to the gems, just pure sentiment." Her voice picked up to keep up with the speed of her gaze running over the precious display on her bed. "It disrupts my process almost to the point of resentment."

He'd need something to steady himself as well if she kept the words crashing into him like waves of rich honey. Only, he wasn't certain he'd make it all the steps to where she'd just clutched at the bedpost before bending over for a closer inspection. He'd fall over and at the foot of the bed if she pulled him a little closer with another almost in a covert confession.

"What do you think?" Her eyes on him snapped his attention back to the material world he'd bought for her but all he could see was the invitation in her insistent gaze to be a part of her future. "Which ones should I wear?" It wasn't something he could normally help with but this time he had an answer. As long as she'd take it.

"Can I ask you to break tradition?" He pulled out the red velvet box under the anticipation in her stance to have her leaving the bed where all her old jewelry rested to come within reach now that he was giving away the weight that had kept him in place.

A whole garden of diamonds was in his hands to hang on her neck and live for as long as she wanted it to, as long as she welcomed it on her skin. The jewels were whiter than the clouds of breath forming in the harsh temperatures outside and small like the grains the kingdom fed on and she didn't eat but still shined like mirrors bathed in the light of her smile.

Samara turned around, urging him silently to clasp it around her neck in a hold even the crown didn't have on her as it could slip off at any moment. Her hand was running over it before he'd even fastened it in place, the motion sending him off balance as it shook him with relief amidst the quietness of her admiration. He had to rest his palms on her shoulders to find his way through the rhythm the day was spinning to.

Samara covered his hand with hers to pull it off and allow herself to face him instead of the mirror. "I wouldn't mind breaking an old tradition for the new year but since you fit right in, there's no need for such drastic measures. It could use some reshaping, though."

He was still stuck on processing the meaning of her words when she leaned in and pressed her lips against his. Just a quick peck that ran through his body like fire as fast as she was out of his reach and settling in front of her vanity. It was just the softness of her naked lips against his and the still palpable warmth of her fingers where she'd held his hand that lingered behind like a gem for him to stash in the depths of his mind where no weight–physical or not–would be able to leave it in angry shards blazing with fire.

"Didn't you switch to a new lipstick just a couple of weeks ago?" he asked once she was already applying the burgundy over her lips, his brain taking longer to react while collecting the memories she was weaving the last day of the year into.

Samara paused to return the effort he'd put in paying her the due attention even though it had only been natural to note the different shade of the marks her kisses left behind. "Yes, I did. But I always open a new make-up kit on New Year's Eve." And she'd already applied all the rest of her beauty products before he'd arrived. Almost as if she'd been waiting for his visit or at least hoping for it. Either that, or she'd just wanted to keep the lipstick as fresh as possible before heading to the ballroom for the long night ahead. Yet, there was no trace of the silence she used to distance herself in contrast to the quiet life of a kiss between them.

"Another tradition?" That was clear but he needed an excuse for her lips to breathe more color into their conversation.

"Don't you have some?" she shot back at him but her intonation wasn't sharp enough to point to exasperation, even if she was too quick for his scattered attention that was in more pieces than there were on her bed.

Did he?

"I pick gifts for my wife."

Another pause as Samara's lips parted to a frozen moment–she must have caught herself from licking off the lipstick–before she spoke. "That is not a New Year's Eve tradition if you do it throughout the rest of the year as well."

"Then I suppose I'm boring." He was lucky to have come up with an answer at all while transfixed with the shimmer of her eyes not warped even in reflection. It'd be a crime not to give her jewels to put next to it for them to pale in comparison with the real beauty she'd grown in the dark.

"Consistent, I would say." Her gaze slid over the room in the mirror and he followed it, unable to turn to the real one if it meant letting her out of his sight. It was still clear as day where her mind treaded even in the shadows creeping around the room with each second they remained too preoccupied with each other to get the lights.

All the leftover illumination from the day and the shine of the space bodies just coming into view was captured by the jewelry he'd given her to turn each piece into a lighthouse of its own in the waves of silk on her bed. He'd gifted her quite a high number in the couple of years they'd been married but they still weren't enough to replace electricity or even the glow of fire.

It was him that was doing the impossible – counting jewelry instead of coins when the monarchy was as stable as Samara's taste for precious gemstones and noble metals. Nothing was shaking under his feet or threatening to crumble on his head in the quietness of her bedchamber. Not even the weight of the earrings dangling from his palm could throw him off balance as he brought the long stemmed calla lilies to her attention and she let him add their tender white and gold to her look.

The music ended just as Erendor found his footing in the dance with exhaustion. He didn't let go of Samara's waist for another couple of seconds until he could steady himself outside the rhythm of her body swaying with his. There were just minutes still from the year they were leaving behind their backs and he had to let go of her on the precipice and risk separation in the name of an obligatory speech and toast. It was so trivial it would have brought out tears if he allowed it but she was queen because he was king and his only choice was to obey the law that had brought them together.

He held her hand until the armrest of his throne was within reach to numb the emptiness of letting go. His reluctant fingers almost retreated from the coolness of the glass with champagne when he would much prefer her company over that of the alcohol sloshing around in its confinement without grace. Especially when the smooth coldness of the glass reminded him of his chase of hard gems outside in the freezing weather and made him feel like the first idiot but the diamonds shining on her neck and the metal warmed up by her skin that had been pressed in his fingers not long ago burned the thought away. They brought the speech to his lips when it had been her touch weaving it in his mind all year in a way that he'd never been able to before. In a way she'd never been able to before with the heavy jewelry dragging her heart and hands into the depths to drown her grace in the spillage of her own blood.

There was nothing but her own decision holding her tongue now to free her from the image of the dragons harnessed for someone else's purposes. And he could tell the story of their monarchy now that they'd pried it free from everyone else's control. It was theirs so there was nothing stopping him from leaning towards her during the cheer of the guests and the thumping of his own heart in unheard applause for her kept promise to meet the new year together with him.

"What a shame to see such waste of lipstick on your glass." She'd barely sipped enough to leave the shape of her lips on the glass and his mind rendering him incapable of noticing anything else.

"I have plenty of lipstick left to spare, remember?" Her tradition made a lot more sense now. "And there is not a force in this kingdom greater than us that could take away our first kiss of the year." He could count on her promise regardless of how long it would take them to keep it.

"Happy New Year," he took her hand again to feel a warmth even the dragons didn't have to offer.

"Happy New Year." She smiled again to blind him to anything the world could serve them next – even the sun crashing on their heads.

The fireworks exploded outside the windows to change the pattern of the light streaming through but even in the lack of consistency, his brain recognized one heat signature like it was the center of the universe.