#Amnesia

[kent-farm]

Who are all of you?

—Barry Allen, The Flash, “Cause and Effect”

[tacagen]

[ghostypetrainer]

I'm just imagining what happens if Ingo and Dawn's families make it to Hisui to rescue them in the situation of Kuro and Akari getting yeeted to Hisui. Imagine Kuro and Akari seeing them and their first instinct is to /flee/ because they have these fragments of other memories that make them not want to fight, but they know these people as the enemy so they don't want to stay around. Imagine them leading their families on a wild goose chase across Hisui until someone runs afoul of an alpha

Emmet, Elesa, Barry and Lucas arrive in Hisui and split up to look for Ingo and Dawn. Emmet and Elesa head towards the Highlands, and Barry and Lucas head for Jubilife Village, since it's the place they're most likely to find them. Barry and Lucas are closer, but they uh... cause a bit of a commotion when they arrive, since you know. Hisuian Zoroarks and the fact that Lucas and Rei are basically identical.

Akari comes to the gate to see what all the fuss is about, and stops dead in her tracks. Her memories are pulling her two ways- these are people she cares about, but they're also people she's spent months fighting against. They want to get in the way of her ideals. Just as soon as they spot her, she RUNS.

Barry and Lucas are left to sort of explain things to Kamado, Cyllene, and Laventon. But somehow they feel like it would be bad to mention the whole brainwashing/evil team thing to these people? What if it gets Dawn into trouble? The fact that she RAN when she saw them instead of challenging them on the spot must mean something, right? Something good? Maybe?

Anyways they just tell them that they had a really bad fight before Da- Akari disappeared, and that's why she ran away. Cyllene theorizes that if she's headed anywhere, she's probably going to see Warden Kuro in the Highlands. The two are close- they knew each other before they came here, yes?

And Barry and Lucas just exchange a glance bc... yeah. They guess they are close, from everything they've seen. Cyllene offers to have someone show them the way to Warden Kuro's tent, and they eagerly accept the offer. They'll think of a way to convince Akari to come home with them on the way.

(They also ask dozens of questions about her on the way to the Highlands. How much of their friend is Akari, and how much of her is Dawn? They would like to find out!)

[wrishwrosh]

hey, i find your posts about historical fiction pretty interesting, do you have any recs?

anon this is the most beautiful and validating ask i have ever received. absolutely of COURSE I have recs. not gonna be a lot of deep cuts on this list but i love all of these books and occasionally books do receive awards and acclaim because they are good. in no particular order:

the cromwell trilogy by hilary mantel. of course i gotta start with the og. it’s 40 million pages on the tudor court and the english reformation and it will fundamentally change you as a person and a reader

(sub rec: the giant, o’brien by hilary mantel. in many ways a much shorter thematic companion to the cromwell trilogy imo. about stories and death and embodiment and the historical record and 18th century ireland. if you loved the trilogy, read this to experience hils playing with her own theories about historical fiction. if you are intimidated by the trilogy, read this first to get a taste of her prose style and her approach to the genre. either way please read all four novels ok thanks)

lincoln in the bardo by george saunders. the book that got me back into historical fiction as an adult. american history as narrated by a bunch of weird ghosts and abraham lincoln. chaotic and lovely and morbid.

the everlasting by katy simpson smith. rome through the ages as seen by a medici princess, a gay death-obsessed monk, and an early christian martyr. really historically grounded writing about religion and power, and also narrated with interjections from god’s ex boyfriend satan. smith is a trained historian and her prose slaps

(sub rec: free men by katy simpson smith. only a sub rec bc i read it a long time ago and my memory of it is imperfect but i loved it in 2017ish. about three men in the woods in the post revolutionary american south and by virtue of being about masculinity is actually about women. smith did her phd in antebellum southern femininity and motherhood iirc so this book is LOCKED IN to those perspectives)

a mercy by toni morrison. explores the dissolution of a household in 17th century new york. very different place and time than a lot of morrison’s bigger novels but just as mean and beautiful

(sub rec: beloved by toni morrison. a sub rec bc im pretty sure everyone has already read beloved but perhaps consider reading it again? histfic ghost story abt how the past is always here and will never go away and loves you and hates you and is trying to kill you)

an artist of the floating world by kazuo ishiguro. my bestie sir kazuo likes to explore the past through characters who, for one reason or another (amnesia, dementia, being a little baby robot who was just born yesterday, etc), are unable to fully comprehend their surroundings. this one is about post-wwii japan as understood by an elderly supporter of the imperial regime

(sub rec: remains of the day by kazuo ishiguro. same conceit as above except this time the elderly collaborator is incapable of reckoning with the slow collapse of the system that sheltered him due to britishness.)

the pull of the stars by emma donoghue. donoghue is a strong researcher and all of her novels are super grounded in their place and time without getting so caught up in it they turn into textbooks. i picked this one bc it is a wwi lesbian love story about childbirth that made me cry so hard i almost threw up on a plane but i recommend all her histfic published after 2010. before that she was still finding her stride.

days without end by sebastian barry. this one is hard to read and to rec bc it is about the us army’s policy of genocide against native americans in the 19th century west as told by an irish cavalry soldier. it is grim and violent and miserable and also so beautiful it makes me cry about every three pages. first time i read it i was genuinely inconsolable for two days afterwards.

this post is long as hell so HONORABLE MENTIONS: the amazing adventures of kavalier & clay by michael chabon, the western wind by samantha harvey, golden hill by frances spufford, barkskins by annie proulx, postcards by annie proulx, most things annie proulx has written but i feel like i talk about her too much, the view from castle rock by alice munro, the name of the rose by umberto eco, tracks by louise erdrich

[chaotic-tired-fox]

In terms of getting really obscure facts about my Special Interests(tm) I am a master.

So here’s a whole bunch of obscure Resident Evil facts for y’all!

Part two: here!

Part three: here!

Lemme know if any of these surprised you or if you knew any of these!

☠️ Leon is scared of lightning (Astraphobia) but not thunder. (RE6)

☠️ Chris has a fear of late night phone calls because that’s how he learned of his parents death.

☠️ Piers is very heavily implied to be Bisexual due to a file in Revelations 2 (his concept art also implies this, if you know you know)

☠️ The Hound Wolf Squad is the only squad Chris has had that have all survived the entire game.

☠️ Wesker and Birkin were childhood friends

☠️ The Cerberus are all clones of each other which is why they’re all Doberman

☠️ Leon is a terrible driver, crashing one of just about every vehicle type including cars, a boat, a motorbike, a plane and a helicopter.

☠️ Sheva is one of the only left handed characters

☠️ Wesker wore glasses to hide his emotions (and later his red eyes)

☠️ Chris can play Bass guitar

☠️ Ada Wong isn’t her real name

☠️ Vector is Japanese

☠️ Vector is the only character that can canonically turn invisible (Hunk can too but only in various mercenary modes)

☠️ Hunk is said to respond emotionally to the name ‘Bella’

☠️ The USS soldier who shot Birkin and started the outbreak had the callsign ‘Ghost’

☠️ Nighthawk has two call signs, the other being ‘Lone Wolf’

☠️ Barry Burton and Wesker are the same age however Wesker appeared to stop aging at 38 years old after infection.

☠️ Jake Muller was conceived before Wesker was infected with the Progenitor Virus making his immunity to the C Virus a plot hole.

☠️ Lobo is the only member of the Hound Wolf Squad that had worked with Chris prior to Village. See Heavenly Island

☠️ Piers was introduced in the comic The Marhawa Desire set before RE6

☠️ Chris and Jill both know 7 fighting styles. Leon knows 6

☠️ Lady Dimitrescu is highly implied to be Lesbian

☠️ Heisenberg was the one who told Chris and the Hound Wolf Squad about Miranda (though planned to betray them from the beginning)

☠️ Ethan’s immortality was gained back in RE7 at the dinner table scene with the Bakers as they resurrected him after Jack killed him.

☠️ Piers and Claire kept in contact via email and later phone calls up until his death in China. It is implied he told her nothing about Chris’s amnesia at the time.

☠️ Jill Valentine learned to lock pick from her father who was a French thief

☠️ Leon once considered suicide after the events of RE2 but stayed alive because Sherry needed him

☠️ Leon’s parents were both criminals who died when he was a child. He was inspired to become a cop after the one who rescued him.

☠️ Hunk had an intense rivalry with Nicholai which is why he interfered so much with Vector and Wolfpack.

☠️ Birkin prided himself on being the youngest Umbrella researcher at only 16 until a 10 year old Alexia Ashford came along.

☠️ Wesker made his own blueprints for anti BOW weaponry which later inspired the creations of Thor’s Hammer and modifications based on his original Samurai Edge called the AW Model

☠️Jake Muller is an incredibly gifted pianist

☠️ Chris Redfield was a notorious prankster during his days at STARS

☠️ When Chris went missing after Edonia one of the people Piers contacted was Sheva.

☠️ Leon and Wesker never meet nor interact directly

☠️ Hunk has also never interacted with any of the main characters including Wesker

☠️ During RE2 Wesker/Ada and Hunk were working against each other to obtain the G Virus unknowingly

☠️ Some, if not all of Wolfpack survive the Raccoon City outbreak after sparing Leon, Claire and Sherry and betraying Umbrella.

☠️The BSAA were actively working against Chris and the HWS in Village, implying to even have the green light to kill them.

☠️ Zoe Baker after RE7 is implied to have become an informant for Chris Redfield and a journalist

☠️ Hunk agreed to personally train Vector after they fought to a draw. Vector is also the only character to ever escape from Hunk’s neck snapping headlock.

☠️ The USS were Umbrella’s personal army whilst the UBCS were just hired mercenaries and in the end considered a liability

☠️ Simmons from RE6 was one of the ones responsible for passing the vote to blow up Raccoon City

☠️ About 10% of humans have immunity to the T-Virus and Umbrella never figured out how

☠️ Chief Irons was straight up a serial killer able to cover his tracks thanks to Umbrella’s involvement while also being paid to stay quiet about their experiments

☠️ Hunk developed his own fighting style called Close Quarters Quarantined Battle Zone after Umbrella’s downfall in 2003 in which he became a legendary mercenary.

☠️ Thanks to Shadows of Rose, Chris is implied to still be working well into his 60’s as well as the Hound Wolf Squad.

☠️ ‘K’ from Shadows of Rose is heavily implied to be an older Canine from the HWS

☠️ The new Death Island CGI movie is not only the first time we’ll see Jill in the timeline since 2009 but also the first time we’ll see Leon and Jill onscreen together

[yeyinde]

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about. faq. masterlists. recent posts. wips.

about.

Levada, Lev. early 20s. Swampy Cree/Welsh.

amateur writer • multifandom • poetry & mythology enthusiast • occasional gif maker • NECA/action figure collector • certified monster fucker

faq.

REQUESTS: tentatively open TAG LIST: i do not have a taglist TAGGING: you have my permission to tag me in stuff LINKS: ko-fi

masterlists

AO3 | known as Dachande

Yautja Call of Duty | Ghost, Soap, Ghoap, Keegan, Gaz, Alejandro, Rudy Slashers | Thomas Hewitt/Leatherface, Ghostface (Danny Johnson, DBD), Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees Barry Sloane | John Price (COD), Joe "Bear" Graves MISC | Joel Miller, Puppy (Ruiner)

recent posts

the soft blue of a pale moon | Yautja x Reader dangle on the leash | Ghost x f!Reader (babytrap fic) when your need grows teeth | John Price x f!Reader (babytrap fic) down to the marrow | Ghoap x f!Reader (eldritch horror)

wips | upcoming fics

Apsis | Yautja Smut Series (Dark, Shaman, Yeyinde, Tichinde) Skin to the Bone | Ghoap x f!Reader (amnesia/forced marriage au); teaser not a lot (just forever) | Mountain Man!Soap x F!Reader; teaser Devour What's Truly Yours | Priest!Price; teaser i, teaser ii Desolate Field | Sukuna x f!Reader; teaser

[leletha-jann]

Headcanon in which I wake up and choose violence:

Kjarl Thotep is a very time-lost, very scrambled Barry Heterodyne.

Wait, wait. Put down the tomatoes until I can plead my case, such as it is.

Bad reasons for this:

It would be funny

It's how I'd do it, OK?

Skywriting reasons for this: (in which it looks pretty, but it's connecting probably nonexistent dots, and a stiff breeze will blow it away)

Where the hell is Barry after all this time?

There's a whole lot of time travel happening in the background of this story.

Lucrezia is, probably, very seriously time-lost.

Lucrezia has a history of pushing people through Mirrors to get rid of them.

Lucrezia did not like - was, in fact, scared of - Barry Heterodyne, and was worried about him coming back.

Lucrezia was very good at mind-swapping machines (I don't need a link to prove that, right?)

If Lucrezia didn't take out Barry, who did?

I'm sort of assuming that Barry is either time-lost or timestopped somewhere, because, again, there's a lot of unresolved background time travel.

Where did Barry go?

Why is Kjarl still around in this story?

...leads into plot structure reasons:

Why is Kjarl still around in this story? Is it just to know things about the creature coming through into Mechanicsburg, or about the Dreen?

He's not the key to the timestop, or the big quest for Prende's Lantern was a really long red herring. I don't know if the Foglios are making that much extra work for themselves, although I say this after "A Story with Franz", so...

Our triumvirate can generate technobabble about the timestop on their own.

He can't be here just to make jokes at Tarvek's expense, because we can do that all by ourselves.

Who is Kjarl?

"I don't know, I just have a feeling" reasons:

The impression I've gotten from what we've seen of Barry so far, in flashbacks and memories and things mentioned in passing, is the feeling of a gentle giant. Maybe that's because we mostly see him through Agatha's eyes, and Agatha was small. But when I think about Barry, I don't get the same, hmmm, fire that I get when I think about Bill. Bill was on a crusade. Bill was the older brother, the protector, the one trying to make things right. Barry...not so much, maybe. Barry built Franz's flying-assist machine, led the rescues and the cleanup in the wake of the attack on Castle Heterodyne, rescued Agatha and made sure she had a safe home when he left.

Kjarl gives me kind of the same "gentle giant" feeling. Yes, because he's large compared to everyone else, but also, he picks up Tarvek because he's happy to interact with him coherently, and then forgets to put him down. He wants to help, but he's very confused and struggling to communicate (even when he's fully in this dimension). Kjarl's very lost.

Picking up someone strange along the way and then they turn out to be the person who's been missing, but in disguise is very, very fantasy and/or pulp adventure.

We haven't had a screaming amnesia case yet, and that's a major trope.

The Foglios like "brick jokes" - the thing mentioned in passing that got thrown up in the air, and you forgot about it, and then it comes back down on your head real hard years later.

"What happened to Barry Heterodyne?" is an open question. And it can't be resolved post-canon, because that would be unsatisfying and messy.

What if he's Kjarl, and Kjarl doesn't know he's Barry? Because Lucrezia, or because whatever place he ended up in was so alien it scrambled his mind and memory all by itself? For example, does anyone expect Vapnoople to come back in the same shape and coherence in which he left?

It just feels right in my head, in a weird way. And wouldn't it be really narratively satisfying? If we'd found Barry Heterodyne already and didn't know? Until one day, we do, and it's a big reveal?

...and it's how I'd do it, OK?

[finalfrontierpioneer]

2023 Fic Recs!

Happy International Fanworks Day everybody!!! To celebrate, have some fic recs! These are some of my favorite works from last year! You know the drill- all completed last year, various ratings/lengths, nothing from multiple authors (although i was SO tempted, especially by @chocolateteapotsvis as always), and in complete random order.

Thank you to all of these lovely authors for brightening up my year! :D And also enabling my procrastination lolol

Halbarry, my otp, of course:

Onward to the Horizon by ChocolateTeapots @chocolateteapotsvis (Teen and up)

Five days, three Kaiju, and eleven collective hours of sleep. It’s one more fight. They just need to pull through. For Halbarry Week Day 4: Fantasy/SciFi

sometimes I feel it comin' on at the wheel by DynamicDuo (XylB) @halifax-jordan (Explicit)

"It'll be okay," Hal soothes. "I don't need to know what's troubling you right now, but whatever it is, it'll be all right." "It focuses…on what…I want," Barry says through gritted teeth, like each word is painful to get out. Or maybe embarrassing? He peeks up at Hal through his fingers with a meaningful look, as if hoping Hal will understand…through osmosis? "Buddy, I can do a lot, but I can't read your mind."

When I Come Back, I'll Wear Your Wedding Ring by ketchup_monthly (General)

hal has some issues he needs to work through, but he loves his boyfriend very much. barry just wants to get married. aka: i wrote yet another halbarry fic furthering my "hal is a huge romantic" agenda

Entropy (Has Got Nothing on Us) by RoboticNebula @roboticnebula (Mature)

Snapshots of Hal and Barry’s life together. For Halbarry week 2023 (25 August – 31 August).

star twinkled skin by Rexs_Blacks (Explicit)

Barry gets stuck in a wall. Hal helps out. Feelings and shit.

Buddie!

glue by ProsperDemeter (Teen and up) -this entire series is SO PERFECT

“It’s just…” Connor shrugged. “No offense, man, but… you’re twenty-five. Do you really want to be spending so much time falling for a guy with a kid?” “I’m not falling for him.” -- A month away from graduating the LAFD Academy, Evan Buckley gets introduced to new recruit Eddie Diaz and things certainly change for both of them after that. -- Another season one rewrite.

I'll Feel You Forget Me Like I Used to Feel You Breathe by turningthepages (Mature)

A car accident leaves Eddie without ten years of memories. He forgets meeting Buck, falling in love, getting married, and bringing two more kids into their life. As Eddie struggles to adjust to this new life, Buck struggles with being in love with someone who doesn't want to remember him. Oh, and they have really cute kids. or Just another Hollywood Amnesia story the fandom probably didn't need but lived in my head rent free for too long.

help me hold on to you by Ink_Dancer (Mature)

"You doing okay, Buck?" Eddie asked. Buck snorted. Loudly. It echoed. Eddie clicked his tongue. "Okay." He started moving again, coming over to Buck's side and starting to gather up an armful of takeout cartons. "What're you doing?" Buck asked. "I'm taking care of you," Eddie said firmly. "Because you're not doing a very good job." Or: Buck recovers slowly from the ladder truck, the Buckley-Diaz family goes stargazing, and Eddie and Buck get stuck in an attic during a house fire.

to your front door by hammersmiths (General)

Pepa’s been eyeing him all evening, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when she says, “Why aren’t you dating Eddie?” And yet Buck still nearly veers the car straight off the road.

maybe it's the way you lean on his shoulder by allyasavedtheday @littlespoonevan (Teen and up)

“Eddie,” she blurts. “Hi. Sorry. I didn’t realise you were here.” The sound of her voice makes him move and he quickly sets the knife down, offering her a warm smile. “Hey, Maddie. Don’t apologise; I’m not interrupting your schedule, am I?” “Oh no,” Maddie shakes her head quickly, waving the idea away. “The uh- the schedule’s been retired. I was just gonna make Buck dinner but-“ “Looks like we had the same idea, huh?” Eddie replies with a half-laugh. “Well, you’re welcome to join us. I’m making lasagne. It’s not quite on the level of Bobby’s famous four-cheese recipe but Buck’s still on a comfort food kick.” * In which Maddie realises there might be more to Buck and Eddie's relationship than she'd originally thought.

Stucky:

Werewolves in the Workplace by leveragehunters (Monkeygreen) @leveragehunters (Teen and up)

SHIELD was the only intelligence agency that assigned werewolf and vampire agents to work together in the field, but the program had been a staggering success. They compensated each other’s weaknesses, complemented each other’s strengths, and a werewolf could feed a vampire and shake off the effects faster than ordering a pizza. Bucky knew all that. What he didn't know was why this particular vampire, one Agent Steve Rogers, was holding out a protein bar. They were perched in the rafters of a warehouse, waiting for not-overly punctual arms dealers to show up and deal arms, had been stuck up here for a couple of hours, but none of that explained vampires suddenly offering snacks. In his near decade as a werewolf in SHIELD, Bucky had worked with a lot of vampires, and they all tended to be pretty much the same. Steve Rogers was different, didn't fit the vampire mould, and Bucky couldn't quite figure out why. Not that it really mattered. Steve was just someone he was occasionally paired with on SHIELD assignments. It wasn't like he was going to have any effect on Bucky's life.

Waking the Fire in Me by humapuma (Explicit)

Steve’s knees nearly went out from under him, but he grabbed onto the table to stay upright. He whined – he couldn’t help it. His chest cracked open, breaking him down until he was sixteen years old again, thin and sickly. The pale grey of those eyes was so familiar, but Steve hadn’t seen it, hadn’t even thought to look for it. How? A voice screamed inside. How did I not see? His entire being trembled as he whispered, “Bucky?” The Soldier’s usually cold eyes changed then, something flashed in them as his nostrils flared, harshly inhaling Steve’s scent before he said the words that finally made his buckling knees give out, forcing Steve to the ground. “Who the hell is Bucky?” A ghost found his way to the Avengers, asking for help - a ghost of a man long thought dead.

the time that's slipping by its_tortle @its-tortle (Teen and up)

“Hello?” she calls. Steve holds his breath again, even as he feels pressure build up behind his eyes. Because that’s his mother’s voice, and he hasn’t heard in twenty one (conscious) years. He doesn’t dare move. OR 'If Steve was going to travel back in time for anything before returning to his own timeline, it would be to see his mom again one last time'

Tongue in Cheek by rohruh (Explicit)

“No, no,” Bucky leans into his space, close enough that Steve can feel the warm tufts of his breath against his cheek, “go on.” “It’s just,” Steve’s not quite sure how to phrase this. He’s not sure what his motivation was in starting this whole conversation, really. “I guess I wish that I could kiss like that, is all.” Bucky stares at him, his eyes bright as the warm glow from the streetlight dances off of them. “I could teach you.” Steve’s mouth goes dry. “Teach me?” “Yeah,” Bucky snatches the joint out of his hand and leans back against the wall. “Give you a kissing lesson, or whatever.”

Backhoe by ZenaidaMacrouras @zenaidamacrouras1 (Explicit)

Steve Rogers is a seasoned activist and not at all afraid to get arrested while protesting the building of a pipeline. HOWEVER he is TERRIFIED when he realizes he’ll be chained to the same backhoe as Bucky “very handsome southern boy who also plays guitar and struts like a panther in his very tight, worn thin blue jeans” Barnes. Our brave, tiny Steve will find out once and for all: Can you catch on fire from blushing over your crush? May Contain: Extended descriptions of how to get arrested while chained to a backhoe, copious amounts of sisters, Appalachian accents, cheerful silliness interspersed with tragic background realness. Pining with a happy ending. Chicken related controversy. Tragic background realness mainly consists of parents passing away, because who doesn’t love adult orphans. Discussion of funerals. Very brief homophobic interaction in chapter 18 (marked in the chapter intro notes). There is no violence, but there are a few moments where you might think there might be violence. Overall this is a romance not a gritty, hard hitting documentary.

Various pairings:

Till You Find Your Dream by Kyele @timeforalongstory (Explicit) (Brudick)

You know, my child, that the orphanage cannot continue to support you once you become an adult.” The abbess sighs. “There is one path that is always open to you. You may choose a holy vocation, and take orders. The Sisters of Perpetual Grace will accept you as a postulant if you choose.” Dick had known to expect this. “Thank you, Reverend Mother,” Dick says respectfully, “but I cannot follow that path.” The Mother Superior nods. He looks unsurprised. “Then perhaps,” he says, “you would be interested to hear of another opportunity.” From the papers on his desk, the abbess removes a single sheet. “Are you familiar with Captain Wayne?” Dick accepts a position as governess to eight war-orphans, adopted by millionaire and WW1 flying ace Captain Bruce Wayne. The rest is inevitable.

Seven by HollyDB (Explicit) (Spuffy)

It's been months since Willow almost ended the world, and a tense summer has turned into an ominous fall in Sunnydale. Spike is back from wherever and acting weirder than usual, a new threat is rising that—for once—doesn't seem to stem from the hellmouth, and Buffy has no idea who to trust or what to believe. She also doesn’t have the luxury of time to figure it out. Some things never change.

Seven Lessons by Tessabeth (Mature) (Cazriel)

At Windhaven, teenage Cassian's in trouble again. As punishment he's paired with the strange shadowsinger who hangs around Devlon's headquarters. 40,000 words, ten chapters, complete. Some timeline tinkering. “You,” says Devlon, pointing at Cass, “need to learn self control. He’s got it. And you,” pointing at Azriel now, “need to learn to use those pathetic curtains you’re carrying around on your back, and this one knows how. So there you go. You’ve got a week. At the end of the week, I want both of you flying, and both of you able to put up a solid shield without blasting your comrades over a cliff. Now fuck off.” Azriel bends down to the Commander and murmurs something urgently in his ear. Tendrils of shadow writhe around his jaw. “No. No, I’ll manage it without you. I’ve let this go on too long; you’re too old for this bullshit. You can come back when you can fly. Go on, fuck off. And shut the door behind you.” Back out in the gelid dusk, the two look at each other warily. Azriel still says nothing. Cass sighs. “See you in the morning? Meet by the mess?” Azriel ducks his head in agreement, and disappears down an alleyway. It’s going to be a long week.

Desperate Times by Eienvine (General) (Sifki)

Sif sees the man’s lips curve up in a sharp, cruel smile. “I have long dreamed of seeing Odin on his knees, begging for his life. I cannot have that, but I can at least see his son beg for someone else’s life.” He won’t do it, Sif is certain; if there is one thing that can confidently be said about Loki, it is that he is horribly proud. And proud men do not beg. Not even to save her life.

Sit, Stay, Speak by Fenris13 @ragnarokhound (Explicit) (Jaytim)

“He’s not here. Just his suit,” he tells Babs, gathering up the costume. “The apartment’s untouched, but downstairs looks like a hurricane went through it.” There’s a crackling hiss through the receiver as she sighs, tense. “Shit. Okay. Is there anything—?” “That’s not all,” he interrupts, standing up with an apprehensive look at his unexpected new companion. “There’s a dog.”

and tell the ones you love (you love them) by LadyMerlin (Teen and up) (Jaytim)

Weeks pass and the clan remains occupied with the chaos that is Gotham. It’s no busier than usual, but Bruce feels himself tiring easily, still recovering from his involuntary jaunt through the timestream. Everyone is remarkably kind to him, giving him time and space to recover. Unfortunately, all that time gives him, well… a lot of time to think. To consider. To analyse the changes that have occurred during his absence. There are new alliances, new tensions, shifting fault lines in the geology of his family. He reminds himself that this is the best case scenario; that everyone is still alive and well, that things could have gone much worse. But he can’t help but feel there’s something he’s still missing. Something he hasn't been told. AKA: the one where Bruce learns how to use his words, and tries not to be too nosy about his children's love lives.

those kind of friends by gabrieeella (Mature) (Jeronica)

He remembered the first time he’d seen her wear her hair like that, the way it’d unsettled him a little. It was so Betty-like, and yet not Betty-like at all. Betty’s ponytail moved like spilled sunlight. Veronica’s swung around like a guillotine. Or, a series of unexpected late-night encounters force an ever-distant Jughead and Veronica to explore who they really are (and could be) to each other.

you dug my heart a grave by jilliancares @jilliancares (General) (Spideypool)

He’s laying there, groaning and in pain and clutching his ribs, but even worse— [Really? Is it really worse? Give it a good, hard think and tell me if this is worse.] —but even worse, sparks are flying. Literally. Or: Wade realizes that Spidey is his soulmate.

[mintythyme]

The Oaks Are Alone

Hildy- Literally in a different fuckijg world

Barry- half-elf, moms from a literal different fucking world, contains a eldritch god giving him a god complex

Henry- least chill person in entire community, then become the guy with amnesia who had no nostalgia for anything in a time when that shit was everywhere, then become the dads who’s kids fucking ended the world, and then the dad left alone just because he was too scared of his own father and kids but mostly himself

Sparrow and Lark- I know what you’re saying. “Minty, how are they alone, that’s have each other” BULLSHIT. You can be alone with other people it’s a plaguing state of mind. These codependent fuckos have been isolated just from day one. Twins, so they’re one unit, and then the doodler thing, and then the prophecy, on top of all the being cravers of violence and life and excitement that everyone else seems to find draining and painful

Hero- you’re gonna tell me that being a magically destined child, ‘sent to save the world’ isn’t a lot for a kid? Isn’t enough to make forming new relationships with people who do. Or even don’t know that? You’re gonna tell me that she has a healthy social life being the chosen one who had to murder a deer at 5am last night in the woods and taste it’s blood so she could track it made her good at making friends with the new kid?

Normal- somehow the odd one out in a group of three, four, and especially in five. The fucking teens have three odd ones out and two of them don’t like this (and now unfortunately don’t like each other or themselves) but can’t change it. Isolated for being a mascot, a figure that stands alone, there’s only one mascot. Isolated for being too loud, for being too blunt, for being too stupid. Isolated for being stupid enough to be himself. That’s always their first mistake. Sometimes the last, too.

TL;DR

These fuckers never feel like anyone can relate to them properly even if somebody can *cough cough* the twins *cough cough*

[bettsfic]

A few years ago—god, i must have still been in college. 2018? 19? You made a master post of all your fic up until then. Would you be able to make another post, with all your fic from 2019ish-now?

sure! i've been wanting to do this for a while but the question becomes - how to organize? i write in too many different fandoms to do it by canon. so we're just gonna go by the myriad ways my id is on full display.

i skipped a few fics that i didn't like so it's not *everything*. also many of these are locked down so you have to log into ao3 to see them.

masterpost of my fics, 2019 - 2023

key:

personal favorite

you don't really need to know the canon going in

VERY NSFW

diet cottagecore

there's a house. somebody is sad. chores.

rest in grace - violet evergarden, violet/gilbert, canon divergence - 20k, complete

float - breaking bad, jesse/OMC, post-canon - 19k, complete

good bones - star wars sequels, reylo, modern au - 12k, wip

stray - genshin impact, razor/lumine, canon divergence - 6k, complete

"i don't remember you" to "let's pretend to be in a relationship" to "oh you've been in love with me your entire life?"

fake dating via trauma-induced amnesia and chronic illness

a standing engagement - the hunger games, odesta, canon divergence - 57k, complete

wind of the new world - the hunger games, odesta, sequel to ASE - 10k, complete

digging for orchids - tgcf, hualian, modern au - 43k, complete

a brat and the guardian she desperately wants to fuck

and the guardian who is trying desperately not to give in

huaycan - the gray man, six/claire, post-canon - 16k, complete

in water falling - the clone wars, rexsoka, dystopia au - 14k, complete

a long way - game of thrones, jaime/myrcella, canon divergence - 18k, complete

so obsessively in love that their life is upended and their identity irrevocably changed

romance with repercussions & codependency ever after

free ride - tbosas, snowbaird, modern au - 24k, wip

patronage - painter of the night, nakyum/seungho, modern au - 11k, complete

lemon - star wars prequels, anidala, modern au - 73k, complete

organic chemistry - the clone wars, rexsoka, modern au - 57k, wip

"i will kill for you" (literal)

murder as a love language

acquittal - tgcf, hualian, modern au - 10k, complete

the bluff - barry (hbo), sally/barry, canon divergence - 9k, complete

if i had a nickel for every fic i've written where an unstable marriage is saved by an adrift third burdened by the guilt of their society-ruining decisions

i'd have two nickels, but it's weird it happened twice

before the suns rise - star wars prequels, obianidala, canon divergence - 30k, wip

renovations - frozen, anna/elsa/kristoff, modern au (no incest) - 47k, complete

"whoops, i was trying to kill you but i fell in love with you instead"

villainfucker city rise up

the truth of time - rurouni kenshin, e/k, canon (live action) - 6k, complete

penitence - star wars sequels, reylo, canon divergence - 17k, complete

porn, but also healing from atrocity

honestly every fic i write could fall under this category

reclaimed - star wars sequels, reylo, omegaverse - 14k, complete

light - saezuru, yashiro/doumeki, canon divergence - 30k, complete

sick part of a sick thing - stranger things, hellcheer, no upside down au - 45k, complete

let ruin end here - tgcf, hualian, modern au - 8k, complete

the art of scraping through - the 100, bellarke, modern au - 18k, complete

porn, but also righting the wrongs of decades past

boys with big regrets and even bigger—

dirtbag - stranger things, hellcheer, no upside down au - 60k, complete

moderation - the 100, bellarke, modern au - 40k, complete

always be closing - mdzs, wangxian, modern au - 32k, complete

femdom tsundere (ft. pegging)

grouchy women and the submissive men who adore them

black-eyed - mdzs, chengqing, modern au - 16k, complete

not if, when - original fiction - 12k, complete (the pegging is there in spirit)

ghost in the pearl - westworld, dolores/caleb, canon divergence - 7k, complete

the innate comedy of abject pining

"i'm so in love with you it's killing me lmao"

no certainty of doors between us - mdzs, wangxian, modern au - 6k, complete

the beach episode - tgcf, hualian, modern au - 20k, complete

shut up and kill me - original fiction - 5k, complete (not really a romance)

if you dig my stuff and want to support me, you can

subscribe to my newsletter

buy me a coffee on ko-fi

thanks for the ask, anon! this was fun.

[msfcatlover]

Reverse!Robins/Titans Timeline

Still trying to pin this down. Not bothering with time intervals, just order of events.

(Gee, can you tell which parts of this team I’m still ironing out, and which ones I’ve put the most thought into?)

Batman: Zero Year

Joker debuts. (Duke’s parents caught in one of the attacks)

Duke starts patrolling/searching for his parents.

After running into Duke several times, Bruce makes Duke his crime-fighting partner to both train & keep an eye on him. Duke chooses the name “Moonbeam.”

Yara Flor becomes Wonder Girl. Bruce & Diana encourage their proteges to become friends, so that they have someone their own age who understands their vigilante problems to talk to.

Connor Hawke reunites with his father, and becomes Marksman (Green Arrow’s first sidekick.) Connor is also encouraged to join this friend group.

(Clark occasionally asks the teens to babysit his son Jon, when the adults are busy.)

Damian shows up in Gotham, making a huge splash & overturning the Batfam status quo. After killing a few criminals, Damian is forbidden from patrolling until he proves himself trustworthy.

(Damian does not join the group, but the others know about him because Duke complains. Damian does become friends with Jon after a little while.)

A ship crashes while the JL is busy. The teens go to investigate it, finding a single survivor who turns out to have speedster powers & complete amnesia. They use the Batcomputer to trace the ship, trying to help their new friend.

Damian sneaks onboard the shuttle the teens “borrow” to follow their trace, still trying to prove himself.

This team finds an illegal alien market and breaks it up, rescuing Pam in the process.

Upon return to Earth, the JL commends the kids for their work. A new team is formed with Yara as their leader, and named the “Teen Titans.” The lineup is:

Wonder Girl (Yara Flor)

Moonbeam (Duke Thomas)

Marksman (Connor Hawke)

Kid Flash (Bartholomew “Tolly” Taurus)

Menagerie (Pamela “Pam” Merlo)

Damian does not get to be part of the team, deemed too young, but he has proven himself enough to officially join Batman & Moonbeam on the streets. He goes by “Shadow.”

Arthur Curry asks if his protege, Kaldur'ahm, can join the Titans. Aqualad is added to the lineup.

Pam’s sister, Sonja, tries to get in contact. Whole arc occurs of Pam struggling with her own transformation and the two of them reuniting.

Chimera (Ra'ut L'lwer) joins the Titans.

Yara’s arc where she’s manipulated by Eros & Hera happens here.

Jon becomes Superboy, and joins the Titans.

Damian joins the Titans.

Tolly’s past comes to light, throwing his relationships with everyone in the community into chaos. The team barely manages to pull themselves together in time to mount a defense and keep him from being punished for the crimes of a life that was not his. 

Tolly still feels the need to pull away from the Titans a little out of guilt over what he’s done (especially to Pam.)

Barry Allen dies, and Tolly becomes the Flash.

Yara is at this point over 20, and feeling out of place at the head of the team. She starts to pull back a bit, trying to figure out where her life is going next.

Cassandra Cain is adopted by Bruce Wayne. Duke is the only one who can train against her, as his precognition lets him just about keep up with her body-reading abilities. They bond, and he introduces her to the team.

Spoiler debuts in Gotham. Batman tells her to go home.

Damian decides to make Spoiler his apprentice.

Anima (Courtney Mason) joins the Titans.

Yara announces she’s officially stepping down as leader of the Titans. Duke steps up, announcing his own change of name to “The Signal,” and officially passing his mantle to his little sister, Cassandra.

Anima & Chimera manage to figure out how to free Pamela from her swarm. Duke’s first official mission as team leader is facilitating this.

Pam leaves the Titans for a normal life with her sister. Many tears are shed.

[I’m just double-checking my current lineup.]

The Signal (Duke Thomas)

Marksman (Connor Hawke)

Aqualad (Jackson Hyde/Kaldur’ahm)

Chimera (Ra'ut L'lwer) 

Superboy (Jonathan Kent/Jon-El)

Shadow (Damian Wayne)

Moonbeam (Cassandra Wayne)

Anima (Courtney Mason)

Steph’s mom goes to rehab. Bruce fosters Steph in the meantime, and this is how she discovers their identities.

Damage (Grant Emerson) joins the Titans as community service, after his powers manifest by going completely haywire.

(Yara decides going by “Wonder Girl” is undermining her attempts to be an independent adult hero. She changes her name to “Diadem.”)

Damian introduces Steph to the team. Spoiler becomes a Titan.

Chimera announces she’s going independent and leaves the team.

Just like in canon, Grant’s trauma catches up with him and he has to step down from hero work. Connor takes Grant under his wing formally and they both leave the team.

Emiko Queen takes Connor’s place on the team, going by the name “Red Arrow.”

Duke is too overwhelmed by being Gotham’s only daytime hero and running the team, as well as feeling guilty for not giving Grant more support. He goes independent, leaving the team.

Jon & Damian step up as co-leaders of the Titans.

Roundhouse (William Wu) & Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) join the Titans.

Anima is stranded in another dimension on a mission with the team, in a dramatic act of self-sacrifice to ensure everyone else can make it home. Everyone is very upset, but they comfort themselves knowing she’s still out there being a hero, just... somewhere else.

After a lot of introspection, Aqualad decides to dedicate himself full-time to his studies & duties in Atlantis, and steps down from the team.

[Double-checking the lineup]

Superboy (Jonathan Kent)

Shadow (Damian Wayne)

Moonbeam (Cassandra Wayne)

Spoiler (Stephanie Brown)

Red Arrow (Emiko Queen)

Roundhouse (William Wu)

Blue Beetle (Jamie Reyes)

Damian & Jon decide to go independant together, becoming Bluhaven’s new superheroes as Nightwing & Flamebird. Damian formally passes his mantle to Steph in private before they announce the change to the team.

Steph & Cass take over as co-leaders.

Steph meets Tim at school, and they become fast friends. After a couple months of being study buddies, they start dating.

Jon introduces his adoptive younger siblings, the Super-Twins, to the team.

Vaporlock (Natasha Irons) joins the team.

Atom (Ray Palmer) is de-aged. He temporarily joins the team until he can recover his memories.

Argent (Antonia Monetti), Static (Virgil Hawkins), & Power Girl (Tanya Spears) join the team.

Atom goes back to normal and leaves.

Cass takes on Tim as her apprentice after catching him following the Bats around Gotham. Steph is a bit thrown by this discovery, but training together only stengthens her & Tim’s relationship.

Until Cass decides Tim’s ready to follow them on patrol (if not fight anyone yet,) and gives Tim the Spoiler mantle without asking, assuming it’s just a placeholder name and not realizing it has any special meaning to Steph.

(This is the beginning of the end, though they don’t realize it yet.)

Steph feels betrayed by the theft of her old identity and it compounds with her initial uneasiness over Tim befriending/dating her without telling her he knew their identities. She tries to put it aside for the good of the city, but can’t.

The sudden rockiness between Steph & Cass bleeds over into the Titans. When the team meets Tim, it becomes clear something about his apprenticeship with Cass is what has lead to the rift, though none of the Bats will clarify.

Emiko introduces her own apprentice, Mia Dearden, the second Marksman.

Steph & Tim have a really nasty breakup.

Steph has the same death she suffered in War Games.

The entire Batfamily are left reeling.

Tim gets fired.

Cass struggles to go on as both Moonbeam & the leader of the Titans, when she’s supposed to be part of a matched set. She ends up quitting both, and the team completely falls apart.

Cass puts together a new costume, made originally from old Batman suits, and gains the street name “Black Bat.” (She didn’t choose it, it was given to her; Batman has the yellow belt & circle, where Cass’s suit has neither. So which Bat is attacking? “The black bat.”)

Tim gives the family until after Steph’s funeral before dropping by (to argue his case, but if that doesn’t work, to pick up his stuff.) He sees Steph’s memorial, and is furious that Bruce would reduce Steph’s legacy to that.

After weeks of arguing, Tim throws on his own version of the Shadow costume (back to Damian’s original black, but the cloak is lined with Steph’s signature purple) and eventually forces his way into the role, refusing to let Steph’s dream die with her.

Damian is incensed by the whole mess that’s happening with Tim. That’s his mantle Tim is taking, and Damian’s still wracked with guilt that Steph died, blaming himself for not training her thoroughly enough. Damian demands that before Tim ever goes out as Shadow, Tim has to go to Bludhaven every weekend to train with Damian. 

The training is absolutely brutal, but Tim refuses to give up. Eventually, Duke finds out about it and goes to ream Damian out for taking things so far (and Jon, for not having already given Damian this same lecture.) Duke essentially tells Damian that Damian’s no better than the people who originally hurt Damian and storms out.

Duke tells Tim he doesn’t have to go back the next weekend. Tim shows up anyway. Damian stares blankly for a few seconds, then takes a very confused Tim out for ice cream.

(Damian spends years trying to be better, to make up for what he’s done, but he never manages to get over that double-dose of guilt. He veers hard in the other direction, being incredibly supportive whenever they’re around eachother, but also avoids Tim whenever Damian can justify it to himself, because it just... eats at Damian.)

Tim also pulls the Titans back together. Or, more accurately, he pulls Vaporlock, Marksman, and Blue Beetle back together, before he ends up recruiting... well, basically the Young Justice lineup to be his new team.

Tim’s parents die. Tim tries the whole fake uncle thing, but Damian rats him out.

(Somewhere in there, Tim ends up on Ra’s al Ghul’s radar.)

Jason tries to steal the Batmobile’s tires.

Jason manages to convince the family to let him help. They offer him Moonbeam, but Jason doesn’t want to be Moonbeam. First of all, Jason can’t do any of that weird precog stuff Duke & Cass have going on; second, Jason’s personal hero was always the Shadow with the Crime Alley accent.

Tim gives Jason Spoiler instead (Tim himself thinking Spoiler is a training-wheel mantle, but more importantly, it was Steph’s.)

During a public event, Tim is shot by an assassin who took a contract from Ra’s. Laying in the hospital, Tim all but begs Bruce to go out on patrol and Jason to put on the Shadow costume, not wanting Tim’s injury to be the reason their identities got outed.

Tim’s spine was clipped by the bullet. While he’s not completely paralyzed, he’ll never be able to walk unassisted again, and even with mobility aids, Tim suffers from chronic pain thanks to the nerve damage.

(Tim finds a get well card from Ra’s, inviting Tim for a dip in the Lazarus pit whenever Tim’s ready to admit he “needs” it. Tim borrows Jason’s lighter and burns the note. Only Tim & Jason ever know about it.)

Tim becomes Oracle.

When Jason joins the Titans, it’s assumed he’ll be their new leader, as Shadow and/or Moonbeam have always been one of the leaders of the Titans. He also suffers a lot from the comparison to his predecessors, and with how people perceive the speed at which he took up Tim’s mantle.

Jason does win that place and prove himself as a leader, but it is a rough ride to get there.

[Jason’s Titans lineup]

Inherited from Tim:

Wonder Girl (Cassandra Sandsmark)

Impulse (Bart Allen)

Miss Martian (M’gann M’orzz)

Joined while Jason was Spoiler:

Red Devil (Edward Bloomberg)

Ravager (Rose Wilson)

DC (Daniel Chase)

(Yes, Danny thinks hero names are stupid and only ever used one to fake his own death. But, frankly, Danny used his real name as his spy code name, which makes him mocking everyone else for having hero names just… so goddam insufferable. I’m cutting the middle ground here; it’s not a full-on alias, but it’s not just shouting his real name in a high-stakes/arguably undercover situation.)

Joined under Jason’s leadership:

Beast Boy (Garfield Logan)

Raven (Rachel Roth)

Cyborg (Victor Stone)

Halo (Gabrielle Doe)

Risk (Cody Driscoll)

Redwing (Carrie Levine)

Prester (Jonathan Levine)

(I found a pair of twins I both know & like better than Jade & Obsidian. Seriously, John & Carrie are the best part of the entire Team Titans fiasco, and given we do see some overlap between the timelines, I’ve no idea why they got wiped from reality but fucking Mirage didn’t.)

Steph comes back to life. 

Cue the Lost Days/Red Hood arcs.

Steph does try to scare Jason out of being a hero with the fight at the Tower. She shows up in her Death Mask costume and frames it as a fair duel--“More fair than any other rogue will give you.”--to prove that non-powered (non-ninja) kids like them can only meet a nasty end. The fight doesn’t stay “fair” long, as Steph fights dirty to make her point, and throws both her own history & Jason’s insecurities into his face. Jason adapts, but doesn’t win, eventually left reeling by the reveal of Steph’s identity.

The fight is interrupted by Eddie, who gets back early from an off-planet mission and therefore was not factored into Steph’s contingencies for the other Titans. Steph escapes by first holding Jason in front of her with a knife to his throat, then driving the knife into his thigh, forcing Eddie to choose between going after her and keeping Jason from bleeding out.

Red Devil stays behind to cauterize the wound, and Death Mask gets away.

.

After that, the chronology gets a lot more muddled.

Steph reunites with the family after saving Jason from the Joker.

Bruce takes in Dick after Dick’s parents die, but it’s a very rough transition. Then Bruce dies, leading to the family falling apart all over again, Jason getting the Red Robin (”Bluejay”) arc, Cass becoming Batman, and Dick becoming her Moonbeam.

When Bruce comes back, Bluejay joins the Signal as a daytime hero.

When Bruce can eventually no longer be Batman and Cass steps up again, she’ll offer Jason Black Bat if he wants it. He accepts, and everyone assumes Dick will be Bluejay when Dick graduates from being Moonbeam.

When Dick grows up, his final hero identity will be Robin.

[ghostypetrainer]

Something that got talked about on the discord that I haven't brought up here is the summer camp AU. No time-travel, no amnesia. Just summer camp. Ingo and Emmet used to go to it every year, but Emmet was never as enthusiastic about it as Ingo was. He stopped going around middle school, but Ingo kept it up and eventually became a counselor when he was old enough.

So every summer, Ingo packs his bags and heads to Sinnoh to spend a month and a half working at the sleepaway summer camp there. Lian, Sabi, Akari and Rei are all campers, whereas most everyone else from Hisui is in some kind of position at the Camp, with Kamado running the show. Irida and Adaman are in charge of the two main cabins. Irida just barely is old enough to be a counselor herself after attending the camp for years.

(Lucas and Dawn also attend the camp. They are not related to Akari and Rei in any way. Yes, they're pretty sure.)

(Barry's there too.)

Nobody at the camp really associates counselor Ingo with Subway Boss Ingo, mostly because Ingo just likes to get in touch with his wild side so to speak while at camp. They have cabins for the counselors to sleep in? Oh, that's quite alright. He'll just pitch his tent.

(He's not alone though. Gaeric also does this.)

All of the Noble Pokemon hang around at the camp as well... they're rare variants that the camp takes care of, and they help out around the camp. Sneasler is very attached to Ingo, and sometimes likes to use him as a babysitter. Some things truly never change. Since Ingo leaves all of his Unovan Pokemon with Emmet to help at the Battle Subway, the first year he starts working at the camp afterwards he doesn't have any with him... until he finds an injured Gligar who he nurses back to health and oh. Well. He has another Pokemon now.

(He keeps doing this until he has another full team of six. Whoops.)

[threadsun]

Hello Dearie~!

So I was hoping to ask for the crew reacting to their MC's having to be in the hospital, cause they were attacked, have an illness, or something!

The guys could find their MC and bring them to the hospital or getting told their already in there! Was hoping to see what you'd write for their reactions and what they would do!

If that's not to much to ask? If not it's ok too. Please and Thank You

Oh I'm a huge sucker for this sorta thing!! I wrote a lil bit for everyone, but I'll gladly do a full thing for any of them if anyone wants~

I took many creative liberties because I had some super specific ideas when I read this ask >:3c

Content: Injuries, sickness, hospitals, amnesia, mentions of stalking, fake relationship, Nick's is a lil fucked up ngl, mugging, stabbing

Jack:

He was there when it happened.

One moment, you'd been wobbling on the little stepladder, trying to grab some of the spare cups from the backroom of the yogurt shop. The next moment, you were on the floor, the back of your head bleeding where it had hit the counter.

He'd never felt more hopeless than he did in the intervening hour, unable to do anything but watch your boss call for an ambulance, follow the EMTs as they brought you to the hospital, pace with worry while the doctors tried to stop the bleeding and made sure there was no lasting damage.

Even when you woke up, he had to stay out of the way and watch doctors swarm you with questions and tests until they decided you needed rest. You couldn't even acknowledge his presence until you were left alone in the hospital room.

"Jack," your voice is tired, but warm. You're happy to see him. He's relieved.

"Hey, Sunspot." He moves to sit on the edge of the little hospital bed, more leaning against it than anything. He takes your hand and strokes the back of it. "You took a pretty bad fall there. I was worried."

"I've told Barry that ladder needs replacing, it's an OSHA violation." You're trying to lighten the mood, but Jack only frowns.

"Are you sure you want to keep working there, Sunspot? It's a dangerous place. I don't want anything to happen to you."

He's been trying to convince you to quit for a while, to work from home somehow. But... now he's got even more reason to want you home. He can't do this again. He can't handle the uncertainty and helplessness of seeing you injured.

"Jack..."

"Rest, Sunspot." He strokes your hair, leaning down to kiss your forehead. "We can talk about it more later. For now, we need to get you better!"

As you close your eyes and let yourself drift to sleep, Jack turns his thoughts to Barry. Someone has to pay for his Sunshine's injury.

Ian:

Ian hadn't been sure what sort of welcome he should expect. Would you get mad at him? Welcome him home? Ignore him completely? His name was still on the lease, he had every right to be there. And... it was all part of his plan!

But... what he hadn't expected, what wasn't part of his plan, was to open the door and find you collapsed in the living room. You were grey, shivering, eyes distant. Scattered around you were tissues, empty mugs, piles of pillows and blankets, and a bucket of... he didn't want to know what, but he could guess.

You were sick. Sicker than he'd ever seen you before. All thoughts, all plans, all everything went out the window as he picked you up and carried you to his car. You needed a doctor. Immediately.

When you wake up, everything's bright. White and clean and beeping. Your sluggish brain takes a little bit to process that you're in a hospital bed. You can't remember much at all. Not how you got here, not why you feel like you're dying of consumption... even your own name takes a solid thirty seconds to come to mind after you focus on it.

There's a familiar person sitting next to the bed, holding your hand and looking like he's been crying. Ian. The name comes easier than your own had.

"Hey, you." You smile at him, eyes drifting closed whenever your focus slips for even a moment.

"Hey! Hey, uh..." He sounds nervous. Excited. Agitated. "Hey."

"I think you said that already," your laugh is more of a raspy wheeze.

"I'm just..." He looks almost like he's waiting for you to snatch your hand away, to kick him out of the room. You can't remember why you might want to do that. "I'm just glad you're okay."

It seems like he wants to say more, but the doctor comes in to check on you.

"You're lucky your boyfriend got you here in time," the doctor is trying to make conversation while he checks you over. "You were in a real bad way. If he hadn't been so quick, you might not have made it."

Boyfriend... Ian... The words circle in your mind as the doctor marks your vitals on the chart and checks on your IV. The more the pieces start to fit together in your brain, the more nervous Ian looks.

He just wants you to stop thinking about it. To just... let it be. For tonight. So he can hold your hand and be sure you're alright before you inevitably kick him to the curb in the morning.

Shaun:

Honestly, you probably should've expected it to end like this. Nothing good has ever come from a dare. In this case, you'd been dared to climb a very old tree in the park. You and Shaun were hanging out there with friends, and one of them had dared you to do it. Shaun had laughed and tried to persuade you not to, but you were determined not to look like a coward.

And then you climbed too high. And then a branch snapped. And then you learned what it sounds like to break your leg.

"Okay, fuck, alright, okay." Shaun shoos everyone back to give you space, picking you up and carrying you to his car. "You'll be fine. You'll be okay."

"Shaun..." Your teeth are gritted, eyes pricking with tears. Your voice is a little hiccupping sob. "It hurts."

"I know." He tries to keep his voice level as he rests you in the backseat with your leg propped up. He kisses your forehead before getting into the driver's seat and heading straight for the hospital. "Just hang in there, we'll get you sorted out. It'll be fine, I promise, it'll be fine."

The waiting room is busy. Apparently a broken leg isn't high on the ER priority list. Which... when you see some of the other people around you, it's hard to argue with. But it means that you're stuck in the waiting room, leg propped up in Shaun's lap, wincing every time it moves.

"Sorry." Shaun's voice is quiet as he rubs your good leg soothingly.

"It's not your fault," you're still speaking through gritted teeth, but you're sort of adjusting to the pain. "I'm the idiot who climbed the—fuck this hurts." Well, mostly adjusting.

"I know," Shaun ignores the outburst, but continues his soothing pets. "But I should've stopped you."

You give a little sharp laugh, it's all you can muster. "Like you could've stopped me. Oh, that's me!"

There's a nurse waving the two of you into the examination room, and Shaun lifts you into his arms to carry you in. Your words bring a soft smile to his face.

"Yeah," his voice is quiet, affectionate. "No one can stop you."

Nick:

He's been rehearsing his story since he found you. He's your fiancé. You live together. That's why he had the key to your place. He wasn't sure how you'd fallen and hit your head—all the best lies have some truth in them—but he'd heard the sound from your shared bedroom and come running. He's your fiancé. You live together. He's your fiancé.

The ring he'd swapped onto his ring finger really sold it. None of the doctors or nurses questioned his story. They let him sit nearby as they scanned your head, looking for injuries. They let him wait in your room while they waited for you to wake up. And then they delivered him the best news imaginable.

Amnesia. They weren't sure how much you'd forget, how long it would last. But they were fairly certain your memory suffered from the fall.

So when you awoke with a strange man holding your hand, a ring on his finger, and no memories of the last... well, it feels like years are gone from your brain. When he smiled softly at you and said your name in the most loving voice. When he told you he was your fiancé and the doctors called him the same. Well, why would you question them?

"Shouldn't you go home?" It's late, you think. The voice overhead had said visiting hours were ending. And you're pretty sure there's a home for him to go to.

"And leave you here alone?" Nick presses a soft kiss to the back of your hand. "Never."

He's so... sweet. So romantic. He looks at you like you're the best thing that's ever happened to him. It makes you feel giddy.

"So, can you tell me more about us?" The more you've talked, the less shy you've been about asking him to help fill in your memories. "Like how we met?"

"Well," Nick's voice takes on that soothing story-telling tone. "It all started a few years ago..."

He weaves you tales of your relationship. Invents first dates and anniversaries, moving in and a proposal. He fills your head with all the pretty things he wishes were true. And now... now they can be. All thanks to your little tumble.

And hey, he'd practically saved your life! How could anyone say that what he did was wrong?

Joseph:

He should've been there. He should've been with you. Maybe things would've gone differently. Maybe he would've been able to protect you. Maybe he could've taken the knife for you. Maybe...

His stomach turns at memory seared into his brain. Your body laying in the parking lot outside the studio. The contents of your bag scattered around you, save for your wallet. And the... he can't think about it. He can't not think about it. The gash in your side, gushing blood as he ran towards you.

He'd gotten you to the hospital in time. If he hadn't, he wouldn't be sitting in the waiting room, leg bouncing and mind racing, as he waits for you to be well enough for him to visit.

It was his fault. If he hadn't stayed in the studio so late, if he hadn't taken his time getting out of costume, if he'd just been in the parking lot at the right time...

He's been in knife fights before, he has the scars to show for it. He could've taken on the mugger. He could've protected you. Why hadn't he been there to protect you? Why had he let you get hurt?

His spiral is only broken when the doctor tells him that you're alright enough to visit. He spends a moment pacing in front of the door, wondering if you'll blame him like he blames himself. But... he has to see you. Has to see that you're okay.

"Joseph." The relief in your voice is tangible, and it relaxes him almost immediately. "They told me what happened. Thank you."

It feels good and bad and weird. Being thanked for doing the bare minimum. Being thanked despite failing to protect you. Being thanked by you.

He can't speak. He can't do anything but sit numbly in the chair by your bed and cry. Somehow, despite you being the one who was stabbed, the one with stitches in your side, the one who surely needs the comfort... Somehow, it's you comforting him.

He's haunted by the memory of your injury. He's haunted by the thought of your blood on his hands. He's haunted by his own failure to protect you. And he'll do anything to make up for it.

Jean:

He noticed your absence immediately.

His attention is always on you. So when he showed up on set and you weren't there? He noticed. And he didn't just notice. He stormed around the studio, demanding to be told where you were.

An angry Jean is a scary Jean. No one wanted to tell him what had happened, just in case the fury burning in his eyes turned on them. But someone had to, eventually.

In hospital. An accident. It was all he needed to hear before he was back in his car, breaking the speed limit many times over to get to you as soon as possible.

If he weren't quite so well known, he might have been removed from the hospital entirely, for how frantically he burst in and demanded to see you. But as it was, he was recognised, and no one wanted to argue with such a big star.

So, here he is, in your room, waiting for you to wake up. He's pacing back and forth, unable to get out all the excess energy and stress he's holding. He can't even look at you, laying there like that. Just the sight of the hospital bed makes bile rise in his throat.

His name is barely a croak, falling from your dry, cracked lips when you see him. He's by your side in an instant, holding your hand and offering you the cup of water on the table next to you.

He's asking you too many questions, not letting you get a single answer out. He wants to know what happened, how it happened, who's to blame. But most of all, he wants to know that you're okay.

Your hand squeezes his, weak but there. "I'm alright. I promise."

The tension seeps from him. You're okay. You'll be okay. He can relax.

[hedgiwithapen]

Prompt: that Old Guard!Cisco thing you've talked about :)

Cisco wakes up, aching. For a moment, he's relieved. Dr. Wells being the Reverse Flash, the Trap being fake all along, it was all just a really awful nightmare. He makes a mental note to avoid burritos after 1 am for the foreseeable future.

Except that his shirt still has a bloodstain over his heart. And he isn't slumped over his desk or his couch, but the hard floor of the subbasement. Above and behind him, the trap looms like a cage. Cisco swallows. 

"Oh, no," he says, quiet. It still echoes. 

Dr. Wells killed him. Dr. Wells confessed to murdering Nora Allen, to being the Reverse Flash, and then he killed him. But somehow he's still alive.

Not for long, Cisco thinks bitterly. He's no speedster. The minute Wells--Thawne, he said his name was Thawne--learns that he fucked up the murder somehow, he'll just kill Cisco again.

Unless... Maybe, if he doesn't realize Cisco's a threat. If he changes his shirt, claims he doesn't remember anything... Faking Amnesia's gotta be the dumbest trick in the book, but he's a little short on pages at the moment. He's already going to die, probably. 

Cisco bites his lip, then stands, wobbling, and goes to get his laptop. He'll find a way to leave a message, just in case. Not for Caitlin-- Wells probably already killed her.

Cisco staggers at the thought, the sudden grief. He swallows hard. He has to play this exactly right.

He can hear Wells talking, his voice echoing down the curved corridor. 

"Barry, I'm sorry. There was nothing I could do, he was too fast..."

Cisco took a breath, and a step. 

"Cisco!" Barry yelped, running for him. Cisco held back the flinch at the lightning, letting Barry hug him. He was damp, the suit was soaked. "Oh my god, I was--I thought you were--Dr. Wells said--"

Dr Wells sat in his wheelchair, his eyes redrimmed. From crying, not evil lightning, Cisco notes. Fake crying, probably. He stares at Cisco. Cisco stares back. 

Caitlin rushes into the hug. "Cisco, how did you get away?"

"Uh," Cisco says, trying to piece together an answer that'll fit with whatever story Wells was spinning. 

"I really don't--I hit my head pretty hard. It's all kind of a blur. Can I sit down?" Before he finishes, there's a chair under him.

"I'm so sorry," Barry says, earnest. "I should have been there to save you. There was a tidal wave, and--Joe's in the hospital, but--Dr. Wells said--Caitlin said..."

"The Reverse Flash kidnapped you both," Caitlin interrupts. "Dr. Wells thought you were dead, I thought...."

"Yeah," Cisco says. " I... really don't remember--I came in here to see if there was anything to find Mardon and... then I was in the hallway. I../"

"I'm just glad you're alive," Caitlin says. "Let me make sure you don't have any internal bleeding, or--a TBI--well, you must, if you don't remember--but--" She cuts herself off, going to find her flashlight and kit.

"Cisco," Wells says, urgency in his voice. Cisco makes himself smile and not shudder back. "I'm...I can't tell you how good it is to see you."

"Yeah," says Cisco. "I'm glad you're alright, too."

"Here," Caitlin says. "Barry, can you get him to the medbay for me?"

Cisco blinks twice, feeling the sheets beneath him. "Fast," he says. He looks around. " So. Uh."

"Cisco," Caitlin says, looking at Barry. " You really don't--do you remember why you wanted me to..." she lowers her voice. " distract Dr. Wells? Before he got taken?"

"Oh," Cisco says, looking around. Barry's hovering anxiously. Wells isn't here yet, which is either good or extremely bad.  "Uh. Yes. I think I'm a metahuman."

"Oh," says Caitlin. "That's... it?"

"Pretty much," Cisco says.

"What can you do?" Barry asks. 

"Mmmmm, you might wanna sit down. Wait. FIRST you might want to get Iris, and Joe and Eddie, and maybe my family if you can and get them very far away and not tell anyone where, ok?"

*

The dreams start that night. Cisco's barely asleep on Joe's couch, the rest of them all piled into the house for the sake of numbers. Eobard Thawne's body lies somewhere in the pipeline, left after being sure. Both Eddie and Joe's gun's worth of bullets sure. He dreams of a woman in the water, drowning, and wakes with a hand over his heart. 

He doesn't speak of it the next morning.

None of them want to leave, not even to go get coffee, but some how the world goes on. Barry stopped the tidal wave but there's still so much fallout from that, and the fight through the streets.  Cisco stays on the couch while Iris sits in the kitchen, writing her article for a noon deadline, even though she was up half the night with it already. 

When the front door splinters, Cisco braces.

"Hey, kid." A woman with short cropped hair says. " Need you to come with me."

"Uh.. no," Cisco says. Somehow dying twice in a day has made him braver.  

The woman looks over her shoulder. A handsome guy with a beard extends a hand. "You're one of us. For your safety..."

"No, thanks," Cisco says, inching a hand for his phone. He needs Barry to get here before Iris hears and yells and gets her very-much-not-immortal-neck snapped, or whatever. "I'm good."

"You died yesterday," says the Woman.

"Yup," Cisco says, still going for his phone, until the guy with the beard spots his hand.  "And yet!"

"People will notice."

"They definitely did."

"All the more reason to hide. This City isn't safe for you. There's rumors about a lab..."

"Which I work for," Cisco interrupts, then wishes he hadn't when he sees the murderous look in the guy's eyes. "Doing totally normal things. Like make  stuff that can stop giant lightning storms that almost took out the police station. tech stuff. Very cool. Can you leave?"

"You're going to end up in a cage if you stay."

"I mean, maybe, but seeing as how everyone I'm friends with is already on whatever shady science and evil government wish list, I think I'm good here."

"...explain." The woman sits. "I'm Andy."

"And we're sitting. Cool," says Cisco. "Feeling a little outnumbered here. can I phone a friend? Also a metahuman, great guy."

"No."

"Well, it's his house," Cisco says, poking the beacon button. "Look, I hope you're here to be concerned and not kidnap me, because really, I'm fine. And the last time someone tried to kidnap one of my friends it didn't go great. it was a whole thing like, a month ago? So really, I'm in good hands here."

"A month ago," the guy repeats. "I'm Joe, by the way."

"Oh, that's going to be confusing."

"That wouldn't have been an army base, would it? Blown up entirely?" Andy asks.

"It was a team effort," Cisco shrugs.  A flash of gold lightning breaks one of the intact windows in a roar. 

"Hey Flash," Cisco says. "Got company! Probably fine."

"Explain," Andy says. "From the beginning."

"Well he's the fastest man alive, and fifteen years ago....Look, this might take a while."

"We have time."

[kitkatt0430]

For the AU headcanon game, AU in which Savitar is someone other than Barry? 👀

So I do remember various theories about Savitar's identity and one of them was Eddie. Which... I did not like that theory, so I'm not gonna go that way.

If it was someone the team knew already, then Eobard is the obvious candidate. In the comics, he's made himself look like Barry a few different ways and so there could be a convoluted plot going on that way, but... they've had enough Eobard Thawne as the bad guy on the show, I wanna speculate on someone new.

So the comics Savitar - New Earth version - was a Cold War pilot whose real identity was never discovered. While at top speed in his fighter plane, he was struck by lightning and survived the crash in hostile territory. This could be updated to him being an air force test pilot for an experimental craft using Dominator tech - foreshadowing the Dominator attack xover event later that season - that gets struck by lightning mid test. The test is classed a failure and the craft is unrecoverable - the man who becomes Savitar is assumed dead but of course he isn't.

Savitar therefor isn't obsessed with killing Iris - his existence doesn't depend on her. Instead perhaps Iris' investigation into Savitar's origins puts her in danger as he doesn't want anyone to know who he used to be - maybe he doesn't even remember and having his identity revealed would detract from the story he's selling the cult he's been creating.

Perhaps Alchemy as a stage one/first half of season boss with Savitar being hinted at until he's revealed at the mid season finale. Savitar could still be the man behind Alchemy, with Julian being unaware that he's been brainwashed to take on the persona of Alchemy under specific triggers. To de brainwash Julian, they bring in Hartley who - in this timeline - used a hypnotic flute in addition to his gloves. Julian thus has to come to terms both with what he did under the brainwashing and with the fact that he is a meta... that it was his rejection and self-hatred over being a meta that gave Savitar the in he needed to control Julian in the first place.

Part of the season's focus is on Barry having to accept that he has no idea how much the changes to the timeline are his fault and how much is stuff that was already gonna happen and he just... didn't know things were leading that way behind the scenes.

Revealing Frost's real origins in this season. Caitlin, panicking, goes to her mom for help and things with Carla eventually unravel to the reveal of Icicle. Frost has to choose between teaming up with Icicle or siding with Caitlin's friends... and chooses Icicle. Only to quickly realize she's in over her head and she turns to Caitlin for advice. The two of them form a truce to defeat Icicle and rejoin Team Flash by surprise!!! during the final Savitar vs Flash fight at the end of the season, which would also include Jesse and Wally as well as Savitar's cult.

Savitar would definitely try to recruit Icicle and Frost into his cult, but I don't see them having any of it. Icicle has his own god complex of a sort going on and Killer Frost just doesn't like him or trust him after Caitlin's experiences with Zoom and the Reverse Flash. If you've met one evil Speedster, you've met them all.

One of the things I did like about show!Savitar was that he was a fallen hero - I'm a Tales game series fan, i love fallen heroes as villains, that's basically the main villain of every Tales game and I eat it up every time. So I think part of the investigation into Savitar would be the reveal that he was a highly decorated hero and he saved a lot of lives. That's why he was tapped for the project. But after being essentially left for dead and his amnesia, Savitar grew to feel he was owed the accolades and devotion and it all warped into the god complex he has now. Forcing him to face his past isn't exactly a tomato in the mirror moment but he's torn between horror over who he's become and his desire for security and safety through the power he's accumulated.

[ruiniel]

Another way - VIII

Summary: what if someone in the 21st century stumbled upon this stranger during a turbulent storm, narrowly avoiding running them over, and what's more they can't understand a word coming out of their mouth.

Pairing: Alucard x Reader

Rating: Mature / 18+ only

Tags/CW: explicit language, depressive character, character-meets-world, modern AU, fantasy, depictions of violence

VIII.

You went ahead of yourself, of course. Lunch proved an affair swiftly forgotten with all the notes Adrian effusively scribbled your way, a verbosity (in a manner of speaking) you never expected of him, considering the grim and desperate moods he’s been teetering between until now. 

Most of them, though, are unusual — but you went with it. If he truly suffers from some kind of amnesia, offering answers takes nothing away from you, but gives him a sort of comfort, as you’ve noticed. Or, at least, it makes way for curiosity instead of misery. And, for yet another unknown reason, seeing him animated, seeing the golden lights flare in his eyes (you’re waxing poetic, but they really are damn golden) feels like a Good thing. It feels… right. It feels like you’re giving something and, peculiarly, receiving in return (not that it matters). 

Still, you haven’t forgotten the blood you saw on him at the cabin, were reminded of this when looking at the stains persisting on his drying shirt — also torn. You’d shown it to him, trying to make him understand it’ll need some mending before it’s of any use; at which point Adrian merely shrugged, took it from your hands and stuffed it in the rucksack you’d given him (now his).

But, the questions.

“How do the fast carriages outside work?”

“... You mean the cars. They’re either electric, or run on gas or diesel, or some are hybrids.”

“Does everyone have one? Are there flat roads everywhere here?”

“Not everyone, but many people do. The cars need the roads and highways, so yes.”

“Are the lifting devices in the corridor electric?”

“... a lot of things are.”

“Like the cold storage you keep in your home.”

“Yes, like that, and most everything else.”

“And this flat rectangular machine you’re using to translate?”

“The phone. Yes, that too.”

“Are there other tomes beyond the distance mirror you were writing on earlier?”

The. The what? You decide to try:

“With the internet, you basically can get knowledge on most topics in existence nowadays, if you know how to search.”

“... the internet?”

And on, and on, about the most basic things, all of which are absolutely random questions concerning some of the basic functions or origins of average, everyday items, and some of your answers spawn even more questions; which you also answer, and the exchange is slow but the look on his face, the beams of understanding lightening his pale, sickly features, drives you onward against your will.

You sit facing each other at the small table in your kitchen corner, heads close together and eyes darting between that agenda and your phone, ‘talking’ this way until the grumble of your stomach and a look out the window shows the day’s given way to dusk. You have your own questions but entertained the barrage coming from him for now, all the while thinking and seeing no whisper of a solution as to his — and your — predicament about his stay.

You look back at Adrian, then type in: “Dinner time already. It’s chilly outside. I guess you’ll need your coat. It must’ve dried by now.”

You get another ‘Gratitude’ for that, head bowed and hand to his chest — weird, but strangely fitting for him? His countenance is not that of a lost waif any longer, though by all means there’s a shadow, a haunting about him, if you didn’t know better. Like he’s constantly drowning in hardening cement, flailing and gasping for air that does not come.

You know the feeling all too well, unfortunately, but you have the added advantage of knowing who you are, or at least who you used to be.

Shaking out of such sinking thoughts is easy now, though, and the crossing of the significant barrier between you and your guest feels like a reason to celebrate. So, you opted to try going out for dinner, after all. Pay day’s tomorrow, anyway.

You change quickly and pluck his long dark coat from the drying rack you’d moved on the small balcony facing the main street (the clothes dryer downstairs is broken) only to turn—

“FUCK!” you squee, as undignified as suddenly bumping into someone could make you. “Shit, you really have to stop doing this,” you mumble, finding your palms pressed against his chest as you’d turned and slammed right into Adrian. You’re amazed at the strain in his body, quickly removing your hands as you regain balance.

You stare up at him.

But Adrian’s not looking at you. His gaze roams far away, across the city, over the tall buildings like looming giants in the night, over the reddening tint of light pollution drowning out the stars; over the horizon. His mouth has fallen open and it would be comical, if it weren’t doubly worrying.

“Yeah, it’s not exactly the nicest sight,” you say as you make way for him to step onto the balcony.

He does, walking as if in a trance, hands propped against the stone edge, and you watch from the entrance as his head sinks low between his shoulders.

“Adrian?” you ask after a few minutes of stillness, during which you’ve felt as though you were observing a statue, or one of those decorative grotesques you’ve seen during your research in art class. Though, in all fairness, ‘grotesque’ is by far the least appropriate word to describe him.

You hear a long sigh, then he fluidly turns around with something you can only describe as innate elegance, reaching for the coat you’re still holding, thanking you again with a nod. His eyes hold that burden of loss and despair again, which you should definitely not care about.

You don’t.

Adrian follows you back inside, his silence returning; no more questions. But, he takes special care to tuck the agenda and pen in his coat pocket, looking up as you put on your shoes — he gets it, and so does the same, before looking back expectantly at you. 

“No car this time,” you write. “We’re going to a place I know for dinner, on foot.”

Another nod. 

You turn without further comment and soon you take the streets, your tall adage walking by your side, extremely interested in the neon signs, the cars (again) rushing by, the people gliding on Segways; turning at nearly every car horn honking.

“Here’s the place,” you say, pushing open the door of a local Italian diner, one that’s been flourishing here since the 1980s.

Adrian glances around at the people, the arrangements, the tables, following you when you take a seat, then cautiously does the same.

You see him taking out the agenda.

“Where are we?”

“We’ll eat here. Italian place. The food is good.”

“Do you know everyone here?”

Some assumption. “No, just some of the staff. Why?”

He taps the pen against the agenda after reading your reply, then shakes his head as though to say ‘no matter.’

You try to help him with the menu using the internet, showing him the dishes on your phone and after a few minutes of painstaking research Adrian shrugs, then raises both hands towards you in the universal ‘whatever you decide’ gesture. 

“You’re getting what I’m having, then. Hope you have no allergies,” you mumble with a raised eyebrow just as the waiter comes to take your order.

“Greetings, who do we have here?” Marcus says, a young, spritely man who’s in business school and became an acquaintance since you started living in the area. 

“Hi, Marcus,” you smile, and spend the next five minutes in a soft chit chat which ends with you ordering and Marcus leaving, not before throwing a swift glance Adrian’s way.

But Adrian is watching you, with curiosity and something else you can’t quite define.

It’s a quick affair, the meal — not least because of the silence, during which he actually eats something this time.

“My cooking is really that bad, huh?” you ask with half a smirk on your face (what’s gotten into you?), at which Adrian raises those golden eyebrows again and reaches for the agenda.

“No, it’s… it’s okay, no need,” you press onto his hand, smiling and shaking your head before your brain catches up with your action; Adrian stills, and so do you because, because—

“You’re as cold as death,” you murmur, but quickly retrieve your hand remembering personal space and how it means different things to different people.

Adrian’s hand hasn’t moved from the table; he stares at it as though seeing it for the first time, frowns, and another flash of uneasiness, or rather unrest crosses his face, and he becomes… jittery: his leg is twitching beneath the square two-seat table and you know this because the surface is vibrating with it, and he pulls at loose strands of his hair with one hand, staring listlessly ahead.

“Hey, we can go, all right?” you say, then tap quickly into your phone: “I’ll go pay. You can wait outside.”

Adrian barely glances at the words, then springs to his feet, turning and leaving the diner without looking back.

“... all good?” Marcus asks as he passes by with some plates. 

“Yeah,” you lie, wondering what all that was about. “Yeah, all good.”

When you step outside, you see him standing with his back to the diner, hands plunged in his coat pockets. His gaze is set on the dirty gray sidewalk, his long hair partly shielding his profile. Like this, he awakens memories of lone, bedraggled heroes fighting against the fates from the fantasy novels you’d read throughout your teenage years and beyond, but of course, that’s a silly thought. “Let’s go back,” you say.

Adrian looks your way, understands. One thought nags you: he did not have the look of one lost and confused mere moments ago, but of one deep in thought, ruminating over troubles plaguing them for a long while.

Either way, the agenda method won’t be of much help in this, you ponder as you walk side by side, into the night, beneath broken street lamps that wink erratically in an intermittent sequence. 

“Let’s go this way, it’s a shortcut,” you say after a while, gesturing and taking a right through an alley.

There’s fewer people around at this hour. It’s just the two of you, and another pair ahead, coming from the opposite direction. The silence is more prominent here, and the sounds of your steps ricochet against concrete walls.

You glance sideways at Adrian, finding him staring ahead, hands fisted at his sides — at least he left those gloves at home, though in this coat he still looks ever so slightly out of place.

“I know, this is probably not among the greatest days of your life,” you say, needing to hear yourself talk again, looking absently at the pair nearing you. “I really hope—”

Someone bumps into you, hard. “Hey!” you turn, but your words die on your tongue as you stare at the sharp end of a gleaming dagger; pointed at you?!

Oh yes, it’s pointed at you all right. The guy holding it is tall, wears a cap hiding his eyes, and gestures at you, then Adrian. “This can go both ways, pigeons. All up to you.” He speaks in a low, guttural voice, and you take a step back, bumping into Adrian. Behind him, the other person — another guy by the looks of it, holding another weapon poised to stab. 

Well, shit. “We don’t want any trouble,” you try. What the fuck-what the fuck-what the fuck.

“Neither do we,” the first man says. “Hand over any jewelry, phones and wallets, and you’re free to go. Both you and Pretty boy over here. C’mon, don’t have all night.”

You glance up at Adrian, finding him… you don’t exactly know what to make of it, but he looks… completely aloof, untouched by the panic gurgling up your throat, surging through your limbs. You’d never seen him this way before; it distresses you even more than the clusterfuck you’ve apparently landed in just now.

Bad, this is bad. “He doesn’t have any of those things, and trust me, there’s not much on me either,” you say, raising both palms in a warding gesture. “Look, let us pass and that’ll be the end of it. No charges, nothing.”

“... or what?” the mugger behind Adrian asks. “Legs here’ll seduce us with his pretty hair? Move.”

Adrian says something then, and your head swivels up to look at him.

His eyes are. Frightening. Cold, empty. And that frown? In the haggard yellow light spilling through the alley he looks nothing short of menacing, which, of course, does little to diminish your shocked surprise. 

You pull at his arm imperceptibly, but he won’t look at you. His gaze is set on the first attacker holding the dagger. 

“... what the fuck is he saying?” 

“I… I don’t know. Please, we just want to go home.”

“Don’t we all,” the first mugger says — and grabs you by the wrist.

He doesn’t get to do much else.

Next you know his hands are off you, and he’s screeching in pain with Adrian’s hand around his forearm; he stabs.

“No!” you yell, uselessly, but apparently the asshole missed because his other hand is now trapped in Adrian’s grip, and it’s all happening so fast but the guy’s groan turns into a wail with the pressure of that grasp on his hand, and you hear a nauseating snap before the dagger drops with a metallic clank onto the filthy pavement.

The other mugger swipes at you; you barely avoid the blow, all under the blood-curdling cries that echo through the alleyway.

“Let me go, you fucking freak—” one begs, fallen to his knees even as Adrian releases him, and you barely get to see what’s happening before mugger #2 literally flies and strikes the wall behind you, then falls limply into the dumpster placed against it.

You’re left gaping at Adrian staring down the first attacker, taking one step towards him.

He’s already scrambling away; turning on his knees, cursing as he rises, falls, then rises again and runs off. He never looks back. 

Your breath is warring with your heart. You can’t fathom what just happened, or how long it took. 

Adrian glances your way, composed, looking mildly bothered at best by everything. He nears you.

You take a step back.

Adrian pauses, the icy expression from before already melted from his countenance, making way for regretful uncertainty.

Think, think. He just prevented this from getting worse. Good. He just beat the living crap out of those guys. 

...Bad?

Is it?

You’re not sure how you feel about that, standing there as Adrian approaches, doing nothing when he places both hands on your shoulders.

The pressure awakens you from your dumbstruck state. “I’m fine,” you choke, answering the look in his eyes; one of disarming sincerity.

And as you allow yourself to be gently nudged and led forward, as you continue your walk until you leave the alley behind, your body loses its tension, your mind stops being a blank, making way for two thoughts playing ball inside your head (violently):

What the fuck just happened?

and

Who exactly have you taken into your home?

Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V - Part VI - Part VII - Part VIII - Part IX - Part X

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