#she spent basically six months or so and then some more in solitary when she was in the circle

[ch4nticle]

i do think jessamine is mildly claustrophobic

[clarke-griffinwanheda]

Clarke Griffin

Solitary Confinement Discussion

(It’s a rant, but let’s just call it a discussion)

SPOILERS FOR THE 100!

Why does no one talk about Clarke being in solitary? Like, she was literally, as a 17 year old CHILD, but in the Sky Box in solitary for a year.

The United Nations' "Mandela Rules" prohibit placements in solitary beyond 15 consecutive days. Because, you know, that’s the humane treatment of prisoners. But Clarke. Clarke was in solitary confinement for a year. And not even because she committed some great crime and was psycho or anything. She was just traumatised because she saw her dad being killed, was told that she and everyone on the Ark was going to die, and she was shoved into a cell just for damage control.

And it’s literally never talked about. Other than the first episode, we see nothing of it. Not the ramifications or, you know, the major trauma. Which is actually insane because when she is finally let out, she doesn’t even have any time to process or properly adjust because she is being sent basically to her death. And then they released the ground was survivable.

Even after all of that, after being alone with nothing but her thoughts for so long, she stepped up. They landed on the ground, and she chose not only to try and help everyone, but to actively LEAD them.

But what’s worse? That wasn’t the only time. Clarke always ends up by herself. First in solitary, and then after Praimfaya, and then at the end of the show.

Yes, she had Madi, but… she was still alone for that first month. And as much as Madi was there, she was also a six year old child who needed Clarke. Clarke had no one she could actually talk to, or to help her. She was alone. As always, she was on her own with the responsibility and decisions she made. But also, Clarke has been a victim of hallucinations (after Finn’s death). It’s a very real possibility that until Skaikru and Diyoza’s crew came back, that she had to ask if Madi was even real.

After the Test, when literally every other person in the universe got to transcend, Clarke, yet again, is left to be alone. Because of course she is. That’s been her entire life. She has spent more of her adult by herself than with other people. And at the end, when she realised that she hasn’t lost everyone, she is also so goddamn relieved because for the first time, people stayed with her. She wasn’t alone.

[modern-inheritance]

Modern Inheritance: Reunion, pt. 2 (Reluctance and Recall)

(A/N: I just wanted to get this out there. I might continue writing it and put a better ending on it, but for now I just want it off the WIP pile so it stops haunting me. Happy New Year and the like. Hopefully I'll have more stories out this time!)

~~~~

It hadn’t escaped him that she had left her combat jacket on that night. Or that she was wearing it when she came out the next morning. Or the day after that. Or the next six mornings. 

They portioned out their days. Arya would spend the morning drafting reports and debriefs, filling out paperwork to reverse her apparent death and half begrudgingly taking on Brom’s share of more mundane documents as he joined Eragon and Saphira at Oromis and Glaedr’s lessons. They split the evenings, Arya going sometimes to guide Eragon and Saphira around Ellesméra or attempting to mend her fragile relationship with her mother. Other nights she joined Glen for dinner and spent the night remembering the days they spent crawling in trenches and infiltrating camps, Fäolin perched above them in his little nest.

Afternoons, though, were for wandering the pines together, walking aimlessly and just talking. Glen told her about the last months, his recovery and the process of fitting, building and bonding with his new arm. The struggles and the joys of connecting the nerves without further surgery, the excited yelling that earned him a pair of tongs to the face when he finally picked up a mug without shattering it or throwing it into his own teeth. 

The three months he spent without leaving Rhunön’s shop. He didn’t tell her it was because he couldn’t find the courage to face the Queen. 

In turn she told him the entire story of Eragon and Saphira, everything the two had shared and every bit of information Brom would reveal about his and their lives in the village of Carvahall. The Raz’zac, the disastrous first flight, Brom’s near death experience, the young son of Morzan and his surprising allegiance. Glen could tell she glossed over the madcap escape from Gil’ead, their eventual return to the Varden getting a similar treatment along with the post battle recovery under Farthen Dûr. 

He didn’t press for a time. But eventually, he knew he had to.

It was eight days after their impromptu reunion, meandering alone past one of the solitary beech trees that some elf had planted and warded years ago with leaves near dripping with the winking lights of bioluminescent moths, when he finally tried to break through. 

“You know you can take that off, right?” Glen teased, plucking a wrinkled fold on the arm of Arya’s combat jacket. “You’re gonna get more looks than usual if you keep wearing it with those cargos.”

Arya looked down with a frown. “Hey! I think it looks good with these! Green and tan go good together, right?” She had never been much for fashion, or even being all that presentable beyond the occasional inspection back during basic or black tie events for the Varden. At those, all it took was a black dress to get whoever dragged her along off her back, even if she insisted on wearing combat boots with it. 

For a moment she remembered, with some fondness, the first time Fäolin had been forced to join her at a fundraiser in Surda. Teasing him about his slicked back hair, chucking him under the chin to get at the bowtie that was damn near choking him over the starched collar of his borrowed suit. His laugh when she asked him where he had put the backup pistol, her own when he subtly touched the grip of the one strapped to her leg under the dress. “You’re my backup pistol, remember?”

Then it was gone again.

Shaking his head as if his commander were a lost cause, Glenwing peered up from under his brows at the dappled sunlight filtering through the heavy needles above. “Come on. What are you hiding under there?”

“Nothing.” 

The medic closed his eyes with a deep inhale and soft sigh at the deadpan tone, the sharp hint of warning contained in the single word. So it would be like that.

He stopped walking. “Arya.”

“What?” Her momentum had carried her three paces beyond, so she had to stop and turn to him. Her fists were jammed in the pockets of the combat jacket.

“We don’t lie to each other.” He fixed her with that look. The medic look. The look that said ‘I am here to help and if you don’t let me there will be a very difficult road ahead.’ A look that he hadn’t given her for years, decades. 

His heart sank when she cut her eyes away from him. “I don’t…” Arya broke off and rubbed the back of her neck again, fingers digging in roughly. “There’s too much to do. We can worry about it later.”

“You finished the paperwork this morning.” Green eyes slid closed in a quiet, nonverbal curse for telling him that earlier. “You– we –were relieved from guarding Eragon and Saphira days ago, and we won’t be called to that again until they leave. Please.” Movement caught his attention. “Your hands have been shaking since you got back.”

Arya looked down. The tremors had been increasing in frequency since Tarnag. The moments of recall around her wrists always followed their appearance. 

“Arya, you know that I can’t break my oath to you. I can only help you if you allow me. I can’t tell anyone unless you tell me to.” Careful that his approach was seen well before he reached out, Glen touched his commander’s shoulder gently. “I don’t want you to do this alone. I didn’t. I couldn’t.”

And still, she refused to look at him. “You don’t need this on top of everything else.”

“Cut the bullshit.” That got her attention. Glen swore only half as much as the rest of their little squad, and when he did it was usually cause for alarm. No one wanted the man holding their bleeding guts in suddenly swearing out of nowhere. “You’re scared. I understand. And I’m here to help you.”

The accusation made Arya let out a short bark of laughter. At Glen’s raised eyebrow, she merely shook her head, half a twisted grin on her lips. “Ah, Glen. I’m not scared. Nothing really scares me anymore.” Again she let out a short laugh, squinting up into the needles above much like he had and put her hands on her hips. 

He really didn’t expect her explanation. 

“I’ve puked on a shade’s shoes before and lived through the consequences. And I did it again, too. Twice.”

Glenwing stared, bewildered. It took him some seconds to find his words. “...I…I don’t know if you’re joking with me, or if this is your way of saying you’re going to talk about it, or–”

“Oh, I one hundred percent puked on Durza shoes multiple times. That’s one of the things that I like to remember about all that.” Arya was smiling broadly. It didn’t reach her eyes. “If you really want to know,” The smile fell. “I’ll tell you. But later.”

“No.” 

“Glen–”

“I have the file. You know I do.”

Arya closed her eyes in surrender. The file had been sitting on the table for days now, a clear sign to her that he was waiting for her consent to begin the process of unraveling the last nine months. “Yeah.” She inhaled. Smelled wet concrete and tasted copper and iron. Released the breath with a rough sigh. “Okay. Tonight.”

“Tonight.” 

~~~

Glenwing was sitting on the couch with tea already made, file sitting undisturbed on the coffee table, when the door slid open and closed. Relief seeped into his limbs, feeling cold on his left and warm on his right. He hadn't been entirely convinced she was going to show up.

He looked up when she didn’t immediately sit beside him. Arya stood in front of the low table, shoulders tight and fists again firmly shoved in the front pockets of her combat jacket. Every line of her body reflected tension, but her dark eyes glinted with steel when he met her gaze. 

“You sure you wanna do this?” Arya motioned to the file with her chin, sharp and jerky. “It’s a lot less…” She paused, searching for the right word. “Brutal. If you read it from there.”

Glen nodded. He did his best to sound gentle but firm. “I need to hear it from you.” 

Her jaw clenched. “...I don’t know how much I can tell you.”

“Whatever you can. Whatever you want to.” The medic patted the cushion next to him. “We’ll stop whenever you want.” She waited a few more moments. Then, with stiff steps, Arya sat a few feet down the couch. “Take all the time you need.” 

Arya braced her elbows on her knees and leaned over, studying the moss that made up part of the floor of their flat. “I’m not…I’m not ashamed of what happened there.” A shiny backed beetle meandered onto the edge of her boot. She reached down and let it crawl onto her finger, lifted it to examine the iridescence of its carapace. “Hell, I’m proud of what I endured. I don’t know why it's so hard to talk about it like this.” She grinned as the little creature fluttered its hidden wings, the thin sheaves dark in contrast to the elytra’s color. “I’ve joked about it plenty.” 

Glen leaned back. He had his notepad in his hands, rumpled and scuffed and one of the corners charred. “You’ve always preferred deflecting whenever something’s bothering you.”

With a gentle puff of air, Arya encouraged the glittering insect to take flight. They both watched it go, floating to the window where it escaped through the barely open latch. “...Yeah.”

She took a deep breath then, resumed her previous position, and rubbed the flats of her palms together. “I guess I should start from the beginning. 

“That night we were ambushed, when you lost your arm and Fäolin was killed, Durza captured me after I teleported Saphira’s egg.” Again the woman focused her eyes on the ground, watching the miniscule hairs of the moss waver in the near imperceptible movements of air created by the cracked window, her breath, and Glenwing’s breath. Connecting currents that linked everything in the room. “I was in and out, but when I woke up fully I was in a cell under Gil’ead’s keep, their maximum security wing. 

“There were shackles on my wrists. They weren’t connected to anything, so when Durza came in I obviously tried to take his face off.” Half a smirk touched her lips, a tone of bitter pride coloring her words. “So he locked the shackles to the wall. Then I tried to headbutt him when he got too close. So he put me in a chair and locked me to that.”

The woman tilted her head slightly, brow knitted in a hint of confusion. Her braid slid over her shoulder to hang free. “He just…talked to me that time. Sat across from me and told me who he was, gloated about the spells he made to break our wards with just bullets and Urgals at his disposal.” To Glen’s surprise, Arya had an almost wistful, crooked grin when she looked over at him. “You know what he did next?” 

Despite her previous assertion that nothing could really scare her, Glen saw, buried beneath the convoluted and contorted emotions in his friend’s eyes, a glimmer of fear. He shook his head, afraid to break whatever courage was driving her to speak. 

“He asked me, point blank, if I would submit. Asked if I would surrender then and there, knowing the spells he had created, the potential he had, knowing what he was. He told me what awaited me if I did. I would be taken to Urû’baen immediately and presented to Galbatorix. He would receive the information I had to give, take more if he wanted, and then I would be released into his service. I’d swear oaths to him and become his new Forsworn, and used however he saw fit to bring down the Varden, Surda and Du Weldenvarden.” She let out a soft scoff, that pained look still twisting her lips. “I told him ‘no.’ Only word I said to him besides ‘bite me, bitch’ and ‘fuck you’ a few times.” She laughed again, and it sounded desperate, near panicked at the edges. “He just smiled, that fucking smile, and said ‘good.’”

Her own smile gone, Arya dragged a hand down her face, skin going pale as she remembered. “He spent…I don’t know how long. I’ve got no sense of time anymore. He spent what had to be hours just…just telling me what he could do to me. What he would do to me. He paced around and around that stupid fucking chair, grabbed my neck from behind and whispered in my ear the experiments he wanted to try.” 

A shudder passed from the back of her skull to the base of her spine. Arya did her best to focus on the swaths of moss between her boots. Pincushion moss. A bryophyte. They grew it there because it was soft and stayed that way even when the weather turned dry for weeks at a time. 

She could feel his hand gripping the base of her braid, head yanked back against the metal edge of the chair. The way he cupped her throat, thumb pressing just under the joint of her jaw and stroking her skin as she did her best to appear nonchalant. Simply met his gleeful gaze with cold fire in her eyes. She would not look away. 

The elf took a shuddering breath and untangled her fingers from where she had been clenching them together hard enough to leave bruises. “And then…he did. He did all of it and more.” She blinked, willed the floor to return to its green carpet rather than the grey creeping in. “And I fought it. I fought whenever I could. He stopped using the shackles in the cell because my wrists were shredded and I wouldn’t stop fighting them. I don’t know how long it was till I…” Her words caught in her throat. She blinked again. Why was this what made her choke up? “Till I couldn’t fight anymore. 

“He dosed me with Skilna each day, tried to wear me down.” Her lungs hurt at the memory. The time that he had sat on her cot, one leg daintily crossed over the other while he let the poison run its course longer than before. Watched her, that fucking smile plastered on his face, the antidote held in his lap, as she coughed up blood until she couldn’t anymore, as she writhed against the feeling of her bones shattered like crystal glass and the overwhelming, all encompassing fever that turned her veins to molten lead. 

He had wanted her to ask for it. To beg for the antidote. 

She crawled over, every movement triggering more liquid glass to explode within her cells. Grabbed his leg. Saw that triumphant, gleeful grin in the haze above. 

With her last ounce of strength she slipped a finger between his leg and his high, polished boots and deposited a mouthful of blood into the space.

Her gurgling laughter at his disgust made her smile briefly, lost when the noise ended abruptly with a crack and the sound of a tightly gripped, torn throat struggling to breathe. Still. The broken jaw and flail chest had been worth it. And she didn’t even have to ask for the antidote.

“He uh…” Arya cleared her throat, tasted the same blood as he dragged her out of the cell again, fury evident in each step. “He had to change it. To a longer form. One he could trigger at will. I was apparently getting some sort of tolerance.” She could see the pen moving from the corner of her eye. “He couldn’t always be there. Something about reporting to Galbatorix. He told the guards to keep his…his work, going while he was away. Only rule was no blows to the head. Needed the information in my mind unscrambled.”

Glenwing’s pen slowed. He didn’t want to ask the question. He knew she could feel his eyes on her, the way she shifted and raised her laced together hands to her lips. The way she tensed when he put the pen down and leaned toward her to touch two fingers to her forearm. “Arya….”

She refused to look at him. “They didn’t.” Her jaw was clenched. “They…they tried.” One of her hands twitched before the other clamped down on it. She blinked. “One of them…one of them must’ve found some old book somewhere…talked about elf customs or something.” Slowly Glen saw her entire body go tense, muscles locked and coiled to their limit. The first mumbled words of her next admission were lost in the quiet breath that delivered them.  

“...tried to notch my ear.” 

Glen’s blood went cold. The practice was ancient, heralding back to the bonding of the dragons and elves and the…peculiar…additions the dragon’s blood had on elves' practices of coupling. While a gentle bite on the ear of a mate was considered a pact of love, of devotion…a notch was a symbol of bitter solitude. Any elf with a notched ear was considered almost untouchable when it came to love, mating, partnership, acceptance. They were given only for horrific deeds, the slaughter of children, taking an unwilling mate, murder of a partner, and, above all else, for the betrayal of the entire elven race. 

If Durza had learned of this from his men he would have carried it out as the ultimate humiliation, and bound the mark to her body so that no healing could touch the wound. 

It took every ounce of Glenwing’s self control to not seize his best friend’s face and turn her to him, looking for the telltale rift. Instead, he steadied his voice as best he could and managed an only slightly enraged, “They tried?”

“They didn’t manage it.” The words were hollow, the memory of just how close she came to being marked still bouncing in her skull. Unlike the others, this one was…hazy. She could feel the panic in her chest and the many hands forcing her to the ground as she struggled to lift her broken body. They wanted revenge for the men she had…disposed of…after their attempts to take advantage of her weakened state. The cold, cold metal of a set of wire cutters sliding against the side of her head and behind her right ear. 

Then just…relief. Gratitude? And spending time curled under the cot, pressed as tightly against the wall as she could manage until the pale hand dragged her out for another span of agony after a longer than normal gap. 

For some reason the sense of relief sparked warmth that soothed the growing lump in her throat. She pressed her fingers into the spaces between her knuckles, grounded herself in the discomfort as she found sore tendons and protesting connective bands. “Eragon was captured some time after that. I don’t know how long. Adrenaline and pain tablets kept me on my feet long enough to get out with them. Eragon, Saphira and Brom healed what they could and got me awake. The rest you already know.”

Glen picked up his pen again and rolled it between his fingers. “Poison?” He had masked the tremor in his tone, but the rage wasn’t going to fade quite so easy. He wouldn’t press, not now at least. This was enough for one night.

“Right.” Gil’ead retreating from her mind, Arya straightened somewhat and clasped her knees with hands now blooming with fingertip shaped bruises. “Durza activated it. We got through the Hadarac before it caused problems. I might have…had to use the dream state to survive it.” She winced, fully expecting a lecture. 

Instead, Glenwing chewed the end of his pen. “You got out of it.” It was a statement of fact, laced with a hint of assurance that he wasn’t angry. He had taught her how to trigger the dream state for emergencies, and poison was certainly on the qualifying list.

“After a bunch of Tunivor’s Nectar…yeah.” Arya blinked, suddenly remembering another visitor during her half-addled state in Tronjheim’s hospital. “And the Wise One gave me something to pull me out.”

Glen stopped his absentminded chewing, pen dangling from his lips as he shot his commander a look of shock. “She’s back?” The way the stylus bobbed with his words made him look almost comically like Brom with his pipe. 

“Werecat and all.” Arya frowned. “Didn’t I say she’s the one that fixed Eragon’s back?”

“You kind of ignored the recovery period.” 

“Ah.” 

The woman’s bearing had shifted again. Glen saw more anxiety than before, less tension in her limbs as she cut her gaze away again and picked a loose thread by her knee. “Speaking of the recovery period…” 

“I broke the Star Sapphire, injected myself with four full doses of adrenaline to try and stop Eragon’s back from bleeding, overdosed, had several cardiac events, and Vilks put me on strict orders and told me I’d die if I didn’t follow them.” 

‘Ah’ indeed. No wonder she looked nervous. There was nothing that could trigger fear in a lifelong, diehard soldier with nothing else but their deployment than the anger of a very exasperated medic with the power to put them on an indefinite hold.

“You what?!”

Arya had already bolted off the couch, skittering past the coffee table. “Look, I know you’re upset with me for pulling a stunt like that again–”

“FOUR?!” 

She was already down the hall, nearly slingshotting past her room when she grabbed the doorframe. “Just…read the file, Vilks took good notes, I’ll change, just…yeah!”

Torn between fuming and alarmed, Glen grabbed for the file on the coffee table. He swore when his knuckles impacted the side of the wood, the metal leaving a decent dent. Making a mental note to speak to Rhunön about his continued issues of emotional override, he snatched up the packet with his right hand and flipped it open to the tab at the very back.

Vilks’ handwriting still kept its tight scrawl in his advanced age, and after so many years the doctor had perfected the art of short, sweet and to the point in his notes. Possible seizures. Fluid in the lungs, intubation for two hours, O2 mask for six after. Five VTach events before AED applied, unknown number post. Repeated attempts to leave bed before fully aware. Restrained for aprox 10 minutes before reminded of patient history. Energy extremely depleted, side effects of poisoning, imprisonment, poor diet, adrenaline overdose and magic overuse. Given orders of NO MAGIC two weeks, consistent bedrest and sleep (unlikely), multivit 2/d two weeks, recheck two weeks. Warned of consequences. 

A quick note at an angle, dated eleven days after the initial list, added ‘Given consequences after discovered participating in rigorous PT. Patient given icepack for forehead contusion and required to replace hospital clipboard at next possible opportunity.’

Despite his frustration, Glen couldn't help the smile that curled the edges of his lips. ‘Of course.’

“If you’re going to chuck that at me, let me get a head start first.” The medic looked up at his commander’s wry request. She had donned a pair of jogging shorts and a loose tshirt, the standard PT gear of Varden recruits in Fathen Dûr. 

Glenwing snapped the file closed. “I wouldn’t warn you if I was going to throw it, especially after reading that. Let’s sit at the table, better light.” Arya shrugged, thumbs hooked in the small pockets of her shorts, and followed him to sit in the dining area where bright werelights hung above their heads. 

They sat together, bathed in light tinged with the greens that dominated their home away from the Varden. Arya, after a moment of hesitation, placed her forearms on the table, palms down.

The medic resisted sucking his teeth, and instead bit the tip of his tongue as he reached out and gently lifted the woman’s left arm. A swath of scar tissue encircled her wrist, creeping up her hand and palm just slightly before diving down and dipping a concave wrap two inches down her forearm. The right side mirrored the same mutilation, both dark and a mottled red mix of soft ridges and silken patches. With a light touch to the back of her hand and a nod of acquiescence, he turned her palm up to reveal her tendons etched at the surface of her skin, as if locked permanently taut. 

“They’re just like that.” Arya broke the silence. A half hearted shrug tilted her wrist, and the flexor tendons jutted out further. “Tissue’s gone. Tendons just kind of…stand out, I guess.”

Glen hummed in acknowledgement, inwardly swearing at the possible damage that lurked beneath her skin. “Do you have any numbness in your hands or fingers?”

“No. The shaking started when we were around Tarnag. It feels like pins and needles sometimes, but it’s not affected my grip or range of motion.” 

Gently manipulating the joints, Glenwing confirmed her words before picking up his pen and scribbling a note down. “And you didn’t heal these…?”

“I like them.” Arya’s eyes were clear when he snapped his gaze up to hers. 

“Arya, they've got nerve damage. In your hands.” 

At that the woman pulled her hand from his grip and crossed her arms, hiding the dark bands from view. “Can you heal the nerve damage without healing the scars?” 

Glen frowned. “Yes, but–”

“Then we do it that way.” She held him in her gaze for a long moment, waiting for him to acquiesce. “This is my way of taking it back, Glen.” And again, she suddenly cut her eyes away with a quiet mumble.

“What?”

“It helps…” He could see her flex her fingers involuntarily under her arms, gnash her teeth at some unseen jolt. She looked like he did when the phantom pain kicked in unexpectedly, a shock that lingered for minutes or hours. “It helps when I have recall. When…when I touch them it’s like….” The woman fumbled for words, distress building. “He never left scars when he gave me hallucinations.” She gripped the table edge with white knuckles, tilting the chair back slightly. “And when I feel the scars I just…I know I’m not there. It helps bring me back sometimes.” 

Sometimes. Not always.

‘Recall.’ That cursed thing. Sensory recall and elvish memory went hand in hand, making the calling up of emotionally charged memories laden with past sensory detail a normal, if not somewhat uncommon, occurrence among their race. Arya’s had always been strong, bringing back physical touch and involving a majority of the senses for most of her moments of involuntary recall. Glen’s near rivaled hers, built up from the years of war and countless moments where PTSD took hold of the accursed skill, if it could even be called that. They both relived their traumas, ricocheting to the past as the world went on around them, seeing but not seeing.

Every time he thought of the ambush, he smelled the smoke, felt the hot ash and cinders embedding in his clothes and his skin. He could taste blood and pine ash, the grit between his red stained teeth and the excruciating wrong that was the needles and the dirt and bark and ash collecting, sticking to the mangled flesh of his ruined arm. He didn’t always see it, and for that he thanked whatever stars watched over him. That was his only escape. Seeing the metal limb that now dominated his left side, a zing of phantom pain that reminded him that the original limb was long gone…it made coming out of the recall easier. Something to remind him that the past was the past.

Glenwing reached out and, with a feather touch of his mechanical hand, reminded his commander to release the creaking wood of the table. He cupped her scarred knuckles, turned her palm to run a cold thumb over the ghost of a hastily healed burn. 

“I’ll do my best.” He promised. 

A rush of air left Arya’s lungs, a relief she didn't quite realize she needed. An acknowledgement of the scars beyond the cursory looks cast her way under Farthen Dûr, the concerned frown Brom gave them every once in a while. Glenwing understood their purpose, in a way that no one else could. “Thanks.”

Satisfied he could mend some of the frayed nerves, Glen turned to examining the smattering of new scars that littered the woman’s arms. Nothing was particularly egregious, and while several of the straight lines that slid down from beneath the woman’s sleeves looked near surgical, Arya simply told him it was ‘healed fully’ and ‘not a problem.’ Again, he didn't push it.

“Is there more?” Glen took a sip of his now cold tea, making a face before reheating it with a quick word. If this was all that needed checking then he could call himself pleasantly surprised given her previous description. 

Arya paused. “There’s a few on my legs but those were…those were healed. He healed them to the surface at least.” She tried to shake the sudden jolt of seeing steel nubs protruding from her shin, the excruciating ripping, tearing, snapping, as the bone split down its length. All that remained were four pale pink spots in a line from the last time that particular method was used. “Eragon and Saphira healed a scrape on my right leg, but they did well. No complaints there.”

“Uh-huh.” Glen tapped the point of his pen at the upper corner of his paper, resisting the urge to chew on the end again. She wasn’t telling him everything. But it was a start. “Is that it?”

“...No.” Arya sighed and pushed back from the table to stand. “I’m not healing these either, okay?” Her voice was muffled as she tugged her shirt up and over her head. She tossed it into the achingly empty chair across from her and stood clad only in her shorts and sports bra. “Make me look badass.” She turned and pulled her braid over her shoulder, gesturing with a jerked thumb at the expanse of her back. 

Glenwing dropped his pen. “Well. Shit."

“Hey!” Arya whirled to him. She seemed genuinely offended. “Come on, Glen! I survived this shit. You know what that took? I’m fuckin’ proud of these, and I’m not healing them for bullshit vanity.” He didn’t answer. Just stood and put his hands on her shoulders. “What are you–”

And pulled her into another hug.

Arya froze. She could feel the cold metal of his left arm holding her around her shoulder blades, a stark contrast to the warmth of his right hand squeezing around her ribs. Someone was touching her back and he wasn’t recoiling, wasn’t probing, wasn’t hurting. She wasn’t struggling, fighting, desperate to run away. An ache that she didn’t even realize had been tied into the muscles along her spine for months suddenly released, bringing with it a rush of relief and a soothing mix of warm where warm was needed and cool where cool was needed. 

“Don’t lie to me.” Glen murmured in her ear, his voice catching. “You tried.”

Arya squeezed her eyes shut. 

The day after Vilks cleared her for magic use. Checking the multitude of scars that covered her back and criss-crossed her skin with burns, cuts, hills and valleys of hypertrophic and concave bands. The visible slide of muscle where the layers above had been carved away. There was space between them, yes. But all she could see was the red, pink and silver of lingering damage made physical and, above all else, undeniable. She looked…she looked almost broken.

She had tried to heal them. And found herself scrabbling, clawing, writhing on the floor of that stupid little bathroom, choking back a scream of unimaginable pain as the nerves in her back exploded in protest. Everything she had endured, condensed and dripped in a steady, maddening flow along each pathway, electric and burning and pain. Once again it was all that existed for her in that moment, an extended second that encompassed months and months of time she could not begin to grasp nor understand the passage of. 

She ripped away from the magic and lay, panting, on that stupid, stupid bathroom floor. Blood steadily streamed from her forehead to the tiles where she had cracked it on the stone, trying to breathe through the lingering aftershocks and remembering the spells that he had used to the same result. Felt, deep in her chest, an interwoven pity and horror for Eragon and the new hell he was beginning to endure. She couldn’t heal herself. And she couldn’t heal him. Magic wouldn't erase these wounds.

Arya reached up and grabbed onto Glenwing, clutched at the loose folds of his shirt under his shoulder blades as if he were her last hope against drowning. “They’re…” She shivered, pressed her forehead to his shoulder. She had decided already, that day back in Tronjheim, that if she couldn’t remove them then she would wear them as a badge of pride. She wasn’t broken. She couldn’t be. They were the proof. “I’m…. I beat them. I beat him.”

Glenwing didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He knew, and she knew as well. They’d weather it just as they always did, together and steadfast and strong against the push of everyone else. So they had scars. That didn’t mean they were lost, or broken, or could be cast aside as soldiers who had long passed their expiration date. Fifty years, seventy in her case, was a long, long time to fight.  

They’d just have to keep fighting.

They wouldn’t have it any other way.

[lambourngb]

Why can’t I change

The irony is, you inspired this story. You posted a ficlet about Michael and Max going out to distract themselves from the pain of being separated from their soulmates...  and this hit me hard:

Max is drinking too much tonight.  This is a good bar – Michael’s actually been in here before.  Twice.  Both times over the last few months, since Alex and Forrest… yeah.  He’s left with guys, both times. He’s… he’s trying to figure some stuff out, with himself.  What he likes.  What he wants, outside of Alex.  Um, and hopefully, eventually, with Alex. It’s been… fine. Fun.  Light.  Uncomplicated.  Pretty much everything the rest of his life isn’t right now.

So I started writing a fic where Michael is exploring things about himself, dating and figuring out what he wants, while he lingers in that “hopefully eventually” feeling in place. Of course, dating is hell, and especially it’s hell when there is so much about Michael that is hard to explain to someone- not just the alien parts, but his genius IQ, his “adopted” siblings, his past in social services, no parents, etc. Then the awkwardness of how he can’t stop from watching Alex whenever their paths cross.

SNIPPET :

It started innocently enough like most of Michael’s life-ruining decisions, during a beer break from his newly re-established lab bunker. 

“Alright, worst date you’ve ever been on, and go!”  Charlie started, taking a long pull of her IPA, before sending a look over to Michael. “You win on the most embarrassing sibling, Guerin, someone needs to teach your sister to knock, but I bet I have you beat on bad dates.”

So five minutes after she had decided to stay in Roswell, Charlie Cameron had ended up tracking down Michael at Sanders, and opened the conversation unceremoniously with, “So aliens are real and I’m guessing you’re one. Consider me the newest member of your Scooby Gang and tell me everything.” He had dropped a heavy wrench on his boot, pain stealing his voice for a moment. Perhaps there was a man out there that was able to resist the no-nonsense stare of a Cameron woman, but that wasn’t Michael, or even Max for that matter.

And that was that, one more person in on the second biggest secret Michael held (he was still in love with Alex being number one). It came with it’s own valuable reveals, finding out from Charlie that although Helena Ortecho had covered her tracks with the group as a red herring for Flint’s sake, Deep Sky was a very real paramilitary group and they were the source of the depowering serum that Helena had used on Michael to keep him compliant.

So ten minutes after catching her up on all things ridiculous and real in Roswell, New Mexico, Charlie had raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him and drawled lazily, “Any plans to combat that drug, or are you just going to hope that the next time it’s another benign manipulator? Because the way I see it, I’m a genius biochemist, and you’re a genius period, maybe we can do better than blind hope?”

Whether it was hubris at play to see if it was even possible, or a renewed determination to just fuck up whatever military sponsored plot that was in play, Charlie Cameron signed on to research an antidote to the depowering serum and in the process had become Michael’s newest, and surprisingly easiest, friend to have. 

It was strange but Michael was starting to number his friends beyond just Max, Isobel and the currently absent Liz Ortecho. He could begrudgingly add Kyle Valenti to the list, now that Max had come clean with everyone over his heart condition. Although it was exceedingly awkward at times in the wake of their breakup, Maria was trying for friendship with him and it probably said something about them that they fell into that rhythm much easier than he had with Alex. 

On paper he could consider Alex his friend. They shared beers together at neutral locations, there was always a conversation to linger over with coffee, and finally, Michael was the person Alex called now, every time he was scheduled to go out of town for work. That was less friendship, and more of a coping mechanism for them both after his abduction by Jesse then Helena. 

It meant that Charlie Cameron had won the contest of easiest friend probably by default, but that didn’t make being the target of her knife-sharp sense of humor any easier to deflect when she smelled blood in the water. Thinking about his past, he knew that any conversation about dating was sure to leave him bleeding out.

Michael eyed the open hatch of the bunker lab, wondering if the spanse of time they had spent in the open air was enough for Charlie to nip this conversation to a close and return to the task of experimentation. Long periods of time in solitary confinement in a military prison had left her with a dislike of closed spaces, and it didn’t matter what sort of faux-Restoration Hardware light fixture he hung from the ceiling of his bunker; the walls would start closing in on her after two  hours or so of work.  

“You win this round, okay?” 

“Come on, no bowing out. I told you about the ‘bring your child to work day’ my father suffered through with his conservative asshat co-workers, you can tell me about your worst date.”

“I haven’t dated enough to have a bad one, okay?” Michael admitted, looking away. There was no way he was going to talk about the drive in charity benefit with Alex, when he couldn’t be legitimately sure that it was even a date. Did sharing a six-pack on his tailgate even count? The way that night had ended was better off forgotten. Then there was Maria, where drinks at her bar had started as the natural postscript to an evening together. Did that count? He remembered bargaining with debts to arrange a dinner with Chinese food, that had been postponed almost indefinitely after her visions took center stage. 

“Bullshit! Almost the second thing my sister told me about you was to be careful I didn’t end up in your bed.”

Michael ducked his head with an acknowledged wince. Well, Jenna Cameron did have a front-row seat during most of his questionable decisions regarding women and his poor restraint when it came to a certain brand of asshole at the Wild Pony. When he ran across men who reminded him of Foster Dad #5 who thought respect could be beaten into Michael, or men who were like Foster Dad 3 who kept his wife nervously popping pills for her nerves and caked in pancake makeup most Sunday mornings. Some people just needed punching. Michael was always happy to be the one doing it if someone gave him reason to and drunk assholes often did.

He tipped the bottle back to drain the last swallow of nearly flat beer to buy some time as he thought about what to say next. There was little hope of escape, Charlie had the mind of a scientist, sharp and inquisitive and ready to press for more answers. “I’m no virgin, that’s for sure. But that was mainly sex.” He shrugged, dropping the empty into his trash barrel. “From all the movies Izzy makes me watch with her, I gather going on a date is something of a higher tier than a one-off in my truck after last call.”

“What about with Mr. Complicated?” Charlie’s smile was closer to a smirk. Michael revised his assessment of her, from scientist to sadist. 

“More than a one-off in my truck,” Michael agreed quietly. “Everything else was why it was complicated. And no, I don’t really want to talk about it, just to say, I have no stories about lost entrées at dinner or suddenly being a part of someone’s wedding reception with him.” 

Instead of pressing the knife deeper into him with more questions about Alex, Charlie backed off with a mixed expression. Shit that was pity on her face, wasn’t it? God, it really was a sad story, his relationship with Alex and his life currently, Michael thought. Charlie, who had spent time in the last couple of years in a military prison and was actively evading a paramilitary group interested in her research, actually pitied his life. 

“You’re trying to tell me you’re thirty years old, and you don’t have a single dating story to share?” She shook her head giving a sarcastic *bzzz* sound with her lips. “I don’t buy it. What about the hot bartender you were with last year?”

“You ever try to date someone who works in a bar? Her work hours were prime recreational hours. Who wants to go see a movie after last call and closing the till? You especially don’t want to go to another bar during off hours.” Michael pointed out. “Anyway, we kept it low-key. I cooked. Or we had drinks at the Pony. I dunno, life kept getting in the way of anything more.” 

“That’s just sad.”

Michael placed his hand against his chest, “Ouch, don’t hold back!”

Charlie straightened up from where she was sitting, on the steps of the old school bus to get to her feet. “Okay you’ve basically described two relationships with feelings, but I’m talking about something different. You swipe right on someone, trade messages, ghost them when they are creepy, you’ve never done any of that? No one has ever slipped their number to you when you’ve gone out with friends?”

“I just told you, those were just one-offs in my truck.”

“Oh my god, give me your phone, we’re downloading some apps.”

[hockeysweetheart]

So I asked this question Earlier. Do you think that Katniss was in love with Gale the romantic way. 

Easy answer no. I do beileve she loved him as you love her friends. But there were just no sparks there.  Okay this will be a super long thing. I’ll add all  chapters and pages below 

Lets dig into this.  

So at the start of the book they meet up in the woods on the day of the reaping This is Katniss Discribing Gale ( This is after they talk about running away Katniss blurts out I am never having kids, Eating bakery bread  Gale said he would have kids ect...  

Chapter 1 Page 10 The hunger Games 

This Conversation feels all wrong Leave? How could I leave Prim, Who is the only person in the world I’m certain I love? And Gale who is Devoted to his Family. We can’t Leave, so why bother talking about it? And if we did... even if we did... where did this stuff about having kids come from? There’s NEVER been anything romantic between Gale and me. When we met, I was a skinny 12 year old and although he was only two years older. He already looked like a man. It took a long time for us to even become friends, to stop haggling over every trade and begin helping each other out. 

 Besides if he wanted Kids, Gale won’t have any trouble finding a wife. He’s good-looking, he’s strong enough to handle the work in the mines, and he can hunt. You can tell by the way  girls whisper about him when he walks by in school that they want him. It makes me jealous but not for the reason people would think. Good hunting partners are hard to find.

Page 38- 40 Chapter 3 The hunger Games 

( Now this is when Katniss is saying goodbyes and Gale says goodbye)

Finally Gale is here and maybe there is nothing Romantic between us, but when he opens his arms . I don’t hesitate to go into the. His body is familiar to me- the way it moves, the smell of wood and smoke, even the sound of his heart beating I know from quiet moments on a hunt- but this is the first time I really  feel it, lean and hard-muscled against my own.

"Katniss, it's just hunting. You're the best hunter I know," says Gale. "It's not just hunting. They're armed. They think," I say. "So do you. And you've had more practice. Real practice," he says. "You know how to kill." "Not people," I say. "How different can it be, really?" says Gale grimly. The awful thing is that if I can forget they're people, it will be no different at all. The Peacekeepers are back too soon and Gale asks for more time, but they're taking him away and I start to panic. "Don't let them starve!" I cry out, clinging to his hand. "I won't! You know I won't! Katniss, remember I  - " he says, and they yank us apart and slam the door and I'll never know what it was he wanted me to remember.

Pages 109 to 112 Chapter 8 The Hunger Games 

When they first met. Please note this is Before Peeta confessed his Love for Katniss. 

I had been struggling along on my own for about six months when I first ran into Gale in the woods. It was a Sun- day in October, the air cool and pungent with dying things. I’d spent the morning competing with the squirrels for nuts and the slightly warmer afternoon wading in shallow ponds har- vesting katniss. The only meat I’d shot was a squirrel that had practically run over my toes in its quest for acorns, but the an- imals would still be afoot when the snow buried my other food sources. Having strayed farther afield than usual, I was hurrying back home, lugging my burlap sacks when I came across a dead rabbit. It was hanging by its neck in a thin wire a foot above my head. About fifteen yards away was another. I recognized the twitch-up snares because my father had used them. When the prey is caught, it’s yanked into the air out of the reach of other hungry animals. I’d been trying to use snares all summer with no success, so I couldn’t help dropping my sacks to examine this one. My fingers were just on the wire above one of the rabbits when a voice rang out. “That’s dangerous.”

I jumped back several feet as Gale materialized from be- hind a tree. He must have been watching me the whole time. He was only fourteen, but he cleared six feet and was as good as an adult to me. I’d seen him around the Seam and at school. And one other time. He’d lost his father in the same blast that killed mine. In January, I’d stood by while he received his medal of valor in the Justice Building, another oldest child with no father. I remembered his two little brothers clutching his mother, a woman whose swollen belly announced she was just days away from giving birth. “What’s your name?” he said, coming over and disengaging the rabbit from the snare. He had another three hanging from his belt. “Katniss,” I said, barely audible. “Well, Catnip, stealing’s punishable by death, or hadn’t you heard?” he said. “Katniss,” I said louder. “And I wasn’t stealing it. I just wanted to look at your snare. Mine never catch anything.” He scowled at me, not convinced. “So where’d you get the squirrel?” “I shot it.” I pulled my bow off my shoulder. I was still using the small version my father had made me, but I’d been practic- ing with the full-size one when I could. I was hoping that by spring I might be able to bring down some bigger game. Gale’s eyes fastened on the bow. “Can I see that?” I handed it over. “Just remember, stealing’s punishable by death.”

That was the first time I ever saw him smile. It transformed him from someone menacing to someone you wished you knew. But it took several months before I returned that smile. We talked hunting then. I told him I might be able to get him a bow if he had something to trade. Not food. I wanted knowledge. I wanted to set my own snares that caught a belt of fat rabbits in one day. He agreed something might be worked out. As the seasons went by, we grudgingly began to share our knowledge, our weapons, our secret places that were thick with wild plums or turkeys. He taught me snares and fishing. I showed him what plants to eat and eventually gave him one of our precious bows. And then one day, without either of us saying it, we became a team. Dividing the work and the spoils. Making sure that both our families had food. Gale gave me a sense of security I’d lacked since my father’s death. His companionship replaced the long solitary hours in the woods. I became a much better hunter when I didn’t have to look over my shoulder constantly, when someone was watching my back. But he turned into so much more than a hunting partner. He became my confidante, someone with whom I could share thoughts I could never voice inside the fence. In exchange, he trusted me with his. Being out in the woods with Gale . . . sometimes I was actually happy. I call him my friend, but in the last year it’s seemed too ca- sual a word for what Gale is to me. A pang of longing shoots through my chest. If only he was with me now! But, of course, I don’t want that. I don’t want him in the arena where he’d bedead in a few days. I just . . . I just miss him. And I hate being so alone. Does he miss me? He must.

I think of the eleven flashing under my name last night. I know exactly what he’d say to me. “Well, there’s some room for improvement there.” And then he’d give me a smile and I’d return it without hesitating now. I can’t help comparing what I have with Gale to what I’m pretending to have with Peeta. How I never question Gale’s motives while I do nothing but doubt the latter’s. It’s not a fair comparison really. Gale and I were thrown together by a mu- tual need to survive. Peeta and I know the other’s survival means our own death. How do you sidestep that?

Now through out the Games Katniss does Question How Gale would feel about all this like the Kissing, The being in love with Peeta for an act. ( only everyone knows it’s aha not an act.) 

Catching Fire.  

Catching Fire Chaper 1 Page 9.  

Basically saying how painful It was for Gale to see his best friend in love with someone else. 

Hazelle nods “ That’d be good. Gale means to, but he’s only got his Sundays. and I think he likes saving those for you” I Can’t stop the redness that floods my cheeks. It’s stupid. of course. Hardly anybody knows me Better then Hazelle. Knows the bond I share with Gale. I’m sure plenty of people assumed that we’d eventually get married even if I never gave it any thought. But that was before the Games. Before my fellow tribute, Peeta Mellark , announced he was madly in love with me, Our romance became a key strategy for Peeta. I’m not sure what it was for me. But I know now it was nothing put painful for Gale. My chest tightens as I think about how. on the Victory Tour. Peeta and I will have to present ourselves as lovers again.

Catching Fire Chapter 2 Pages 23- 28. 

Now this is when Snow  basically tells Katniss he can kill Gale and that Katniss goes into the kiss ( the surprise one)

"Peeta. How is the love of your life?" he asks. "Good," I say.

"At what point did he realize the exact degree of your indifference?" he asks, dipping his cookie in his tea. "I'm not indifferent," I say.

"But perhaps not as taken with the young man as you would have the country believe," he says. "Who says I'm not?" I say.

"I do," says the president. "And I wouldn't be here if I were the only person who had doubts. How's the handsome cousin?"

"I don't know ... I don't ..." My revulsion at this conversation, at discussing my feelings for two of the people I care most about with President Snow, chokes me off.

"Speak, Miss Everdeen. Him I can easily kill off if we don't come to a happy resolution," he says. "You aren't doing him a favor by disappearing into the woods with him each Sunday."

If he knows this, what else does he know? And how does he know it? Many people could tell him that Gale and I spend our Sundays hunting. Don't we show up at the end of each one loaded down with game? Haven't we for years? The real question is what he thinks goes on in the woods beyond District 12. Surely they haven't been tracking us in there. Or have they? Could we have been followed? That seems impossible. At least by a person. Cameras? That never crossed my mind until this moment. The woods have always been our place of safety, our place beyond the reach of the Capitol, where we're free to say what we feel, be who we are. At least before the Games. If we've been watched since, what have they seen? Two people hunting, saying treasonous things against the Capitol, yes. But not two people in love, which seems to be President Snow's implication. We are safe on that charge. Unless ... unless ...

It only happened once. It was fast and unexpected, but it did happen.

After Peeta and I got home from the Games, it was several weeks before I saw Gale alone. First there were the obligatory celebrations. A banquet for the victors that only the most high-ranking people were invited to. A holiday for the whole district with free food and entertainers brought in from the Capitol. Parcel Day, the first of twelve, in which food packages were delivered to every person in the district. That was my favorite. To see all those hungry kids in the Seam running around, waving cans of applesauce, tins of meat, even candy. Back home, too big to carry, would be bags of grain, cans of oil. To know that once a month for a year they would all receive another parcel. That was one of the few times I actually felt good about winning the Games.

So between the ceremonies and events and the reporters documenting my every move as I presided and thanked and kissed Peeta for the audience, I had no privacy at all. After a few weeks, things finally died down. The camera crews and reporters packed up and went home. Peeta and I assumed the cool relationship we've had ever since. My family settled into our house in the Victor's Village. The everyday life of District 12 - workers to the mines, kids to school - resumed its usual pace. I waited until I thought the coast was really clear, and then one Sunday, without telling anyone, I got up hours before dawn and took off for the woods.

The weather was still warm enough that I didn't need a jacket. I packed along a bag filled with special foods, cold chicken and cheese and bakery bread and oranges. Down at my old house, I put on my hunting boots. As usual, the fence was not charged and it was simple to slip into the woods and retrieve my bow and arrows. I went to our place, Gale's and mine, where we had shared breakfast the morning of the reaping that sent me into the Games.

I waited at least two hours. I'd begun to think that he'd given up on me in the weeks that had passed. Or that he no longer cared about me. Hated me even. And the idea of losing him forever, my best friend, the only person I'd ever trusted with my secrets, was so painful I couldn't stand it. Not on top of everything else that had happened. I could feel my eyes tearing up and my throat starting to close the way it does when I get upset.

Then I looked up and there he was, ten feet away, just watching me. Without even thinking, I jumped up and threw my arms around him, making some weird sound that combined laughing, choking, and crying. He was holding me so tightly that I couldn't see his face, but it was a really long time before he let me go and then he didn't have much choice, because I'd gotten this unbelievably loud case of the hiccups and had to get a drink.

We did what we always did that day. Ate breakfast. Hunted and fished and gathered. Talked about people in town. But not about us, his new life in the mines, my time in the arena. Just about other things. By the time we were at the hole in the fence that's nearest the Hob, I think I really believed that things could be the same. That we could go on as we always had. I'd given all the game to Gale to trade since we had so much food now. I told him I'd skip the Hob, even though I was looking forward to going there, because my mother and sister didn't even know I'd gone hunting and they'd be wondering where I was.

Then suddenly, as I was suggesting I take over the daily snare run, he took my face in his hands and kissed me. I was completely unprepared. You would think that after all the hours I'd spent with Gale - watching him talk and laugh and frown - that I would know all there was to know about his lips. But I hadn't imagined how warm they would feel pressed against my own. Or how those hands, which could set the most intricate of snares, could as easily entrap me. I think I made some sort of noise in the back of my throat, and I vaguely remember my fingers, curled tightly closed, resting on his chest. Then he let go and said, "I had to do that. At least once." And he was gone.

Despite the fact that the sun was setting and my family would be worried, I sat by a tree next to the fence. I tried to decide how I felt about the kiss, if I had liked it or resented it, but all I really remembered was the pressure of Gale's lips and the scent of the oranges that still lingered on his skin. It was pointless comparing it with the many kisses I'd exchanged with Peeta. I still hadn't figured out if any of those counted. Finally I went home.

That week I managed the snares and dropped off the meat with Hazelle. But I didn't see Gale until Sunday.

I had this whole speech worked out, about how I didn't want a boyfriend and never planned on marrying, but I didn't end up using it. Gale acted as if the kiss had never happened.

Maybe he was waiting for me to say something. Or kiss him back. Instead I just pretended it had never happened, either. But it had. Gale had shattered some invisible barrier between us and, with it, any hope I had of resuming our old, uncomplicated friendship. Whatever I pretended, I could never look at his lips in quite the same way.

This all flashes through my head in an instant as President Snow's eyes bore into me on the heels of his threat to kill Gale. How stupid I've been to think the Capitol would just ignore me once I'd returned home! Maybe I didn't know about the potential uprisings. But I knew they were angry with me. Instead of acting with the extreme caution the situation called for, what have I done? From the president's point of view, I've ignored Peeta and flaunted my preference for Gale's company before the whole district. And by doing so made it clear I was, in fact, mocking the Capitol. Now I've endangered Gale and his family and my family and Peeta, too, by my carelessness. “Please don't hurt Gale," I whisper. "He's just my friend. He's been my friend for years. That's all that's between us. Besides, everyone thinks we're cousins now."  

Chaper 7 Pages 93-101  Catching fire 

 Basically talking about running away and then Katniss can’t leave Peeta or Haymitch and  Gale is angry about that But Prior Gale is happy to run away with her Says He loves her... but HA. ( we all know how that worked out) 

Then I sit on the tiny concrete hearth, thawing out by the fire and waiting for Gale. It's a surprisingly short time before he appears. A bow slung over his shoulder, a dead wild turkey he must have encountered along the way hanging from his belt. He stands in the doorway as if considering whether or not to enter. He holds the unopened leather bag of food, the flask, Cinna's gloves. Gifts he will not accept because of his anger at me. I know exactly how he feels. Didn't I do the same thing to my mother? I look in his eyes. His temper can't quite mask the hurt, the sense of betrayal he feels at my engagement to Peeta. This will be my last chance, this meeting today, to not lose Gale forever. I could take hours trying to explain, and even then have him refuse me. Instead I go straight to the heart of my defense. "President Snow personally threatened to have you killed," I say. Gale raises his eyebrows slightly, but there's no real show of fear or astonishment. "Anyone else?" "Well, he didn't actually give me a copy of the list. But it's a good guess it includes both our families," I say. It's enough to bring him to the fire. He crouches before the hearth and warms himself. "Unless what?" "Unless nothing, now," I say. Obviously this requires more of an explanation, but I have no idea where to start, so I just sit there staring gloomily into the fire. After about a minute of this, Gale breaks the silence. "Well, thanks for the heads-up." I turn to him, ready to snap, but I catch the glint in his eye. I hate myself for smiling. This is not a funny moment, but I guess it's a lot to drop on someone. We're all going to be obliterated no matter what. "I do have a plan, you know." "Yeah, I bet it's a stunner," he says. He tosses the gloves on my lap. "Here. I don't want your fiance's old gloves." "He's not my fiance. That's just part of the act. And these aren't his gloves. They were Cinna's," I say. "Give them back, then," he says. He pulls on the gloves, flexes his fingers, and nods in approval. "At least I'll die in comfort." "That's optimistic. Of course, you don't know what's happened," I say. "Let's have it," he says. I decide to begin with the night Peeta and I were crowned victors of the Hunger Games, and Haymitch warned me of the Capitol's fury. I tell him about the uneasiness that dogged me even once I was back home, President Snow's visit to my house, the murders in District 11, the tension in the crowds, the last-ditch effort of the engagement, the president's indication that it hadn't been enough, my certainty that I'll have to pay. Gale never interrupts. While I talk, he tucks the gloves in his pocket and occupies himself with turning the food in the leather bag into a meal for us. Toasting bread and cheese, coring apples, placing chestnuts in the fire to roast. I watch his hands, his beautiful, capable fingers. Scarred, as mine were before the Capitol erased all marks from my skin, but strong and deft. Hands that have the power to mine coal but the precision to set a delicate snare. Hands I trust. I pause to take a drink of tea from the flask before I tell him about my homecoming. "Well, you really made a mess of things," he says. "I'm not even done," I tell him. "I've heard enough for the moment. Let's skip ahead to this plan of yours," he says. I take a deep breath. "We run away." "What?" he asks. This has actually caught him off guard. "We take to the woods and make a run for it," I say. His face is impossible to read. Will he laugh at me, dismiss this as foolishness? I rise in agitation, preparing for an argument. "You said yourself you thought that we could do it! That morning of the reaping. You said - " He steps in and I feel myself lifted off the ground. The room spins, and I have to lock my arms around Gale's neck to brace myself. He's laughing, happy. "Hey!" I protest, but I'm laughing, too. Gale sets me down but doesn't release his hold on me. "Okay, let's run away," he says. "Really? You don't think I'm mad? You'll go with me?" Some of the crushing weight begins to lift as it transfers to Gale's shoulders. "I do think you're mad and I'll still go with you," he says. He means it. Not only means it but welcomes it. "We can do it. I know we can. Let's get out of here and never come back!" "You're sure?" I say. "Because it's going to be hard, with the kids and all. I don't want to get five miles into the woods and have you - " "I'm sure. I'm completely, entirely, one hundred percent sure." He tilts his forehead down to rest against mine and pulls me closer. His skin, his whole being, radiates heat from being so near the fire, and I close my eyes, soaking in his warmth. I breathe in the smell of snow-dampened leather and smoke and apples, the smell of all those wintry days we shared before the Games. I don't try to move away. Why should I, anyway? His voice drops to a whisper. "I love you." That's why. I never see these things coming. They happen too fast. One second you're proposing an escape plan and the next... you're expected to deal with something like this. I come up with what must be the worst possible response. "I know." It sounds terrible. Like I assume he couldn't help loving me but that I don't feel anything in return. Gale starts to draw away, but I grab hold of him. "I know! And you... you know what you are to me." It's not enough. He breaks my grip. "Gale, I can't think about anyone that way now. All I can think about, every day, every waking minute since they drew Prim's name at the reaping, is how afraid I am. And there doesn't seem to be room for anything else. If we could get somewhere safe, maybe I could be different. I don't know." I can see him swallowing his disappointment. "So, we'll go. We'll find out." He turns back to the fire, where the chestnuts are beginning to burn. He flips them out onto the hearth. "My mother's going to take some convincing." I guess he's still going, anyway. But the happiness has fled, leaving an all-too-familiar strain in its place. "Mine, too. I'll just have to make her see reason. Take her for a long walk. Make sure she understands we won't survive the alternative." "She'll understand. I watched a lot of the Games with her and Prim. She won't say no to you," says Gale. "I hope not." The temperature in the house seems to have dropped twenty degrees in a matter of seconds. "Haymitch will be the real challenge." "Haymitch?" Gale abandons the chestnuts. "You're not asking him to come with us?" "I have to, Gale. I can't leave him and Peeta because they'd - " His scowl cuts me off. "What?" "I'm sorry. I didn't realize how large our party was," he snaps at me.

"They'd torture them to death, trying to find out where I was," I say.

"What about Peeta's family? They'll never come. In fact, they probably couldn't wait to inform on us. Which I'm sure he's smart enough to realize. What if he decides to stay?" he asks.

I try to sound indifferent, but my voice cracks. "Then he stays."

"You'd leave him behind?" Gale asks.

"To save Prim and my mother, yes," I answer. "I mean, no! I'll get him to come."

"And me, would you leave me?" Gale's expression is rock hard now. "Just if, for instance, I can't convince my mother to drag three young kids into the wilderness in winter."

"Hazelle won't refuse. She'll see sense," I say.

"Suppose she doesn't, Katniss. What then?" he demands.

"Then you have to force her, Gale. Do you think I'm making this stuff up?" My voice is rising in anger as well.

"No. I don't know. Maybe the president's just manipulating you. I mean, he's throwing your wedding. You saw how the Capitol crowd reacted. I don't think he can afford to kill you. Or Peeta. How's he going to get out of that one?" says Gale.

"Well, with an uprising in District Eight, I doubt he's spending much time choosing my wedding cake!" I shout.

The instant the words are out of my mouth I want to reclaim them. Their effect on Gale is immediate - the flush on his cheeks, the brightness of his gray eyes. "There's an uprising in Eight?" he says in a hushed voice.

I try to backpedal. To defuse him, as I tried to defuse the districts. "I don't know if it's really an uprising. There's unrest. People in the streets - " I say.

Gale grabs my shoulders. "What did you see?"

"Nothing! In person. I just heard something." As usual, it's too little, too late. I give up and tell him. "I saw something on the mayor's television. I wasn't supposed to. There was a crowd, and fires, and the Peacekeepers were gunning people down but they were fighting back. ..." I bite my lip and struggle to continue describing the scene. Instead I say aloud the words that have been eating me up inside. "And it's my fault, Gale. Because of what I did in the arena. If I had just killed myself with those berries, none of this would've happened. Peeta could have come home and lived, and everyone else would have been safe, too."

"Safe to do what?" he says in a gentler tone. "Starve? Work like slaves? Send their kids to the reaping? You haven't hurt people - you've given them an opportunity. They just have to be brave enough to take it. There's already been talk in the mines. People who want to fight. Don't you see? It's happening! It's finally happening! If there's an uprising in District Eight, why not here? Why not everywhere? This could be it, the thing we've been - "

"Stop it! You don't know what you're saying. The Peacekeepers outside of Twelve, they're not like Darius, or even Cray! The lives of district people - they mean less than nothing to them!" I say.

"That's why we have to join the fight!" he answers harshly.

"No! We have to leave here before they kill us and a lot of other people, too!" I'm yelling again, but I can't understand why he's doing this. Why doesn't he see what's so undeniable?

Gale pushes me roughly away from him. "You leave, then. I'd never go in a million years."

"You were happy enough to go before. I don't see how an uprising in District Eight does anything but make it more important that we leave. You're just mad about - " No, I can't throw Peeta in his face. "What about your family?" "What about the other families, Katniss? The ones who can't run away? Don't you see? It can't be about just saving us anymore. Not if the rebellion's begun!" Gale shakes his head, not hiding his disgust with me. "You could do so much." He throws Cinna's gloves at my feet. "I changed my mind. I don't want anything they made in the Capitol." And he's gone. I look down at the gloves. Anything they made in the Capitol? Was that directed at me? Does he think I am now just another product of the Capitol and therefore something untouchable? The unfairness of it all fills me with rage. But it's mixed up with fear over what kind of crazy thing he might do next. I sink down next to the fire, desperate for comfort, to work out my next move. I calm myself by thinking that rebellions don't happen in a day. Gale can't talk to the miners until tomorrow. If I can get to Hazelle before then, she might straighten him out. But I can't go now. If he's there, he'll lock me out. Maybe tonight, after everyone else is asleep ... Hazelle often works late into the night finishing up laundry. I could go then, tap at the window, tell her the situation so she'll keep Gale from doing anything foolish

Catching Fire Chapter 8.  Pages 115-116 

I don't know exactly what my mother means by things starting again, but I'm too angry and hurting to ask. It's registered, though, the idea of worse times returning, because when the doorbell rings, I shoot straight out of bed. Who could it be at this hour of the night? There's only one answer. Peacekeepers. "They can't have him," I say. "Might be you they're after," Haymitch reminds me. "Or you," I say. "Not my house," Haymitch points out. "But I'll get the door." "No, I'll get it," says my mother quietly. We all go, though, following her down the hallway to the insistent ring of the bell. When she opens it, there's not a squad of Peacekeepers but a single, snow-caked figure. Madge. She holds out a small, damp cardboard box to me. "Use these for your friend," she says. I take off the lid of the box, revealing half a dozen vials of clear liquid. "They're my mother's. She said I could take them. Use them, please." She runs back into the storm before we can stop her. "Crazy girl," Haymitch mutters as we follow, my mother into the kitchen. Whatever my mother had given Gale, I was right, it isn't enough. His teeth are gritted and his flesh shines with sweat. My mother fills a syringe with the clear liquid from one of the vials and shoots it into his arm. Almost immediately, his face begins to relax. "What is that stuff?" asks Peeta. "It's from the Capitol. It's called morphling," my mother answers. "I didn't even know Madge knew Gale," says Peeta. "We used to sell her strawberries," I say almost angrily. What am I angry about, though? Not that she has brought the medicine, surely. "She must have quite a taste for them," says Haymitch. That's what nettles me. It's the implication that there's something going on between Gale and Madge. And I don't like it. "She's my friend" is all I say.

Catching Fire Chaper 8  Pages 116-119 

This is after Gales whipping and Did we just whitness Katniss having a mid life crisist at age 17. Because  she is like “ Gale is mine I am his bull shit” 

Alone in the kitchen with Gale, I sit on Hazelle's stool, holding his hand. After a while, my fingers find his face. I touch parts of him I have never had cause to touch before. His heavy, dark eyebrows, the curve of his cheek, the line of his nose, the hollow at the base of his neck. I trace the outline of stubble on his jaw and finally work my way to his lips. Soft and full, slightly chapped. His breath warms my chilled skin. Does everyone look younger asleep? Because right now he could be the boy I ran into in the woods years ago, the one who accused me of stealing from his traps. What a pair we were - fatherless, frightened, but fiercely committed, too, to keeping our families alive. Desperate, yet no longer alone after that day, because we'd found each other. I think of a hundred moments in the woods, lazy afternoons fishing, the day I taught him to swim, that time I twisted my knee and he carried me home. Mutually counting on each other, watching each other's backs, forcing each other to be brave. For the first time, I reverse our positions in my head. I imagine watching Gale volunteering to save Rory in the reaping, having him torn from my life, becoming some strange girl's lover to stay alive, and then coming home with her. Living next to her. Promising to marry her. The hatred I feel for him, for the phantom girl, for everything, is so real and immediate that it chokes me. Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else is unthinkable. Why did it take him being whipped within an inch of his life to see it? Because I'm selfish. I'm a coward. I'm the kind of girl who, when she might actually be of use, would run to stay alive and leave those who couldn't follow to suffer and die. This is the girl Gale met in the woods today. No wonder I won the Games. No decent person ever does. You saved Peeta, I think weakly. But now I question even that. I knew good and well that my life back in District 12 would be unlivable if I let that boy die. I rest my head forward on the edge of the table, overcome with loathing for myself. Wishing I had died in the arena. Wishing Seneca Crane had blown me to bits the way President Snow said he should have when I held out the berries. The berries. I realize the answer to who I am lies in that handful of poisonous fruit. If I held them out to save Peeta because I knew I would be shunned if I came back without him, then I am despicable. If I held them out because I loved him, I am still self-centered, although forgivable. But if I held them out to defy the Capitol, I am someone of worth. The trouble is, I don't know exactly what was going on inside me at that moment. Could it be the people in the districts are right? That it was an act of rebellion, even if it was an unconscious one? Because, deep down, I must know it isn't enough to keep myself, or my family, or my friends alive by running away. Even if I could. It wouldn't fix anything. It wouldn't stop people from being hurt the way Gale was today. Life in District 12 isn't really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it. Well, it's not hard for Gale. He was born a rebel. I'm the one making an escape plan. "I'm so sorry," I whisper. I lean forward and kiss him. His eyelashes flutter and he looks at me through a haze of opiates. "Hey, Catnip." "Hey, Gale," I say. "Thought you'd be gone by now," he says. My choices are simple. I can die like quarry in the woods or I can die here beside Gale. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay right here and cause all kinds of trouble." "Me, too," Gale says. He just manages a smile before the drugs pull him back under.

Catching fire Chapter 9 Page 120 

Someone gives my shoulder a shake and I sit up. I've fallen asleep with my face on the table. The white cloth has left creases on my good cheek. The other, the one that took the lash from Thread, throbs painfully. Gale's dead to the world, but his fingers are locked around mine. I smell fresh bread and turn my stiff neck to find Peeta looking down at me with such a sad expression. I get the sense that he's been watching us awhile. "Go on up to bed, Katniss. I'll look after him now," he says. "Peeta. About what I said yesterday, about running - " I begin. "I know," he says. "There's nothing to explain." I see the loaves of bread on the counter in the pale, snowy morning light. The blue shadows under his eyes. I wonder if he slept at all. Couldn't have been long. I think of his agreeing to go with me yesterday, his stepping up beside me to protect Gale, his willingness to throw his lot in with mine entirely when I give him so little in return. No matter what I do, I'm hurting someone. "Peeta - " "Just go to bed, okay?" he says.

Catching fire Chapter 12 pages 169-170 

I'm hoping she's wrong. I haven't had time to prepare Gale for any of this. Since the whipping, I only see him when he comes to the house for my mother to check how he's healing. He's often scheduled seven days a week in the mine. In the few minutes of privacy we've had, with me walking him back to town, I gather that the rumblings of an uprising in 12 have been subdued by Thread's crackdown. He knows I'm not going to run. But he must also know that if we don't revolt in 12, I'm destined to be Peeta's bride. Seeing me lounging around in gorgeous gowns on his television ... what can he do with that?

Catching fire Chapter  13  Pages 178-179

Thanks," I say. I should go see Peeta now, but I don't want to. My head's spinning from the drink, and I'm so wiped out, who knows what he could get me to agree to? No, now I have to go home to face my mother and Prim. As I stagger up the steps to my house, the front door opens and Gale pulls me into his arms. "I was wrong. We should have gone when you said," he whispers. "No," I say. I'm having trouble focusing, and liquor keeps sloshing out of my bottle and down the back of Gale's jacket, but he doesn't seem to care. "It's not too late," he says. Over his shoulder, I see my mother and Prim clutching each other in the doorway. We run. They die. And now I've got Peeta to protect. End of discussion. "Yeah, it is." My knees give way and he's holding me up. As the alcohol overcomes my mind, I hear the glass bottle shatter on the floor. This seems appropriate since I have obviously lost my grip on everything. 

Catching Fire Chaper 13 ( Later on) Pages 185-186 

Even Gale steps into the picture on Sundays, although he's got no love for Peeta or Haymitch, and teaches us all he knows about snares. It's weird for me, being in conversations with both Peeta and Gale, but they seem to have set aside whatever issues they have about me. One night, as I'm walking Gale back into town, he even admits, "It'd be better if he were easier to hate." "Tell me about it," I say. "If I could've just hated him in the arena, we all wouldn't be in this mess now. He'd be dead, and I'd be a happy little victor all by myself." "And where would we be, Katniss?" asks Gale. I pause, not knowing what to say. Where would I be with my pretend cousin who wouldn't be my cousin if it weren't for Peeta? Would he have still kissed me and would I have kissed him back had I been free to do so? Would I have let myself open up to him, lulled by the security of money and food and the illusion of safety being a victor could bring under different circumstances? But there would still always be the reaping looming over us, over our children. No matter what I wanted ... "Hunting. Like every Sunday," I say. I know he didn't mean the question literally, but this is as much as I can honestly give. Gale knows I chose him over Peeta when I didn't make a run for it. To me, there's no point in talking about things that might have been. Even if I had killed Peeta in the arena, I still wouldn't have wanted to marry anyone. I only got engaged to save people's lives, and that completely backfired. I'm afraid, anyway, that any kind of emotional scene with Gale might cause him to do something drastic. Like start that uprising in the mines. And as Haymitch says, District 12 isn't ready for that. If anything, they're less ready than before the Quarter Quell announcement, because the following morning another hundred Peacekeepers arrived on the train. Since I don't plan on making it back alive a second time, the sooner Gale lets me go, the better. I do plan on saying one or two things to him after the reaping, when we're allowed an hour for good-byes. To let Gale know how essential he's been to me all these years. How much better my life has been for knowing him. For loving him, even if it's only in the limited way that I can manage. But I never get the chance.

Now the only time she Mentions Gale in the arena is when  Peeta pretty much  is reminding her  value alive. That her Family and Gale needs her.  and Other then that She did say her personal goodbyes since she has no intent on coming back alive and the Jabber jay attack. But that’s it. She didn’t think of him when Peeta nearly died. or  when Peeta said that Katniss was pregnat and Already Married. Nope her thoughts were okay well oh shit now what. Okay play it cool loll.  

 Mockingjay   Chapter 2  Pages  27- 31 

After a while, the door opens and someone slips in. Gale slides down beside me, his nose trickling blood. "What happened?" I ask. "I got in Boggs's way," he answers with a shrug. I use my sleeve to wipe his nose. "Watch it!" I try to be gentler. Patting, not wiping. "Which one is he?" "Oh, you know. Coin's right-hand lackey. The one who tried to stop you." He pushes my hand away. "Quit! You'll bleed me to death."

The trickle has turned to a steady stream. I give up on the first-aid attempts. "You fought with Boggs?" "No, just blocked the doorway when he tried to follow you. His elbow caught me in the nose," says Gale. "They'll probably punish you," I say. "Already have." He holds up his wrist. I stare at it uncomprehendingly. "Coin took back my communicuff." I bite my lip, trying to remain serious. But it seems so ridiculous. "I'm sorry, Soldier Gale Hawthorne." "Don't be, Soldier Katniss Everdeen." He grins. "I felt like a jerk walking around with it anyway." We both start laughing. "I think it was quite a demotion." This is one of the few good things about 13. Getting Gale back. With the pressure of the Capitol's arranged marriage between Peeta and me gone, we've managed to regain our friendship. He doesn't push it any further - try to kiss me or talk about love. Either I've been too sick, or he's willing to give me space, or he knows it's just too cruel with Peeta in the hands of the Capitol. Whatever the case, I've got someone to tell my secrets to again. "Who are these people?" I say. "They're us. If we'd had nukes instead of a few lumps of coal," he answers. "I like to think Twelve wouldn't have abandoned the rest of the rebels back in the Dark Days," I say. "We might have. If it was that, surrender, or start a nuclear war," says Gale. "In a way, it's remarkable they survived at all." Maybe it's because I still have the ashes of my own district on my shoes, but for the first time, I give the people of 13 something I have withheld from them: credit. For staying alive against all odds. Their early years must have been terrible, huddled in the chambers beneath the ground after their city was bombed to dust. Population decimated, no possible ally to turn to for aid. Over the past seventy-five years, they've learned to be self-sufficient, turned their citizens into an army, and built a new society with no help from anyone. They would be even more powerful if that pox epidemic hadn't flattened their birthrate and made them so desperate for a new gene pool and breeders. Maybe they are militaristic, overly programmed, and somewhat lacking in a sense of humor. They're here. And willing to take on the Capitol. "Still, it took them long enough to show up," I say. "It wasn't simple. They had to build up a rebel base in the Capitol, get some sort of underground organized in the districts," he says. "Then they needed someone to set the whole thing in motion. They needed you." "They needed Peeta, too, but they seem to have forgotten that," I say. 

Gale's expression darkens. "Peeta might have done a lot of damage tonight. Most of the rebels will dismiss what he said immediately, of course. But there are districts where the resistance is shakier. The cease-fire's clearly President Snow's idea. But it seems so reasonable coming out of Peeta's mouth."

I'm afraid of Gale's answer, but I ask anyway. "Why do you think he said it?" "He might have been tortured. Or persuaded. My guess is he made some kind of deal to protect you. He'd put forth the idea of the cease-fire if Snow let him present you as a confused pregnant girl who had no idea what was going on when she was taken prisoner by the rebels. This way, if the districts lose, there's still a chance of leniency for you. If you play it right." I must still look perplexed because Gale delivers the next line very slowly. "Katniss...he's still trying to keep you alive." To keep me alive?And then I understand. The Games are still on. We have left the arena, but since Peeta and I weren't killed, his last wish to preserve my life still stands. His idea is to have me lie low, remain safe and imprisoned, while the war plays out. Then neither side will really have cause to kill me. And Peeta? If the rebels win, it will be disastrous for him. If the Capitol wins, who knows? Maybe we'll both be allowed to live - if I play it right - to watch the Games go on.... Images flash through my mind: the spear piercing Rue's body in the arena, Gale hanging senseless from the whipping post, the corpse-littered wasteland of my home. And for what? For what? As my blood turns hot, I remember other things. My first glimpse of an uprising in District 8. The victors locked hand in hand the night before the Quarter Quell. And how it was no accident, my shooting that arrow into the force field in the arena. How badly I wanted it to lodge deep in the heart of my enemy. I spring up, upsetting a box of a hundred pencils, sending them scattering around the floor. "What is it?" Gale asks. "There can't be a cease-fire." I lean down, fumbling as I shove the sticks of dark gray graphite back into the box. "We can't go back." "I know." Gale sweeps up a handful of pencils and taps them on the floor into perfect alignment. "Whatever reason Peeta had for saying those things, he's wrong." The stupid sticks won't go in the box and I snap several in my frustration. "I know. Give it here. You're breaking them to bits." He pulls the box from my hands and refills it with swift, concise motions. "He doesn't know what they did to Twelve. If he could've seen what was on the ground" - I start. "Katniss, I'm not arguing. If I could hit a button and kill every living soul working for the Capitol, I would do it. Without hesitation." He slides the last pencil into the box and flips the lid closed. "The question is, what are you going to do?" It turns out the question that's been eating away at me has only ever had one possible answer. But it took Peeta's ploy for me to recognize it. What am I going to do? I take a deep breath. My arms rise slightly - as if recalling the black-and-white wings Cinna gave me - then come to rest at my sides. "I'm going to be the Mockingjay."

Mockingjay  Chapter 3 Pages 39-41 

I skim my list. "Gale. I'll need him with me to do this." "With you how? Off camera? By your side at all times? Do you want him presented as your new lover?" Coin asks. She hasn't said this with any particular malice - quite the contrary, her words are very matter-of-fact. But my mouth still drops open in shock. "What?" "I think we should continue the current romance. A quick defection from Peeta could cause the audience to lose sympathy for her," says Plutarch. "Especially since they think she's pregnant with his child." "Agreed. So, on-screen, Gale can simply be portrayed as a fellow rebel. Is that all right?" says Coin. I just stare at her. She repeats herself impatiently. "For Gale. Will that be sufficient?" "We can always work him in as your cousin," says Fulvia.

"We're not cousins," Gale and I say together.

"Right, but we should probably keep that up for appearances' sake on camera," says Plutarch. "Off camera, he's all yours. Anything else?"

I'm rattled by the turn in the conversation. The implications that I could so readily dispose of Peeta, that I'm in love with Gale, that the whole thing has been an act. My cheeks begin to burn. The very notion that I'm devoting any thought to who I want presented as my lover, given our current circumstances, is demeaning. I let my anger propel me into my greatest demand. "When the war is over, if we've won, Peeta will be pardoned."

Dead silence. I feel Gale's body tense. I guess I should have told him before, but I wasn't sure how he'd respond. Not when it involved Peeta.

"No form of punishment will be inflicted," I continue. A new thought occurs to me. "The same goes for the other captured tributes, Johanna and Enobaria." Frankly, I don't care about Enobaria, the vicious District 2 tribute. In fact, I dislike her, but it seems wrong to leave her out.

"No," says Coin flatly.

"Yes," I shoot back. "It's not their fault you abandoned them in the arena. Who knows what the Capitol's doing to them?"

"They'll be tried with other war criminals and treated as the tribunal sees fit," she says.

"They'll be granted immunity!" I feel myself rising from my chair, my voice full and resonant. "You will personally pledge this in front of the entire population of District Thirteen and the remainder of Twelve. Soon. Today. It will be recorded for future generations. You will hold yourself and your government responsible for their safety, or you'll find yourself another Mockingjay!"

Mockingjay Chapter 4  Pages 53-55. 

We hunt, like in the old days. Silent, needing no words to communicate, because here in the woods we move as two parts of one being. Anticipating each other's movements, watching each other's backs. How long has it been? Eight months? Nine? Since we had this freedom? It's not exactly the same, given all that's happened and the trackers on our ankles and the fact that I have to rest so often. But it's about as close to happiness as I think I can currently get. The animals here are not nearly suspicious enough. That extra moment it takes to place our unfamiliar scent means their death. In an hour and a half, we've got a mixed dozen - rabbits, squirrels, and turkeys - and decide to knock off to spend the remaining time by a pond that must be fed by an underground spring, since the water's cool and sweet. When Gale offers to clean the game, I don't object. I stick a few mint leaves on my tongue, close my eyes, and lean back against a rock, soaking in the sounds, letting the scorching afternoon sun burn my skin, almost at peace until Gale's voice interrupts me. "Katniss, why do you care so much about your prep team?" I open my eyes to see if he's joking, but he's frowning down at the rabbit he's skinning. "Why shouldn't I?" "Hm. Let's see. Because they've spent the last year prettying you up for slaughter?" he suggests. "It's more complicated than that. I know them. They're not evil or cruel. They're not even smart. Hurting them, it's like hurting children. They don't see...I mean, they don't know..." I get knotted up in my words. "They don't know what, Katniss?" he says. "That tributes - who are the actual children involved here, not your trio of freaks - are forced to fight to the death? That you were going into that arena for people's amusement? Was that a big secret in the Capitol?" "No. But they don't view it the way we do," I say. "They're raised on it and - " "Are you actually defending them?" He slips the skin from the rabbit in one quick move. That stings, because, in fact, I am, and it's ridiculous. I struggle to find a logical position. "I guess I'm defending anyone who's treated like that for taking a slice of bread. Maybe it reminds me too much of what happened to you over a turkey!" Still, he's right. It does seem strange, my level of concern over the prep team. I should hate them and want to see them strung up. But they're so clueless, and they belonged to Cinna, and he was on my side, right? "I'm not looking for a fight," Gale says. "But I don't think Coin was sending you some big message by punishing them for breaking the rules here. She probably thought you'd see it as a favor." He stuffs the rabbit in the sack and rises. "We better get going if we want to make it back on time." I ignore his offer of a hand up and get to my feet unsteadily. "Fine." Neither of us talks on the way back, but once we're inside the gate, I think of something else. "During the Quarter Quell, Octavia and Flavius had to quit because they couldn't stop crying over me going back in. And Venia could barely say good-bye." "I'll try and keep that in mind as they...remake you," says Gale. "Do," I say.

Chapter 5  Mockingjay pages 63-64 

Gale, who's not usually much of a talker during meals, makes an effort to keep the conversation going, asking about the makeover. I know it's his attempt at smoothing things over. We argued last night after he suggested I'd left Coin no choice but to counter my demand for the victors' safety with one of her own. "Katniss, she's running this district. She can't do it if it seems like she's caving in to your will." "You mean she can't stand any dissent, even if it's fair," I'd countered. "I mean you put her in a bad position. Making her give Peeta and the others immunity when we don't even know what sort of damage they might cause," Gale had said. "So I should've just gone with the program and let the other tributes take their chances? Not that it matters, because that's what we're all doing anyway!" That was when I'd slammed the door in his face. I hadn't sat with him at breakfast, and when Plutarch had sent him down to training this morning, I'd let him go without a word. I know he only spoke out of concern for me, but I really need him to be on my side, not Coin's. How can he not know that? After lunch, Gale and I are scheduled to go down to Special Defense to meet Beetee. As we ride the elevator, Gale finally says, "You're still angry." "And you're still not sorry," I reply. "I still stand by what I said. Do you want me to lie about it?" he asks. "No, I want you to rethink it and come up with the right opinion," I tell him. But this just makes him laugh. I have to let it go. There's no point in trying to dictate what Gale thinks. Which, if I'm honest, is one reason I trust him. 

Mockingjay Chapter 6 Pages 81-82 

Fulvia Cardew hustles over and makes a sound of frustration when she sees my clean face. "All that work, down the drain. I'm not blaming you, Katniss. It's just that very few people are born with camera-ready faces. Like him." She snags Gale, who's in a conversation with Plutarch, and spins him toward us. "Isn't he handsome?" Gale does look striking in the uniform, I guess. But the question just embarrasses us both, given our history. I'm trying to think of a witty comeback, when Boggs says brusquely, "Well, don't expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear." I decide to go ahead and like Boggs.  

Chapter 9 Mockingjay Pages 116 -118

Come morning, I stick my forearm in the wall and stare groggily at the day's schedule. Immediately after breakfast, I am slated for Production. In the dining hall, as I down my hot grain and milk and mushy beets, I spot a communicuff on Gale's wrist. "When did you get that back, Soldier Hawthorne?" I ask. "Yesterday. They thought if I'm going to be in the field with you, it could be a backup system of communication," says Gale. No one has ever offered me a communicuff. I wonder, if I asked for one, would I get it? "Well, I guess one of us has to be accessible," I say with an edge to my voice. "What's that mean?" he says. "Nothing. Just repeating what you said," I tell him. "And I totally agree that the accessible one should be you. I just hope I still have access to you as well." Our eyes lock, and I realize how furious I am with Gale. That I don't believe for a second that he didn't see Peeta's propo. That I feel completely betrayed that he didn't tell me about it. We know each other too well for him not to read my mood and guess what has caused it. "Katniss - " he begins. Already the admission of guilt is in his tone. I grab my tray, cross to the deposit area, and slam the dishes onto the rack. By the time I'm in the hallway, he's caught up with me. "Why didn't you say something?" he asks, taking my arm. "Why didn'tI ?" I jerk my arm free. "Why didn'tyou , Gale? And I did, by the way, when I asked you last night about what had been going on!" "I'm sorry. All right? I didn't know what to do. I wanted to tell you, but everyone was afraid that seeing Peeta's propo would make you sick," he says. "They were right. It did. But not quite as sick as you lying to me for Coin." At that moment, his communicuff starts beeping. "There she is. Better run. You have things to tell her." For a moment, real hurt registers on his face. Then cold anger replaces it. He turns on his heel and goes. Maybe I have been too spiteful, not given him enough time to explain. Maybe everyone is just trying to protect me by lying to me. I don't care. I'm sick of people lying to me for my own good. Because really it's mostly for their own good. Lie to Katniss about the rebellion so she doesn't do anything crazy. Send her into the arena without a clue so we can fish her out. Don't tell her about Peeta's propo because it might make her sick, and it's hard enough to get a decent performance out of her as it is. I do feel sick. Heartsick. And too tired for a day of production. But I'm already at Remake, so I go in.

Mockingjay Chapter 9  Pages 127-130

As we trudge back through the woods, we reach a boulder, and both Gale and I turn our heads in the same direction, like a pair of dogs catching a scent on the wind. Cressida notices and asks what lies that way. We admit, without acknowledging each other, it's our old hunting rendezvous place. She wants to see it, even after we tell her it's nothing really. Nothing but a place where I was happy, I think. Our rock ledge overlooking the valley. Perhaps a little less green than usual, but the blackberry bushes hang heavy with fruit. Here began countless days of hunting and snaring, fishing and gathering, roaming together through the woods, unloading our thoughts while we filled our game bags. This was the doorway to both sustenance and sanity. And we were each other's key. There's no District 12 to escape from now, no Peacekeepers to trick, no hungry mouths to feed. The Capitol took away all of that, and I'm on the verge of losing Gale as well. The glue of mutual need that bonded us so tightly together for all those years is melting away. Dark patches, not light, show in the spaces between us. How can it be that today, in the face of 12's horrible demise, we are too angry to even speak to each other? Gale as good as lied to me. That was unacceptable, even if he was concerned about my well-being. His apology seemed genuine, though. And I threw it back in his face with an insult to make sure it stung. What is happening to us? Why are we always at odds now? It's all a muddle, but I somehow feel that if I went back to the root of our troubles, my actions would be at the heart of it. Do I really want to drive him away? My fingers encircle a blackberry and pluck it from its stem. I roll it gently between my thumb and forefinger. Suddenly, I turn to him and toss it in his direction. "And may the odds - " I say. I throw it high so he has plenty of time to decide whether to knock it aside or accept it. Gale's eyes train on me, not the berry, but at the last moment, he opens his mouth and catches it. He chews, swallows, and there's a long pause before he says " - beever in your favor." But he does say it. Cressida has us sit in the nook in the rocks, where it's impossible not to be touching, and coaxes us into talking about hunting. What drove us out into the woods, how we met, favorite moments. We thaw, begin to laugh a little, as we relate mishaps with bees and wild dogs and skunks. When the conversation turns to how it felt to translate our skill with weapons to the bombing in 8, I stop talking. Gale just says, "Long overdue." By the time we reach the town square, afternoon's sinking into evening. I take Cressida to the rubble of the bakery and ask her to film something. The only emotion I can muster is exhaustion. "Peeta, this is your home. None of your family has been heard of since the bombing. Twelve is gone. And you're calling for a cease-fire?" I look across the emptiness. "There's no one left to hear you." As we stand before the lump of metal that was the gallows, Cressida asks if either of us has ever been tortured. In answer, Gale pulls off his shirt and turns his back to the camera. I stare at the lash marks, and again hear the whistling of the whip, see his bloody figure hanging unconscious by his wrists. "I'm done," I announce. "I'll meet you at the Victor's Village. Something for...my mother." I guess I walked here, but the next thing I'm conscious of is sitting on the floor in front of the kitchen cabinets of our house in the Victor's Village. Meticulously lining ceramic jars and glass bottles into a box. Placing clean cotton bandages between them to prevent breaking. Wrapping bunches of dried flowers. Suddenly, I remember the rose on my dresser. Was it real? If so, is it still up there? I have to resist the temptation to check. If it's there, it will only frighten me all over again. I hurry with my packing. When the cabinets are empty, I rise to find that Gale has materialized in my kitchen. It's disturbing how soundlessly he can appear. He's leaning on the table, his fingers spread wide against the wood grain. I set the box between us. "Remember?" he asks. "This is where you kissed me." So the heavy dose of morphling administered after the whipping wasn't enough to erase that from his consciousness. "I didn't think you'd remember that," I say. "Have to be dead to forget. Maybe even not then," he tells me. "Maybe I'll be like that man in 'The Hanging Tree.' Still waiting for an answer." Gale, who I have never seen cry, has tears in his eyes. To keep them from spilling over, I reach forward and press my lips against his. We taste of heat, ashes, and misery. It's a surprising flavor for such a gentle kiss. He pulls away first and gives me a wry smile. "I knew you'd kiss me." "How?" I say. Because I didn't know myself. "Because I'm in pain," he says. "That's the only way I get your attention." He picks up the box. "Don't worry, Katniss. It'll pass." He leaves before I can answer.

Mockingjay Chapter 11  Page 158 

"Can we have a coffee?" asks Finnick. Steaming cups are handed out. I stare distastefully at the shiny black liquid, never having been much of a fan of the stuff, but thinking it might help me stay on my feet. Finnick sloshes some cream in my cup and reaches into the sugar bowl. "Want a sugar cube?" he asks in his old seductive voice. That's how we met, with Finnick offering me sugar. Surrounded by horses and chariots, costumed and painted for the crowds, before we were allies. Before I had any idea what made him tick. The memory actually coaxes a smile out of me. "Here, it improves the taste," he says in his real voice, plunking three cubes in my cup. As I turn to go suit up as the Mockingjay, I catch Gale watching me and Finnick unhappily. What now? Does he actually think something's going on between us? Maybe he saw me go to Finnick's last night. I would've passed the Hawthornes' space to get there. I guess that probably rubbed him the wrong way. Me seeking out Finnick's company instead of his. Well, fine. I've got rope burn on my fingers, I can barely hold my eyes open, and a camera crew's waiting for me to do something brilliant. And Snow's got Peeta. Gale can think whatever he wants.

Mockingjay Chapter 13 Page 185-186

Gale must have been released from the hospital this morning as well, because I find him in one of the research rooms with Beetee. They're immersed, heads bent over a drawing, taking a measurement. Versions of the picture litter the table and floor. Tacked on the corkboard walls and occupying several computer screens are other designs of some sort. In the rough lines of one, I recognize Gale's twitch-up snare. "What are these?" I ask hoarsely, pulling their attention from the sheet. "Ah, Katniss, you've found us out," says Beetee cheerfully. "What? Is this a secret?" I know Gale's been down here working with Beetee a lot, but I assumed they were messing around with bows and guns. "Not really. But I've felt a little guilty about it. Stealing Gale away from you so much," Beetee admits. Since I've spent most of my time in 13 disoriented, worried, angry, being remade, or hospitalized, I can't say Gale's absences have inconvenienced me. Things haven't been exactly harmonious between us, either. But I let Beetee think he owes me. "I hope you've been putting his time to good use." "Come and see," he says, waving me over to a computer screen. This is what they've been doing. Taking the fundamental ideas behind Gale's traps and adapting them into weapons against humans. Bombs mostly. It's less about the mechanics of the traps than the psychology behind them. Booby-trapping an area that provides something essential to survival. A water or food supply. Frightening prey so that a large number flee into a greater destruction. Endangering off-spring in order to draw in the actual desired target, the parent. Luring the victim into what appears to be a safe haven - where death awaits it. At some point, Gale and Beetee left the wilderness behind and focused on more human impulses. Like compassion. A bomb explodes. Time is allowed for people to rush to the aid of the wounded. Then a second, more powerful bomb kills them as well. "That seems to be crossing some kind of line," I say. "So anything goes?" They both stare at me - Beetee with doubt, Gale with hostility. "I guess there isn't a rule book for what might be unacceptable to do to another human being." "Sure there is. Beetee and I have been following the same rule book President Snow used when he hijacked Peeta," says Gale. Cruel, but to the point. I leave without further comment. I feel if I don't get outside immediately, I'll just go ballistic,  

Mockingjay Chapter 14  Pages 196-200

Gale finds me when they arrive late one afternoon. I'm sitting on a log at the edge of my current village, plucking a goose. A dozen or so of the birds are piled at my feet. Great flocks of them have been migrating through here since I've arrived, and the pickings are easy. Without a word, Gale settles beside me and begins to relieve a bird of its feathers. We're through about half when he says, "Any chance we'll get to eat these?" "Yeah. Most go to the camp kitchen, but they expect me to give a couple to whoever I'm staying with tonight," I say. "For keeping me." "Isn't the honor of the thing enough?" he says. "You'd think," I reply. "But word's gotten out that mockingjays are hazardous to your health." We pluck in silence for a while longer. Then he says, "I saw Peeta yesterday. Through the glass." "What'd you think?" I ask. "Something selfish," says Gale. "That you don't have to be jealous of him anymore?" My fingers give a yank, and a cloud of feathers floats down around us. "No. Just the opposite." Gale pulls a feather out of my hair. "I thought...I'll never compete with that. No matter how much pain I'm in." He spins the feather between his thumb and forefinger. "I don't stand a chance if he doesn't get better. You'll never be able to let him go. You'll always feel wrong about being with me." "The way I always felt wrong kissing him because of you," I say. Gale holds my gaze. "If I thought that was true, I could almost live with the rest of it." "It is true," I admit. "But so is what you said about Peeta."

Gale makes a sound of exasperation. Nonetheless, after we've dropped off the birds and volunteered to go back to the woods to gather kindling for the evening fire, I find myself wrapped in his arms. His lips brushing the faded bruises on my neck, working their way to my mouth. Despite what I feel for Peeta, this is when I accept deep down that he'll never come back to me. Or I'll never go back to him. I'll stay in 2 until it falls, go to the Capitol and kill Snow, and then die for my trouble. And he'll die insane and hating me. So in the fading light I shut my eyes and kiss Gale to make up for all the kisses I've withheld, and because it doesn't matter anymore, and because I'm so desperately lonely I can't stand it. Gale's touch and taste and heat remind me that at least my body's still alive, and for the moment it's a welcome feeling. I empty my mind and let the sensations run through my flesh, happy to lose myself. When Gale pulls away slightly, I move forward to close the gap, but I feel his hand under my chin. "Katniss," he says. The instant I open my eyes, the world seems disjointed. This is not our woods or our mountains or our way. My hand automatically goes to the scar on my left temple, which I associate with confusion. "Now kiss me." Bewildered, unblinking, I stand there while he leans in and presses his lips to mine briefly. He examines my face closely. "What's going on in your head?"

"I don't know," I whisper back.

"Then it's like kissing someone who's drunk. It doesn't count," he says with a weak attempt at a laugh. He scoops up a pile of kindling and drops it in my empty arms, returning me to myself.

"How do you know?" I say, mostly to cover my embarrassment. "Have you kissed someone who's drunk?" I guess Gale could've been kissing girls right and left back in 12. He certainly had enough takers. I never thought about it much before.

He just shakes his head. "No. But it's not hard to imagine."

"So, you never kissed any other girls?" I ask.

"I didn't say that. You know, you were only twelve when we met. And a real pain besides. I did have a life outside of hunting with you," he says, loading up with firewood.

Suddenly, I'm genuinely curious. "Who did you kiss? And where?"

"Too many to remember. Behind the school, on the slag heap, you name it," he says.

I roll my eyes. "So when did I become so special? When they carted me off to the Capitol?"

"No. About six months before that. Right after New Year's. We were in the Hob, eating some slop of Greasy Sae's. And Darius was teasing you about trading a rabbit for one of his kisses. And I realized...I minded," he tells me.

I remember that day. Bitter cold and dark by four in the afternoon. We'd been hunting, but a heavy snow had driven us back into town. The Hob was crowded with people looking for refuge from the weather. Greasy Sae's soup, made with stock from the bones of a wild dog we'd shot a week earlier, was below her usual standards. Still, it was hot, and I was starving as I scooped it up, sitting cross-legged on her counter. Darius was leaning on the post of the stall, tickling my cheek with the end of my braid, while I smacked his hand away. He was explaining why one of his kisses merited a rabbit, or possibly two, since everyone knows redheaded men are the most virile. And Greasy Sae and I were laughing because he was so ridiculous and persistent and kept pointing out women around the Hob who he said had paid far more than a rabbit to enjoy his lips. "See? The one in the green muffler? Go ahead and ask her.If you need a reference."

A million miles from here, a billion days ago, this happened. "Darius was just joking around," I say.

"Probably. Although you'd be the last to figure out if he wasn't," Gale tells me. "Take Peeta. Take me. Or even Finnick. I was starting to worry he had his eye on you, but he seems back on track now."

"You don't know Finnick if you think he'd love me," I say.

Gale shrugs. "I know he was desperate. That makes people do all kinds of crazy things."

I can't help thinking that's directed at me.

Mockingjay Chapters 14 and 15 Pages 200-  206 

Gale, who is too restless to sit at the table for more than a few hours, has been alternating between pacing and sharing my windowsill. Early on, he seemed to accept Lyme's assertion that the entrances couldn't be taken, and dropped out of the conversation entirely. For the last hour or so, he's sat quietly, his brow knitted in concentration, staring at the Nut through the window glass. In the silence that follows Lyme's ultimatum, he speaks up. "Is it really so necessary that we take the Nut? Or would it be enough to disable it?" "That would be a step in the right direction," says Beetee. "What do you have in mind?" "Think of it as a wild dog den," Gale continues. "You're not going to fight your way in. So you have two choices. Trap the dogs inside or flush them out." "We've tried bombing the entrances," says Lyme. "They're set too far inside the stone for any real damage to be done." "I wasn't thinking of that," says Gale. "I was thinking of using the mountain." Beetee rises and joins Gale at the window, peering through his ill-fitting glasses. "See? Running down the sides?" "Avalanche paths," says Beetee under his breath. "It'd be tricky. We'd have to design the detonation sequence with great care, and once it's in motion, we couldn't hope to control it." "We don't need to control it if we give up the idea that we have to possess the Nut," says Gale. "Only shut it down." "So you're suggesting we start avalanches and block the entrances?" asks Lyme. "That's it," says Gale. "Trap the enemy inside, cut off from supplies. Make it impossible for them to send out their hovercraft." While everyone considers the plan, Boggs flips through a stack of blueprints of the Nut and frowns. "You risk killing everyone inside. Look at the ventilation system. It's rudimentary at best. Nothing like what we have in Thirteen. It depends entirely on pumping in air from the mountainsides. Block those vents and you'll suffocate whoever is trapped." "They could still escape through the train tunnel to the square," says Beetee. "Not if we blow it up," says Gale brusquely. His intent, his full intent, becomes clear. Gale has no interest in preserving the lives of those in the Nut. No interest in caging the prey for later use. This is one of his death traps.

The implications of what Gale is suggesting settle quietly around the room. You can see the reaction playing out on people's faces. The expressions range from pleasure to distress, from sorrow to satisfaction. "The majority of the workers are citizens from Two," says Beetee neutrally. "So what?" says Gale. "We'll never be able to trust them again." "They should at least have a chance to surrender," says Lyme. "Well, that's a luxury we weren't given when they fire-bombed Twelve, but you're all so much cozier with the Capitol here," says Gale. By the look on Lyme's face, I think she might shoot him, or at least take a swing. She'd probably have the upper hand, too, with all her training. But her anger only seems to infuriate him and he yells, "We watched children burn to death and there was nothing we could do!" I have to close my eyes a minute, as the image rips through me. It has the desired effect. I want everyone in that mountain dead. Am about to say so. But then...I'm also a girl from District 12. Not President Snow. I can't help it. I can't condemn someone to the death he's suggesting. "Gale," I say, taking his arm and trying to speak in a reasonable tone. "The Nut's an old mine. It'd be like causing a massive coal mining accident." Surely the words are enough to make anyone from 12 think twice about the plan. "But not so quick as the one that killed our fathers," he retorts. "Is that everyone's problem? That our enemies might have a few hours to reflect on the fact that they're dying, instead of just being blown to bits?" Back in the old days, when we were nothing more than a couple of kids hunting outside of 12, Gale said things like this and worse. But then they were just words. Here, put into practice, they become deeds that can never be reversed. "You don't know how those District Two people ended up in the Nut," I say. "They may have been coerced. They may be held against their will. Some are our own spies. Will you kill them, too?" "I would sacrifice a few, yes, to take out the rest of them," he replies. "And if I were a spy in there, I'd say, 'Bring on the avalanches!'" I know he's telling the truth. That Gale would sacrifice his life in this way for the cause - no one doubts it. Perhaps we'd all do the same if we were the spies and given the choice. I guess I would. But it's a coldhearted decision to make for other people and those who love them. "You said we had two choices," Boggs tells him. "To trap them or to flush them out. I say we try to avalanche the mountain but leave the train tunnel alone. People can escape into the square, where we'll be waiting for them." "Heavily armed, I hope," says Gale. "You can be sure they'll be." "Heavily armed. We'll take them prisoner," agrees Boggs. "Let's bring Thirteen into the loop now," Beetee suggests. "Let President Coin weigh in." "She'll want to block the tunnel," says Gale with conviction. "Yes, most likely. But you know, Peeta did have a point in his propos. About the dangers of killing ourselves off. I've been playing with some numbers. Factoring in the casualties and the wounded and...I think it's at least worth a conversation," says Beetee.

Mockingjay Chapter 15 Page 207 

Gale's plan exceeds anyone's expectations. Beetee was right about being unable to control the avalanches once they'd been set in motion. The mountainsides are naturally unstable, but weakened by the explosions, they seem almost fluid. Whole sections of the Nut collapse before our eyes, obliterating any sign that human beings have ever set foot on the place. We stand speechless, tiny and insignificant, as waves of stone thunder down the mountain. Burying the entrances under tons of rock. Raising a cloud of dirt and debris that blackens the sky. Turning the Nut into a tomb. I imagine the hell inside the mountain. Sirens wailing. Lights flickering into darkness. Stone dust choking the air. The shrieks of panicked, trapped beings stumbling madly for a way out, only to find the entrances, the launchpad, the ventilation shafts themselves clogged with earth and rock trying to force its way in. Live wires flung free, fires breaking out, rubble making a familiar path a maze. People slamming, shoving, scrambling like ants as the hill presses in, threatening to crush their fragile shells.

Mockingay Chapter 17 Page 244 

"I told you he hated me," I say. "It's the way he hates you. It's so...familiar. I used to feel like that," he admits. "When I'd watch you kissing him on the screen. Only I knew I wasn't being entirely fair. He can't see that." We reach my door. "Maybe he just sees me as I really am. I have to get some sleep." Gale catches my arm before I can disappear. "So that's what you're thinking now?" I shrug. "Katniss, as your oldest friend, believe me when I say he's not seeing you as you really are." He kisses my cheek and goes.

Mockingjay Chapter 19 Pages 267-268

The dinner whistle sounds, and Gale and I line up at the canteen. "Do you want me to kill him?" he asks bluntly. "That'll get us both sent back for sure," I say. But even though I'm furious, the brutality of the offer rattles me. "I can deal with him." "You mean until you take off? You and your paper map and possibly a Holo if you can get your hands on it?" So Gale has not missed my preparations. I hope they haven't been so obvious to the others. None of them know my mind like he does, though. "You're not planning on leaving me behind, are you?" he asks. Up until this point, I was. But having my hunting partner to watch my back doesn't sound like a bad idea. "As your fellow soldier, I have to strongly recommend you stay with your squad. But I can't stop you from coming, can I?" He grins. "No. Not unless you want me to alert the rest of the army."

Mockingjay Chapter 19 Page 274

I move to Gale, press my forehead into the body armor where his chest should be, feel his arm tighten around me. We finally know the name of the girl who we watched the Capitol abduct from the woods of 12, the fate of the Peacekeeper friend who tried to keep Gale alive. This is no time to call up happy moments of remembrance. They lost their lives because of me. I add them to my personal list of kills that began in the arena and now includes thousands. When I look up, I see it has taken Gale differently. His expression says that there are not enough mountains to crush, enough cities to destroy. It promises death.

Mockingjay Chapter  23. Pages  328-329 

We change bandages, handcuff Peeta back to his support, and settle down to sleep. A few hours later, I slip back into consciousness and become aware of a quiet conversation. Peeta and Gale. I can't stop myself from eavesdropping. "Thanks for the water," Peeta says. "No problem," Gale replies. "I wake up ten times a night anyway." "To make sure Katniss is still here?" asks Peeta. "Something like that," Gale admits. There's a long pause before Peeta speaks again. "That was funny, what Tigris said. About no one knowing what to do with her." "Well,we never have," Gale says. They both laugh. It's so strange to hear them talking like this. Almost like friends. Which they're not. Never have been. Although they're not exactly enemies. "She loves you, you know," says Peeta. "She as good as told me after they whipped you." "Don't believe it," Gale answers. "The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell...well, she never kissed me like that." "It was just part of the show," Peeta tells him, although there's an edge of doubt in his voice. "No, you won her over. Gave up everything for her. Maybe that's the only way to convince her you love her." There's a long pause. "I should have volunteered to take your place in the first Games. Protected her then." "You couldn't," says Peeta. "She'd never have forgiven you. You had to take care of her family. They matter more to her than her life." "Well, it won't be an issue much longer. I think it's unlikely all three of us will be alive at the end of the war. And if we are, I guess it's Katniss's problem. Who to choose." Gale yawns. "We should get some sleep." "Yeah." I hear Peeta's handcuffs slide down the support as he settles in. "I wonder how she'll make up her mind." "Oh, that I do know." I can just catch Gale's last words through the layer of fur. "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without."

Mockingjay Chapter 24 Page 275

A chill runs through me. Am I really that cold and calculating? Gale didn't say, "Katniss will pick whoever it will break her heart to give up," or even "whoever she can't live without." Those would have implied I was motivated by a kind of passion. But my best friend predicts I will choose the person who I think I "can't survive without." There's not the least indication that love, or desire, or even compatibility will sway me. I'll just conduct an unfeeling assessment of what my potential mates can offer me. As if in the end, it will be the question of whether a baker or a hunter will extend my longevity the most. It's a horrible thing for Gale to say, for Peeta not to refute. Especially when every emotion I have has been taken and exploited by the Capitol or the rebels. At the moment, the choice would be simple. I can survive just fine without either of them.

Mockingjay  Chapter 26  Pages 366- 367 

There's a tap at the door and Gale steps in. "Can I have a minute?" he asks. In the mirror, I watch my prep team. Unsure of where to go, they bump into one another a few times and then closet themselves in the bathroom. Gale comes up behind me and we examine each other's reflection. I'm searching for something to hang on to, some sign of the girl and boy who met by chance in the woods five years ago and became inseparable. I'm wondering what would have happened to them if the Hunger Games had not reaped the girl. If she would have fallen in love with the boy, married him even. And sometime in the future, when the brothers and sisters had been raised up, escaped with him into the woods and left 12 behind forever. Would they have been happy, out in the wild, or would the dark, twisted sadness between them have grown up even without the Capitol's help? "I brought you this." Gale holds up a sheath. When I take it, I notice it holds a single, ordinary arrow. "It's supposed to be symbolic. You firing the last shot of the war." "What if I miss?" I say. "Does Coin retrieve it and bring it back to me? Or just shoot Snow through the head herself?" "You won't miss." Gale adjusts the sheath on my shoulder. We stand there, face-to-face, not meeting each other's eyes. "You didn't come see me in the hospital." He doesn't answer, so finally I just say it. "Was it your bomb?" "I don't know. Neither does Beetee," he says. "Does it matter? You'll always be thinking about it." He waits for me to deny it; I want to deny it, but it's true. Even now I can see the flash that ignites her, feel the heat of the flames. And I will never be able to separate that moment from Gale. My silence is my answer.

"That was the one thing I had going for me. Taking care of your family," he says. "Shoot straight, okay?" He touches my cheek and leaves. I want to call him back and tell him that I was wrong. That I'll figure out a way to make peace with this. To remember the circumstances under which he created the bomb. Take into account my own inexcusable crimes. Dig up the truth about who dropped the parachutes. Prove it wasn't the rebels. Forgive him. But since I can't, I'll just have to deal with the pain.

 Chapter 27 Pages 384 385 

  Over the eggs, I ask her, "Where did Gale go?" "District Two. Got some fancy job there. I see him now and again on the television," she says. I dig around inside myself, trying to register anger, hatred, longing. I find only relief. "I'm going hunting today," I say. "Well, I wouldn't mind some fresh game at that," she answers. I arm myself with a bow and arrows and head out, intending to exit 12 through the Meadow. Near the square are teams of masked and gloved people with horse-drawn carts. Sifting through what lay under the snow this winter. Gathering remains. A cart's parked in front of the mayor's house. I recognize Thom, Gale's old crewmate, pausing a moment to wipe the sweat from his face with a rag. I remember seeing him in 13, but he must have come back. His greeting gives me the courage to ask, "Did they find anyone in there?" "Whole family. And the two people who worked for them," Thom tells me. Madge. Quiet and kind and brave. The girl who gave me the pin that gave me a name. I swallow hard. Wonder if she'll be joining the cast of my nightmares tonight. Shoveling the ashes into my mouth. "I thought maybe, since he was the mayor..." "I don't think being the mayor of Twelve put the odds in his favor," says Thom. I nod and keep moving, careful not to look in the back of the cart. All through the town and the Seam, it's the same. The reaping of the dead. As I near the ruins of my old house, the road becomes thick with carts. The Meadow's gone, or at least dramatically altered. A deep pit has been dug, and they're lining it with bones, a mass grave for my people. I skirt around the hole and enter the woods at my usual place. It doesn't matter, though. The fence isn't charged anymore and has been propped up with long branches to keep out the predators. But old habits die hard. I think about going to the lake, but I'm so weak that I barely make it to my meeting place with Gale. I sit on the rock where Cressida filmed us, but it's too wide without his body beside me. Several times I close my eyes and count to ten, thinking that when I open them, he will have materialized without a sound as he so often did. I have to remind myself that Gale's in 2 with a fancy job, probably kissing another pair of lips.

[lightofthemoonglow]

in the stacks

Requests: -From the prompt list you reblogged: 26. Do. Not. Tempt. Me With Herbert West? :3 -17 and 30 for the smut prompts w/ Herbert West?💗 -i also asked if it was possible for u to do something based on a combo of #23 & #28 from the smut prompt list for herbert ??  (i couldn’t think of a way to fit in #23 for this, but it’ll go into another Herbert work that should be coming out soon, I promise)

17.“Mine.” 30. “You have no idea what you do to me.” 28. “You’re so fucking hot when you’re mad.”

Summary: Set while Herbert is in prison. Because the world needs more older Herbert content. And do you know what else the world needs? People laying it down in the library.

“The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck…”

You closed the library’s battered copy of Dracula, the hardback book making a soft thud as it shut, the dead silence of the prison’s library allowing both of you to hear it. Herbert West looked up from his notes and there was a long moment where the two of you just stared at each other.

It had been six months since the two of you had met. When Herbert had been let out of his three years of solitary confinement, he had immediately gone back to his former work assignment: the library. You had already been working there for a little more than a year, having taken the job after looking for work for months and not finding anything that paid enough for you to afford to move out of your parent’s house. The prison library was small, the selection was terrible and the ‘safety measures’ were guards outside of the door, unless a certain type of prisoner was there, an office with a lockable door behind the checkout desk and a can of pepper spray. But at least it was quiet, with no one coming in some days and the company wasn’t too bad.

By now, Herbert was used to you. He had been able to pull the wool over the eyes of the doddering old man that had run the library before you and he would not deny that he had been disappointed when he had seen you at the checkout desk and you had informed him that you were in charge now. You would not be easy to fool, he had thought.

Which was correct. You had been wary of the man, as he had spent three years in solitary and was just being left alone with you. Herbert had basically been thrown in front of the desk and after some quick introductions by Moncho, the two of you had been left alone. Herbert had studied you and you had returned the favor. There had been a lot of staring before you had come out from behind the desk to show him the changes that you had made.

After you had caught him scribbling away in a notebook, you had casually mentioned that you had found his old notebook, which had been hidden inside a hollowed-out copy of Shogun. Clever man, you had teased, leaning in to tap him on the temple. Herbert had been momentarily distracted by your closeness, almost missing what you had said next. As long as he didn’t actually do anything in the library, then you wouldn’t care what he did in the library once his work was done. That limited his research to reading and note-taking, but Herbert had taken it.

I’m bored. You’re interesting, had been your response to him asking what you were getting out of the deal.

After spending hours in the library together during a lockdown, something had changed. It had been one of the hottest days of the summer and the air conditioning was off. You had taken off your usual cardigan, showing Herbert what you looked like in a tank top. Despite him feeling as hot as you had, Herbert hadn’t done anything to alleviate it. It would look bad, both of you had realized. The conversation that had followed had been a turning point.

“It definitely wouldn’t look good, even if your shirt was only unbuttoned. Wouldn’t matter that the guards think you’re basically a monk.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The guards told me that they don’t worry about leaving us alone because they don’t think you like anyone or anything. You’re a metaphorical Ken doll, if not a literal one. But they used cruder terms, of course.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh?”

“I notice…things.”

The way he had looked at you for one brief moment had said volumes and the way you had looked at him afterwards said just as much. From then on, it had hung between the two of you. This…attraction that could not be acted on. It was wrong, it was forbidden.

But that made it all the sweeter.

The two of you did what you could, however. When Herbert was helping you shelve books, any brief touches would linger. There was a lot of staring. And sometimes, when it was just the two of you, you would read to him, but only select passages from certain books. When you had read from Tropic of Cancer, the two of you had wound up face to face, Herbert starting to turn red from the effort of holding back his desires and you had actually been wet, whispering that fact to him.

That had been a few weeks ago. Both of you both knew that something would have to give eventually. And both of you were choosing to deny that, even to yourselves.

--

“Do. Not. Tempt. Me.”

Those four words would lead to the dam breaking, to the thing that both of you had been trying to stop for so long.

It had been an ordinary day at the library. Herbert had been shelving books while you had dealt with the patrons, who turned out to be more interested in talking to you than the books. Though they were actually talking at you most of the time. Most of the time, the prisoners hit on you for a short time. It was almost as if they didn’t mean it, they just wanted to say those things, like someone who needed to flip the lights on and off to stay calm.

But today, one of the patrons had been…persistent. Bridger was in for armed robbery and felony murder, so he didn’t require a guard to accompany him. If he had a record that indicated that you would be in danger around him, then there would be a guard there. But there wasn’t, so Bridger was free to say whatever he wanted.

As Bridger had rhapsodized about your ‘piggy cunt’, Herbert had abandoned his task and quietly approached. And in a voice that had made a chill run down your spine and straight to your core, he had asked the much larger man to stop talking to you that way or else he would make him. Bridger had laughed and taunted Herbert, leading the bespectacled man to say those four words.

Bridger had been scared off by the way Herbert had spoken and the look in the man’s eyes. He had quickly left and for a while, the library had been dead silent. Slowly, you had come out from behind the desk and had gone to the cart, Herbert joining you a moment later.

The sound of the lockdown alarm rang out just as the last book was shelved. You could hear the guards at the door leave as the alarm faded and it hit you that the two of you would be truly alone for a while. And that unspoken thing was draped over the both of you, as opposed to hanging over your heads. It wasn’t going to remain unspoken for long.

“You’re so fucking hot when you’re mad,” you whispered, still standing right next to him. Slowly, you began to undo the buttons of your blouse.

Herbert turned to face you just as your blouse dropped to the floor. You were wearing a plain black bra, but it was still more of you than he had ever thought he would see. “You have no idea what you do to me,” he breathed, his eyes still fixed on your body, hands twitching at his sides.

“Show me.”

Within seconds of those words leaving your mouth, you were slammed against the side of the bookshelf, Herbert’s mouth on yours and his hands pushing up your skirt. It had been a while for you, but it had been even longer for him. You could feel it, rather literally. He was grinding against you as soon as your skirt was bunched up around your waist. One of your hands went from around his neck to keep your skirt up so you could properly feel him rub against your core.

You had to let go of your skirt and of Herbert to get your bra off, unhooking it and letting it join your blouse on the floor. And then, the two of you were there as well, Herbert rutting against you as he greedily pawed at your chest, the two of you kissing again, nearly all teeth and tongue.

“Fuck me.” It was a minor miracle that you were even able to speak as the dry humping somehow managed to stimulate your clit. Herbert stopped cold at your words, as if he wasn’t sure what he had heard. But then, he was an animal again, nearly tearing off your panties and crudely shoving himself inside of you, hands all over you as soon as he was able to establish a rhythm.

Herbert couldn’t settle on where to touch you for very long. It had been over a decade for him and he was realizing that he had needed this for a long time. He needed to touch, to feel someone, to have them touch him back. You were so tight and wet, the noises your bodies were making as he fucked you were downright obscene. Your nipples were hard, even before he had touched them, and they were glistening from where his mouth had been. One breast even born faint teeth marks, as he had been rather…eager at first.

“Mine,” he found himself practically hissing as he began to thrust even harder, one hand grabbing your hair as the other went between your legs. You were mindless with lust, the hand in your hair quickly moving to cover your mouth as he began to rub your clit, wanting to make you come but also not wanting to get caught.

After all, getting caught meant never being able to do this again.

Herbert could feel your walls clenching down around him and your shrieks of pleasure against his palm as you came. He declared that you were his once more. This time, you nodded fervently, which made him groan in pleasure and he barely remembered to pull out in time. He came across your stomach and chest, practically painting you with his seed.

[severalspoons]

Long Rambling Trigun Meta Discussion 2

I *hate* the reply function in Tumblr. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t function. It doesn’t even open up a findable page so I can respond, and I can’t directly answer the reply. That’s why I reblog.

So, here’s the next best thing:

tiggymalvern

I don't recall anything like that fic you mention from either canon. It's a lovely idea, if only I could imagine Vash and Knives stopping arguing with each other for long enough to do it.

This fic I’m remembering was surprisingly hard to find, and now I’m wondering if it’s from FF.net rather than AO3. Will share once I find it!

The twins argue while doing it, IIRC, and have very different approaches. Luckily for the humans, in this fic the engineer likes the plant and takes care of it well, given how little is actually known about how to do so post-crash. Even so, Knives almost kills the engineer, but Vash stops him and leaves behind a little journal full of advice and encouragement. 

IMO, I feel like this is something Vash would be motivated to do more than Knives:

-- to repair his relationship with Knives

-- because he feels responsible for the people Rem saved

-- because he wants the bulb plants to be safe and happy

(listed in the order I thought of them)

But Knives would see this as slight progress towards Vash seeing things his way, so he’d go with it. What do you think?

tiggymalvern

I've never been entirely clear on the manga ending myself, and I think Nightow left it somewhat ambiguous deliberately. Vash and Knives are fighting, and then the earth forces attack them both, Livia intevenes and Vash and Knives fly off and

six months later we find Vash in hiding with the people who saved him, because Knives convinced them to, and then Knives plants an apple tree to help feed the peopl looking after Vash, and then he vanishes...

I assume he chose not to stay with humans and just went off somewhere, but it's left open

Interesting! Yeah, I got the sense it was supposed to be deliberately ambiguous, too. 

Many people say that Knives died giving his last energy to save Vash, to the point where I thought that was canon. 

No matter what happened with Knives and the tree, I have questions. If Knives planted the tree before dying or disappearing or whatever, I’d want to know where he got the apple seeds, and if providing the energy to make that tree survive on Gunsmoke killed him. If he turned into a tree (which I thought was the canon, but maybe not?), how? I can see why you didn’t interpret Knives as turning into a tree.

All I know for sure is, if Knives were dying, he’d want to do it on his own terms. Ideally in a way that would express his point and make an impression on Vash. I was going to say that creating a tree doesn’t seem like Knives’ style, but then I thought about the apple tree scenes in the anime. However that tree came to be, Vash would most likely associate it with happier times on the ship. Maybe he’d be fucked up enough to see it as a gesture of love. 

Maybe it was the closest thing to a gesture of love someone as manipulative and self-absorbed as Knives could manage...

tiggymalvern  Knives really is a person with no middle ground. When he believed Rem's teachings, he believed them wholeheartedly, that everything would turn out fine and people just needed to be given a chance. When he rejected those teachings and decided it was all just rubbish, he went maximum speed to the other extreme. Reject ALL humans, not just the individuals who had proven that they suck. And reject as in eradicate, not just avoid... 

I love Knives’ all-or-nothing way of being. Maybe because I know and love so many people with a little streak of that. And it’s so believable. Reminds me of a quote I read somewhere about how a misanthrope is a disillusioned idealist.

Knives thinks in utilitarian terms (”the greatest good for the greatest number with the least possible sacrifice”) as a kid for the few short scenes before he turns evil. He also seems to think in terms of groups rather than individuals (”humans,” “spiders,” “butterflies”). It saves him the grief Vash goes through at coming to know and lose so many people, but it also helps him justify a racist ideology. I love that about him, actually. If I were to write a Knives redemption fic, a key arc would be helping him learn to see others as individuals. I have a few paragraphs of something like that written...

Kids definitely need wonder and to see the beauty in the world, but it's also a good idea to mention the possibility of weird strangers offering candy that are best avoided. For these bizarre new non-human children, those warnings would have been extra pertinent, and maybe would have reduced the shock of what came after. Knives is definitely more mature than Vash in those flashbacks. Like you say, he wants to discuss issues with Vash, and Vash just parrots Rem. 

Agree.

I have a theory. Earth, in Trigunverse, seems a lot like our world, only worse.

I’ve seen a lot of people’s sense of wonder, beauty, fun, and curiosity squished. I was the weirdo in preschool, among other four year olds, for being too much like that. Maybe on Trigun Earth, a bleak place to begin with, that’s the norm. (And destroying people’s wonder/curiosity/etc. leads to depression and the ennui of modern life, but that’s another essay).

Some people, like those who run Waldorf schools, overreact by going to the opposite extreme. The worst, most ideologically rigid ones, deliberately wait to teach kids to read so they can explore the world unmediated by words a little longer. (And will even discourage kids who learn to read early, grr). Waldorf philosophy assumes young kids are basically sensing, feeling, and imagining beings, rather than thinking ones. 

I get the sense that Rem is one of these sorts. She was squashed and made to feel worthless for the way she saw the world. Maybe that’s part of the reason she was so depressed and needed Alex’s help. She’s raising the twins the way she wished she had been raised.

That sort of parenting wasn’t appropriate for a plant, of course. But no one had raised independent plants to adulthood before. No one knew what was appropriate. No one knew how to teach them about danger (or how not to). 

Growing up as a neurodivergent person in the Dark Ages, the only kid with allergies and sensory processing problems, etc., I understand all too well how badly things can go when even the most loving parents just don’t know what to do, and can’t find helpful information anywhere. Where helpful information isn’t just hard to find, but it doesn’t exist yet. 

So as critical as I’m being of Rem, I sympathize with her. She really didn’t have much to go on but her own knowledge and experience, and she bravely did the best she could.

Vash isn't thinking for himself yet, but he's a kid, so that's allowable. It does make it harder for Knives, though, who feels he has to be responsible for them both. 

You know, Knives does feel responsible for them both, and I hadn’t thought much about it and about the implications of that. No wonder he was so frustrated and furious. There’s definitely a sense of “something is deeply unfair and wrong” for a child trying to raise not only themselves, but their younger sibling(s).  Perhaps that’s part of the reason I saw Knives as caring about Vash, in his toxic, screwed up way. 

Plant biology is MASSIVELY confusing, and the more you try to piece it together, the more your head hurts LOL. But I think that's almost the point? ...Leaving the readers struggling to figure out the plants is the human perspective.

What do you think about the anime being so much from a human pov, especially considering that the most important characters in it are not?

Wolfwood is the support Vash needs to learn to control his plant powers among other things, the powers that have terrified Vash for so long that he ignored them. But Wolfwood isn't scared of them - or rather, he is, but not scared enough to abandon Vash because of them. He knows all about Vash, he knows all about July and the hole in the moon, he's seen Vash transform into some weird crazy thing with feathers, and Wolfwood still stays. Wolfwood lets Vash know that Vash's mistakes can be forgiven, and Vash is still a worthwhile person despite them. And because Wolfwood believes it, Vash can start to believe it. 

Between how well you put this and the dynamic itself, I’m...blown away and don’t know what to say. 

– “Vash, take care of Knives.” This breaks my heart because so far … he hasn’t. First he follows Knives around. Then abandons him. Then attacks him. I really do think Vash was trying. He followed Knives around for so long while being so angry with him for what he'd done, and yes, part of that was because he didn't want to be alone himself, but part of it was him trying to follow Rem's advice. 

Yeah, true, he did try at first. I undervalued it because by the time the series starts, that was far into the past and Vash probably doesn’t even remember it, but still.

In the manga, Rem specifically says, 'Vash, don't leave Knives alone,' because I think she recognises that Knives is prone to extremes and needs a balance. 

See, that instruction makes so much more sense. And I think the plants would have agreed. (Well, of course they would. They’re a collective consciousness, after all).

Rem probably also knew it’s bad for anyone’s health or sanity to be alone, and an emotionally unstable twin plant even more so. Knives would be in a solitary confinement of his own making.

Vash tried and tried to get Knives to change; he spent so much effort trying to explain why genocide wasn't the answer. But Vash failed, and eventually he recognised that he was always going to fail. So he left Knives, because he needed a life that wasn't that failure. He needed to do something to compensate for Knives. He took upon himself the responsibility of not only protecting the humans from Knives, but protecting the humans from the worst in themselves, which Knives' actions brought to the surface. And that is one hell of a lot to take on, and not a recipe for a happy life.

Yeah, that’s...a heroic life, but not a happy one. In a way, it seems almost as doomed as trying to change Knives. 

[deadshctx]

hiya folks! spike here, with my angsty son FLOYD LAWTON. i have his bio up HERE and his full application under the cut. LIKE THIS POST and i’ll hop in ur dms for plots! 

IN CHARACTER:

basic info

full name: Floyd Lawton

face claim: Dev Patel

age (include physical age, if different): 30

gender & preferred pronouns: cismale, he/him

MBTI Type: ISTP

occupation: NOVA Contractor

aliases (if any): Deadshot

affiliations (if any): NOVA, ARGUS, Task Force X

1. Is your character human, mutant, metahuman, alien, inhuman, or other? If other, please elaborate: Human

2. What are your characters powers/special abilities, if any?: n/a

3. Please provide three headcanons for your character:

1) Floyd isn’t suicidal, but he has a death wish. There’s a sort of carelessness to the way he works that betrays the little worth he places on his life. He tends to deflect any observations about this with humor—most people who work with him know not to question. It doesn’t get in the way of him getting the job done. He just knows that his job is high risk, and if he dies...he just doesn’t care.

2) Of the members of the suicide squad, Floyd was probably the most level-headed. He was never the kind of costumed criminal the rest of them were, not the type to make flashy shows of his work or do it because of some innate desire. Sure, it takes a certain kind of person to become an assassin of his caliber, but make no mistakes: he has always just been in it for the paycheck.

3) A faraway dream of Floyd’s is to move to India with Zoe, where no one would be able to find them. If he could give it up—if he thought he’d ever be able to give up Deadshot—he’d do it in a heartbeat. He knows, however, that it’s never going to happen. He’s never going to be able to stay out of trouble, and he was just going to have to live with the havoc that would wreak on his daughter’s life.

4. List four personality traits (two positive and two negative) and explain how they influence your character.

+ focused

Floyd has always been good at his job. It was something that came naturally to him, always a fastidious, methodical young person who liked making plans only to revel in the chaos when he threw them out the window. Needless to say, Floyd is deadly.

+ adaptable

As much as Floyd likes following his own plans, he also is always ready to throw them out the window. He’s the kind of person who thrives in the moments when thinking on your feet means life or death.

- reckless

Floyd’s foolish actions haven’t gotten his various teams in trouble yet, but there’s bound to be a fuck-up sometime.

- flippant

A lot of the time, people get frustrated working with Floyd because he refuses to take anything seriously. The combination of his death wish and his sole motivation of a paycheck, Floyd has never found much reason to take anything too seriously, even situations that are life or death.

5. Provide three potential plots you’d like to explore. The admins will do our best to accommodate your plot ideas, but we can’t guarantee all requests.

1) I want to see him do something horrible to the people who experimented on him at Belle Reve. Not only would this just be a cool plot to play out, but I think Floyd has always valued that he’s managed to keep his mind his own. ARGUS and others have taken a lot from him, and a lot of the time, he’s felt like he’s nothing more than a killing machine that they rent out, and it was his own sureness in his sanity that often kept him from doing something drastic. Not being able to trust that anymore would make him furious, and his only coping mechanism has been violence. It would be a type of catharsis when he finally gets rid of all of them that I think Floyd would not have experienced before in his life.

2) Something that I think will be really interesting for Floyd moving forward would be for him to now have a more active role in his daughter’s life. He has been absent for so much of it, and now she’s six and like...a real person and that’s finally sinking in for Floyd. The things he does will blow back on her, and if there is anyone in this world he loves, it’s Zoe Lawton. Having to come to terms with the fact that if he wants this time to be different, he’’s going to have to do some things differently is going to be a tough pill for him to swallow.

3) It would be super fun if a character in game hired Floyd against another character in game. It would be hilarious to watch Floyd chase someone around and then give him a dumb reason for not going through with it honestly it would be great.

character bio

Before the ban, he wasn’t anyone, and after the ban went into place, no one noticed when he disappeared deeper into the forgotten reaches of the system. The ugly dregs of a new normal that no one wanted to look at.

Floyd spent some time in Belle Reve after the start of the ban, mostly because no one really knew what to do with the suicide squad. Eventually, the squad was split up and Floyd was sent to Star City to work as a private contractor for ARGUS. He was still very much their prisoner—the words just made it seem better than it was.

ARGUS controlled Floyd’s entire life at this point, and he had grown used to it. He had grown complacent, tamed unwillingly into obeying the routine that had become his whole life. At one point, he had been the most highly sought after assassin in the world. Now, he was just another cog in ARGUS’ machine.

That never sat right with Floyd, and he had never learned how to solve his problems without a bullet, which was why he put one in Waller’s head.

ARGUS, at that point, was quickly losing its foothold to NOVA, and in the ensuing chaos, no one had time to deal with a loose cannon asset no one liked working with. They tossed him back in Belle Reve and forgot about him.

But he didn’t forget, not through every single nightmare Belle Reve put him through. If the asset won’t be in use, they thought, we can put him to use right here. And they did, putting him into all sorts of fucked up scenarios and seeing if he could fight his way out of it. When he did, they’d convince him that it wasn’t real.

Finally, they got bored of their game, or NOVA needed a pinch hitter, or some other dumb fucking reason that Floyd doesn’t give a fuck about, and they released Floyd. Of course, they couldn’t do it like normal people, and they plopped him back in Star City with a new tracker in his arm and a thirst for violence he’d never felt before.

He doesn’t think it’ll ever go away.

sample

blood, violence tw

Floyd wasn’t doing well in the dormitory, to say the least.

For a while, he was okay, cracking jokes when he felt like it and more often than not sullenly going through the motions, just like everyone else. It seemed like he could be normal, that maybe he could be okay and that whatever had happened before that had kept him out of the field for so long was just a memory.

It was in the third week that the fighting started.

At first, it was a broken nose, a dislocated thumb, a black eye. Minor injuries, things that were unacceptable to NOVA but just shy of irredeemable. So, Floyd stayed in the house. And the more he stayed in the house, the more his anger grew.

He’d spent months in solitary at this point. Fuck it, a year, probably. He wasn’t ready to be thrust back into something so new and so overwhelming all at once. Every single person in that house had their dicks out like they had something to prove, and Floyd, who had absolutely nothing to prove, showed them exactly who was on top.

It wasn’t until he killed someone that they took him out.

Floyd thought about it, the way he felt standing over the body, blood pooling under his head and his eyes glassy and unmoving. Floyd wasn’t used to killing up close like this, relying on the safety of distance whenever he took out his targets. It was clean. Precise. He didn’t see the bloody aftermath.

It was fascinating to him. That was concerning to them.

So, they moved him somewhere alone, and Floyd hated it even more than the dormitory. The silence made his ears ring. At night. he woke up with nightmares of drowning.

Even then, lying awake in bed, he was consumed with the feeling of water entering his lungs. It had happened, he swore. They had told him at Belle Reve that nothing happened, showed him scans of his lungs, clear of any inflammation, and said that it had been a terrible hallucination. All in his head.

But he felt it. He could have sworn he felt it. Water, rising through his cell as he desperately searched for an escape, the feeling of his blood mingling with the water as he clawed at the walls. He remembered the feeling of inhaling water, the pain and shock of a rush of water into the delicate structures of his lungs.

He remembered being administered CPR.

He rolled over in bed. Would he really hallucinate CPR?

Fuck. He wanted to punch someone right then, but he couldn’t, because he got himself kicked out of the fucking dormitory. Way to fucking stick it to ‘em, Floyd.

He felt nauseous. He swallowed it back.

He knew the truth. He had to.

[riizev2]

The Living Timeline of Riize Wintersong

RPing is hard. Keeping track of nearly three years of continuity is harder. Here is my organized timeline of Riize’s life for those interested in RPing her now that I’ve returned. I recognize that this is based primarily on my own recollection of plot events, so I have chosen to tag in as many blogs as possible for those interested in hearing the other side of these stories.

However, times change. A lot has happened in two years and my recollection is far from perfect or impartial. In that vein, this is going to be considered a living document. It may change as new information is brought to my attention. Furthermore, some of the people mentioned here are not on good terms with each other (or with me lmao), so take some of this with a grain of salt. This might end up being more for me than for you.

That leads to what’s in brackets. Certain story beats that happened previous have been decided to be written out of continuity for a variety of reasons. Out of respect to the wishes of those involved, certain characters have been omitted even though they did have canon interactions with Riize previously. If I feel that the scene in question is still required to understand Riize’s current characterization, I will leave them in with brackets. The names and occupations of those involved will be changed for the sake of obscuring the identities of those involved and to open up future revisits to old topics now that I have more control over certain elements of Riize’s past. 

I’m organizing it by patch because using the IRL timeline might awaken Blizzard’s lore department. Bold information was originally supposed to be proper nouns and important events but it got a little bit away from me. Just fucking kidding I deleted one word and half the hyperlinks broke and all the bolding disappeared so nothing is bold now. Also Tumblr ate this post twice so I’m kind of trying to get it up before it happens a third time. If edits need to be made, I will write a reblog with the changes as they happen (unless it is basic grammar or more comprehensive formatting)

With that said, let us begin.

Backstory:

Riize Wintersong was born in Darkshore to a priestess and a druid. Her childhood was largely uneventful, training under her mother as a Priestess of Elune while spending her spare time exploring the coastline. As she grew older, she decided that her true love was the sea and became a sailor. Travelling around Western Kalimdor, she became a rotating member of various trade ships that provided food and supplies to other kaldorei settlements on the continent.

In the lead up to the Third War, Riize joined the Alliance Navy and sailed much of Azeroth. During this period she learned much about dwarven and gnomish engineering and worked to maintain the components of ships. While only obtaining the title of Seamen, these years kindled her love for tinkering.

Riize left the military after fulfilling her tour of duty in Northrend. Like many she did experience whispers of the the Old God Yogg-Saron, but did not yet begin her study of the Void until far later. During her time as a civilian she fished and sailed for recreation purposes. After the Cataclysm she returned to the sea as a hired hand on any vessel that would take her. This began her integration into less savory groups.

Riize’s status as a sailor-for-hire was the status quo leading into her playable first appearance in...

Patch 7.3

At this time, Riize is a member of the pirate gang the Dreadwing Vultures. Operating under the professional alias of ‘Nine,’ she sailed with the group for fun and profit. While occasionally brushing against the machinations of Unit Eight, her time with the group was generally enjoyable. Around this time is her first meetings with Corine Blythe, Saelkath Alzarah (@saelkath-alzarah) , and Kat Hawke (@kat-hawke).

[During this period Riize would begin dating one of her fellow Vultures. The two of them would spend long nights getting high and listening to vinyl records. While their life trajectories eventually moved in two different directions, she still values their time spent together greatly.]

Riize begins to make ties with the independent intelligence agency The Silent and a few of its high ranking members through their establishment at the Golden Keg. She begins to take up the place of one of their previous agents as an informant within the Dreadwing Vultures. This position does not last long, as the Vultures soon move to Ironforge and afterwards shutter completely.

Shortly after this event, Riize begins to study under Saelkath in the ways of the Void. Reaching into the darkness, Riize’s exploration is noticed by beings lurking in the Void and mentally affected irreparably. While initially curious, she finds herself drawn to understanding the Void and the denizens within with more fervor. She convinces Saelkath to reveal to her the rituals of the Cult of C’Thun and soon becomes a member herself.

[However, shortly after reemerging with her new focus on the Void, Riize is captured and held captive by a masked Light zealot in the Hinterlands. Detained and tortured for over two weeks, Riize was eventually able to escape into the woods. While too weak to fight, she swore revenge on the one who imprisoned her.]

Patch 7.3.5

While examining a job board in Stormwind Riize comes across a flier directing people towards Easterly. After communicating with The Silent, Riize chooses to enter the newly reforming House Draconis on an information-gathering mission. She meets the House’s heir, Strixena Draconis, and begins to establish a friendship with her. She completes her induction after kidnapping a priest of the Light out of Stormwind on Strixena’s behalf. She is initiated into the House shortly after. While initially believing she escaped Stormwind without notice, Riize ends up crossing the Warden Elyza Morrowbranch (@morrowbranch) who was more than capable of overpowering the newly minted Lady’s Hand. Beating aside, Riize chooses House Draconis over her previous bonds and affirms her loyalty to Strixena.

Riize’s involvement with House Draconis does not go unnoticed by those who knew her and soon she finds herself interrogated by Director Hawke. Remaining affable post-kidnapping, the two enter a tense truce. Working with Saelkath and her previous student Iceilla Nightbane (@iceillanightbane​), Riize partakes in off-the-record assistance on a small handful of missions on Unit Eight’s log.

During a heated argument between the two of them, Riize slices Strixena’s face and leaves her permanently scarred. Agreeing that her delving into the Void is making her lose control of herself, Riize is isolated within the barren White Room deep under Easterly’s catacombs. She is kept in solitary confinement for six weeks, with her only outside contact to the world being twice daily visits from Strixena to bring her food. While originally planned as an act of love, Riize begins to go mad. Her connection to the Void deepens in secret. When she is released she rekindles her vow of loyalty to Strixena and is rechristened as Riizen Draconis, the Phoenix of Easterly.

While working as a founding member of House Draconis’s intelligence branch, the Lady’s Hand, Riize meets the Arbiter of Dead Sun Harbor Eilithe Duskbringer (@eilitheduskbringer). While working together during the opening of the House’s gunsmithing store in Stormwind (Dragon’s Breath Smithing) the two kaldorei would develop a lasting friendship. Fulfilling her duties to the House, Riize recruits Joskinar Soulshread (@joskinar) into the Lady’s Hand. Near that time she also meets Aurelia Voidsong (@smoke-and-stilettos), Headmistress of Sordasa Academy. The Academy would act as the research division of the House, providing a vast bevy of knowledge to those who would seek it. Riize, Jos, and Aurelia would soon form a polyamorous relationship.

Patch 8.0

Strixena and other key members of House Draconis are jailed by a mysterious figure. Riize is not targeted, though the time spent away from Strixena eats at her. She tries her best to maintain the organization in her stead but is slowly pushed further and further out of power by inter-House politics. She settles into running the House’s business ventures while awaiting her sister’s return.

During a Unit Eight expedition to Ahn’Qiraj with Saelkath and a mage in SI:7’s employ, Riize witnesses the full power of her teacher’s magic and is horrified. Barely able to push through the ritualist’s powerful psychic influence, Riize helps destroy the artifact they came to collect to free Saelkath from its hold. While the trio are able to return to Unit Eight’s headquarters safely, Saelkath’s mind is shattered and she loses all memory of Riize. Heartbroken, she leaves her teacher in the medbay and disappears into the night. Riize never sees her beloved teacher again.

Eventually Strixena reemerges before the House as a Death Knight, a specter of vengeance unleashed upon the world. House Draconis begins to act again, though with far less of Riize’s input. Not long after, Dragon’s Breath Smithing is shuttered. The intelligence branch that Riize helped Strixena found is scrapped as well, resulting in her joining Aurelia in Sordasa Academy.

Things grew more dire over the coming months. War loomed on the horizon and the temperament of her sister grew even more volatile. The final straw came in the one-two punch of the closing of Sordasa Academy and the ultimatum that re-entering the House’s inner circle would require letting go of her attachment to her partners. Riize, Aurelia, and Joskinar would all leave Easterly for the old Voidsong Manor in the dead of night. She never saw her sister again.

Patch 8.1

The War of the Thorns escalated further, far from Riize’s gaze. The Void’s hold on her grew ever deeper until the Burning of Teldrassil snapped her from her stupor. Journeying to Darkshore, Riize learned that her parents had evacuated to the presumably untouchable kaldorei capital only to be lost in the fire. Riize had not seen her family in decades and never got to say goodbye.

Patches 8.1.5 through 8.2.5

AKA the period I wasn’t playing WoW

Riize, Joskinar, and Aurelia married in private far from the world. The trio would spend the following year together in seclusion, enjoying relative peace together far from the world and the war raging around them. While it was peace at the cost of ignorance, it was a much needed reprieve from the pain that had preceded.

Patch 8.3 through Past and Present

The rise of N’Zoth and the emergence of Ny’alotha took an unseen toll upon the Void-Blessed Night Elf. Visions began to infiltrate her mind showing her memories of lives unlived and roads not taken. In time it became impossible to distinguish the visions from reality. The usually energetic kaldorei would soon spend hours of the day bedridden, barely able to navigate through the illusions that danced before her eyes.

Now

Riize re-enters a world that is unfamiliar during a time of uneasy peace. The public has turned its hatred upon the Void-aligned and allies have become few and far between. Familiar faces have disappeared, replaced by an endless stream of vitriol. Still, Riize searches for answers and closure to a life that has escaped her...

[catflowerqueen]

Sableye Backstory

So here’s that backstory I promised you all months ago now… and which I worked on instead of writing the actual paper I have due this week….

I’m going to go ahead and refer to the sableye by name throughout the narrative for ease of understanding, but none of them actually had individual names until some varying point after meeting Laura.

General Backstory:

This will also have to be split in several parts, since the six sableye that I lovingly refer to as the “Sableye Gang” actually started out as two distinct groups. Sort of.

Technically speaking, all six sableye and their families were originally part of a bigger clan/tribe of sableye, so they spent part of their early life together. They all had varied relationships to their blood relatives, but the six of them were always very close, and good friends with each other. They had their squabbles, of course, but more in the manner of close siblings—even though only Seis and Trois are actually related by blood. Or at least, they have the closest blood relationship—some of the others could probably be considered cousins, if only distantly, considering how tight-knit the clan used to be, but no one really bothered to do any sort of genealogical study to confirm that, nor do they really care either way. They’re all around the same age, with Cinq being the oldest and Trois the youngest—the age difference between the two of them probably isn’t any bigger than three years or so, however.

The leader of this clan was Seis and Trois’ grandfather. After his death, when the eldest of the gang (Cinq) was around six or seven, there was a schism in the group over which of the grandfather’s two sons should be the next leader. Ultimately, Seis and Trois’ uncle would win—and he ended up banishing the families that opposed him, so the gang was split up when Seis and Trois’ family was forced to leave. I’ll call this group “Group One,” because even though it’s the smaller of the two groups, it makes a bit more sense chronologically speaking to talk about this group first as far as Seis and Trois are concerned.

 Group One

This group did not fare well at all. They were smaller in number, and couldn’t take on bigger groups of pokémon, or strong solitary pokémon, and so often lost fights over food/territory. It wasn’t long before their leader—Seis and Trois’ dad—decreed that in order to survive, they needed to get rid of the dead weight. By this, he meant the kids—including his own sons. Luckily for the duo, however, their mother loved them very, very much and protected them, covering their escape. But she was severely injured in the process, and didn’t survive long. Her sons kept her chest gem as a memento, and then buried her before moving on and trying to make a life of their own. The safest thing for them was to keep moving and work on speed (and acting skills, in Seis’ case), since they’d already seen the results of what happened when a too-small, too-weak group tried to assert dominance—and they had the added handicap of being children. They managed fairly well for themselves for a year or two… until Trois got really, really sick when Seis was around 8-9 years old. So sick, in fact, that Seis feared he would die, especially since he didn’t have any medical training and didn’t know how to help.

Luckily for them… when Seis was out looking for some clean water to at least try and keep his brother comfortable, he ran into the Little Imp, who was out with Dusknoir on a sort of reconnaissance mission, and he convinced her to help. She basically bullied Dusknoir into going out and getting medicinal fruits and things—either by gathering them himself in the future or getting Dialga/Celebi to send him into the past to get some (because at this point I’m not entirely sure whether or not Little Imp and Celebi had their brief meeting that forced Celebi into moving away from Grovyle and closer to Dialga, where he could keep a watch over her). With her help, Trois manages to recover—though he’ll always have some health/physical development issues stemming from this incident. The only reason that she doesn’t adopt them on the spot is that Seis’ acting skills are so great, even at this stage, that he convinces her that he is way older than he actually is, and that this illness was a freak occurrence and the two do just fine by themselves usually—he totally has everything handled.

He does NOT have everything handled, but the two adults kind of scare him a little (or a lot) despite how helpful they’ve been—Little Imp because of her intensity and how genuine she is in her kindness and caring (since its something he hasn’t seen since his mother passed away) and Dusknoir because he’s just being his typical suspicious and intimidating self—and Seis fooled him as far as ages go, too. He would have probably toned things down at least a little had he known Seis was a child, and not just Trois, he would have toned things down a bit—given his own backstory, he’s always been pretty good with children. Though, granted, the children he’s most familiar with were actually fairly well-adjusted, considering the circumstances.

In any case, despite him not having nearly as good a grip on things as leads everyone he’s ever interacted with to believe, he actually managed fairly well after this incident.

 Group Two:

This group consisted of the remaining four sableye and their families. They mostly kept the same lifestyle that they’d had up until this point, as the group was still fairly large. Nothing major happened with them for roughly four or five years. But when the kids were around 9-10… the group’s leader made a humongous mistake that changed the course of their lives.

Safe spaces to hide and rest are at a premium in the dark future, even for an experienced group like the sableye clan, so when they come across a cave—complete with a sort of door mechanism guarding the entrance—that looks untouched, despite being very well-hidden and near a grove of fruit trees… they decide to try and make it their new base for a while. But the fact that it was so untouched despite being in such a great location should have set off some major warning signals, because shortly after the adults start trying to force the door open… an absolutely furious Dialga shows up. Apparently, this location was the equivalent of a holy place, and Dialga does not take well to the perceived desecration. He starts a massacre, going so far as to actually ignore and push aside the Little Imp—who had been frantically trying to catch up to him and then stop him—and then the next thing the kids know, all the adults are dead. The only reason the kids survive is that the Little Imp shields them with her own body—going so far as to gather the absolutely freaked out kids in her arms and then turn her back to Dialga so that he wouldn’t be able to push her aside again—and then makes a desperate plea and tries to bargain with him. Dialga is too far gone to listen to reason—but he’s apparently still able to parse through plans of vengeance.

 Dialga is mad because the adult sableye were trying to break into a location that’s extremely precious to her, right? So if anyone deserves the right to punish the sableye, it would be her. But simply killing them is a waste, when there are more productive things that could be done—like making them into an object lesson for anyone else foolish enough to cross Dialga. And what good is an example if it can only be shown off once? Especially in this crazy world, where people are liable to forget things if they aren’t constantly exposed to it. So even though she absolutely hates the phrasing and implications, the Little Imp finally manages to secure the lives of the four kids by, essentially, putting them under her control and trading their lives for their freedom. It’s the only thing that makes the slightest bit of sense to Dialga, even though he hasn’t quite been appeased by the carnage he already wrought. In his mind, they owe the Little Imp everything—not because she spared their lives, but because they tried to ruin something that belongs to her, so she is owed repayment of some sort. Even if they didn’t actually do anything, and the whole thing was an accident.

 But the Little Imp hates it, absolutely hates it, because she doesn’t want the kids to feel like they owe her anything, or that they have to be servants. She just wants them to live, and to be able to be kids. But she knows that because of what Dialga just did and said, and because of what the world in general is like… that can’t happen. Especially not now.

Still, despite the unfortunate implications and the trauma, she—and Dusknoir—try to help the kids and raise them the best they can. She doesn’t feel like she can really be a mother figure to them (which is why she never attempts to give any of them names—along with the fact that, as an adult, she actually has the chance to learn about pokémon naming conventions in general, and how some just don’t give specific names to their kids, for various reasons [such as in Dusknoir’s family, where the tradition is that the eldest child of the family remains unnamed in order to “carry on the family name/line/etc.” while all subsequent children get their own name. So Dusknoir, as the eldest, only has his species name while his younger brother, who remained a duskull, did get an actual name]), and she actually feels kind of awkward around them given the technicalities surrounding their situation… but she still tries. And it eventually starts to work—at least, a little. Their relationship is extremely complicated, and they still think of her and Dusknoir as more their bosses/masters than anything like a family… but they become extremely fond of her. They come to adore her, really, and feel safe enough to express the fact that they’re extremely grateful that she saved them—even if they don’t really get why she did. But before she can try to teach them more, or get them to understand their own worth—or the fact that they’re allowed to be angry that she couldn’t do more for them, that she chose this option rather than trying harder to change Dialga’s mind—she dies. This takes place when the eldest of them is around 12-13… and they, along with Dusknoir and Dialga, are absolutely devastated. Also a bit afraid, since she was basically their shield from Dialga’s wrath… but mainly they’re devastated.

 None of them even considers running, event though they probably could have completely escaped during this time of distraction, so they’re still kind of awkwardly mulling around in confusion and grief when Dialga finally regains himself enough to start plotting about kidnapping the Little Imp’s successor. Dusknoir is just as confused and grief-stricken as everyone else, but he also has enough age and sanity to be able to keep ahold of himself and make his own plans and realizes that, given how unhinged Dialga is at the moment, the sableye are in a very precarious position, because their connection to the Little Imp was the only thing keeping his master’s eyes off them. So he quickly takes full control of them himself, telling Dialga that it’s only until the Little Imp’s successor comes of age and can decide what she wants done for herself. Plus, they can still be effective bodyguards as she grows up. Given the nature of the Little Imp, and Laura’s connection to her (and, thus, to the cave that is at the root of this whole mess), Dialga agrees to this pretty readily. Also, he’s half distracted with making preparations and trying to wrest enough control/power from Palkia to be able to open another portal to the human world.

The sableye are pretty on board with this board with this plan, mostly because they don’t really know what else to do, and are fully prepared to take on the role of guard duty/whatever Dusknoir tells them to do—in part because it really isn’t too different than what they were already doing. They and Dusknoir were expecting the new human to be an adult—because, again, only Dialga for sure what is meant by “successor”—and the fact that Earth and the Pokémon world are in different universes means that time doesn’t necessarily sync up exactly between the two [even without the mess that comes from the fact that time is currently messed up in the Pokémon world], so just because… let’s say, ten years or so have passed in Dialga’s perspective from the Little Imp coming to his world to her death, it doesn’t mean ten years have passed on Earth. It could have been twenty. Or a hundred. Or less than month. And by that same token, just because three-ish years passed on Earth from the time Laura was born to when she was kidnapped doesn’t mean that it took that same amount of time back in the Pokémon world. So even though the timing on the Rainbow Child’s personal timeline would imply that the sableye should be around 16-17 or so when they met her next incarnation, by the time they meet Laura they’re all still around the 13-14 they were when the Little Imp died.

So while the gap in age between them in Laura is still a bit large… it isn’t large enough that they aren’t all still basically kids. They’re more on equal footing—and Laura looks at them as friends and guardians more than anything else. The baggage isn’t there on either side, and they can befriend each other without worry—and, actually, the sableye are more or less encouraged to befriend Laura, because friends are what she wants and needs—and their job as her bodyguards is to keep her as happy and safe as possible. So they get to come to like her and be her friends and adore her as much as they want, without worrying overly much about what others think—though they still have to maintain a bit of “professionalism” in order to avoid ticking off Dialga, and they all know that, technically speaking, Laura is their actual boss—even if they’re listening to Dusknoir for now.

In any case, once Laura comes into Dusknoir/Dialga’s care, things proceed pretty much like she told everyone in Relatia’s Cave. The groups wouldn’t meet again for roughly 5-6 years after Laura makes her escape and befriends Grovyle.

 The Convergence of the Groups:

As I said earlier, despite the bluffing that Seis managed to pull off in regards to his actual competency level, he and his brother still managed things fairly well and eventually grew strong enough that they didn’t have to be in panic mode all the time, and could actually chill out and take things a bit slower. He was also able to reflect on things a bit more and decide that the Little Imp probably really was just that kind and genuine, and he probably owed her some sort of debt—or at least a more genuine thank-you. He came to the decision in part because Seis kept asking him for stories about the strangers who helped him back then, since he was really out of it and has no recollection of the events. The two of them (though, mostly Seis, really) decide to try and find her again, working off vague clues that Seis half-remembers about her being important to someone with a high status, and the two of them utilize Seis’ acting skills to gather more information eventually come into contact with Dusknoir again. To their utter shock and joy, when they finally do find him, it also brings them back into contact with their childhood friends—who are quick to assimilate them into their group once more. The two of them actually meet up with the group first before coming into contact with their boss. Dusknoir does not recognize them as the duo he’d helped before given that Seis is acting completely different now—or, rather, he isn’t acting, for once—and he didn’t actually get a good measure of Trois given the whole “riddled with illness” thing he had going on the last time they met. Seis elects not to bring it up—because while he was swapping stories with his friends on the way to go ask if they could formally join the group, he learned that the Little Imp had since passed away. He was devastated, of course, since it meant he never got the chance to formally and fully thank her for the fact that his brother is still alive. But Dusknoir hasn’t gotten any less intimidating since the last time he saw him, and considering how close the two were, he’s a little afraid of mentioning her at all in fear of how he might react—that, and he doesn’t want to bring up any sad memories for his friends, since they were really close to her as well. So no one but Trois actually knows that the two of them met her as well, and since Trois can’t actually remember it, he isn’t quite as impacted on the personal level that the others are.

Seis had already planned to join up with his friends in their work for a lack of anything else better to do, plus the fact that it provided more support and stability, and Trois was of course going to follow his brother, but, privately, Seis also decided to join for the sake of Laura—as the Little Imp’s successor (in more ways than anyone other than Dialga and possibly Dusknoir realize at this time), Seis figures that the debt he has towards the Little Imp transfers over to her. …And he guesses he technically owes Dusknoir a debt to, and this does help to fulfill that one as well, but… honestly, it’s more for pragmatic reasons that he elects to stay on the guy’s good side since, again, he’s kind of terrifying. The better bonus to the situation would be that his friends like Laura, and he likes his friends, so helping her helps them as well.

Given his complicated feelings on the matter of the Little Imp, and the way he’s transferred them onto Laura, one might assume that a better way to repay that debt would be to actually help her in her quest directly—but at this point in time, the fact that she and Grovyle are trying to change the past is more of a side note to the fact that she just straight up ran away from home. No one really realizes yet that changing the past will lead to their nonexistence, so they’re more concerned with the fact that she’s constantly putting herself into dangerous situations—which is an undeniable truth, since… yeah, she is. And since he hasn’t spent any actual time with her, he and Trois don’t have the same conflicted feelings that some of the others might have in regards to the reasons why she’s doing what she’s doing. By the time that they figure out the ramifications for their existence if she and Grovyle manage to succeed in their plans… well, he still hasn’t spent quite enough time with her to feel as conflicted as, say, Dos does, but he is fond of her for her own merits—rather than simply for that tenuous sense of obligation carrying over from the Little Imp—and has silently decided that he’s going to try and get to know her better/cheer her up and be as good of a friend as she’ll let him be once she’s captured for good. Or, at the very least, he’s going to make sure that she’s as physically protected as she can possibly be, since he can’t see her being too happy with the actual outcome of getting captured.

 That’s the basic backstory (though their ages are prone to flux as I pinpoint down exact dates and things, and how old they all feel in canon compared to how old it would reasonably make sense for them to be able to do things while still being able to keep close enough to Laura’s young age that it wouldn’t be weird for her to think of them and Grovyle as friends/older brothers)—but I do want to get into one last thing before signing off. Namely, how the sableye all got their names. Two of these stories have already been posted, but I’m not sure if I’ll end up doing specific ones for the rest, so I’ll just go ahead and list them here, in the order they were named.

1.      Dos: Laura gave him a name after the two of them bonded over painting when he was guarding her cell. She did it for a silly reason, and almost on an impulse, really, after she realized that the two of them had painted portraits of each other—meaning that there were now “two” of them, although she only pointed out her own painting in that explanation. There’s no real reason she decided to give him the Spanish translation of the number, aside from maybe her thinking that since it was in a different language than either of them typically spoke, it would sound more like a name. And “Dos” was less confusing for her to spell out than “Deux.”

2.      Cinq: She named him in guilt, after he got extremely injured picking her a bouquet of five flowers. Again… she thought that the foreign language sounded more like a name than the English/pokémon equivalent translation (which is still technically English, but no one realizes/calls it that since their written language has, for some reason, evolved way beyond that to become pretty much unrecognizable. Is that how linguistics actually work? Probably not, but that’s what I’m going with). She chose French this time because, for whatever reason, she just thought that “Cinq” sounded more elegant/better than “Cinco” for a name.

3.      Un: Named because he was the first pokémon she ever saw, as he (along with Cinq) was one of the ones who came with Dusknoir to kidnap her from Earth. Since she’d already given two of the sableye names at this point, she just decided to go ahead and do the others as well—though she hadn’t realized that she was establishing a theme of numbers. They just sort of… happened, because they fit the situations she was naming them for. As with Cinq, she chose the French version because she just thought it sounded better in this instance.

4.      Cuatro: He was the last one she gave a name while she was still in Dusknoir/Dialga’s custody, and he was was so named because he would typically greet her with four questions/fun facts whenever they saw each other, given his curious nature. This time, the Spanish version of the word sounded better. She still had not yet realized she’d locked herself into the number theme.

5.      Trois: The first time she met him (which was when he joined the others in trying to chase her down and capture her) he called her “Laura.” Just “Laura,” no honorifics—and he was only the third pokémon to ever do that (with the first being Dusknoir and the second Grovyle). Since practically no one ever used just her name—even Grovyle tended to call her “Partner” most of the time—this pleased her immensely. Of course, the other sableye were horrified by this, and quickly corrected him on the matter—the next time the group caught up with her and Grovyle, he was calling her “Miss Laura,” to her great displeasure. But she’d already given him a name, so she couldn’t change it now. She elected for “Trois” rather than “Tres” because ‘Tres” sounds like “Trace” when spoken aloud, and she wanted to highlight the “three” aspect in her naming reasoning.

6.      Seis: His is probably the most boring reason/story. She had finally by this point recognized the theme she’d inadvertently given the rest of the sableye (or had it pointed out to her by one of her friends), and felt compelled to continue with it. He’s named Seis because it means “Six,” she didn’t want to repeat a number, and the others alternated in language so next up was Spanish. If any other sableye joined up after him, they would have been named Sept to follow the theme and pattern. Seis takes it all in good humor—and probably figured out the reasoning behind his name without having to be told—though he can get a little annoyed when the others—especially Trois—tease him over it. And Trois likes to do it a lot, since he’s an annoying younger brother and revels in the fact that not only was he named first, despite being younger, but his name actually has a cool story behind it.

[incognitowetrust]

I finally got this done. Now I can move on.

Bruhs I guess this technically has been, like, a month, huh? Fuck. 

Well, I know for most of you following me, this won’t be very relevant, but because I got into MK, I had to make two OCs. It took me a long ass time to make the references, because I wanted to have decent enough shading/coloring. I often spend a lot longer on the 1st drawing of a character, because I’ll be designing the character as I go along, and it’s all about planning out and making an idea into a actual image, which is why I often add a lot of detail, because it’s another thing that’s part of me thinking out and processing what I want the smaller details of a character to be like. 

Well... I hope you can get some enjoyment outta this friggin’ mess. Lol, now proceed to watch me never draw or use these characters again. Jk Jk... probably. 

Adding the text details and backstory garbage under the “read more”.

Naknada OC, “Strayer” also known as “Mama”:

Personality: Difficulty trusting others, solitary, critical, resentful towards greed, resentful towards Outworld, respects the shaolin, soft spot for children and young adults, surprisingly caring.

Fighting style: She doesn’t like opponents to get within stabbing or grabbing distance, that’s probably why she gravitated towards using a halberd, which has some reach to it, as well as a whip, which can be used to snag or snap at foes. Knives always have their uses, so she carries those as well. Due to being self-preservative, she would rather avoid dangerous situations, but she’s no coward, and will fight tooth and nail if she has to. 

Overview: Strayer is a female naknada who was originally a slave in Outworld. She once had a son, and though being slaves is obviously a rough life, Strayer wasn’t willing to attempt an escape or something of that sort in fear of the punishments she or her son could face. Her son was quicker to break obedience, and became extremely defiant, as well as being a troublemaker, which ultimately caused him to get killed. Distraught, and deciding she had nothing left to lose, Strayer lost much of the fear that kept her in line, and decided she was going to leave her slave life one way or another, even if it was death. She managed to escape, and, figuring she was pretty much done with Outworld altogether, decided she’d be better off if she fled to Earthrealm. Not that she expected to meld with human groups or anything, far from it, it was more of a matter of her believing Earthrealm would be an easier place for her to be safe in. Before she did move to Earthrealm, she spent a while gathering and stealing supplies, some of which included items with magic properties, so that when she left Outworld to be a loner she would feel at least a bit more prepared. 

It had only been in earthrealm a matter of days before Strayer encountered Kitty, who was only around 6 years old at the time. Strayer’s reaction to Kitty was perhaps comparable to how humans react to finding orphaned baby animals (in fact, based off of this and Kitty’s name, Strayer sometimes refers to Kitty as “kitten”). Other species babies are always cuter after all. It wouldn’t be hard to argue that as a naknada, Strayer’s decision to take in Kitty could have been motivated by greed, but she would have helped Kitty regardless, she is far from heartless and if she acts selfish, it is likely from self preservation and survival, not greed. After all, Strayer was once a mother, she doesn’t want to see children getting hurt, and wasn’t willing to assume that the next person who might stumble across Kitty would be benevolent. 

Strayer would have returned Kitty to her family, but upon inquiring to the young girl about the circumstances of her situation, Kitty confirmed that she didn’t really have anyone she could turn to (or at least, that’s what she thought. Jun Shi had a lot of recovery to do, and was a lot more of a brotherly than fatherly figure, but he would have attempted to watch over her). With that, Strayer basically adopted Kitty right then and there. She isn’t an outwardly affectionate type, but got attached to her new weird daughter very quickly. At first, she attempted to discourage Kitty from calling her “Mama”, but when she got used to it, she simply accepted it as another name. 

Mama now takes her protective role pretty seriously. Sure, there is technically some selfishness in how she is overprotective of Kitty, sometimes it may be difficult to decide if some of her behaviors are protective or possessive, but ultimately she cares a lot about Kitty, and does make efforts to keep her happy. She does feel some guilt around the fact that due to their lifestyle, and often strict rules, contributes to Kitty often feeling lonely from being largely isolated from other people, but Strayer tries to do whatever she feels is best for both of them. She is distrusting towards the world (er… worlds), having had come from such a rough background, and does not believe she can rely on others to help or protect her. 

Knowing that there very well could be a time when she cannot keep Kitty safe herself, Mama Strayer at one point made the decision to move to and stay around the Henan province. Strayer isn’t exactly someone who socializes easily, so she doesn’t like to get “too” close to where the shaolin monks are… but she actually has a bit of a soft spot for them, considering them a trustworthy group of people. Strayer has instructed Kitty that if a dire situation should arise, she should flee to the shaolin. 

Human/earthrealmer OC, “Kitty”, also known as “Kit”, “Kitten”, and “Gilder”: 

Personality: Open, friendly, fearful of loss, fearful of electricity and deep water, lonely, blunt, well-meaning, innocent and a little naive but not entirely dumb, can be goofy and flirty, dislikes blatantly selfish people. 

Fighting style: She uses her gold magic to smash, pound, burn, melt, and jab her opponents. She’ll throw whatever she’s got. Opponents within close proximity had best watch out for her molten metal vomit, she can spew it at will. She has a habit of going all-out, but over time will tire, which will leave her with more vulnerable openings to be countered by an opponent who has high endurance or evasive skills. 

Overview: Kitty Gow Gilder was originally born in Scotland. Her mother (Maisie Gilder) also had magic to manipulate metal, but didn’t produce gold. However, it’s safe to assume that Kitty most likely inherited the gold trait from somewhere in her family line. Her parents weren’t fighters, instead opting to use metal magic to assist in their metal smithing/crafting. Kitty’s father (Gavin Gow) passed away when she was a toddler, and her mother remarried a few years later. The stepfather was Chinese (Cheng Li), and, seeing the idea of moving to a new region as a good way to have a new start, Kitty’s family moved to China, and took up residence in a modest village, where Kitty’s mother continued metalworking, and Kitty’s stepfather made elixirs with all sorts of uses, as well as overseeing the growth of two pupils. The stepfather didn’t have any children of his own, and was perfectly happy to see his stepdaughter and pupils as his children. 

Kitty’s young childhood was stable and decent for a few more years, but when she was six, both her mother and stepfather died via a betrayal from one of the stepfather’s pupils (Qi Fan), who attempted to frame the other pupil (Jun Shi) so he could succeed their master. Kitty’s mother got sick, which wasn’t all serious, but Jun Shi wanted to make her feel better anyway so made an elixir to do just that, however, Qi Fan poisoned it, resulting in Maisie dying. But things didn’t really go as planned, and Kitty’s stepfather and Jun Shi figured out that something was up… so, long story short-ish, “shit went down” at Kitty’s family’s house, and during the skirmish Cheng Li was killed. Kitty was present for the event, and was beyond a state of panic and confusion. She hardly knew how to use her magic yet, but the surge of adrenaline and fear caused her to projectile vomit a large amount of molten metal, which nearly killed Qi Fan, but he survived, and was driven away to flee in agony. Jun Shi has been terribly injured by Qi Fan, and though he did survive after his fellow villagers came to his aid, he had fallen unconscious, to Kitty appearing dead, and she didn’t stay around long enough to see him be safe.

Confused, disoriented, and so frightened she hardly understood what was going on or what to do, she fled from her house and into the forest outside of the village, and subsequently wandered aimlessly, and became lost. Though, she did not believe she had anyone to turn to regardless. 

She found aid from an unlikely source when she crossed paths with Strayer by accident. Both were pretty surprised at each other, but considering how scary a naknada look to some children, Kitty wasn’t startled at all. Due to the fresh trauma, it took her time to climb out of a shocked, exhausted, and frightened shell that had left her struggling to even think or speak straight, but her condition improved dramatically after Strayer took her into her tent, fed her, and allowed her a safe place to have a hard sleep. 

Kitty struggled with stress and grief early on in Strayer’s care, by no fault of Strayer of course, she was troubled from what she had to go through. Over time, she found happiness again as she and Strayer became comfortable around one another, and slowly developed their own type of family. The first times Kitty referred to Strayer as “Mama” were actually accidental, the same way a kid might slip up and call a teacher “mom”, but after a few years Kitty started saying it in earnest. 

Her life wasn’t perfect, but Kitty settled into her new existence pretty well. She and Mama Strayer took care of one another, and lived in their own sense of “normal”. Having a good deal of spare time on her hands, Kitty spent hours a day self-educating herself on how to use her gold magic through experience. She never received much in terms of formal training to fight besides whatever advice and guidance Mama could offer, but she gained enough self control to which she could fight and hold her own. Since she has reached adulthood, Strayer has allowed Kitty to have a little more independence, though she is strongly discouraged from being overly friendly towards strangers. She is especially discouraged from flirting… yeah, no bringing dudes home to the tent or staying overnight anywhere. Kitty complies with most of Mama’s rules, with the understanding that Mama has a lot more life experience, and has never really done anything to her that would give her a reason to distrust her, so she tries to keep a good level of self-awareness with her actions. Despite not being able to know a lot of people, Kitty still wants to be friendly, so does this by secretly giving people gifts, often gold, or made of gold. She has a want to be helpful and kind, or to at least make people happy, even if she doesn’t get to see it all the time. Like Mama Strayer. She has a strong dislike for greed, if someone was to hound her for gold, namely if that person doesn’t need it, she may possibly respond with violence. If someone in need comes to her out of desperation, she will likely not respond with aggression, but demand that if she grants the person the gold they ask for, that they do not speak of it or her. 

 Item guide. 

1 and 2- Bags

Strayer/Mama and Kitty each have their own bag they use to carry useful items in. While the bags' space is not infinite, they bear a magic property that allows them to carry a lot more than they look like they should. Strayer/Mama is not above stealing items she feels like she needs to. After meeting Kitty, her need to steal in order to get by decreased significantly, since the two can use gold to trade for pretty much whatever necessities they need. Though, ol' Mama Strayer still maintains a certain level of social avoidance. Despite the often distrusting naknada being overprotective towards Kitty, as an earthrealmer if the two gotta speak with earthrealmers, Kitty naturally has the home field (and resting friendly-face) advantage, and Strayer accepts that being glued to Kitty 100% of the time may do more damage than good. The two only part ways for short periods of time when they do, and remain within a reasonable distance. They're rather nomadic, as well as preferring to keep a low profile. Kitty often feels lonely and isolated, due to the lack of people she actually gets to be friendly towards. 

3- Peanut butter and honey

Kitty has a fondness for honey and peanut butter. When Kit was younger, Mama would let her have a spoonful here and there as a treat for good behavior. 

4- Some whistles

A whistle is a good item to have if you need to get someone’s attention in a pinch. Sometimes it’s easier than yelling, and Strayer and Kitty don’t want an avoidable accident killing or badly hurting either of them, so they usually each bring a whistle with them if they have to be out of eyesight of each other, so that if one gets hurt, the other can rush to help. 

5- “eyebaubles”

A pair of magic trinkets. Two people each carrying one can see what the other is doing, or at least get an idea, because one eye shows what’s in eyesight of the other, and vice versa. 

6- Tenthouse

The set up tent that Strayer and Kitty use as a house a good deal of the time. Like the bags, it is bigger on the inside than the outside. Strayer doesn’t bother collecting tons of items she does not consider useful, but she has collected some wall hangings to make the makeshift house more customized and homey. The tent cannot be taken down while there are sentient beings occupying it. Otherwise, when the tent needs to be moved, it will disappear when the anchoring spikes are removed. To set up the tent, someone simply needs to get one spike in the ground, and the other three will move to the appropriate placement on their own. 

7- Purification flask

A container with magic properties. It purifies water to a crystal clear high quality. Water filtered in this flask may assist in keeping wounds safe from infection if poured on, or soaked into the wound. 

8- Sewing and knitting

Both Mama Strayer and Kitty know how to sew and knit, though Mama is better at it. 

9 and 10- Bouncey ball, and Kitty’s doodlepad and crayons 

Strayer wasn’t always obvious about gestures of affection towards Kitty, but one thing she did regular give Kitty as a child were toy balls with a good bounce (because Kitty liked seeing how high she could launch them), and basic drawing supplies. Though grown up, Kitty still enjoys making drawings with crayons. 

11- Gold objects

While a lot of the gold Kitty produces comes in the form of molten metal and chunky nuggets, she is able to manipulate her gold with a decent level of skill. She likes making little figurines of people and animals, and she can also mimic/print her own coins. Though she does not get to socialize a ton, sometimes she’ll sneak little gifts to people in the form of objects she has made, or non-specific shaped gold if she is not carrying a region’s usual currency and feels like someone deserves a bit of money. Strayer has mixed feelings about Kitty secretly gifting people, because she likes that Kitty is good hearted, but is concerned that Kitty may draw unwanted attention to herself if she isn’t careful. 

12- Kitty’s gold magic

Kitty is by no means a violent person, and she does not look particularly threatening either. However, over the years she has figured out and honed her magic pretty well, and if she ever needed to defend herself from an attacker, she’s far from completely helpless. Gold, being a heavy but soft metal, is not the best metal to make stabby things with, but because she can mix in an alloy of other metals, she can harden her gold up enough where she could make a good jabbin’ spike. She is better at simply forming big chunks of heavy gold and battering foes with it, because she can lift her gold with a good deal of ease even if she couldn’t lift another object of the same weight. One of her more nasty offensive moves would be related to her magic also being able to manipulate molten gold. She can spew large amounts of the hot melted material from her mouth, and will willingly projectile vomit on someone she deems as being too much of a threat. She will “clean up” after herself and cause gold to break down and poof into dust, which could be needed if she had to hide any evidence of her having been somewhere. She doesn’t typically wear footwear, since keeping metal on her feet acts as a makeshift shoe via being harder than skin. 

Kitty’s hands, feet, mouth, and insides can heat up. She is more temperature resistant than an unprotected average human, but extreme temperatures aside from her own can pose a threat to her without much trouble. She has a fear of lightning and electricity, because she is naturally a strong conductor. 

[scripttorture]

There's this character that has pretty much been put through the winger. He has accidentally killed his adoptive father, his crush was murdered, meets his end by being decapitated (he was pretending to be his twin sister so she could escape), in his second life has to decapitate his mother figure, and in the 'afterlife', because of being an unpredictable being, was locked in for 500 years (complete sensory deprivation). Now, in the canon material this is handwaved, but in my fic I will explore

it. I guess it’s handwaved as he’s a soul at the time but there has to be some sort of damage. Now, in my fic, aside from having a hard life -living a few years in the streets with all the psychological issues malnutrition entails, along with some disassociation issues- I plan on taking a spin for the supernatural with one of the Gods needing him to remember his past lives, and decides that the best method is locking him in again in hopes he remembers. What would the pschological aspects of that be, even if I downplay all the crap that happened to him in his two previous lives, being locked in for four, five months? If you want to look him up, the character I’m talking about is Allen Avadonia from the Evillious Chronicles

OKI haven’t read or even heard of the source material, so keep thatin mind, there’s a limit to the character-specific advice I cangive.

Thatsaid there are a lot of problems in this story and not all of themare from the canon. I would strongly recommend you start by readingmypost on common misconceptions about torture.Because this needs large changes to be anywhere close to realistic orsensitive to the struggles real torture survivors face.

Sensorydeprivation is rare and it is totally crippling.

Mygeneral advice about using it is: don’t.

Dependingon the method used the average time a person will voluntarily (iesafely) spend in sensory deprivation is between 24 and 4 hours.Given how you’re characterising this scenario the safe period wouldbe fourhours or less.

Thelongest (proven) period a human being has spent in sensorydeprivation was 35 days. That was one, unconsenting volunteer in aseries of experiments.

Tenyears later another group followed up the victims of theseexperiments. 85%of the people they found were either hospitalised or needed regularmedical help. 60%ofthem had lost large chunks of their memories, ranging from six monthsto tenyears.

Thirtyyears on a group of them sued the Canadian government thatpart-funded the abuse. Two of the group couldnot recognise faces or everyday objects.

Thirtyyears later.

Sensorydeprivation is notsomething that a remotely human character can be subjected to formonths at a time. Months is far beyond the typical time frame thatfrankly it’s ridiculous.

Usingsuch a hugely extended time frame sends the message that this type ofabuse is much less harmful then it is. And it is extremelyharmful.

Theflaws in the canon, the torture apologia in the canon, is notyour fault.

Downplayingthe damage these kinds of tortures do is so common in popular fictionand the media generally. It is not surprising that you’ve come upwith such an unreasonable time frame. The research is hard. Iunderstand that.

Thisblog is here partly to serve as a reality check on exactly this sortof thing. Thereis no shame in coming here with an idea that doesn’t work.It’sabout learning and hopefully getting closer to reality next time.

Fouror five months of sensory deprivation is completely unrealistic.Let’s focus on what you can do instead.

Ithink the best choice really depends on what’s most important toyou in this scenario.

Onceagain I would strongly suggest you don’tuse sensory deprivation but if you’re entirely wedded to the ideathen I’d suggest no longer then 24 hours.

Ifthe timeframeof 4-5 months is important to you then I’d suggest using solitaryconfinement. Youcan read more about it here.This would still be verydamaging over 4-5 months, the ‘safe’ period where total recoveryis expected is about a week. But over 4-5 months it’s unlikely tobe lethal and it’s unlikely to result in disability to a degreethat would take the character out of the story.

Howeverif recoveringmemoriesis what’s important here then you should cut all abusive practicesout of the story.

Painand stress damage memory. One of the most common symptoms of tortureis memory problems. That can mean memory loss, it can also meaninaccurate memories.

Youcan read more about the memory problems torture and abuse cause here.

Inthe context of your story, if the character is mistreated in anattempt to ‘make him remember’- realistically that can’t work.That is torture apologia.

Realisticallyhurting the character or causing stress makes it more likely that hewill lose those memories forever orthat those memories will become inaccurate. Or a combination of thetwo.

Thereare a lot of magical trappings and fantasy elements in this story butwhen you strip it down it isrelying on two very common ideas that justify torture in reality:

Pain can be used to ‘force’ people to remember things

Some tortures are basically harmless

Frommy perspective, wanting to changethe way we talk about torture so that we are more supportive ofsurvivors, neither is acceptable in a story.

Ifyou are attached to the elements of the story that support those twoideas then I’d ask you to consider why that is. And whether you arecomfortable putting your narrative preferences over the humanetreatment of torture survivors.

Whatyou do and where you go with your story from here is entirely yourchoice.

ButI would ask you to remember that there are real people behind thethings we choose to write about.

Andbehind the sensory deprivation experiments are group of people whowent to their doctor with mild mental health problems. They wantedhelp and they were abused.

Thosethat survived spent the rest of their lives struggling with theextensive brain damage that had been inflicted on them.

Theydeserve our sympathy, our support and our respect.

Edited for typos

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[prissyhalliwell]

Cover art brought to you by the one and only, @timelordthirteen​!

Summary: Rumplestiltskin reflects on his life ten years later.

Read on AO3

EPILOGUE

If Rumplestiltskin had thought his life would grow simpler with the loss the Dark One’s curse, he was very much mistaken.

Years later, he would often joke about how relaxing those years under the curse had been, though no one around him ever did anything more than roll their eyes at his quip.

The Dark Castle, which had once been a solitary and lonely place, was now full of life. At first, it had just been him, Bae, and Belle as they tried to figure out how to be a family. Despite Belle’s insistence that he should have natural magic abilities, his fairy powers never amounted to much. He still had enough to create potions and basic spells, but never again would he wield power close to that of the Dark One.

Considering the price that power had cost him, he was just fine without it.

Now that his quest to find Bae was over, he spent less time locked up in his study and more outside, catching up on centuries of stories with Bae or helping Belle with her gardening. Now that his magic wasn’t dark, Rumplestiltskin found it much easier to grow a flower without turning it to ash.

As for Regina, Belle had been right in her suspicions when she’d noticed the queen gazing at the Dark Realm’s children longingly. Regina had been more than willing to take in a young girl named Drizella, who was already exhibiting an aptitude for magic. A year later, Regina had used some of her fairy dust to locate her soulmate. Now the four of them, including her husband’s young son, lived in a manor house on the edge of the forest.

Jefferson had used part of his share of the dust to make his cat visible. Unfortunately, it didn’t work perfectly, and the cat would often pop in and out of sight, though they later came to suspect that this was based on the cat’s whims rather than a defect of the dust. During a rather boisterous party at the Dark Castle some years later, a drunken Jefferson had convinced an equally inebriated Regina to help him find his true love. Less than six months later, he and Priscilla were married and expecting their first child.

Belle spent a good amount of her time at the castle being human size, though she would often revert to her original form while gardening. Once their daughter Rose - named for how they had met - came along, it looked like Belle would be full-size most of the time, until they realized on their daughter’s third birthday that she too was able to change size. Between Rumple’s magic and Belle’s flying speed, they were usually able to keep her from getting into too much trouble.

Gideon had been an entirely different matter altogether, having inherited the strangest combination of magic from both sides of the family. Bae was the only one could really keep him in line half the time, and Gideon would regularly disappear from the castle for hours, only for them to find the toddler playing in a meadow somewhere, happy as could be.  

Both Jefferson and Regina’s families frequently visited the Dark Castle and often overstayed their welcome, at least in Rumplestiltskin’s opinion. As he was the only one in his family who thought this way, his opinion was noted and then ignored.

Despite sometimes wishing his friends weren’t so comfortable swanning into this home at any and all hours, Rumpelstiltskin was grateful for the easy friendships that it provided for his children. Though he had not been the Dark One for many years now, a reputation that dark never really faded. He remembered the loneliness of a childhood spent without friends, ostracized because of his father’s reputation as a cheat and womanizer. He had not wanted his children to suffer the same. Thanks to his insufferably friendly acquaintances, he never had to worry about that happening.

Still, Rumplestiltskin liked nothing better than sitting in his garden with Belle while the children ran around them, occasionally trampling flowers that he and Belle would have to spend the next morning coaxing back to life.

It was one such afternoon when Rumplestiltskin was in a contemplative mood, his mind reflecting back on the events that had transpired in the Dark Realm over a decade earlier. Something was niggling at the back of his brain, but he couldn’t put a finger on it.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” he wondered aloud to Bae who sat next to him. “I spent centuries trying to get to the Land Without Magic because I thought that’s where you were. I must have tried every possibility out there to cross over, but nothing worked. Had I actually succeeded, I would have been trapped and we never would have been reunited.” He gaze swept over the garden. “I never would have met Belle, and neither Rose nor Gideon would even exist.”  

Bae looked over at his younger siblings, chuckling as a fairy-sized Rose dodged the flower bombs Gideon was sending towards her.

“Perhaps it was fate, Papa. Or maybe Fiona had a hand in it. We know she sent you on a wild goose chase after the Dark Curse. It would make sense that she wouldn’t want you to actually succeed in getting there.”

Rumplestiltskin nodded thoughtfully. Those theories made as much sense as anything he had been able to come up with.

“I guess we’ll never know,” he said finally, realizing that was an answer he could live with. Whatever had brought him to this point, he was grateful for it.  

Bae chuckled. “What do you want to bet Belle will find an ancient fairy prophecy that predicted the whole thing?”

With a groan, Rumplestilskin ruffled his adult son’s hair affectionately. “Let’s not tempt fate, hmm?”

Considering the strange course his life had taken, there wasn’t much that would surprise him at this point. He had hated fairies for centuries, only to find out that his entire life has been more or less orchestrated by one of the most powerful fairies in existence. He had discovered that he himself was part fairy. Most importantly, he’d found True Love with Belle, a woman who embodied the best characteristics of her people - kind, loving, and stubborn as hell.

After all these years, Rumplestiltskin was happy to admit that perhaps he didn’t hate fairies quite so much, after all.

Author’s Note: We’ve reached the end! Thank you to each and every one of you who has read this story, reblogged it, or taken the time to leave a sweet comment. Your support has gotten me through writer’s block, the uncertainty of trying new things as a writer, and the general anxiety of staring at a blank Word document thinking “WTF HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO?” So thank you once again and I hope to see you around! <3  

[goodproofingwater]

Wildfire Records: Breaking America - Chapter Six

Word count: 1904

Andy spent the best part of the rest of the night thinking about the interaction that had happened between his dad and Victoria. It was unheard of for anyone to stand up to his father. Even Josh and Danny has learned the hard way that his dad was not to be fucked with and they had joked at length about it. It was strange then that the redhead hadn’t even flinched, had dived headfirst into the lion's den simply because he had been rude.

What did it all mean? Andy was no longer under the illusion that Victoria secretly wanted him, that thought process had been 95% cocaine, but the passion with which she stood up to his dad was unlike anything he had ever seen. He was beginning to realise through the process of healing from an addiction just how much it had ruined his life, and in turn how much his father had influenced both how the drug habit had started and how it continued. All of his relationships when he was younger were scarred by the way his father treated him. Either he spoke to friends in the way his dad spoke to him and lost them that way, or he wouldn’t know how to act and would lose them out of sheer lack of contact.

Danny and Josh had been the only ones to stick around, the sandbox love never dying as they saw him for who he was and loved him for it. It seemed that Victoria now fell into that category too. Her willingness to accept him regardless of his flaws had been what had been why he had fallen in love with her to begin with, but the fact that she would stand up for him after everything he had put her through just solidified that it wasn’t love as he had thought it. It was the same love he felt when Josh said he was proud of a guitar riff Andy had written, the same love that he saw in Danny’s eyes the first time Andy had turned down that drink he knew would tip him over the edge, the love and respect that held them together as a band. It was all so new, but he was enjoying every second of these previously unexplored emotions.

Everything had been so black and white when he was on the drugs, now he was seeing layers of colour, each new day adding new depth to a rich tapestry.

It felt strange going back to the house as a group after a show, the five of them crammed into the back of an uber and stumbling into the house as they had done so many times before. It felt even weirder to watch Josh and Victoria walk into her room with only the smallest flutter of jealousy, the anger he used to feel completely rationalised now his mind wasn’t filled with such inflammatory thoughts of how Josh had somehow stolen her.

He still loved Victoria in a romantic way, a part of him would for a while considering she was the first he had ever felt like that about, but because of this love all he wanted was her happiness. As sad as it was to admit, Josh made her happier than he ever could done himself.

He walked up to the kitchen to pour himself some water and make a hot chocolate that would send him to sleep. The downside to being almost sober was that he had been so used to allowing the whiskey to knock him out at night and his insomnia was particularly strong.

As he boiled the milk, he heard soft footsteps and turned to see Victoria walking toward the kitchen in Josh’s hoody, two glasses in her hands.

“Making hot chocolate?” She smiled as she glanced at the cocoa powder that sat beside to hob, moving to the tap to fill up the glasses.

Andy found himself in the strange position of being somewhat starstruck. She looked gorgeous the way she was, hair up and makeup off, but it wasn’t that. It was the sheer affection that radiated from him as he considered what she had done for him earlier.

“Do you want one?” He asked and she licked her lips, nodding.

“Yes please…” She hopped up onto the counter as she watched him stir the milk, this new version of Andy so domestic that it was a sight to behold. She still hadn’t gotten used to him being sober, and she supposed that he would continue to change even further the more the cocaine left his system.

“Vic..” He started, feeling like there was a weight on his chest that he needed to relieve. How could he thank her? How could he put into words how amazing he thought she was for what she had done without it sounding like he was coming on to her? Would he be able to stop himself from coming on to her if they started down this road? He shook his head as he added cocoa powder to the milk, but instead of letting it go she slipped from the counter and leaned against the counter next to the hob.

“Go on, Andrew” she joked, and he couldn’t help but chuckle a little, ignoring the twist in his stomach from her calling him his full name.

“You really didn’t have to do that…” He gulped, looking from the pan to her eyes momentarily before they darted back down, “I mean.. My dad is an asshole but usually people just ignore him.”

Her brow furrowed as she watched how uncomfortable he was talking about his dad, and she wondered if she had done wrong by him in calling him out until she saw the small smile on his features at the end of his sentence.

“Well people shouldn’t,” She sipped her water as she watched him pour sugar into the hot chocolate, his slow and methodical stirring lulling her alcohol infused brain into an almost meditative state, “I wasn’t going to let someone stand there and talk shit about you, I don’t care who they are.”

Andy bit his lip,continuing to stir in silence for a few moments before moving the pan from the burner. He moved to wrap his arms around her waist, pulling her in and smiling as she rested her head on his chest, her small hands resting on his back. It had been too long since he had felt her this close, too long since he had been able to feel affection so pure.

“I did you so wrong, Vic..” He spoke, sighing and squeezing her a little tighter and she did the same, pulling back and allowing his strong hands to rest on her waist as she looked up into gorgeous brown eyes that she had once seen her future in.

“You did.” She nodded, “But that’s in the past now, alright? You’re my friend. We’ve been through a lot and we spoke so much about that asshole when we were together, I know what he does to you.” She moved her hands to rest on his shoulders, and she was glad that Josh had been too tired to even come to the kitchen. If he saw them like this he wouldn’t be happy, regardless of how innocent it actually was.

“You still didn’t have to--” She placed a finger on his lips to shh him, shaking her head with a small smile on her face.

“I did for you what I would do for any of my friends, standing up for them against something that causes them pain. I don’t care about what has happened between us, you still mean the world to me and you shouldn't let someone define your worth by things you have done in the past, especially when you’re doing so well to adapt” She couldn’t believe how much Andy’s eyes softened at her words, how his hands held her more delicately, his breathing becoming shallower.

“I--” He sighed, eyes never leaving her own as he shook his head, “Thank you. You-- You’re the only person that’s ever done that and I--I love you for it.”

Her breath hitched in her throat at the L word and he noticed, laughing a little and shaking his head, “N-no.. I mean I-- I do.. I did.. I don’t know..” He stumbled over his words and Victoria couldn’t help but smile, this new version of Andy so adorable that she almost wished this was the version she could have met in the first place.

Andy swallowed thickly as he tried to get the words out, tried to organise his thoughts and ensure this came out in the way that he wanted it to and in a way that wasn’t going to make her uncomfortable.

“I love you Vic… I think I have for a while.” He spoke, hurrying through so that look of confusion in her eyes would run away, “It’s..It’s different now to how it was then though. I love you like I love Josh and Danny, you’re..you’re kind of like family I guess.”

She let out a short breath, glad for his continuation. She wasn’t ready to deal with Andy confessing his love for her in a romantic way, but this she could deal with. She knew that he had trouble dealing with his emotions when he was on the drugs, so dealing with something so knew at the same time as going through recovery must be on a different level.

“Well I guess I love you like that too.” She smiled softly up at him, running her fingers softly through his red hair, a hand resting on his face as it had done so many times before. “I’m glad that we’re here now. It...It was horrible not being able to be close to you. I always enjoyed the friendship part of our relationship.”

He nodded, smiling down at her and fighting the urge to turn his face to kiss the palm of her hand. He was of course being truthful about the way he loved her, but there was still a part of him that was getting over her romantically, still a part of his heart which had jumped when she said she loved him even if she was basically confirming it was no longer romantic.

“We’re good like that,” He nodded, pulling her into another hug and sighing a little as he pressed his face to her hair, “I’m glad that you found it in you to forgive me…”

They stood there in each others arms for a moment, a solitary second of silence held between them as they let out breaths of relief. A conversation like this had been overdue.

“Well..” Victoria spoke, pulling back and taking the glasses of water, “I better get back to Josh, he’ll be wondering why it’s taken so long to turn the taps..”

“If he’s even awake,” Andy joked, pouring hot chocolate into two mugs and passing her one on a tray, “Here… to help you sleep.”

She placed the two glasses on the tray and then took it from him with a smile, desperately wanting to hug him again but knowing she needed to go.

“See you in the morning, Andy.” She smiled softly at him once more, turning and walking down the stairs, her heart feeling full for the first time in months.

[a-gay-bloodmage]

—Hate—

Pairing: Sera x Female Trevelyan

Pairing Type: F/F

Words: 2,635

Warnings: Fuck the Chantry, Mentions of Past Sexual Violence and Abuse, Late Night Smokes and Unlearning Bigotry, Light Angst, Surprise! The Hate was Inside Us All Along, Fluffy Ending Because Fluff Conquers all

Kiora knew far too well that people hated what they didn't understand. That fear was always a gateway to lashing out and hurting those you didn't know, or even those you deeply cared about.

Especially when it came to magic.

Everyone who wasn't a mage had a natural instinct to hate mages. Even some mages hated mages. Hated themselves for being mages. Parents handed over their children to the Chantry because they suddenly feared the child they loved just the day before.

It wasn't right, and Kiora knew that so long as she lived with magic, she would have to work every day to change people's minds about the craft she loved.

Right now, Sera was her current project.

"So... what's on your mind, tadwinks?" Sera asked, relaxing as she leaned back on her hands. "I can tell you've been thinking 'bout something." The two of them were currently sitting on Kiora's bed, an ashtray between them and two of Kiora's cats—the lovely couple of Duchess and Duke—sitting at the end of the bed, curled up around each other and sleeping peacefully. Kiora and Sera had been passing an elfroot cigar between the two of them for about ten minutes or so, and Kiora was slowly building the nerve to do something she'd been planning for a few weeks now.

"Well," Kiora started, elfroot smoke curling from her purple-painted lips as she spoke, "I have an idea. You don't have to go along with it, of course..." She took another puff to calm her increasing anxiety. "I want to do something. With you."

"What, you wanna top or something?" Sera's eyes flickered down to Kiora's long, black, and incredibly sharp fingernails.

"No, no," Kiora said, giggling a little at the silly idea. "I want to help you understand me a little better." She passed the cigar to Sera, who took a small puff, only coughing a little this time. She was getting better. "Not exactly me, but it's a part of me," Kiora carried on as she took the cigar back. "I know you're fearful of magic." She shook her head to cut Sera off before she had the opportunity to even protest. "Don't lie to me, sunshine. It's okay." She smiled over at Sera as she tapped a little bit of accumulating ash out into the little glass ashtray. "It's perfectly natural to fear magic. Most people do."

Sera sighed, shifting a little uncomfortably on the soft bed. "I'm not scared of it," she said, trying and failing to be forceful. "I'm certainly not scared of you," she added, laughing a little.

Kiora smiled and nodded. "Well, most people aren't," she said. "But really, I do want to help you understand me." She smiled a little shyly. "I... I love you very much, Sera, and you know this means a lot to me." Sera nodded. "I mean, you learned to like my cats pretty quickly..."

Sera laughed and nodded. "I still think they're all stupid bastards, though," she said. The two of them laughed as both Duke and Duchess woke up at Sera's voice calling them bastards. It'd become all six of Kiora's cats' second name.

"They can be, yes," Kiora said, nodding with an affectionate smile as she reached back to pat Duchess on the head before turning back to Sera. "I get that magic's a lot more... intense, but if you can like my cats, maybe... maybe you can at least not be scared of my magic?" She was trying to be hopeful. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that Sera would shut the idea of getting more intimately acquainted with magic down completely. That she would insist on ignoring the fact that the woman she liked so much was a mage despite the giant role that magic played in every second of Kiora's life.

"I... Alright," Sera said, sitting up straight. "What do you want to do?"

Kiora was caught off guard by her sudden willingness, and took another instinctive puff of her cigar to soothe herself. "You're not...?"

Sera shook her head. "Magic's... important to you, yeah?" Kiora nodded. "Like, your whole sleep-thing. That's 'cause of magic, isn't it?" Kiora nodded again. Her seemingly random bouts of fatigue were brought on by a hyper-sensitive connection to the Fade that pulled at her at even the slightest lull in activity. "And that's super big for you," Sera continued. "So magic's super big for you. I... Me not understanding your magic would be like you not understanding my being a Jenny, huh?"

Kiora nodded once more. "It's a big part of my being who I am. It's a part of my childhood, my adulthood, my mind, my body, my everything," she said. "So... I want you to know me better," she smiled. "So... just a little magic." She pressed the tiny, burnt end of her cigar into the ashtray to put it out. "Deal?"

"Deal."

Kiora was smiling wider than usual. Sera simply agreeing to be in such close proximity to active magic was a huge step in her being more comfortable with the practice. "First off, let's move this," she said quietly, concentrating on the little bit of magic needed to levitate the small glass ashtray and move it to the nightstand. "There," she said, pressing her hands together and smiling sweetly. "Now," she said, recalling back to the days she spent as a nonconventional spirit healer in the Circle, the hours she spent using her magic to soothe the emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually wounded. "Let's start with the basics." She sat up straight, crossing her legs beneath her nightgown and placing her hands in front of her chest, intertwined like in prayer.

It took only a small amount of concentration to summon a small ball of light, softly glowing and lighting up the bed in dim, lilac light. She willed it to get a little brighter, and after a moment, to dim.

"In the Circle," she said, gently holding the glowing orb between her hands, "it was my job to fix broken mages."

"Broken?"

"If a mage was talented, they wouldn't want to waste them and make them Tranquil," she said. "So I helped fix them when the Templars broke them."

Sera's eyes came up from the dim light to look at Kiora, eyebrows pushed together. "How do you break a mage?"

Kiora's eyes stayed on the orb between her hands. "Beat them a little too hard, put them in solitary a little too long, or rape them," she said, her voice faint but even. Sometimes, she frightened herself with how casually she could speak of the Circle. Like what went on there was normal and not horrifying. "This spell was especially good for the ones that came from solitary." The little light was warm between her hands, but it would never burn. Only comfort.

"That's awful," Sera said, voice a little shaky. "That was common?"

Kiora nodded. "I was quite useful." She looked at Sera, smiling softly. "Here," she said, holding out the little lilac orb. "Would you like to hold it?" Sera hesitated before nodding slowly. Kiora gingerly moved the little ball of light to between Sera's cupped hands, letting it hover just above her palms. "There," she smiled, "now, it's perfect for cuddling."

"Cuddling? An orb?" Sera tentatively put her hands on it. "It's warm."

"This was used mostly on the ones from solitary," she said, smiling as she felt a sort of sick nostalgia. "The light was a good contrast to the dark, and the warmth helped keep them tethered to reality. Not to mention the magic that pulsates just a little into their bodies. It helps distract them from any after-effects of magebane."

"That sounds horrible," Sera said, the orb now close to her chest. "Mages were really just locked up in the dark for... for what?"

Kiora shrugged. "Anything, really. Talking back too often, using spells inappropriately, having an affair, trying to escape, all sorts of things." She sighed, and the orb dimmed for a moment. "No light, no other people, no magic, just you and your mind as you slowly forget what reality is." She put a hand on the little orb to calm herself. She craved another cigar already. "I heard that the revolutionary, Anders, was in solitary a year."

"A year?" Sera looked horrified. "What did he do? That was before he went a blew up a Chantry."

"He escaped again, apparently." Kiora sighed. "I don't think Ferelden's Circle had a mage like me... Poor thing. He'd have to deal with the aftermath all on his own..." It was surprising the man still had a functioning mind.

"Maybe that's why he went loony," Sera said, quiet.

"Well, maybe not mad in the sense of starting a war, but I doubt he could ever sleep without a light again," Kiora said. "Thank the Maker I never had anyone who had been in there that long. The worst was a girl that had been stuck down there nine months." She shivered. She didn't like thinking of Nina.

"What'd she do?"

"She'd had her third baby," Kiora sighed. "All by Templars, but they punished her just the same. So they kept her down in the cells to keep her away from any men." She shook her head. "I think I was her only friend in the Circle, and I didn't even know her all too well. She came to me after every rape, and after every time she gave birth, the poor girl." Sera didn't speak, she just held the little orb against her chest and listened. "She was only nineteen when they put her in solitary, and when she came out, I couldn't fix her. Too far gone, apparently. She begged for Tranquility at that point."

"Did that... happen a lot?" She looked sick.

"Separately, yes. Lots of mages had children, despite our best efforts. And a lot of women ended up Tranquil after the whole ordeal. They couldn't handle it, apparently."

"Handle what?"

"Having their babies taken away," she sighed. "Chantry law forbids mages from having children, so they're immediately put into orphanages where the Chantry can watch them and make sure they don't end up mages like their mothers. If they do, they're sent to a different Circle, and if they're normal, they become Templars."

"And the Chantry does all this..." Sera said, mainly to herself. "And they can just 'cause people like me are scared of magic, huh?" 

Kiora reached over and put a hand on Sera's shoulder."Well, thankfully the mages are free, now, even if we're all apostates," Kiora said. "I used to hate the idea of leaving the Circle, but... I have to admit, I like it a lot more now that I see what life can be like without it."

"Why would anyone like the Circle, if all that shit happens in it?"

"Because it offers a place where I don't have to worry about angry townspeople trying to burn a witch," she said, almost laughing. "I'd be a very easy witch to catch."

"Kiora." Kiora looked into Sera's eyes at the use of her name. She was taken aback by the tears that had begun welling up in Sera's pretty grey-green eyes. "This is all 'cause of people like me," she said again, voice tight. Her hands were shaking. "People scared of magic... Letting the Chantry get away with- with evil shit like that 'cause we're scared."

"Oh, no, Sera," Kiora said, leaning forward, her hand still on Sera's shoulder. "It's not your fault."

"But it is! I didn't give a shit about mages, I let them get all locked away 'cause I didn't care!" She sniffled. "I spend my whole life trying to help the little guys, yeah? The people nobs spit on for existing, but I let mages-!"

"No," Kiora said, trying to sound forceful in her soft, whispery voice. "You can't be blamed for what the Chantry does. They'd do it no matter what people said or fought for. The only reason mages are free now was because of someone taking a stand they couldn't ignore." She brushed a lock of straw blonde hair behind one of Sera's pretty elven ears. "What matters now is standing with us, okay? Working to understand magic, and unlearning all the hatred the Chantry put inside you." She gently touched the warm, glowing orb that still floated between their chests. It lit up a little brighter, its softly pulsating light making shadows flicker across their faces.

Sera nodded and let Kiora wipe a tear from her cheek. "I'm gonna beat up so many Templars," she said, a shaky smile coming back onto her face.

Kiora laughed, leaning forward the rest of the way to plant a chaste kiss on Sera's lips. "Just don't fight too many at once," she giggled, cupping Sera's jaw.

"I'll beat up every Templar that I see," she said, conviction in her voice.

"Maybe go easy on Cullen, though, we do sort of need him around."

"Can we prank him?"

"Oh, definitely."

Sera's smile grew, and she kissed Kiora again. And again. And again. She pushed forward, wrapping her arms around Kiora's shoulders, pressing the warm ball of magic between their chests, spreading its soft heat between their bodies. Kiora ended up flat on her back, smiling as the magic dissipated between their thinly clothed skin.

"Tadwinks," Sera said, smiling into the kisses. "I- Hey!"

Kiora couldn't help but laugh when she noticed why Sera had pulled back from the kisses. Duke and Duchess had woken up from their sleep, and had started batting at Sera's sensitive ears.

"I'm not trying to suffocate your mum!" Sera groaned, pushing the cats away with one hand. "Stupid bastards! Tadwinks! Call 'em off!"

Kiora snapped her fingers, lighting a few purple sparks to distract the cats. "Don't be mean to mama Sera," she cooed, making the two look at her with judgmental blue and green eyes.

"I'm not their mum."

"She and I are just kissing, there's no reason for you to get mad at her," she said, smiling softly at the two felines. They didn't look convinced. She made little kissing noises at them, smiling affectionately as they came over to press their wet little noses against her cheeks, begging for attention. "I might love Sera, but I love you two, too," she giggled, squirming as their whiskers tickled at her face.

"You're so weird," Sera said, laughing.

"Yep," Kiora smiled, looking up at Sera.

Sera straddled her hips, leaning down to lie with her chest against Kiora's. "Your magic isn't even the weird bit," she said, shaking her head with a soft smile. "You're just weird, weirdo. You and your weird cats."

Duke and Duchess turned their affection to Sera, making her groan and weakly attempt to push them off. She complained about their wet noses and their cat-smell and their fur, but Kiora knew she didn't mean it, not really.

They ended up beneath the covers eventually, limbs intertwined and their feet weighed down by the odd black cats.

"I want you to show me more magic," Sera said, yawning. "It's kinda cool."

Kiora smiled and kissed her on the forehead. "Here," she said, voice tired but loving nevertheless. She kissed Sera again, letting a slow spell of drowsiness seep from her lips. Sera's eyes closed, and she mumbled out a goodnight as she slipped into the Fade.

Kiora followed soon after, and she felt lighter than usual as the wandered the pale green stretches of the dreaming world. She knew that when she awoke, she could be just as much as mage awake as she was asleep. The thought made her smile wider than she had in a long, long time.

[1066od427co]

Fair is Fair

This is a light-hearted and fluffy one-shot involving the Force Bond that she and Kylo Ren share.  Growing up on Jakku, Rey had lived a solitary life devoid of any interactions with the human race. This has led to some interesting outcomes.  Not really spoilery, because everyone knew abut the Force Bond from the promo material and the rest is fluff.

Read it below the cut or read on FF: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12765978/1/Fair-is-Fair

“What the- sorry Rey.”

In her room again, thanks to the bond, and not at a good time.  Kylo instinctively turned away from the girl, inwardly cursing himself.  He had never apologized to anyone for anything in years.  It had slipped out.  Not a moment of weakness, but of instinct.  She wouldn’t see it that way, though.  He might have to be a little colder to her than usual once she got herself together, just to keep things on an even keel.  

“What for?” she asked from behind him.  She let bitter sarcasm drip into her voice, “All things considered, you’re going to have to be a hell of a lot more specific.”

He felt a soft touch on his shoulder.  From the corner of his eye he saw her fingers curling around his leather-clad shoulder, delicate digits that hid a surprising amount of strength, he knew.   Gently she tugged at him, trying to turn him to face her.

He refused to be moved.

“For nothing,” he growled, resisting her gasp.  “It’s clearly not an appropriate time for you to have a guest, is all.  The bond shouldn’t have brought me here.  Not now.”

“Ben?  What’s going on?” she demanded from behind.  

She pulled harder on his shoulder this time, then stepped all the way around to face him when he still refused to budge.  He sighed with a loud huff then folded his arms across his chest.  As she moved directly in front of him, well within arm’s reach, his gaze shifted straight up.  He absolutely refused to look at the Jedi girl.

“Why won’t you look at me, Ben?”  she asked, seemingly in genuine confusion.  “Is this about the liberation of Ryloth?  We spent months planning that together.  No casualties...  It worked out, didn’t it?”

“It’s not that, Rey,” he said.  She couldn’t really be this dense, could she?  “You’re naked.”  Taking the opportunity to steal a long glance, he nodded to her bare chest, eyes flowing down her flat and almost- but not quite- too lean stomach, before settling on the vee formed where her thighs started.  Disappointingly, it terminated at a few wisps of dark hair poking from the top of a small towel that wrapped around her waist. She had the two ends of the thick cloth twisted at the top and secured at her side.  Small water droplets covered her bare skin, collecting and clinging to all the right places.  Her body hair, so fine as to be all but invisible, prickled in the cold.  She was making it very hard to think.  He blinked twice and returned to staring at her ceiling.

“I’m not naked,” she protested, balling her fists and pressing them onto her hips.  The action had the effect of defiantly thrusting her chest out at Kylo.  

The man growled internally.  She wasn’t helping.  

“I’m wearing a towel,” the Jedi said.  Rolling her eyes, she grabbed a section of the cloth where the two ends met and shook it.  Her bare thigh peeked through the gap like the slit on a cocktail dress.  “See?!”

It was Kylo’s tun to roll his eyes.  She had to be doing this on purpose.  Fine.  He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of thinking she was having any kind of effect on him.  He swallowed hard and met her eyes, willing himself not to glance down at her perky, shapely, and perfectly sized-

This wasn’t going to work.

“Rey.  Put on some clothes.  Now.”

“Ben.  No.  Alright?  So, what were we going to do this time?” she asked, her eyes wandering in thought.  Strolling to one of her chairs, she sat facing Kylo and, thankfully for him, crossed her legs.  She gestured to the chair next to hers.  “Sit.  I think it’s your turn to teach me something, isn’t it?  More calligraphy, maybe?”

“No.  It was the history of the Great Hyperspace War, but now it’s nothing.  No lessons until you get dressed.”

“Ben…”

“I mean it, I cannot concentrate otherwise.”

“Ben!”

“Fine.  Today’s lesson is how to put a shirt on.”

“I don’t get it.  What the hell has gotten into you?” she asked, sounding genuinely upset.  “I would have gotten dressed, but now you’re turning it into a thing and I’m refusing.  I think I’m going to spend the rest of the day like this.  You better get used to it.  I think this bond is going to be a long one.  Couple hours at least.  I can feel it, can’t you?”   

Kylo took a the seat next to her.  At least as close as they were, and as small as she was, he could only see the top of her head and not much of anything below that.  She was right, he could feel it in the bond too.  The more time they spent apart, the more the bond would try to keep them together through the force.  They would have to meet again, probably within the month, or they would be spending entire days like this.

“Yes, but this is really, really distracting to me.”

“I don’t get it, Ben,” she said, “You don’t think I get distracted whenever I see your tits out?  Maybe a little horny, even?  Every damn time?  And I swear, you’re shirtless more often than not up in that suite of yours.  Not my fault you can’t handle yourself as well as me.”

“How is that even close to equivalent, Rey?” he asked, “You’re a girl.”

“I know that,” she snapped, folding her arms below her breasts, “I’ve known that for years.”

That sounded off; not like sarcasm at all.  Instead, she sounded serious and even a little defensive.  “How many years?” he asked slowly.

“A little over six, not that it’s any of your concern,” she said.  The young woman glanced up in thought.  After a moment, she continued, “There were maybe five humans on all of Jakku, and I don’t think I spoke to any of them, that I can remember.  I once asked a traveling Iridonian Zabrak what species I was because I didn’t know.  I talked to her because she looked like me and I was hoping she would tell me when my horns would grow in.  She pointed to an old scavenger woman who only ever mumbled to herself and said, ‘she’s your kind, I think.’  I had no idea we were the same species, we looked so different.  I’ll never forget it.  Learning what a female was- and that I was supposed to be one- came shortly after that.  To me, I’ve always just been Rey.”   

Every now and then Rey had to be taught some of the basics that one wouldn’t have necessarily picked up living a solitary life on Jakku.  He remembered when she had told him about the durasteel fork she had salvaged from a crash site.  That conversation had come up when he caught her combing her hair with it.  Until then, he had been debating asking her to an official dinner, in disguise of course, as his guest, but that was shelved indefinitely as long as things like this came up.  Force help them all if the Supreme Leader’s Imperial courtesan ate with her hands, cleaned her gun at the table, or tried to eat her napkin.

“Who taught you about becoming a woman?” he asked, “That old scavenger?”

She chuckled, “No.  The only thing she ever taught me was what not to become.  Why is that something that needs to be taught?  If I am one, I am one.  Is it different from being a man?”

“A little,” Kylo replied with a small shrug.    

“Well, you can teach me about both of them if you like,” she offered, “but it doesn’t mean I’ll do anything with that information.”

“Fair enough,” he said, “So.  Men can go topless.  Women can’t.”

“Bantha shit.”

“Excuse me?” he asked, glaring down at her.  

She craned her neck all the way back to meet his gaze with a quiet fury.  Her teeth flashed as she spoke each word.  “Bantha.  Shit.”

“No, I’m telling the truth,” he hastened to reply.  “That’s one of the cultural differences between the sexes.”

“Pass,” she said, turning away and waving a hand, “I guess I’m not a woman after all.  What else you got?”

“No, Rey-”

“No, you.”  She turned back to the man, “You don’t get to walk around shirtless whenever you want, Mr. Perfect Tits.  You don’t get to grease yourself up-”

He interrupted, “I told you I have eczema and that’s lotion to-”

“-and strut around like a chiseled god.  I’m sorry that mine don’t look as good as yours.”  She was working herself into a verbal storm now, “I’m sorry they’re so much smaller and aren’t nearly as lean or muscled and I can’t make them flex and do that bouncy thing you do.  I’m sorry you’re so disgusted by seeing me topless that I have to cover up.  But this is me and I will not be ashamed!  Deal with it, Ben.”

Kylo closed his eyes and breathed out slowly, willing himself to remain calm.  Rey had to be the most bull-headed person he had ever met.  “It’s not that.  Girls don’t-”

“Bantha shit!” She pointed a finger centimeters from his nose.  “If it was just some cultural thing between the genders, your reaction wouldn’t be so different from mine.  We both know you don’t give a lizard-monkey’s ass about culture.  You need me all covered up.  I don’t mind you naked.  What does that tell you, huh?  I think it’s obvious.”

He mentally sighed.  That settled it.  He could deal with her nudity, but one thing he would not tolerate was the hurt and shame he feel through their bond.  Those awful feelings he had caused radiated from her like searing heat off a stove top.

“You’re right.  You’re right and I’m sorry,” he said.  He pried on the bond just a little and projected his feelings as best he could, opening his mind to her so she knew he was speaking the truth.   “I Just want you to know that I think you are the most beautiful person I have ever met in my life and I think you are a perfect human being in every way possible.”

Eyes wide and mouth agape, she stared at him for a handful of seconds, speechless.  Clearly, she could feel beyond all doubt that he was telling the absolute truth.  “I…  Okay,” she finally managed, nodding her head slowly.

He bent down to plant a kiss at the top of her forehead, a soft peck.  She tried to leverage herself up and change the destination of his lips to hers, doing everything in her power short of grabbing hold of his jacket and yanking.  He pretended not to notice and let her sink back down, dejected and unsatisfied with his chaste token of affection.

He stood, taking off his jacket and shirt in the process.  He turned to walk back into his world, eying Rey over his shoulder.  He flexed his back muscles, bringing his shoulder blades together and then apart.  The Jedi was biting her lip.  He smiled to himself.  

Moving into his bedroom, he retrieved his skincare lotion and resumed his seat next to Rey.  Squeezing some of the thick liquid onto a hand, he rubbed it between both palms and then began slowly spreading it over his pectorals, the sound of softly slapping skin filling the space between them, all while keeping his steely gaze and neutral expression locked on the the topless young woman.

“My droid is broken,” he said, still rubbing his already slippery muscles, “so I need you to help me with my back.  And while you do that, there is some business to attend to before I forget.  We need to discuss the recent trouble your resistance has been giving us on Taris.  We’re open to a few more concessions, but-”

“You know what?”  She interrupted, swallowing hard.  “Suddenly, I believe you.  It is possible to be that distracted.  Shirts on?”

He tossed the bottle into his room and picked up his clothing.  “Shirts on,” he replied.

“Shirts on,” she seconded, nodding vigorously.  Getting up, she dug through her dresser drawer.  “For now,” she whispered.