#... whats it called when you throw that specific part of canon away

[lewiscarrolatemybrain]

I love trans Jin Ling but I specifically love trans Jin Ling in a way where Jingyi calls him Young Mistress and Jin Ling rightfully gets pissed about it, but as time passes and the two become totally-not-friends-shut-up the name changes and Jin Ling actually sort of starts to definitely-not-like-it because he knows Jingyi doesn’t mean it like that and anyway it’s Jin Ling’s gender and he gets to decide how precious he wants to be about it.

Then Jingyi finds out Jin Ling is trans and he is appalled. He’s been? Misgendering him?? This entire time??? He didn’t know he didn’t mean to. He presents himself to the disciplinary pavilion for punishment and refuses to tell the disciple in charge the specifics of why he needs to be punished but he’s insistent that it’s A Big Deal and ends up kneeling in the courtyard for days, because the least-Lan Lan who ever lived is still, at his core, a Lan.

When Jin Ling asks what Jingyi got in trouble for this time Sizhui just does that Thing where he’s not rolling his eyes but somehow radiating exasperation and tells Jin Ling not to even worry about it, Jingyi is being dramatic, and Jin Ling lets it go only to notice, weeks later, that Jingyi no longer calls him Young Mistress.

Nothing else about their dynamic has changed. Jingyi is still the worst, and Jin Ling still endures it with all the grace, poise, and long-suffering patience expected of a man of his status, and if he does occasionally very rarely slip up just a little bit and express a totally reasonable amount of frustration with Lan Jingyi’s Everything then that’s still Jingyi’s fault because Jingyi was provoking him and Jin Ling has a responsibility to his clan and sect to defend his honor and therefor that of the Jin at large!

The only thing that’s different is that one, stupid name. And Jin Ling doesn’t care about it! Of course he doesn’t! Why should he even be curious about changed? He isn’t curious! It doesn’t matter to him At All!

Anyway other Plot happens and then they both do eventually end up in a situation where it comes up and Jingyi explains that he found out Jin Ling was trans and felt like a great big piece of shit because there’s bullying and there’s bullying and he has never once wanted to be that kind of person, and Jin Ling confesses that actually he kind of liked it before because he knew that Jingyi wasn’t trying to treat him like less of man, he was just being a jerk, and it felt easy and playful and dumb, and...

And Jiujiu used to say that Jin Ling looked like his mother. Not -- not a lot, not like, identical to her or anything, but. But that little girl he used to be, she was... unhappy, most of the time, for a lot of reasons, and he doesn’t regret... letting her sleep. He doesn’t regret burying her. But Jiujiu seemed almost relieved to have her gone, to not constantly be looking at a reminder of the sister he misses so much, and Jin Ling obviously is endlessly grateful for his uncle’s support and validation and he’s so much more comfortable in his body now and he never wants to be that little girl again, but. Sometimes, he feels like, maybe someone should mourn her. Like maybe there should be someone who... not wanted her back, really, but was still... aware that she was gone, and... was grateful for what she did. Respected the sacrifice she made, so that Jin Ling could be Jin Ling. There should be somebody who knew she existed, and thought of her fondly, on occasion.

And Jingyi looks at Jin Ling for a long, long moment, and says “Okay, Young Mistress. I can do that.”

[yamujiburo]

Some of this might sound intentionally hostile in text and I apologize.

I'm saying this as an abuse survivor mind you - don't throw "abusive ships" under the bus so easily - at least, so long as they're not actually glamorizing the abuse. I lived that irl and I personally find someone overcoming it, slowly having enough of that bullshit and getting out over time, and the other person having to wipe their own butt for once after they've made the damn mess, very refreshing. Maybe that's not a ship in the traditional sense. It's no happily ever after bc it shouldn't be, but I find stories like mine shyed away from so often because even the portrayal gets considered a "canon ship". ... that's just how media works now, I guess? I very rarely See a fictional relationship not called a ship in literally any context now so that's the definition I'm running on.

I wish more people were willing to portray the hardships of finding acceptance outside of "whoever you can find will accept you" very much, and finding the better things after. I wish people weren't terrified out of portrayimg situations like mine.

Jessie.. is not a good person in canon. You expect me to believe she moved into to hanamusa seamlessly, without falling on her ass? I never see you talk about Jessie's abusive tendencies in canon. You never talk about the inherent meanness she needed to get over to get there. She's quite aml lot like my ex in canon, actually.

What do you mean you're going to just remove from the character that she is abusive to those around her. Jessie hits people. She takes her own junk out on others all the time. Do you even like the character then, are you actually invested in her growing, or are you just making an OC at this point?

Idk. Do you, boo. But you are posting about a character who, whether you like it or not, is canonically abusive. I just don't buy that dating Ash's mom alone fixed her. That isn't... How that works. It would be excellent if it did. Part of my love of hanamusa is that it signals Jessie's change - but she could have changed for anyone before now.

What makes Delia different? How is she specifically a turning point for Jessie? Because Jessie's flaws go well beyond just bossing people around.

I would love if my abuser had the same outcome as your Jessie. I adore your portayals of hanamusa, where she's still flawed but still strives to do better. That's all I ever wanted from my ex.

What the fuck got her there tho.

Anyways I've been watching a lot of Bojack Horseman lately -

I agree with you! I don't think abusive relationships (or any tough subject matter in general) should be shied away from in media. It can be powerful when executed well and written by folks who are equipped to tell those kinds of stories. I do think it's sad when people treat it as off limits. But the ask I got was definitely more about which ships I have where I actually like the relationship between the characters. I think the semantics of the word "ship" are kind of vague or rather, over time, got so specific to only mean "absolutely love together and want them as endgame" (for most people anyways). So that's usually what I take the word to mean when people ask me about it.

I can 100% appreciate how an abusive relationship is written and handled, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna ship an abuser with their victim (that falls into the glorifying you're talking about). Love Bojack Horseman! Big fan! I think the way they handled Bojack and Sarah Lynn was beautifully and tragically well written. But does that mean I ship Bojack and Sarah Lynn? Absolutely fucking not.

I've talked about Jessie's character plenty on this blog and the way she's handled in earlier seasons specifically. This is kind of a summary: If we look at it on surface level, yes we can say she was abusive. But I think it's important to acknowledge and take into account the medium, time period and culture. Slapstick and cartoon violence was HUGE in anime and animation in the 90s (and prior to that too). Characters were always cartoonishly slapping each other around with giant mallets, folding fans, etc. Looney Tunes style. These slapstick bits were always distinct from real abuse and hurt (for Pokémon, Jessiebelle comes to mind). Mean slapstick wasn't a character trait exclusive to Jessie either. We saw it in Misty, James, Meowth, characters of the day and pretty much any character who got mad. It was a visual shortcut to show anger.

This type of slapstick has since (thankfully) died out and it hasn't really been a part of the Pokémon franchise since the early 2000s. However, Jessie was a notably special case. One of my favorite fun facts about the Pokémon anime is that there was a point in the series where Megumi Hayashibara (Jessie/Musashi's seiyuu) told the writers that moving forward, she no longer wanted Jessie to be violent or to be shown hitting James or Meowth (source: her memoir "The Characters Taught Me Everything"). She thought it directly went against the vision Takeshi Shudo had for Jessie, James and Meowth, when he created them, which was that they are good natured villains. If you watch from DP and on, Jessie never lays a hand on either of them. I think it was a such a good move on Pokémon's part to change her character like that and I'm forever grateful that Hayashibara said something! Whenever I write Jessie now, I always keep that in mind. She's mean, shouty and stupid but would never genuinely hurt those she cares about.

From then, her character becomes much more bearable. She's still bossy, mean and vain (typical cartoon villainess attributes) but I'd hesitate to say abusive. She'll still yell at James and Meowth, they all yell at each other, but in more of a sibling way (imo) rather than a "i'm actively trying to hurt your feelings way". The show makes a point especially in later seasons to show that Jessie, James and Meowth are not beyond being redeemed. From conception the whole POINT of the Team Rocket trio was that they are redeemable but their persistence and obsession keeps getting in the way of them seeing that there's a better life for them out there.

I won't deny that Jessie was unsavory in earlier seasons, but when I write her, I choose to write the version that Takeshi Shudo and Megumi Hayashibara had envisioned from the get go. She's still incredibly flawed and makes plenty missteps but wants to be better as you stated! My favorite part about Jessie is that she's a piece of shit LOL and I enjoy writing the changes she goes through to be better (but then still showing her default so some of her evil tendencies). In this AU, Delia doesn't fix Jessie. Jessie fixes Jessie because she is with someone makes her want to be a better person. She's already in the middle of turning over a new leaf before even meeting Delia, after leaving Team Rocket. Writing Jessie as legitimately abusive I think could work, but that's not my story to tell and if someone who were more equipped to tell that story did, I'd be very interested to take a listen!

I hope this doesn't come off as trying to deny or invalidate your experience. If you see that in Jessie, I hear you! This is just how I've interpreted her character over the years, having watched every episode of Pokémon and reading Japanese interviews from the cast and crew. She's such a compelling character and I love how messy she is

[confused-pyramid]

There Is More When You Let Go | s2

pairing: aaron hotchner x childhood bsf!reader

summary: Hotch and his childhood best friend working together at the BAU: a slow burn across the seasons.

word count: 18.8k

warnings: canon!typical violence, mentions of abuse, death of a spouse, kidnapping, torture, drug use, specific episodes mentioned in this part are 2x01, 2x05, 2x06, 2x13, 2x14, 2x15, 2x16, 2x18, 2x23

a/n: here's season 2 of the anchor series! I had a lot of fun writing this one (hence why it got so long lmao), and I included a lot more direct show content in this part, so I hope you like it. Also more flashbacks:) Title is from Benediction by Luke Sital-Singh

series masterlist

A gunshot. That's the last thing you hear before Elle's front door flies open, almost throwing you back onto the stairs. The shock of seeing the Fisher King standing right in front of you almost makes you miss the puddle of blood that has started seeping across the floor to your feet.

"Elle," you gasp, your moment of distraction enough time for the man to push you behind him and make a break for it. You fall forward with the force of his shove, but he's much slower than you are. If you ran after him now, you could almost certainly catch up to him, but the sight of Elle bleeding out in front of you makes you immobile.

Making the split second decision to abandon the chase, you throw yourself forward and press your hands against her wound to control the blood flow.

"You're gonna be okay," you tell her, even as her blood trickles out from below your palm. "I need to call for help."

Pressing one hand down harder, you try to ignore the sounds of her gasping in pain as you reach behind you for her house phone. After dialing 911, you hold the phone between your ear and shoulder and bring your hand back to apply more pressure.

The paramedics arrive within five minutes, and they pry you off of her as they pull out a defibrillator. You had been so focused on stopping her from bleeding out that you hadn't even noticed she had stopped breathing. How could you have missed that?

"Charging to 200."

You lean back against her couch as tears leak from the corners of your eyes.

"Clear!"

***

"They took her into surgery," you say when Hotch meets you at the hospital. Your eyes keep darting around, like you're looking for something, but you don't know what.

"What happened?" he asks, placing his hands on your shoulders to regain your focus. The pressure calms you down.

"I think he was waiting for her," you whisper, your throat tightening. "He had to have been. It all happened so fast."

His eyes stay on yours, as though trying to predict your next movement. "I'm glad you're okay."

More agents filter into the hospital and he begins to turn away to talk to them, but then you stiffen under his hands. "I had him, Hotch."

"What?" he frowns, looking at you again. "What are you talking about?"

You lift your hands to your face to brush away a strand of hair, barely noticing the stains all over your skin. "He was right there. The unsub. I could've grabbed him...but I didn't."

Anderson walks over with a question, but Hotch doesn't take his eyes off you. "You went to Elle. It's okay, you made the right choice."

"But the girl he took," you protest, shaking his hands off, "this could have lead us to her, but she's still-"

"You did the right thing," he cuts you off, waving Anderson away to speak with someone else. "It's not your fault."

You grit your teeth, your voice still tinged with guilt. "How do you know?"

"Because," he sighs, running a hand through his hair, "it's mine. I sent her home."

You open your mouth to tell him how unfair that is, but he cuts you off with an order to go wash up before he leaves to explain the situation to the other agents.

The only bathroom on that floor of the hospital is at the end of the patient ward, so you trudge down the hallway and into the single family restroom, trying to avoid the worried glances from all around.

You haven't seen your reflection since before leaving with Elle, and you know it can't be a pretty sight, but the face staring back at you in the mirror is still a shock.

The bottom of your shirt is matted to your skin, and your hands are covered in now-dried blood that looks flaky and dark. When you look up, you see a streak of blood smeared over your nose from when you swiped at your face earlier.

Grabbing a fistful of paper towels, you run them under the faucet before scrubbing at your face and peeling your button down off to rid them of any trace of Elle's blood. When you're sure there isn't anything left, you turn the faucet back on and stretch your hands forward, watching the warm water turn a muddy red color as it swirls around the drain.

Eventually, the water runs clear, but you can still see the blood in your mind. You are suddenly ambushed by a memory you thought you had pushed down long ago. Red blood, cold skin.

How was there so much blood in the human body?

Your department-mandated therapist told you at the time that you would be in denial for the first few weeks, but you weren't denying anything. You had seen his body, seen the blood pooling around him as the coroner snapped photographs for the crime scene report. You knew he was dead. You just couldn't get that question out of your mind.

The memory shifts and suddenly you're seventeen again. You're seventeen and you are reaching for your first aid kit for the second time this month as Hotch sits on your bed with what feels like a permanent wince fused to his lips.

"Hold still," you whisper as you pour rubbing alcohol onto a cotton pad and press it into the cut on his hand. There's also blood under his nose and in his teeth, but he doesn't seem to notice.

He hisses as the alcohol makes contact, but he doesn't pull away. He's used to this routine now. You both are.

"I'm sorry I came by so late," he whispers through gritted teeth as he watches your fingers peel open a bandage. You want to berate him for apologizing, for feeling so much guilt all the time, but it's fruitless. It's like he was born with it inside of him, always clawing its way out at the slightest inconvenience.

"Don't be." You shoot him a look that he knows to mean 'be quiet and let me finish this'. He heeds your unspoken order, but after a few minutes, it's you who breaks it. "How did this one happen?"

He looks down and you immediately want to take it back. "You don't have to answer."

He's quiet for a beat. "He was drunk and I cleared his bottle away before he was finished with it."

Your lips thin and you press your hand to his knee, desperately needing to connect yourself to him in some manner.

"I tried to keep him in the kitchen, so Sean wouldn't hear, but I guess the noise woke him up." He takes a deep breath, and you can almost feel the determination entering his body as he sits up straighter. "I couldn't let him get to Sean, so I finally did it. I fought back."

He looks down at his bandaged hand then, and you can see pride accompanying the blood etched into the lines of his face. "I finally fought back."

Your eyes refocus and when you look at yourself in the mirror again, there's no trace of Elle's blood on your body anymore.

***

When Elle is discharged from the hospital, you spend the rest of the break helping her move out of her house and into a new apartment. When you drove her back home, the blood had been cleaned off of her floors, but you could see in her expression that it wasn't enough. This place would always be a reminder of what had happened to her.

The apartment search was quick, only a week between finding a place she liked and signing the new lease, but she saved the actual move out for the last few days of your break, instead hopping between sleeping in your guest room and a motel in town.

That's why you find yourself in Elle's old bedroom on the final Saturday before you're due back at work, packing some of her clothes into a suitcase while she works on clearing her bathroom. She tossed out almost everything she didn't absolutely need, only packing up her basic clothing and a few other sentimental keepsakes from her past.

"What about these?" you ask, holding up a pair of dark wash jeans that you remember her wearing to the bars with you a few months ago. God, has it really only been a few months?

She peeks out of the bathroom for barely a second. "I told you, I don't care. Keep it, toss it, your choice."

You don't know how you feel about being in charge of her future wardrobe, especially since you tend to live in loose jeans and old tee shirts when you're not at work, but you can understand where she's coming from. The instinct to hand off every decision to someone else.

You remember how hard it was for you to even decide what to eat for dinner after Jeff died. You also remember Hotch slipping pre-packed meals into your fridge whenever he came over to keep you company.

It takes you a couple of hours to clear out her house, and another hour to drop her and her stuff off at the new place, with promises to visit whenever you can over the next months of her leave.

You don't realize how exhausted you are until your front door shuts behind you and you collapse onto your couch, still in your dirty clothes. The summer sun is completely below the horizon as you lean back into your throw pillows and grab the tv remote. You haven't used your tv in months, and you figure that a vacation from work is the perfect opportunity to dust it off.

The screen comes to life on a local news channel, where a young reporter with teased-up hair is announcing a recall on a vacuum cleaner brand you've never heard of. She finishes her spiel before handing the mic off to an older woman who starts reporting the details of a car accident that took place in a neighborhood a few miles from yours.

These reports don't usually get under your skin - you have seen enough to know that it happens everyday - but suddenly, you can't stand to look at the crime scene tape flashing on your screen. You don't wait long enough to see what caused the accident. Whether it was a simple mistake, or if it was a drunk dri-

Grabbing the remote, you turn the television off and stand up, shaking your limbs out in an effort to rid yourself of the anxious feeling that's been growing inside of you.

You make yourself a quick microwave dinner and wolf it down in a few minutes, before trudging upstairs and hopping in the shower. You take your time washing the dust off of your body, and only emerge when the hot water runs out.

Even after cleaning yourself off and climbing into a fresh set of sheets, sleep doesn't come easily. The minutes tick by slowly as you stare at the ceiling, and before you can overthink it, you grab your phone off your nightstand and hit the first number on your speed dial.

It rings twice before the line connects. "Is everything okay?"

"What happened to 'hello'?" you ask, huffing out a laugh as you sit up in your bed.

Hotch grunts quietly. "Hello." You can hear the tiredness in his voice, but he sounds alert. You didn't wake him up. "What can I do for you?"

"So I have to need something to call you?"

"Y/N."

"Sorry for wanting to talk to my friend-"

He sighs so loudly, you can practically see his eyes rolling. "Are you going to tell me why you called or not."

"I helped Elle move out today."

That gets his attention. "How is she doing?"

You shrug, even though he can't see you. "As good as can be expected. We threw out almost all of her stuff, you know. She ended up with just a suitcase and three boxes at the end."

"That's just her way of coping, I guess."

"When we got to her house, it was..." You pause for a beat. You don't know the correct way to bring this up. "Well, it was clean. The blood was gone."

He doesn't say anything, and you know you were right. "Hotch, it was you, wasn't it."

He exhales quietly, as though he's trying to control his volume. Shit, maybe Haley's sleeping next to him. This is why you don't call someone after midnight.

"She didn't need to see a crime scene in her own home."

You wonder if he knows how he sounds right now. How caring and compassionate he can be when he doesn't try to tamp down that side of himself.

"You're a good unit chief," you say, leaning your head back against your wooden headboard. "I don't know why you keep things like this hidden."

You do know why, but that isn't what's important right now. There's a small creaking sound over the receiver and you imagine he's getting out of bed and crossing the room. Then the click of a door closing. "All that matters is that it's done."

You can't control the exasperated sigh that leaves your body. "Who are you trying to kid, Hotch? This is me you're talking to. I know how you worry that you aren't setting a good example for the team, but it's things like this that go a long way. It really wouldn't hurt for the team to see you showing some emotion."

"That's what they have you for," he says, his voice tightening the slightest bit. "They don't need that from me. When my emotions get in the way, I can't do my job properly."

You scoff. "And what job is that, exactly?"

"Keeping you safe."

He doesn't need to raise his voice to make you feel his anger. "If I had kept my emotion out of it, I wouldn't have sent her home. I wouldn't have let you accompany her, and I wouldn't have put both of you in danger."

Your hand comes up, rubbing circles into the skin above your chest. "Aaron...that wasn't on you." You can sense his protests coming, so you try a different tactic. "It wasn't on me either. No one but Garner deserves any blame for what happened."

The line is silent for a few moments, and you take the little victory. "I'm sorry I called you so late."

"Oh, it's alright," he chuckles. "You know I was up anyway."

***

She came back too quickly. You can't get the thought out of your head as you watch Elle restlessly tap her foot on the ground as she waits for the final word on whether she will be acting as bait for the serial rapist.

You don't think she's ready, and you've made your opinion known to the team, but Gideon made up his mind quickly.

"You think Elle's ready for it?"

"We'll be there for her."

You watch her vigilantly from Hotch's SUV as she enters the house and drops her keys on the table by the window. She's wired, which is a small relief, but Gideon's instruction not to have her gun on her has you more anxious than you'd like.

"Why isn't she leaving?" Hotch says from next to you, echoing your thoughts.

A car driven by a man fitting the profile pulls up on the opposite side of the street and you hear Morgan dialing Garcia. After a few seconds, he's back on the line. "William Lee. It's him."

"Bingo," Gideon's voice exclaims through your earpiece. "She's on the move."

You turn away from the car and see Elle exiting the front of the house. She glances at the man on her way to her car in the driveway, and it's only then that you notice the gun stuffed in her waistband.

"Her gun's out," you whisper, mostly to yourself. "What's she doing?"

"She's panicking."

"We've got no reason to bring him in."

"Don't blow it, don't blow it."

A chorus of yells echo through your earpiece as Elle stomps down the drive and points her gun at the unsub. "FBI, put your hands where I can see them!"

You throw open the car door and run over to apprehend the man as he fervently denies all of her accusations. "I was just stopping to look at my map."

The police put him into an interrogation room back at the station, where Hotch and Gideon try to get him to confess by showing empathy for this motive. It seems to be going well until his lawyer shows up, putting an end to the conversation.

She's been tense all day, so you're not surprised when Elle blows up. "You're letting him walk?"

Gideon is the first to step in. "Back off, Elle."

"You don't know what he's done," she yells, as though trying to reason with the police. The pain in her voice is palpable, but you can't deny the truth, even if you aren't able to voice it to her.

Hotch doesn't face the same issue. "The only reason he's walking is because you panicked."

"I'm supposed to believe that you've got my back?" she fires back, her anger redirecting to fly in his direction.

"What are you saying to me?"

"The last time you sent me home, Hotch, it got me shot."

All of the air leaves the room. You grab Elle's arm and pull her back, expecting more resistance than you get. "Walk with me."

She follows you across the hall and into a little meeting room that's scattered with evidence bags and files from the case. You let the door click shut behind her before you start speaking. "You need to take a breath. I know you, Elle. I know exactly what you're capable of. You just need to give yourself time to heal."

The fury in her eyes hasn't abated since you apprehended Lee a few hours earlier. You're not sure it will in this environment. "Take a walk. Get some air, and then come back."

She doesn't meet your eye as she pushes past you and storms out of the station.

***

"There's no reason for us to stick around anymore, is there?"

Gideon shakes his head and you purse your lips, glancing at the doors behind you. You haven't been able to shake the feeling that something terrible is going to happen, but you suppose that's a common notion on this team.

"Wheels up at noon tomorrow."

You're walking out to the parking lot with the team when the feeling hits you again. The last time you felt this level of dread was right before you got the call from organized crime just over two years ago.

Your fears are confirmed when Hotch's phone rings with a call from the local PD that they have Elle at Lee's address. The drive over is silent, and even though you're always the first to call Hotch out on his guilt spirals, you can't get the thought out of your head that this is all your fault. You knew she had come back too quickly. Never mind that it wasn't your call. You should've fought it harder.

Lee's bullet-riddled body is like a beacon of your guilt as Elle insists it was cut-and-dry self defense. "I was having a conversation with him and he drew his weapon and I fired."

The police don't let any of you talk to her as they load her into the back of their cruiser, but you know what you have to do if you want to be able to sleep tonight.

"I'm going to the station," you tell Hotch before flagging down another one of the officers on the scene. He moves to stop you, but you sidestep him and level him with a glare that high school you would have been proud of. "I have to do this."

The station doesn't finish processing her until halfway through the night, but you couldn't fall asleep even if you wanted to. When they finally remove her cuffs and bring her out, you stand up from the plastic chair you spent the last four hours in and stretch out your legs.

She doesn't spot you immediately, but when she does, her body almost deflates. "I'm fine, L/N. You didn't have to come here."

She stops in front of you, her jacket hanging over her arm as she stuffs her badge back into her pocket. If you didn't know her so well, you would be surprised by how relaxed she looks. You wouldn't recognize the front she has had up since she stepped off the plane.

"What happened, Elle?"

That catches her attention, and you watch as the mask slips by a hair. "You don't believe me?"

You don't want to accuse her of something you have no evidence of, but you also can't ignore all of the signs in front of you. "Can you really look me in the eye and say you didn't go there hoping Lee would provoke you?"

She just looks at you, and you watch in real time as the mask slides back into place. Without another word, she turns around and walks out of the station.

***

The next case doesn't come until a few days later. Elle gets cleared by the bureau's internal investigation, but you can't imagine Hotch won't tack on a psych eval just to be safe.

"Nicholas Faye of Ozona, Texas, was beaten to death roughly 13 hours ago."

JJ clicks her remote and the screen in the conference room changes, displaying the crime scene photos.

"God," you curse, averting your eyes for a moment. "He's just a child."

"Blunt force trauma to the head," she continues with a forlorn sigh. "He's the second young boy in Ozona to die the same death in the last 2 months. Local hunter found his body in the woods."

Morgan looks down at the case file. "First victim's name: Robbie Davis. Are these boys connected somehow?"

JJ shrugs. "Ozona's population's roughly 2, 500. Everyone has some kind of connection."

"Well if they weren't linked before, they most certainly are now."

Hotch and Gideon's absences from the conference room don't escape your notice, so you keep an eye out for them upon leaving the briefing.

You spot them discussing something in hushed whispers by the coffee station, and you wait for them to finish before you approach Hotch.

"You missed the briefing."

His eyes pinch, and you notice that the lines in his forehead are more prominent than usual. "What is it?"

"Elle missed her evaluation."

Your breath releases like a sigh. "I can check her apartment."

"No," he says matter-of-factly, with a shake of his head. "Gideon wants all of you in Texas for this one. I'll go look for her."

You would normally argue, but the horrific images from the briefing are still imprinted on the backs of your eyelids. "Okay. I'll see you soon."

He leaves you with a nod, and you grab your go-bag before following the rest of the team to the jet.

"You guys see Elle's cleared?" Reid pipes up as soon as the plane takes off.

Derek nods, his lips thinning. "Self defense."

"So it was a good shot."

"She hit what she was aiming for."

Reid frowns. "That's not what I meant."

"I know."

"If they cleared her how come she's not here with us?" You glance up and realize Reid is looking at you. "Or Hotch?"

You don't want to reveal more than is necessary, especially when the situation is this precarious and personal, but you're saved from responding when Gideon turns around and yells, "Focus on the case!"

JJ turns the conversation back to the unsub's motivations, and you all discuss a possible profile until a new female victim emerges that strays from the previous victimology.

Gideon doesn't waste any time delegating tasks. "When we land, Morgan and Reid, go to the new crime scene. The little girl."

He turns to you. "We'll look at the scene where Nicholas Faye was found."

The murder site is so far into the woods, that you can't help but imagine what it would've been like to be the little boy who was brought all the way out here with no hope of return. You can't believe that a young child would come this far out of their way unless they trusted the person they were following. "I think the victims knew their killer."

Gideon seems to be on the same train of thought. "They followed him to this spot."

"What makes you think that?" the local officer asks.

Gideon looks at you expectantly, and you take the invitation with a grateful nod. "Well I guess they went this deep into the woods because they trusted him. He probably stashed his weapon here beforehand. This means we're looking for someone intelligent, methodical."

The police officer accompanying you doesn't look sure of your assessment. "He bashed the kid's head in, it looks like a moment of rage to me!"

"I agree," Gideon muses, turning away and looking further into the woods. "It doesn't make any sense."

After informing the town's parents of the five PM curfew, and the children of the new buddy system in place, you excuse yourself to go call Hotch for an update.

"Anything new?" you ask when he answers the phone.

"I went to her appartment to talk to her," he explains, "but she was leaving with an overnight bag."

Your heart collapses in your chest. "She's running."

"I don't know, I hope not." He pauses for a beat. "I'm following her."

"All right," you sigh, wishing there was more you could do from here, "I really hope I'm wrong about this."

He's silent for a second, and you realize your slip up. "I just mean, I don't want to- I mean, fuck."

"I know," Hotch whispers. You can hear his car starting in the background. "But Gideon's right. She's innocent until proven guilty."

He ends the call with a promise to keep you updated, and you head back to the station, where another child has been reported missing. The missing boy's little brother draws your attention to a local legend that leads you to a Mr. Fennigan's so-called "haunted" house up in the hills.

***

"Garcia," you say into your phone before putting it on speaker and setting it down at the table you're sitting at. After establishing that Finnegan's house was empty, you and team have been searching the property for any indications that he's the unsub. "You got anything for me?"

"Only that Fennigan's house on the hill is like the Bates Motel of Ozona, Texas."

You roll your eyes, even though she can't see you. "We heard the legend from that counselor, Charles I think."

"Be careful, though," she says, her voice going lower as though she's telling a campfire story. "People that go into that house supposedly never come out."

"Garcia."

"But then there is that matter of his missing wife."

Deciding to humor her, you clear your throat and whisper, "Do you think she's still on the premises?"

"I got two words for you, my friend: 'rear window'. That guy probably chopped that lady up into delicious bitesize pieces."

You suppress a laugh. "Pen, do you really think that's gonna scare me?"

She huffs and you grin, tugging open one of the drawers next to you and peeking inside.

"You're no fun. Reid was scared shitless."

"He's just afraid of the dark," you smile, before your eyes catch on something bright under the table beside you. "Garcia, I gotta go. And cut Reid some slack."

"No promises, Mama."

You tuck your phone away and reach below the table, where you find a small pink backpack with the last victim's name scrawled on top in Sharpie. "Guys! I found something."

The clues from Finnegan's house lead you back to Charles, the town's guidance counselor, and then to his son, who the police are able to catch in the act of luring away Tracey Belle, another young girl. You don't relax until she's back with her parents, and even then, there's still a tension in your shoulders.

Cases involving children never get easier, but you can't help the kinship you feel to little Tracey Belle, who had the same look in her eyes that you recognized in yourself when you were ten years old. You don't remember your mom's funeral much, mostly because you were so young, but also because the whole day was a blur. The few flashes that come back here and there are your father's eyes, red from crying, and the cold gray of the headstone that you visited with him every year on the anniversary until you graduated.

The plane ride back is morose, and no one looks up from their reading material until it's time to disembark. Hotch isn't at the office when you drop off your case file, so you rub the exhaustion from your eyes and drive home.

There's a figure sitting on your porch when you pull into your driveway, and you're a moment from panicking when her face comes into the light.

"I turned in my badge," Elle says after you lock your car and walk up the steps.

Something twists in your gut, but the one emotion you aren't feeling is surprise. "Do you want to come inside? How long have you been waiting?"

She shakes her head, and you give her some time to formulate her thoughts. After a minute, she meets your eye again. "You were kind to me."

You don't know what to say, but you can see the change in her since just last week. She already looks lighter, and you can't help but think about how heavy the job can be. It's a weight on each of your lives that never seems to let up, and while you're going to be sad to see her go, you understand. It's the right choice.

Elle presses her lips together before curving them into a small smile. "You supported me after...after Garner. I'm gonna miss you."

You smile at her, even as your heart fills with sadness. "i'm going to miss you too."

Her body shifts like she's making to leave but then she turns back one last time. "You're too good for him, you know."

You get the sense that you know what she's referring to, but it's not something you can acknowledge without sending a flare shooting up your spine. She nods once, like that's all she wanted to say, and turns away into the night. You blink your eyes closed, squeezing them tightly as though it will somehow make the last few months a nightmare you can wake up from. But that's not how this works.

You give yourself a minute to pretend, but when you open your eyes again, she's gone.

***

The case that takes you to Golconda, Nevada feels almost unique to Gideon, as he takes each of the unsub's decisions personally in a way you haven't seen before.

Once you give the profile to the local police, the sheriff, Georgia Davis, leads you to a woman with a story to match the previous victimology.

"Jane," she says softly as she walks into the holding area at the back of the station. "These people are from the FBI. I'd like you to tell them your story."

Her story takes you through a tale of alien abductions and young love, but the kernel of truth underneath sounds awfully similar to the unsub's M.O. Her eyes still shine with a childlike tenacity that you don't usually see in other victims of such prolific and disturbing killers.

"Her subconscious mind has created a delusion that she was abducted by an alien," Gideon sighs after Sheriff George sends you all out of the room to let Jane rest. "She didn't show him the fear he wanted, so he let her go."

When it becomes clear that he is still in town, you disperse around the local R.V. park in search of his vehicle.

Hotch pairs you with Emily Prentiss, the new agent who joined the team after Elle left, and you welcome the opportunity to speak with her more than you've gotten the chance to since she arrived.

"How have you been settling in?" you ask her as you both stroll along the edge of the R.V. park.

"The team has been very welcoming," she says as she continues to scan the vehicles around you. "I'm just glad to be joining such an accomplished unit."

"That's kind of you," you smile, noting the extreme focus in her eyes. Her intelligence and intense concentration on each of the cases you've worked made much more sense when you learned about her history. Her background must have sparked more than a few nepotism claims over the years, so you don't mind letting her overcompensate, if it means she will prove to herself that she deserves to be here. "Everyone seems to like having you around. I certainly don't mind."

She shoots you a smile that you return by patting her forearm comfortingly. You were worried it would be hard for another agent to settle into the space Elle left on the team, but Prentiss has made easy work of it. She has the same humor as Derek and Penelope, and you've seen how well she gets along with you and JJ. Even Reid has welcomed her with open arms.

"This team is kind of famous," she says after a moment, piquing your interest.

"Oh?"

She shrugs, turning into another row of vehicles. "You've all been through so much, but it just seems to have made you more of a family."

When you first joined the team, that was all you wanted. You were by yourself, completely alone, and the team had become your family in the blink of an eye. It was exactly what you needed. These days, you're not so sure anymore. More family just means more people to lose.

"Can I ask you a question?"

You look at her with a nod. "Yeah, of course."

"It's about Agent Hotchner."

You should've figured. Every new agent tries to vie for his approval, until they realize it's not something you can force. "Yeah?"

She sighs, and you can tell this isn't something she wants to be talking about. "I don't know if I understand him. You're the only person who seems to have his ear. I guess I'm just wondering how I can do the same."

"I got his attention and respect through decades of friendship," you say, watching her eyes widen as you speak. "But he's not the enigma you may think he is. Showing off won't help your cause, but working hard and doing your job well is all you can really do."

She nods, taking in your words. "Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

You smile, bumping her shoulder to lighten the mood. "Don't worry about him. He knows your worth, I can tell."

Prentiss leans against you for a moment before shaking out her legs and turning back to the lot. "I don't think the unsub is here. We should meet up with the rest of the team."

Once Gideon puts it together that the unsub is hiding out somewhere in town, Hotch suggests that you all turn in for the night, but the older man doesn't want to listen.

"We could wait till first light, Gideon," he stresses, turning his body to stand between him and the officers. "It's gonna be dark soon."

"Do what you like," Jason grunts, shoving past him. "I'm gonna find him."

Hotch starts to go after him, but you step forward and put your hand on his shoulder. "Let him go. Maybe the walk back to the station will help clear his head."

He sighs heavily, and you know it's all the agreement you're going to get right now. "Let's head over there too. He needs our help if he wants to crack this before morning."

The stress lines on his forehead are almost as noticeable as they were the day Elle left the bureau, and you grab his wrist as he tries to turn away. You raise your eyebrows, knowing he'll be able to read the question written in the ridges of your face. How are you holding up?

Hotch rolls his neck to the side, stretching it out after what has been a very long day. When he looks back at you, you wait for a nod that comes after a moment. Alright. Been better, but alright.

Back at the station, the work is slow going, and you don't feel like anyone is helping with how uptight Gideon is acting. The air inside the small building has started to feel suffocating, and you finally get your chance to escape when Sheriff George grabs her car keys.

"I'm gonna take Jane home," she tells you when you approach her at her desk. "It's been a long night, and she needs to sleep in her own bed."

"You need to rest too," you say, noticing the droop of her eyes from sheer exhaustion. "Go home, Sheriff. I'll take her back. I remember her address from earlier."

She doesn't look convinced, so you lean in with a smile. "It's getting really stuffy in here. I need some air too."

That's all it takes to satisfy her, and she pats your arm with a nod before handing you the keys to the cruiser and walking to the exit.

You only see Morgan as you pick Jane up from the holding area, so you tell him you'll be back in a half hour and head out to the back lot.

"How long have you been living in this town?" you ask Jane as you make the short drive to her house.

"Since I was a teenager," she says dreamily, her eyes gazing out the window.

"You never wanted to live anywhere else?"

She shakes her head profusely. "Why would I? This is where I can be found."

You frown at her words, but it's not the oddest thing she has said today. When you arrive at her house, you park the cruiser out front and lead her up the porch steps, where she slowly unlocks the front door. "Do you want to come inside?"

You figure it wouldn't hurt to scope out the place, so you accept her invitation and follow her inside. "This is a beautiful home, Jane." Trinkets are scattered everywhere, and rudimentary sketches cover the walls.

"Thank you," she responds from another room. "You're very nice." You follow the sound of her voice to her kitchen, where she is struggling to lift a pitcher of juice from her fridge.

"Here, let me help you," you say, taking it from her and setting it down on the little breakfast table in front of her stove. "Do you have any cups?"

She walks over to a cupboard across from you, and you unclip your side-holster and set it on the table until the sound of a footstep behind you makes you spin on your heels.

You're assaulted by the sight of a tall, white man, who you immediately recognize from Gideon's profile earlier that day.

"Jane!" you yell, inching toward the table where your gun is. "I need you to run."

"Come with me, Jane," the man says, ignoring you completely. You use the moment of distraction to reach for your gun, but he's quicker than you. A sharp pinprick of pain shoots down your neck as your hand knocks over the pitcher of juice and your limbs suddenly feel like they weigh a million pounds.

"Jane, he's a murderer," you yell, hoping your voice doesn't sound as quiet as it does in your head. Your vision is already blurry, and you wish Reid was here to distract you by spouting off a list of fast-acting drugs from memory. "Jane, run!"

The last thing you hear before you black out is the sound of hurried footsteps receding into the background.

***

None of this makes sense. As each minute ticks by, he can't shake the feeling that they are missing something that's right under their noses.

"JJ just called," Morgan says, walking back into the station with his phone waving in his hand. "Apparently an anonymous caller called the tip line and claimed they saw an R.V. driven by a man who fits the description we gave to the media."

Hotch frowns. "Claimed?"

"Well, not a single R.V. or trailer has passed through any of the roadblocks."

Morgan's words click in his brain, and he instinctively glances beside him as an idea forms, but you aren't there. Now that he thinks of it, he hasn't seen you in over an hour.

"Who does the number belong to?" he asks, shifting his focus back.

Morgan is about to respond when Deputy Silo runs into the office, shoving past the other cops in his way. "We got a call from outside Jane's house. I think it was from the unsub."

Hotch stands up immediately, grabbing his jacket and gun, but next to him, Morgan stills, his face going slack.

"We need to head over there now," Hotch says, listing off a few instructions to the deputies nearby. Where are you?

"Hotch."

"And have some of your guys check in town," he continues, "in case he took her with him."

"Hotch."

He turns around. "What is it?"

"L/N drove Jane home."

His heart drops.

***

Just stay for a few more minutes, Jeff implores, his fingers dancing over your arm as you try to sit up.

You laugh as he tries to pull you back into the bed. I can't, I have to go into work.

Just five minutes, I promise. He pouts as you slide your legs out from under the covers. Three. One. One minute, please. I miss you.

I miss you too, you sigh, pressing a kiss to his lips. I'll see you tonight.

His hands reach up to caress your face, like he always does in the mornings. Cupping your cheek with his palm and running his fingers through your hair.

You settle into the feeling, wishing you had more time to just lay in bed with him. But you don't. Because Jeff's not here anymore.

Your eyes snap open right as the unsub tapes your mouth closed.

***

His hands grip the steering wheel as his SUV barrels up the small country road leading to Jane's house. He can't seem to press the gas pedal hard enough, and Reid's incessant foot-tapping in the backseat is driving him crazy, even though he understands the anxiety coursing through his body.

He beats Deputy Silo to the house, and flies out of the car without waiting for the other agents to open their doors. He's not sure what he's expecting to see inside as he pulls his gun from his waist holster, but he doesn't give himself a chance to think about it before kicking the door in.

"What the hell are you doing?" Morgan yells from behind him as he checks around the door and makes his way through the small hallway. The house is silent, aside from the footsteps of the agents behind him, but the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears is almost deafening.

"Clear," he shouts after checking each room up to the kitchen. When he steps inside, there's juice all over the floor, and he spots the pitcher on its side beside the fridge. Juice, not blood.

His eyes flash to the table and his breath catches in his throat. He would recognize your holster anywhere, especially since he was with you when you bought it.

What do you think? It's not too bold, is it?

I definitely wouldn't mess with you.

"Why didn't she reach for her gun?" he wonders out loud.

"Because she couldn't." He turns around to see Reid holding up a large, empty syringe he found under the table.

He can't take his eyes off the juice on the floor, splattered everywhere as though someone had knocked it off the counter. The image of Elle's blood spilled all over her living room is still fresh in his mind, and he can't get over how easily the dark red cranberry juice seeping into the floorboards could have been yours.

Growing up, it was a common occurrence for you to patch him up and wash the blood off his skin, but there was only one time when he had to return the favor.

He still remembers the proud glint in your eyes after you had literally head-butted a man who had grabbed you in a college bar by Georgetown. Already a year into law school, he would've thought you'd have more forethought than to injure yourself in the hopes of getting back at the jackass, but once he saw your bloody grin, his annoyance had fizzled away.

"What on earth were you thinking?" he had asked as you stuck a scrap of napkin up your nostrils to control the flow after the head-butt broke a few blood vessels in your nose. He hadn't seen you much throughout undergrad, but he was glad that you hadn't changed too much, even if it meant you were just as wild as before. "I'm getting you ice."

A few minutes of angry haggling later, he returned to your side with a small bag of ice that he held to the bridge of your nose. Nothing he said could have ruined your mood that night, especially since the man had been kicked out of the bar and banned for life.

"Did you see the look on his face?" you had asked, your eyes twinkling behind the quickly melting ice.

"I did," he sighs, before breaking into a grin. "I'm just glad that your future law degree will give you another method of retaliation against scumbags like him."

You had laughed then, causing a few drops of blood to spray out of your nose, but all he could think about as he jerked back to avoid the mess was how happy he was that you were back in his life again.

Hotch flies back to the conversation happening around him, his brain refusing to let him imagine the worst case scenario.

"Those footprints," Morgan is saying as he starts listening again, "they got to be Jane's."

Reid nods, following along. "They go to the back."

"She escapes. The unsub knows the ketamine's gonna wear off, so he's got to act."

"No," one of the deputies says. "He hasn't got what he came here for."

His voice returns to him all at once. "So he took Y/N for leverage."

"He thinks we have Jane. Which means he wants a trade."

"Whatever he wants, we need to find Jane and your agent fast."

His agent. He feels sick at the thought of whatever that man is doing to you. "Garcia can track the phone number from the anonymous caller. You go to town, we'll find Jane."

***

Your eyes are blurry as you try to clear the fogginess in your head from whatever he injected you with. You can see the shape of the unsub moving around the room, and you squint your eyes to get a better look at the anatomical posters and drawings on the walls.

When your vision begins to focus again, the man comes toward you with a smile. "You're awake." He reaches forward to check the tape on your wrists and you try to jerk away from him, but your body is still flowing with the drug. You can't move as he brushes your hair behind your ear and smiles down at you, a sinister lack of emotion in his eyes. You stop trying to move, realizing it's no use. He's been doing this for years. Mutilating women. Cutting them to pieces.

You can feel your heart rate increasing, and you try not to look at the knives and saws littering the tables around you in an effort to keep yourself calm. Your team is looking for you. Derek knows where you went.

When he grabs your arms and starts lifting you off the makeshift operating table you were lying on, you try to scream, but the tape just pulls at your lips, tearing at the thin skin underneath.

Your eyes widen as he drops you into a metal coffin-like box, but he just looks at you with a shake of his head. "No need for that," he tsks before closing the lid over you, enveloping you in eery darkness.

***

Reid and Prentiss help him inspect Jane's house further for clues as to where the unsub could've taken you. The wind chimes of rib bone blowing in the breeze on the front porch catch his attention almost immediately.

His chest feels tight and he clears his throat. "He's obviously been here before and left these gifts for her."

"How romantic," Prentiss grimaces.

"Well, his version of romance."

Prentiss frowns. "What, are you trying to say you think he keeps coming back here because he's in love with her?"

"That's impossible," Reid interjects. "A sexual sadist can't feel love."

"Well," he says, "define love." He doesn't know if he can. He knows he loves Haley and Jack. He likes to think he always wants to be with them, but when a particularly excruciating case arrives on his desk, his desire to catch the bad guy trumps everything else in his mind. He knows he will always try to protect them from anyone or anything that wants to do them harm, but is that love?

It must be, because he feels the same instinct to protect you, but it manifests in him differently.

"Chemically, it involves surging brain elements called monoamines, dopamines, norepinephrine, and serotonin."

Of course that would be Reid's answer.

He continues rattling off a list of foods that contain these chemicals, and Hotch tunes him out, turning back to the house. They're missing something, they have to be. It's not until they spot a small trailer out back that it clicks.

***

You don't know how much time passes until the effects of the drug finally wear off enough for you to rub your wrists together to loosen the tape around them. The noises outside the coffin stopped a while ago, and you assume the man has left, likely to resume his search for Jane.

When the tape finally breaks, you let out a relieved gasp and let your arms rest for a few moments, before you begin slamming your fists into the bottom of the lid. It doesn't budge, no matter how hard you pound at it, so you change tactics, instead clawing your fingers at the seams in search of a hinge or screw you can loosen.

You're still trying to pry open the lid when you hear a muffled voice speaking outside the coffin. Despite your determination to stay calm, your heart squeezes in your chest as you bring your hands up to fight back in case he opens the lid. You feel someone slide your box across the floor, before opening the top and flooding your eyes with light.

When you adjust to the brightness, you see the familiar faces of Hotch, Reid, and Prentiss standing above you, and you almost cry with relief. Hotch reaches down with a small "thank god" and pulls you up and out of the coffin. Prentiss carefully peels the tape off your mouth, wincing as some of the skin of your lips comes away with it.

When you're standing up again, your legs give out as the fear leaves you, and you collapse into Hotch.

He catches you easily, holding you against him tightly as you shake from the sheer relief of being found before something irreversible happened. You're acutely aware of your teammates watching you hang onto your unit chief as though your life depends on it, but you can't bring yourself to let go.

It's only after your hands stop shaking that he finally pulls away.

***

When you return from Texas, most of the team heads straight home, but Gideon hangs back, calling you into his office.

"How are you doing after today?" he asks as you shut the door behind you and take a seat in front of his desk.

"Fine," you say simply, looking him straight in the eye. You're not sure exactly what you're feeling, but it definitely isn't fine. The few times your eyes fell closed on the flight back, you could still feel Frank's fingers pressing the tape onto your face.

Gideon scrutinizes you for a moment, his brow crinkling as he waits for you to elaborate. You can appreciate his intention, but you really don't feel like talking about it right now. Not when the memory of the cold metal on your skin is still fresh.

"Okay," he concedes after a minute of silence. It's not really a concession - you can already hear him recommending you for a psych evaluation - but it's enough for the moment. "You don't have to do it right away, but you need to eventually fill out an incident report. I can get you the paperwork now, but I mean it, take your time."

He reaches into his accordion file folder and pulls out a sheet of paper that's mostly blank, except for a few lines at the top. "Just hand it in to me or Hotch when you're done."

You accept the paper and leave his office, with a promise to head home soon. You heard his suggestion to finish it in your own time, but you can't imagine coming back to this at a later date.

Dropping into your chair, you lay the paper down on your desk and read over the form. The first section is the same as every other form you've had to fill out at the bureau: name, date, badge number.

The second half is just one line of instruction before a vast sea of white space. Describe the incident in detail.

Images from Frank's workshop flash in your mind. A roll of silver duct tape. A bloody washcloth. A rusted scalpel. Nothing you can effectively put onto paper.

The words don't come, even as the lights in the hallway automatically turn off, and the hushed voices from the nearby offices go silent. You eventually stand up to shake out your legs and get another coffee, not because you need it to stay awake, but because it feels like the normal thing to do. The idea of sleeping just takes you back to the darkness of the coffin, and a shudder runs through you as you pour yourself a cup and dump the muddy remains of the pot in the sink.

You're about to head back to your desk to fruitlessly stare at the form for a little while longer, when your eye catches on a small lamplight from Hotch's office at the top of the stairs. Gulping back a mouthful of stale coffee, you toss the rest in the trash and grab your report before hiking up the stairs.

"You're still here?" he asks when you knock on his door and push it open. "I thought you left hours ago."

The same question Gideon asked you earlier is etched into his face, but you know he won't voice it just yet. He was always good about knowing your boundaries (and when to push them).

"I could ask you the same thing," you smile with a shrug, before flopping down into the chair by his desk. "You really need to replace this chair, by the way. It's horribly uncomfortable."

He snorts quietly. "It's a perfectly fine chair."

You laugh, the sound quickly turning into a yawn.

"Go home," he stresses, dropping his pen and fixing you with a pointed stare.

"You first."

"I have work to do."

"So do I."

He looks down at the paper in your hands. "Gideon gave you the form already? I was going to give it you in a few days."

"I'm glad he gave it to me today," you say, before dropping your eyes with a sigh. "I've just been having some trouble finding the words to describe what happened."

"You don't have to do it now..." he starts, but you cut him off.

"I do. I don't want to come back to this later. I need to finish it now, while I still can."

"Okay," he accepts after a moment. "Then take your time. I'll be here."

You fall into a comfortable silence as you bring your pen back down and start writing.

***

He doesn't finish his own paperwork until well after midnight. When he looks up from his reports, you're asleep, your head resting on your crossed arms over his desk.

He would normally wake you and tell you to head home, but you look so peaceful for the first time in too long. Haley and Jack would have gone to bed hours ago, so he figures it won't hurt to stay with you for at least a little while as you get some much needed rest. He can't imagine that sleep has been coming easy - he saw you shaking yourself awake each time you closed your eyes on the plane - so he lets you slumber.

He still hasn't gotten the image of you with your hands and mouth taped out of his head, and he doesn't know if he ever will. When your legs had given out, his arms had instinctively shot forward to grab you before his brain could catch up. He can barely look at the bandages on your wrist now, where the tape rubbed your skin raw.

Standing up from his chair, he slides his suit jacket down his arms and steps around his desk. Being extra careful not to wake you, he drapes it over your shoulders and lets you sleep.

***

Hotch gives you the next week off, but the quiet solitude of your house is too much to bear with all of the memories swirling through your brain. You know he would have called you if there was a case out of town, so a few evenings later, you find yourself in your car, driving over to the Virginia field office.

When you walk into the bullpen, it's empty aside from Reid at his desk and Prentiss at the coffee station. It's late, and you assume Reid is just taking some notes down from the last case, but you aren't sure why Emily is still here.

"Hey," she says when she sees you sit at your desk. "Don't you have the week off?"

She looks exhausted, but you understand where she's coming from. The urge to overcompensate for being new. For not being the agent you're replacing. You felt it with Gideon when you were transferred here. She likely feels it with Elle.

"I needed to get out of the house," you explain, adjusting your seat and settling back.

"I hear that," she says, before putting a lid on her coffee cup and grabbing her bag. "I should actually go home for once, but I'll see you in a few days."

Spencer doesn't look up from his notepad until the sound of the door closing behind Emily jerks him from his stupor.

"You're here," he states, as though he's not sure if he is supposed to be asking a question or not. "What are you doing here?"

You shrug, smiling at him. For a genius, he can be kind of clueless sometimes. "I wanted to see you guys."

"Oh," he says, placing his pen on his desk, "well, it's just me here."

You grin. "Works for me."

That makes him smile slightly, but it falls in an instant. "I'm glad you're okay."

Your heart leaps into your throat. "Thanks, Spence, me too."

You expect him to return to his notes, but he just looks down and back up again. "Are you? Okay?"

You frown, more out of a lack of understanding, but he starts backtracking immediately. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't press-"

"It's fine," you reassure, pressing your lips together. "It's what everyone's thinking anyway."

He doesn't say anything for a moment, so you continue to fill the silence. "You just can't let the stares get to you."

"How, though?" he says after a beat. You're not sure what he's asking, but the confusion you're feeling must be mirrored in your expression, because he elaborates. "Ever since my mom came here for the Garner case, I feel like everyone has been looking at me, with all this...pity."

Your chest squeezes as you think about all of the lingering stares that followed him around in the week after Garner killed himself. Even Morgan couldn't hide his shock when Mrs. Reid showed up at the field office. "Have I?"

He shakes his head, and your chest relaxes with relief. Spencer glances up at you, and he looks so young for a second. "You're one of the few who hasn't."

"I guess I just understand the stares better than anyone," you sigh, feeling the familiar ache as your memories return to you in flashes.

You hear him suck in a breath as the realization dawns on him. "Agent Adler..."

You nod and Reid gives you a second to take a breath before he continues. "He was my instructor once, you know. At the academy."

You smile as your eyes shine with unshed tears. "Yeah, I know."

There's this kid in my hand-to-hand combat seminar.

Kid?

He can't be more than 20, maybe 21 years old. But the kid has guts.

You remember those nights before Jeff joined organized crime so fondly these days. The calm before the storm.

"He never treated me differently."

You look up with a sad smile, the memory receding as Spencer shares his own. "Hotch made me take a few physical training classes at the academy after I joined. All the other instructors acted like I was a joke, or a prank being pulled on them...but he never did."

That doesn't surprise you. Jeff was so nurturing and kind, much better than you ever were before you met him.

"I really miss him sometimes," he whispers softly.

You reach forward and press your hand on top of his. He doesn't pull back. "Me too, kid."

***

You can't remember the last time the team went out together. There was one night, what feels like years ago, when you all got dinner together after an especially cut-and-dry case that ended within the first day you arrived on scene. When the cases are long and hard-fought, it's not the same; everyone bolts the minute the jet hits the tarmac.

Tonight, something feels different. There hasn't been a new case in a couple of weeks, and everyone seems lighter.

"I'm back," Haley smiles, carefully setting two drinks down on the little high top table you are crowded around. "Spicy marg for Emily, and mojito for me."

You're still nursing the old fashioned you ordered a half hour ago, and Hotch is only halfway through his pint of Guinness.

"How are they treating you at the BAU, Emily?" Haley asks, before putting the straw in her mouth and taking a large sip.

"She means is he being nice to you," you grin, cocking your head at Hotch as he shoots you a look of mock-offense. You know I'm right.

He flashes his eyes. And?

"Everyone has been incredibly nice," she says with a smile as a waitress approaches you with a drink in her hand.

She sets it on the table in front of you and glances behind her. "That man over there bought this for you."

Haley starts hooting before the waitress has a chance to leave the vicinity. She's definitely starting to feel her mojito, but you would never judge her on her one night away from the baby.

"That was weird," you say, hoping you don't look as awkward as you feel.

Haley leans forward and grabs your hand, an earnest smile on her face. "You should go talk to him! Only if you want to, of course."

"Yeah, it's your night off," Emily agrees, shooting you a smirk over the rim of her margarita.

"I don't know, guys," you say, sliding the drink to the center of the table.

You can tell Haley isn't done encouraging you to have a wild night, so you brace yourself for the pounce, but thankfully, Hotch stands up just as she's opening her mouth, and takes her hand. "Come on, honey, let's go show them how it's done."

"Oh!" she smiles, her face lighting up as she follows him onto the dance floor. "You ladies don't have too much fun without me."

"Wouldn't dream of it," you grin, before downing the last of your original drink.

Emily watches them shimmy into the crowd, her chin resting on her palm. "They are so sweet."

"They've been that way forever," you agree, glancing back over at them as they dance lazily in the center of the dance floor. Haley's movements are a bit looser as she slides through his arms, but he keeps a firm grasp on her hand, keeping her upright even when it looks like she may fall.

He still looks at her the same way he did in high school, when he saw her at that first rehearsal for Pirates of Penzance. There's so much wonder in his eyes, like he's seeing her for the first time, every time.

***

You should be happier right now. You're done with high school, sitting in a sea of green caps and gowns with all of your friends, but all you can think about is how soon he's going to be gone.

You're going to be at different schools next year. Him at Harvard, you at UCLA, opposite ends of the country, for four years. The gravity of what that means didn't sink in until this very moment, the worst possible timing, because you're supposed to be happy right now.

"High school couldn't end fast enough," the girl next to you grins, her cap decorated with the glittery letters of the school she will be attending next year. "I'm so ready for all of this to be over."

You're not. You force your lips into a smile and let yourself glance a few rows up, just for a moment. When it's just the back of his head, you aren't confronted by the confusing emotions that have been swirling around your brain for the last few months. Of course you would realize you're in love with your best friend a semester before school ends. But that isn't the only reason your timing couldn't be worse.

You wave at your dad in the crowd, you is wearing more school colors than even you are, and he waves back enthusiastically. It distracts you for a moment, but then you face the front again, and your eyes are drawn back to the same place.

He turns back then, with a grin meant just for you, and your heart flutters like it's in a butterfly enclosure. You smile back, more genuine this time, but his attention shifts behind you after a quick nod. You don't have to turn back to know who he's looking at in the stands.

You shouldn't be surprised they got along so well, you practically set them up. After their first date, he seemed lighter than air, giddy with the impatient brush strokes of a first love. The look in his eyes now is the same as it was that day.

How did it go?

I'm gonna marry that girl one day.

You don't know why you had just assumed he was joking around. Hotch never joked about things like this.

Eventually, he turns back around in his seat, and you stare at your hands as you clasp and unclasp them over and over and over again until you no longer feel the cavity in your chest where your best friend used to be.

***

The next case comes in as you're working on your second drink. JJ corrals everyone at the bar into taxis, and sends you all off to the airport where the jet is already fueled and waiting.

"You missed a fun night," you note as Gideon climbs into the plane, a few minutes after the rest of you arrived.

"I had a good time," he says simply, before sitting by himself a few rows over. He hasn't spoken to you since he gave you the incident report, but you know it's not about you. Being forced to let Frank get away was hard on him, but you don't know how to assuage his guilt about your kidnapping if he won't even look at you.

Derek flips open his case file and huffs out a breath. "Well, good time's definitely over."

"The Kyles," JJ says, beginning the briefing as the plane takes off, "Dennis and Lacy were murdered an hour ago in their suburban Atlanta home."

You look up, assuming you heard her wrong. "Only an hour ago?"

"Police were on scene unusually fast," she nods.

Derek frowns. "Why?"

"One of the unsubs called them and told them that the other was about to murder the victims."

Prentiss lets out a humorless laugh from across from you. "You're kidding."

"From inside the house."

JJ scans the file again. "According to the dispatcher, the first male sounded terrified and begged them to get there before the other, who they both identified as Raphael, was about to kill the sinners that lived there."

Gideon enters the conversation with a confused frown. "Sinners?"

"Also, when they arrived, the police found this displayed prominently on the bed." She holds up a photo of a page that looks torn out of a book.

"Revelations, chapter 6, verse 8."

Gideon sighs. "They're on a mission. And mission-based killers will not stop killing."

***

Gideon was right, as he usually is. The killings don't stop, and videos of the murders are posted online, spreading the killers' message for them.

"JJ, why don't you and Reid go out there, see if you can find Mr. Hankel and see if he remembers something."

"On it."

Garcia calls almost immediately after they leave. "There's a new video from our psycho."

Hotch stills. "Get it on the monitor here as soon as you can."

The police officer you met at the first crime scene joins you, Hotch, and Morgan in front of the computer as the video appears on the screen. The first thing you see is the dirty mattress. Then come the dogs.

You avert your eyes as the woman's screams for help fill the room.

"Jezebel's death," Hotch whispers, almost to himself.

"My god," Morgan grimaces. "You can turn it off."

The officer suddenly leans forward. "Oh, wait."

"You haven't seen enough?" Morgan asks, disgust coloring his tone. He has two sisters, both of whom he protects fiercely. You can't imagine what he's thinking about as he watches the screen.

"Those dogs," he says, his voice growing in strength as he speaks. "Those three dogs attacked someone a couple of months ago. I would have had them impounded, but the victim knew the owner."

"You have the owner's name?"

He checks his notepad, flipping through it rapidly. "Hankel."

Your blood runs cold. "Hankel?"

"Tobias Hankel."

You're on your feet before he can finish saying his name.

***

The drive to the Hankel farmhouse is filled with hand wringing and nervous leg bouncing. You keep catching Hotch glancing over at you, but you don't care. You just need him to drive faster.

When he pulls up in front of the house, you and Emily throw your doors open before he can come to a complete stop. Hotch and Gideon head toward the house, so you lead Prentiss and Morgan over to the barn, where you can hear the faint sound of panicked breathing.

Lifting your gun and flashlight, you push open the barn door and are greeted by the sight of JJ pointing her gun at you. "JJ, it's L/N, Prentiss, and Morgan. You're okay."

She looks frenzied, her hair and clothes covered in a layer of sweat and grime. When her flashlight comes down, you notice the dead dogs on the ground.

"Tobias Hankel is the unsub," she gasps, stumbling over to you.

"We know, honey," you whisper, taking her arm and leading her outside, before glancing at Emily behind you. "Call an ambulance."

She nods and rushes over to the clearing in search of better cell signal as Derek steps forward, his face still twisted into a worried frown. "JJ, where's Reid?"

"They just completely tore her apart," she babbles, her eyes still frantic even as you put your hands on her shoulders to steady her. "There's nothing even left-"

"JJ, look at me."

Her eyes snap over to Morgan, and he brings his voice down again. "Where's Reid?"

"We split up," she says, her voice still tight, but slightly calmer. "He said he was going to go in the back."

"House is clear," Hotch calls from behind you, making you spin around, your mouth twisting with dread.

"So where is he?"

JJ's eyes glance back at the cornfield behind the house, and suddenly you're running. You can hear someone calling your name, but all you can think about is Spencer with an unsub who's idea of torture is biblical and cruel.

There are two sets of footprints in the dirt by the edge of the field, but after a few feet, they turn to drag marks. Oh no, oh god no.

***

The whole team - except for Reid, your brain keeps reminding you - sets up in Hankel's house, with even Garcia joining you on the scene to limit communication time.

You can't sleep as you alternate between reading Hankel's journals and hovering over Penelope's shoulder as she pores through his downloaded images and videos. Even as exhaustion pulls at your eyes, you periodically splash your face with water from the bathroom to keep yourself up. If anyone can understand how terrifying it is to be taken by a psychotic killer, it's you. Succumbing to sleep feels like a defeat, like you've given up on him.

You don't find anything useful until after Emily and JJ return from meeting with Tobias's N.A. sponsor, but in the sixth hour of scouring his journal, your brain clicks with a realization. "Guys, some parts of this journal match his father's handwriting. But they were written after he died."

"The bedrooms upstairs..." Gideon mutters, his eyes shifting up like they do when he's thinking. "One of Tobias's personalities may be his father."

Your brow furrows and you look down at the journal in front of you even as your eyes burn with fatigue. "Then who is Raphael?"

"My guess," Gideon sighs, "a mediator between the two."

Hotch looks at you, and you can see the concern etched into his face. "We need to start profiling Tobias's father. He may be the one who chose where to take Reid."

Morgan nods. "I'll get Garcia on it."

He leaves the room and Hotch comes over to the table, where you're still staring down at one of the journals. Your hands are covered in pink half-moon indentations where your nails were pressed, and he fights the urge to take you away from here, to save you from this hurt. "You should get some rest."

"I'm fine, Hotch," you whisper through gritted teeth. He can hear the worry in every word that leaves your mouth. The terror at the prospect of losing the team's youngest profiler.

"You didn't sleep at all last night," he points out gently.

"Neither did you."

You're not wrong. He didn't get a chance to shut his eyes either, but he's used to the sleepless nights. He supposes you are, too.

Your focus returns to the journal, and you don't notice as he slips out of the room and finds Gideon by the front of the house.

"Reid's brilliant," the older man sighs when he notices Hotch, almost like he's trying to convince himself. "He'll make it."

"I take advantage of Reid for his brain," he says softly, "but I never teach him how to handle things emotionally."

Jason shrugs. "Lead by example."

"What kind of example is that?"

For a bunch of criminal psychologists, you all still have no idea how to truly deal with losing people. Maybe that's just how life works. He thinks about the weeks after Jeff's death, when he wasn't sure if you would ever be okay again. Even as he held you while you cried, and promised that you would feel okay someday, he's not sure if he ever actually believed it.

But then one day, your eyes stopped shining at the mention of his name, and you no longer fell apart after each time you had to question a victim's widow.

Even after your mother's death, you were stoic. He remembers holding your hand at the funeral, but your grip was almost stronger than his, like you were holding him up with your sheer willpower to stay upright.

Seeing you now, he's not sure what will happen if Reid doesn't come back. He just knows he doesn't plan on finding out.

He and Gideon rush back inside when Garcia's voice frantically calls for everyone to look at Hankel's monitors. His eyes squint inadvertently as the video feed of Reid tied to a chair lights up the screens in front of them, almost like his brain is trying to block out the image.

Your hand flies to your mouth, but not before a small anguished sound escapes. "He's been beaten."

"This is for us," Garcia whispers, tears streaming down her cheeks. "He knows we're here."

"I'm gonna put this guy's head on a stick," Morgan spits out, before turning around and slamming his fist into the room's wooden door.

Gideon leans closer to the screens, clearly trying to take in any detail he can from the scene. "Why can't you locate him?"

"He's rerouting to a different I.P. address every 30 seconds," Garcia explains, her voice thick through the tears. "I can't track him."

***

The screens shut off and the video feed of Spencer is gone. Penelope starts frantically typing away at the keyboard, likely in an effort to regain the signal, but it doesn't seem to be working.

Your body feels heavy, like there are weights on all of your limbs. Realistically, you know it's mostly the stress and exhaustion, but you can't stop thinking about the frightened look on Reid's face and how he must be feeling.

When you walk back through the house, the sound of a hushed argument in the kitchen catches your attention.

"JJ, what do you want from me?"

You recognize Morgan's voice, and you almost turn away to give them some privacy, but something in JJ's voice as she responds keeps you at the door.

"I just...I want someone to tell me the truth."

"The truth is one of you is here, and one of you isn't. You gotta figure the rest out for yourself."

You're walking inside before you can stop yourself. "Morgan, go help Penelope with the video file."

He looks surprised when he sees you, but he doesn't argue before leaving the room.

JJ rakes a hand through her hair as you approach her slowly. She doesn't shy away as you stand next to her, so you reach out and squeeze her forearm once before pulling back. "I was terrified when Frank took me in Texas."

She looks up with a shocked expression, her eyes finally meeting yours for the first time all day.

"I was terrified," you repeat, "but I never lost hope, because I knew you guys would come for me, no matter what."

Her eyes crinkle with sorrow and you pat her arm again, almost as much for you as for her. "I didn't blame anyone for what happened to me, JJ. Reid isn't blaming you either."

Her lip trembles, and you pull her into a hug as the tears finally come.

***

"Your team members...choose one to die."

Spencer gasps on the grainy computer monitor. "Kill me."

"Tell me who dies."

"No."

The back and forth continues as Hankel stalks toward him and lines his revolver up with Reid's forehead. "Choose."

"I-I choose Aaron Hotchner."

The room stills.

"He's a classic narcissist. He thinks he's better than everyone else on the team. Genesis 23:4. 'Let him not deceive himself and trust in emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense. In emptiness, vanity, falseness, and futility, for these shall be his recompense.'"

Reid's words sink in and you unconsciously reach towards Hotch, but he's already walking out of the room. You follow him into the other room, the rest of the team on your heels.

"I'm not a narcissist," he says, his voice lighter than you're expecting. He grabs a Bible from the table and quickly flips through it, landing on the verse Reid mentioned.

"Come on, look," Gideon urges. "You can't think anything from that. He's not in his right mind, Hotch."

He waves away everyone's concern. "No. Stop. Stop. All right, everybody right now- what's my worst quality?"

No one says anything. You can feel Morgan revving up, so you jump in to start things off. "You're a workaholic."

Your mind flashes back to your hometown's library, all the late nights where you would fall asleep in your chair as he worked away into the early hours of the morning. His home was a trigger after his father died, and you could see the guilt eating away at him as he realized he didn't miss his dad as much as he was supposed to. As much as Sean did. The guilt that wore him down as he struggled to figure out how to be there for his brother, when he couldn't understand his pain.

He nods at you then, and there's nothing but determination behind his eyes.

"You're a bully," JJ chimes in.

Morgan adds, "You can be a drill sergeant sometimes."

Hotch is still nodding. "Right."

"You don't trust women as much as men," Emily says, her voice wavering slightly.

"Ok, good," he says, tapping the page with his finger. "I'm all these things, but none of you said that I ever put myself above the team, because I don't, ever."

"Hotch, what's your point," you whisper, chewing your lip as you anxiously glance back at the screen.

He shushes you with a wave of his hand. "Reid and I argued about the definition of classic narcissism, and he knew that I would remember that, and he also quoted Genesis, chapter 23, verse 4. Read it."

You lean forward, taking the book from him. "'I am a stranger and a sojourner with you. Give me property, forbear a place among you that I may bury my dead out of my sight.'"

"He wouldn't get it wrong unless it was on purpose."

"Bury my dead," Morgan repeats, his eyes widening. "He's in a cemetery."

***

Hotch heads to the nearest cemetery with Morgan and Gideon, while you follow closely behind, with JJ in the seat next to you and Emily in the back. The drive is short, and you all throw yourselves out of the SUV when you park, as everyone spreads out to search the cemetery.

"Come with me," you tell JJ when you see her eyes flit around the darkness, a slightly panicked expression on her face. "We'll find him."

The wet mulch of the graveyard sinks under your quick footsteps, and you keep your eyes peeled as his name choruses around you, from all of the officers milling around.

The search ends with the sound of a gunshot, and when you get to the source, you nearly collapse with the relief of seeing Hankel on the ground as Reid kneels beside him.

"Spencer," you gasp as the other agents examine Hankel's body. He looks up at the sound of your voice and his face contorts for a second as you kneel in front of him.

A small sound leaves his mouth and suddenly your arms are crushing him to you, your panic ebbing away with the rapid rise and fall of his chest. "You're okay. You're okay."

Hotch reaches out when you break apart and helps him up before Reid pulls him into a tight hug that surprises everyone. "I knew you'd understand."

Hotch tightens his arms for a moment, before they both pull back and JJ throws her arms around Reid. "I'm so sorry."

He pats her back, and for a split second, you can almost imagine he's comforting her, instead of the other way around. "It's all right. It wasn't your fault."

She steps away from him and he asks for a moment alone, so you all move back a few paces, allowing him the time to come to terms with the death of the man who somehow both tortured and saved him. You use the second of space to catch your breath as you will yourself not to let the tears of relief fall.

When Spencer finally stands up, you grab onto his shoulder as he wraps his arm around you, and you help him over to the ambulance that is waiting by the edge of the cemetery.

"Thank you," you gasp as he sits on the edge of the vehicle, suddenly unable to help yourself.

He frowns, his hair hanging in sweaty pieces in front of his face. "For what?"

"For staying alive."

***

The next case takes you to New York, where you find yourself hyper-vigilant as you watch Spencer try to acclimate to the job again. You can't help but notice the small changes in his demeanor, including the snappiness in his tone as he responds to everyone's questions, but you attribute it to the shock of his kidnapping.

After returning from the city, you decide to take some time to complete the paperwork you've been letting slide. Hotch managed to head home at a decent hour for once, and JJ and Prentiss are no where to be seen, but you spot Morgan twiddling his thumbs at his desk, his eyes darting over to peer at Reid almost as often as yours do.

An hour into scribbling out a case report, you head over to the coffee station to refill your mug. It has cooled down since you made it a couple of hours ago, but it still tastes just how you like it.

Burnt, Hotch's voice grumbles in your head. Even when he's gone, he won't leave you alone.

Topping off your mug, you turn around to get back to work and end up bumping into Reid, who looks worse for wear than he did on the jet.

"Shit, sorry," you smile, trying to get him to meet your eye. "I didn't see you there."

"Watch where you're going," he snaps, before stepping around you.

You don't let him get away that easily. Grabbing his arm, you hold him in place as he tries to wriggle away. "Spencer, don't do that. You know you can talk to me about anything, right?"

"I'm fine," he says simply, his expression almost emotionless as he glances back at you over his shoulder.

"I'm serious," you say, putting extra emphasis on your words. "I know what you're feeling. I can help."

His expression shifts into one of animosity and something else you can't place. "You don't know anything about what I'm feeling."

His words are like a slap to the face, and he uses your break in focus to tug himself out of your grip and stalk over to the bathroom around the corner.

You press your lips together, willing yourself not to take it personally. He's just been through a horrifying ordeal. No one can expect him to continue on like normal, at least for a little while.

"Something is up with him," Morgan says from his desk, before spinning in his chair to look at the spot where Reid walked away. "He's acting...hostile."

"He's just adjusting," you say quickly, your protective instinct coming out in full force. You close your eyes for a moment to calm your voice down. "This is a normal reaction for what he went through."

Derek doesn't look convinced, but he doesn't press the issue. You don't even know if you're convincing yourself, because you know why this kind of hostility and irritation manifests: when you're hiding something.

You weren't a particularly crazy teenager, so you didn't have much to hide from your parents, but there was one secret you held until you left for college that manifested in your daily interactions. One secret that changed how you acted around your best friend, how you spoke to him, how you even looked at him.

You push the thought away before turning to stare at the bathroom door as it falls shut behind Reid. You know Morgan's right. You just don't know what to do.

***

"Hey, Reid," Derek says, looking at him with a small smile. "What's going on up there?"

He shrugs. "Just thinking of this old friend of mine from Las Vegas, Ethan. Pretty sure he lives in New Orleans now."

JJ called you at home a few hours ago with the briefing and an instruction to pack for warm weather. Wanting to pack light, you threw on the tank top you planned to wear, and a button-down for the flight. A few cursory glances around the jet tell you that almost everyone else had the same idea. Of course, Hotch is still in his suit, and Reid has on a sweater vest that you're sure he won't take off, even if the temperature skyrockets.

"Really?" Derek asks. "You going to give him a call?"

Reid shrugs again, and you absentmindedly wonder if his shoulders hurt from the number of times he has used that motion over the past week. "We grew up competing against each other in absolutely everything. Spelling bees, science fairs. We also both had our hearts set on joining the Bureau but first day at Quantico he backed out."

Emily, who is sitting next to you, looks up with a grin. "He probably just couldn't take the heat."

"It's not really for us to judge, is it?" Reid states, and her face falls immediately.

"Right. My bad."

He hasn't been as irritable in recent days, but sometimes a random response will rub him the wrong way. You find Emily's hand on the armrest and squeeze it once. She looks down at her hand and then at you, a grateful smile on her face.

JJ directs everyone back to the images that were recovered as you approach Louisiana.

"A slaughter like this takes time," you note as you examine the depth and shape of the wounds on the dead man in the photos before you.

"Andrei Chikatilo fantasized that the men he killed were his captives," Reid adds, chiming in from across the cabin, "and that torturing and mutilating them somehow made him a hero."

Gideon nods, looking up from his file. "This city's barely back to life. Something like this could cripple its psyche."

"So," you say, looking at JJ. "Where do we start?"

She sighs. "All of the records were washed away in Katrina."

"With no case files, there's only one place we can start," Hotch says, drawing your attention. "Square one."

The plane lands soon after, and you disembark into the midday heat, heading to the latest crime scene immediately after dropping your bags off at the station.

Instead of a body, there's a very alive man waiting for you all at the scene.

"You must be BAU," he says, reaching out to shake JJ's hand. "Will Lamontagne."

She smiles at him, accepting the handshake. "Hi, Jennifer Jareau, we spoke on the phone."

The detective is looking at her so intently, you almost feel like you're interrupting something by bring here. "Okay, then. I pictured you different."

You glance over at Emily, who is already looking at you, a smirk on her face.

"These are Agents Gideon, Morgan, Prentiss, and L/N," she introduces. "This is Detective William Lamontagne Jr."

He nods at you. "Appreciate you guys being here."

"Of course," you say, trying to keep the smile off your face as you shake his hand. Beside you, JJ has turned a light shade of mauve that you presently allow her to pretend is just from the heat.

***

"Morgan called," Hotch mentions when you finally meet him back at the station. He hasn't seen you since you got off the plane. "He and Prentiss think the unsub is a woman."

You ponder the idea, your eyes lighting up as the gaps in the profile get filled. "All straight male victims, killed while on a night out at the bars. Always in groups of other men, drinking. A woman would be able to lure them away. That makes sense."

He nods, turning back to the letters from the unsub. He's about to call the rest of the team back in when he notices your forehead crinkle out of the corner of his eye. You look up at him. "Wait, you said Prentiss and Morgan think it's a woman. What about Reid? Didn't he fly out with them?"

He sighs, mentally kicking himself for letting that slip. He doesn't want you worrying about Reid any more than you already have been, but he knows there isn't anything he can do to stop you. "Apparently he missed the flight. They couldn't get ahold of him."

"What?" Your brow furrows with concern, and he quickly interjects to keep you from spiraling. "They will be back from Texas any minute now, and Gideon said he spotted Reid heading over here a few minutes before you arrived. Nothing has happened to him."

"What are you talking about?" you exclaim, before bringing your voice down. "The worst thing happened to him. He's hurting more than any of us can possibly imagine. I just don't know how to help him get through it."

He doesn't correct you. He doesn't say that almost every single member of this team can at least somewhat relate to what Reid may be feeling, including you. Instead, he puts his hand on your arm and says, "You're doing all you can."

You sigh. "And what's that?"

"You're promising to be there when he's ready for your help." He sees the tension visibly leave your shoulders, and he pulls his hand back. "That's all any of us can do."

***

When another body is found in the French Quarter, the plan changes. Everyone disperses in pairs to cover the streets in the hopes of catching the unsub in action.

Even as night falls, the temperature doesn't, and you strip off your over-shirt, leaving you in a pale pink tank top. When you emerge from the bathroom, Hotch is the only one waiting for you outside, with all of the other pairs already patrolling Bourbon Street.

He gives you a funny look when he sees you tying your button-down around your waist, and you bump your shoulder against his with a laugh. "What are you looking at?"

He exhales in a quick burst, before meeting your eye. "You look different."

"That doesn't sound good."

"No," he shakes his head, his eyes blinking shut as he clearly regrets his choice of words, "no, it's good...uh, you look good."

Your stomach flips and you turn your face down to hide the smile that's threatening to appear. "Thanks, Hotch."

He huffs out a laugh before leading you up to the bars, where tourists are bustling around in large groups. The sounds of buskers playing their accordions at the street corners loosens a memory from your brain, and you turn to him with a bright smile. "Remember your first performance of Pirates of Penzance?"

He frowns. "I remember it being my first and last foray into the world of theater."

"No," you giggle, glancing around you periodically even as you continue the story. "I mean, do you remember how that one accordion player tripped and almost fell into the orchestra pit like ten minutes into opening night?"

His eyes light up at the memory and he laughs. "I thought it was hilarious, but Haley was so stressed out the whole performance. To this day, I've never seen that vein in her forehead get so big."

"You were pirate number four," you chastise him with a grin. "She was one of the leads. I hardly think you can compare experiences."

He shrugs, his eyes still scanning the vicinity. He looks like he wants to say something, but then you both notice Morgan and Reid rushing towards one of the side streets and your conversation halts. "Let's go."

***

With help from Detective Lamontagne and his late father, the team is able to catch the unsub right before she kills another man. Once she's in custody, you wait outside by the ambulances, watching from afar as JJ and Will talk by his car.

After a few minutes, she hands him something and walks back over to where you're standing. "I can't believe I just did that."

"What did you do?" you ask, trying not to laugh at how freaked out she looks.

She puts her face in her hands for a second, before looking at you with a sigh. "I gave him my number."

"That's good!" you smile, squeezing her arm. "That's good, right?"

"I don't know," she says softly, her eyes squinting as she looks at you. "He seems really sweet. And he's clearly great at his job. I think the distance just worries me."

"You can take it slow," you tell her earnestly. "This doesn't have to be any more serious than you want it to be."

"What if I want it to be serious? Eventually, I mean."

You can't help but smile at the look on her face. You recognize it on yourself from when you first met Jeff: the excitement of possibility. "Then that's up to you too."

She nods, and you let out a smile. "Let loose, JJ. He seems like a good one, and you definitely deserve something good."

JJ glances over at the police cars, where Will is talking to one of the paramedics. "I hope so."

***

You sit by yourself on the flight home, giving yourself a bit of time to unwind from the case. You don't encounter female unsubs often, but the ones that arise always have a tendency to get under your skin. Maybe it's because their motivations seem so different from the others. Or maybe you just feel bad for them.

You're so zoned out that you don't realize Spencer is sitting next to you until he taps your arm. "Hey."

"Hey, Spence," you smile, trying to keep your tone light so he doesn't think you expect too much. "What's up?"

He looks down for a beat before meeting your eyes. "I'm sorry."

Your heart twists and you press your lips together to keep from speaking too quickly. "You never have to apologize to me."

"I do," he says, shaking his head. "Please just let me."

He looks so strong all of a sudden. You haven't seen him look so steady in months, and it makes your chest feel lighter. "Okay. I forgive you, Spencer."

He nods, making a move to get up, but you don't let him get away just yet. "Just promise me something."

He purses his lips, like he's unsure of how to respond, but eventually he dips his chin into another nod.

"Promise me that next time you feel this way, you'll come to me."

He looks at you with an expression you can't decipher, but it quickly falls into contrition. "I promise."

***

"What are you thinking about?" Hotch's shoulder bumps yours as he sits down on the edge of the desk next to you.

"Nothing," you say quickly. He's not sure why you're lying. He can sniff out your dishonesty from a mile away.

"I thought you and Reid got a chance to talk on the plane last week," he frowns, following your line of sight.

You sigh, turning your gaze away from the younger agent. "We did. I just keep thinking about what he said about the unsub at the last scene."

He's like a drug addict.

It would be almost impossible for him to quit without help.

"All of us knew," he says softly, his eyes turning up, searching for something he can't see. "To some extent, we knew. But he's doing a lot better now. We just have to give him time to trust us with the truth."

Your eyes find his. "How did you know you could trust me? When we were kids, I mean?"

Your question takes him aback. He wants to say something profound, to mention a specific moment when he realized that he could share the worst parts of his life with you without the fear that the world would end, but it wasn't that poetic. All he knows is that you were a kid, and he was too, and the first time you saw the splotches of black and blue painting his skin, you didn't turn away. You looked at him, not with pity or sorrow, but with a strength that he still draws from to this day. "I think I just knew you would always be there."

You ponder his words, your eyes traveling back to Reid, who is flipping through a book he brought with him. He knows there are a lot of ways you could take what he said, but he believes you'll take what you need, because he was telling the truth.

You really were always there for him. Even when you weren't - either because of physical distance or because you were in a fight - he never doubted that you would be there if he needed you.

"Come on," he says after a beat. "Let's head back."

You nod, your mind still a million miles away. "Okay."

***

Friday nights used to be your date night. Jeff would promise to be home by seven, usually with a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers, and you would cook something special together before watching a movie or falling into bed.

After he died, Friday nights became your least favorite time of the week, serving as a constant reminder of what you should have, and no longer do.

Today, for the first time in over two years, you think you might be ready to remember those nights you used to love. Grabbing a bottle of cabernet from your pantry, you pull out a thin-stemmed glass and pour yourself some wine. Your heart thuds heavily as you swirl the wine around, and you are willing yourself to bring the glass to your lips when your pager goes off. You feel a shameful sense of relief as you set your glass down and reach for your purse.

181 Arthur Street. Why does that look familiar?

You wrack your brain for a second before it clicks. It takes you less than a minute to toss your wine into the sink and grab your coat.

***

"Where's Gideon?" you ask when you spot Hotch and the team standing in his kitchen.

"He's not here," he replied. "It seems he left in a hurry."

Morgan looks at him with an urgency you recognize in yourself. "PD thinks he did this?"

"They have six witnesses who saw him running down the street covered in blood, wielding a gun."

"Okay, he was probably chasing the son of a bitch who did do this."

Hotch shrugs, and you can feel the momentary helplessness in the motion. "Either way, we're under strict orders not to get in the way of the investigation."

"Gideon's a suspect," Emily nods, "we're his colleagues."

"Conflict of interest," JJ agrees. "There's no way they'll ask for our help."

"Which he needs badly right now."

You turn into the bedroom to look at the crime scene for the first time. The mutilation of the victim's body brings a familiar nausea to your stomach that you swallow down. "Do we know who she is?"

Hotch comes in behind you. "An old school friend." He turns back to spout off a list of instructions to JJ, but you can't take your eyes off of the woman.

Evisceration of the torso. Removal of various organs. No defensive wounds.

Something in her hand catches your attention and your eyes flicker down to see what she's clutching. Using one of your gloved hands, you pry open her fist and reveal a broken piece of bone. A rib bone.

"Frank," you whisper, almost to yourself. "It's Frank."

"What did you say?" Morgan asks, stepping up next to you. You unfurl your hand to reveal the bone, and he swears under his breath. He turns around to address the rest of the team. "Frank's back."

After JJ snaps a dozen photos of the crime scene on her phone, you all head out into the night air to regroup and formulate a game plan. You hang behind the team on the walk out, your mind spinning with memories of hands and voices you still see sometimes when you're trying to fall asleep.

"Y/N." Your eyes snap up to Emily's as she strolls alongside you. "You okay?"

She looks sincere, and you find yourself wanting to talk all of a sudden. You nod, heaving out a sigh. "Yeah, it just feels very fresh all over again."

"I can imagine." She takes your hand and gives it a small squeeze. "You can come to me if you need a break from all of it."

She leaves you with an earnest smile, and you realize, not for the first time, how glad you are that she's on the team.

***

You aren't able to save Rebecca Garner this time. Frank kills her, and you once again feel that familiar bitterness of nausea rising in your throat as you see her mutilated body.

When you realize he's going to go after children again, you join Hotch and Morgan as they go to Tracey Belle's house.

"We need a crime scene team," Hotch barks into his comm when the home comes up empty, no trace of anyone inside.

"That's my house!"

You turn around and see Tracey's parents running up to the entrance, panic reflected in their eyes.

Hotch steps forward to block them. "Mr. Belle..."

"You have to let us in. My daughter's in there."

He turns to the mother. "Ma'am, you can't go in right now."

"Where's Tracy? Where is she?"

You can see the interaction pulling him down, like a ship anchored to the sea floor.

"What's important to know right now is Tracy is alive, okay? Your daughter's alive."

S.W.A.T. takes the parents aside to explain the situation to them in more detail, and you go to Hotch's side as a pained expression crosses his face. More than anything, you want to comfort him. To tell him that Tracey isn't Jack, that this won't happen to him...but how can you?

Gideon's girlfriend was murdered tonight. Jeff was killed while undercover. Your mother was killed by a drunk driver. No one is ever really safe.

Your eyes flash back over to Mr. and Mrs. Belle, and your chest tightens almost uncontrollably as you imagine how scared Tracey must be.

When Emily and JJ find Jane in a holding cell at the local precinct, her knowledge of Frank's backstory provides more clues about his whereabouts. You go with JJ and Reid to his mother's apartment in Manhattan, while the rest of the team heads to the train station to find Frank.

The idea of Tracey being all alone, frightened for her life, plagues your every thought as the three of you drive to the city. You try to clear your mind as you push through the front door and check for any sign of life. Instead, what you find is the dusty corpse of Frank's late mother.

"Guys, over here." Reid points to a latched door. Stepping around the bed, you immediately unlock the door and throw it open, revealing the tiny, shivering form of Tracey.

"Oh, sweetie," you gasp as sits up in fright, her posture only relaxing once she sees the FBI vests. "You're okay, honey."

You undo the ties on her wrists and she all but falls forward and into your arms. You pull her into a tight hug, making sure to be careful of any possible injuries she could have sustained. The feeling of her chest rising and falling against yours brings you a familiar comfort, and you squeeze her tighter, before finally letting go.

***

He finds himself in Strauss's office again as he explains what happened with the Frank case. How he killed himself and Jane, but he can't bring himself to take that as a failure, because he knows she never would've found the strength to leave him anyway. "Once again, the team has battled a monster and won."

"The future of the BAU is not in the balance here." Her eyes are brimming with scorn. "The residual impact as a result of the investigations into the crimes and criminals you pursue is. Every cause has its effect."

He almost scoffs. "You think I don't know that?"

"I believe you are no longer effective in your post."

There it is. He knows she never liked the way he handled his team. The next words are out of his mouth before he can stop them. "The modern furniture, strategically placed magazines, the framed diplomas, the art on the wall are all in conflict with your family photos."

Her eyes widen but he just continues, undeterred.

"You have three children, but you favor the middle one, your son."

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Of course you love all your children," he shrugs, "but not like your son."

Strauss twists her hand into a fist. "That's enough."

"The bonsai that you obsessively nurture is to compensate for feelings of failure as a mother..."

"Agent Hotchner," she says, her voice bordering on rage. "I said that is enough. My position is not in question here. As your superior I am questioning your ability to lead your team."

"My team?" he scoffs, unable to keep the malice from his tone. "Let me tell you about my team. Agent Morgan fought to protect his identity from the very people who could save him. Why? Because trust has to be earned and there are very few people he truly trusts.

"Reid's intellect is a shield which protects him from his emotions and at the moment his shield is under repair.

"Prentiss overcompensates because she doesn't yet feel she's a part of the team. She needn't worry.

"Every day, Agent Jareau fields dozens of requests for our team. And every night she goes home hoping she's made the right choices.

"Garcia fills her office with figurines and color to remind herself to smile as the horror fills her screens.

"Agent Gideon in many ways is damned by his profound knowledge of others, which is why he shares so little of himself. Yet he pours his heart into every case we handle.

"And Agent L/N," he pauses finally, taking a moment to find himself again, "she has taken the immense loss that life has handed to her and transformed it, not into cynicism, but into empathy, for her team, for the victims, for the world."

Strauss doesn't say anything, and he can't help the vindication that shines through his voice as he says, "I stand by my actions and I stand by my team. And if you think that you can find a better person for the job, good luck."

"Agent Hotchner," she emphasizes, making him look back at her one last time.

"How do I know you favor your son?"

She simply looks at him, a mixture of irritation and shame on her face.

"I'm good at my job."

***

"What's wrong?" Hotch looks up in surprise as you sidle up next to him. He was staring at the portrait of the FBI director, hanging in the hallway outside the bullpen, and he only does that when he's professionally stressed.

He looks like he wants to avoid the question, but you fix him with a glare that makes him sigh. "We're being evaluated."

"Doesn't that happen every year?" you ask, still not understanding.

"It's six months early."

You take a deep breath. This past year has been tough for everybody, but you think the team has come through the other side better people. "So they're assessing our unit. It'll be fine, we did great work this year."

"The only file they didn't request was mine."

That sends a spike of anxiety through your bloodstream, but he doesn't need your fear. "They could never fire you. You stepped up to the plate when Gideon left. You helped make this unit what it is."

You're the reason I joined at all, you want to say. You made this unit my family. I can't imagine being here without you.

But that isn't fair. He doesn't need to carry this with you. This burden of having no one else.

So instead you just smile at him, bump his shoulder with yours, and say, "You're going to be fine. This team wouldn't be the same without you."

TAGLIST: @citrusiove, @distortionbobble, @sanayikes (message me to be added!)

[vypridae]

You seem to be the only one making brokerdoll (thanks for the ship name btw) content, and I wanted to know if you have any more headcannon s, or just general thoughts on the ship. I'm starved for content

okay a. you are so welcome for the ship name i shit you not i spent like ten minutes just being like WHAT DO I CALL THEM because i couldn't figure out a word that would go well with "doll" (as velvette's ship names tend to have in them)

ANYWAY!! HEADCANONS !! i had a post uuuh here (that took me so much longer to find than it should have) of some hcs but here are some more!! (if this took forever to get out i apologize my brain is working at 2 wpm rn and sometimes thinking of hcs is hard)

after they started dating, carmilla starts buying velvette clothes she sees that she thinks velvette will love

spoiler alert: every single piece she buys for vel is exactly her style

i like to imagine carmilla is pleasantly rich, even in comparison to the other overlords, because her weapons and parts and whatnot just sell super well

so she gets so much money to spoil velvette with and she UTILIZES it

velvette's love language i imagine is acts of service or getting gifts (she knows they love her when they get her stuff) and carmilla's is gift giving, which neither of them seemed to realize until velvette literally squealed in joy when carmilla bought her a jewellery set she'd been wanting for FOREVER

also since singing is apparently just a canon thing in the hazbin universe, i cannot for the life of me stop imagining pre-relationship velvette sneaking vox's camera footage from inside carmilla's bunker(?) (of which he got velvette, conveniently, to put there after the overlord meeting) onto her phone just to listen to carmilla sing over and over and over again.

vox and val HAVE walked into her room to see her with her phone sitting on her dresser, watching the same footage of carmilla singing out for love for the 138147985th time

(they don't question it because lets be real they have their obsessions too)

post-relationship, velvette probably posts a bunch of fake online drama about her and carmilla because she thinks its funny to see people being like OMG??? WHAT NO WAY

carmilla is like "cariño why are you posting that we broke up. again." and velvette is like "just for funsies, babe <3"

velvette probably ends up showing carmilla how to use social media because let's be so fr she probably has no clue

velvette loves running her fingers through carmilla's hair and probably has just as much fun actually doing it up as carmilla has with velvette's

painting nails ?? carmilla paints velvette's and paints little white swirl designs over the black polish and velvette draws cute little pink hearts on carmilla's

(yes, they do both get questioned about it)

velvette probably wanted to start a friends w/ benefits (or enemies with benefits) relationship with carmilla but she knew for a fact carmilla would deny INSTANTLY

ok look they aren't married but matching rings ... carmilla wears hers as a necklace and velvette shows off her ring (that she keeps saying is "marriage proposal material" when its not) to literally everyone forever

possessive carmilla? only slightly. she glares daggers and probably throws said daggers at anyone who tries anything to velvette

pre-relationship velvette pining she progressively started sitting closer and closer to carmilla during meetings until she was in the chair next to her like zestial is during ep 3

(she lies out her ass and says it's "so i can annoy her easier, obviously" but she's just gay)

(carmilla starts noticing when velvette starts arriving to meetings earlier rather than later so she can get the seat she wants)

also velvette probably ended up convincing staticmoth to stay away from overlord meetings specifically so they can't tease her for being head over heels in hate-love with carmilla when she's in the same vicinity as her (of which they agree with because its more time for them to do What Ever The Fuck Their Gay Asses Do)

(also vox has cameras set up at the meeting room)

(guess who gets teased to heaven and back by two (2) overlords when she gets home)

(they both know the struggles of a weird obsession with another demon, they know how to poke and prod at velvette until she admits her gayness to them)

they probably ended up convincing her to confess tbh

(which doesnt happen for Several Years, probably)

either that, or carmilla finds a letter on her chair in the meeting room signed "~V" and opens it and it just says "we should be homos" or something stupid like that AJHAKASHJ

firm hc that velvette cannot confess for her fucking life . she doesnt like being vulnerable

lucky for her, carmilla 100% sends back a letter thats signed with "C. Carmine" and says "We can date, if that's what you mean by "being homos"" or something HAHAHASGFJ

[mamawasatesttube]

tim for the ask game? :-)

Headcanon A:  realistic

part of the reason he keeps his hair longer later is that he has a pretty significant burn scar on the back of his neck after the explosion he's caught in late in robin '93. he's not too self-conscious about it or anything, but he hates when people stare or ask about it.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

when he was going through his dad's stuff after his death, he found a box of his own baby teeth that his parents apparently just... kept. which he had feelings about for sure, but also like... he didn't really want to keep a little box of his own teeth. that feels weird. but also throwing them away when they clearly had significant value to his parents feels BAD.

solution: he makes sure the box is clearly labeled (there's a tiny paper that says "tim's baby teeth <3" in his mom's handwriting in the lid; he goes over it with sharpie because it's kind of faded) and then just leaves it in a drawer in dick's apartment. dick you want these right? for emotional attachment or whatever? yeah cool.

dick finds them like two weeks after tim just places them there and goes hm. considers calling tim like hey why is there a box of your teeth in the drawer under my tv? but then he's like eh you know what, my life is weird enough. this may as well happen. so he just leaves them there and forgets about them again. tim considers this a job well done.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

he has a boatload of internalized homophobia to work through before he can even admit to himself that he's bi, thanks in large part to jack drake. he's also trans, and jack's acceptance of that hinged on tim being able to play the part of the classic ~all-star american boy~ so well. as a result, after jack is dead, tim has a lot of issues allowing himself to stray from what he knows his dad would've wanted him to be. it's not a simple easy said-and-done journey. it takes him years; he's the last one of core four to come out.

he also doesn't just like. tell people. his sexuality and his relationships are on a need-to-know basis. he's a very private person he's not going like oh i'm queer? i need to inform everyone i know. it's like... partly because he is just a private person, but also because it takes him a looong time to work through the shame around his sexuality that his dad left behind.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

he and zoanne are still friends. or they reconnect when tim eventually goes to college to get an engineering degree. specifically i think he just goes "well i'm great at tinkering and shit so how hard can this be?" and then once again has to struggle with juggling vigilanteism and having a normal life and doing homework. and zoanne is there going jeez your eyebags!!! are you good?? and tim's like no i want to sleep for a week :( why did charaxes show up last night when i have an 8:30 am lecture on tues/thurs >:( except he can't say that because secret identities. the point being tim gets to continue exploring his Themes and Issues re: identities and ALSO zoanne wilkins is there.

[daz4i]

oh wait i did promise a full dazai and nikolai comparison post didn’t i. time to deliver. no keep reading button, we’re clogging everyone’s dashboards like men. enjoy

clowning

so. i doubt i need to elaborate much on nikolai’s clowning - it’s very plainly put in the text, he along with other characters constantly call him a clown, and he obviously takes on a clown persona.

nikolai’s method of clowning is to take it to the extreme - everything he says sounds like a joke or pure nonsense, making you doubt everything that comes out of his mouth immediately, even when he’s saying the truth.

dazai’s is only slightly more subtle. i’m basing this on no longer human, given that so much of his character is based on yozo. dazai puts on a mask of a carefree, funny, lazy guy, especially to the agency, just like yozo does

his method of clowning is to seem genuine. pepper in just enough truth to make others believe him. seem reliable enough to make others trust him. but never showing his full self, so you should doubt everything he says

ultimately, the same outcome, done with different methods

so, we all agree they both do it. now, let’s analyze why. dazai’s is more obvious imo, so let’s start with him. 

with the agency specifically, it makes sense, gotta appear nonthreatening n all, seem like a normal guy with absolutely no past in the mafia (at least at first). i’d also say it can be used to make his enemies underestimate him - no one expects the goofy silly guy to pull a knife on them, after all, and you definitely don’t expect him to be a mastermind.

on a deeper level, if we go back to the yozo train of thought, it’s also to protect himself. no one can leave you, hurt the deeper parts of your soul, attack you personally if they can’t figure out who you are. no one can get close enough to matter to you then get taken away, the way oda was.

nikolai’s reasoning is less grounded in canon or external works (that i know of), so feel free to disagree with that part (with any part of this post tbh.) but in my interpretation, he does it for multiple reasons:

same as dazai, not letting anyone close enough to get him to care. nikolai sees bonds as something chaining him down - he cares about fyodor and sees him as a friend, and that’s why he wants to kill him. if you see him, he will care about you, and he can’t have that. better to have the self inflicted cage of a mask than have the key in someone else’s hands, if you wanna be poetic about it.

chaos! a lot of what nikolai does is to subvert expectations, be illogical, to prove the existence of his free will. nothing more chaotic than a clown

to contrast dazai, rather than make his enemies underestimate him, nikolai’s intention is to make his teammates underestimate him. he’s trying to throw their suspicions off him - oh, he defied the plan fyodor set up? well, can’t blame him, he always does silly shit like that. look how crazy that guy is, obviously he can’t follow orders - so he can freely do what he wants and only have them catch up way later.

already, we see a lot of similarities, as well as opposites-within-the-same-action. let’s continue

death

tldr: both are supposedly willing to die, yet still avoid death.

dazai sure managed to survive a lot of suicide attempts, huh! weird how all of his on screen attempts - especially since oda’s death - have been using methods that are easily to survive, like drowning. that’s so strange guys i wonder why’s that (psst i wrote a whole post just about that already)

and nikolai sure did give a dramatic speech about how dying will set him free, very convincing! weird that he faked his death, then. hmmm.

granted, nikolai’s speech might’ve been The Page’s work, but tbf it does align with his views on this topic so i’d like to believe there was some truth there, just like there’s some truth in dazai’s suicide attempts - yes, they want to die, but... there’s more to be done first.

both of them seem to hold a high value in the act of dying, and both see it as being set free. both feel trapped in their own life - nikolai outright says so, that he feels caged inside his own head, and if you dig into dazai’s character song you see him describe life as a “never-ending today”. both see death as salvation from their situation, but won’t get down to achieving it.

this is actually a good place to transition to our next topic,

meaning

since i mentioned dazai’s character song, one thing he seems to focus on there is looking for meaning, or rather being frustrated that he hasn’t found one yet (he also brings up this internal conflict in the dark era, but the song solidifies it as relevant even in his current state). dazai tries so hard to find meaning, but can’t.

nikolai’s fixation on free will, i’d argue, is not quite a search for meaning, but rather a struggle to prove there is no greater meaning in life, in order to ease his own guilt. none of his murders matter at the end of the day... right? then why does he still feel this way?

ironically, both can find meaning in their bonds - dazai has many at this point, with oda being the main one he might’ve found meaning in before, and nikolai has fyodor - but this is scary. they’re not used to having meaning, to caring. and so we circle back to the clowning, to pushing people away, to wanting to kill fyodor, to the comfort and familiarity of no meaning. 

guilt

like onions and ogres, clowns have layers. bear with me here.

on the surface, you’d expect them both to feel guilt for their horrendous acts. peel a layer, and it seems neither of them particularly does, otherwise they would stop doing it, you’d assume. peel back another layer, and... honestly, i think they do, but are just repressing it.

this is smth i get less from the text and more from their real life counterparts, tbh. going back to the yozo comparisons, he does outright say “i’ve lived a life filled with guilt” which. is very fair to expect to hear from our dazai. meanwhile the real life gogol straight up died because of his guilt. i don’t think asagiri would overlook stuff like that when turning them into characters.

nikolai also does outright tell atsushi he feels guilty for the atrocities he committed - though, pretends he didn’t mean it immediately after, putting back one of those layers we tried to peel.

going back to dazai’s song, it’s the “the tainted past, too, begone!” line that i feel is nodding to it. dazai obviously knows the things he’s done while in the mafia are wrong, seems like he knew while being in the mafia as well given his conversations with oda during the dark era. but this really does make it seem like he regrets it, imo.

they’re both repressing their guilt for the same reason they won’t die. there’s more important shit going on. dazai outright tells atsushi that wallowing in guilt is pointless, and we see him move forward and execute plans even if he’s still feeling guilty throughout, and even when he needs to do some dirty work to make them happen. nikolai is the same in that regard - he’s just hyperfocused on this goal of proving his free will, and guilt is another thing that’s keeping him caged, so he must break free from it. wallowing in it will simply be counterproductive.

sorry i gotta talk abt fyodor now

but it’s gonna be short i promise

so we’ve got this all knowing, unbeatable, super smart guy, right? anyway what if the only people we see outsmart him were 2 suicidal clowns. wouldn’t that be funny

so, it’s a bit tricky to call it “outsmarting” with dazai considering how their whole Thing is give and take that’s not going to end any time soon, but fyodor obviously views him as someone on his level so i’m counting that. he wouldn’t put this much effort into someone he didn’t think was less smart than him. and, he calls him a worthy chess opponent for a reason

nikolai did outsmart him, though. nikolai was supposed to die. nikolai wasn’t meant to survive the plan, let alone come to meursault and put fyodor in a death game when he could’ve escaped using the vampiric guard he planted in the prison instead. nikolai is throwing an unpredictable wrench in the plan of the guy who knows how everything is gonna turn out because humans are so predictable.

clearly they both affect him a lot, more than we see others have. both of them are the only ones so far we’ve seen get on the same level as fyodor

and, both of them are seen by fyodor. nikolai explicitly says fyodor is the only person who sees him, and dazai is seen because they are the same, on a certain level. fyodor understands them, which is why it’s even more impressive that they can outsmart him, imo

in conclusion

asagiri i am on my knees begging. make them interact properly please please please

fr tho, i’m curious if this means something. because this is a huge amount of similarities, especially when they’re not really related in any way and barely ever talked. does it mean anything?? how about nikolai being able to use his ability on dazai, does that mean anything????? asagiri please give me some answers i am asking so nicely

anyway. thank you for reading! lmk if i missed anything, or reblog with your own additions and analysis. if you disagree with anything i said, feel free to express that as well, just be respectful. hope i managed to infect you with my brainrot as well. have a great day :3!

[sandiavolo]

Ash Spider AU Overview

Ya know, I kinda thought it might've seemed rushed to just throw in my AU to the public and lookin back I kinda wished I'd gone over an overview of it since idk if something like this has been thought of. So to commemorate my first written chapter ever and the first part of my story, As the Ash Cloud Passes Over, I wanted to do just that.

I don't wanna give too much away for those who want a little surprises but imma do my best to describe this rollercoaster.

So first off, it starts off right when the Sully's have retreated to Awa'atlu as they did in The Way or Water. The only thing is they left not b/c of Spider being kidnapped, they simply just left. However, Spider wasn't kidnapped. Yes, he was with the Omaticaya for his childhood, yes he was outcasted so badly by the people he wanted to call his own, and yes Neytiri left a lot of metaphorical scars on him. But as far as the Sully's know, Miles "Spider" Socorro died around 5 or 6 years before they left, thanks to how they couldn't find him after an incident.

Que in the Sully's struggling to fit in (trauma from Spider's death most definetely made it much worse for them emotionally/mentally in this setting, cause I am SO convinced he truly means that much) and seeming like they're just miss something in their lives. Then, que in one fateful day where a Na'vi with skin the color of ash winds up a prisoner of the Metkayina. The Sully's, especially the children, are entrapped by the mystery behind the small, Ash Na'vi. When their interest takes a next level, they discover something, actually someone, that may change the course of their lives forever.

So to put it in general, but specific overview, I'm working with:

The Sully parents, Neytiri especially, and anyone who I think hurt Spider are gonna get berated at SO ferociously cause no one messes with ma boi

The Sully children are gonna be so emotionally unstable that it's crazy

Spider is gonna be both the biggest main character and most helpful side character at the same time, but this entire idea is overall to make him literally the greatest and close-to-happiest Na'vi-human b/c it's his dream and I want him to win no matter what (legit don't care what any Spider-haters think at all)

The Ash Na'vi are gonna come in much early, and I have legit worked an entire civilization and story for them (clan members, weapons, traditions, religion, village, etc.).

Pretty much NOTHING to do with most of the 2nd canon and the 3rd movie leaks b/c I am literally re-writing the 2nd movie and plan to make a whole new 3rd movie in writing down the road

So if you wanna come check it out, you're in for a whole new world and persepctive on Avatar that I pull from literally nowhere. and with a big help from @yesthisismycurrenthyperfixation I hope you guys can get to enjoy it as much as I will. Toodles, y'all! 💙💙💙

[taffywabbit]

im also anti proship but calling rugrats porn drawings "child porn" really dilutes the severity of actual child porn. we shouldnt be confusing actual cp that hurts real children with just weirdos drawing porn of cartoon characters that happen to be kids, the two things are not at all on the same level

ok i suppose this was inevitable, i may as well get into it.

(CW for some discussion of CSA and child pornography, obviously)

first off, "i'm also anti proship but" is a terrifying way to start your message, and to go and follow it up with some extremely common proship copypasta i've heard a million times about "taking attention/resources/severity/etc away from real CSA victims" or whatever kinda makes me wonder how "anti proship" you actually are...?

kind of the point of this whole debate is typically that "proship" folks insist that fiction, or in this case "porn of cartoon characters that happen to be kids" as you put it, has no effect on reality or people's mindsets. and so-called "antis" like myself generally respond to this idea with something along the lines of "well it sure seems to affect the reality of your cock and balls", and point out how repeatedly consuming media with a particular focus or message has been shown time and time again to quantifiably influence the way people view the world around them, in ways that subsequently affect how they act, or desensitize them to things that might otherwise upset/offend them. y'know, like political propaganda! or blockbuster movies about killer sharks! obviously some people are going to be more resilient against that sort of influence when the real-world equivalent of "porn of cartoon characters that happen to be kids" is something so blatantly unacceptable, and nobody is really claiming that the impact of fictional CP is "on the same level" as its IRL counterpart.

but at the very least, most people who would be considered "anti proship" WILL tell you "hey, i'm not trying to say that you jerking it to twitter porn of Gwen Tennyson or Tails or whatever is LITERALLY THE SAME as committing CSA, but it's still really fucking concerning and creepy that the majority of your sexual fixations are all specifically cutesy vulnerable cartoon characters under the age of 12, many of whom also have canonical adult designs that you conveniently avoid in favor of sexualizing the ones that are barely old enough to learn long division. you should maybe do some introspection and figure out why that is and whether or not you're really comfortable with what it implies about you. personally i know I'M not comfortable with that shit and i'm not going to keep hanging around you unless you make some serious changes." except usually in my experience the conversation ends up being a lot shorter and ends in a block pretty quickly. like i'm not a psychologist and i don't keep a bunch of studies on hand to throw at you about how fictional CP is often a factor in grooming, but i DO have a brain and can pretty clearly see when someone is rationalizing behavior that will lead them to places i'm not willing to follow.

ANYWAYS to focus more specifically on the actual reason we're talking about this (which was, to be clear, a mobile ad Tumblr served me that depicted one of the dads from Rugrats having sex with his 3yo daughter): yes, actually, that shit IS illegal to create or distribute. it's not the SAME as literal photographs of real children, OBVIOUSLY, but it's still also extremely fucked up in its own right, and any reasonable person in your life would probably stop talking to you if you told them you got off to it.

don't believe me about the legality part? check this out:

so like, I GUESS you might get some legal leeway with cub furry art or sonic porn or stuff that isn't always obvious in how much it's intended to parallel real children? if you really care? but this ad was literally multiple illustrations of a human adult man having intercourse with a human toddler. it's pornography centered around openly fetishizing the sexual assault of a child by a parent. i fail to see how referring to that in shorthand as "child porn" is inaccurate in any way that matters.

and Tumblr is a US-based company, beholden to the laws shown above, so they are at least somewhat responsible when illustrated pedophilic incest porn gets shown to thousands of their mobile app users in an ad they got paid to display. THAT was the original point i was making in my post. but thank you for trying to derail it to interrogate my "anti proship" views or whatever, i have had multiple people send me fairly nasty asks about it in the past year and you finally caught me in a moment when i was already pissed enough about something else that i felt like going off about this stuff. sorry if you actually agreed with most of this and i came off as overly rude/harsh, but if that's the case then this response is for all the other anon asks and replies i've gotten too, i guess.

now we're all clear about where i stand and i hopefully don't need to talk about this again - it's kind of a fucking bummer to think about this stuff and i've been avoiding the subject intentionally. you are always welcome to just block me if you have a problem

[gloomwitchwrites]

Dark Knowledge: Part Six

Miraak x Hermaeus Mora x Female Dragonborn Reader

Chapter Specific Warnings (per the warnings MDNI): canon-typical violence, tentacles, horror elements

Word Count: 5.1k

A/N: Part Six (Finale) of Dark Knowledge (for @childofyuggoth)

Mora wants to make a deal. Storn makes a choice. Two are betrayed.

Part Five

ao3 // taglist // main masterlist // dark knowledge masterlist

If there is anything in all of Tamriel that you can rely on, it is the continuance of pain. Of terror. Of all the horror you’ve lived and now must live again.

Endless. Always.

And why you? Why? Are the gods having a laugh? Do they find this amusing? Or is this some sick test between them and Hermaeus Mora? Are their hands pressed into the gore or do they simply watch on as Mora has his fun?

“What is it?” you ask Teldryn just before the world starts tipping. It is always tipping it seems. Slipping. Falling away from under your feet.

You blink. Shake your head. Attempt to throw off whatever this odd feeling is. There is a slithery sensation over your skin. A creeping that drags, pulling you into a soft weightlessness. You know it. It is an understanding. Taking shape around you is a familiar dread that simply exists. It festers. Desires to consume you whole.

Like before, in that creeping dungeon with the whispering Black Book, you lift your hand to your face, and brush your knuckles under your nose. Pulling your hand back, you see bright red.

Teldryn calls your name but you are falling to your knees even with his arms around you.

Reality is fading.

Fading fast.

Dovahkiin.

“No.”

Dovahkiin.

“No. No. No.”

Within your chest and head, Mora’s voice blooms and grows, shoving you down into an abyss. The dark is endless and it is everywhere. A darkness that has no up, that has no down, that has no side to side.

Rage. You must rage against this, return to the light and the hearth and the warmth of the familiar.

“Be gone, demon. I am not your servant.”

Hermaeus Mora chuckles in the darkness. “Your fiery spirit is such a bright thing. What potential there is inside of you, Dragonborn.”

From the endless darkness comes a soft green glow. It expands enough that you see inside Apocrypha. It isn’t like the places you’ve been before. There is actual land here, and a massive structure that looks more like a horrific cathedral than the towers you dwelled in.

And Hermaeus Mora is not here. At least, not physically. But you sense his presence, and that is enough to swirl your stomach into knots until you’re close to puking all over your feet in this odd dark.

“Well done, my champion,” croons Mora in a surprisingly soft timbre. “Your journey towards enlightenment has finally led you here. To this moment. With me.”

Games. Conquest. That is all this is to Hermaeus Mora. A Daedric Lord only wants to be obeyed and worshipped. Something you will not bend to.

“What do you want from me this time?” The exhaustion in your voice is evident, like you’re too tired to hide it from him. Maybe Hermaeus Mora is blocking your ability to keep things secret. Is his influence here, too? Has a bit of him broken off and festered in your body, waiting for the moment when the two of you would reunite?

“You entered my realm. Sought out the forbidden knowledge,” replies Hermaeus Mora calmly. “Only one other has obtained it. But you already know of whom I speak.”

Miraak.

The man who ushered you from his tower, sent you back to the realm of the living to prevent you from falling into Hermaeus Mora’s grasp. It worked, for a moment, but you’re not sure if this is Apocrypha or you are simply dreaming.

Awake. And dreaming. Or elsewhere. In the creeping dark.

“What is it you want from me, Mora? Speak plainly.” You’re tired of being dragged about. This needs to end quickly.

“You came to Apocrypha to learn Miraak’s secrets,” he says, slowly.

“You already know this. I know this. That isn’t new information,” you snap, growing impatient.

Hermaeus Mora still has not appeared before you. It is just a portal, perhaps a window, a glimpse into his realm.

“Miraak knows what he does because of me. If you wish to defeat him, or even prevent his return to Tamriel, all you need to do is serve me.”

Hermaeus Mora makes it sound so easy. That simple worship will give you all the answers. That basking in his presence and reveling in his praise will end all your ills and suffering.

That is a lie.

“After the way you treated me, I’m not eager for your help. I can learn Miraak’s secrets as well as yours on my own. I do not need you.”

“No!” Hermaeus Mora’s voice is fierce, a sharp slap of sludge against the face. “Look around. You have done nothing here on your own. You could spend a hundred lifetimes searching my realm and wandering the stacks of my library. And still, you will never find what you seek. All you have done, all that you are, and all that you have learned happened because I allowed it to.”

Everything you’ve done, everything you are, and everything you know happened because you made it happen. Not he. Never him. He is not the master of Fate but simply the keeper. Hubris and arrogance are his errors. Just like Miraak. The champion has learned it from his teacher.

“Spit it out, Mora,” you growl. “I’m tired of this.”

Hermaeus Mora hums softly. “You need the final Word of Power. Miraak knows all three but you only know two. One of which I gave you for that delicious bit of knowledge about the secret the Greybeards have dwelling atop their mountain.”

You sigh heavily, staring at that odd building through the circular portal. The sky above it is still greenish, and the land is almost blackened as if it has been dead for centuries.

“What is your price for the final Word of Power?” you ask, keeping your tone flat.

“The Skaal have withheld their secrets from me for many long years. The time has come for this knowledge to be added to my library.”

The Skaal? He seeks knowledge from them?

“And why do you think I need this Word of Power to defeat Miraak? You think I cannot do so without it?”

“Even dragons submit to Miraak's Voice. Without that power, you cannot face him. You’ve seen this power used before. One of his dragons saved you from an imminent death, only to bring you to Miraak upon his command.”

This is true. A great, serpentine dragon snatched you up right before you plunged into the water. It brought you to Miraak without question, almost seeming prideful when it presented you. But Miraak is Hermaeus Mora’s champion. They have dwelled together for years.

“So, you reward loyalty this way? This is how you treat an ally? I thought you were above that. Your words make it difficult for me to want to join your side.” You shake your head. “I am disappointed.”

Through the opening, you notice one lone tentacle drop into frame, swinging slowly as if caught in a breeze. But there is no breeze in Apocrypha. There is only dead air. Silence.

“Miraak no longer serves me in the way that I should be. I need a champion who will flourish and thrive beneath my careful mind.”

With Hermaeus Mora’s words come influence. It slithers in again like it did before when you stood in front of the Black Book and opened it. Voices appear, whispering, distant, but you ignore them. You know what it is you need to look out for. You understand how Mora operates. Falling to him, bending the knee, is not an option.

“And you want Skall knowledge for this? Why?” you ask. Another tentacle drops into frame, this one much smaller than the first.

“Indeed. If you bring me their secrets, you will be richly rewarded.”

Hermaeus Mora is stepping around the specifics, purposefully avoiding exactly what it is he wishes you to fetch. You’re not all that interested in turning over Skaal knowledge just to defeat Miraak. You’ve been successful in others ways without any help from Hermaeus Mora. Why seek his help now? Why give him anything?

“I will speak with the Skaal. Maybe bring you their secrets. But I will not force them.” The words leaving your mouth are false. You will talk with them, but not to help Mora. Merely to warn them of his intentions.

“Of course,” purrs Mora. “I know that you will do all that you can to provide me what I ask for. Then Miraak’s power will also be yours. And I will have a new champion.”

You straighten your shoulders, deciding to push a bit. “And what if the Skaal refuse? What if they do not wish to give up their secrets?”

You hear the displeasure in Hermaeus Mora’s voice. “My servant Miraak would have found a way to bring me what I want. So will you if you wish to surpass him.”

You wish for no such thing. While you and Miraak ended up in bed together, you did so out of survival. Men are weak, even ones like him when it comes to something they want. And he wanted you, and you gave it to him. Doing so provided you a chance to escape.

“After everything you’ve done, you still believe I trust you? That is bold to assume.”

“My word is as true as fate. As inevitable as destiny. Bring me what I want, and I will give you what you seek. Send the Skaal shaman to me. He holds the secrets that will be mine.”

Several more tentacles fall into the frame, as does a few small eyes that watch you greedily, blinking slowly.

“Prince of Fate,” you call out, gaze still locked on the building before you. “What is this place?”

Hermaeus Mora sighs with pleasure. “That is my most treasured place in all of Apocrypha. The Endless Library. All knowledge is hoarded there. It is my purpose. It is my work.”

A weakness is what that is, Hermaeus Mora.

“And if I help you, will you show me its halls?”

“Yes,” he croons. “It will be your home as much as it is mine.”

The next words are easy to stay, even though their meaning is sticky. “Then I will help you.”

“Good,” murmurs Hermaeus Mora. “Good.”

The portal begins to close. The darkness and sickly green of the sky recedes until the only thing you see is the ceiling of Storn Crag-Strider’s home.

At first, there is no breath in your lungs. And then you inhale, sharp and loud and so gasping big that it startles Teldryn who peers down at you.

“Hells. You need to stop doing this to me,” he mutters, grabbing your upper arms.

“Sorry,” you wince, his voice seemingly too boisterous for such a small space.

“What happened?” he asks, and you wince slightly in pain. “What did you see?”

You blink slowly, and then inhale again, this time with more calmness. “I talked with Hermaeus Mora.” Teldryn frowns and proceeds to grabs the sides of your face with both hands. “What are you doing?” you ask, voice slightly muffled by his warm hands against your cheeks.

Teldryn squints and turns your face back and forth, his gaze darting everywhere.

“Teldryn—”

“Hush. I’m checking for insanity.”

“Right,” you mutter, allowing Teldryn this one thing.

“You’re normal,” he says after a few moments.

“I don’t feel normal,” you murmur, staring up at the ceiling.

Teldryn shifts, adjusting his position on the floor next to the bed you rest in. “What did Hermaeus Mora have to say? He must have wanted something.”

You shake your head, avoiding the question. “How did I end up here and not back in that dungeon?”

Teldryn sighs. “Because I carried you and the Black Book here.”

You sit up abruptly and nearly faint. Teldryn reaches out and catches you. “What?”

“I didn’t take it to Master Neloth. Instead, I brought it here, to the Skaal. They’re not happy with me, but when I told them why, Storn calmed the villagers’ fears.”

“I was in the book, and not…here.”

Teldryn shakes his head. “No. You were here. At least in body. The rest of you was gone. A limp dish rag.”

You briefly close your eyes. When they open again, the middle of Teldryn’s brow is creased. “Hermaeus Mora wants ‘the secrets of the Skaal’ in exchange for teaching me a final word that will help me defeat Miraak.”

Teldryn rolls his eyes. “What will he learn from them? How to skin a horker? No. You’re not doing it.”

You arch a single eyebrow. “Are you bossing me around?”

“You might pay me to be loyal but I’m going to tell you when I think something is a bad idea. I haven’t lived this long by making stupid decisions.”

“You should listen to your friend.” You and Teldryn turn at the sound of Storn Crag-Strider’s voice. “You spoke to Hermaeus Mora?”

You nod and Storn frowns slightly.

“Hermaeus Mora. It seems he is the source of Miraak's power. Of course. I should have foreseen that. We have many tales of Herma-Mora trying to trick us into giving up our secrets to him. And now he comes again for what we have long kept from him.”

“I told him I’d help him but I lied. You do not need to help him gain anything for a simple advantage,” you say quickly, not wishing for Storn to try and wiggle his way into helping you.

Storn looks at you with pity, as if he knows something you don’t.

“So, it falls to me to be the one to give up the secrets to our ancient enemy. I do not know if I have the strength to face him.” Storn’s gaze grows sad. “The Tree Stone is still corrupted and the land is still out of balance. But with the other five restored it may be enough. It will have to be.”

“Storn,” you say, trying to push up from the small bed you’re in.

Teldryn tuts and attempts to push you to your back. “You need rest,” he says.

“Get off me,” you growl, surprising Teldryn with a quick pull on his pointy ear.

“Damn the gods! That hurt,” he snaps as you swing your legs over the side of the bed and successfully stand.

Storn is already turning his back on you, walking toward the Black Book.

“I don’t need Hermaeus Mora’s help,” you say to Storn’s back, trying to get the man to turn around and face you.

Teldryn rubs at his ear as he follows you and Storn out into the small communal area of his home. He is completely bundled up for the weather, and you’re in nothing but thin robes. Teldryn begrudgingly holds out a worn blanket to you.

You murmur a ‘thanks’ and take it from him, draping it over your shoulders.

“Don’t give Mora what he wants, Storn,” you murmur, stepping into his line of sight.

“The Skaal tell of the day when we must finally give up our secrets. When Herma-Mora finally wins.” Storn glances down at his feet. “As shaman, it is my duty to guard these secrets, but also to decide when it is necessary to give them up.” He glances up, features grim yet determined. “I believe that time is now. If I am wrong, may my ancestors forgive me. I will take the book. I will read it and speak to old Herma-Mora himself. I will make sure he lives up to his part of the bargain.”

Storn should not do this. He should not give Hermaeus Mora what he wants. Not for you. There is always another way. There is always a different path that can be taken. You just need to find it. You need to figure it out and then Storn can keep his secrets. Mora does not need them.

As you step forward, it is clear that there is little energy within you. You almost topple forward, your left leg giving out. Teldryn is right there, wrapping his arms around your waist, hoisting you back to your feet.

“Let the old man do what he feels is best,” murmurs Teldryn.

You shake your head. “He should not do this for me. It’s not worth it.”

“People are allowed to make their own decisions. I keep telling you that about yourself and you always fail to listen.”

“Teldryn—”

“Put on some boots and let the old man sacrifice himself. You can’t save everyone.”

You and Teldryn stare each other down while Storn lingers near the ominously smoking Black Book. Your hand curls into a fist, ready to fight if necessary.

“All choices have consequences. Even yours, Dragonborn. I will do this, and you will have to accept it.”

You glance away from Teldryn and find Storn holding the Black Book with both hands. Seeing him with it is an ominous sight. A warning. An ending. A new beginning. All of it wrapped up into one.

Frea stands nearby, her face stained with tears. The Skaal are not your people, but it doesn’t mean Storn should have to sacrifice all he cares about in order to help you. He may see it as a way to stop Miraak, and while that is important, you’re not sure what to do about the First Dragonborn.

Frea and Storn’s voices are distant. You only hear pieces. Fragments. The door to the small home is opening, cold air rushing in to lick at your bare legs. You tighten the blanket around your shoulders, following them out, Teldryn right next to you.

It is a horror. As all things that involve Hermaeus Mora are.

With you, Mora was almost tender in the way his tentacles roamed and explored your body. When he dived inside your mind, he took care to make it pleasurable enough that any pain was forgotten or absent. The shuffling within your head was uncomfortable, but it is not this.

Hermaeus Mora is cruel just because he can be.

Blood sprays. Tentacles pierce. Frea screams, sharp and loud and gore-drenched. Curses fall from Storn’s lips. There is outrage. Terror. And sweet, sweet triumphant victory dripping from the Daedric Prince of Fate to pool beneath the floating Black Book.

“At last,” breathes Hermaeus Mora as if he’s awoken from a long sleep. “The Skaal yield up their secrets to me.”

Storn coughs and up comes bright red. “Liar—you—not for you.”

Frea shrieks, her mouth moving, but you’re unable to hear her. You’re focused on the growing puddle underneath Storn’s hovering body. Hermaeus Mora becomes larger, his form expanding as if he is feeding off of Storn’s soul.

“You please me, Dragonborn. You have delivered me the gift I requested. In return, I keep my promise to you.” Hermaeus Mora’s massive eye slowly shifts in your direction even as Storn clings to the last vestiges of life. “I give you the Word of Power that you need to challenge Miraak. You will be either a worthy opponent or his successor, as the tides of fate decree.”

As the tides of fate decree.

You are not a pawn. Not a chess piece. Even if Hermaeus Mora thinks so.

The Word of Power flares to life in your head. It pounds like a drum, beating over and over again until your brain is close to bursting. The Thu’um thrums and vibrates, connecting with your blood and bone to find its own familiar place to dwell within you.

It is bright and bold and unrelenting.

Until it isn’t.

Until all is peace inside your head.

The Black Book belches more dark mist before Mora’s massive tentacles retreat, slipping from Storn’s body, returning to their horrid home. The Black Book shuts abruptly and promptly drops into the snow.

Storn’s body hovers in the air a second longer before he descends with a horrible crunch.

“Father!” Frea bolts, dropping to her knees.

Teldryn stands beside you in the cold, his head swiveled in your direction. You do not look at him as you speak. “I saw something while I was away.”

“What did you see?”

“The Endless Library. Hermaeus Mora’s most precious pride and joy.” You glance at Teldryn. “Do you trust me?”

Teldryn’s lips form a thin line. “What do you have in mind?”

“Gol Hah Dov!”

Your voice rings out and the great dragon above you trumpets, circling back to land upon the platform.

“Hail,” rumbles Sahrotaar. The great beast shakes like a dog. “Your Thu’um is stronger than Miraak’s. And you wish to seek an audience with him.”

“Will you take me to your master?”

Sahrotaar makes a series of rumbles and rolling clicks. “Climb aboard my back. I will carry you to him.”

You take a deep breath, forcing your nerves to steel. There is no turning back. There is no retreating to the moment before Teldryn agreed to this. If everything falls into place as it should, two will lose, and everything will be set to right.

With slow steps, you stride toward Sahrotaar. You place your hand against the dragon’s smooth scales as it dips its massive head for you to slide onto its massive back. Your original gear you entered into Apocrypha with is gone, but Teldryn brought you a few items from the horde you keep in Raven Rock.

It will do even if it’s not your preferred attire.

Finding a small dip in Sahrotaar’s scales, you hoist yourself onto the dragon’s massive back. Once seated, the giant beast pushes off from the platform, soaring high above Apocrypha. You know Hermaeus Mora watches. You know he waits in secret for the moment that he deems it appropriate to make an appearance.

That is something you can rely on. For Hermaeus Mora to flaunt his knowledge and attunement to time and the threads of fate. Perhaps he won’t see what you and Teldryn have planned. Maybe he will. Maybe he is taking care of it right now.

Stay strong, Teldryn. Please, don’t fail me.

Sahrotaar soars, trumpets, flying toward a massive tower. It’s the same one in which you dwelled. The same tower that Miraak and you came together. But that meant nothing, even if the tethered power pulsing between you is too great a thing to completely ignore.

Even as you get closer, you sense that pull. That connection that cannot seem to quiet when the First and Last Dragonborn are within distance of the other.

Sahrotaar circles above the top of the tower before landing with a massive thud. As you slide off the dragon’s back, a familiar figure strolls forward. You don’t have to see who it is to know. The tether pulls taut, close to snapping.

“You return to me.” Miraak sounds pleased if a bit hesitant. “The Last Dragonborn returns to the First Dragonborn at the summit of Apocrypha. No doubt just as Hermaeus Mora intended. His tentacles are always wiggling around where they are unwanted.” Miraak’s voice is as much a comfort as it is a curse.

You still stand close to Sahrotaar, unsure if you should step away from the great beast or use it as a shield.

“I’ve returned,” you reply cooly.

“But not to join me,” says Miraak, already knowing your mind.

That is the truth of it. You are not going to join him. Miraak manipulates. Hermaeus Mora manipulates. As Teldryn has said countless times, you are not beholden to anyone but yourself. When it comes to your life, and your choices, only you can make them.

Miraak sighs heavily. “Hermaeus Mora is a fickle master. But I shall be free of him. My time here in Apocrypha will soon be over.” Miraak removes a gnarled weapon from beneath his robes. It looks more like a sickly, broken off tree branch than a weapon.

“I will return to Solstheim and be master of my own fate.”

You stand tall and take a step forward. Sahrotaar shifts and takes flight. Miraak does not watch the dragon go.

“You said we would fight,” you say, lifting your arms slightly from your sides.

“Indeed,” replies Miraak. “But there is still hope that you will see the error of your ways. And you will join me.” He glances up into the sky. “Kruziikrel! Relonikiv! To me!”

What did you expect in coming here? A battle of wits? A bit of blood?

No. Not that.

You expect Miraak to want to kill you, to annihilate you. And yet that is far from the truth.

While Miraak fights with a ferocity that is unmatched, not a single stroke of his blade is meant to kill. His strikes are only to disable or disarm, to incapacitate. Miraak is not trying to kill you, which means he believes he can make you see reason. That he can convince you to come back to him and join his cause.

It is too late for that. With every second that continues, for every dragon felled and soul consumed, Miraak becomes weary and uncertain. You cannot see his eyes, but each time he retreats from his position you notice the way his shoulders sag. You are not making this easy.

But that is the point.

Miraak is a distraction. You are a distraction. This is not for either of you, but for something much greater.

Please, don’t fail me, Teldryn.

Miraak’s blade comes crashing down, and you step to the side, narrowly missing it. That swing held anger. It whistled with it.

“Cease this,” growls Miraak. “You are acting foolish.”

“Foolish? You hurt me,” you chide, poking at his anger.

You swing with your own and Miraak lurches backward, the edge of the blade ringing loudly against his mask. It leaves no mark, just a faint ringing.

Men are all the same, even ones as old as Miraak. He is a manipulator. Hermaeus Mora is a manipulator. They will break your arms and legs only to carry you to safety to tend to your wounds after. They will say sweet things and expect you to be grateful for showing you mercy.

That is who they are. That is their spirit.

That is a cycle you need to break. A Daedric Price cannot be felled, but he can be weakened. Miraak is simply a man, and death will one day claim him.

Another swing and you strike true, slicing Miraak across the chest in a wide arc. He howls, rears back, teleports to the other side of the tower. The moment he reappears, a mass of tentacles pops into existence above the platform.

The Daedric Prince of Fate is here. He has finally made an appearance. You knew he would. You knew it, anticipated it. Mora loves a good show. He loves the drama of it all, and this fight is exactly that. You are playing into his entertainment, and Hermaeus Mora is eating it up.

With ethereal speed, Hermaeus Mora’s tentacles shoot out and wrap around Miraak, lifting him into the air. Miraak growls like a caged wolf, swinging his weight around to try and free himself.

“Did you think to escape me, Miraak? You can hide nothing from me here.” Mora’s voice is a low hiss. “You are my champion. You are my servant. I do not take kindly to those that seek to usurp me.”

“You have found a new Dragonborn to serve you.” Miraak’s golden mask shifts, facing you as he says the next words. “May she be rewarded for her service.”

Miraak’s back bends sharply as three of Mora’s tentacles pierce his chest. It’s just like Storn all over again, but so much worse. The power within you, the tether, flares white hot. A blinding pain that nearly rips your soul from your body to ship off to Sovngarde before extinguishing entirely.

Slowly, Hermaeus Mora sets Miraak’s body on the platform. There is something tender in the way he does it, like a father putting their child to sleep. His tentacles retreat, and he shifts closer to Miraak’s body, inspecting it. The large eye in the center of his massive form squints, almost confused.

Is Teldryn where he is supposed to be? Hopefully he is done, and far form Apocrypha.

You smell it before you see it. And Hermaeus Mora senses it just as you do.

Smoke. Acrid. Dark. Drifting into the air far in the distance. You notice it just above a line of mismatched spiraling towers.

Hermaeus Mora makes a piercing shriek. It is an eldritch pitch of noise that pushes you onto your knees and forces you to slap your hands over your ears. Your brain and tongue and teeth and muscles and eyes and ears are melting. Bleeding. Morphing.

The pain within Mora is a pain you experience just as profoundly.

Hermaeus Mora’s shriek turns into groans, his tentacles coiling back in on himself as if cradling his sorrow. His form heaves like he cannot catch his breath. The Daedric Prince of Fate is in pain, and his pain is sweet. It is good.

His large eye pivots in your direction, grows wide with accusation. He says nothing, only simmers for seconds before growling low and receding into a small black dot until that too is gone.

Teldryn did it. The Endless Library, Hermaeus Mora’s beloved treasure, is on fire.

Miraak’s body is quickly fading. You rush to him, remove the mask, and cradle it to your chest. You glimpse him briefly as you knew him before he melts away, only leaving his clothes and skeleton behind.

The mask you will keep. You will hold it close.

Rushing toward the stairs at the far side of the platform, you descend into the room where the Black Book is held. It is still there, a living horror for anyone unlucky enough to come across it. Keeping the mask tucked close to your chest, you open it up, seeking and eventually receiving that familiar descent.

When you return, Teldryn is right there, smelling of smoke.

“You did it,” you breathe, throwing yourself into his arms.

He laughs, holding you tight. “You owe me a drink. And that house in Falkreath.”

“You can have the damn house,” you smile. “I have two others.”

Teldryn draws back slightly, his hand resting on your forearms. “Do you think Mora will seek vengeance?”

“We will likely be long dead before he manages it.”

“Maybe for you,” chuckles Teldryn. “Not me.”

“You’re already very old, Teldryn. Or have you forgotten in your old age?”

“Very funny, Dragonborn.” He releases your arms and then crosses his over his chest. “We should make ourselves scarce.”

“Back to Skyrim then?”

“You say where, and I shall follow.”

taglist:

@glassgulls @km-ffluv @singleteapot @tiredmetalenthusiast @childofyuggoth @coffeecaketornado @wrathofcats @ninman82

[impishtubist]

bitchy inbox time (i’m not over thirty but i do love sirius black) !!

there are many (many) things that annoy me about the current mwpp fandom (and/or a specific part of it). it’s not just jamming all the DE’s and order members in the same year(s) at hogwarts, and making the DE characters secretly good (but not their parents) and also very boring, and the complete OC-ification of characters because the characterisations were like that in this one big fic, and the frequent attempts to make the 70s fit into the 2k20s ideas of progressiveness. it’s not just stuff like that.

i don’t like the whole ‘fandom agrees’ thing either, but that’s not very new nor fandom specific anyway so that’s not something i can complain about lol. what i hate the most is that it just takes the heart out of it, i guess? basically all these characters who get extra background, or additional background, or whatever are the same, just with a different look and different name. the terf lady didn’t give much of a flying fuck about any of the characters, but the fandom did. and each character was (usually) so vibrant!! distinguishable!! even in the fanart designs, you know?

and now it’s like. the same cookie-cutter guy or gal. queer and tattooed, with mental health issues fashionable clothing like it’s something you can just fucking put on—some sort of tiktok aesthetic played for being ‘relatable’. all the DE’s have shitty parents and a heart of gold and Not That Bad actually. remus gets turned into james and if a very specific sirius portrayal was afab, people would call her character one of the most misogynistic and sexist portrayals in the series.

‘we’re throwing away canon and making the series progressive and morally good’ but we’re not, because the queerness feels fetishised and the depiction of abuse is so unserious, and we’re apparently making bigots ‘misunderstood’. it’s just. HNHHHH. so annoying.

xoxo soopsie

Hiiiiiiiiii darling <3

Yes! All of this is so well-said! I spent a lot of time banging my head against a wall, trying to figure out WHY this was happening, and when I found out that a lot of people joining the fandom had never read the books, that's when things clicked. It's not GOOD, but at least I sort of have an explanation now for why these characterizations are happening and why they're so prevalent. If you only know these characters from fanfic and TikTok....well I'm still gonna bitch about all of this but at least I know why you're writing them a certain way.

And another thing! If you weren't here in the '90s/early '00s then what are you doing here in the first place lmao, we're only here because we have no choice.

[lovecolibri]

The thing about the Big Q Word is that I get ~not giving future plot lines away~ and all that but I do think that when the powers behind a show or movie series become aware of a significant following for a ship that is either not-straight or interracial (or both), if they already know they’re not going to go there they have a moral responsibility to say that. In plain terms. If they’re worried about losing audience, well they can’t have it both ways. If it’s a big enough chunk to worry about, perhaps they should reconsider their plan. And if it’s not, just nip it in the bud and let people down easy. People can get very emotionally invested in media. In fact, that’s often what they want from us. And certain ships just are more sensitive than others! If, early on, the showrunners are made aware of a growing audience for X ship, and they just say “oh now that you point it out I can see what you’re seeing, but it wasn’t our intention and we won’t be pursuing it.” That would A: validate that part of the audience and not accuse them of making things up, and B: allow people to make an informed choice. I think probably most would keep watching. If they like the product and are treated with a bit of respect why not? Sure, there will always be an element who will keep believing in canon no matter how plainly you say it’s not happening (…look at what we’re seeing in the face of all evidence now. Though letting go of years of heavy shipping is harder than letting go of one season or so). But I think that could be reduced by early intervention of “hey, cool ship but just so you know it will be remaining in drydock.”

This is well said! I think part of the issue is, terminology takes awhile to catch up and that is a word that people have right now so they use it even though things don't always meet the textbook definition, because they don’t really HAVE another word to use for what a show is doing. 911 may steer clear of using Buddie in their promo material or teasing it on their social media (though they DO tend to drop scenes or pics of one or both of the guys whenever something comes out that had people talking negatively especially this season soooo), which worked to keep away the accusations on technicality, but they still used Buddie within the show itself to generate the buzz online and keep the show talked about while turning around and telling everyone fans were seeing things and that's fine but it's not what they intended to come across. 5 seasons in it's unintentional and they had no idea people would see it that way?! I call bullshit.

It's disingenuous to say people are seeing things when you’re making very specific and repeated parallels to other canon couples, and talking about how costumes ARE important and something that gets discussed, and the directors ARE watching to make sure certain facial expressions are in focus. OR how about something like telling people to pay attention to the couch, and that the couch is important, then putting Buck and Chris on the couch in shot-for-shot parallels, after Buck can’t sleep on the couch his mom gave him, and turning around and saying “oh no not THOSE couch scenes, that was "unintentional", you didn't need to pay attention to them, they never meant anything and we never said they did and you really just did this to yourself."

Like, YES they are not using Budding THEMSELVES as a marketing tool because they don't want people to call them out and right now they can say "but, but, WE didn't do it!", but it's almost more insidious how they put stuff in they absolutely cannot be unaware of how it will come across this many years in, and let the online fandom do the marketing FOR them and create all the buzz and keep their show popular, only to, when someone pushes them about it, throw those same fans under the bus with an "oh well everyone can see what they want! We certainly didn't intend that they would see THIS *insert incredibly romantically coded thing here* as anything but we won't tell them they're wrong."

@suavecitoeddie mentioned a great term today, "ship bait" which I think fits because it's not JUST about representation, as in the case of 911 there are other mlm/wlw relationships depicted AND lovingly crafted in the show. But that doesn't mean that the show ISN'T pulling some shady shit with Buddie. Hen and Karen were already established at the start but Bathena and Madney were established in season 2 and Michael met David in season 3. Aside from Athena, Michael and Chim in season 1, none of them have dated anyone else (we have seen past relationships but not active dating) and the show has given wonderful stories of growth for these couples and having each other's backs across several seasons. And Buck and Eddie have the same kind of story the only difference is, it gets told around the show throwing woman after woman after woman at them. We KNOW this show can tell well-crafted love stories, we SEE the parallels they CHOOSE to make with Buddie and the other couples. And while the GA may not be analyzing everything, it's also not fair to offhandedly label ALL of them as blind or dumb enough to NOT pick up on some of that stuff as well. We all saw the comments after Buck fell asleep on the couch, or after the cemetery scene of people saying "I thought you all were making stuff up but I'm rethinking everything now!" We have all seen the comments of people starting the show thinking fandom was blowing Buddie out of proportion (I certainly thought so and that was around season 3) only to watch and go "how did Tumbler of all places actually UNDERSELL how much these two are in love?"

We know TPTB are keeping an eye on social media because they know enough to avoid the common "traps" of baiting so people can't accuse them of it. Which means they can't say they don't know how things are going to come across. Yes, Ryan may have shocked everyone with that performance in 6x10, but he's running up the ladder in a wide shot when we hear him screaming for Buck. We don't see his face, they easily could have cut some of his reactions or the audio there or cut the scene differently and still had it be a very moving and emotional scene that showed Eddie going after his friend. We still would have seen it through a Buddie lens, but for KR to come out and act like she had no say in how that final product we saw came out, regardless of what Ryan did on the day? I don't buy it. 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

And YES at this point they're in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation no matter what they say but part of that is because they have kept up the "it's open for any interpretation" thing so long while making these blatant parallels, AND, the big thing for me personally, while making Buck and Eddie at every turn be the exact puzzle piece the other is missing! Not every fandom ship is something that makes sense for canon or is even something the shippers WANT for canon, it's just fun and that's okay! But 911 specifically has build Buck and Eddie as the perfect partners in every sense of the word for each other. On top of that, they have also given them just....some of the WORST people for them where we can SEE, blatantly, how incompatible they are, and then shown Buck or Eddie perfectly doing what the gf did not. You just...you cannot tell me it's not intentional, I won't believe you.

Also, on top of everything else it's just....SO cowardly to be so concerned with appealing to everyone all at once that you refuse to pick a side and commit to a story JUST so everyone can "see it how they want", until, when push comes to shove and the show is ending, suddenly you HAVE picked a side and then suddenly all those fans are just angry for no reason because of something some other show did to them because you were NEVER doing anything to lead them on. You checked the textbook definition and followed it to a T, so no one can be upset. 🙄🙄🙄

ANYWAY. It's okay to feel "ship baited" because it's pretty clear the show was trying to have things both ways until the show was supposed to end, and only at that point did they show their hand. It's also okay to call them out on it and to let ABC know what we want. Will it do anything? Maybe not! Who knows! But they won't be able to say they didn't see or hear the backlash, and the show is made for the fans! Yes a lot of people may casually watch, but ad revenue tied to demo isn't as important as it used to be, and online fandom is what keeps shows alive. So make noise! If nothing else, you'll probably feel a little better! (And ABC was already going to be facing an uphill battle to keep viewers with an already lackluster season with dropping viewers, a network switch after so many seasons, and now the strike pushing things back. I honestly don't think they can afford to entirely discredit the current buzz around the finale. Which is NOT just tied to Buddie as a ship but the character's individual journeys, and the disjointed writing for everyone and the pacing issues especially with the big emergency. We may not get everything or at least not all at once, but the more they know about what fans want, the more likely we are to see some changes to get us closer to those early season vibes.)

[brighter-by-the-daly]

Rachel Daly x Reader

Part Four: Dashed Hopes

Over the weeks of the tournament you and Rachel started to get close again. You, Mary, Millie and Rachel had become a firm foursome and started to film some TikToks together, hanging out in each other’s rooms and she even joined your table for meals sometimes. The flirtiness had returned and people were starting to notice, poking fun when they could. You still didn’t like what she did to you but Rach had a way when it came to making people fall for her. Her cocky manner, her jokey behaviour, her need for wanting to play with your hair and then there was the hugs. Oh the hugs! You can’t lie that feeling her arms wrapped around your shoulders from behind didn’t make you swoon. Having someone who knows you so intimately was comforting. The knowledge about each other doesn’t leave when you break up, you still know everything and anything about them and it’s impossible for that to disappear completely. You knew when she was frustrated or anxious by just a look and the little glances across the room said you were thinking the same thing when someone did something silly. Game after game you’d celebrate together, wearing cowboy hats and running around like kids who had too many sweets. It felt nostalgic and comforting but you hadn’t forgotten the pain she had caused, you’d simply decided it wasn’t going to ruin this moment in your life.

With hard work and determination England reached the final and it was neck and neck between you and Rachel with goals scored. The Lionesses were drawing with only a few minutes left to spare of normal time, Sarina had replaced Lucy with Rachel knowing she could work both ends of the pitch when needed. A corner gone wrong for them left us with a free run towards our goal. You were the fastest on the team with Lucy already off but Rachel had the ball at her feet and looked like she was taking it the whole way. Their defenders started to catch up as the goalie ran towards her, the best option was to pass to you who was unmarked but she didn’t - chipping it over the goalie and towards the net. The whole crowd gasped as it narrowly hit the bar only to fall perfectly towards your head and into the net. The competition between you both quickly melted away as she jumped into your arms, thinking quickly to catch her as the rest of the team surrounded you with congratulations. Soon after that the full time whistle blew. You’d won. You specifically had won the World Cup for England. It was all a blur after that. The team fell to their knees in relief that you’d done what you came here to do before lifting you into the air to parade you around the stadium. Confetti canons going off left, right and centre. The noise deafening even away from home.

Lining up to clap the silver medalists, the guard of honour was formed to receive the winning announcements. Knowing you had the golden boot in the bag your team cheered as you walked up to collect your trophy. No sooner than when you’d just got back to your place you were called up to receive the player of the tournament as well, collecting your second trophy of the night before being awarded your gold medal and celebrating with the team for the third one. You and Ebony had a photo together with the trophy as others were doing with their club teammates when Rachel approached asking to have a photo with you both too. All of you throwing up the H with the biggest smiles on your faces before partying with the rest of the team - it felt like you stayed on that pitch for hours.

Sarina had hired a bar for you all to celebrate, the drinks were flowing and by midnight some were looking worse for wear, you danced into the early hours of the morning with the girls that remained. Recording a video with your golden boot with Mary and her golden glove was bittersweet, it would be the last one before you left for USA again but you’d be leaving with a firm friendship in the goal keeper. Sitting on a sofa in the corner of the room you were in a trance watching all the happy smiley people around you, this is where you belong - on this team. Officially a Lioness and a winning one at that, nothing could wipe this smile off your face; not even Rachel who was approaching you across the floor. She sat down opposite as she handed you another drink. “I broke up with Becky.. last month actually” she shouted over the music, your facial expression remained blank and seemingly unaffected by the news, not understanding why this had anything to do with you. “I was hoping you’d stay.. come home?” The bright lights flashing in your eyes and the heavy bass thumping in your ears made you think you misheard her. “These past few months have reminded me how much I love you, I don’t want to lose you again (y/n/n). Please stay” she took your hands into hers and kissed them, her puppy dog eyes making her hard to resist. Three months ago you wanted nothing more than to hear Rach say she loved you and here she was in front of you saying it.

Part Five

[cactuseri]

Hi there 😊 if your asks are open, are you able to do some headcannons for room-mates Steve, Robin & Eddie?

anon i am kissing u gently on the forehead here’s some stuff i had in mind:

• first of all i declare these tags as canon:

(via @frogs-and-lilypads and @wynnyfryd )

• i was thinking theyre in an apartment but if house makes more sense to u then godspeed bc its a small town in 80s indiana that ppl think is cursed so i cant imagine property value is super high

• incomprehensible jean-marc explanation i posted at 4 am

• not a headcanon but while i’m at it, @lilshitwayne linked this fic where they move into the creel house by fivecenturiesverse: i finally got around to reading it last night and aaa it’s very cute!! thank u for the link!

• as drawn, no one wears their own clothes lmao. they’re always stealing each other’s shirts, sweatpants, they mostly lose track of whose socks are whose

• half their furniture is just . stuff they found in back alleys & the cheapest shit they could find at a furniture store, plus some hand-me-down things from the (actual) adults. after a few months, though, especially with eddie’s hoarding habits, the place becomes pretty cluttered

• everyone tagging the art as “steddie (kinda)” is correct of course they r pining for each other

• (the first time the kids show up unexpected they ask steve “is that eddie’s shirt????” & he’s just, *sweating* “yes and? it’s comfortable”)

• im thinking robin goes to community college? it’s a bit of a drive but she wants to stay in hawkins (or more specifically: with steve and eddie and the kids)

• steve teaches her to drive over the summer. while he and robin bicker and she almost takes out 4 mailboxes and a stop sign, eddie’s in the backseat also helping (read: adding to the chaos) but he’s a bit less stressed than steve is bc lets be real he does not drive much better than her

• nancy is at emmerson or whatever that college was in canon idk. shes living her best life & calls/visits here and there. i feel like out of all of them she’d want to get out of hawkins the most idk

• uncle wayne has his own place, paid for by either those lab people or the gov or insurance or something — he visits too (and they go to his place for thanksgivings)

• the kids r over all the time of course. steve isn’t even sure how they keep getting in

• for the most part, steve cooks. one time (maybe for steve’s birthday) eddie’s like “hey robs what if we cooked something fancy for him it’ll be a surprise he’ll love it” and it is indeed a surprise when steve comes home from his shift to find a firetruck in the parking lot & the whole building evacuated. when he gets out of the car he spots robin and eddie standing awkwardly to the side of the crowd and when they see him they simultaneously point at each other

• im not actually sure what eddie’s job wld be. still dealing? housewife? tattoo artist? working part time at some store? idk

• the neighbors file a noise complaint bc of eddie’s guitar playing [eddie: “can i smear butter on his doorstep. it’ll be hilarious i promise” steve: “dude he’s like 94 we are not making him break a hip. be reasonable. we’re gonna fill his mailbox with gravel for a month”]

• all the cuddle sessions!! especially angsty ones where one or more of them has a nightmare, quite often the wake-up-screaming kind & they help each other then end up piling up in one bed for the night

• just . the joy of living away from parents for the first time. them realizing they can set their own rules. them realizing no one is stopping them from making pasta at 3 am while high and eating it straight from the pot in a circle on the floor

• especially when it comes to stuff like robin having sensory issues, for example maybe the texture of the bathroom rug bothers her. and when she mentions it steve is just like “aight” and throws it out then & there. and she just has a moment of realizing “oh. no one’s going to yell at me for not liking something. no one’s going to roll their eyes and say i’m being stupid or dramatic.” & tears up a little bit

• eddie has the same issue, to a degree. (i headcanon him as having ADHD bc i love projecting) but they both really like the feel of steve’s sweaters so they steal them a lot & when steve does have a chance to wear one he has to deal w them petting his arms for like 20 mins (and pretends to be annoyed lmao)

• them just learning to b patient with each other for the things they can’t rlly help

• oh and. the jean-marc funeral procession involves eddie reading the plant its funeral rites (the religion changes each time) as robin plays the flute and steve — who needed a lot of convincing to play along — lowers it into a small grave they dug near the property (and keep having to dig up for the next unfortunate jean-marc)

ok i should probably stop here LMAO this post is already so long 😭😭 also sorry that i took forever to answer work was killing me and im a mess in general

[marunalu]

If Dad for One is canon I'm really interested to see how it's going to be pulled off, Inkos character bio said she's had to raise Izuku by herself for the most part, as it was stated her husband was working overseas. Izuku doesn't seem to care much about the man, not even thinking about him when he almost dies to Muscular. Leads me to believe that while All for One provided financially, he was very emotionally distant for most of Izukus life. Which will have an affect on Izuku reaction to the revelation if it happens. I like the theory in general, but we need to know three things: 1. Why did All for One decide to have a family? 2. How does he feel about his family now? 3. How does this family feel about him? I think if Hori comes up with a satisfying answer to all three of those things, then I'll be fine with canon Dad for One. We just need All for One to hop in a Kurogiri portal and go to UA so we can put all of this to rest.

An other old ask (45 more to go 😭😭😭)

I will focus on the 3 points you made what I think is the case.

1. I dont think he "decided" to have a family. I think it "just happend". I think his original plan was to use and manipulate inko for his own plans (could be for a possible quirk marriage or the inko shimura theory). If for example its the inko shimura theory I believe he wanted to use her against all might to break his spirit, so he would be able to steal ofa. In other words what he later uses tomura for. But things between him and inko changed. I cant for 100% say he fell in love with her, but I think he does care for her deeply enough for him to throw his original plans with her away. I think after a while he realized that he liked the thought of having a family again and was enjoying this kind of peacefull live and have a place called home he could return to.

2. He loves them. Im pretty sure of that. He stays away to protect them, but still helps inko financielly since she has no job and is a stay at home mom. I dont think its an healthy love he feels for them though. We see with yoichi how toxic afos love can be. I think he sees inko and izuku both as something that belongs to him (similar how anakin/vader saw padme and later luke as something that belongs to him instead of seeing them as their own individuals with feelings).

3. I dont think that either inko or izuku have specific feelings for hisashi right now, because I believe that he used a memory manipulation quirk or something similar on them to make them forget him till he pulls the effect of the quirk from them (garaki can manipulate memorys like he did with little tomura). And thats the reason why izuku NEVER not even in moments when he is close to death (only about his mother and all might) thinks of his father. Not even ONCE! Its like as if hisashi was completly wiped from his mind and since inko never mentions him too I guess its similar with her.

[an-unraveling-unknown]

It's been a bit, and I think I've forgotten some. Can you give me a brief rundown of your little guys?

Hiya Bones, I WOULD LOVE TO GIVE YOU A BRIEF RUNDOWN ON MY LITTLE GUYS!!! (thank you thank you thank you!!) (its not as brief as it should be I'm so sorry)

I still have yet to name this project: My first original project! I have no ideas for the plot LMAO /crying a little

Locke: Ancient android cursed to carry the physical fear of an entire very dead race of beings that they have identified as 'human,' the same thing they classify the people they see today. Travels a lot, he generally likes to keep moving - has taken up the mantel of unofficial psychopomp. Likes people (from a distance,) dressing up, engaging in human activism in whatever way they can, and Deimos. Dislikes having a lack of bodily autonomy. Was called 'Rue' once (Agender, but he has a fondness for He/They)

Deimos: Your local embodiment of human fear, and human fear specifically. Laughs in the face of gender on a daily basis, mostly due to the fact that he's a shapeshifter (generally shifting into the specifically held fear of whatever society he happens to be around) Drama queen, constantly makes either slightly too old or slightly too new pop culture references that Locke could never hope to understand, but he found a good audience with The Children. Deeply just wants social connection, a bit of a hard feat when you're immortal, and unfortunately something he couldn't find in Locke due to their own circumstances. For a while, at least. (Genderfluid, but currently favors he/him)

The Children: Collective term for all the people and non-people Deimos has unofficially adopted - still workin on them, but I CAN tell you that Charlotte (third youngest) has ties to 'Charlotte's Web' and the 1829 poem 'The Spider and the Fly' and also happens to be an anthropomorphic spider, while Marley is (probably) from Boston (youngest). Not all technically children by human standards, but pretty much everyone is a kid when you're Deimos's age

(other little guys below. forgive me for the massive text blocks)

Undertale AU: Some context, this revolves around two of my ocs in an au that is basically be adding non-canon context with plot; Sunny and Z!* Sunny ran away from home after extenuating circumstances and an argument with her parents, kind of as a 'last hurrah' of sorts, and Z tagged along because of his own reasons. Both of them found themselves in the underground and are now constantly wondering if they went and died about it because Undertale is actually a thing that exists in their universe

Sunny: He is a trainwreck, and is also probably the closest I'll ever get to a self-insert (but it's moreso me when I was 12-ish inserted into a 17 y/o's body). Compassionate at heart, she likes the sciences and being outdoors and philosophical things; math is latin to her (dead,) and she knows a fair amount of sign language. Utterly thrilled to be in the underground for the most part, something he and Z have conflict about - doesn't like talking about his childhood. Yellow coded as in warning (She/Him, Aroace)

Z: Also a huge freakin clusterfuck and Sunny's best friend, but Z is more contained than not. The funny one of the two, Super tech efficient, the fella loves cryptography and all things coding, made a rick-roll virus once on the family computer and now that very same computer exists half-alive in the garage - he'd like to be a game dev someday. Used to get hurt and sick a lot when he was younger. Z refuses to be alone with his thoughts, so he practically throws himself at anything declared constructive at a contstant rate, very much unlike his friend. Knows Sunny has a lot going on with the imminent move to Europe and all, but they shouldn't, cannot stay here damnit (He/Him, Straight)

*not their actual names, but they can't really say their actual names due to extenuating plot reasons and 'Sunny' n 'Z' is what Flowey called them upon first encounter.

BG3: The Baldur's Gate 3 duders!! neither Aeonian nor Monad really fit into forgotten realms lore, considering I picked them up from a separate Stardew Valley AU project and threw them at my current hyperfixation without a lick of research cos I figured it would be no problem. I was sadly mistaken, but we're making it work (even amidst the greek myth n gaelic folklore parallels which are now just outside-of-story meta)

Aeonian: My Tav!! Best put (in your words exactly) as a sad little tissue paper man. Unofficial bard and humanoid-shaped creature (Physical Embodiment of Death at Sea, to be precise) who is not normally humanoid-shaped, but is doing it anyway because their sister is missing and they have a guard dog complex to uphold. Looks like a very tall and very blue twig that could snap in the wind, but what they lack in intimidation they receive in cleverness and wit with a little bit of added bardic charmisa. They did not at all wish to claw themselves out of the sea with gritted teeth and sheer drive alone, and while they aren't necessarily cold, they also aren't here to make friends. This is currently being conflicted by the fact that they give a shit. Character development follows the rock cycle (They/Them, Demirose)

Monad: Aeonian's older sister and Embodiment of Life at Sea - the braver of the two, having ventured up to the surface first and kept going despite being kidnapped by pirates more times than ve can count on both hands - ve is here to have a good time and a good time only. Lively and charismatic, he loves the pleasures of life, people, life in general, and Aeonian. Took up the druid class, as she told her sibling, and was in the midst of learning how to wild shape before she went up on a surface outing one day and didn't come back. Ve's more secretive than Aeon knows (Ve/Her/Himself and very much a lesbian)

[50calmadeuce]

Ch. 9: Jake and The Hard Deck

Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction using characters from the Top Gun: Maverick world, trademarked by Paramount Pictures Corporation. I do not claim ownership of the characters and the world that I am borrowing.

The story and situation I am creating are a work of my imagination and I do not ascribe them to official story canon. This work is for entertainment only and is not a part of the storyline.

I also do not own the rights or copyrights of 'Mandolin Rain' by Bruce Hornsby and the Range or 'Second Chance' by 38 Special. I just happen to really like these songs.

I am not profiting financially from the creation and publication of this story, but I do hope it gives you happy thoughts.

These stories are my own, so please do not take them and use them for yourself without my permission. If you see them somewhere else, please let me know. :)

Jake sat on the couch in his apartment, gazing out of the window.

"Bro, you've got to get out. You're starting to drive me crazy," his best friend Javy 'Coyote' Machado urged. "I've never seen you come home this upset before."

Jake turned to look at him. "Have I ever mentioned Y/N to you?"

Coyote pondered for a moment. "I think I recall. High school sweetheart, right? The reason you've been steering clear of relationships since."

"Yeah, she's the one," Jake admitted, taking a moment to gather himself. "And that's also why I've been feeling this need to prove myself, to show her I'm the best for her."

Coyote perched on the armrest of the couch. "I had no idea it ran that deep."

Jake met his gaze. "I saw her."

"Wait, seriously? She was home?"

"Her mom passed away. I had no clue until her brother asked me to help bring in cattle one of the days."

"Damn. I'm really sorry to hear that."

"We shared a kiss."

Coyote's eyes widened. "That's something, man!"

"Before I found out she's engaged."

"Ouch!"

Jake's gaze fell downward. "Yeah."

Coyote sprang up, playfully smacking Jake's arm. "Come on, let's get out of here. Shoot some pool, throw some darts. Anything to take your mind off it.:

Jake met his eyes. "True and I need to clear my head."

"Good. Now go and get dressed."

You entered The Hard Deck around 8 p.m. The place was alive with pilots and women, a mix of those in Navy uniforms and others in civilian attire.

You had phoned ahead, speaking with the owner to inquire about the presence of a jukebox and specifically if they had the song 'Mandolin Rain'. The woman on the other end was pleasant and regretfully informed you they didn't have your song, but assured you she could arrange it. You took the opportunity to share a bit about yourself and the plan to surprise Jake. It didn't surprise you that she was acquainted with him, though she was taken aback to learn about his past relationship. You mentioned that you would introduce yourself when you arrived.

As you scanned the room, your gaze settled on Jake at the pool table, dressed in a khaki uniform like the others around him. He was poised to take a shot, and you found yourself unable to look away. In that moment, Leslie's words rang painfully true. You felt like a fool. For years, you had only seen Jake as, well, Jake. The boy next door, a familiar face your family had known for years, who had professed his love for you, but it had never truly registered. You really didn't understand how deep Jake really loved you.

You approached the bar, where a striking brunette locked eyes with you.

"What can I get you?" she politely inquired.

"I called earlier. I'm Y/N," you explained.

Surprised, she gave you a quick once-over before nodding towards the pool table. "Jake's over there."

"I know. I just wanted to assure you that I'm real and I have no intention of hurting him."

She nodded. "I sensed that. You don't sound like the others." She extended her hand. "I'm Penny. Penny Benjamin."

You smiled and shook her hand. "Thank you, and it's nice to meet you, Penny."

"You want something to drink?"

"I'll take a beer."

"Coming right up." She swiftly wiped the bar.

You continued to watch Jake as he played pool, but something just seemed off. He didn't seem like the cheerful Jake you knew. Just then, a blonde in jean shorts and a white tank top walked up to him and whispered something in his ear, but Jake shook his head and the girl walked away sadly.

Penny came back with the beer. "Here you go."

"How much do I owe you?"

"It's on the house. Any friend of Hangman's is a friend of mine. H22 is your song."

You grabbed the beer. "Thanks." You then made your way to the juke box, grabbed some quarters out of your pocket, put them in when 'Second Chance' by 38 Special caught your eye. You pushed that button and then selected H22. You then stepped over to the table a couple of feet away. Close enough to watch him, but also far enough away to hide.

The current song finished playing and 'Second Chance' by 38 Special started to play.