#I feel like half of these are vivisection related and part of me feel bad but also that’s like where half of these go anyway

[minty364]

DPXDC Prompt #67

Little 10 year old Danny was frightened as he ran through the fields trying to get away. He got his powers a couple years ago and had been captured and kept in a GIW facility where he was experimented on. He got out and ran as fast as his little legs would take him. He eventually comes across a barn and decides to hide out and rest for the night. Little did he know a certain man of steel heard him as he was visiting his folks on the farm. Clarks about to gain a little brother or son depending how you want this to go!

[sophiamcdougall]

I keep thinking that the immortals give Nile a lot of authoritative-sounding information about how being immortal works, and yet their sample size is never more than six and frequently it’s one.  Including Nile, there have only ever been seven of them ... that they know of. Obviously, there might have been near-immortals who lived and eventually died before Andy was even born, but also, until encountering Quynh, Andy had no way of knowing that new immortals inspire clairvoyant dreams in each other. Even after the dreams and meeting Quynh in real life ... if I were in her shoes I think I might have read the situation as “destined to find my soulmate” more than “all immortals come with a sort of built-in homing beacon which broadcasts equally to all other immortals.” Not for centuries would either encounter any further evidence either way. And even now -- having dreamed of, and then found, Lykon, Joe, Nicky and Nile, how do you know you’re dreaming of the world’s entire population of immortals, rather than a random selection? Or those Destiny or whatever particularly wants you to meet? Nicky and Joe can only ever have had this experience once before, relatively recently, and Booker can never have had it at all. I guess it doesn’t matter, as acknowledging the possibility that there might be others out there wouldn’t practically change very much, but it’s part of a pattern of jumping to conclusions.  

“Eventually you stop healing.” This has only happened once (that they know of, see above) and only one member of the current team was there to see it. “Immortality has limits and in time, this will happen to all of us” is a good theory, but it should only be a theory. How do they know that something hadn’t happened to Lykon, and only Lykon, to rob him of his immortality? What if he got a defective dose of immortality in the first place? Or, given that their own existence proves the existence of the supernatural, is it out of bounds to think that he might have pissed off some other form of supernatural being? Now, I don’t exactly mind them jumping to conclusions on this one, because they all have good reason, actually, to want this to be true -- Booker and Andy because depression and grief and burnout, Nicky and Joe because wonderful as it is to share centuries with your true love, you’d probably rather not stick around for the sun boiling away the oceans. And in fact bearing in mind that they couldn’t truly have known this was coming adds tension and urgency to the scenes after the revelation of Andy’s mortality. But I kind of wish it had been expressed, because it makes the possibility that this might be happening to all of them now - when they’re surrounded by enemies -- even more compelling. It’s somewhat implicit in the acting choices but imagine if they were explicitly grappling with the possibility that Lykon was an outlier in a different way - the rest of them were always supposed to run out of immortality juice now, today.  “Your family will reject you.” This is the one that actually bothers me,  because Christ, NILE’S POOR MUM. And this isn’t a statement about how immortality works anyway, it’s a statement about anyone who happens to be related to an immortal. The whole team seem to offhandedly agree that Nile is better off not going back to her family, but the only person who actually explains why is Booker, and ... why is anyone accepting Booker’s experiences as representative of anything? Especially after discovering the betrayal! Booker is suicidally depressed! Obviously he thinks the world is terrible, interpersonal problems are insurmountable and every bad thing that’s happened to him is a universal law of nature! You don’t have to believe him! Especially since his situation, as described, has pretty much fuck all in common with Nile’s and there’s little reason to think it has anything much in common with the others, either. And yet even when Nile has her “refusal of the call” moment, she doesn’t say argue with Booker’s predictions, she merely says that she can defer the moment she must vanish from her family’s lives until her immortality becomes impossible to hide. But why? Booker does not mention parents, only his children. There’s no indication any of the others had offspring, but even if they did, it’s largely irrelevant to Nile who clearly doesn’t. She’s concerned about her mother and brother. Nile discovers her immortality a lot younger than the rest of the team, in a period with a much longer average life expectancy. All the rest appear to be in their mid thirties to mid forties. Given how far back in time their origins are, it’s unlikely that all of them had living parents when they discovered their immortality, and any that  they did have would have been decidedly elderly by the standards of the time. So how plausible is it that any of the others experienced any version of what Booker describes? I’d say not very, and it’s downright implausible that they experienced it with a parent. Children are supposed to outlive their parents. Booker’s situation was agonising specifically because it was a tragic inversion of that rule. Booker’s son had to die in pain while his father now looked younger than he did. But Andy, Joe or Nicky’s parents, even if they were around to witness anything, would have seen ... what? Their 45-year-old son still passing for 35?  Even if they knew about the immortality ... how exactly would they have wanted/expected their child to pass it on? Wouldn’t an 11th century parent have been far more likely to take up the unequal distribution of miracles with God rather than their kid? So why should Nile accept that her mother will behave like Booker’s son? Isn’t it enormously more likely that a woman who, like every mother, has always wanted and expected to be outlived by her daughter, and yet has been living with the daily terror of losing her in combat, will be enormously relieved to know that she’s not going to die prematurely? Is it even vaguely likely that the pain of not benefiting directly from your daughter’s magical healing powers, decades from now, is worse than the pain of losing her at 20? OK, so then there’s the brother. Outliving a brother isn’t like outliving a child either, but it’s at least somewhat easier to believe there could be jealousy and conflict there eventually. But is that possibility of pain worth inflicting absolutely certain agony now? Is it impossible to talk through potential issues now just because it didn’t work out that way for Booker? OK, but for argument’s sake, let’s accept your family will inevitably ask you to share your immortality with them. Booker says that of course you can’t pass it on, yet his entire freaking arc is predicated on the possibility that maybe you can. (Which is cool, actually! But it has unexplored implications!) One thing that I actually really liked about film is it made “getting kidnapped and vivisected” a convincing threat, whereas many sci-fi shows vaguely invoke it as a reason that superpowered characters must keep their abilities secret, without ever bothering to show how that would play out in practice. I mean, people with unusual abilities exist! Michael Phelps produces less than half the usual amount of lactic acid! And has twice the normal lung capacity! Which we know, because researchers have studied him! Yet nobody has ever carted Michael Phelps off to a secret laboratory and if they did he would have various legal options!  It works here, but part of the reason it works is that Copley raises the obvious objection - why should being a subject of medical research mean anything more than donating some blood, a cheek swab and maybe at absolute worst some bone marrow? That would be enough to map their entire genome ... what else does even the maddest scientist even want? The Old Guard is the first show I can think of which actually had a decent answer, and it’s that Merrick is a greedy hypercapitalist psychopath who doesn’t want to share. Which is brilliant, but acknowledges it isn’t actually the science that’s the problem. But none of that was available in Booker’s time! He not only had to deal with an apparently unique situation among the immortals, he also was caught at a unique moment in history: far enough advanced that his family was less likely to accept “miraculously chosen by god/gods/fate” as an answer, far enough advanced to contemplate the possibility that medical science could replicate his immortality, but nowhere near advanced enough to meaningfully try. But if you’re immortal now and your dying relative is freaking out ... wouldn’t you at least agree to giving them a blood transfusion? They’d know you tried. It’d probably calm them down. It might even work!  What is the wider significance of this? Basically fuck all, but it feels like it’s been years since I got to nitpick something that I genuinely enjoyed for the sheer, innocent love of being an insufferable killjoy rather than because I thought it was Problematic.  

[vegalocity]

Comforting Hugs and (platonic) kiss on the cheek. Min Yi falls and gets a boo boo so Huntsman has to Comfort her, much to his discomfort. Cause what you wrote with Uncle Goliath was adorable so now it's Uncle Huntsys turn. - Pixel Anon

Affection meme

4. Comforting hugs

8. Kisses on cheek

Whoops i tripped and it turned into feels how'd that happen

--

Huntsman had never wanted kids. He didn’t like kids, he didn’t trust kids, Kids always seemed to be more of a pain than they were worth.

Which was why he wasn’t particularly excited when everyone found out that Syntax had a kid. Some little wannabe detective whom was barely old enough for grade school yet somehow believed she was capable of solving any mystery handed to her but still needed to hold hands with a grownup while crossing the street.

Another thing he didn’t like about kids, they didn’t even have the skills to back up their egos.

The only positive thing he could scrounge together about Syntax's Daughter for a long time was that she seemed to be a rather tough kid. Always tripping and falling and scraping herself up in ways he was (pretty sure) a lesser child would have stopped everything to cry about, brushing the dirt off of her clothes and going back to whatever she was doing. At times Syntax or her aunt needed to pull her away and tell her to bandage up her injuries first and she’d protest over it.

So he’d give her that. She was tough.

That in no way meant he was alright with babysitting just because he was the only one without any plans tonight.

He’d be completely fair and say that he expected it tpo be a quiet night. The brat was in between ‘mysteries’ and was quietly working on one of her arts and crafts projects. He’d figured they’d have no real reason to interact until she’d tell him it was about dinner time and they’d… order in or something, he didn’t know what kids liked to eat.

But that didn’t mean he was okay with it just happening to him to be stuck with the brat all night until Syntax got home from whatever tech-related insanity the Monkie Kid and his ilk had pulled him into.

Though when he heard a yelp of surprise and pain, he’d assumed it was something like, the little gremlin tripping on her own socks or something and falling face first onto the floor or whatever. So he didn’t give it any mind as he continued to sharpen his lucky blade.

Though he didn’t hear any grumbles of annoyance as she continued on with what she was doing, or even laughter at her own clumsy actions. Then she was a little blur of black hair and pink jacket as she darted from the kitchen area to the bathroom, passing by as quickly and quietly as possible.

Now… That was… probably something….

The bathroom door shut with a thud, but he could pick up on sniffling and upset whimpering noises among the sounds of bottles clattering, every so often punctuated by more yelps of pain.

Then he smelled burning. It was coming from the kitchen and sure enough there was a skillet that had fallen to the ground, and a pair of eggs half sprayed along the stovetop, some parts very quickly turning to charcoal.

What had happened put itself together rather quickly and he cursed under his breath at the idiocy of children.

When he returned to the bathroom the whimpering had ended and was replaced entirely with the sniffling, and the rummaging of bottles was replaced with the running of the faucet.

“What are ya doing in there?”

“Nothing!”

“Bull. Open the door kid.”

“It’s okay! I’m okay!”

“Open the door before I break it. Minyi.” The child’s name felt weird on his tongue, but she had to know he was serious.

There was a pause, and then the door creaked open. The kid stood there, moving her hand from the doorknob to wipe at her eyes, the other hand held behind her back.

“You’re really gonna be a stupid kid and hide it from me?”

She rocked back and forth on her heels, her glasses were missing, probably dropped them when she ran in here, so she couldn’t hide her face like she usually did.

After another long pause where Huntsman debated what sort of threat he could make to a six year old without her father finding out about it and finalizing those vivisection plans he was sure he had squirreled away somewhere but constantly denied, the brat relented and held out her hidden hand, and sure enough the sleeve was rolled up to the elbow and the outer side of her hand front he base of her pinky all the way down to her wrist was an angry red.

“Dumb kid.”

She whimpered again and a fresh set of tears began to bubble out of her eyes and he rolled his. “Sit down. I’m not risking your Aunt’s wrath by not patching you up after you did something stupid.” The kid quietly did as instructed and sat on the edge of the bathtub as he opened the medicine cabinet. The burn cream was far too high up for her to have been able to reach.

She had started to cry properly now… Stupid kids crying their eyes out over dumb things.

“Please don’t tell Daddy or Auntie.” she squeaked out when he finally crouched in front of her, holding out a hand for when her own was placed in his.

“Why? You scared of admitting you burned yourself trying to make your own dinner instead of being the rational and smart kid they both keep saying you are?”

The brat kept crying as he finished wrapping up the wound until the entire area was covered over her left hand.

“I can’t cause any problems…” That… gave him pause.

Sure kids want to be good. They might be little shits but they rarely WANT to be bad kids. So if she’d said that she ‘wanted to be a good girl’ or whatever that would have made sense. But… ‘cause problems’?

“What are you on about?”

“Daddy and Auntie have enough problems, and I can’t be one too!” she looked up at him then, sniffing pathetically and hair falling in her face at her vehemence “I gotta be no problems at all! Cuz Cuz… I’m a trooper! And clever, and a delight to have in class!”

….damn here he thought obsessive perfectionism wouldn’t kick in until teen years.

“You’re six years old is what you are.” UGH… he knew what adults were SUPPOSED to do around crying children.

Didn’t mean he had to like it.

Huntsman offered his hand to the kid again, and she didn’t hesitate before sliding her uninjured one into his. He tugged her forward, and she stumbled until her little body collided with his. And to keep her from escaping he placed his other hand on her back. “Who ever told you you ain’t allowed to be a damn kid, huh?”

“Nobody…”

“Kids don’t just pick up ‘delight to have in class’ from nowhere, I'm guessing it was a teacher?”

“No!”

“Then who's messing with the development of clan young? It’s been decades since this clan has had any young, and if our only child in thirty years has had her development messed with…” the kid let go of his hand and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“...Nobody has to… people are always sayin' stuff about how scary it is that me an’ Auntie are the only humans in our family… that you an’ Uncle Goliath eat people… That Daddy used to be handsome but now he’s just….i forget the word… The teachers wanna keep an eye on me, they keep saying that ‘demon behavior’ might rub off on me. And it’s stupid!” She pulled away to look at him again and she’d stopped crying, her face pinched in a pout. “It’s stupid cuz you an Uncle Goliath are super cool! And Daddy is Daddy! But they’re all scared and they shouldn’t be. But…” she looked away again and Huntsman took the opportunity to lift her into the air to steadily walk them back out into the living room. “But if I start bein’ a problem then they’re gonna think its your guys fault. It’s not, but they'll think it. And they're gonna do bad things cuz they’ll think they gotta and It’ll be my fault because I made problems and I can’t make problems!”

….huh….

“Maybe I should show those grownups how right they are about how dangerous I can be, if it upsets you that much.” The kid looked back up at him and he made sure to bear his fangs properly. She’d probably get scared too and he could remind her how he and Goliath were actually in fact quite dangerous, and while her father would never dream of hurting her, those ladies probably had the right idea, too.

And then the little shit laughed at him.

“You’re silly.” But just like that her mood was better. She leaned in and before he could tell her to buzz off or drop her she pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thanks for bandaging me Uncle Huntsman. But I messed up the eggs still so I gotta make another dinner.”

“If you really don’t wanna cause problems-” he dropped her, she landed on the couch harmlessly. “-Just tell the grownup in the room that you’re getting hungry. Don’t just assume you know what you’re doing.”

She fingered the bandages on her hand again when she sat down properly in the seat. “Okay. Sorry Uncle Huntsman.”

“Just because you don’t want to cause problems doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself. You’re literally a child.”

“Okay Uncle Huntsman.”

“Now out on one of your damn movies while I see if there’s anything edible left in this place.”

“Okay!”

More rebound than a beach ball apparently, that kid. Observant too, if she could connect probably idle chatter that… either teachers or parents of friends… would whisper about to not only her and hers, but also deduce the danger of her family being considered ‘scary’ and what she should do to combat it (whether it was a good idea or not)

He wondered how many of those scrapes she acted like she didn’t even notice were just her putting on a brave face because being seen as weak was suddenly something she thought she couldn’t afford to do.

… Minyi really was a tough kid, wasn’t she?

--

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