#ANYWAY... write with them :gun:

[lunaccult]

quick rundown of margaret (& libby) galdur for those unfamiliar with my lore: wicked scary faerie falls for a mortal woman. they decide to have a baby. labor kills the mortal woman. wicked scary faerie, in her grief-fueled rage, promises to murder the cause of her lover's death: her own child. but this child is snatched away and kept safe for 20 years. and after 20 years of searching for her child, the faerie confronts the child and the two strike each other down, cursing themselves to the fate of forever trying to kill the other first in every life after that.

cue: present day margaret & libby. underground spn mafia queen & tortured artist gremlin with mommy issues.

[hypertechnica]

i’m going to make fiddauthor art with fidds wearing his wedding ring and you are NOT going to like it

big obligatory banner that says “cheating is bad don’t do it i just like stories with relationship drama”

closeted, internally homophobic gay men who are married with kids has to be the trope i’m weakest to. no person involved is escaping the despair brought on by a relationship built on a well intentioned, desperate lie, born out of a desire to be normal and good

he WANTED to love her so fucking badly. he felt no ill will towards her and he loves their son more than words can say. he thought the attraction, the way she felt about him, would come with time. it didn’t. he doesn’t want to hurt her yet was doomed to from the start, and he’s truly, truly sorry. this does not absolve him of anything whatsoever and she has the full right to never want to speak with him again. he lied! he pretended to feel the same when he never once felt anything but platonic affection! he’s been in love with someone else this whole fucking time! and their kid… he’s caught in the middle of it all, too young to understand why his father would hurt his family like this.

and then he disappears and never comes back. imagine you’re 5 and your dad goes to the middle of the woods with his buddy for science shit, all of the sudden your parents are yelling on the phone and signing papers, and then he goes MIA. for years.

imagine your husbands “buddy” was the one he was thinking of all this time, not you, never you. and the first chance he gets to run away from you, he takes, and you should have been suspicious by the rushed frenzy of it all, the phone calls getting shorter and shorter until it fizzles to nothing. he forgot to get you a christmas gift. he hand-made him two. there has to be something wrong with you, it has to be your fault. you wish you married the man he becomes when he’s in his presence.

he folded when you started questioning him directly - he’d been to neurotic to ever be a good liar. you thought he was the one. he thought you were nice.

by the time the divorce is finalized he’s different in a wrong way. confused, angry, forgetful, insane - if the giant homicidal robot pterodactyl you’ve been harassed by is any indication. (he’s had a bad habit of building homicidal robots when he’s mad since they met -engineer things- but it was never directed at her - thankfully it never actually does anything) he’s clearly abusing drugs - you’d feel bad if he hadn’t abandoned you with the burden of explaining why your son can’t see his father anymore.

it’s a rotten bit of your soul, but time heals you. you move on and no longer think of him. trust in your career. find a man who truly loves you with no motives attached. raise your kid to be a good man. and in a fashion not unlike shakespearean dramatic irony, this makes him move to gravity falls to find and take care of his father. you couldn’t care less what hee doing now, but damn it, it’s his father, what is the kid supposed to do? but its futile- he appears to have no remorse, hell, no memory of the incident in the first place. (this isn’t his fault but how are they supposed to know that?) so he grows bitter and cold just like his mother used to be.

imagine that.

all over a mans inability to do anything but live in denial. to force himself to live in a box and pine like a dying man over the right one at the wrong time, destined to crash and burn. to take denial to a new level- a cult, brain damaging radiation, a total ego death - just to take the edge off. take off that damn wedding ring

[just-here-with-my-thoughts]

Water Gun Fight / "It's Not What You Think"

Fandom: The Bad Batch Characters: Mox, Stak, Deke, Omega, Lyana, Jax, Eva, Hunter, Crosshair Set when everyone is living happily on Pabu :) Word Count: ~1560 Read Here on AO3

Synopsis: The children of Pabu have a water gun fight

Check out a teeny sneak peek of the amazing artwork @the-little-moment did to go with my fic! Go see the full piece HERE and tell her how awesome she is!

“This isn’t fair. Whoever gets the clones on their team will win.”

Mox folded his arms, a faint, aloof smile painting his face. Either side of him, Stak and Deke stood loose and ready, empty water-pistols held with casual, easy confidence.

“Omega’s a clone too,” he pointed out. “So there’s four of us. You can have two on each team to keep it even.”

“That’s not even,” said Deke with exaggerated annoyance. “Omega was trained by the defectives. She fights dirty.”

“She fights tactically,” corrected Mox, smiling at the blonde girl whose own lips twitched in amusement. “Makes it a challenge.”

Around them the children of Pabu shifted and muttered as a ripple of discussion ran through the group. Some of the younger ones were already getting bored with the idea of teams and rules, pretending to aim at each other and pulling the triggers of their empty water pistols with giggles.

The older ones were taking the issue much more seriously. Nobody could decide what counted as an unfair advantage when it came to the former cadets’ and Omega’s training.

“I think the clones should only be allowed to target each other,” volunteered Jax. His confidence was blossoming with the care he received from his new foster-family on Pabu. “That would make it fair… right?”

“But the rest of you can still target us?” scoffed Stak. “No way.”

“We haven’t even picked team captains yet!” groaned Lyana, dragging her hands dramatically over her face. “At this rate the sea will dry up before we fill these water pistols!”

“I have an idea.”

Omega’s voice cut clearly over the chatter, and the children fell quiet. She had that effect when she took command.

She turned to Deke with a smirk that made her look oh-so-like her younger brother, if only she had a toothpick to hand. “You think I fight dirty?”

There was a deceptive casualness to her tone, the way her dark brown eyes flicked to his from under her long lashes.

Deke shifted uncomfortably, aware that being trapped in the spotlight of Omega’s attention whilst she was plotting something was not where he wanted to be.

“How about… I don’t participate?”

A cry immediately went up from the other children, the small crowd surging to surround her. Eva took her hand, tugging gently.

“You have to play, Omega. You have to.”

Omega held up her free hand, and all eyes turned to her. Mox was smiling out the corner of his mouth, one eyebrow raised in curiosity. He nodded to invite her explanation.

She fixed him with a firm look, challenge in her smile. “I won’t participate,” she repeated, squeezing Eva’s hand reassuringly. “I’ll direct them. The rest of the island against you three. Think you can handle it?”

Stak looked up at Mox, his face breaking into a wide grin. Mox glanced from Stak to Deke, taking in the latter’s nerves, then looked back to Omega.

His smile curved wide as he nodded.

“You’ve got a deal.”

*

“I don’t like this,” muttered Deke as they crept along the side of a building, pressed tight to the shadows and ignoring the glances and titters from the adults going about their daily business. “Omega will be planning something.”

“Exactly,” said Stak with a confident grin. “Wouldn’t be a challenge otherwise.”

Mox smiled but shushed their chatter, leaning round the wall to check the coast was clear. The water gun sat heavy in his hands, freshly reloaded. He’d emptied it – apologetically, almost – into a brother and sister in Lower Pabu.

That was the rule of the game. A soaked t-shirt meant you were out.

He ducked back when a jet of water streamed in his direction, accompanied by giggling.

Quirking an amused eyebrow at the other two, he gestured with his head. In moments the clones were storming the main street, water splashing everywhere, as shrieks of laughter filled the air.

In the end five dripping children stood about, huge grins on their faces, whilst the three clone boys were still bone-dry.

Lyana was among the victims. She had been drenched head-to-toe when Stak and Deke chased her into a corner, shielding her head with her arms to little effect and sobbing with laughter the entire time.

She stood proudly with her arms crossed now, her ‘troops’ at her side.

“Well, what now, boys?” she challenged.

Stak stepped forward, levelling the brightly coloured super-soaker towards her. “Tell us where your general is,” he demanded, unable to bite back his grin.

Lyana laughed. “You’ll never find her.”

“She’s at the Archium,” said Mox with a grin.

“You don’t know that,” piped up one of the Pabu boys bravely, but Mox just chuckled.

“It’s where I’d direct my squad from,” he said, tilting his head up and shielding his eyes from the glare of Pabu’s sun as he gazed up towards Upper Pabu.

“Reckon we can fight our way up there?” asked Deke, stepping to his side.

“Sure.” He glanced back at Lyana with a sly smile. “We’ve taken out her lieutenant. It won’t be long before we’ve ended this.”

*

The adults were generous about letting the clones into their houses to refill their water guns. A lifetime’s training came back easily, even after the soft months without warfare on Pabu, and Deke and Stak easily fell into their roles following Mox’s orders.

They avoided combat when they could to conserve their water supplies. Were ruthless in drenching the island’s children when they could not.

Jax made a valiant attempt to divert them, dancing tauntingly in the mouth of an alley-way which wound into darkness behind the shadow of a two-storey building. Deke laid a warning hand on Stak’s arm.

“Watch out. It could be an ambush.”

“He’s one kid,” grinned Stak. “How bad can it be?”

Jax backed away slowly as Stak advanced. He held his water pistol loosely in one hand as he raised his arms in surrender.

“See?” called Stak. “Not so bad.”

A muffled giggle sounded. Then Eva popped up from the balcony above, tipping a bucket of water which splashed squarely onto Stak, soaking his hair, his shirt, and most of his shorts.

The clone gasped with the shock of it, then a grin spread wide on his face. Jax’s face danced with mirth.

“Vengeance!” howled Mox playfully, and he and Deke dove into the alley, water guns firing. Soon the two force sensitive children were similarly drenched, laughing as Stak threw an arm around each of their shoulders.

“Guess I’m out,” he said good-naturedly, grinning at his brothers. “Think you can take the general down by yourself?”

“Leave it to us,” said Deke with a smile and a salute. “We’ll end Omega’s reign of terror. Just you wait and see.”

*

Storming the plaza in front of the Archium was a running battle. The clones ducked and hid behind market stalls, weaving between chuckling adults as they pursued their quarry, the other laughing children.

Water pistols emptied. Were refilled. Were replaced with weapons ‘looted’ from ‘fallen’ enemies.

Before long they had Omega pinned. Deke leaned over her where she lay on her back, winded but still smiling slyly, where he had tackled her to the floor.

“Orders, sir?” he asked over his shoulder.

“If we’ve captured their general we can negotiate,” said Mox with a cautious glance at Omega. She smoothed her face into an innocent expression, which was a dangerous thing.

“I say we execute her.” Deke primed his super-soaker. “She’s too dangerous to let her live.”

Mox shook his head. “Let her reach her com. She can call her troops off.”

Reluctantly, Deke lifted his foot from where he had pinned Omega’s arm. The blonde girl’s smile returned as she slowly inched her arm towards her face, activating her wrist-com.

“Havoc-1?”

“Yeah?”

The deep rumble of Hunter’s voice was so unexpected that both younger clones backpedalled in shock.

“Hunter–” said Mox, startled, and Deke glanced in panic at Omega’s prone position as he added, “It’s not what you think!”

Hunter folded his arms, tattooed face shadowed with displeasure, stepping forwards to shield Omega and loom over the cadets.

Mox glanced uneasily between them, holding his hands out to his sides in surrender.

“It’s a game–” he began.

The jet of water caught him squarely in the back, running down his spine to soak him to the skin. He yelled, and his shout was echoed by Deke when a similarly targeted blast drenched him too.

The clones spun, searching for the source of the attack. It didn’t take them long to spot Crosshair perched in the weeping maya tree, an impressively large super-soaker in his hands, toothpick clenched between teeth which were bared in a grin.

“No fair,” objected Deke. “This game is supposed to be for kids.”

“It is,” said Hunter, and now he let his brooding façade crack as he picked Omega up from the floor with a fond smile. “Didn’t you hear? We’re younger than Omega. If she can play, we can play…”

Omega returned her big-little brother’s smile and turned a sympathetic look on the two dripping cadets.

“Don’t feel bad,” she said blithely, glancing first at Hunter and then at Crosshair with adoration in her eyes. Her smile turned soft. “You were never going to win, not when I have them.”

Haha well way back at the submitting prompts stage it was my kiddo who volunteered water gun fight, and I guess you know I engaged in some spurious voting practice to get it into the top 26... thrilled that it got drawn as week 1!

With thanks to @ninjadeathblade who said Crosshair should be camping in the weeping maya tree waiting to snipe the cadets :P

And thanks to the amazing @kybercrystals94 for organising this challenge! You struck up a conversation with me out of the blue last summer and it's been so fun spending the past 10 months bouncing fic ideas back and forth as well as participating in prompt challenges with you. And now you're hosting your own one! Bad Batch Themed! How great is that! :D

[reiverreturns]

can’t stop thinking about the fact that phoenix, as a female character, is not once used as a emotional wayfinder for rooster or the audience. i’m not yet over how damn COMPELLING it is as a facet of her character.

so phoenix is presented from the off as someone with an obvious close connection with rooster, and through her perspective we see bits of their history - deadpanning him when she nails him with the pool cue because he didn’t tell her he was stateside (and she’s not angry or disappointed, she clearly didn’t expect him to); how she gets out of the way for rooster and hangman to face off (she’s knows what’s coming but also that it’s not her fight); the way her face lights up when rooster sits at the piano (because she knows him well enough to know what makes him happy and how he expresses it). 

these moments all tell us things about phoenix and rooster’s friendship, but none of it serves to solve rooster’s problems or help him work through his emotions. phoenix never steps into that role. you could argue she gets close when rooster admits to her that mav pulled his papers, but even then phoenix doesn’t sympathise or validate rooster’s anger. she pauses, considers, and only asks “why would he do that?” - the one question rooster should be asking but doesn’t, the one his anger’s been pushing him away from for years.

and i just love that. phoenix isn’t there as a character to serve others, she isn’t a woman that exists to push forward the arc of a male protagonist. she’s there as the architect of the web that pulls all of these pilots and their shared histories together. she’s there to show how friendships can be deep and sustained and caring without being emotionally crippling. she’s there to show that knowing a person isn’t the same as understanding them. she doesn’t know rooster fully, but kneeling on the tarmac she understands him better than anyone in the world.

to illustrate my point by comparison, think about penny. to mav she’s a reminder of the past (one he’s constantly wrestling with because he can’t forgive himself for what’s happened, whether he’s earned the blame or not.) she steers him back towards what’s important and inspires his action when he has a crisis of confidence after cyclone pulls him out of the programme. the grand goodbye before mav goes on the mission in his dress whites with the cavernous black sea behind them is the cinematic equivalent of holding up a sign to the audience that says ‘you should be sad and worried! this little man’s in danger! hope you left room for catharsis after dinner.’

now i’m not saying one is better than the other (i stan penny and will hear nothing bad about her.) both characters serve purposes in the narrative that progress the plot. all i am saying is that it would have been so easy for the writers to write phoenix as that feminine emotional touchpoint for rooster and the audience. they could have inserted a scene after rooster and hangman’s fight where rooster starts to sift through his complex emotions about mav and his dad with her. they could have had a shot of her flying back looking distraught after rooster goes back for mav. what they did instead; in making her the connective glue of the group, using her to colour in their unseen past relationships and dynamics; is force rooster’s arc to come from within. and i’m telling you, the entire freaking movie is stronger for it.

so yeah. i really love phoenix. can you tell?

[lesbiradshaw]

Remember when we bunked together on the carrier?

[tvckerwash]

wash tormenting the reds in the most petty ways possible because he's still pissed off about them hitting him with a car and then blowing him up in s8 is so important to me you don't even understand

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

one of Thee funniest tv tropes is "group of people (better if they're not friends) wake up in the same area after being blackout drunk, with it being Wildly obvious that some crazy shit went down & they have to puzzle it out / fix their mess without anyone knowing"

[rindomness]

hello hi tell us about mementos and the security level

OH HELLO. Welcome to my personal hill to die on. This post is long. It's one of my out-loud rants in text form. Sorry in advance. There's a cut down there somewhere.

Thesis statement of whatever's about to come next is that Mementos fucks actually as a concept its execution was just horrible and also Yaldabaoth is a terrible final boss. OKAY LET'S GET INTO IT

First things first I really do think Mementos should have gotten a security level. The game plays "Mementos is the public's Palace" very straight, all the way to the end, insisting that Yaldabaoth is created by the public's desire for a status quo yadda yadda yadda. So like. Here's the screenshots actually

I didn't get the whole conversation mostly because I think I was streaming at the time and complaining out loud but like. He just straight-up says this? And then they do nothing with it???

Imagine this with me. Enter the imagisphere or whatever.

It's October. You've just defeated Okumura, and you just watched the mysterious black-masked figure you've been told cryptically about for a while now kill his Shadow. You watch Okumura have a mental shutdown live. It's horrific! It's worrying! What happened? What's going to happen to you? The Phan-Site meter starts dropping rapidly. You go to Mementos to prepare for the next Palace.

There's a security level.

NOT ONLY did this act make the public lose faith in you, but now you're enemy #1, and it's reflected in the collective unconscious. This Chekov's gun that they set up back in May goes off. You have to be much more careful in Mementos because if you aren't, you could get kicked out. The stakes are higher. Mementos, the public view of you, has changed. It's not just doors opening for you anymore.

THAT WOULD BE SO COOL. RIGHT? RIGHT??? BUT NO! No we don't get a security level until the depths, which contradicts itself, actually, because once you get to the depths, the whole POINT is that the public ISN'T reacting to you or your actions! Why the hell would they care that you're In There!

The obvious answer is that it's because the security level belongs to the Holy Grail/Yaldabaoth/the fuckass cup/whatever you personally call him. And okay, whatever, but the game goes out of its way to establish that the Grail isn't really a separate entity from "public desire," he IS "public desire," the status quo incarnate, so once again, I ask, why is this the only time you have a security level! (I know it's because this is the home-stretch to the final boss and mechanically it has to act like a proper Palace. I still think it's stupid.)

And now that I'm talking about the Grail. Hi. Hello. If you've talked to me on Discord you already know this but I fucking hate the Grail. I think it's stupid. I think it's thematically inconsistent. I think its only purpose is to be the "Let's fight God!" final boss. I truly believe that if I hadn't gotten into Persona 5 through Royal, I would not still be into Persona 5, because I would have gotten so frustrated with Yaldabaoth that I would have dropped the game. I regularly complain for half an hour straight about this thing in voice calls. One person once told me the only thing they knew about Persona 5 was that this cup sucked because I wouldn't shut up about it.

I've somehow managed to not do this on Tumblr but I can't really talk about Mementos without talking about it so I guess we're talking about the cup

Narratively: Yaldabaoth just sort of comes out of nowhere??? The whole game is building up to Shido. The whole game. And you do it! You defeat him! And then... there's this other thing??? Apparently??? I was genuinely really confused when I got to this part of the game the first time because I was going ok we beat the final boss complete with eight hundred phases! Hooray! And now there's this other fucker. Going back through the game there's some foreshadowing for him? But it's kind of all concentrated in the start of the game, around Madarame's Palace, when you're just getting used to Mementos, and then it all sorta just disappears.

YOU KNOW WHAT IS FORESHADOWED, THOUGH? MORGANA.

Imagine with me x2 because this is where I thought the game was taking us when it went "btw we need to tackle the depths now"

Morgana has no memories. Morgana knows there's something in the depths that explains who he is. Morgana assumes it's because he's human, and will become human again if he finds out what it is. The WHOLE POINT of exploring Mementos was for Morgana's memories! And then he starts getting these really unsettling dreams, right, where he's a Shadow, or has a Shadow, or whatever. And then you get to the depths.

What I thought was about to happen was that we were going to find out that Morgana was more or less what the Grail claims to be(a being created by the wishes of the masses) and that Mementos was going to be Morgana's Palace. "Oh but Morgana has a Persona-" Morgana's already a weird case I could easily see him having a Shadow or being a Shadow himself while also having a Persona. I'm ignoring Maruki because we're talking about vanilla and Maruki didn't exist yet.

I thought our final boss was going to be Mona's Shadow and that by defeating him(the part of Morgana(as a Shadow/Metaverse being/etc) representative of what they were trying to make Yaldabaoth: wanting to let the status quo handle everything, more or less, the desire to let the system do what it's designed to even if that thing is "crush everything in its path") we would reaffirm that change is possible as long as we all work together. Morgana getting to be this very physical symbol of rebellion and force of will and getting to go NO I want to try even if it hurts me.

What actually happened was... a lot more underwhelming.

What we got was, in a game where one of the primary themes is "rebellion against systemic injustice, you can't just get rid of the One Guy and fix Everything," a final boss who was... one guy who if you got rid of him you'd fix everything?

And I get it Atlus doesn't want to actually shake the boat that much but at the same time Yaldabaoth comes out of nowhere and says absolutely nothing of substance in a game that, over and over again, gets SO CLOSE to saying something really powerful and then sinking back into what's comfortable. It's the aesthetic of rebellion without the teeth of it.

Anyway now that I've complained for an essay's worth here's some positive stuff

I really do like Mementos. It gets a lot of shit for being repetitive and boring and like I sort of get that but on the other hand it is a JRPG. I'm not sure what you expected from the area that is, mechanically, "Here's where you go to grind." I don't see a problem with having this area. I think the special floor events manage to spice it up enough that it's not all that boring. I like Jose being there in Royal, I think he adds a lot, actually. The implications of everything Jose says are fascinating to me. The fact it's impacted by the weather! Like, as a world component, Mementos is so so cool actually guys. I know it's a Persona game so "world impacted by cognition" is sort of the bare minimum but it's really cool!!! The aesthetics fuck! The only layer I really don't like is.. fuck, I think it's Kaitul? Whichever one gets unlocked after Kaneshiro's Palace, I haven't gotten there in my current playthrough yet. It's just... too dark to see, all the time, imo. Mementos feels(except for... 90% sure it's Chemdah) very oppressive and spooky and I honestly think that's great. It's a depressing place to be! For a game about how corruption and systemic violence hurts everybody, it's really good!

In conclusion... don't ask me about Mementos unless you want an essay LMAO in seriousness I understand why Mementos gets shit but I think it should get less of it. And also that I could have fixed it(the cup. The cup is the big bad part of Mementos. Not the grinding you're going to get that with a JRPG no matter what you do you signed up for it when you launched the game.)

[whimsicmimic]

I wanted to do a little thing for @trigunfanfic appreciation week!!! We're gonna keep it nice and short, but god knows I'll be back to rec some more. So!

Come and See by @avoidingavoidance ; Tristamp post s1, canon divergence: Wolfwood goes home, Vashwood

I've been following Come and See for Multiple months now, and it's honestly been one of my absolute favorite fics in the fandom. Cannot stress enough how much I adore this fic -- where do I even begin? It's heartfelt, it's funny, it's PHENOMENALLY paced, and the character writing is just so, so, so good. There've been multiple chapters where after I finished reading, all I could do was pace, because what else can you do!!!! What else can you do!!!!! Fuck!!!!!!!

CAUSE OF DEATH (See instructions and examples) by @floofyfluff ; Post-Trimax, Wolfwood Lives, Vashwood

Cause of Death is my absolute favorite Wolfwood Lives fic; I rec it to people CONSTANTLY. I adore how it tackles the unpleasantness of coming back from the dead and its recognition of how spending a full year in a coma is an incredibly difficult thing for everyone involved. It also does a phenomenal job with Vash's grief, guilt, and conflict avoidance hitting against the brick wall of Wolfwood's fear of abandonment, and again, I really do just gotta shout out to the way it handles coming back from the dead as a wholeass medical condition that leaves a lasting impact on the body.

Someone's hand opens (I hold it) by @tytonnidaie ; Trimax, canon divergence: the events of Trimax happen long before Vash meets the other three, Vashwood

Read someone's hand opens. Seriously, read someone's hand opens. It's an INCREDIBLY fun premise, with the events of Trimax having happened long ago + Vash disappearing afterwards. The end of the world has been avoided, but no one really knows what happened, and no one has closure regarding these events. It's so much fun, y'all. It's SO much fun. I love Vash as a character out of time, I love Wolfwood as the man with a bounty on his head, and I LOVE the worldbuilding and speculation regarding life on No Man's Land post-Trimax and the culture clash between the SEEDS colonies and the Terrans. Read someone's hand opens.

Blended in Measure (Series) by inkpot__gods ; Tristamp, Getting Funky With It, Mashwood and Stryfewood

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh my goddddddd. Enough about the boys, let's talk about our girl Meryl Stryfe for a moment. There's so much that can be praised in this series: the amount of care and attention towards Meryl's character, situation, and background, the shared grief between Meryl and Wolfwood as the only two people who know the truth behind a cataclysmic event (and the knowledge that the world will never, ever believe them), the WORLDBUILDING. Oh my god, the worldbuilding, y'all. The worldbuilding is so well thought out, and I want to eat it with a spoon. I also wanna shout out to the way they expanded on Meryl and Zazie's friendship, because god, I love them. I love them. What more can I possibly say.

[honestlyvan]

Looking at this tweet:

and thinking about how I actually did this to Prime Wheeljack on my second viewing, deciding that he has to deal with fuckoff arm and wrist pain like I do

except he fucking did it to himself, because of course he did -- all of his integrated weaponry is custom, with his engineering background meant to primarily support hand tools, his initial loadout was configured for near-recoilless weaponry like Bumblebee and Smokescreen, but running around doing commando blackops shit (in his mind) necessitated larger firepower and there were no medics around to finger-wag him out of doing whatever upgrades he wanted so now all of his weaponry is a grade or two stronger than his structural components should on paper be able to handle.

As a result his whole upper body has a ton of microfractures from magnetic shear and recoil -- nothing that his self-repair can't handle, but just like with humans, supportive member damage doesn't heal back up to be stronger without very specific kind of physical therapy to accompany it. As a result Wheeljack has actually gained mass and lost a lot of the flexibility and aerodynamic and balance qualities of racer frames, and is maintaining his ability to do trick driving largely through just. Doing it, lmao, and not thinking about his worsening health.

[pedropascll]

Why worry about real life when I could write fanfiction about whatever fictional universe I’m currently hyper-fixated on 😃

[animentality]

Did they get a postive response from adding those Gortash lines? I thought a bunch of people hateing on it instead? Also what if they removed the lines to change them a go a diffrent direction. I'm sorry. I have a lot of worry they wont do something I agee with.

The overwhelming reaction was positive. Durgetash artists went on Twitter to celebrate, and the small but passionate fans of the ship went nuclear here and on Twitter, and helped BG3 trend, yada yada, tale as old as time.

Most people don't care about Durgetash or Gortash. The majority of people you hear from would be the people who like both of those things. It's also a small ship.

The haters of that ship are even smaller in comparison, because the hand that reaches out will always touch more than the hand clenched into a fist.

And the only "legitimate" complainers, who don't just dislike the ship on principle, are the whiners who keep insisting their durges are lesbians, and how dare Larian "force" them into a relationship with a man - which is literally not what Larian did.

No one bitches about how Gale's ORIGIN completely precludes him from being gay.

I see no reason why you can't similarly have Durge's ORIGIN make them attracted to men. Or, you know. Enver is special.

Oh. And also. It's so fucking platonic, if you want it to be. Stop being stupid and just say you don't like Durgetash. It's as easy as that.

Stop using "lesbophobic" as a handy label for your self righteous soapbox. You just don't like the ship, and that's fine. It's FINE. But acting like Durgetash is lesbophobic - oh, go play a Tav.

And also, Astarion and Gale and Wyll better not flirt with you in game, even though you can tell them to fuck off, or else they're lesbophobic too.

That's the only discourse that gained traction on Twitter. As far as I know.

If Larian had made Gale wear blackface or something, and people got pissed, then yeah. They'd back up on that, and get rid of it pronto.

But Durgetash???

Aside from the general evil antics, they're not that fucking controversial of a ship.

Most people don't even PLAY the Dark Urge.

I don't know how to stress this any other way...

People act like Durgetashers are loud - we're honestly not that loud.

Astarion fans are far louder, and yet, the most romanced companion is SHADOWHEART and then Laezel and KARLACH.

He's not even in the top 3. And yet, he dominates the content on Twitter and Tumblr... he's definitely more popular than Gortash or the Dark Urge or Durgetash together...but his fans are still technically the damn minority.

So Durgetash in comparison to Starries???

Infinitesimal.

And Durgetash haters?

Would be even smaller.

So what I'm saying is...

I'm kind of tired of answering asks about this.

I don't KNOW for certain whether or not this is Larian backing up or walking forward, and while I don't believe they'd walk back on this, and especially not for a handful of people, it kind of annoys me to even think about things outside of my control.

now if Larian makes a big grand statement and says actually we totally rescind something WE WROTE AND ADDED TO THE GAME because some people got mad...then I'll call them cucks, and complain.

But as of right now?

As far as I know personally, and assume in my heart... it's neutral.

The lines are probably just bugged. Also, not ALL of them are bugged either, so.

Please stop freaking out, guys.

I am the world's biggest resident durgetash freak, and I'm shrugging at this, and just saying it's a bug.

Don't let it bother you. It's out of your control, regardless.

(And I stress again - if we find out they're legitimately backing away from something they did...they have the spine of a ham sandwich. But until we know that for sure, I won't condemn them for this, because as far as we know, it is legitimately an accident.)

[kindahoping4forever]

Galantis and Michael spoke with Rolling Stone about the origins of Lighter and the collaborative process

[tangledinink]

"This was supposed to be easy. A simple re-introduction to crime-fighting after taking so much time off to heal after the invasion. Dipping his toes back into the water, so to speak. Maybe it was because it was easy that he let this happen."

my beta @livsinpjs and i are playing a game where they choose a bad things happen bingo prompt and then i write a thing for them. i'm having a lovely time. guess which prompt this one was? anyway, read on ao3 or below the cut! :3c

This was supposed to be easy.

Baby’s First Mission, so to speak. Or perhaps, more accurately, Baby’s First Mission, Take Two: Electric Boogaloo, because it was certainly not the first time Leo had debuted his mad skillz on the mean lean streets of NYC, thank you very much. It was, however, the first time in… a while.

Assuming Leo had his math right, it had been about four and a half months. Four and a half months since he had participated in any degree of crime fighting.

It took him four and a half months to recover enough from the invasion for his family to even consider letting him participate in the simplest of ninja tasks. And, okay, fine. It was… kind of understandable. Leo wasn’t a total idiot. He could recognize that he had been pretty fucked up. Like, for real fucked up. Not that everyone else wasn’t, he had just…

He had just had a bit more ground to cover. After the Prison Dimension, and stuff. That was all. 

Nothing he couldn’t handle. No big.

… Because he had! He had covered that ground! It was all covered now, totally out of sight and out of mind, and honestly, he was basically bounced back, good as new, as if the whole thing had never happened! Yes, okay, he did have some… lingering scars and aches and such, but so did everyone else! And they were super-soldier mutants, after all. They healed fast. All the broken limbs, the torn muscles, the lacerations and the cracks and the internal injuries-- they were all good now. He had a clean bill of health! Sure, he had given the clean bill of health to himself, but he hadn’t cut any corners or given himself any breaks.

He wouldn’t do that to his family.

He knew it had been… hard. Usually, he was the one who took care of any injuries or boo-boos, and things had admittedly been kind of touch-and-go there for a minute before he had recovered back enough to offer any of his (self-taught…) expertise, with his family struggling to fill in the gaps he left behind. But things were okay now. He had been good and patient and tolerant about being trapped in the Lair, bored out of his mind, for four and a half months. 

He was ready to be back out here.

And it was just a patrol!

“Things have been, like, stupid quiet today,” Leo muttered softly to himself as he wandered along the rooftops, balancing on the edge, his arms held out to keep himself steady. “What’s the deal?”

“Isn’t a lack of crime considered, you know, a good thing?” Donnie questioned, looking up from his tech gauntlet to raise a brow at his twin. Leo scoffed softly, rolling his eyes.

“I’m not saying it’s bad! I’m just making an observation!”

“Things have been a little calmer ever since the invasion,” Raph observed, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I guess even the criminals are still spooked,” Mikey chirped.

“Boring,” Leo muttered under his breath.

“I heard that,” Donnie said, and Leo shot him a mischievous grin.

“Oh, please, as if you’re not dying to go beat up some bad guys, too!” He flashed back, hopping down from his makeshift balance beam to fall into step with his brothers, looping an arm around his twin, who groaned in irritation. “We’re ninjas! We need things to ninja! It’s the natural order of things, Dee! We need, like… enrichment! For our enclosures!”

“Leo, get off of--”

Donnie’s gauntlet began to chirp brightly, and Leo gasped, reaching over.

“Ooh! Is that a bad guy code!? Is that one of your crime alert things!? What does it say!?”

“Well, get off of me so I can read it!” Donnie snapped in response, growling softly as he kicked his brother away. Leo whined but allowed himself to be shoved, stumbling and spinning dramatically as he went. Mikey caught him with a giggle and Leo slumped into him, draping an arm over his head.

“By my own brother…!”

“Shut up,” Donnie muttered. “A convenience store three blocks from here was robbed. Four suspects fleeing north. And by the way, that would be code six-seven-five-point--”

“A robbery?! Perfect! We could handle that in our sleep! And they’re even running towards us! Isn’t that a fun change of pace?” Leo cried, grinning big as he rose back up to his full height, unsheathing his katanas with a satisfying shwing . God, it felt so good to do that again. “What do you say, hermanos? ”

Three grins echoed his own-- even Donnie.

“That’s what I like to see,” Leo sang. “C’mon, let’s go ruin some bad guys’ day!”

---

Maybe Leo was a little rusty, but he wasn’t wrong, either. 

They could handle these shmucks in their sleep.

Maybe that had been the problem.

Things had been going well, quite frankly. Really well! Leo still wasn’t sure where he miscalculated-- where he had missed. The game plan had been solid! They were all totally in sync and completely in control. Everything went just the way it should. They got the jump on the suspects, and when two had fled left and the other two right, Leo had sent Mikey and Raph in one direction, and he and Donnie had gone in the other. And they weren’t even far from each other-- he could still hear Raph and Mikey yelling from here, just around the corner, having easily cornered their part of the group and making quick work of them. And he and Donnie had been doing the same. It wasn’t even hard. I mean, come on. They had defeated the Kraang. What were these guys to him?

That one guy had just barely gotten a hit on him. Just barely.

It was just bad luck, really. He had jumped out of the disarmed robber’s clumsy attempt at an attack, leaping up onto a nearby dumpster and then flipping over, back behind him. And he didn’t get hurt, per se, he just--

He just landed on his bad leg. That was all. And his knee kind of… didn’t appreciate it, was the thing. And so he stumbled. Just a tiny bit. Just ever-so-slightly.

Just long enough for that stupid asshole to whip around and slug him, sending him reeling backward.

“Leo!” Donnie hissed in alarm, his eyes widening as Leo fell back, stumbling slightly. With a quick sweep of his bo staff, he had thrown the other criminal to the ground, promptly abandoning the fight in order to instead rush to Leo’s side. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine! Takes more than that to knock me out,” Leo scoffed, waving off his concerns quickly. “What are you over here fussing at me for? We still got two dudes to take down! Mikey and Raph are gonna win and embarrass us!”

“Maybe we should re-evaluate--”

“Dee, chill. It was one punch. I’m not even bleeding,” Leo snapped, just barely sparing Donnie a glance before he was re-focused on the task at hand-- at the two goons who they had now allowed the space to regroup and begin a hasty retreat.

“But you’re hurt--”

“Come on! They’re gonna get away!” Leo hissed, brushing past Donnie so that he could give chase. He grit his teeth as the pair darted back around the corner of the alley, picking up his pace to pursue and re-adjusting his grip on his katanas.

“Wait--!”

“Dude, I’ve got it, chill,” Leo snapped, bristling the tiniest bit from irritation. Look, sure, he knew he had gotten fucked up and that it was scary, but he was better now! They didn’t have to keep acting like he was some fragile doll-- why couldn’t they understand that and just trust him--!?

“Leo--!” Out of the very corners of his eyes, he saw his twin brother surge forward, a hand clamping onto his shoulder and attempting to yank him back behind him. Leo cursed, stumbling slightly, pulling back in resistance and turning slightly to glare.

“Dee, stop it, I’m--”

His words died in his mouth as an explosive bang cut through them both, echoing through the alley, dramatic and demanding-- insisting it be heard. Leo flinched back at the assault to his senses. He could feel the noise bouncing through his head. His ears were ringing. It was so loud. His vision blurred for a second as his balance wobbled.

He thought blearily for a second, what the hell was that?

And then he thought, that was really loud.

And then he felt Donnie’s grip on his shoulder falter and loosen.

And it fell away.

---

Maybe it was because it was easy that he let this happen.

Maybe it was because it was ‘no big deal’ that he had disarmed the suspect and left it at that, and hadn’t thought to check or wonder if that was his only weapon.

---

A second ago, it had been so loud, and now all of a sudden, it was so quiet, and it took a second for Leo to force his body to move enough so that he could wrench his head up enough to look over at his brother.

“Oh my god--”

Donnie kind of seemed like he was trying to respond, but he didn’t quite manage it. He curled a bit further in on himself, struggling to keep himself up on his knees rather than falling over entirely. And the next sound Leo heard was the splash of liquid dripping down onto asphalt.

---

Everything was moving kind of fast. 

Which was probably good. Because Donnie was bleeding a lot. 

He had started screaming for Raph and Mikey, he remembered, sort of vaguely, though it felt like a long time ago now. And he was sure that they heard him, and he was sure they were coming, but after about five seconds of watching Donnie bleed like that, making these fucking horrible noises in the back of his throat like breathing was suddenly hurting him, Leo decided he couldn’t wait. 

Mikey and Raph would catch up. 

Donnie needed first aid right now.

The Turtle Tank was close. He could get them there. He was out of practice and panicking, but he knew he could teleport them there, at least, and they had supplies there, and Mikey and Raph could come and help, and it would be okay--

It would be fine.

Donnie would be fine.

It would be fine if he could just get them there. Just to the Turtle Tank. It was close. He just had to get Donnie to the Tank, and he’d be okay.

“Hang on. Hang on, don’t move. Just-- don’t move--” He bit out, his voice frantic as he kneeled down next to the other, grabbing onto them. He was embarrassed to admit that it took him a few tries, but all he could see in his mind when he tried to focus his energy was the blood and how fucking awful the wound looked, oh my god--

But he got them there. They jolted slightly on arrival, and Leo winced, listening to this short groan be pulled from Donnie’s chest as his knees finally buckled fully beneath him.

“Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s okay. Just-- it’s fine. You’re okay--” Leo kept biting out as he held onto his twin, easing him down onto his back on the floor of the tank, and he wasn’t really sure who he was trying to reassure. And up until now, Leo had been panicking, but he hadn’t been crying.  

Now he was looking at his brother, his shoulder torn open like it was fucking raw, chewed-up meat, trembling on the cold metal floor and wheezing painfully. And he hiccuped, tears welling up in his eyes.

“Oh, fuck--”

Because it kind of sunk in for the first time that Donnie did this on purpose.

“Why-- why did you do that?” He hissed weakly, his voice trembling as he rushed to grab the first aid kit. ���What is wrong with you?!”

Donnie gave this very weak, strangled sort of noise, which sounded like it was trying to be laughter, but was shaking and wet.

“This is why you always lose at team FPS games,” he mumbled, his speech slurred slightly, lips ever-so-slightly turning up into this pained little half-grin. Leo swallowed at the sight of it, forcing his eyes away, hurriedly yanking supplies from their first-aid kit and ripping open packs of gauze.

“What-- what the fuck are you even talking about? Just-- stay still, I, I have to apply pressure and it’s gonna suck, just, try not to move--”

“Gotta protect your healer, dum-dum,” Donnie muttered, agreeably going limp beneath Leo’s hands, his head lolling back against the metal of the tank with a soft thud as his eyes fluttered shut. “Tha’s… basics. N-now-- hurry up and-- and fix me.”

Leo sobbed.

“I hate you. I fucking hate you,” he whispered in a shaky little mantra, tripping over his own words over and over as he shoved bandages up against the honest to god hole in Donnie’s shoulder, blood bubbling up like a fucking drinking fountain, just below his throat and just barely to the right of the metal strap of his battle shell because of course it was, of fucking course it was. The bullet was most likely literally lodged inside his fucking battle shell right now, but a lot of good the stupid shell did if the bullet went through his brother to get there--

His clavicle is probably shattered, he thought to himself, and he swallowed hard-- but he didn’t allow himself to hesitate. Even if he didn’t wanna do this.

Donnie couldn’t afford to lose much more blood, and he couldn’t afford to lose any time to Leo hesitating over putting him in more pain.

Leo braced both palms over the wound, internally said a preemptive apology, and shifted his entire weight forward onto his hands, leaning hard into his brother. 

Donatello’s eyes flashed back open. 

Somehow, his strength seemed to renew itself, which would be comforting if it wasn’t all being wasted in his body instinctively fighting back against the pain, jerking sharply beneath Leo’s touch. A choked howl wrenched its way from Donnie’s throat as he writhed against him, all his limbs flailing for just a second and his muscles twitching before he could gather himself enough to try and wrest control of his body again, attempting desperately to follow directions.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Dee. I have to,” Leo hissed through clenched teeth, hiccuping softly, shifting slightly so he could pin his brother down properly-- holding him forcibly in place by his injured shoulder. Luckily, the fight didn’t last long, and soon Donatello had settled back down again, only trembling and twitching beneath him. Leo tried to find it in himself to be grateful, but honestly, the stillness was somehow even worse. “I’m sorry--”

“This does suck,” Donnie wheezed out weakly, gritting his teeth, and Leo forced this watery little chuckle in reply.

“I told you,” he bit out, sniffling a little. He knew that he was dripping tears down onto his brother with how he was hunched over him, and he knew that under normal circumstances Donnie would think that that was fucking disgusting. But he couldn’t free up any hands or move right now to wipe them away, and honestly, Donnie probably had bigger things to worry about at the moment. “Oh my god. I hate you. I f-fucking hate you. Why did you do this…?”

“Payback,” Donnie slurred, and Leo decided right then and there that that was going to haunt him for at least the next ten years of his life.

“I’m sorry--”

“Don’t--” Donnie had more to say, Leo could tell, but his words kept dying in his throat like he was forgetting what he was gonna say halfway through. 

Or like he was giving up.

“Hey. Don’t go to sleep,” Leo hissed, increasing the pressure ever so slightly and jostling him, his brother wincing and wriggling in response. “You gotta stay up. Okay? It’s gonna be fine. You’re okay. It’s-- it’s just your shoulder. No big deal! The technodrome was way worse than this, this is like-- like a papercut! You’re gonna be fine,” he insisted, though he could hear how his own voice wobbled. “Come on. Just stay awake with me, okay?”

Donnie moaned softly in response, forcing one eye open again.

Leo swallowed hard, squeezing his own eyes shut for a moment to try to force himself to refocus. 

He couldn’t just sit here and apply pressure. He had to-- he had to get him back to the Lair. To the Medbay, so he could actually treat him properly. He racked his brain, trying to calculate how many blood bags they had in storage. They had learned their lesson after the Invasion, and they kept blood bags, because they were stupid fucked up mutants and they couldn’t get blood from anyone except for each other, but blood only kept for so long! And even if they did still have some, they were all stored cold. They were all in the fridge in the MedBay. He couldn’t use cold blood. And they wouldn’t have time to warm anything up. Donnie would be dead by the time it was usable. 

So he was gonna need Mikey. Mikey had the matching blood type. Mikey had universal blood, and none of the rest of them matched. And Donnie was losing so much blood still. All the gauze was soaking through. Fuck. Had they hit an artery or something? For a moment he brain racked frantically through all the major arteries and their locations, trying to name and place them, before he snapped out of it, giving a sharp shake of his head. Focus! Blood. Mikey. Mikey and Raph-- we need them.

“Hey. Hey, Don, I need you-- I need you to lift your left arm for me a tiny bit, okay?” Donnie stiffened slightly and whined. “I know. I know, I just-- I need to call Mikey and Raph and tell them where we’re at, okay? C’mon. Just for a minute, I swear--”

And Donnie made this fucking horrible noise as he did it, but he was a goddamn champion and a trooper and he did it anyway, and Leo dared to remove one of his hands from the wound just long enough so that he could smack at the screen of Donnie’s gauntlet. He smeared blood across the glass, pushing away all the notifications and alerts that were flooding the space. It had been beeping like crazy for a while now, Leo belatedly realized, and while he was sure a lot of this was due to Donnie being literally shot, he would also not be surprised if Mikey and Raph had tried to call them about eighty times now.

He managed to place a call back.

Raph picked up instantly.

“LEO! Where are you!? Are you hurt!? What happened--”

“We’re in the tank!” He hissed, fighting to keep his voice from breaking. “It’s-- w-we’re okay, but I, I need you to get back here ‘cause we-- we gotta go home, like-- like, right now--”

---

Once his brothers were there, he could make them hold the gauze in place. He could wrap the wound enough so that he could maybe feel halfway okay with moving Donnie. And he could take the five seconds he needed to recenter himself and make a portal back home.

And that was all good. But it was also when things started to get really fucking scary.

Because even though he knew that Raph was holding him so, so fucking carefully, just the movement of jumping through the portal and into the Medbay back in the Lair tore this horrendous fucking scream from Donnie, his entire body jerking and locking up slightly as he curled up against Raph, and then he had absolutely sobbed and Leo’s heart went up into his throat because Donnie wasn’t a crier. Donnie cried, sure, but rarely. And he certainly didn’t cry from pain. 

He might be a nerd and a drama queen, but he was way tougher than he let on. Combat may not always be the main focus in his world, but he was perfectly capable of going toe-to-toe with the rest of them without breaking a sweat-- sometimes even outpacing them-- and he wasn’t afraid of pain.

Donnie was perfectly capable of growing overwhelmed and emotional and being brought to tears. Of course he was. He was a person. Leo had seen him cry plenty of times before, even if it was a rarely-observed phenomenon.

But he didn’t cry from pain.

Which meant that right now, Donnie was clinging to Raph and fucking weeping not because he was in pain, but because he was scared. And that was what scared Leo.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, we made it. Everything’s gonna be fine now, hermano, I swear. We’ve got you,” he hissed, rushing to begin throwing open cabinets, yanking supplies out of drawers and storage bins. Blood. We gotta deal with the blood loss first, and then everything else. He’s gonna bleed out if we don’t-- “Raph, put-- put him down on the bed, and Mikey, you run-- No. No, wait, Mikey, don’t go anywhere. Raph, you go get Dad. Mikey, you-- you and Raph gotta switch off, you gotta keep the pressure on the wound--” he hissed out frantic instructions, his mind tripping over itself in his haste.

He was dimly aware that Raph and Mikey were in tears, too, but his had stopped a while ago now. He had had his turn, and he needed to focus right now. He didn’t have time to cry anymore.

By the time he had what he needed, which had only taken seconds, Raph was already gone and Mikey had taken his place, holding Donnie down to the cot by his shoulder and sobbing weakly.

“It’s okay, we’re home now. Everything is gonna be fine, Dee…!” He kept saying in between little sniffles and hiccups. “We’re home, it’s okay…!”

“Good job, Miguelito. Uhm, here. Can you-- I need you to twist your elbow a little, okay?” He instructed, a bit haltingly, tossing the required supplies down on top of Donnie as he tried to navigate between them, ducking past Mikey’s arms. “Okay-- yeah, yeah, good. Alright. Uhm. Dee-- Dee needs some blood, okay? So I’m gonna-- Mikey, more pressure than that--!”

“It’s-- it’s hurting him--

“Do it anyway. Yeah, okay, Yes. Like that. Okay, good. Uhm. I’m just-- I’m gonna poke you real quick so he can have some of yours, so I just-- I need you to stay still for me so I can find a vein. Okay?”

Mikey just sobbed in reply, nodding fervently. 

It took Leo about four tries to find a vein in Mikey’s arm, and then three tries to find one on Donnie, and he cursed himself and apologized about eighty times, swearing that he would practice more later and get good enough so he could get the vein on the first time, every single time, no matter what.

(Goddammit, why did Mikey have to be the universal donor? Why couldn’t it have been Raph? Or him? Mikey was so small. He kept missing the veins because his hands were shaking so badly. He had never done a direct transfusion before. It would be so easy to take too much. If he didn’t pay close enough attention he could end up killing Mikey with this so easily--)

“Purple!”

Leo’s head jerked up slightly, his eyes wide. He hadn’t even heard Dad and Raph coming back until they were here. Their dad absolutely flew to Donnie’s side, all but jumping on him, finding his hand to grab, his other hand resting on his child’s cheek. “Oh-- oh, Purple. It’s okay. It is okay, my son, we are here. Your family is right here. You’re going to be okay--!”

“Dad--” Donnie whimpered, and his voice sounded so small and weak and un-Donnie-like that oh, actually, okay. He had thought he had worked past the tears.

But he had not. They were back now. And Leo sobbed, his knees nearly going out from under him, because oh my god.

Jesus christ.

Donnie was shot. Donnie got shot and he was bleeding out right now in front of him, and it should have been him.

He should have been paying attention and being more careful and now Donnie had been fucking shot and it should have been him--

“Blue.”

Leo choked on another sob, his head just barely lifting up to meet his father’s eyes. And his voice was so gentle and careful, but so firm as he grabbed him by the back of the neck and yanked him back out from under the water where he had been drowning a second ago. 

“It’s going to be okay,” their dad said. “Just tell us what you need us to do.”

Right. Right.

Leo swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes shut.

He was the healer.

And he had to fix Donnie.

He could do this. 

“I--” His voice shook, so he stopped and sniffled and started again, hurriedly wiping at his face. “H-he’s, he’s s-still bleeding, really bad, and I-- I think it h-hit an artery or something so I. I gotta g-go in and, and put in a clamp, or, or do a repair, or s-something, so I--”

He took in a long, deep breath, his entire body trembling.

“So I need Mikey to sit down and stick close. And I need someone to get him food and water ‘cause he’s Donnie’s lifeline right now so he can’t pass out. And I need Donnie’s battle shell off-- carefully. And I need to grab the drugs to put him under and I-- I need to scrub in.”

---

Leo had never intended to be the medic of the team. It was never a goal of his or anything-- it’s not like one day he sat down and said, ‘oh, you know what would be super fun? Being responsible for the health and safety of all my family members in times of crisis!’ 

‘Cause, uh, no. No, thank you.

It had just… it had just sort of happened.  

He had just fallen into it at some point. Whenever something went wrong or something got hurt, if Dad wasn’t around to immediately pick them up and patch them up, then somehow, it would fall to Leo to take over until Dad got there-- because Donnie was squeamish with blood and Mikey got distracted, and Raph would get so focused on trying to get whichever brother was crying to calm down that he’d kind of forget about the whole first aid bit. 

So Leo would do it. If Dad wasn’t there right away, then Leo figured could get out the bandaids and the neosporin and get the scraped elbow or bloody knee all fixed up. And then when he did, once dad did get there, he would always smile and pat his head and say, ‘good job, Blue.’ And every single time, Leo would just beam at the praise, all filled up with excited and warm and fuzzy and proud.

So he took it upon himself to always jump in and help whenever anyone got hurt-- not just when Dad wasn’t around. And eventually, he learned how to do more stuff. When Mikey sprained his ankle skateboarding, he got Donnie to help him look it up on the computer so he could help treat him. And when Raph tore out one of his claws, he scoured WebMD and VCA articles alike to figure out how he could best help. And then, slowly but surely, he fell down more and more rabbit holes. He’d look up the symptoms of concussions when Donnie fell and bumped his head, and then he’d just end up opening up every related and suggested article. Internal bleeding, TBIs, nerve damage, spinal cord injuries… 

He devoured medical textbooks. He watched videos of surgeries on YouTube. He studied recorded lectures from college classes online. The more he learned, the more he found it to be genuinely interesting. So he learned more. 

And the more he learned, the more often he could say, “I know how to take care of that,” when someone was injured. And the more often he said that the more people would come to him when they were injured and ask for his help.

And he liked that.

Every time he was able to help, he’d still get that warm fuzzy feeling. Because this was something he could do. This was how he could help his family. And god, that fucking meant something to him.

And by now, he was… he was pretty good at it. Or, at least, he thought he was. He was pretty sure he was…! But he was still just… 

Leo. 

He was still just some dumb teenage kid, barely seventeen, who grew up in the sewer and had literally no formal education or training.

He was a decent medic, sure.

But a surgeon he was not.

He had watched surgeries. He had studied them. He understood the concept and what he had to do and how it had to be done. But he had never really done it before. 

About five different times, he thought, oh my fucking god, what am I doing? I’m going kill him--

And then five different times, he thought, what other choice is there? If you don’t try, you’ll still kill him.

So he washed the ever-loving shit out of his hands. He got things as sterile as he possibly could in the MedBay. He drew up the required drugs, all acquired through illicit means by the brother they were now being used on and pushed them through the IV line he had set up. (‘Nighty-night, motherfucker,’ he had said to Donnie, and they had kind of weakly, shakily laughed in response.) He got every tool and drug and contingency that he could possibly think of and he made sure it was all within arm’s reach.

And then he had opened his twin brother up.

And suddenly the MedBay was his OR. And he was the trauma surgeon. And he was also the anesthesiologist. He was the nurse and the assistant, too, and the doctor for his youngest brother at the same time, who was now also actively bleeding out alongside Donnie for his sake, desperately attempting to use what he had to keep two bodies alive instead of just one. And Raph and Dad were there to help, but there was only so much they could do. Dad was pretty knowledgeable, but only to an extent! And he was so fucking glad they were there, thank god they were all there, but it was still…

He was the medic. It was on him.

He worked for almost an hour before he had to call it. He actually tried to call it two times before that, worried about how much blood Mikey was losing, afraid to keep going. But every time he did, Mikey set his expression and shook his head and asked, “Is he okay yet?”

And Leo would hesitate just long enough that Mikey would narrow his eyes and say, “Keep going until you’re sure. I’m still okay. I can keep going.”

At some point, Raph’s sole responsibility to the operation was just to watch Mikey and nothing else. To sit with him and monitor his heart rate, to talk with him and make sure he was breathing okay, that he was still able to move, to speak clearly, to follow a conversation. 

But eventually, he had to call it. 

He just had to trust that he had done enough. To just pray that things might be okay. That he had done a decent enough job for Donnie to live. His collarbone was still totally fucked , but at least the artery was patched, and that was the most important thing-- or at least, he thought it was patched. He hoped it was. But he couldn’t go any longer. He couldn’t take anything else from Mikey or else they were gonna have two unconscious brothers.

He wasn’t a surgeon. 

He just did the best that he possibly could.

The entire time he worked, he was laser-focused, desperately willing himself to keep his eyes on the task at hand. But in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but think about the invasion. 

And he kept thinking about what a horrific state they had all been in after the invasion. And he thought about how he still couldn’t remember… the first, like… five days after Staten Island. And he didn’t really even know what they did. Or how they managed.

He had come home in fucking pieces. They all had. Mikey’s burnt skin had been fucking sloughing off his arms. He remembered realizing that Donnie was leaving bloody footprints behind him when he walked for how much blood he was losing, dripping down his legs. Half of Raph’s face had been an open wound, and he swore he could still see it when he closed his eyes, through all the bits and pieces, in between all the massive gaps in his memories.

And he just kept thinking about them all dealing with this same situation, but a million times worse. And he hadn’t helped.

He got Donnie all stitched up. He got Mikey laid up in a second bed and gave him some of his own blood from, like, a month ago because they did still have a blood bag in cold storage that they had been able to warm, and then finally allowed him to pass the fuck out after shoving, like… so much pasta and cookies into him. He pushed the reversal dose into his twin.

He still had no idea if he actually fixed it. He didn’t know if he had actually managed to stop the bleeding entirely or not. For all he knew, he was still bleeding out now. For all he knew, he wouldn’t wake up.

He settled down to wait and to watch. 

---

The sound was so soft, he almost didn’t hear it.

It was hardly even there.

It had been a while now. Raph and Dad waited with him, taking turns watching Mikey and Donnie and doing whatever they could to help and trying to get him to rest, too.

But he didn’t want to rest.

(Neither did they. So even though they all repeatedly said to each other, ‘seriously, you should get some sleep, you look exhausted, I can watch him for a while,’ none of them really listened and none of them really had the room to push it, either.)

It was just weird luck. Dad had gone to fetch some food and tea for them. And Raph had just left, carrying Mikey back to his own room, because Leo had finally declared him stable, though exhausted, and he kept getting woken up over and over by the rest of them in here, and while Leo knew he’d never complain about it, it was a little heartbreaking to watch.

So for just a moment, it was just Leo and Donnie in the Medbay.

And Leo sighed very softly, laying his head down in his arms and bouncing his leg anxiously, biting at the inside of his cheek.

Please. Please. Please wake up. I swear, I will never do anything stupid and dumb or selfish ever again. I swear I’ll learn my lesson this time. Please. Just. Please. Please wake up. Don’t make my fuck ups be his consequences, please--

And he was so caught up in his own thoughts, he almost didn’t hear it at first.

This tiny, soft little chirp, just barely echoed through the cold white space.

He almost didn’t hear it.

But he did.

And his head snapped up, his eyes wide.

Donnie blinked very slowly, twitching the tiniest bit and visibly struggling to force his eyes open. And he chirped again. And Leo almost immediately burst into tears.

“Holy fuck. Don. Oh my god-- Never do that again. I-- oh my god. Thank fuck. I’m so fucking sorry--”

Donnie chuffed shakily in response and mumbled something completely incomprehensible, but didn’t quite have it in him to reply with words just yet. Leo didn’t mind. He’d take the opportunity to just continue to cry and hang onto him and touch his face and make sure he was actually there, actually alive. And to bite out apologies over and over and over until Donnie was finally awake enough to cut in.

“Leo. Shut up.”

“Sorry. Sorry, I--”

“Stop saying sorry.”

“Okay,” Leo finally whispered, hiccuping weakly, laying his head down on the bed again, sniffling a bit. “Okay. Uhm. I-- are you okay…?”

“Peachy.”

“Don’t be a bitch,” Leo mumbled weakly. “I’m trying to be the goddamn healer, remember?”

“I’m okay,” Donnie breathed, shifting ever-so-slightly in bed and wincing a bit at the movement. “Fucking-- sore. But I think I’m okay. Drugs’re working for sure.” 

“Good,” Leo said, and then was quiet for a little bit.

“Never do that again,” Leo whispered.

“I still think my logic was solid--”

“Donnie--”

“Okay, look,” Donnie sighed. “It’s not like I made a conscious choice, okay? I wasn’t-- I wasn’t trying to get shot. I would have actually really, really preferred not to get shot! Two really’s! My goal wasn’t to take the damn bullet, okay? I just--” He huffed softly, letting his eyes flutter shut again.

“I just saw the gun and I wanted you to be safe. So I moved. I was just trying to get you out of the way. That’s all.”

Leo swallowed hard, covering his mouth with his hand and gritting his teeth. “If I hadn’t-- If I hadn’t let that guy hit me. Or if I-- if I listened to you when you told me to stop, then they wouldn’t have--”

“Yeah, maybe,” Donnie scoffed. “And if I hadn’t gotten all protective over your getting hit one time, and if I had listened to you when you told me that you were fine, then maybe I wouldn’t have gotten shot then, either!”

“I’m-- I’m sorry, I should have--”

“Cut it out,” Donnie immediately cut off.  “You didn’t do anything wrong, okay? Shit just happens sometimes. It’s not like you were being a reckless idiot. You weren’t trying to get shot, either. Sometimes, things just happen. This is unfortunately the way of the world. It’s just a big random number generator. Or something,” he grumbled a bit, wrinkling up his nose. “I dunno. I’m pretty high. You get it, though.”

Leo kept quiet for a minute, and then slowly nodded.

“... Yeah.”

“And it’s not payback, either,” Donnie mumbled tiredly. “Sorry I said that shit. It’s just that I was in shock and bleeding out at the time, and therefore not really in the best mindset…”

Leo scowled. “You don’t have to apologize--”

“We already talked about it. And we’re okay. I shouldn’t have brought it up,” he said. “So just, like… let me apologize or whatever. You know how rare of a moment this is. So just take it.” 

The two of them were quiet for a second.

“Were things really bad after the Invasion?” Leo asked. Donnie cracked open an eye so he could look at his brother.

“What? Obviously, things were bad, Leo. What kind of a question is that?”

“Because--” Leo broke off, frowning. “Because I didn’t help--”

“Well, yeah, because you were literally comatose.”

“Y-yeah, but-- I-- If I hadn’t, it would’ve--”

“Look, Leo, if you had been around immediately after the Invasion, it probably would have helped,” Donnie sighed. “But it still would have sucked! And you weren’t, and we were still okay. None of us died. You didn’t die. We had people to help us, and it was okay. And it’s not your fucking fault that an alien literally tried to beat you to death. I dunno how many times we have to go over this-- fuck. Can we please not discuss this anymore while I’m high? ‘Cause I’m on, like… so many drugs right now, I’m pretty sure. So I’m probably being kind of an asshole. Oh my god. What did you give me?” He muttered, his voice slurring a bit as his head lolled to the side, his will to keep his eyes open failing him once more. And Leo laughed despite himself, reaching over to pat his brother’s head.

“The good shit, brother,” he said, exhaling softly through his nose. “... Yeah. Okay. Understood. I’m just. Fuck. I’m just really glad you’re okay.”

Donnie chirped very softly at him.

And Leo chirped back.

[asfodelle]

New chapter of Bites coming out most likely later this week and even though the story is fully planned out, the reason it's taking a minute is because I'm doing the classic thing of thinking about too many projects at once. Like, the pendulum of focus won't settle, it's an issue.

I'm writing a long one shot exploring a future where He Tian only reappears a couple weeks at a time while they're stuck in an angsty situationship, it's currently sitting at 20k words but no clue where it'll be when I'm done with it, some parts are still pretty unfinished.

I also have started two fics that make me kick my feet in excitement, one being a long enemies to lovers mafia AU with spying and skyscrapers climbing, the other being a babyfic that I'd love to dive into whenever I have the time.

I might want to add a ZhengYi counterpart to Tangerines too, I'll see where the pendulum takes me.

[chrrywvea]

creds to @epiimetheux !!!

i kept coming back to this beautiful artwork and i got inspired by it so here you go...

(disclaimer: i haven't completed a fic in forever, let alone published one, so i'm very anxious about this, i apologise if it's a mess •~•♡ love you guys)

----------

tom watches from the side as his husband steps forward to his coffin. pete's head is bowed, but he can see the trembling of his lips and the coiled muscles in his jaw.

oh my love.

what i'd give to embrace you one more time.

he knew he couldn't reach his husband anymore. his time had passed.

that didn't keep tom from standing next to pete's side. keeping watch. protecting his wingman, as they'd promised to each other years ago on that fateful day.

when repressed feelings and pretentious rivalry finally made way for the unconditional love thay had never wavered once.

partnership that had lasted 33 years.

tom watched as pete took the wings off his uniform, laying them onto the smooth oak.

the gun salutes were no more than background noise, tom's sole focus lying on the man in front of him.

the moment he saw pete punching the wings into the coffin he felt an incredible warmth spread through his chest.

such a feeling had been limited to very few moments in his life.

in the cockpit of his plane, soaring above the clouds with ron at his back and pete right by his side.

the return from the layton mission.

aching and sweaty and all kinds of shaken up but alive, thriving on adrenaline and pent up energy.

they had only seen each other then.

not iceman and maverick, but tom and pete, right there on the deck, what ron had later jokingly called their "confession".

their wedding. finally being allowed to slip a ring onto pete's finger while surrounded by all their loved ones. to call him his husband for everyone to see and hear without having to fear anymore. forever and always - the ending of both of their vows.

when their son had come back to them.

pete, bradley and himself crying with relief in their kitchen as they embraced for the first time in years. pete almost losing it as bradley started called him 'dad' again, and tom almost following suit when 'pops' returned back to daily use.

in that hospital bed, when he'd kissed his husband for the last time. he had wiped the tears on pete's cheeks with trembling hands, mapping that gorgeous face he knew better than the back of his own hand.

hushed i love you's in the quiet of the room, both signed and said out loud as they held each other.

the last words he felt pressed against his forehead being 'forever and always', before he slipped away into neverland.

tom looked over his shoulder just as pete stepped back from the coffin.

the wings on his back were strikingly white. glossy and strong feathers fluttered softly in the wind, and tom couldn't help the smile that spread on his face.

i will protect you, my heart.

my wingman.

my everything.

carefully he guided his wings around pete's sides. shielding him for just a moment. providing the endless support he couldn't give in person anymore.

pete looked up towards the sky, just like the rest of the crowd, watching as the missing man formation flew by.

everyone watched the sky, but tom couldn't tear his eyes away from his husband. how the dusking sun reflected in those tender green eyes. the curve of his nose, and the sweet lips he'd kissed so very often, now being worried at between pearly teeth.

i love you, forever and always.

as if he heard him, pete echoed his words.

"forever and always, sweetheart."