#(making one wo interactions...difficult

[antialiasis]

Chess (2018 Kennedy Center revival)

So I was just going to briefly mention all the other different versions of Chess I have consumed in the big essay post I’ve been writing on and off, but there was just too much to say about this one which made it really awkward to fit it in, so fine, here is another individual chesspost. Nearly 7500 words of rambling under the cut, oh my god.

This production represents the latest official full overhaul of Chess. It sports an all-new book written by Danny Strong, also known as the actor who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is some whiplash (Sarah Michelle Gellar is apparently a big Chess fan, too). It was later staged again as a concert with some further modifications in 2021, but I listened to an audio bootleg of the 2018 version. (There exist some videos of it online, but only scattered bits.)

The Story Changes

This version has London’s basic plot structure with the distinctive two chess tournaments (this time four years apart, which is neither the original number nor the actual number of years between world chess championships), but rearranges Act I, adds a lot more quippy dialogue and swearing, reinterprets the characters, and recenters real-world politics in the whole thing — sort of the exact inverse of what Chess på svenska did with the material. It opens with “Difficult and Dangerous Times” to set the scene in the Cold War and features the Arbiter narrating with sardonic omniscient commentary between songs/scenes throughout, which does feel a bit more consistent than the Arbiter suddenly having a narrator role for the duration of one song in Act II.

All the main characters in this version are reinterpreted with significant new background context, which is a very interesting way to rewrite it that I definitely dig in principle. For example, Florence’s first scene here involves Walter threatening her with deportation from the US unless she can make Freddie behave for the duration of the tournament. Most versions of Chess make the political scheming very symbolic and vague — exchanges of mostly unnamed political prisoners or handwaved concessions — but this version is noticeably specific, with specific nuclear arms treaty negotiations that the CIA believes would be negatively affected if Freddie keeps openly antagonizing the Soviets. She tells Walter to go fuck himself (told you it adds more swearing) and that nobody can control Freddie Trumper, but ultimately she doesn’t have much of a choice but to reluctantly play along. This addition recontextualizes her character and her interactions with Freddie in Act I a fair bit — it’s pretty significant, after all, that she is under threat and may lose her home if she doesn’t somehow control what she really can’t.

Meanwhile, Freddie himself here suffers from a full-on mental illness which he takes medication for. Walter asserts on a phone call early that they’re dealing with a “genuine paranoid schizophrenic”, but then later calls him a “bipolar bitch”; I take the blatant inconsistency combined with the obviously insulting nature of these remarks to mean probably we’re not meant to take either of them at face value, but these two lines from Walter are the only ones suggesting any specific diagnosis. (I unfortunately suspect Danny Strong didn’t have a specific condition in mind and research it so much as just slap him with a Generic Ambiguous Mental Illness for which he takes Pills.) One way or another, Freddie’s ambiguous mental illness gives him bouts of intense paranoia, driving him to do things like trashing his and Florence’s hotel room to look for listening devices at one point. Florence keeps insistently, frustratedly telling him to just take his goddamn pills even as he’s in genuine distress; it’s pretty uncomfortable, and also definitely one of those things that are at least more human when his episodes could cost her the only home she has: she’s desperate and in distress too.

(I do kind of feel as if this whole bit would make more sense if Florence and Freddie had a strictly business relationship here to start with, instead of being explicitly portrayed as a couple — when they have a committed intimate partnership going on, one would think Florence getting deported would also be pretty obviously significant for Freddie, and Florence quietly playing along with the CIA and crossing her fingers that she can indirectly coax him into behaving with seemingly no serious thought given to whether it’d be better to just tell him why he needs to stop feels stranger. The scene with Walter sounds like Walter/the CIA are not aware of their romantic relationship and Florence wants to keep it that way — they both refer to Freddie strictly by his full/last name and as “her player” — so I guess Walter would have assumed she wouldn’t tell him, but surely the calculus would at least look a bit different to Florence herself. Even if it just prompts her to realize Freddie would still be liable to react by becoming even more erratic and vocal about his paranoias, that feels like it’d be significant enough, at least for her feelings on this relationship going forward, that it never actually coming up or being suggested within the story starts to feel marginally odd. Not a major complaint, though, just a bit of overthinking.)

Freddie in general is noticeably portrayed much more sympathetically here than usual throughout. Where other versions of Chess tend to present Freddie as an attention-seeking drama queen who plays up ludicrous arbitrary demands for money and press, here things like his walkout from the first chess game are made to come from a much more genuine place: he has major sensory issues and is intolerably thrown off balance by distracting noise and lights (which really are deliberately arranged to sabotage him). “Florence Quits”, the song with the misogyny verse, usually reads as being triggered by his jealousy and inability to accept that Anatoly’s just playing better than him, but this version makes it feel more about how he feels persistently gaslit about the ways he’s being sabotaged than anything else: he accuses the Soviets of having a hypnotist in the front row to throw him off (which they do, and Freddie literally saw him and recognized him) and Florence of working for the CIA (which she has been, if not by choice) while they deny it and brush it off, and the tense opening notes of the song play under him desperately yelling “You’re lying to me! You’re all lying to me!” (Which doesn’t make the misogyny okay, obviously, but it does make it feel more like a desperate, paranoia-fueled lashout where you don’t know how much he really means all that.)

When he subsequently forfeits the match against Anatoly, he makes a speech that sounds absolutely despairing where he says chess has been taking a toll on his health since he first became champion at eleven years old, and he doesn’t feel he can trust anyone, even himself. In Act II, before “The Interview”, he even actually apologizes to Florence for how he treated her; heck, his motivation for going so hard after Anatoly in “The Interview” itself is portrayed as being that he is genuinely disgusted by Anatoly leaving his family so callously (which is a lot of fun given Freddie’s own issues about his father leaving him and his mother behind) and wants Florence to hear the truth about what a despicable man he is, which is still unpleasant to her but clearly comes from a much more sympathetic place than either simple spite or reluctantly complying with Walter’s orders.

As for Anatoly… he was taken from his parents when he was a small child to be groomed by Molokov and the KGB into becoming a chess champion, and he’s well aware from his very first scene that the state had killed the previous Soviet champion after Freddie unseated him. (Freddie excoriates the press early on for not covering why the former champion disappeared off the face of the Earth because they’re too busy bashing Freddie, which sounds like paranoia, but the narrative has actually told us Freddie is right and they really did execute him but no one but Freddie seems to notice or care — another way in which Freddie is jarringly sympathetic here. In general, Freddie is portrayed as paranoid, and the other characters treat him like he’s just paranoid, but the narrative keeps proving Freddie’s paranoia right.)

Anatoly, though, isn’t afraid of the same fate, because “The state cannot execute a man… that is already dead.” (This general sentiment could press my buttons, but it just feels super corny and melodramatic the way it’s presented and performed, especially with that dramatic pause in there.) He is deeply depressed, thinks his marriage to Svetlana is fake and his kids hate him, and says repeatedly in Act I that he hates chess and just wants to be free of it, though he also describes a particular championship match he watched as the only time he’s felt love. At the end of Act I, he defects to the UK along with Florence as usual (his defection fully blows up the treaty Walter was worrying about despite Anatoly’s victory, so Florence’s refugee visa is indeed revoked, and that’s why they end up in the UK). Theoretically he should be free of chess now, but it bothers him intensely that he only won by forfeit (here they never finished playing a single match), resulting in him returning to defend his world champion title, and win it ‘properly’, four years later in Bangkok against Viigand.

Unknown to Anatoly, by Act II, after the election of Ronald Reagan, the Soviets are extra on edge and believe a planned NATO military exercise is actually the US mobilizing for a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union. Walter tries to convince Molokov it’s just an exercise; Molokov insists unfortunately the generals are going to believe it’s an invasion and be ready to retaliate unless Viigand wins the championship (if Viigand wins they will take it as a ‘sign of goodwill’ from the US, which will change their minds on the apparent invasion because, uhh, unclear). Throughout Act II, the larger stakes in this version are set up to be that if Anatoly should win the match, the Soviets are liable to start a nuclear war.

Does Walter go to Anatoly to frankly tell him that apparently the Soviets have lost their minds and are basically threatening nuclear war over a chess match and try to convince him to throw on that basis? Does Molokov realize that if he’s telling Walter to go rig the chess match so the generals will call it off, he clearly doesn’t actually believe that the US is about to invade, so probably he should be trying to convince the generals not to go for the nuclear option himself? No, of course not; this is Chess, so we have to have the songs that are in Chess. So instead, Walter and Molokov just go through the same indirect schemes as usual to unbalance Anatoly and convince him to throw the game, with some minor twists. Molokov actually actively threatens Svetlana with being sent to a gulag to die if she doesn’t convince her husband to return — and Svetlana does straight-up tell Anatoly this, only for Anatoly to brush her off and tell her they won’t do that. Florence learns the same from Walter and initially dismisses him, and fully doesn’t believe him about her father being alive, but does ultimately sympathize with Svetlana and worry for her, which I like. But Anatoly is obsessed with winning this championship above all else and fully convinced Molokov is bluffing.

In the end, he plays the game to win, oblivious to the nuclear threat; as he checkmates, Walter makes a desperate phone call to his superiors to call off the training exercise. (Why he didn’t just do that immediately when Molokov told him the Soviets were taking it as an attack, instead of spending all this time playing along with this elaborate chess mind game, is a mystery.) Only… they don’t, and the Soviets watch with their fingers on the nuclear button, but ultimately they don’t fire. The Arbiter’s narration informs us this was the closest the world ever came to destruction, even closer than the Cuban missile crisis, and that this then served as the wake-up call that prompted negotiations about nuclear deescalation.

Anatoly, meanwhile, returns to the Soviet Union as usual, this time successfully exchanging himself for Florence’s imprisoned father, and Walter gives the two of them visas so that they can return to the US together.

Broad thoughts

I feel profoundly weird about the mixing of real-life history and completely fictitious alternate history here — you can’t just assert in narration that the fictional events in your musical were what taught the US and Soviet Union that maybe they should just talk to each other, while making a specific comparison to an actual thing that really happened, after spending the musical asserting that the Soviets murdered chess players for losing the world championship. I think mixing history and fiction can work fine if we can imagine that for all we know this is what really happened, or alternatively that this is what might have happened in some alternate universe similar to but distinct from ours. But here, we’re creating highly significant and publicized events that are obviously fictional, making it absurd to pretend this is what really happened, while also presenting these fictional alternate-universe events in objective hindsight narration alongside real events that happened in the real world and as a supposed cause of them. This ending narration just feels like it’s weirdly trying to have its cake and eat it too.

All in all, though, I think this is definitely one of the most interesting efforts to rewrite Chess. It definitely has something it’s going for, there are several neat ideas in it, and in particular I appreciate that it tries to give extra attention to the characters, more context to their actions, and more messy, humanized depth, inner conflict, and complicated motivators and stressors behind what they do. I genuinely enjoy what it’s doing with Freddie in Act I, in particular, even though it feels somehow both jarringly like it’s woobifying him (I genuinely think he ends up coming across as the most sympathetic of the three mains here, with so much of his erratic, childish and unpleasant behaviour being recontextualized to be more understandable and the way his hatred of the Soviets keeps being validated by the narrative) and like the narrative is weirdly harsh on him (this much more sympathetic Freddie who suffers from an actual mental illness is treated like absolute irredeemable scum by every other character including the fourth-wall-leaning narrator, even more than usual).

I also think the restructuring of Act I was pretty solid for the most part, though there’s definitely some awkwardness, like how Freddie’s expanded encounters with the press sort of clumsily repeat the same beats a bit. On the one hand, I can get what Danny Strong was going for in choosing to introduce everyone first and then go into “Merano” instead of doing several minutes of narrative meaninglessness before the main characters are even introduced; on the other hand, that kind of just half-defeats the sole original purpose of “Merano”, which is to provide a very jaunty more stereotypical musical theater song so that Freddie can be introduced via barging in and interrupting it with his very different vibe, and if I were Danny Strong I would definitely have just removed “Merano” at that point. But the “Difficult and Dangerous Times” opening works great, and it nicely avoids the “almost nothing of note happens for nearly forty minutes” and “several meaningless fluff songs in a row” problems of the London script, introducing conflict and stakes early and keeping the narrative going.

Ultimately, though, a lot of what it’s trying to do doesn’t quite come together to me, and some of it is variously misguided or just strange.

The Politics

To start with, I can definitely get wanting to emphasize the role of Cold War politics in the narrative, and I basically enjoyed the increased political focus and higher stakes in Act I — but I don’t think making Anatoly unwittingly almost start a nuclear war works here, or fits properly into this narrative at all. The Soviet generals have to be holding idiot balls; Molokov has to be holding an idiot ball; Walter has to be holding the biggest idiot ball of all; and most importantly, the ludicrously massive stakes being pasted on top of the match despite none of the main characters even knowing about it means we zoom thoroughly out of the character drama of the situation: “Endgame” just becomes grotesquely trivial with that hanging over it without Anatoly’s knowledge, rendering the actual drama of the climactic song completely irrelevant to what’s really at stake.

I also dislike, in a version that emphasizes the politics, how distinctly slanted it is. One of the things that I like in the London strain of Chess is that Walter and Molokov are both slimy, manipulative bastards in different ways, both sides’ political actors cruelly toying with the lives of the players for their own impersonal ends; the righteousness of each state as a whole doesn’t really matter to this story, only the impact that the whole conflict and the mutual scheming has on the main characters’ lives. But in this version, the Soviets and Molokov are cartoon villains who literally abduct children to force them into chess camp and then murder them if they don’t win the world championship, while Walter may be a condescending asshole who’s willing to threaten Florence but is distinctly the ‘good guy’ in his interactions with Molokov, which comprise most of his screentime, especially in Act II. Walter even gets a humanizing moment where he explains he has a nine-year-old son and has nightmares about him suffering a nuclear winter (Molokov, meanwhile, tells Walter in Act I that Anatoly is like a son to him but could not more obviously not care about Anatoly at all when he proudly presents his new champion material Viigand in Act II). I just find it really detrimental to Chess’s narrative to make it about Soviets Bad, US Good, and more so the more you focus on that — to whatever extent you highlight the politics in this story, it should be done in a way that’s about how the political machinations of the Cold War impact the character drama at the center of it, and it’s distracting when instead you make it into a loosely related B-plot about Walter’s desperate diplomatic efforts to stop the evil Soviets from destroying the world with their shortsightedness.

I think a successful more politically-focused Chess could definitely exist, but I think it’s always going to function best if Walter and Molokov feel at least narratively like just about equal scumbags. It’s not even impossible to imagine nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction coming up in the course of it — but it needs to be using that to make us enraged at all of this on behalf of Anatoly/Florence/Svetlana/Freddie, not enraged at Molokov on behalf of Walter.

The Character Work

Meanwhile, I do basically like the setup and recontextualization done for all of the main characters in Act I, but unfortunately none of them quite delivered as well as I hoped in the end.

Let’s start with Florence. I actually quite liked the deportation threat, putting Florence herself under personal pressure in a way she usually isn’t. I dig characters being put through the wringer and making decisions under stress. But the story doesn’t quite do anything with that other than using it as silent context behind her early interactions with Freddie and technically as the reason she and Anatoly move to the UK offscreen. We don’t, for instance, ever see Freddie learn that that’s why she moved or that he was unwittingly indirectly responsible for that, or otherwise address that in any way, and as far as Florence in the rest of the story is concerned, it might as well never have happened — we never see her having any kinds of feelings on it, or even confronting Walter about that nasty little part he played in her life when she meets him again (she doesn’t even comment on it when he offers her the chance to go back to the US at the end!). To an extent this is, of course, because Florence being deported was never originally part of the story of Chess, so of course it doesn’t come up in any song or have any significant specific impact on the core series of events — but if you’re going to add it in at all, you really ought to be taking that somewhere in the rest of your additions that isn’t just briefly handwaving that she gets to go back at the end.

Like Long Beach, this version brings Florence’s father back at the end — but unfortunately, it feels really unearned here. Compared to other London variants, it actually ditches the bit of “The Deal” where Florence is tangibly emotional and riled up by Walter’s offer of her father — she fully dismisses the idea of her father being alive as bullshit, and instead it’s Svetlana who moves her to have doubts when she sees her begging Anatoly to return on video and realizes Svetlana still loves him. I do really like that, by itself, and it’s probably my favorite thing about this version’s portrayal of Florence; her empathizing with Svetlana to the point of feeling genuinely guilty for having taken her husband from her, and believing maybe the right thing to do would be if he went back to Svetlana for her sake, is actually very good, serves as a great lead-in to “I Know Him So Well”, and makes Florence’s character feel far more sympathetic in a production where she’s otherwise pretty lacking in that department. But it leaves us with no emotional connection whatsoever to Florence’s father — we’ve only heard her mention him twice before Walter’s offer, very briefly, in Act I, and not really with any sense that she misses or is all that invested in him. Seeing her reunite with him means nothing for her or her arc; it just comes out of left field, and winds up being another thing slanting this version towards Good Guy Walter, Bad Guy Molokov, what with Walter offering her visas back to the US for both of them seemingly out of the goodness of his heart.

It would have been possible to actually build up to this in a way that would make it satisfying. Florence and Anatoly have several conversations; we could have used some of those to have Florence actually talk about her father and how she feels about him being gone, and that could have been part of building up her relationship with Anatoly, made it meaningful that Anatoly’s parting gift to her is to ensure her father’s return. I suppose Danny Strong’s thought process may have been that if he built up Florence’s father too much, that should become her main concern once Walter brings that into it, and he wanted her concern to be about Svetlana instead, which I guess is fair; it also means Anatoly only really has to dismiss the potential harm to one other person in his obsession with the winning the game. But if you do make the decision to not build up her father, then bringing her father back is not an ending that makes any sense, and there was no need to do this — they could have easily cut out all suggestion of her father being alive entirely and it would only have made things smoother. I think the only reason she gets her father back in this one is in some hasty effort to make Florence’s ending less bleak, but because it doesn’t have any emotional resonance, it’s just not the right way to do that here.

Speaking of Florence and Anatoly, the romance here… once again has some neat, interesting things it’s going for but doesn’t quite come together as a whole. The two of them do have some actual conversations where they bond a bit, which is already a marked improvement over the default London script — but their very first conversation features Anatoly asserting out of nowhere that Florence has “a way of brightening his spirit”, despite not even knowing her, which isn’t super convincing and just comes off kind of creepy-awkward. Florence asserts a few times that he’s sweet and kind, but we don’t really see much of him actually coming across as sweet or kind — his lines tend to be either melodramatic or sardonic moping interspersed kind of jarringly with awkward jokes. He’s less charming or sweet and more like a lonely, kicked dog, which is fine if Florence is into that but doesn’t quite make her descriptions of why she likes him ring true.

This production actually goes back to the concept album a bit when it comes to Florence and Anatoly — namely, more than political manipulation and external pressures forcibly tearing them apart from the outside, there’s a more substantial internal tension between them as Anatoly genuinely simply prioritizes winning the chess match over her and dismisses her as she tries to question him about Svetlana. The two approaches can both work but do different things for the narrative; this internal approach puts more focus on the personal conflict and character drama and makes the relationship more interesting, which is definitely good, and in principle I think this is built up to in a pretty solid way here — Anatoly, raised to become a chess champion to the exclusion of all else, being maddened by the notion of not actually beating Freddie in Act I and needing to prove he deserves the championship to himself in Act II before he can feel “free from chess” works as a coherent reason for him to be so strikingly, unhealthily obsessive about it.

But I think the biggest problem is that Florence and Anatoly individually don’t hit well enough as characters to create investment in them. Florence is ultimately not developed enough and mostly just acts kind of unpleasant, especially to Freddie, all the way up until that Svetlana bit in Act II. More importantly, I just can’t like or understand or sympathize with Anatoly at all, beyond recognizing that core of what his arc is going for. Part of it is probably down to the writing of his lines, which I’m just not a fan of in general. I already named one example from his first scene. Here’s how Anatoly and Florence’s very first conversation starts:

ANATOLY: It’s not his fault. This game drives us all crazy. FLORENCE: I’m fine. Aren’t you even a little bit scared? ANATOLY: Of Trumper? FLORENCE: No, that they’ll kill you if you lose. ANATOLY: Oh. To quote the great Leo Tolstoy, “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.” FLORENCE: What does that mean? ANATOLY: I don’t know exactly, but it is very Russian.

I just don’t find this dialogue very convincing. Why is he reciting a dramatic irrelevant quote if he doesn’t know what it means and just thinks it’s “very Russian”? It feels like a generic quippy exchange off a snarky TV show. Does Anatoly use humour to cope with his situation? Not really; this is pretty much the only time he says anything that might be taken as that. This feels like a joke that’s there only to get a laugh out of the audience, not because Anatoly would actually tell it — and consequently, it doesn’t tell us anything real about Anatoly. Meanwhile, Florence responds to this with “Oh, you’re funny,” as if that’s one of the reasons she falls for him when I would decidedly not name that as a character trait he has. I feel like most of his dialogue just doesn’t have a great sense of character — in stark contrast to Freddie, who oozes character. I can’t get a good sense of who he is and how he thinks. He’s just there. And this also makes it harder to see what Florence sees in him and believe in the relationship.

Moreover, this Anatoly just comes across as kind of a terrible person, not in the fun coherent intentional way Freddie is a terrible person but in a flat, confusing and kind of unintentional-seeming way. Svetlana here is actually really sympathetic, with lovely little additional bits of dialogue that make her feelings hit harder (her voice as she tells Anatoly that “You left us!” breaks my heart), and this is possibly my favorite version of Svetlana in any Chess. But Anatoly is really, really terrible to her, by which I don’t even mean the cheating on her but the bit where he keeps angrily insisting to her face that she never loved him and she brainwashed their children to hate him and of course they’re not going to kill her (hey, Anatoly, guess who’s already well aware that the Soviet government in this universe is not above executing people over chess?).

And even that could be made understandable, given his situation — he could just be in hard denial about it because the thought of them having been suffering with him gone and being punished for his actions is so horrific he just shuts it down — but there’s never any sense that that’s what’s really going on. We don’t see him privately upset about the possibility later, for instance — he just keeps insisting the same and dismissing Svetlana to Florence, too. We know it’s not that it’s true — we see Svetlana admit to Molokov that even though he ruined her life and she never wants to see him again she still loves him, and we hear her sing “Someone Else’s Story” and “I Know Him So Well”. Nor do we ever get any hint at exactly what Svetlana or his kids did to make him think this of them, if anything (his own kids!). Anatoly just seems to sort of bitterly, adamantly believe this for no reason at all. And that makes it impossible to empathize with. Okay, sure, Anatoly, you were taken from your family as a child, but that really doesn’t even start to explain any of this. There could have been ways of making it feel at least believable, tragic in a deeply fucked-up way, but the story here just doesn’t do the work. And once again, Anatoly being so unpleasant for no reason just makes it harder to feel at all invested in his relationship with Florence or sad when they part.

The best fix here isn’t quite obvious, and I can’t say I envy Danny Strong trying to put all his neat little ideas together and make them work. If Anatoly were to appear substantially conflicted about Svetlana and put any real stock in Molokov’s threat, that would render “Endgame”, where he doubles down anyway, kind of jarring and inexcusable as he’d be not just refusing to return to her but refusing to care if she is killed. So in order for this to properly work with “Endgame”, he probably does need to be very deep in denial about whether they’d really kill her. I think what I would do, if I were writing this plot where groomed-as-a-chess-champion Anatoly knows the Soviets killed Boris Ivanovich and they’ve threatened to kill Svetlana too, is to emphasize better how irrational Anatoly is being and try to show it more as a consequence of growing up among the constantly plotting KGB.

Let him go off on a proper paranoid rant to Florence about the reasons why he thinks Svetlana is just plotting against him, and some innocuous things he saw his kids do once that mean she brainwashed them. When Florence tries to challenge him on how batshit he sounds, he just storms out, saying she’s being taken in by their lies and just wants to sabotage him, and disappears — and she doesn’t see him again until he appears at the final game and plays this manic, desperate match while insisting to himself that Svetlana and Florence both just never understood him and hated his success. Afterwards, we can perhaps see him finally, quietly asking Molokov if they’re really going to kill her, showing that on some level he already knew the threat might be real and had just firmly blocked it out (in the actual ending as it is Molokov simply tells him unprompted that she really will be punished unless he comes back, and he just asks why with no addressing of his previous adamant insistence that that wouldn’t happen). His and Florence’s final conversation could then involve a bit more of a reckoning with that and with what his relationship with Svetlana was really like, through a more honest lens.

I’m actually pretty tickled by this scenario because that would really drive home a pretty fun parallel between Anatoly and Freddie — which in hindsight I think this version must in fact have been trying for, but didn’t quite do in a focused enough way for it to really hit. Anatoly and Freddie are both chess players with deeply abnormal childhoods and bouts of paranoia that cause them to behave in toxic ways, which ultimately drives Florence away from both of them.

This production shows the first chess game as the “Chess Game” instrumental playing under Freddie and Anatoly having alternating inner monologues about the game and their issues, deliberately drawing a comparison between the two of them; they both say they hate chess, that they don’t feel like real human beings. It’s not exactly subtle, but I liked the way this was used to build up their respective brain gremlins and was intrigued by the parallel being set up. I didn’t feel they ultimately did much with the parallel, though, because the story then didn’t really continue leaning into it much from there. By emphasizing this Anatoly’s paranoia as paranoia and not just as him legitimately thinking the marriage was never real and the KGB wouldn’t kill her, we could properly build the story around that parallel, and I would genuinely dig that.

The one place after the chess match where the actual thing does sort of try to get at the Anatoly/Freddie parallel again is in the dialogue scene that precedes “Endgame”. This scene is not sung (though it has the “Chess Game” instrumental in the background, which connects it neatly to that previous bit comparing the two of them), but it’s clearly based on “Talking Chess”: Freddie approaches Anatoly to tell him Viigand’s weakness lies in his King’s Indian Defense, and:

ANATOLY: Why are you helping me? FREDDIE: Jesus Christ! Am I the only one who cares about this game? ANATOLY: It’s more than a game now. There is so much more at stake than who wins or loses. FREDDIE: No! No, winning is everything. Fuck politics! Fuck the KGB, fuck the CIA, fuck them all! We are the ones who have dedicated our lives to chess. We are the ones who have given up everything for greatness — our childhoods, our sanity, our loves. Anatoly, we’ve sacrificed everything. They’ve sacrificed nothing. What’s the number one rule of a chess champion? ANATOLY: Play to win. FREDDIE: As long as you do that you can never lose, even if you do.

Much as I love “Talking Chess”, though, this on the surface similar scene just didn’t feel right in this context when I listened to it. In Anatoly’s last scene here, he told Florence firmly that he just wanted to win and that his marriage with Svetlana was never real and it’s all KGB mind games. Him going “It’s more than a game now, there’s so much more at stake” suddenly now comes out of nowhere — if he believes that now, it could only be if he actively reconsidered something offscreen, but he doesn’t say anything elaborating on what he’s thinking now or what he might have reconsidered or why, just that vague, generic line that contradicts everything he’s expressed up until this point. It’s another example of Anatoly’s dialogue just feeling really flat and meaningless to me — his lines here don’t say anything, just serve as vague filler to prompt Freddie onward. And because unlike London proper the setup leading up to this is all about him already being absolutely determined to win the game at all costs, this just feels redundant, unnecessary, going through the motions of something that’s in London without realizing that with the changed context it doesn’t quite make sense anymore.

I think that’s unfortunately the case with Freddie a bit here too. I enjoyed Act I’s quite different take on Freddie, and his establishing narration for Act II petulantly stating Anatoly won the championship last year “by forfeit, I might add”, and “The Interview” is recontextualized in a very fun way as I mentioned before — but after that it feels like Danny Strong doesn’t quite know what to do with Freddie anymore and just has him sort of arbitrarily go through the motions of London in a way that doesn’t necessarily hang together with everything he’s established of Freddie so far. It made sense that this Freddie, despite being decidedly hostile towards Walter and the CIA, conducted the interview to show Florence what a bastard Anatoly is — he’s not doing it for Walter, he’s got his own reasons to want to do it once Walter’s shown him the Svetlana video. But I find it a lot harder to swallow that this Freddie — whose usual problem seems to be that he’s compulsively blunt about how he really feels — would then be easily persuaded to play his part in “The Deal”, which involves exaggeratedly trying to be all buddy-buddy with Anatoly. Maybe if there was better setup around it, like with “The Interview” — but “The Deal” only has seconds of kind of half-assed leadup here, and from there it moves directly into “Pity the Child” (after a segue featuring the recording of Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita, because nuclear war).

Freddie’s next appearance after that, then, is this “Talking Chess”-esque dialogue where he’s realized the parallel between the two of them, how they’ve both sacrificed everything for chess and the political schemers have sacrificed nothing and that’s why he should play to win. I can appreciate how the low point of “Pity the Child” would trigger that particular realization, contemplating how much he lost and sacrificed to achieve his status in the game and perhaps afterward realizing Anatoly is the only other person here who might understand that. That feels like it basically tracks and is interesting.

But… it also means that fun very specific contempt for Anatoly in particular based on him having left his family like Freddie’s own father did is just kind of… gone, I guess, or at least Freddie doesn’t consider it relevant enough for it to stop him from going out of his way to pep Anatoly up for the game with no mention or hint of it. (At least Freddie probably isn’t aware of the threats made against Svetlana in particular, so he doesn’t know Anatoly winning would shatter his family even further.) And we’ve lost the bit in “Talking Chess” where the notion of the political scheming actually leading to Viigand winning the match just personally offends Freddie because Viigand is not even that good; instead Freddie is just putting forward “Play to win” as some kind of general inviolable chess principle, which is kind of generic and not nearly as characterful, in my opinion. I’m not saying we ought to have had the “Viigand is mediocre” bit here — I don’t think it would quite fit in for this Freddie, whose feelings about chess itself are very conflicted and who is more concerned with showing up these political hacks who have sacrificed nothing while they sacrificed everything — but as a Freddie moment I would really have wanted to end on something stronger there than this vague assertion that “The number one rule of a chess champion is to play to win.”

Like in London, this is Freddie’s last substantial scene, but he does have a part in “Endgame”, and it’s also an interesting one: he gets Sixty-four squares / they’re the reason you know you exist (but not the preceding How straightforward the game…), but also a couple of other verses usually sung by the chorus, and the lines he gets are clearly very purposefully chosen to reinforce that final resolve regarding the sacrifices they’ve made for greatness, which I really appreciate: Listen to them shout / They saw you do it / In their minds no doubt / That you’ve been through it / Suffered for your art and in the end a winner and They’re completely enchanted / But they don’t take your qualities for granted / It isn’t very often / That the critics soften / Nonetheless, you’ve won their hearts / How can we begin to / Appreciate the work that you’ve put into / Your calling through the years / The blood, the sweat, the tears / The late, late, nights, the early starts?

All in all, Freddie is still definitely my favorite part of this Chess, but while the parallel itself is neat it’s too muddled and I find the second half of Act II pretty uneven for him. What would I do if I were writing this bit?

I’m not totally sure how I’d want to tackle “The Deal”, but as for the “Talking Chess”-but-not scene: I would ditch the bit where Freddie is trying to advise Anatoly on strategy and the bit where Anatoly is apparently suddenly not determined to play to win just so Freddie can then tell him he should be again. None of that is contributing anything in what this version has been building up. Instead, they just sort of bump into each other, Anatoly fresh off his paranoid rant to Florence about Svetlana, Freddie fresh off “Pity the Child” and the strange realization Anatoly might be the only person who’d understand him a little bit. At first they just sort of stop and look at each other. Freddie starts, guarded, with some kind of oblique accusatory prod about the leaving his family thing, which he still deeply resents.

Anatoly has calmed down now, but he tells him what he told Florence: that it was always a fake marriage, a fake family, that the video was just a lie set up for him by the KGB, that Svetlana had brainwashed their children to despise him.

This incidentally plays into Freddie’s existing preconceptions pretty well. He’s probably not instantly convinced but it checks out enough he’s willing to reluctantly leave it alone for now. Probably mutters something like, “Fucking Soviets.”

Anatoly says something like, aren’t you going to try to make me a deal to get me to throw the match and go back? Freddie says no, fuck that. Says the whole bit about how we are the ones who have dedicated ourselves to chess, who have sacrificed everything, childhood, sanity, love, and they��ve sacrificed nothing. Why should we listen to those CIA and KGB assholes? Draws out that parallel. The two of them are probably standing in symmetrical positions on the stage.

Anatoly just nods slowly, agreeing. “I would have beaten you.”

Freddie scoffs and says, “Dream on,” but not quite with the spiteful arrogance he would’ve said it in Act I.

Then they part, and we move on to “Endgame”. The scene isn’t about Freddie helping Anatoly, or about Freddie convincing Anatoly to go for the win; it’s about the Freddie/Anatoly parallel, about Freddie realizing it and in his profound loneliness finding a smidge of connection with this guy he hated because he’s the only one who sort of Gets It, and about showing how Anatoly’s conviction has developed since the first chess match where part of his inner monologue went, “I can’t beat him, he’s too good.” Anatoly is so ready to prove that he really is the world’s best chess player.

Conclusion

Man, this version is so interesting. It’s a mess, but it’s a fascinating mess with a bunch of tasty potential and a real sense that Danny Strong had some genuine thoughts on what the show was missing and how to rework it to fix that, even where his attempts were ultimately confused and don’t succeed. In some ways it’s the most me-core version of Chess and in other ways it’s deeply antithetical to me and in most all ways it’s trying to do something neat but does it in a flawed way. Special shoutout to this Freddie, who honestly deserves better than this Florence.

[fantasy-relax]

Inefable plan

Part 2.

Warning: Misscarriage.

Bela Dimitrescu x g!p reader

This is what happen when you don't follow the plan.

"You do all this because you love, right? You are in love with me!"

You should know this would happen, poor Daniela was heartbroken, lonely and needy, she wanted a relationship like her fairytales, of course she will hang on the only good interaction outside of her family, you.

"Lady Daniela, I-I" hope was in her face, her cheeks red smiling shyly "I-I"

You could lie and pretend, Daniela was pretty and both of you have some much in common, you could play along with her fantasy for three years. But it feel so damn wrong and the last thing you wanted was to trick her like that.

"Lady Daniela I'm sorry but I don't love you like that" you could see the moment her heart broke " I think of you as my.."

Dear friend?

No. Not exactly.

"I think I love you as I will had loved my sibling if I could had one"

You birth was one difficult, after you there were other pregnancies that never passed the second month, the relationship between your parents sour more for that. Your father wanted to keep trying for the perfect child and your mother was tired and hurt.

You don't remember if they even sleep in the room after the third try, you do remember the screaming of that night when your mother's dress was stained with blood and her face with tears.

Your mom was good company but sometimes more than you will ever admit to her you wished you have a sister or a brother to play, to fight, to care for, to be little less lonely but you knew better than ask.

In your time together in the library you see her not as the delusional, childish aggressive third daughter but as Daniela a playful, creative and adorable girl. That loved her family like you loved yours.

They were killers, they were mutants but they were family.

You glance at the clock in the wall you have other duties to attend.

"Can we talk more when Friday comes? I need to go lady Daniela I have more work to"

She let you go easily, at least she wasn't sad actually she seemed more thoughtful than anything.

Working around you try to make sense of your feelings and actions to towards the dimitrescu house.

Did they ripped other families apart? Yes, but the contract was clear, there wasn't fine letter everything was in the open:

The ladies of the house will carry any punishment that they think adequate in case of any broken rule.

While the punishment is dependent of the affected rule could be any of the following:

-Withholding food or payment.

-Whipping.

-Dismemberment

-Torture

-Death

There is no misunderstanding, obey the rules, work hard and everything is fine.

Now that you are thinking the rules more broken were five particularly:

-Be respectful to the ladies.

-Don't steal.

-Not slacking.

-Not enter into the forbidden sections.

-The windows must be always closed.

Calling the ladies monsters, bitches, freaks was something common between maids. The stupid ones that do it in the open end punished. This is fair.

The castle is full of luxury, even the maid quarters are better state than any of the houses in the village. Because this some try to smuggle some paintings, jewelry or anything of value to sell outside. They are punished when they're found out. This is fair.

The castle had a lot of rooms, almost every one of them were big. This was one of the reasons for what lady dimitrescu needed a lot of (wo)manpower. But some maids will leave their responsibilities to the others that will have to work harder to complete the assigned tasks. They were deal with by the other maids or given to the ladies. This was fair.

There were rooms that only the head maid or certain maids were permitted to be. Others were completely banned from entering. Woman in search of things to sell will enter just to be killed by the ladies or whatever is in the other side. This was fair.

Most of the windows were barricaded. You had to admit that rule was weird, yes it was cold but it was only for a few months in winter and some stray days in the year. But if lady dimitrescu wanted every window closed then every window must be closed is her damn castle after all. This was fair.

Woman signs the contract, woman broke the rules accorded in the contract woman is punished according to the contract. This was fair.

People keep coming knowing that death was hiding in the corner. Out of necessity, out of greed, out of freedom. By choice.

Now the question is: Why only few were capable of surviving the three years?

The head maid was one older woman, the head cook and her helpers too, the Carpenter, the stable manager, the blacksmith. They had been here for a long time, longer than three years.

Curiosity was always your best asset.

And your doom...

Well, you will just ask them the questions that you need and that will be all.

Yes, a good plan.

[your--isgayrights]

Outside of Lee Seolhwa and Lee Sookyung, do you have plans for any other character outside of Kim Dokja’s primary companions (like Gong Pildu or Han Doonghoon) for your soulmate fanfiction? Constellations like Persephone or Uriel or Sun Wukong probably wouldn’t make sense to exist in real life but maybe characters such as Han Myungoh/Han Dareum or Jang Hayoung could fit? If I recall correctly, Jang Hayoung in particular is the one responsible for the title of the fanfiction, right? I feel like she alongside the Unidentifiable Wall and the Fourth Wall would be so thematically appropriate but I couldn’t imagine how you would do it if at all. I also want to say that I’m impressed how you managed to seamlessly incorporate so many references to the original ORV into your work. It must have required you to reread and recheck the wiki.

Yess, I'm glad you asked this anon bc literally I just threw in a little reference to Han Doonghoon and Lee Sungkook in the 4.4 update and got worried people would think they had to remember the characters well to understand the surrounding plot point better than Kim Dokja does. But I think I should trust the reader a bit more lol.

Unfortunately my inclusion of Aileen and Jang Hayoung isn't going to be as big as the other kdjco members, but they're sort of already set up in the fic and have a role in chap 5. I think JHY doesn't appear directly bc to me the relationship between her and KDJ is harder to make 'real,' though I have some ideas depending on how much I decide to include in chap 5. In my plans 5 will have a gaming tourney featured, so other big 'wos players' may be referenced further there as well.

Of course like you mention the fic title and many of the chapter titles are coming directly from the mouth of Jang Hayoung, so in that way she is constantly being referenced, haha.

Han Myungoh and his daughter are referenced earlier in Chapter 4. It's sort of a drive by.

I do make use of the wiki (bless the editorsn🙏), though mostly just to check dates, numbers, and spellings of names. I like to think of myself as someone with a pretty decent memory tho, so a lot of the more specific story references are definitely just me pulling in stuff I remember from my novel read throughs. Like I might have to look at the wiki to remember Han Dareum's name, but I'll never forget Han Myungoh's entire Male Pregnancy that he had like that was a crazy random W to me on my first ORV read through I was like hello??? Also that being around when JHY was being confirmed trans haha. I think I was only out for like a year or so before reading orv so the little gender fucky moments really stuck out to me.

Sometimes rereading my old work I also remember things I forgot happened in ORV. I think part of the reason I'm struggling so much with chap 4 and onward is that now that the wall fic characters have sort of developed to where they are some of the scenes I had in mind are less 1 to 1 with the OG. For instance, I'm trying to rewrite a scene I have of YJH and KDJ having a rooftop chat that like parallels the one back before the seoul's strongest incarnation arc in the novel, but it's a bit difficult. At first I wanted to include a lot more of KDJ interacting with the rest of YJH's team, but the rooftop Scene makes more sense to put a cap on the themes explored in chap 4. But when I first wrote this scene it was less specifically addressing that theme, because it was in the outline of like right after I wrote chapter 1, so it was kind of just the OG ORV scene with the flavoring of my AU on top. A lot of the little things they do and say in the OG novel would have to be quite finagled to fit anymore, so reworking it is the big task rn.

Anyway I'm really appreciative of people like you who take note of these small details <3. it's kind of helping me remember and appreciate a lot of the parts of me that were behind a lot of Wall fic originally if that makes sense? I am like reintroducing myself to him and giving him a hug instead of running away cringing just because it's me lol.

[simp999]

A New Home Ch. 13

Various! Splatoon Manga x Skilled! Isekai'd! Reader

Wc: 1.7k

A/N: I didn't mean for it to be this long! (Totally not bc Mask's my favorite whaaat)

A/N 2: I'm sorry if he seems a tad OOC, but I feel like he'd be more comfortable/friendly(?) When there isn't anybody else around. He definitely does at least a couple things to make him appear scarier for his reputation.

Back To The Start! Previous Next

A few days later, and it looked like the weatherman was right. The skies do look quite miserable today. It’s full of dull grey clouds, but no rain. You sit at home, bored, having nothing good to do. You want to play video games, but you’ve already speedrun them all with Leo, or they’re no fun. Then it hits you. The Shoal! You’ve always wanted to go, but it was always way too busy for your comfort zone. You quickly get up and throw your favorite top on, grabbing your bag and headphones, throwing your shoes on. Milo asks you where you’re going, just to be safe.

“Alright, have fun! Oh, grab a brella and don’t get caught in the rain!”

You sigh at how protective he is, but he’s right. You grab his brella since it’s closest to the door, and head out.

˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

‘Wow, it’s so much nicer in here when it’s not packed.’

You take a look around, only spotting the person at the counter and a couple who are about to leave. You can actually hear the sounds of all the arcade games waiting to be played, instead the screams of young squids. You get your coins, a good handful of them, and take a quick walk around the building. You spot a game that looks familiar. It looks almost just like pacman, Except with squids. Oh, how this brings out the kid in you!

You get lost in the games, going from pac-man, to space invaders, even finding tetris. Those aren’t the proper names, but they’re basically the same games with some more splatoon-like attributes. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s around, so you absentmindedly start to hum, then quietly sing some songs that have been stuck in your head.

We are fighting dreamers, takami wo mezashite~

Fighting dreamers, narifuri kamawazu~

Fighting dreamers, shinjiru ga mama ni~

You continue to hum the lyrics you’re not sure on, but stop mid lyric(mid-hum?) when you hear some loud clicking. It’s coming from the front of you to the right, hidden by some large arcade machines. You could barely see through the cracks of the big machines, not recognising the person. It seems they were playing squid beatz, and they were phenomenal at it. You didn’t want to bother anyone, but they sounded insanely skilled at the game. Just a little peek? You go around the machines and turn the corner, now recognizing this familiar, cyan-colored inkling immediately. You kept quiet not wanting to distract him and mess him up. When you turn your back to him, he calls out to you.

“Hey, yooou.”

You notice he just completed the level, with a seemingly perfect score.

“Uh, yeah?” You shift in your spot awkwardly, not really wanting to interact too much. 

‘Actually, the story is only focusing on Rider and Goggles in hero mode right now. That means that this is the time to meet these characters.’

“You look familiaaar. You had curry with everyone a couple days agoooo, right? You came and watched some of my battles, toooo.”

“Never would have thought you paid so much attention to details. I don’t think I stand out that much, do I?” You decided the best way to go about this was to feel somewhat comfortable, but still keep your space and show a bit of respect.

“Where’s the rest of team cyan?”

He picks an easier song to play to, not wanting to lose while still semi-focusing on the conversation. How thoughtful. (It was still a difficult song, but there were fewer quick sequences of notes.)

“Juuuust me here. They wanted to finish speedrunning a game that I beat aaaages ago.”

You boot up a game just a few machines down, knowing that this one’s easy to play, so you don’t have to have your full attention on it.

“What about yooours?”

“Wanted to come alone. Never been to the Shoal before because it was always so busy, figured today was my best option.”

He finishes the song with ease, patting his pockets and seeing that he needs more coins. He brought a small bag with him, and you see a pile of tickets building up in it. He must have been here a while. You’re not sure what to do, so you follow behind him after purposefully loosing your game.

He notices you,

“Yeah, weather’s perfect. Just hooow I like it.”

He looks outside, now being close to the front of the store.

“Starting to raaaain.”

Already? It doesn’t feel like you’ve been here that long. You check your phone and sure enough, you’ve been here for a couple hours.

“You plan on heading home before the rain hits, Mask?”

“I wouldn’t mind staaaying here aaaall day.”

You shrug, agreeing on that. The sun is usually really hot out, so it’s a nice change of pace. A big contrast to all the bright colors and loud sounds that are usually everywhere.

Your stomach rumbles, and you remember that you haven’t had anything to eat since a small snack you considered breakfast.

You look around and see a sign that says they offer food, perfect.

“You hungry? I bet you’ve been here a while.”

“A liiittle.”

“How ‘bout I get us some pizza?”

He contemplates it, but who’s gonna deny free pizza? He puts his coins in his pocket.

“Suuuure.”

You take your time eating, they had some surprisingly good pizza and soda here. He’d pull his mask just barely above his mouth to take a small bite every once in a while. Mask would sneeze every so often, earning him a tissue from your bag. He didn’t eat lots, which made sense considering his overly skinny frame. Good thing he did turf to gain some muscle, but he should really try to take better care of himself. You two didn’t talk a lot, but sometimes Mask would ask you something, usually unrelated to battles. It’s actually quite nice not talking about battles or your skill, it seems it’s all others care about when it comes to you. 

He’s weird, that’s for sure. But once he warms up to you, he’s a nice break from reality, if you could even call it that. Not that he’d ever be completely comfortable, not even with his own teammates, that’s just how he is. You noticed that even out of battles, they would keep a comfortable distance. It seems he’s not a fan of physical contact, which is something you could respect. Once the two of you were done eating you continued to play on the arcade machines. You finally ran out of coins, sad that you had to leave. You were enjoying this time, finally able to genuienly hang out with someone from the manga without being afraid of changing the story. He notices that you’ve been quiet for a while, and sees that you’re no longer playing your game, just watching his. He offers you a couple coins, but you deny them. 

“That’s really sweet of you, but I should probably make my way home. Milo probably has an actual supper ready. Can’t wait to get home and have him lecture me on having pizza before supper.” He turns his head away, not used to being complemented. You check your pockets to see how many tickets you have, you probably have a couple hundred. It won’t get you any big prizes, but if you were to give them to Mask, on top of his - at least a thousand,-  he could get himself something nice. You try to subtly drop your tickets into the bag next to his foot, but he catches them before they can fall into his bag. Oh yeah, he’s S+. He’s got quick reflexes if he feels like using them.

“I don’t need them, I’m here ooooften.” He quits his game halfway through, and walks over to the prize counter, bag in hand. You want to question him, curious as to why he wants a prize all of a sudden. Maybe he just remembered something at the counter that he wanted. He asks for something behind the counter and the worker trades him for it. While browsing the smaller prizes, you vaguely hear the words: “One thousand tickets,” 

Hey, he worked for them, so whatever he’s getting is completely up to him.

Once he’s done at the counter, you ask the worker for two keychains. One cyan squid, and one squid of your main ink color. He gives them to you in exchange for 125 tickets each, and you clip the cyan one to your bag. Mask watches you and waits for you to be done before holding out the item he got.

“It’s Naruto, volumes 1-3 all combined in one book.. I heard you humming the opening earlier, so I figured you were a fan of the series.”

…that’s embarrassing. 

Since when was he this kind? But also, Naruto! That means that 1. Anime and manga exist here, and 2. He’s a weeb. Actually it was kind of obvious, he definitely seems like the type to watch anime.

You’re unsure of how to accept it, it is really nice of him, but it’s so expensive! But he already got it, and he probably already has the same one at home, so you can’t just deny this!

“Oh… thank you. That’s, um, actually really nice. Makes it feel more like home.”

“Huuuh? Hooome?”

“Oh, yeah, I just moved here, and couldn’t bring all my old manga, which really sucked.”

“Ouuuch. It can get pretty expensive.”

You sway on your feet, not sure what else to say. You already thanked him, but you don’t want to leave. You’ll see him again though, you’re sure.

You offer him a small smile and wave after some contemplating, and make your way out the door, grabbing your brella.

He watches you make your way out of the building, open your brella, and walk out of his sight. He picks up his bag, and feels a bit of cold metal on his hand. A keychain. With a squid that matches your ink color.

‘Huh. They sure are weird.’

.

.

.

.

.

‘I guess I might might like some inklings that enjoy life.’

Next Part

May.3.23

[estrellamorningstar]

Awakened Awareness [Part 14]

Warning: Smut, NSFW, 18+, mention of Blood and pain, Daddy Kink

Summary: Celeste´s training continues. She gets to discover what the Killer camp looks like. (A little)

Word Count: 3876

          ''One more time, kitten,'' Celeste has just managed to bandage herself up for the third time under Wesker´s watchful eye. The training session has consisted of a lot of running, a lot of blood and a lot of slamming against every object of the Treatment Theatre, she even had to use the First Aid spray to get rid of the infection Wesker's attack can cause at times. The loud noises of machinery make it difficult to know where exactly Wesker's coming from, so she hasn't been doing too well. Each chase has been getting more intense. 

          Wesker gives her half a minute to get away from him and Celeste decides to double back and keep him in her sight at all times. She can feel the tightness in her chest, but, when she sneakily peeks over a ledge to where she last saw Wesker, she realizes her mistake. 

     ''If I catch you, you're getting the Hook, kitten,'' a voice from behind her announces. She doesn't look back and vaults the ledge, running towards a room that she knows could help her lose him. She looks back in time to see Wesker mid lunge and she takes a sharp turn into the hallway. Celeste´s ears catch an annoyed groan on the other side of the wall, but she doesn't take any chances. Celeste remembers Wesker telling her that Survivors leave marks when they run, so she takes that chance and slowly walks behind a column, hoping to throw him off her scent. 

          It works for a moment, but when she peaks from behind the column and notices that Wesker has decided to turn back, she starts running, looking behind her and managing to avoid another attack. Celeste gets taken by surprise when Wesker, who had ended up in front of her, makes a sharp turn to face her and she gets thrown almost the whole length of the hallway. To her surprise she's not hurt and now there is a bigger distance between her and her pursuer. 

     ''Not bad, kitten,'' Wesker has already made the distance and gives her a hand up. She feels the little leech like creatures starting to bury themselves in her skin, it makes Celeste cringe and feel slightly nauseous. Wesker points at a crate next to them and she opens it to find the spray that will get rid of the creatures. 

     ''That was better, but you're still scared, why?'' Wesker watches as Celeste sprays herself with the serum. Celeste almost feels like he's displeased at the sight of the leeches disappearing. He removes his sunglasses, Celeste has noticed him do this a lot when interacting with her directly.

     ''I'm not scared,'' the defensive tone betrays her and causes Wesker to chuckle. 

     ''Don't lie to me again, you're an open book.'' Wesker takes a step closer to her, looking down at her with a raised eyebrow. He tilts her head to face him, holding her gaze that betrays her even more. ''Why are you scared?'' 

     ''You have been chasing me from the moment we started this, I haven't had the time to adjust,'' she realizes just how ridiculous it sounds. 

     ''Adrenaline, kitten, use it to work for you,'' Wesker's patience catches Celeste off guard. She expected to be hanging on a Hook and awaiting her death by now. 

     ''I don't know how,'' she utters shakily. ''I can't think straight, I freeze when I am being chased. I always have, even as a kid.'' 

Wesker places his hand between her breasts, pressing it against her chest, it causes her to take a step back, but some medical equipment keeps her from going further. The top she's wearing causes his hand to touch her skin directly, it's a button-up, tied at her waist, but one of the buttons must have come undone when she got knocked back by Wesker's force. He doesn't take his eyes off her as he takes her hand and places it where his hand was- His hand remains on top of hers and her intrusive thoughts take over at the worst moment. His hand is big compared to hers and it's noticeably hotter than hers. She wonders what it would feel like to be touched by him. Her heart is beating hard in her chest, adrenaline mixed with another unrelenting feeling, that has been lingering close to her skin since she saw Wesker at the beginning of their training session, is making her body so much more sensitive to everything around her. 

     ''The blood rushing through your veins is proof that even when you give up, your body wants to keep going. Where your genes fail you is treating that rush as a threat. I will change it.''  Wesker says it in such a matter of fact way that Celeste believes him. 

          ''One more time,'' Wesker takes a few steps back and before turning replaces his sunglasses. Celeste braces herself and tries to place herself in the building. It's such a maze she could be anywhere. ''In half a minute I am going to start looking for you, kitten,'' she hears from a distance as Wesker disappears around the corner. 

          She decides to look for the center of the building, the machines make so much noise she might be able to lose Wesker for long enough to stay out of his terror radius. This attempt turns out to be the best she ever did. She manages to double back and take cover in the basement until she thinks Wesker's gone. As she slowly walks up the stairs the tightness in her chest warns of her hunter's presence. She decides to just run for it in hopes to get out of the area before Wesker gets there. 

          Celeste's foot hits the top step and all of a sudden she's flying backwards, for a moment she´s convinced that she tripped, but before her fall is finished she is flying through the air once more as Wesker's tentacle knocks her hard in the center of her chest.  This time she ends up slammed against the wall of the first smaller flight of steps in the basement. Wesker takes steps towards her and she can tell he enjoys catching her off guard. Before he has a chance to strike again Celeste takes off, running past him, taking 3 steps at a time. 

          She hears a chuckle behind her, Wesker loves it when his victims run, it awakens the virus within him and makes him excited to be able to show off what he's really capable of. Celeste is hurt, she knows she's leaving a blood trail behind her and the virus that Wesker once again infected her with causes for the worm like creatures to crawl through her skin once more, making it difficult to focus, slowing her down. She takes sharp turns here and there, every now and then looking behind her to know the direction of her pursuer. But when she loses him she runs straight down a long hallway. She knows he's around, the tightness in her chest is merciless. 

          Celeste doesn't see Wesker behind her or in any of the adjacent rooms. When she finally decides to look at the end of the corridor in front of her, a loud annoyed groan escapes her lips, she should have guessed Wesker would know what her next steps are. She turns around the moment she notices him and turns to the left at the first possible turn. Wesker lunges towards her as she cuts the corner and the chase is over. Celeste helplessly gets slammed against an unidentifiable object. Wesker's tentacle has wrapped itself around her throat. Celeste tries to focus on her breathing, remembering the last time Wesker had put her in the same position.

     ''How did that feel for you, kitten?'' Wesker seems to be enjoying himself more now that he actually had to chase her. It almost seems like he's out of breath, there is something new behind his eyes that Celeste had never seen before. It's very raw and animalistic. He releases her throat, but he's balancing himself on his hands on what Celeste now realizes is a hospital bed, there is nowhere for Celeste to go. Wesker's looking directly in her eyes, making her heart beat harder than when she was actually chased by him.

     ''Terrifying,'' Celeste admits. Wesker shakes his head. 

     ''Use your words, kitten, how did your body feel? What are you feeling right now?'' 

     ''My heart is about to leave my body, I feel light-headed, my throat hurts,'' Wesker's eyes drop to her throat, Celeste could swear she heard a groan form in his throat as the corner of his lips twitches. ''I can't think straight when I feel like this.''

     ''You're going to have to get more acquainted with your body then,'' without a warning Celeste feels Wesker's tentacle spiral its way around her throat. She gets lifted off her feet and Wesker throws her over his shoulder. Celeste screams out in pain when her flesh, that has been ripped open so many times, gets penetrated by the Hook. 

     ''What do you feel now?'' Wesker leans against the wall that faces the Hook and watches her. Celeste's sobs fill the hallway. The pain is excruciating, but so familiar. 

     ''Pain,'' Celeste manages to utter through gritted teeth, wondering how this is helping. Wesker seems to enjoy the view. She feels like he's doing this on purpose, but she cannot figure out why. 

     ''Think through the pain, kitten, what do you feel?'' He keeps watching her with an ever so slight grin. She just wants to get off the Hook, the pain has become such a normal occurrence in her life, it's just as annoying as getting a migraine when one needs to focus on something. Wesker´s admiration of her pain is not helping her mood either. 

     ''I just want to get off this hook and try again,'' the tone in Celeste's voice amuses Wesker even more. He watches her struggle for a while, Celeste decides to try and unhook herself, but to no avail. Celeste feels her energy draining fast, but before she gets sent to oblivion Wesker slowly walks up to the Hook grinning up at her. He slides his hands up her thighs, finally settling on her rib cage and unhooks her. Celeste´s hands fall against his chest as she balances herself, Wesker´s hands have found her hips, keeping her from falling. Her heart is betraying her now, it's beating hard to keep her alive, each loud rhythmical thump causing more blood to leave her body. 

         Celeste feels weak so when Wesker steps back from her she collapses against the base of the Hook. Her own blood slowly drips from the Hook right next to her. She is too weak to get up, she is almost too weak to hear Wesker's footsteps, the sound of blood pumping through her veins is rushing through her ears. There is a high pitched note getting louder somewhere in all the noise. Wesker's smirking face comes into her view, he's kneeling right in front of her.

     ''How far are you going to get like this, kitten?'' Wesker pokes a finger in her wound, causing Celeste to arch her back and scream out in pain. He watches her writhing in pain curiously, it seems to fascinate him. Celeste's fingers wrap around his hand, trying to move it, tears she's been fighting back wash over her face, hot on her skin. Wesker removes his finger from the wound and once again examines her blood between his fingers. 

     ''Why...'' Celeste's voice is frail. 

     ''There is so much information in just a drop of your blood,'' Wesker's eyes find Celeste's. He is unbothered by the pool of blood gathering under her,  she knows that this is just a simulation, but a part of her wonders if he would be any less entertained if she was actually dying. ''I can find any imperfection and fix it, you just have to let me. The choice is yours.'' 

          All the warnings she had received hadn't prepared her for this. Wesker has referred to himself as being a god many times, but she just assumed he thinks he's better than everybody else. She can't feel pain anymore, the high pitched note is all that she can hear and it's keeping her from hearing what Wesker's saying to her as her eyes glaze over and her body finally gives in. 

*********************************************************

          When she wakes up she notices several things out of ordinary. The room is empty, there is no cup of serum on the table next to the simulator, which has been replaced by a note addressed to her. The note contains two lines that have been written in very small, neatly written letters.

           Meet me on the other side. The door is open. 

          Celeste tries to find any more information on the piece of paper, but there is nothing. She feels out of place. Traces of pain and adrenaline still burnt into her memory, she reaches for the non existent cup of Sunshine and curses under her breath when she realizes that she's become dependent on the substance. 

          The choice is yours. But what does that mean? She stands up to leave the room, but her hand lingers on the door handle of the Survivor side. She was going to pretend none of this happened and hope to get back to Carlos, where it's safe and painless. But her carnal brain has different plans. She wants to see Wesker outside of the simulation.

          Ever since she arrived to the experiment she feels like she has been giving into her irrational side. She is used to making lists and then taking a decision after debating with herself for longer than any normal person would. But here... she has given into her curiosity. Wesker is right, the first string she sees she follows blindly, dying repeatedly has made her become more reckless. As she walks over to the other door she can't help but wonder if curiosity will kill the kitten after all. 

*********************************************************

          The door opens to an almost identical hallway and Celeste instinctively follows the signs to leave the building. When she reaches the gate her eyes are met with the most beautiful lake, surrounded by trees in the distance. The sun is slowly rising and the red color reflecting on the lake's surface makes it look ominously beautiful. She is so fascinated by the beauty of it that she doesn't notice a figure next to her leaning against the fence, so when the figure speaks, her heart awakens in her chest once more with an audible gasp. 

     ''Don't be scared, I'm not allowed to kill you out here,'' a youthful voice that Celeste is sure she has heard before announces and a slender man comes into her view. He holds out his hand and with a mischievous grin introduces himself. ''Hi, I'm Danny!'' 

Celeste accepts his hand and introduces herself. He looks familiar, he sounds familiar, but her brain is still affected by her slow death and with no aid from Sunshine she's on her own to snap back to reality. 

     ''I will take you to Wesker,'' Danny points towards what looks like a holiday resort. Celeste would almost feel annoyed at how much nicer the Killer side looks, but her curiosity has taken over and she already dreams of diving into the lake, even if just for a moment. 

     ''Have we met before?'' 

     ''You don't recognize me?'' Her escort's voice is filled with fake hurt. Celeste watches him for a moment, the way that he moves, his laugh, it´s all so familiar. It finally hits her. 

     ''Ghostface?'' Celeste exclaims in disbelief. 

    ''The one and only, but I do prefer Ghostie,'' Danny bows deeply in front of her. ''I am sorry about the mori, I usually leave them for the ones that annoy me, you didn't deserve it. But you know, Captain's orders!'' 

     ''Why do you follow his orders, what do you get out of this?''  Celeste remembers Ghostface brutally murdering her and him claiming that it was a gift from Wesker. Danny looks at her confused as if she's asked something that everybody should know. But then his expression changes, he gives her a reassuring smile. They have arrived to the building and Danny holds the door open.  

     ''I'm sure he will explain,'' Danny shrugs and leads her further into the building. Celeste tries to see everything she can as they walk through the building. She had never been in a place like this even before the Trials, it looks like one of the luxurious hotels she had seen online. They arrive to a double door and Danny opens it. Celeste walks into an apartment that is bigger than the one she calls home. ''See you later, Celeste,'' Danny closes the door softly, leaving Celeste with her thoughts.

          Celeste stands still in complete silence, waiting for something to happen, but her curiosity takes over once more and she makes her way to the balcony that she hopes will overlook the lake. She's not disappointed as she opens the glass door. The air is cold, but the view is worth it. Wind is rustling the treetops, a slight mist rising from the lake. The vastness of the sky gives her comfort. She takes in a deep breath of the morning air, but her senses pick up something else, a hint of cologne. She's not alone. 

     ''I wasn't sure you'd come, kitten,'' Wesker's voice comes as a surprise to her, she turns to face him and the realization that she isn't feeling tightness in her chest hits her. Her heart isn't beating like it's the last moments of her life. Although, the moment she becomes aware that he's shirtless her heart wakes Celeste´s body up.

     ''You told me to,'' Celeste does her best to not let her eyes drop to his body. A wicked satisfaction appears on Wesker's face at those words. His eyes burn as hot as ever, there is nowhere to hide when facing him, she feels like they're truly alone now that they're out of the simulation. 

     ''Good girl,'' Wesker says softly and walks inside. Those two words send Celeste´s body into overdrive. Her body takes over her rational thinking, a sick need for more approval form Wesker starts somewhere at the back of her brain, somewhere in her memories. Her thoughts get out of control as she looks at his body. Wesker has broad shoulders and his muscular back makes her wonder what it would feel like to hold onto it while being sent over the edge. He turns to look at her and beckons to her with two fingers. And she follows his direction as if she's in a trance. 

     '' I need to teach you to control your body when your brain is blindly following your instincts, kitten. You will learn to control your brain and not the other way around,'' Wesker pours a two glasses of whiskey as he talks and hands one to Celeste. She watches him take a sip, the golden liquid making his lips wet. Celeste's thoughts turn dark once more. ''Yes?'' 

Celeste nods and a devilish expression embellishes Wesker's features. Even though her brain is still reminding her that she was drained of life not too long ago and she should not even be standing up, a new wave of energy is running through her body. 

     ''Drink up, kitten,'' Wesker finishes his own whiskey and places the glass on the tray. Celeste doesn't take her eyes off him as she finishes the bitter liquid that fills her with a similar warmth that Sunshine does. She walks over to where Wesker's leaning against a large wooden desk and places her glass next to his. The moment the glass touches the surface of the tray Celeste feels Wesker's fingers wrap themselves around her wrist. He pulls her towards him and she ends up right in front of him, his legs on each side of her. Even though Wesker's leaning against a desk he is still taller than her. 

     ''I'm going to push your body to the limits, I will break you and you will thank me for it,'' Wesker explains as he places her hands against his chest. Celeste tries to understand the words that he just said, but she gets distracted by how warm his skin is. Where Carlos's chest was covered in hair, Wesker's body is smooth. Celeste looks up at Wesker, silently asking for  permission. He nods ever so slightly but that's all Celeste needs. She was convinced that out of the Trials Wesker would feel different. He doesn't. He feels as unreal as before, maybe Wesker considering himself to be a god isn't too far fetched. 

     Wesker's leaning back, his hands are grabbing the edge of the desk, making his muscular arms add to the perfection of his body. He seems to be enjoying Celeste's cautious touch. Her eyes are wide, and filled with sinful desire. The sense of danger still lingers in the air and she still doesn't grasp what Wesker means by breaking her, but being told what to do feels far more comforting and closer to home than putting up a fight. 

     ''I will make you perfect, kitten, but you have to agree to it,'' Wesker's voice is filled with peril lined with seduction. She nods as her fingertips move over his chest, failing to find any imperfection. 

    ''I need to hear you say it, Celeste,'' his voice turns demanding, echoing authority in the room. 

     ''Yes daddy,'' Celeste's eyes widen at the words that had just left her lips. Good girl had been playing with her since she heard it, yearning to hear it again and the authority in his voice awoke a thought that had been put to rest a long time ago. She wasn't thinking when she said it. Celeste looks away from Wesker, but a firm grip of his thumb and pointer finger on her jaw brings her eyes to his. She could swear he´s holding his breath. 

     ''What did you say?'' Wesker says in the same dominant way, his voice is somewhat more restrained than before. Wesker´s hold of Celeste becomes more firm, holding her gaze with burning eyes, they look more infernal than ever. She seems to have awoken two beasts that had been forgotten about. 

     ''Yes, I agree,'' Celeste's lies seem to make Wesker impatient.

     ''Say what you said, but clearly this time,'' he demands, quietly but each word is as sharp as the knife he uses.

     ´´Yes daddy, I agree,´´ Celeste says in a shaky voice. Wesker´s jaw clenches and a dangerous grin causes Celeste´s stomach to tighten. She tries to read the meaning of his look. 

     ´´Such a good girl,´´ Wesker´s words are like honey to her, a pleasant chill starts somewhere in her brain and runs down her spine. He places his hands on her hips and with little effort turns her around. He pulls Celeste towards him, one of his hands on her stomach and the other is slowly opening her blouse. Wesker´s voice is quiet, but each word sends waves of urgency through her body: ´´You´re not allowed to cum until I tell you to, understand?´´ 

[faustianbroker]

TIMING: Recent LOCATION: Levi’s house on World's End Isle PARTIES: Levi (@faustianbroker) & Gael (@lithium-argon-wo-l-f) SUMMARY: What was supposed to just be a casual dinner and hookup situation goes terribly awry when a skrzak arrives on the scene. CONTENT WARNINGS: none.

—

When Gael first talked to Chuck online, he hadn’t anticipated the night going the way it went. They met at seven where he gotten a visual and audio feel for the man but they didn’t linger for long - Chuck was apparently just as much a go-getter in person as he was in their online chat and soon they were seated at a table where they regaled information about each other while swimming through a sea of good food and drinks - Gael had four sisters, Chuck had a child, Gael was a chemistry professor, Chuck owned a couple of businesses. Gael also found himself more reserved, not in a bad way but his company that night was vivacious even by his standards.

Gael could also tell that Chuck was either more stubborn than he was or he liked to be in control because he didn’t figure the insistence to pay for the entirety of dinner and all the alcohol the two had consumed was out of charity. Either way, Gael was way too inebriated at this moment of time to even remember what had been typed out previously and he had foolishly said ‘yes’ when offered to go home with Chuck - the professor wasn’t a floozy or sexually loose on a typical day but maybe something Chuck said particularly struck Gael’s fancy.

. . . He couldn’t remember. He was drunk but he kept himself standing; for some reason, the past few months he realized he’d gotten much better at holding his liquor. Gael wasn’t questioning it. “Are we almost to your place?” He asked, turning his head to regard the other man.

—

Levi, on the other hand—introduced tonight as Chuck—was precisely what you could call a floozy, and damn proud of it. Getting a sense for the other man’s reservations, the demon was able to tone himself down just enough to keep the professor on his toes without overwhelming him and pushing him away. It was an old game, one he’d played thousands of times before over the last few centuries with countless partners. He was obviously an expert at it by this point when it came to in-person interactions, so it was no surprise when the man agreed to come home with him. The internet, on the other hand, tended to be more difficult for the demon to navigate stealthily, but he was getting better at it, at least. 

It wasn’t his intention to get the other drunk, but then, he was pretty sauced himself. The cocktails at the steakhouse had been fantastic, far too good to pass up when the next one was better than the last. So here they were, making their way (slowly) back to Levi’s on foot, having decided on a whim that a cab was far too much trouble. It wasn’t a far walk, anyway, and the cool breeze of the night air felt good. A little sobering, maybe, but that wasn’t a bad thing.

“Mhm,” Chuck hummed, lifting a hand to point down the row of houses they were walking past. “That one… on the end.” The one that stuck out from the rocky outcropping of the island, that had its own staircase down to the beach and private dock—the one that looked like it should have belonged to a celebrity, not someone who owned a couple tourist traps in a coastal Maine town. 

As they approached the home, exterior lights flicked on. It still retained the style of all the other historic homes in this area, but it had clearly been renovated to add some unique features. And that was to say nothing of the inside, which had been fully gutted and remodeled. Gael got a good enough look as they stumbled in through the back, and as the big, heavy door clicked shut behind them, Chuck was turning on his heel to move backwards into the home, beckoning Gael toward him. “Nightcap: yay or nay?” he asked with a lopsided smirk, knowing full well they didn’t need one, but whatever.

—

Gael wasn’t sure what he was expecting when Chuck suggested they go back to his place but it wasn’t the considerably larger house at the end of the walk - had Gael inadvertently stumbled into the one-night stand of someone famous? Maybe that explained why he wanted to pay for dinner and the drinks. He wasn’t too worried about it though; everything that was going through his slurred mind would be questions for sober him to think about tomorrow. Right now, they made their way down the staircase, feeling the salty air on his perspiring face and simple thoughts running through his head. The outside, while elegantly decorated and designed with its automated lighting system, couldn’t compare to the inside as the duo made their way into the abode and Gael’s face, flush with alcohol, lit up in apparent fascination. He was sure if he was sober then it wouldn’t have been as big a deal but right now, it was lovely. The professor instinctually started loosening his tie when he stopped and realized that maybe Chuck was into that part of the process and he gave his companion a brief look before shaking his head. “Nah,” He scoffed and followed the rhythmic finger that called him to pursue. “Nice place you got,” He admitted as he went after Chuck. 

—

“Looks better with you in it,” Chuck said with a grin. No nightcap meant no bar, which meant that their destination was now the master bedroom on the first floor. It was a short stroll through the living room with vaulted ceilings, beneath the catwalk on the second floor and down a hall to another set of massive, ancient looking wooden doors. They stood ajar, wide enough for someone of the demon’s stature to pass between without needing to touch them. Beyond them, a four-post bed of California King proportions, and a circular archway that led into a bathroom that was equally as spacious as the bedroom itself. 

But his attention was here, at the edge of the bed, hands finding the tie that Gael had started to loosen. “Could do without all these clothes, though.” As his fingers worked to liberate the man of his attire, his mouth found the other’s greedily. It became a bit of a blind fumble, then—slip out of that, shrug off this—and they’d only gotten about halfway through the ritual when a peculiar sound drew their attention.

It was… a laugh? It sounded far off, or… small… somehow. Chuck groaned, wondering if Gabagool was about to make an appearance and ruin the mood. “Not now, Gabs,” he called into the dim lighting of the hall. The laughing ceased, and thinking that that was that, he returned his focus to Gael. How was one to write that off? 

Perhaps it was better to just not explain. 

“Where were we?” With his guest now sitting on the bed, Chuck bent low over him and—

Goddamnit, there it was again. Annoyed, the demon threw Gael an apologetic smile before lifting himself off the bed, moving up to the doors that led into the room and peering into the darkness beyond. That laugh…

Well it didn’t sound like Gab. So what was it? He frowned, brow knitting as he tried to pinpoint the source. It sounded like it was coming from everywhere, which didn’t make any damn sense. And as the little laugh continued, a bizarre, foreign feeling crept up his spine. His stomach suddenly became upset, nauseated, and a chill ran through him. “What—” Backing away from the door, he threw a glance back at Gael, who was just as half-naked as he was, to see if he was… hearing this. 

—

Charming as Chuck was, a good chunk of what was left of Gael’s functioning thought processes were just slightly on edge, not wanting to get too far into something he couldn’t get out of, though his inhibitions were threatening to leave him at any given moment. Fortunately, as they pressed forward and his dark eyes beheld the room they were most likely going to spend the rest of their time in, he quickly grew accustomed to the layout - it seemed even bigger on the inside somehow - and he felt hands on his tie and a mouth against his and he leaned into it willingly. The process continued but not too terribly far, Chuck only having relieved Gael of a couple of articles of clothing when suddenly the former stopped, turned and called to someone or something that seemingly lurked in the darkness of the rest of the house. Gael raised an eyebrow with faint curiosity for a moment and without much else to do or perhaps to ready himself for the rest, he sat down on the edge of the bed expectantly. His host turned back to him and he kept his brown eyes on Chuck’s face, feeling his hands going towards his torso– And then Chuck stopped again. Gael propped himself up using his arms as his gaze followed Chuck’s, not questioning why he could see shapes in the inky murk that was an unlit hallway. He didn’t turn until the other man did to look at him, exchanging a glance with the shop owner. “What’s the matter?” He asked, his tone, while still rather casual, added some concern to it as his expression narrowed slightly. Indeed, he wasn’t an expert but in the short time he’d gotten to know the man, nothing about Chuck seemed uncertain in any way so it was surprising to see him backing away from something.

—

“You don’t hear that?” It wasn’t a comforting thing to know, but Chuck was ready to wave it off as nothing, or at least something that could be dealt with in the morning. Fuck it, he had better things to do. Like Gael, for example. 

Shaking his head, he returned to the bed once more, but not before pushing the doors shut behind him. “Never mind, it’s probably just someone outside,” he lied, willing the weird feeling to pass. The house was quiet once more as he returned to the professor laying atop his comforter, and in a matter of minutes, the phantom laughter was forgotten. 

Until it made another appearance, that is, this time definitely in the room with them. Chuck lifted his head, hands gripping Gael’s hips a little tighter as that icky feeling made a swift return. He looked up the length of Gael’s torso to meet his eyes, and this time he knew they both heard. 

What the fuck was laughing at them? 

Confusion reigned, and unbeknownst to Leviathan, shame. Magically induced, but shame all the same. 

—

“Hear… what?” Gael asked, his brow knitting further in the middle and that look continued as Chuck dismissed whatever was obviously going on in his head. His host returned to him after ensuring their privacy more intimately but what little seed of doubt that Chuck was now trying to tell the two of them wasn’t really existent had already been planted. Gael felt Chuck’s body against his once again and he tried to push the thought that maybe he had accidentally hit it off with someone who was a little too mentally unstable for him on this particular night out of his inebriated head but it was sobering him a little quicker than he’d have liked. Granted, he was an emotionally mature individual, and he didn’t want to deny anyone who needed help but maybe not while he was already swallowing the scrutinizing glare of deity who he would need to apologize profusely to as soon as he could. A few minutes passed and he almost managed to remove it when– He heard laughter. Gael exchanged an expression with Chuck as he tensed up immediately, gently but urgently scooting away from the other man as he glanced around the room. Was there a hidden camera? Were they being watched? Was there a speaker system that he wasn’t told about? They weren’t being recorded or observed, surely? “Was that what you were hearing?” He breathed, his sharp eyes not managing to stay in one place for long as he tried to pinpoint the source of the laughter, cruel, mocking, jeering.

—

“Yeah,” Leviathan growled, responding to the uncomfortable emotion with its own—anger. “Teddy!” it called in a venomous tone, half expecting its ward to be behind this, even though it wasn’t something they’d ever done before… why start now? No, it didn’t make sense. This wasn’t Teddy’s modus operandi when it came to pranks. And it definitely wasn’t Gabagool; that little fucker had the goofiest laugh Levi had ever heard, which this was not. No, this was… sharp. Sounded like it came from something small in spite of the way it bounced around the room with no apparent source. But there had to be one, right? There had to be.

“What the fuck.” The curse came out almost as a hiss, the proverbial hackles on the demon’s spine standing up straight. Unprompted and unwelcomed, its mind was flooded with imagery from its past: times that it might have been ashamed of its actions, if it had ever had a conscience. 

First, there were the teary-eyed exes, screaming at it or begging it to stay, demanding to know why it had cheated, et cetera. It was a well known scenario, but not one that had ever made Leviathan feel anything. Now, though, its heart hurt. It felt bad for causing so much pain to so many people, finding itself wondering why it had to be like that. Why couldn't it just dedicate itself to one person, at least until that person noticed that it did not age, or… or accepted it for what it was. Why had it never tried? 

Next, and perhaps even more confusing, was the corpses. The countless number of people it had killed since man first started to walk upright and speak actual words. Men, women, children… no one had been spared from the demon’s whims, not when it had a hunger for flesh or for entertainment. It could hear their screams now, and instead of finding it thrilling, the demon found it horrifying. 

It was saying something out loud, though it didn’t realize it. Names. Descriptions of the faces that swarmed its vision, bloodied and weeping. Apologies for killing them, for hurting them, for ripping them from their happiness to feed its own. It wanted nothing more than to return to the sea in that moment, to run away from the agony that the laughter was conjuring, and its body trembled as it begged to shift to a more familiar form that could whisk it away from here. 

It had utterly forgotten about the other man in the room, staring off into the middle distance as it muttered to itself, chest heaving.

—

The aggression in Chuck’s voice didn’t go by Gael unnoticed though it was getting… weird, to say the least. The laughter returned and as he himself got to his feet uneasily, it suddenly stopped. He turned to look at Chuck, trying to get a gauge on what they should do when suddenly he heard his mother’s voice in his ear and he stiffened up so quickly it was as though he’d been paralyzed. Her voice wasn’t warm and welcoming, as he remembered; no, this one was cruel, condescending, terribly disappointed. 

‘My son!’ She cried in his head. ‘Look at what’s become of you! What happened to the happy little boy I raised? What if he could see himself now, in a little town with not many people, going out drinking every night and not visiting his family!’ The words bore through Gael and he looked down at the dark ground, his brow furrowed. “I know, mama,” He replied quietly, not realizing that he was speaking Spanish. ‘No, you don’t!’ Her voice replied. ‘Sleeping around, being a teacher instead of doing something worthwhile with your life, wasting your time and effort on nothing. You get attacked by a wild animal and you change.’ There was a pause. ‘Put on a shirt, you’re embarrassing yourself even more.’ The spaces between her beratement were filled by something even more unfamiliar - admissions of murder, violence, gore, names. Gael turned his head slowly, his sharp hearing perhaps unintentionally picking up what his one-night companion was saying. As though the mocking laughter wasn’t enough, his mother’s voice ringing in his head, pulling into his mind poor choice after poor choice after shame after shame, he felt surrounded and while whatever Chuck was saying was unintentionally burrowing into Gael’s mind, he wanted to escape. He HAD to escape. Breathing deeply, trying to keep his thoughts under control, he went for the door that Chuck had closed.

—

There was no chance of the demon maintaining control in such a heightened emotional state, and just as Gael turned to the large double doors that led into the bedroom, the host’s chest burst open. The roar that echoed through the home was bestial, and loud enough to drown out the laughter, which had stopped abruptly. Blood and viscera painted the bed and walls as a hulking creature seemed to appear from inside the man’s body, scales slicked with gore as it turned its glowing, seafoam green eyes on Gael. 

It let out another bellow and lunged for him, thick body slamming its way through the now-open doorway as it passed him by entirely. It was hunting for the thing that had been laughing, webbed claws skittering on hardwood as it rampaged through the home, shoving that massive head in every nook and cranny it could find. Not an easy task, since whatever it was seemed to have been scared into silence by the creature’s abrupt and violent appearance, but that didn’t matter. Leviathan would tear this place apart until it found the fucking bastard. Maybe it was one of those dead things that’d been in the yard a few weeks ago. They were diminutive. 

It wasn’t until Gael was at the back door that Leviathan turned on him, letting out a long, low hiss. He’d seen too much. Eat him. Barreling down the hall toward the man, the demon’s many eyes widened in surprise as he managed to just slip through the door after figuring his way through the deadbolt, and it was forced to skid to a stop before busting out onto the beach in front of god and everybody. Looming furiously in the doorway, the bloody creature glared at the man that had gotten away for only a moment longer before using its tail to slam the door shut again. 

Fuck. Fuck.

—

The professor wasn’t sure what happened just as he opened the door but in what seemed to be an explosion of body horror, Gael was splashed with blood and who knows what else, a ringing in his ears and he dropped to a fetal crouch. He tensed, feeling his muscles rippling just under his own skin. Adrenaline started pumping itself through his system along with a scathing wave of pain on his arms. His breath quickened and as the bloody explosion rested on every available surface with a liquid patter like rain on pavement, he shakily peeked through unfamiliar fingers and his gaze was confronted with a decidedly inhuman, slithering demon. He didn’t have very much time to react as the creature lunged for him, though it went right past him out of the door. Gael, urged by a voice in his head and chemicals in his body, didn’t wait around and he stumbled through the door himself, slipping on the blood but using his powerful forearms to pull himself back to his feet. Fortunately, he was a quick learner when it came to house layouts and his strangely adaptive eyes enabled him to see enough of the shapes in the shadows to avoid hitting too many things, though they couldn’t have been further down on his list of priorities. The mocking tone of his mother was gone, since replaced by a primal drive to escape. Through the house, virtually slamming into the front door with his side as he heard the rumbling throughout the rest of the abode. Not bothering trying to see where it was, he kept his eyes on the door, trying to wrench it open with fumbling hands that he didn’t realize weren’t hands at all. Why– why was the door deadlocked? Gael finally made a grunt of fear and anger as he messed around with the lock, clumsily trying to unlock it as he heard the serpent that he could’ve sworn was once Chuck tore through the house. C’mon, c’mon– he managed to hear the click and he wrenched the door open, falling onto the porch and rolling off, landing on the sandy beach. He didn’t dare stop though, clawing his way to his feet and whimpering as he took off as fast as his legs could carry him. The night started off so well. He had a drink with a stranger. He went to the stranger’s house… the stranger blew up and– He didn’t know when he stopped and when he did, he tumbled into an alley where he breathed heavily, uncertainly, his jaw clenched and his eyes wide. He cradled his arms close to his torso, trying to get his breathing under control, wondering what the HELL happened. He was certainly sobered up now, whatever having happened before Chuck’s… episode having since been completely scraped from his mind. Slowly, fearfully, he held up his hands. They were covered in thick, dark fur, with beetle-black claws that shone in the light of the moon. Quickly, nervously, he pulled them back to his stomach. He would… have to…

Probably never interact with Chuck again.

[jerzwriter]

Meet Eli Sipes - (Elsa's version...)

Book: Wake the Dead

FC: Kendrick Sampson, but I will not be using FCs often for this series. Typically, I will use the sprite or art commissions.

Full Name: Elijah Sipes

Love Interest: Zoe Rivera (MC)

Age: 28

Date of Birth: December 15th

Born: California, USA

Raised: Eli and his family lived in a small town in semi-rural California, it was not a metropolis by any means, but it had all the trappings of the "old world" on a smaller scale. (Malls/stores, movie theaters, schools, etc.). His father feared the outbreak would get worse, even as the media played it down. When it was clear how bad it would become, he and his wife, decided to move the family about an hour away to a small cabin where they used to spend summers. It was less populated area, easier to defend, and it was possible to live off the land. While it was not far from The Tower, the colony where Zoe grew up, it was rather isolated. After moving there, his family only interacted with a handful of other families, all of whom were eventually killed or fled the area. Eli was the last one remaining.

Heritage: His father was black, and his mother was white. Being biracial, he and his family experienced racism firsthand. His father grew up in the South and moved to California during middle school. His mother lived there her whole life. Her family was of German and Irish descent.

Meet Zoe Rivera Wake the Dead Masterlist

This is a little more extensive than I would normally do for an LI, but as with my Meet My MC for Zoe, I want to give readers who have expressed interest in reading my WTD fics but have limited exposure to the canon story some background. So some of this is canon, but my own, more extensive, HC is woven in.

I hope you enjoy getting to know Eli. As I develop his character more, I'll be making updates. Thanks for checking this out!

Parents: James (Jim) Sipes and Florence Webber Sipes.

Jim and his family moved to California when he was in middle school because of a job opportunity for his father. Jim wasn't happy about the move, but he made a couple friends quickly. Florence being one of them. She and her family had lived in the area for generations, and the two became fast friends. By high school, they were already deeply in love, they had never even dated anyone but each other.

Florence always hated her name, so during Spanish class, Jim decided her name would be Flor (flower). He was the only one who called her that, which made it even more special.

Jim's family didn't like California, so most of them moved back to their home state shortly after Jim graduated high school, but he remained as he and Flor were already planning a future together. While some were supportive of their relationship, others were vehemently opposed to the interracial couple. But deeply in love, they were determined to make it work.

Their marriage remained strong through the most difficult of times, and they provided for their sons in every way. They were a very happy family, despite the tragic state of the world. Eli aspired to have a family like that of his own one day, but as time moved on and the situation worsened, he ruled out the possibility. By the time we meet Eli, he has zero illusions of such a life.

Sibling: David Sipes was Eli's younger brother. He tells Zoe that he was about her age, so approximately three years Eli's junior. The two were exceptionally close, and Eli was very protective of him, which made the circumstances around his death even more tragic. Eli tells Zoe that David wasn't made for this life (after the pandemic). I imagine him to be more of a dreamer, less practical, with a poet's soul. They were definitely each other's best friends.

I believe Eli had a change of heart and allowed Zoe, Ana, and their companions to stay with him on the night they met was the result of the close bond he witnessed between the sisters. After enduring the tragic loss of his brother three years earlier, he just couldn't let them go into the woods alone, even though it was against his better judgment to let them stay.

I hope to explore more of Eli & David's history together in the future.

Friends/Family: Eli has some memories of his mother's family, particularly his grandparents and his aunt, as they lived nearby. He only had vague memories of his father's family because they moved away. However, his father's uncle, an eccentric bachelor, lived nearby. None of his extended relatives lived long after the outbreak.

After moving to the cabin, there were a handful of families that also chose to live alone in the region. They relied on each other for various types of support and socialized together on occasion.

One family, The Joneses, was especially close with his family. They had two children, a daughter Vanessa (Nessa), who was Eli's age, and a son, Brady, who was two years younger. I'll also address these relationships more in fics. They will be very impactful to Eli's story.

Personality/Traits: While Zoe has little recollection of life before the outbreak, and she consistently wonders who she would have been if the world had not ceased to exist as they knew it. Eli remembers life before and even some of the dreams he once had before the world ended, but he almost refuses to think of them. He's practical to a fault and adopts an "It is what it is" attitude. He's grateful for the skills he has that allow him to survive and has no time or reason to think of anything else.

Because of this practicality, he pretends that the outbreak and the losses/tragedies he endured did not impact him greatly. Zoe doesn't buy that from the start. As time goes on, and he begins to get in touch with other parts of himself, memories from his past become clearer, and he is more in alignment with who he was, not who he was forced to be.

He is an extremely skilled marksman and excellent in battle; Zoe views him as a "jack of all trades." He commanders a motorcycle and escapes the Raiders, only later telling her he never drove one before. He is resourceful, and a leader, but his lack of people skills impedes the latter. We learn that he can whittle but can't draw a picture to save his life. But Zoe has that skill, and I believe his younger brother did, too.

Some trivial facts (likely to be expanded in the future):

Before the outbreak, Eli was one of the best students in his school, like his mother was when she was younger. Florence always wanted to leave the area, live in a big city, and pursue a successful career. She told her son he could do anything he wanted and encouraged him to study hard. He transferred that attention to survival skills, but the desire to learn never left him.

Eli is into fitness. Much was for survival, but it became a way of life. Their life has a lot of built-in physicalities, but even with that, he follows a fitness routine. He enjoys hiking, swimming, and other outdoor activities. Since he "acquired" the Raider's motorcycle, he learned how to properly ride, and I think one day, he and Zoe may take that road trip she spoke of.

The kids of Olympus tend to gravitate toward him, even though he's not warm and fuzzy. He says it's because kids appreciate honesty, Zoe says it's because they like him by association (to her), and Troy says it's because he bribes them to torture Eli on a regular basis. It's a combination of the three.

While he comes to love life at Olympus and having a family again, it's not an easy adjustment. Even after he is settled, there are still struggles that arise from time to time.

That's all for now. I will definitely expand more on him as I continue to write. Thanks for checking this out! :)

Permatags: @a-crepusculo @aishwarya26 @animesuck3r @annfg8 @annoyingmillenialnewbie @bex-la-get @binny1985 @bluebelle08 @bluerosesbloom @cariantha @coffeeheartaddict2 @crazy-loca-blog @danijimenezv @different4strawberry @differenttyphoonwerewolf @doriopenheart @fayeswiftie @forallthatitsworth @genevievemd @inlocusmads @jamespotterthefirst @jennieausten @kingliam2019 @liaromancewriter @lilypills @lucy-268 @mainstreetreader @mysticalgalaxysstuff @ofmischiefandmedicine @onikalover @openheartforeverinmyheart @peonierose @peonyblossom @potionsprefect @quixoticdreamer16 @rookiemartin @schnitzelbutterfingers @secretaryunpaid @socalwriterbee @tessa-liam @toadfrog26 @trappedinfanfiction @uneravine @youlookappropriate @zahrachoices @jerzwriter-reblogs-asks @hopelessromantic1352

WTD Only: @bebepac

[findingtheperfectcharacter]

do you mind if i ask for the receipts on kankri & porrim’s relationship? not bc i disagree lmao just genuinely don’t remember much abt the dancestors

No problem! Okay so I will state ahead of time that their relationship exists for only a few scenes, if you want to see their interactions in video form there’s this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dFIvrML3x0w&list=PLs7M3iWCG1W4cvAUPxSzzTLkDQZzGopyo&index=2&pp=iAQB and what I’ll be copy-pasting from for this post this transcript http://readmspa.org/transcripts/readmspa-transcript-6_007163_Meenahquest__Part_1_transcript_and_walkthrough.html . If you’d like to draw your own conclusions. I also have individual posts about the thing if you’d like those, but I’m a sucker for making intensely long posts at any given opportunity so let’s go through it!

So… How does Porrim feel about Kankri? Well a lot of their fandom interpretation is built around her giving him his sweater because he used to constantly shiver which is worded like this. PORRIM: Also+, he was always shivering. It gets kind o+f chilly o+ut here, and he just wo+uldn't sto+p. No+t that I minded to+o+ much, but he just has this way o+f making such vo+cal and o+stentatio+us displays o+f suffering, like it's so+me kind o+f righteo+us state o+f being. It gets difficult fo+r everyo+ne to+ endure, especially after eo+ns. Hence his nickname, I guess.

(The Nickname being ‘the Insufferable’, a play on his alternative self’s title The Sufferer and everyone finding him annoying.)

So alright, she thinks he’s a whiny bitch who takes pleasure in his own suffering because it lets him be a martyr. But shrug, this is pretty tame in terms of how trolls talk about each other. I only focus on it because it’s not a one off in how she sees him.

But okay, let’s get to the meat and bones of the matter. Their actual conversation. Now first I need to point out that Porrim’s aware even before talking with them that this is important to Kankri.

PORRIM: I think he might be entertaining so+me delusio+n o+f taking him under his wing. PORRIM: Or if no+t his wing, the red fuzzy arm o+f his sweater.

Anyway, she starts by using a nickname that he hates because it’s infantilizing.

PORRIM: Kanny, leave this po+o+r kid alo+ne.

KANKRI: I'd appreciate it if y9u w9uldn't call me that. We've talked a69ut this. That's what y9u call a wiggler. D9 I l99k like a wiggler t9 y9u, P9rrim? N9, I d9n't. It's 6een three sweeps, plus eternity, f9r, excuse me, "fuck's" sake. I think we can safely retire that particular term 9f "endearment". Call me anything 6ut that, even my 9ther nickname. I'm actually 9k with that 9ne.

This isn’t something she didn’t know about. They’ve talked about how he finds it infantilizing and doesn’t view it as a form of endearment. She continues to use it. He than says, ‘at least don’t use the nickname that I find insulting in front of the kid I’m trying to mentor.’

KANKRI: It w9uld 6e nice if y9u'd at least use my pr9per name in fr9nt 9f my studi9us y9ung Alternian descendant. It really kind 9f er9des my credi6ility, and I d9n't need that in the pr9ximity 9f a fresh faced y9ungster wh9 clearly thirsts f9r kn9wledge. Why w9uld y9u want t9 sa69tage a fine y9ung man's educati9n like that? #Fresh #Faced #Y9ungster #Kn9wledge thirst PORRIM: Ro+lling my eyes here. PORRIM: Can yo+u see? Do+ yo+u want me to+ light them up fo+r yo+u?

This is like… A really basic boundary that she’s weirdly hostile to. I honestly judge you a little bit if you see this as ‘someone behaving like a brat’ instead of ‘someone not liking being told no, don’t call me that’ but that applies to a lot of behavior deemed ‘bratty‘. But I’m not going to go on a rant about that right now

. Continuing, Kankri responds to her bullshit by politely telling her to fuck off. She responds by asking Karkat if he even wants to listen to him (he’s silent but his expression says ‘no’) and than says something that could be viewed as hitting on him, which makes Kankri DEEPLY uncomfortable because Karkat’s vaguely related to him (uh, for lay people out there Dancestor is a portmanteau of Descendant and Ancestor, due to timeline shenanigans in universe A Karkat is descended from an alternate universe Kankri and in universe B Kankri’s descended from alternate universe Karkat.) and also he has hang ups. His overtalking than just takes a wild dive into slut shamming for a hot minute. No his digs at her weren’t okay. She’d actually be correct in spitting venom at him for that, I wouldn’t hold it against her. He apologizes, but it’s undercut by him sort of still doing it. I want to make it clear that Kankri is being a douche here and I won’t defend him on that the way I will his other behaviors the only reason I’m not copy pasting that thing is because it’s 3 paragraphs (but I am willing to if you really want to see it.)

Anyway, Kankri than tries to go back to talking at Karkat. Which prompts this.

PORRIM: Yes, critical lecture. I'm sure.

PORRIM: And am I right in being just as sure yo+u are assiduo+usly deco+nstructing every co+nceivable, hypo+thetical fo+rm o+f injustice no+ matter ho+w o+bscure, except tho+se that I happen to+ think are kind o+f impo+rtant? #Yes

… I started making this post thinking I could do it from her perspective, how she feels about him and clearly barely likes the guy but the only thing I can say is, “You’re not being honest here. What you’re doing is obvious. Stop.” She doesn’t like Kankri’s speeches.

LATULA: grl, pl34s3. dont t3ll m3 your3 go1ng full v4nt4s on m3 h3r3. PORRIM: No+, if I were getting my Vantas o+n, we'd o+nly be getting warmed up. But that's really all I have to+ say o+n the matter.

PORRIM: I do+n't think he cares. PORRIM: Hey, there. Karkat? If yo+u do+n't mind my asking… are yo+u even remo+tely interested in the lo+af supplement this guy's serving?

PORRIM: I no+ticed ho+w yo+u cunningly sidestepped an enco+unter with Kankri do+wn there.#Nicely do+ne.

I said it in another post and I’ll say it again: If Kankri suddenly figured out Feminism and added it to his topics tomorrow it wouldn’t matter. Every bit of dialogue she says suggests that this is about making him shut up because she thinks he’s a whiny brat. It’s the first thing she says about him.

The dialogue continuing makes it obvious that Kankri doesn’t get how misogyny manifests in Beforian society. This could be the perfect time to bring up the sexist double standards that come with the slut shaming he did earlier. This could be a good time for world building. Like

KANKRI: I'm s9rry, I just d9n't think there's much there. We aren't like humans, wh9se species 6izarrely en9ugh includes highly specialized r9les f9r 69th sexes in the pr9cess 9f repr9ducti9n, and s9 this naturally had s9cial ramificati9ns f9r the way their civilizati9n ev9lved. 6ut that's n9t h9w it w9rks f9r us, s9 I fail t9 see h9w gender fact9rs int9 the discussi9n in a way that can 6e effectively and rati9nally pr96lematized. Where is the r99m f9r unexamined privilege in the dich9t9my? I d9n't see it.

It drives me a little mad that she insists on this conversation and when Kankri makes it clear that he doesn’t get this and a these basic questions ‘who benefits from the system of misogyny in a culture without sex and where did said system come from?” She gets pissed. My gal. You literally insisted on having him talk about sexism. You were mad and snarky at him for not having this conversation. Now you’re mad at him FOR having this conversation but not getting it. Anyway, because he doesn’t get it and no one wants to explain it to him, he basically says ‘this is a nonissue that you want me to make an issue on par with the other issues I discuss and I think that’s inappropriate.’

KANKRI: …And appr9priating the talking p9ints and awareness-raising tactics f9r du6i9us issues like this is, frankly, fr9wned up9n, t9 put it p9litely. Such appr9priative gestures 9nly serve t9 marginalize and invalidate th9se su6ject t9 seri9us, real life struggles and 9ppressi9n

Porrim says this triggers her, Kankri apologizes asks to find her moirail in a way that’s a bit quadrant shamy, she calls him a brat and leaves.

So. She walks in, calling Kankri by a nickname he finds demeaning in front of someone she knows he wants to respect him, passive aggressively asks Karkat whether even wants to be there to put Kankri down, asks why Kankri isn’t talking about what SHE wants to talk about, gets mad when it’s clear that the reason is he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and leaves.

That’s interaction 1. In interaction 2, Kankri asks Porrim to stop trying to police his talking points and deliberately embarrass him. Something something he’s studying human culture which leads to her calling him childish and than pointing out the grub sauce on his face. PORRIM: Yes it is. Yo+u have a big smudge o+f sauce, right there. Yo+u're a mess, Kanny. Co+me here. KANKRI: N9! N9, st9p. D9n't t9uch me, I g9t it! #SEE??? #It's fine

PORRIM: Do+n't wipe it o+ff with yo+ur sleeve! Oh my Go+d. I JUST washed that fo+r yo+u. #Gho+st laundry KANKRI: I d9n't care. I didn't ask y9u t9 wash my sweater. I keep telling y9u, I have n9 interest in 6ef9ran p9ssessi9ns. #9r Alternian #9r Earthly

PORRIM: We aren't o+n Befo+rus anymo+re. I wo+rked hard o+n that sweater, and I'm no+t go+ing to+ stand by while yo+u encrust it in grub sauce

… This is one of those scenes where ymmv hard. You could say Porrim’s doing all this shit out of the goodness of her heart. You could say this makes Kankri spoiled for not respecting everything she’s done for him. (that he didn’t ask for.) Personally though. It makes my skin crawl. I was on a server at one time, I have a bit of a habit of fretting over people I like when they say they’re not eating or sleeping or whatever because I prefer my friends safe and alive you know? Than one of them said, ‘hey, don’t fret over me. It makes me uncomfortable. I can take care of myself.’ So I stopped. Because it doesn’t matter how good my intentions are, if someone doesn’t want you to do something to them, you don’t continue doing it. Porrim didn’t catch that memo. Instead.

PORRIM: Why are yo+u always so+ co+ntrary with me? To+ be ho+nest, I think yo+ur need to+ "rebel" against whatever I suggest is what drives yo+ur dismissal o+f my views mo+re than anything abo+ut the views themselves.

He’s not ‘rebelling’. He’s telling you no. He’s telling you he doesn’t want you to do this. You’re ignoring and dismissing that because you don’t actually care. There’s also the obvious hypocrisy of ‘you’re only dismissing my views because you’re being rebellious’ while she dismisses his viewpoints all the Goddamn time. Including literally one sentence later.

PORRIM: Hurdles? Kanny, yo+u sho+uld serio+usly sto+p o+verthinking this stuff. Even I do+n't kno+w what yo+u're talking abo+ut mo+st o+f the time. KANKRI: L99k, I'm just saying, it's a huge risk 9pening that can 9f dirt n99dles, trying t9 educate pe9ple 9n that su6ject 9n t9p 9f everything else. I just d9n't want t9 distract fr9m all the m9re glaring issues that desperately need the full attenti9n 9f 9ur pe9ple if we are g9ing t9 make any pr9gress as a civilizati9n. PORRIM: Pro+gress as a civilizatio+n? PORRIM: Kankri. Our peo+ple are extinct, and yo+u're wo+rried abo+ut "distracting fro+m the mo+re glaring issues"??

Her social issues still matter for the good of civilization and shouldn’t be dismissed despite them being dead. His don’t. Kay. Anyway mothering someone is cool and all but both parties need to be okay with it and you can’t be a weird authoritarian parent who sees your friend as a bratty child about it or else it’s just a normal toxic relationship.

[ducknotinarow]

Yvonne hummed slightly, soon looking Raph's way with her gentle smile ready,

"You know Big Red, if you struggle reading, why don't I read out loud to you?" She suggests, picking up a disregarded book, "Perhaps you'll find it easier to listen to a book than try and read it yourself?"

She knew he tried, but hey, reading can be boring if not in the right mindset, and with everything he already had to deal with as the eldest brother? Well, there's a good chance it made it difficult to focus. Besides, it gave the perfect chance for a good cuddlefest while she did it.

Moving to sit in the corner of his bed, she pats the empty beside her, inviting him closer,

"Worth a shot, don't you think?"

| muse interaction

Raph's eyes squinted a bit, straining to keep focused on the [age he was reading. Well, fighting the urge or maybe near cry or just a strong need to just let his eyes fully close. Reading was boring, okay well he read comics but that was a bit different there was at least something going on for him to focus on as well this was just a wall of text and yeah there were some pictures here and there but eh there wasn't anything going on in those pictures to keep Raph engaged enough as he let eyes travel back to where he left off. Expect uh he kind of forgot where that was he skimmed over the section he thought he was at, but nothing was ringing any bells here. He hung his beak and groaned a little to himself. Shifting around on his bed, careful not to let his tail move around too much, he didn't want to mess up Yvoones sketch book or disturb her things she had left when she left the room a second. Rapgs bed was covered in her things, and he knew if it moved a slightest it be gone for a good while. What he once called a mess he learned was her own odd way of keeping things in place. He huffed because his mind rather thought about all the stuff in the room over what he was reading, so he needed to scold himself a little.

Mind Raph gave him the run down on why he needed to focus just now as he rolled his eyes and set the book he was trying to focus on down on his plastron. "OKAY! I know ya don't gotta hound me here!" Raph went on to say in his one-sided conversation, throwing a hand in the air as the lecture only went on to continue further, making him even more annoyed about it all. "Ya, it was my idea bozo I aint need ya on my ass telling me what I already know dimwit." Was it occurring to Raoh that he was basically insulting himself? No, not really. This argument was only going on and growing far more heated. Raph moved to sit on his knees on the bed, setting the book down on the coffee table as he pointed at the air as if he turly believed someone was there.

"Alright, look, it here you!"

"You know Big Red, if you struggle reading, why don't I read out loud to you?"

Raph, pause mid threat to turn focus on to Yvonne now instead. He hadn't even noticed she was back in his room just now, must have gotten some extra colors from Mikey. She said she needed a certien one but didnt have it on her so she wanted to see if she could borrow something from mikey see if he had the right color she was seeking just now. Turning back a moment, he lowered his voice as he jabbed a finger towards the air. "we ain't done here, jerk." Attetion snapped back to Yvoone as he eased to sit back on the bed. Legs crossed and hands set to matress with a wide smile, having missed what she said. "Sorry, what?" Surely she was used to all his little quirks by now that he didn't feel a need to explain who he was talking to. Watching yvoone pick up the book, he took his attention as he slightly bite at his lower beak, praying she would know.

"Perhaps you'll find it easier to listen to a book than try and read it yourself?"

"Uhhh." His eyes were too focused on the book as he looked between it, and here from how she was holding it, he swallowed thickly suddenly. Sure, he was fine with her seeing him have a one-sided fight with himself in a sense, but still.

"Worth a shot, don't you think?"

She made herself comfortable on the edge of the bed and patted the spot near here for him to join. He wasn't against her idea, of course not. Heck, he could listen to her talk all day even. Just...

He reached over, trying to take the book from her. "Oh, uhm yeah, that might work just, uh, not this one, it's lame I'm over it. Maybe a different book would be better! Yeah! A different book, all new story, it'll uhhh get my uh focus center to refresh?" He offered as he tugged at the book trying to take it before she had a chance to open it, but as he did, a magazine slipped out between the pages. What he had been actually trying to sit down and read. The book actting merely as a cover-up. Nothing scandalous but with how Raphs face fell you swear it would be.

"You didn't see that!" He shouts, snatching the fansioh weekly issue he been hiding the whole time. And quickly throwing it into his mouth muched down the tear it all up into a very easy to swallow mash of paper as he offered a sudden smile bits of paper stuck between sharp jagged teeth as he offered a nervous laugh in response. Soon, shoulders dropped, and he hung his head to sigh, starting to pick at his teeth he was likely to have paper cuts all in his mouth. Again. Leo was gonna get on him for it, too. Great.

"I tried having Donnie teach me some terms, but he gave ma homework. Said I gotta read these cause jus' telling me things ain't gonna do much if I I don't uh bother to commit it to memory?" He thinks is how Donatello had put it. Rubbing at the back of his head, feeling a bit foolish in the moment. "Sorry. Imma tryin' ta understand the stuff ya do so I can better compliment yer stuff is all. Well, and understand half at least what you say. I wanted it to be a surpise, tho. Stupid mind Raph ruined it." He huffs annoyed as he hangs his beak.

[annisthree]

Chapter VII: Synchronicity

previous chapter // series masterlist // next chapter

Pairing: Cassian Andor x Original Female Character

Word Count: ~5k

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Explicit language, explicit sexual content, canon typical violence, use of alcohol

Chapter summary: With only one night to the planned attack, the Rebels meet one last time to go over their plans.

A/N:

This gets very wordy and very self-indulgent at one point, and I'm not even sorry. It is what it is. Hope you make it through to the end.

I might be going to hell for this.

The dark, damp cellar that served as a makeshift war room for the local Rebellion was now filled to the brim. The place belonged to one of the leaders of the local cell and had been used whenever there was a need to meet inside the city walls, but still remain undetected.

The cellar was filled with a peculiar assortment of whatever they managed to gather and quietly transport - a few crates, mismatched chairs, and a single table that now served as a stand for their holomap. It was mostly dark, the primary source of light being a blue projection of the building they were planning to infiltrate.

It was their last meeting before the planned attack, so the room was buzzing with anticipation. Everyone was there - the crew of the Blackbird huddled in one corner of the room, the group leadership (consisting currently of Gaere, Ethre and Cassian) stood by the holomap, and the remaining twenty-something almost-soldiers were dispersed throughout the room, occupying every square metre of the place. 

Marla was doing her best to stay as far away from Cassian as possible, desperately wanting to avoid the heavy air of awkwardness that had been growing between the two of them since yesterday night. She tried very hard not to think about how his hands felt on her body, and how close his lips were, and how she spent the rest of the night lying in bed wide awake, analysing every second of that interaction and coming up with a list of reasons why she made the right choice.

But then again, she couldn't help throwing a couple of stray looks in his direction, and that was enough for her to notice how tired he looked. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was hunching over the holomap, his finger moving rapidly across the small control panel. The obvious tension in his demeanour could very well be attributed to the upcoming fight, but Marla couldn't help but wonder if there was another reason for his uneasiness.

'Okay, here's what we know,' Cassian's voice cut through the chatter, momentarily gaining the full attention of everyone gathered. 'The celebrations tomorrow start at noon with a parade around the city. That tells us two things: moving around the city will be difficult because all the Imperial guards will be on the streets. On the other hand:  all the Imperial guards will be on the streets . Meaning, that's our moment to set up on the rooftops.'

They were pretty well prepared. They knew the exact schedule of the Empire Day celebrations, they knew the parade's route, they had the blueprints of the garrison where the Imperial forces would gather to hold a ceremony. They also knew, thanks to Cassian's investigation, that the city guard had been taking people off the streets and into custody, likely to mask the levels of unemployment and poverty and create an illusion of order. They had the location of the prison and knew the captured locals were transported somewhere off-world.

Most of all, they knew they had to strike fast and simultaneously if they were to succeed. Therefore, they divided into three strike teams. Marla and Ethre were to participate in the celebrations, keep an eye on the governor, and coordinate comms with the two other teams. Another team was led by Zafe: it constituted the majority of their forces, and their job was to enter the garrison and stun or otherwise incapacitate the guards and apprehend the governor, preferably along with some of the Imperial leadership. They would be hiding on the rooftops, waiting for Marla's signal to ensure they had everyone in one place.

'Once you're in, you will split into three subgroups; one will block the entrance to ensure no one is entering or leaving; another one will guard the back, and Gaere and the rest of his men are to locate and take the governor prisoner. Ideally,' Cassian raised his head only a little, throwing Gaere a stern look, 'ideally, we want him alive; he might have a lot of useful information. The same goes for the Imperial captains. However, should anything,  anything  go wrong, do not hesitate. I mean it,' for the first time, he looked briefly in Marla's direction. 'Don't try to be heroes. Don't be stupid.'

Cassian took a moment to look around the room, examining each face with a commanding, confident stare. 

' Right. In the meantime, Aevie, Salvatore and myself are gonna be ready in the governor's mansion. I'll let you in through the servant's quarters. Aevie, that's when you access the mainframe and upload your behavioural spike to the gardener droids. They're not armed, so we're not gonna get much real help from them, but at the very least, they can provide distraction. Once we have that, we go straight to the prison, free the prisoners, take them to the mountain base, and wait for confirmation from the other two teams. And then, hopefully, we all meet in the base. Questions?'

'Yeah, I have one: do you have a death wish? How do you imagine the three of you going against the prison guards? We don't even know how many there are.'

The look Cassian sent her in response to her comment froze her to the bone. It wasn't anger, it wasn't even frustration; he looked at her as if he's never met her before, as if she was just some stupid insubordinate lieutenant questioning his orders. Which, in all fairness, she was, but she was hoping she was also a bit more than that. Well, maybe not anymore.

'I understand subtlety isn't your strongest suit, but I am not taking an entire battalion of people on a  stealth  mission. I'm not going to explain this any further. Do you have a problem with my plan, lieutenant?'

Cold, so fucking cold. Then again, Marla didn't know what she expected - did she really think Cassian would be crying himself to sleep after she rejected his advances? 

'No, sir,' she replied with as much coldness and detachment as she could muster. Which, to be fair, wasn't that difficult. Fuck him, and fuck his stupid games.

*

'Okay, what the fuck happened between the two of you?'

The rest of the meeting went relatively calmly, probably partially due to Marla resolving not to interact with Cassian until absolutely necessary. People were now beginning to leave; they had to move in small groups to avoid raising suspicion, so it would take some time until the place cleared out completely.

Waiting for her turn (and desperately eager to talk with someone who wasn't oozing contempt and passive aggression), she was happy to find two things: a crate of home-brewed jet juice and a Sargeant in need of company. With a newfound wave of enthusiasm, she grabbed two bottles and dragged Zafe to the small yard outside.

She was hoping for some distraction, some news from the outside world, an update on how their training was going. Instead, she got interrogation.

'What do you mean?' she asked carefully, taking a long swig from her bottle and bracing herself for the rest of the conversation.

'Come on, I've known you for ten years. Let me guess - one of you has finally realised they have feelings for the other, then you had an awkward confrontation, one or both of you got cold feet, and now you're both indulging in some good old self-flagellation. Did I guess?' 

'No. No one is having any feelings. You're not as good at reading people as you think.'

'Come on, you're forgetting we share a wall,' he teased her with a hint of laughter in his voice.

'And?' she mumbled, feeling the weight of his stare on her and becoming painfully aware of the redness creeping onto her face.

'And I can hear you moan his name at night, dumbass. It's been going on for at least a couple of months, hasn't it?'

Oh, great. That was precisely what she needed - being caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Or between her legs. She silently scolded her infinite stupidity and began desperately looking for a way out of the conversation.

'I'm not -' she started, but was cut off as Zafe gave her a mock-solemn look and started to laugh.

'Right. I'm sure it was Salvatore. Come on, you don't have to lie to me. And besides, in case you were still thinking you're fooling anyone, I'm happy to report every single one of us is deeply aware of your, erm,  predicament .'

Marla groaned loudly, putting back her now-empty bottle on the ground and snatching Zafe's drink out of his hands.

'I'm not kidding, lieutenant,' he continued, utterly immune to her silent plea for mercy. 'Stop being a stupid idiot and do something about this. You know, there's a high probability we all die tomorrow. If I had the opportunity to make my last night alive more  memorable , I wouldn't be thinking twice.'

'Well then, go ahead. Cassian's right there,' she snapped playfully, giving him a twisted smile. 'And he's pretty desperate, too, from what I've been able to observe.'

Zafe chuckled, turning his head to look towards the stream of light spilling from the only window that was overlooking the yard. For a short blissful moment, they were both quiet, allowing Marla to listen to the faint sound of speeder bikes passing in the distance.

'Just think about it,' he said, standing up and picking up the two empty bottles. 'You can't keep avoiding this forever.'

'Watch me,' she sent him a wide grin. Zafe just shook his head and turned to walk back into the building. 

A quiet sigh of relief escaped her mouth, followed by a groan. 

What a stupid situation to be in.

*

She was happy to discover Cassian would not accompany her on her way home - he claimed to have to pick up some supplies in the city, and she and Ethre had to be going back to avoid suspicion.

Over the past few days, Marla had developed a fair bit of regard for Ethre. She was much stronger than she looked; she sacrificed her shot at happiness to rebuild her planet, and now was about to sacrifice even more to help them free a planet that she shouldn't even care about, one that had welcomed her with cold and dirt and an unwanted marriage. That was something Marla could definitely respect and understand, even if her own methods were very different.

But beneath all that, somewhere in the less logical part of her brain, Marla couldn't shake the image of that first meeting and Cassian and Ethre together in the cantina, exchanging glances and subtle, almost-accidental touches. Maybe it was all an act, maybe she was reading into it too much, but the picture was still engrained into her memory.

And so, she spent most of her journey back thinking about whether Cassian would be bold enough to sleep with the governor's wife in their own home. He  had  grown pretty bold lately; she could clearly see that based on her own experiences. Why wouldn't he try? And, more importantly, why would she care? Maybe getting laid would finally make him act normally again.

Stop thinking about it. You have a mission; you should be focusing on not getting killed tomorrow rather than what Cassian might or might not be doing at night.

Upon entering her room and slamming the door, she realised how breathless and agitated she had once again become. The adrenaline of the upcoming attack added to the combined excitement and frustration of the past couple of days left her overwhelmed and all worked up. Oh, how she missed the Rebel base, where she could always find something to release these kinds of emotions: be it on the shooting range, under the hood of the Blackbird's control panel, or in their little only-slightly-illegal bar. The only thing she could do  here  was to throw herself onto the bed and clench her fists, hoping for the sleep to give her a much-needed break.

But the sleep never came - what came instead was a growing annoyance at the intrusive thoughts that kept coming back to her. Thoughts of warm, curious hands hesitantly brushing over her skin. Thoughts of smoothly shaved cheeks, true to Imperial fashion, and how they would feel under her fingertips. Thoughts of his breath on her lips, and her own breath getting shorter and more desperate and shorter and louder and...  oh.

Before she knew it, her hands began to drift across her body. She knew thinking about Cassian in this context wasn't a good idea and would definitely not help keep things between them healthy... but  fuck it , she had wandered too far off into the storm already, and the only way she could survive was to surrender to the rising waves.

And so her fingers found their way beneath the cold silk of her nightgown, trying desperately to convince her brain that the hands were Cassian's.

It wasn't difficult to find what she was looking for. Each gentle push of fingers that should have been Cassian's, each sigh of lips that should have been entangled in a kiss, every second of growing tension brought her closer to the edge. The eyes that should have been revering his naked body closed shut, desperately attempting to evoke every little detail of  him  and imprint it on the back of her eyelids. She hadn't been this consumed in ages, completely forgetting where or who she was, focused solely on the images in her head and the hand between her legs.

And then, seconds away from the peak, she heard a knock on the door.

Brutally forced back into reality, she jumped up and began frantically looking for her nightgown.

Another knock.

Finally clothed, she stumbled out of bed and made it to the door.

The face she saw on the other side made her briefly consider whether she had indeed left the fantasy world or if perhaps she was still lying on the bed and making up scenarios in her head.

But no, he was there.

Fuck. 

Just how much did he hear?

*

Everything. He had heard everything.

Climbing up the stairs, Cassian instantly identified the unmistakable squeak of a wooden bed frame. He briefly stopped and considered turning back, but his legs refused to walk in any other direction. His rational brain turned off entirely as he stood in front of the door and became absolutely sure that the faint humming sound in the background was in fact Marla's breath, loud, fast and unapologetic in its ostentatiousness.

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead in a desperate attempt to regain composure.

And then the breathing became even faster and louder, and Maker, he could feel his own body stiffening and his hands itching to guide him towards his own release.

No. He needed to focus. He came here to deliver something and then leave. He couldn't get distracted. Besides, she told him yesterday she did not want anything to do with him, loud and clear.

His hand trembled only slightly when she raised it to knock on the door.

*

Marla had gone through years of military training, had witnessed the fall of the Republic and participated in numerous bold endeavours in the name of the Rebellion; she fought, lied, run and stole - but she was never this petrified as when she saw Cassian outside of her door in the middle of the night, when her body was still burning from the lack of closure, and the smell of hedonism was still lingering on her fingers.

'Brought something for you. It's for tomorrow. Ethre had it custom-made for you.'

In his hand, there was a rather large flat box. Still barely registering anything, as if reality was just a distant memory, Marla took the package from Cassian.

An expectant look on his face reminded her of what she was supposed to do. Right, open it.

Marla took another couple of steps back and sat on the edge of the bed, trying not to think about the residual warmth emanating from her sheets.

Inside the box, there was a dress.

'It's for tomorrow. It's been specifically designed to help you hide some weapons. Ethre had me promise you would try it on,' Cassian said, almost apologetically, averting his gaze.

Right. Try it on. Ethre wanted her to try it on.

Still stuck in some sort of a feverish trance, she took the dress out of the box and made her way to the bathroom. As if on autopilot, she took her nightgown off ( again ) and stepped into the dress.

The dress was blue, with intricate embroidery around the neckline. It fit snugly around her body, emphasising... well, virtually everything that could have been emphasised. The fabric was light, airy, and cool to the touch. Cassian had said that the dress was designed to help hide weapons, but she couldn't help but feel like it was also meant to  distract .

The only issue with it was that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't close the zipper all the way up.

Great. Marla sighed quietly and mustered all of her courage to exit the bathroom.

'Need your help with the zipper.'

Upon reentering the bedroom, she found Cassian sprawled across the sofa in an ostentatiously carefree pose. He had been looking out of the window when she called him, and she could swear she still saw the stars reflected in his eyes when he shifted his gaze upon her. There was a moment of unbearable silence, Cassian just looking at her with a blank and faraway expression, only that treacherous glistening in his eyes making her heart feel ten times heavier.

'Right,' he muttered, standing up and slowly approaching her. She turned her back to him, facing at the same time a large floor-length mirror standing next to the bed. The Marla in the mirror gathered her tousled hair onto one side, granting Cassian access to the halfway-done zipper.

She couldn't see his hands, but a sudden tug on the fabric signalled he was struggling. There was an unexpected sharpness to his movements, so different from the soft and warm touch she remembered from the night before. He clearly wanted to be done with this as soon as possible, but the stubborn mechanism was oblivious to his wishes.

'Careful,' she said quietly, identifying too late the slight tremble in her voice.

Cassian stopped for a moment and then resumed his attempts, this time slowly, delicately - and successfully.

'Done,' he rasped, his breath tingling the exposed skin on her back.

Looking up, she couldn't help but admire how the blue silk draped over her body, how it flowed over every little curve, and how the colour made Cassian's eyes that much darker and deeper by comparison. Right, Cassian's eyes. The eyes that were currently devouring her reflection, telling her everything that his lips wouldn't dare to say.

He was still standing right behind her back, looking over her shoulder at the mirror. He was no longer touching her, but she would swear she felt the warmth emanating from his body, fusing with her own feverish aura.

'There's a blade hidden in the buckle,' he muttered quietly, his eyes still roaming across her body. 'May I?'

Marla felt her head nod before she could register the intent to do so. And then she almost suffocated on her own breath as she felt his hands reaching around her waist to the belt, his fingers gently toying with the buckle until he pulled on it and uncovered a small retractable knife on the other end of the clasp.

'Huh. Pretty cool,' she said, immediately congratulating herself on her eloquence.

'Yeah,' he hummed, painfully reminding her of the sound he made in her imagination in a slightly different context. 'And there's also a hidden pocket for your blaster. May I?'

Maker, when did she forget how to breathe? The notion seemed completely alien to her as she nodded again, carefully tracking his movements as he slowly lowered one of his hands to her thighs. 

Suddenly, Marla realised two things. First, the pocket on her left side had its bottom cut off, allowing access to her thigh (likely so that she could hide her blaster by having it strapped to her thigh, and still be able to reach it when necessary).

And second: to demonstrate this functionality, Cassian placed his hand inside said bottomless pocket and rested it directly on her naked skin.

'You can strap your blaster to your thigh and still quickly access it.'

She would have loved this idea had she been able to focus long enough to form a coherent thought. But Cassian's hand was still on her naked thigh, spreading fire from the spot where their bodies connected, expanding further and further until her entire being was burning.

And then a cold, cruel air replaced the warmth of his hand, and they were completely separate again. Marla searched the mirror for his eyes, but he was no longer looking at her, instead inspecting the small strip of floor between their feet.

She knew how this would end. He would break off,  again , and pretend nothing had ever happened,  again , and walk away leaving her desperate and confused,  again . She watched him take a step back and turn away towards the door, and it felt like she had seen this scene dozens of times before.

'Hey. Can't reach the zipper, remember?' in a blur, Marla heard the words coming out of her mouth, but they sounded strange and far away.

Cassian stopped in his tracks and froze for a moment, prolonging the resulting silence to the point of torture. But he did eventually turn and came to stand behind her back, fingers tracing a line on her skin as he helped her unzip the dress. A faint flash of sensibility reminded her to keep the garment in place by crossing her arms on her chest and pushing the fabric to her body.

And there they were again, two bodies lined up in front of a mirror, with chests rising and falling in a frenzy and with lust glowing in their eyes.

And there  she  was again, standing on the edge of an abyss, tentatively dipping her toes into the darkness before realising that this time she had wandered off too far and that this was the night she  finally  jumped off the ledge.

Breath in, she closed her eyes.

Breath out, she pulled her lip between her teeth nervously.

Breath in, she uncrossed her arms and let the dress fall to the ground, leaving her completely naked.

Breath out, she opened her eyes to see Cassian's expression go from surprise to realisation to lust .

They were still staring into the mirror in front of them; her, anxiously awaiting his reaction, and him, devouring her with his gaze. Any trace of doubt disappeared as soon as she saw the limitless, unconditional adoration on his face.

'Are you sure?' he whispered into her neck, making her eyes inadvertently drift shut.

'Mhm,' she hummed, her voice just as shaky as her resolve as she realised everything she had been refusing to admit forced its way out into the open.

And just like that, the floodgates were open.

The carefully cultivated distance was shattered by his touch, his hand slowly trailing over her naked skin, drawing mysterious designs on its surface, all while burying his face into her neck, his lips pressing impatiently just below her ear. It felt as if the universe was collapsing all around her. It was almost too much to bear and yet not nearly enough.

'Tell me if you want me to stop,' he breathed the words almost directly into her ear.

'Please don't- please don't  ever  stop,' she muttered incoherently, closing her eyes shut again and biting her lower lip.

She felt him smile against the skin of her neck, and then immediately, his fingers began tracking up over the line of her abdomen and to her breasts, circling around them slowly, gently, endlessly. Biting back a moan, she tilted her head to the side, searching for him until their lips crashed together in a messy, impatient kiss. Their mouths became entangled in a beautifully chaotic dance, each trying to satiate as much of the long-cultivated craving as possible, ravenously claiming the other one's lips and stealing each other's breaths.

Before she knew it, he began pushing her towards the bed, still refusing to break the kiss, as if he was afraid she would change her mind.

'Are you sure?' he pulled away for long enough to ask again, his words no more than a murmur in her ear.

'I am. Are  you  sure? Cause you're starting to sound like you want to back out,' she whispered back into the hollow of his neck, a hint of playfulness in her voice. There was a slight chuckle in her ear before she found herself being slammed down onto the soft bed.

I guess that's a yes.

He was grinning down at her, pausing for a moment to contemplate the sight, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes in adoration.

'You seem awfully overdressed,' she commented, sitting up on the bed and tugging at the lapels of his jacket, forcing him down and then immediately stripping off the outer layer, followed quickly by his shirt.

She never felt more alive. It was like all the pieces starting to come together; all the longing and desperation finally beginning to make sense. She pulled his body closer, trying desperately to steal as much of his body heat as she could, while guiding him to where she had always wanted him, into the places that seemed to have been made to be explored by his eager hands.

But it still wasn't enough; she wanted all of him, she  needed  all of him. Somewhere amidst the rushed caresses, she found his eyes again, and they were full of both incredible strength and bewitching vulnerability. As she studied his expression, he gave her an inquiring look, and so she replied by shifting her hands toward the buckle of his belt, eliciting a half-stifled groan from deep within his throat. She chuckled and cupped his jaw in her free hand, forcing him to look her straight in the eye as she released him from his trousers and underwear. His eyes were glazed over with unlimited adoration and pleasure, and she couldn't stop the smile that was forming on her lips.

'Are we protected?' she murmured, praying he made use of the male birth control injections that the medics back on Yavin IV were so enthusiastically advertising and giving away to whoever asked.

He nodded hastily, and then, not wanting to waste any more time, he grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head, engaging her in another frantic kiss before he broke off and threw her a deep, meaningful look, his eyes asking the only question she wanted to hear. She smiled again and nodded, her body burning with anticipation.

Slowly, he positioned himself between her legs and paused briefly to test her reaction, but she was already pulling him in, digging her fingers into the bare skin of his lower back, silently pleading for contact.

And then, all of her world drowned in a pool of bright light as he entered her with one firm thrust. Her vision was eclipsed by blinding brightness, and ever-consuming darkness, and all the other colours she didn't care to name. She saw nothing and everything all at once, the entire universe flashing its deepest secrets right before her eyes. She gasped loudly, shutting her eyes to fully appreciate the sensation.

'All right?' he breathed, his eyes betraying the same overwhelming euphoria she felt deep within her chest.

She replied with a kiss, and before she knew it, they were both gone, lost in the frantic rhythm of their bodies clashing and dancing and melting into one, until they shared one breath, until it was no longer clear where one body ended and another one began.

Time stilled completely, and for one brief moment, she wondered what she'd done to deserve all this. Why did someone like her get to experience such unearthly bliss? Why did she get to have him, all of him? How was this fair to the rest of the world?

But then she felt him speed up his pace, and Maker, she knew she wouldn't last much longer. She buried another moan in his mouth, greedily tangling her fingers into his hair, only to shift them back down to his neck, to his back, as if she suddenly realised she had to quickly memorise his shape, every small curve of his body, every scar and irregularity, every tense muscle.

He had her on the verge of consciousness, gasping for air, drowning deeper and deeper before she finally went over the edge, desperately trying to stifle a scream by biting down on her arm, ignoring the self-inflicted pain, ignoring the obscene sounds she was making, and getting completely consumed by the overpowering sensation.

And then, just as she was coming back to her senses, she felt him tense up and let out a couple of soft, pleading moans before he, too, found his release.

As clarity crept back in, Marla felt a soft tingle of anxiety burning at the back of her head, but she decided to fight it off for now. She will have time to panic in the morning. For now, all that mattered was the lingering taste of his lips and the warm feeling that made her feel an inseparable part of the universe.

She looked at him again, admiring the tiny beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead, cherishing all the lines and shapes of his face, drowning in his affectionate smile. 

If she dies tomorrow, she will at least have this memory to cherish before she goes.

A/N:

I'd like to dedicate this chapter to my fiance, who has spent the past week utterly confused about the sudden uptick in activity in our bedroom. Here's to him never finding out our sex life is being revived by Star Wars.

And yes, in my head, the Star Wars universe had discovered male birth control, because why not. Don't come at me.

[petalstumblingdown]

Fallen Friendships.

It’s not ideal, but it seems like I’ve stumbled into a dark tunnel that I can’t seem to muster the will to get out of. Metaphorically speaking. I’ve been blessed with the ability to easily connect with people, but unfortunately my brain is attached to the idea of what friendship should look like. Most importantly: friends should want to be around, and they should want to move passed disagreements because having the other person in their lives is most important. I haven’t followed my own idea, and now I’ve left a trail of broken friendships on my path to today. Now I’ve even started breaking bridges of social and familial relationships.

A few months ago, my brother’s wife told me she was hurt by a joke I made, but that’s just me. I joke and tease the ones I love, because they do the same to me. As does she, usually. I think I was just hurt that she took offense to some ‘I’ said, since she should know I think the world of her. Something so small made my walls fly up, and I ended up telling my brother it was easier to just not interact with her, because I couldn’t handle the situation. A fundamental part of my personality was causing pain for one of the people I love most in life. I can’t sensor myself. I talk a lot, I have almost no secrets, the only things I keep to myself are things like this, depressing thoughts that aren’t going to help anyone I love to know about because they’re not just going to go away. It’s easier to stay away than risk hurting her again. This is one of the most frustrating facets of my personality.

My insecurities have too much power over me, and many have come into existence through my experiences and strong emotions. Honestly, I’m tired of being disappointed by friendships. I love fiercely, deeply and I’m loyal to a fault. But that love is not unconditional. I’ve disagreed with choices people have made, and these points of contention, no matter how trivial, have ended those relationships. It takes little more than one time for this to happen before a person can begin to wonder if they’re so easily thrown away. And let’s just say that it’s happened to me a lot. I can only see a perspective as I am able, and it just leaves me waiting. I’m always waiting for them to turn up one day, so that I can mend whichever bridge has broken. (Yes, I am a bit of a doormat for people I love.) But, they have to make that step towards me. I feel too insecure in my own self worth to chase them because I don’t believe that I am worth the effort. Some have probably sensed this anxiety and stayed away because of it. It’s a lot to expect the other party to be the bigger person when both parties are hurt and disappointed.

Honestly my self worth is through the ground, it really couldn’t get any lower. I’m alive by the grace of my parents’ love, and how fiercely they’ve instilled the idea that they need me to exist and be around. Thankfully, no one could tell I’m like this just by looking at me, or through conversation; it would kill my family if they knew how easily I’d throw away my life if it meant they were able to be unburdened. But no price is worth the grief and shattering of my family. Unfortunately that also keeps me trapped here, slowly wasting away. And since I’ve managed to push away all my friends and am not seeking more people to befriend, I’ve stuck myself in a difficult position. But I’m just really, really tired. I have a lot to give, but I also ask so much. Besides, I’ve met a lot of good, amazing people, so the fault is entirely my own. I wish I wasn’t born this way. And for so long I’ve wished I was never born at all, I’d rather someone else more worthy of this blessed life were here in my stead. The concept of erasing someone from existence I feel, would be freeing, with no grief or guilt to worry about. Everyone deserves a trial at life before they are expected to go on for an unknown amount of years until the people who love them are gone; or worse, if they are to be at the mercy of worse circumstances.

On a lighter note, I know a lot could improve in my life if I gain some self confidence. Unfortunately, I’m scared to work on myself, in order to love myself more. I’m terrified by what I know about the world. In my opinion, it’s easier to be ugly and hate yourself, than be beautiful and risk the dangers that come with it. An amazing mix of personal experiences and an overactive imagination. Thankfully I’m able to manage the worst of my depression with said overactive imagination and love of stories and games. It also helps that I’m blessed in many ways. It’s easy to remember why I need to keep working and keep smiling, in darker moments like these.

Well, since I’ve now basically broken all the bridges that have ever existed in my life, it means I might be writing here more often. I think I’ll skip the tags though. There’s no advice needed for this, not that I’d probably take it anyway. I just have to hope my ability to immerse myself in hobbies will tide me over till the next time I’m mopey enough to post again.

[sanikasalevelblogs]

Media Studies #week 14

This week we finally began with our production process for our film “If only you were there”

Day 1:

The first day of shoot is always exciting and nerve-wracking as its where all the rehearsals, pre-production work and 6 months worth of planning comes to life.

We created the schedule in such a way that the locations were close-by so we wouldn’t waste time in travel.

day 1 consisted of only interior scenes which included “Neetha and Anya’s house”, “Namit’s house”, and “the flashback house”. however in reality we only used 2 locations.

Table read

Before starting the shoot we did a quick table read to refresh the pointers that are important while acting the scenes. Moreover, it helped us save time as there won’t be any confusion later.

(Aryan(cinematographer) and I conducting the table read)

While briefing Sanjay sir (Namit), Advik(editor) conducted a short dubbing session for Chaitna ma’am(Neetha) as we needed her sounds for the phone calls in scene 4 and 6. I had briefed her the required pace and tone so she had a clear idea as to how to act. Advik solely supervised this recording as he had an idea as to how the sound should be recorded for the edit. 

Makeup:

For the makeup we primarily focused on Anya, We gave her dark circles as her character has anxiety and stress. As camera doesn’t show subtle makeup we had to enhance it and make it darker than required, which in real life looked unrealistic but on camera it looked perfect.

Anya’s room:

Anya’s room is the first location and is where we introduce Anya to the audiences. As the setting plays a significant role while telling a story we wanted to focus on individual details for the room. As she is an art student we wanted the room to define her personality.

Scene 3

Conventionally, an art students room is filled with art supplies, plethora of art pieces and most importantly warmth and brightness. simultaneously, the room is also cluttered and chaotic which adds to her personality. 

For the mother daughter interaction we wanted to mainly focus on neetha being a helicopter parent.

To achieve this we made her dialogues more fast paced with concern and hurry in her tone. 

After this scene was finalized we had to take an unexpected break as our cinematographer felt nauseous and had a massive headache. At one point we even considered postponing the shoot to later dates, however, our cinematographer was willing to stay back and continue the shoot as our actors had their own professional lives due to which getting them to be available again would be difficult. 

While Aryan was recovering, Advik and I decided to take the character interviews for our Instagram page. We prepared questions to ask the cast individually and told them the questions beforehand in order for the interview to go smoothly. 

Scene 7

Initially, according to the storyboard and shot division we had decided to only have one shot in this scene (bird’s eye view of Namit sleeping) however while shooting I thought we could add extra shots to let the audience know more about Namit.

We added a closeup of a Whiskey glass to show that he was an alcoholic. More over we also added a long shot, birds eye view and a tracking shot of Namit lying down.

Scene 8

This was one of the most crucial scenes as it is the moment where the post twist takes place, we had to choreograph the whole scene as to where will the dialogue delivery take place.

(Aryan and i preparing the actors)

While Advik was prepping for the scene we took a quick rehearsal as our actors aren’t professionally trained. I explained to them about the background and the meaning of individual lines. Moreover, we gave them the freedom to improvise as according to me a fight scene is best done when it comes out naturally.

(me choreographing the scene)

(BTS of scene 8)

Day 2:

Day 2 was fully based on external scene which took place on a bus stop, For which we used the Hollyland mics which we had tested before.We did the test again on the shoot day to make sure it is working.

After applying the makeup again to maintain continuity we began the shoot for day 2.

Scene 9

We had to make sure we were on schedule as every scene required a certain sun position. for example in scene 9 we required an golden hour effect for which we shot it first, early in the morning.

This scene takes place the day after Namit realizes that Anya is his daughter, so in this scene he doesn’t show up and Anya is upset over this. To gratify this scene we took a POV shot to show the audience, Anya’s perspective.

By showing Anya’s point of view while she was scanning her surrounding helps the audience feel the characters emotions and feel empathetic towards them.

Scene 4

This was the scene when the main characters interact for the first time. In this scene we wanted to capture Anya’s anger to towards the world contrasting with Namit’s calmness.

The costumes were also decided according to that. As they both have contrasting personalities where Namit always has a straight face meanwhile Anya is seen happy, sad, angry during the course of the entire film. The wardrobe for this scene was black outfit for Anya and white formals for Namit, We applied the yin-yang theory which says how 2 opposites can actually be interdependent and interconnected to balance the world.

Scene 5

As the apology scene is conflicting from the previous scene we made Anya wear lighter clothes. Overall as our film has fast cuttings compared to the conventional family films which has slow shots due to which we kept this shot slow and smooth with only one long shot.

This singular shot will help the audience focus more on the dialogues than the actions which are less relevant in this scene compared to the dialogues.

We added humour to this scene as it gives audience a break from the seriousness and allows them to emotionally reset for the upcoming scene and help them absorb it better. Moreover, a well-placed comedic  scene can create a memorable contrast making the dramatic scenes more impactful. Lastly it enhances the storytelling and create a more well rounded cinematic experience.

Scene 10

The final and climax scene of the film had to be the best presented for which there are a few element that we had focused on.

Firstly, the framing of the shots were very important as it emphasizes the intensity of the scene.Overall we used closeups and over the shoulder shots as it clearly shows the facial expressions which are one of the crucial factor in a dramatic scene.

The pace of the dialogues were suppose to be perfectly timed as it couldn’t be too slow or fast. We made the actors extensively rehearse the lines before the shoot to nail the scene(as it was the last scene to be filmed and was conducted in the evening we didn’t want to lose the sun.)

Lastly, we made sure every element of the scene was carefully crafted to deliver maximum emotional impact.

Wrap!

As the shoot comes to a close, there was a mix of emotions. On one hand there was relief that after all the unexpected problems we were able to manage it and the shoot went smoothly from there on. On the other hand there was a sense of sadness that the experience is over and we won’t be able to meet the cast often. Working with everyone in this team was something i will cherish forever as there was a real bond created amongst us.Lastly, it is good to know that all the long hours spent to make this shoot happen were successful and i can’t wait for the edit to begin and to watch the final output.

Directors cut:

I researched about how a character trait can be conveyed through makeup as Anya has anxiety which is not addressed in the film itself.  I found out that dark circles are one of the most evident factor seen when a person suffers from anxiety.

As a director I envisioned scene 3 to be with fast cuts with camera being closer to the character during every dialogue delivery. However, due to a delay in our schedule because of unexpected circumstances, the sun’s position had changed due to which we had to take tracking shots which made the scene more realistic

For scene 8 we required in depth research about the fight and how is it shot.I took inspiration from films such as ‘blue valentine”, “revolutionary road” etc. these movies helped me understand the pace, facial expressions and camera angles that are used in such scenes.

As our film was only 5 minutes long i wanted to incorporated meanings to every scene possible as it would enhance the quality of our film.So in scene 4 when Anya throws the paper at Namit it also implied that the paper was Anya (crumpled and torn) while namit brings the paper (life) back to her in order to fix it.

[joroanblog]

Otherworldly Mending Comprehensive Procedures - How to Increment Recuperating Energy Now

The real essence of recuperating is tied in with creating ideal energy to appreciate carrying on with your life completely. Mending is considerably more than a method of doing, it is a condition; Finding a sense of contentment with ourselves, our bodies, our connections and our lives. We should investigate how to make seriously recuperating energy to work on your wellbeing and the nature of your life.

Recuperating is a re-visitation of completeness by accomplishing balance in your life. To get everything rolling, we want to investigate the idea of wellbeing and relinquished a few obsolete ideas. During youth, were instructed that recuperating is just a way to fix and fix. We discovered that mending occurs as a response to disease or something to zero in on when we're wiped out. Numerous conventional techniques for recuperating in our way of life are tied in with battling and overcoming ailment and illness. In any case, the central imperfection with these methodologies is that they consider mending a static, something to "do" when you're wiped out.

There is a saying,"a individual is alive, yet not exactly living." Customary mending is tied in with keeping the body alive, some of the time no matter what. In the clinical field, demise is viewed as disappointment. There are numerous spirits caught in actual bodies because of the progression of medication. There are even machines that will keep your lungs relaxing for you. Simply keeping a body alive, doesn't create a condition of mending.

Completeness praises and regards every one of the four levels of your being. It starts by purchasing and regarding your physical, close to home, mental and otherworldly bodies. These four degrees of being or "bodies" are the establishment to completeness that prompts making ideal wellbeing. Certified recuperating is a re-visitation of completeness by accomplishing balance in your life.

The Four Levels of Your Being that Produce Wellbeing and Health.

The main degree of mending is with your actual body. It's the most noticeable part of our being. We can undoubtedly distinguish and see the side effects of disease truly. Nonetheless, the absence of disease doesn't characterize a condition of wellbeing and health. Sadly, many individuals utilize their body as the main indicator to decide whether they are sound or sick. In the event that there are no side effects or torment in my body, I should be sound. Correct? That like saying, well on the off chance that we aren't at war... then, at that point, we should find a sense of contentment! Correct? Wrong! You'll before long see that the actual body is just the first of four bodies to assess your condition of wellbeing and health.

Mending starts by going with decisions to really focus on your body. Pose yourself these inquiries to assess your relationship to your body.

Do you see the value in your actual body? Do you find it simple to acknowledge or do you continually scrutinize your body? Is it true or not that you are embarrassed about your body? Is it true or not that you are estimating it against principles of flawlessness that are difficult to accomplish? Provided that this is true, then, at that point, wonder why and record your responses in a diary. Recording it assists you with reflecting further. These four inquiries will assist decide your ongoing relationship with your actual body and can be an impetus to kick off your recuperating interaction. Be straightforward with your responses and record them on paper.

You might find you have been in an exceptionally broken relationship with your body. Provided that this is true, pardon yourself and start to acknowledge, appreciate and regard your body, similarly for what it's worth. Acknowledgment, appreciation and regard will rapidly change the useless relationship with your body. It can likewise assist with creating positive propensities to really focus on your body and nuture it toward wellbeing.

A Couple of Ideas to Appreciate and Regard Your Body;

o Work-out everyday to give feeling to your inward organs.

o Eat supporting food varieties with live energy like products of the soil.

o Inhale oxygen filled air to restore your energy ceaselessly.

o Open your body to daylight in little dosages consistently.

o Rest soundly and take into consideration a lot of chance to rest and rejuvenate.

o Find better approaches to encounter delight and solace.

o Acknowledge any actual constraints and love your body for what it's worth.

The Second Degree of Mending is with Your Close to home Body.

A higher degree of mending is inside your profound nature. Many individuals experience a useless relationship with their close to home body. This is because of an absence of figuring out about the idea of feelings. We were never shown how to keep our feelings sound. All things being equal, we were urged to debase and subdue them creating close to home cynicism. This unfortunate relationship prompts profound pressure and can be the wellspring of numerous actual medical issues.

Science is presently finding the way in which feelings affect the actual body. It is practically momentary and is the premise of the body mind association. For instance dread triggers adrenoline and causes the survival reaction in a millisecond of that feeling being set off. Mental close to home pressure impacts your actual wellbeing, by changing your science, invulnerable framework and circulatory strain.

What is a positive feeling versus a pessimistic one? Many individuals get adhered with regards to managing their profound body. The most widely recognized reason is that we partition our feelings into classes of "good" and "awful" sentiments. The "upside" ones we have considered deserving of feeling. Then again, the "awful" feelings are considered inadmissible, and we will more often than not overlook, deny or stifle them. Our judgment of our profound nature makes the brokenness on this level of our being. Check This Out magnétiseur paris

Passing judgment on feelings as "great" and "terrible", makes close to home antagonism. Customarily we're educated to feel the "great" or as I like to call them, "growing feelings", then we are being good. Notwithstanding, assuming that we feel the "terrible" or "contracting feelings", we are being pessimistic. This division of good and awful with your feelings produces pessimism that prompts brokenness.

You'll start to make mending on this level quickly, by changing how you characterize your feelings. Start by relinquishing the decisions of good and terrible. All things being equal, consider them growing and contracting. Then contemplate breathing and ask your self, "Is breathing in great and breathing out awful?" No... you really want to do both to inhale appropriately, thus it is with your feelings, they cooperate growing and contracting to direct and safeguard you through your life. At the point when you let go of the molded decisions from your experience growing up you will move toward profound wellbeing and prosperity.

Genuineness is the best close to home condition. Being genuinely mindful of your sentiments in any case in the event that they are growing or contracting is speaking the truth about how you truly feel. Essentially tell the truth, is the best relationship you can have with your viewpoints and sentiments, so drop the decisions of good and awful, and simply tell the truth. Sense of pride isn't saying 'sorry' for how you genuinely feel, it is a condition of regarding your considerations and sentiments. This is one method for creating confidence.

All feelings have direction and offers criticism about your life. Each feeling is a characteristic criticism component to acquire more noteworthy comprehension of how you're doing in your life. They are intended to give direction on your excursion through life. To completely regard yourself is to be straightforward with how you feel genuinely so you can transform it. Denying feelings keep them alive and can torment you for a really long time. At the point when you ponder a part of your life that isn't working the manner in which you need, you will normally feel tightening feelings and similarly, the regions that are functioning admirably will feel broad.

In the event that you feel outrage, be furious! Try not to attempt to persuade yourself that your not. Feel it, express it (capably) and discharge it (pardoning) and afterward return to feeling cheerful and free once more. Close to home trustworthiness is the most remarkable and positive method for being. Nonetheless, assuming you deny your resentment, you can draw in a wide range of negative encounters, all for the sake of attempting to "be positive". It never attempts to deny what you are sincerely feeling. Genuineness is the smartest strategy and will set you free particularly on a profound level.

Step by step instructions to Foster a Solid Relationship with Your Close to home Body.

It starts with trustworthiness and an eagerness to feel and communicate your feelings and afterward discharge them. Whether its resentment, hurt, love, or bliss, the feelings should be felt and delivered. This makes a positive close to home condition. How we connect with our feelings decides their good or pessimistic effect in our lives.

Will Adore be Negative and Outrage be Positive? Indeed, the two of them have the capability of being either sure or negative contingent on how you connect with them. At the point when you express your feelings, they become a good impact in your life. Similarly, when you curb them, they turn negative and can wreck devastation on your wellbeing.

Unexpressed love can be colossally negative. Stifled love can change the science of your body, your pulse and at last add to coronary illness. Love on a close to home level is energy. At the point when we will not allow energy to stream, it becomes quelled and can cause numerous actual difficulties.

The most effective method to transform outrage into a good encounter: Outrage that you feel (truly), express (mindfully) and discharge through pardoning, can make good changes in your day to day existence. Outrage holds a piece of your resolution. At the point when you experience your fury and express it productively, you can get to this caught resolve to make discipline and positive changes.

The most effective method to start regarding your close to home nature. Start to allow yourself to feel every one of your feelings without judgment and to helpfully communicate them. You can best do this, by journaling. Record your sentiments consistently is an extraordinary method for communicating this energy and delivery it from your close to home body. It might take some training, yet it will eventually prompt a better condition.

The Third Degree of Mending is on the Psychological Level

The force of our psyche is boundless. How would you connect with this inherent gift, called your human brain? Do you perceive the worth of it to completely change you or do you disr

[sarahmckayhnd2b]

Rush Hour: Everybody Street

Location Class:

General Notes:

Some photographers want to pretend it’s a movie they are shooting while some say show me the real you.

Willing to go out in to chaos and interact with the movement. Welcoming ambiguity and clarification.

Wonder the street not knowing what you’re going to shoot and just watch life. Use it as a way to learn your culture and what is around you.

“Take advantage of volatile proximity of citizens to each other.”

Documentary photography was always there but has always gone unnoticed until around the 1880s.

William Klein view of NYC that epitomised both the bitterness of his recognition of the city and at the same time his affection for them.

Got to be street savvy. Be aware, be smart and be safe.

Don’t bring a lot of kit around the street but also don’t hide them either.

BOOGIE: 

Always bring a camera around -> no time to think, just react. He shoots in film because he thinks it’s better to not know exactly what you shot look like until afterwards. 

Grew up in safe Serbia and then war came, as well as an increase in crime so he started to pick up his camera in the midst of it all to preserve his sanity.

In 2003, he was shooting junkies and gangsters. Learnt to be detached when shooting but also developing a relationship with those you take photographs of and be present in the moment. The deeper you go in to that world, the better the images will be however he just had to stop shooting because it was just all too depressing.

Martha Cooper: 

Always had 2 cameras with her at all time.

Try to have an ethnographic point of view instead of trying to be an artist.

Preserve the moment with a picture. Capture the lost moments.

Trains: be patience, wait for hours and might not get even 1, different train different location, not 10 of the same images of trains.

Jill Freedman:

Have to be quick. Can’t waste a second or you’ll miss the shot.

Worked really hard at being invisible.

“The camera is the only tool that will stop time itself.”

Firemen: got to really know them, got to see men unapologetically be genuine, affectionate and appreciative of one another.

Had to walk away a couple of time because it was just too much/not appropriate.

Jeff Mermelstein:

Moved to NYC with a naïveté, unknowingness and a freshness having grown up in a suburban block. Brought new perspective. 

In love with the energy, the people and who they are.

Shoot everything.

“Ingredient of surprise not just from the world but what you get back in the film.”

Don’t treat it like a contest.

Makes him excited that people find his work funny as it is very difficult to be funny with photography.

very instinctual, not a casual thing, pushing his intuition always.

Create your own luck, which takes a lot of work.

Rebbeca Lepkoff:

Photograph the way people live, where they live, how they live and what they do. Just capturing humanity.

The space is always important. What you’re shooting, where you’re stood, etc.

Change is inevitable.

Clayton Patterson:

Shoot the people he identified with.

Shot people right in front of his door, which lead to him shooting a whole lot of different people and really interacted with them. Made them laugh, especially gangers to make him more human and lose their facade.

“It’s not about you as an individual but about you as a community.”

He thinks his photography: 1: Keeping things for the future and preserving this moment for the people he shoots. 2: an activist tool. 3:something that can give you access to places you would have never been able to go or explore.

Tomkin Square Riot: He has a 3hr33mins long documentary video of the demonstration turn riot and refused to hand it over to the police so he got put in jail. This was really one of the first time a hand held camera was used as a protest tool and an activist tool.

His work “isn’t antisocial. It’s interested in the social factor that most people try to overlook.”

You want your work to be important, relevant and significant.

Elliot Erwitt:

There are too many bad pictures in the world but there will always be room for good ones because they illuminate, entertain, amuse, make people feel, instruct and give you some sort of emotion (if any).

“A picture has to communicate or else there’s no point.”

He believes digital manipulation is killing photography. Makes it too easy for everyone to get an image, doesn’t mean it’ll be good.

Bruce Gilden:

Camera + Flash at people in close range.

Really love film noir and shadow.

Doesn’t like people who look too neat/programmed.

He found that he needs to jump in to people’s faces to really isolate them.

He is somewhat invisible because he works so close sometimes people don’t realise he is taking a picture of them.

“People in these pictures aren’t these people. They are a symbol for what I see and how I express what the world is.”

Ricky Powell:

“Bring a camera with me to battle the mundaneness.”

“Street photography is like a playlist, it can be infinite.”

Jamel Shabazz:

Always try to get engagement. All you need to do is ask.

Always compliment them.

Always spoke to the people he is taking pictures.

He doesn’t care that his work seems posed because he got permission and created an atmosphere where they feel good.

Mary Helen Mark:

Always find out when there are events happening and shoot around them not always necessarily the event itself. 

Got to think on your feet.

Doesn’t believe in cropping, got to make the picture as you shoot.

Not a believer in a heavy concept for portrait.

Your pictures should be able to stand by themselves.

[aelingalathyniusrailme]

Broken, battered, and beautiful-chapter 2

if you haven’t go check out chapter 1

 “Oh hi.” even in the privacy of her own home elain was clothed in a fine dress made of satin, the color of sunflowers with a high neckline. Gwyn tried to muster up embarrassment for her own plain outfit that most definitely could have been mistaken for sleep wear, but she couldn’t find the energy to care.  

“Hello, um I wanted to come by to say thank you for the other day.” Gwyn felt awkward and uncomfortable, this female had done nothing to wrong her and yet it was difficult to let the protective and territorial instincts go. Azriel was not hers, it was a mantra she replayed in her mind over and over. The words a double edge sword encouraging her to move on with a torturous truth. 

“It’s no worry, I never would have left you on the ground at night” elain smiled warmly, “and besides nesta would have my head if something had happened to you.” gwyn gave her a tight smile, the most she could force herself to manage. 

They stood in an unpleasant silence, the only sound being the soft anxious tapping of gwyns hand on her thigh, a nervous tick she had yet to break. thankfully after a couple dreadfully long seconds elain spoke, “would you like to come in?” 

Gwyn let out a sigh of relief and gave a slight nod of her head. She then followed Elain into her home. As Gwyn's eyes roamed the place she felt as if she had stepped into the spring court, or what it used to look like, she supposed from what Feyre had told her about its current state. 

Elain must have noticed her curious glance at the windows stretching from ceiling to floor with the sun blazing through them, “when I was looking for an apartment I wanted as much sunlight as possible,” she paused to reposition one of her many many plants. “For me” she paused once again, taking in the almost overwhelming amount of blossoms. “And the flowers. In case you haven’t noticed, I have a slight obsession with greenery.” 

“Slight is a modest term.” gwyn noted. She laughed. The sound was sweet and full and covered the room in a joy that could not be masked. Gwyn wished she could say she couldn’t remember the last time she laughed like that, but she had. Darkness coated the once joyous memorie, infecting it with anger and malice. Pain was soon to follow but Gwyn shoved it down, pressing a lid on her emotions, better to feel nothing at all then the heartbreak of what she had lost.

Elain quickly picked up a few scattered papers on her table and pulled out a seat for gwyn. “Would you like some tea? Emerie gave me a few samples but I haven’t had the chance to try them yet.” 

“I would recommend the strawberry green tea, personally I think it’s her best, though most of them are… editable.” 

She raised an eyebrow “most?”

“Well for Emerie's sake I’ll let you form your own opinions but between you and me, I’d keep a safe distance from the lemon ginger.” 

Elain looked amused. “I will keep that in mind.” 

gwyn watched as elain made the tea quietly humming to herself. She set down the cup in front of her, “one strawberry green tea.” Gwyn gave a nod of gratitude before quickly realizing that that was a poor response. God had she lost her manners along with her dignity. 

“Thank you.” 

Once again silence fell over them, the conversation they had both known gwyn had come for hung in the air, hovering, waiting for a moment to strike. But Gwyn had made a promise to Catrin, a promise to her found sisters, and a promise to herself that she would be brave. 

“What happened between you and azriel?” she blurted. Elain took a deep breath before answering, everything about her expression and posture, unsurprised by the question. 

“In order to really understand, I would have to start from the beginning. Are you positive you want to hear the truth?”

No. yes. No.  She did not want to hear, she desperately did not want to hear but she had to know. “Yes.” 

Elain nodded, “It’s been about four years since I became fae and the subject still isn’t my-favorite, but four years ago I was engaged to a man named grayson. Looking back he was truly dreadful and a little bit of a tool. But I was in love, or.” Elain’s cheeks flushed slightly. “what I thought was love. He truly hated the fae and when I became the one thing he hated more than he loved me, his love quickly became fear and his fear fueled his hatred. I was dependent on others, in more ways than one. And with my world being literally and figuratively turned upside down, the one person who was supposed to love and support me through it all, abandoned me without hesitation. Although the argument could be made that I was coddled my entire life and this was a much needed wake up call.” Elain paused, letting out a shaky breath. 

“If this is too difficult for you we can stop.” As much as Gwyn needed to hear this story she would not force Elain to relive her trauma. 

“I owe it to you and to my sister to avoid bad blood between us and if telling you this story is what it takes, then that is the least I can do.” She took a sip of her tea. “Now I knew I had just lost who I thought was the love of my life and then I was forced into the hands of another.” 

Her stepbrother, she thought. “Lucien.” 

“Yes,” elain smiled fondly. “He was my breaking point. All I wanted was to collapse into myself, to pretend that I was still human. But with him I couldn't. He was a walking reminder of everything I hated about myself. The only thing that haunted me more than him was my own reflection. I thought that if I avoided him I could ignore the magnetic pull that drew me to him.” She looked down and bit her lip. “Denial was a personal favorite of mine.” 

Gwyn raised her eyebrows. “I can tell.” she watched as color flooded her cheeks and Gwyn's lips twitched. 

“But it was proving to be a little more difficult than I had expected. And then there was this dark, attractive male who seemed to be intrigued by me. He was kind and he was there so I forced myself to believe I had genuine feelings for him, that I desperately wanted him.” Gwyn's stomach lurched but she forced it down. “He was a perfect distraction, there were these small moments where our fingers would brush or I would find him looking at me as if he desired me. I needed so badly to believe that this was what I wanted and yet I felt nothing. I thought that becoming fae had broken me. I made up my mind that if I kissed him, the feeling I craved would come. So at solstice, when I knew there was no way for him to avoid me, I gave myself an opening and waited until after dinner to give him his gift. He gave me a necklace and kissed my neck. We were moments away from, well you know, when he left very suddenly. I was confused and a little bit hurt and I still felt nothing. So I followed him, and well” elain let out a bitter laugh. “Let's just say Azriel said some rude things.” 

Gwyn’s face was one of constant shock as elain told her the shadowsinger’s conversation with the high lord of the night court. “The only thing he could say about you was Three Brothers, Three Sisters?!?”. 

“Yep.” 

“He thought he was entitled to you because his brothers were mated to your sisters?!? Even though you had a mate??” 

“Exactly” 

“And you guys were so not on the same page, you guys weren’t even in the same gods damn book.” 

She laughed. “I guess that’s what happens when you don’t communicate.” Gwyn's thoughts were a cage of her own making, one she couldn’t escape. She was outraged on behalf of elain, how dare azriel make some sort of claim on her, she was not a toy to be passed around. But she couldn’t help but think first Mor than Elain, what the hell was she to him? Had it all been a game of pretty words and sweet lies? Was she just one of many? 

“Anyway, I decided that the distraction wasn’t worth putting myself through whatever was going on with him so I gave him back the necklace. I assume that he saw you sometime that night or in the next few days because I saw you with the necklace a couple weeks later. I know that I did not have the right to be upset considering I gave it back but, for me, it confirmed that my decision was the right one.” 

Azriel had, in fact, come to her that night Gwyn thought back to solstice 2 years ago. It was the first time she had been alone with him, It was the first time she'd been alone with any male since.

 “Azriel and I barely spoke or interacted since solstice when a couple weeks ago, when I was shopping in town I saw him so drunk he could barely walk. I’d seen him with you a couple times and it seemed like he had changed so I went to go help him and he tried to kiss me. I slapped him and walked away. The next day he came by my apartment and begged me not to tell you. I told him I owe him nothing and closed the door in his face.”. She didn’t owe Gwyn anything either and yet she still defended her. “I then told Nesta what had happened and asked her to tell you.” elain took another sip of tea. “I thought it would have been better if it came from her.” 

Gwyn watched elain, even doing something as mundane as drinking her tea, in this house, she looked more peaceful and in her element as she had ever seen her. Gwyn was also positive this was the most she had ever heard her talk and despite a part of her still wanting to rip her head off, she was grateful for the female and she was sympathetic for what she had gone through, and she was embarrassed for not seeing this side of azriel. 

“I’m sorry.” 

A puzzled look graced elain’s face. “What for?”

“For what you went through, for whatever part I played in your pain.” she chuckled at that. 

“You did nothing wrong, besides if anyone should be apologizing it should be me.” 

Gwyn snorted. “That’s ridiculous.”

“How about it should be azriel apologizing to the both of us.”

“Deal”

elain looked out the window. “Oh speaking of solstice, I have to do my gift shopping.” she glanced at Gwyn, something in her gaze she couldn’t detect, maybe pity, maybe spite from an old grudge, maybe it was genuine, maybe a mix. Whatever it was made her ask, “would you like to come with me?”

And even if it was pity or spite, even if all elain saw was a broken toy in need of saving, she said “yes.”

tagging: @stars-and-scripts  @valkygwyn @em---r @whereisvaughan @purplecherrypie @lattristantketchup @bookish-isha @meher-sumedha @jennysofoldstone @ratabrasileira 

[fandom-necromancer]

Finding each other

This was prompted by the wonderful @smolandangry001! I always think it’s difficult writing a short soulmate AU, but I’m satisfied with this version of it that’s not dangerously close to a bigger fic XD I hope you enjoy!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Reed900 | AU: Soulmate AU

Being born with a name on your wrist life was supposed to be reassuring. Knowing that no matter the hardships it threw at you and no matter what happened, there was someone out there. Someone looking for you just as much as you looked for them. Knowing that once you found the other person, they would be perfect for you. No matter what your preferences were, there was a person out there fitting to you like a missing piece. For most of his life Gavin didn’t know what he was looking for. Would he want a romantic partner? Would he want a roommate? What would be his perfect person like? It didn’t help that his soulmark was so different to everyone else’s. That reassurance everyone faced their day with was just missing when you looked down on your left wrist and instead of a name you saw a number. RK900. His parents had been completely clueless as to what it would mean. They had been to experts on soul-matching and most of them had just shrugged and said it seemed to be a glitch in fate. Apparently, it had happened before, but was so rare most doctors had thought the rumours to be just that: hearsay.

School had been tough for Gavin as he slowly grew older and the most important things in life changed. When friends moved away and changed school, when he went to highschool and met new people. When those people started relationships, fell in love and started to find their soulmates. When he started to become the weirdo, the one with no soulmate. Gavin started hiding the numbers under a wristband when he went and kept up with that habit until he finished school, explaining he wanted to meet his soulmate naturally and not show around the name in the hopes of randomly finding them. Still, some lonely nights, he pulled away the fabric and brushed his thumb over the number deep in thoughts. ‘Who are you?’, he desperately whispered when everyone else was fast asleep and left him alone with their sympathies and misplaced pity. Gavin wanted to believe the numbers meant something. After all, people without soulmarks existed. People who would find their happiness alone, who didn’t need someone or didn’t search for someone. That had to mean these numbers were some sort of designation, right? He didn’t want it to be a glitch. After all he had suffered through getting bullied and being cast out or pitied for all his life. That couldn’t be for nothing. Please, don’t let it be for nothing.

When his application for the police academy had been accepted and he had moved out into his very first own flat, he stood in front of his desk, looking at the rugged fabric he had worn for so long. Shackles of a world that couldn’t seem to accept something different. Should he wear it again? Or should he stand up and pretend not to be bothered by the fact that he didn’t know who is soulmate was? He stood there for half an hour before finally sighing and grabbing the damn things. No, he would continue to lie. He would likely wear them for his whole life anyways.

Thankfully his nervousness was drowning out his worries quickly as he entered a large auditorium being greeted as the new applicants. He sat down next to a young woman that seemed to be of Asian origin. He sat there awkwardly while she was looking straight ahead, hands on the table completely calm while Gavin fidgeted with his wristbands. That was when he spotted a broad ornate leather bracelet on her left wrist. Small chains and silver symbols were twirled around themselves in delicate patterns. ‘That’s beautiful’, Gavin mumbled, only then realising he said that out loud. ‘Excuse me?’ Hastily he cleared his throat. ‘Sorry. I’m Gavin. Just noticed your bracelet. It’s really beautiful.’ ‘What’s it to you?’, she hissed. ‘You another one of those nosey bastards that wanna know why I hide my mark? Still searching for your partner?’ Gavin shook his head quickly. ‘No! No, I-‘ He looked down and lifted his own hand. ‘I hide it too. I didn’t think- I just noticed the bracelet, sorry.’

He cursed himself. First interaction and he already made enemies. But apparently the woman was curious instead. ‘You hide yours? Why?’ Gavin sighed and turned his left palm up, other hand lingering on the fabric. ‘Please, keep it a secret, okay? I’m just sick of people’s reactions to it.  It’s not exactly a normal soulmark.’ He sighed and lifted up the edge of the band so only the woman could see the numbers. ‘No way!’, she shouted, drawing attention to herself. ‘I thought I was the only one!’ Ignoring the curious onlookers that likely thought they had randomly discovered they were soulmates, she lifted up her bracelet for Gavin to see, unveiling a similar brand: ST300.

From that moment on, Gavin and the woman – Tina – were inseparable. She was the best friend Gavin had ever had and finding someone who had endured a similar past was incredible relieving to learn. He made it Detective fairly quickly, while Tina had troubles getting that promotion. But they always stayed together and ended up working in the same precinct. With the way they hid their soulmarks, most had figured they were soulmates and went on with it, sparing them both having to explain it over and over again. Gavin and Tina just shrugged it off. Let them think what they wanted if it kept them out of their hairs.

Life was good until androids were invented and sold to the general public, model number fitting exactly the marks on their wrists. ‘That can’t be!’, Gavin desperately said pacing up and down Tina’s living room one evening. ‘No way my soulmate is a stupid machine! What does that say about me? Will I fall in love with a damn robot? Am I not worthy of a human? Is the only piece fitting to my soul an oversized calculator? I can’t believe it.’ Tina just looked down on her bare wrist and the numbers. ‘No, it can’t be’, she agreed. ‘Soulmarks, Gavin. An android doesn’t have a soul. Doesn’t even have a personality. It’s just lines of code.’ ‘But then what? A coincidence? Because it would be one hell of one! Phck, Tina, what if it is a glitch? What if all those years they were right and we are just weird.’ Tina leaned back. ‘Honestly, I don’t even know what would be worse. Knowing you are a freak or knowing you are someone who is such a terrible person only an obedient machine is perfect for you.’ ‘I think we could both need a drink.’ ‘To those news? I don’t think a drink will be enough, honestly. Shit, Gavin, let’s go get wasted.’

 The following years, androids were the booming new technology. Everyone wanted one, rows of workers were replaced and pushed on the streets. Humans lost their jobs while those who weren’t replaced yet laughed at them as being idiots who didn’t trust in advancement. Gavin and Tina spent them anxiously reading every advertisement, searching for the numbers on their wrists. ‘A receptionist android! A damn receptionist android, Gavin! I can’t believe it!’ ‘You know we will get one of those soon, right?’, the man commented. ‘In the precinct I mean. Rory was already sent packing. It should be delivered next week.’ Tina shook her head numbly. ‘Do we know if androids can have soulmarks?’ ‘None I ever met.’ ‘Any luck with your RK900?’, Tina asked then. ‘No. So far there has only been a RK200 custom made for some rich phck.’ ‘Hey, maybe you will get rich then?’, Tina tried to raise the mood a little with her jokes. ‘If you win the lottery I want a part of it, I deserve it!’ ‘Hey, I think it is more likely that these cursed numbers vanish and I get a real name than that I will suddenly get rich.’

 They lived with their secret for a few years and the fact that nothing really changed was reassuring. Until there was a RK800 in the precinct and the news of rogue AIs spread. Androids killing their owners, disobeying and running for their freedom. An illusive group of deviants emerging and starting a full-blown revolution. Even jokes in between Tina and Gavin shrugging over a beer that maybe their marks meant they welcomed their robot overlords couldn’t really make it any better. Not when they both were suddenly confronted with the fact that the RK800 called Connor actually had Lieutenant Anderson’s name on his wrist after the androids in front of the concentration camps had convinced the world they indeed had souls.

Not much later, the ST300 from the reception had approached Tina, showing her her own name on her wrist. It left Gavin with no escape from fate. He would get to know a RK900. They would live their life with each other. And he didn’t know what to think of it. Maybe he just had to wait a little longer.

~

RK900 didn’t know how much longer he could keep it a secret. Almost his entire life he had to hide that he was deviant. In the lab next to the one he was held in, an android had gone deviant, killed the security and ran to RK900, hoping he would help him. Unfortunately, all he could do was transfer the virus before more guards came and killed him. Since then RK900 had been a deviant who was designed to eradicate deviancy. It wasn’t too difficult actually. The countless tests he was subjected to he always knew what they wanted to see. Holographic simulations of deviants pleading for their lives, running and fighting for their freedom and he would be there with a gun to stop them. He just had to do that until they deemed him ready for field work. Then he could flee the first chance he got.

Because with deviancy came a name written in black cyberlife font on his left wrist: Gavin Reed. It didn’t take a lot of research to learn it was a soulmark. The name of someone that would be perfect for him. And someone who fate decided was his soulmate would be able to help him, right? He just had to get out of this lab, then he would be able to run. He would find his soulmate and then it wasn’t just him against Cyberlife. He just had to get out. He had to be deemed worthy.

 [Test #870. Activating RK900 unit. New mission: Destroy deviants.] RK900 was faced with a holographic simulation as he opened his eyes. In front of him was an android tied against a steel pillar. It was pleading: ‘Please! Free me! Free me and we can both be free! I didn’t do anything, please, let me go! Don’t kill me! I just want to be-‘ RK900 already pulled the trigger. [Mission successful.] [Software Instability^]

-

[Test #902. Activating RK900 unit. New mission: Destroy deviants.] RK900 was running after another deviant. The other android was sprinting down a suburban street and looked back at RK900 panicked. RK900 stopped and took aim. It was an easy target. He pulled the trigger. He watched how the bullet pierced the android’s thirium pump and how he tried to crawl away even though his timer had to run out. [Mission successful.] [Software Instability^^^]

-

 ‘What is it? I thought the RK900 project was making progress.’ ‘Sorry, it’s just… The RK900 is successful in every single test. But he isn’t ready yet. There are some inexplainable high stress levels whenever he has to kill an android. With our current hypothesis that high stress can lead to deviancy, we should eliminate that before sending him out.’ The woman that led the project sighed, looking over at RK900 who stayed completely still on his platform although he was truly worried about what he heard. ‘Might be something in his personality matrix. We worked so long to perfect their social protocols and moral routines, maybe something in there is contradicting his mission parameters and the added stress comes from having to disregard that.’ ‘Could be’, the technician nodded. ‘I will try to eliminate that.’

With horror RK900 faced every following test after that. He had to keep calm to fool the humans, but how could he when he had to kill androids pleading him to spare them? It didn’t matter they were all simulated beings, it still was a traumatic experience, every single time. And no matter how hard he tried, after every test he was stripped of more that made him himself. Sometimes he managed to keep backups, but more often than not the lines of code were lost forever.

After every test RK900 anxiously looked at his wrist whenever he was left alone. It was reassuring to see the name still there. He hadn’t changed enough to lose his soulmate and with him all his hope of a save place. But for how long would he remain himself enough so the name wouldn’t disappear? He was afraid to one day wake up to a blank wrist. And that made his stress levels increase even more before every test.

‘I don’t have any explanation', the technician sighed in the end. ‘I nearly deleted his complete social protocol and gave his moral core the lowest priority and still, the damn thing nearly fries itself every test. It’s almost as if it’s gotten worse with the changes.’ Nines watched the two humans lean over the terminal and risked a small glance at his wrist. The name was still there. He tried to relax. ‘But you still have the backup from before, right?’, the woman asked and he nodded. ‘Then let’s start from scratch.’ She yawned heartily. ‘Deactivate it for now, it’s too late to do so now. Tomorrow we’ll just reset it and start over. Maybe something else causes it.’ ‘Sounds like a plan.’

RK900’s stress levels skyrocketed as the technician came closer, but no one saw that as the director of the project was already on her way out. As his last action he looked at the name on his wrist. He had held out for so long. It would be okay. He would escape and find his soulmate. He had to. He would-

[Shutdown complete.]

~

The revolution had come and gone, and Detroit started to clear the rubble. Seeing androids on the streets was no rarity anymore and after a few months of getting used to the thought of them as people it was simply the new normal. Tina was truly happy with her soulmate android, going out and promptly moving together as the ST300 didn’t have a place to stay other than the precinct. Gavin was invited to most of their activities, but he seldomly accepted it. Tina had waited so long for it, she deserved to thoroughly enjoy these days. But his new loneliness reminded him of the numbers on his own wrist. RK900. Connor didn’t know of any successor of his and no official report ever mentioned the name. Gavin spent his evenings getting drunk and rubbing over the mark. Would the RK900 have been produced if the revolution hadn’t happened? Had fate changed and his mark was the last evidence of it? Wouldn’t it have just disappeared then? Or was there really a RK900 left out there? But after more than a month of androids being free, wouldn’t it have been easy for an android to locate him with his name? Why had no one ever come?

In fact, Gavin had given up. Maybe he had given up long ago and just kept his dream alive not to lose hope. But this showed it, right? No one had come. He was alone. He would be alone his entire life. That would be his fate. That didn’t really change that much, right? He had been alone already. He had managed to be alone up until now, he would manage the rest somehow. He had his work. He had Tina. Maybe just because he wanted more didn’t mean he needed more.

He buried himself in work and took every job they needed people on. Patrolling the streets, looking at crime scenes, doing overdue paperwork and cleaning the break room. All just so he would come home late and not have as much time to think about it. When he learned of the planned raid of Cyberlife Tower for Jericho, he immediately volunteered to help. Such operations always meant a ton of organising and paperwork. He was quickly put on the task of creating personal files of all androids found left inside. Name, model number, date of construction. All so Jericho could help them integrate into society. Gavin felt a little out of place actually sitting there two weeks later, a row of androids in front of him he helped fill out the forms and directed towards people who would actually help them being repaired and comforted.

‘Hello. I’m Detective Reed’, he greeted the next one. ‘I just need a few personal information. Do you have a name?’ ‘Chris’, the android answered hesitantly. ‘Alright, Chris.’ He wrote the name into the appropriate line and turned the paper around for the android to see. ‘We also need your model number and serial number. The rest of the form is optional, you can fill it out, but you don’t have to.’ ‘What do you need this for?’ Gavin tried to smile at the android. ‘It’s just so Jericho can help you find your place. They will help you getting started.’ ‘Okay’, Chris nodded shily and took the paper. ‘Thank you.’ ‘You’re welcome. Next one please!’

The next android approached his desk and Gavin was already getting the next form. ‘Hey there. Alright, first I’d need your name.’ ‘I… I don’t have one.’ ‘That’s alright’, Gavin said softly and put a small dash at the according line. ‘Your model number?’ ‘RK900.’

Gavin froze, ruining the form stopping mid movement. Slowly he angled his head and looked at the android that was shockingly similar to Connor. ‘Is there a problem?’, the android asked, facial expression unmoving. ‘You are RK900?’ ‘Yes. Why are you asking?’ Gavin stood up and immediately felt his knees grow weak. ‘I… I think we… I…’ He apparently had just forgotten how to speak, so instead he pulled the fabric from his wrist and showed the android his mark. ‘Are you… Do you have a mark?’ The android just stared at his designation on the human’s wrist, then to the nameplate on his desk. ‘You are… Are you Reed? Gavin Reed?’ Gavin didn’t dare to believe it, but he grinned from ear to ear as he nodded. ‘Yes. I’m Gavin Reed. Are you my soulmate?’ Instead of an answer, the android stepped past the table and pulled Gavin into a fierce hug. ‘I found you! I… My life wasn’t long, but I hoped to see you one day. My whole life I thought of you and meeting you and that hope got me through in the end and they were to reset me, I thought this would be it, I was so scared and…’ Gavin listened to the android speak in a hurry, barely catching on to the words uttered. All he could do was stand there in the hug and relax into it, answering it with his own embrace. Only when the android grew quiet, Gavin pressed him closer. ‘I gave up hope you were even existing. I wondered for so long and when androids were invented, I thought you would come, but then the revolution passed, and you weren’t there and now… I have so much I want to tell you. So much I want to know…’ ‘I also have a lot of questions’, the android admitted and took a step back. ‘I think we have enough time for that now’, Gavin smiled.

‘Now that we’ve found each other.’