#I still wonder what his canon build was before being a cop but that one probably doesn't exist. he's all of them it's up to you

[bluastro-yellow]

I like to think that no matter what natural inclinations you give him, pre-amnesia Harry had high points in EVERYTHING thanks to all the drugs/alcohol/cigarettes that raised his learning caps and all the exp he got from churning cases like crazy. burned out supercop to the max!

[freshlyrage]

Running Like Water

Chapter 29

pairing: Javier Peña x OFC (written as xReader)

fic warnings: NSFW Explicit Smut (18+ MDNI) language, strained family relationships, mentions of drug abuse, discussions of insecurities and body image issues, daddy and mommy issues

fic tags: Best friends younger sister, Life-long crush, Friends to lovers, Unrequited love, slow burn, Push and Pull, Small Town Dynamics, Secret Relationships, latina MC, Fluff and Angst, OFC!Jessica Alba face claim, sorry Lorraine I'm bringing you into this, Time jumps, 2 year age gap, pre-canon

word count: 6.1k

IMPORTANT a/n: Hello! She's here....

I suggest reading The Holiday chapter I posted this Christmas, before this one.

I hope you enjoy. HEHEHE

December 1989

Javier’s uncle died very suddenly. 

Escobar didn’t. Javier swears he has spent twenty years of his life in Colombia. Tainted by death, sex and drugs. What is the point of anything when you’ve become desensitized to tragedy? Time slows each time. He can't keep count of how many hours he has spent outside of various buildings just waiting for medics to roll out the victims. Hours he spent, cigarette in hand just talking about what's next while bodies are wheeled away. Days spent in bed with women racking his bills sky high. Just because sometimes he can't come home to a bed empty.

 He had enough, he broke protocol and he knew that the hammer was to come down on him. He knew that the DEA was just as twisted, a fearful institution that only cared about profit. Because if there are no more cartels, there is no more DEA. The only goal was to kill the big man, capo, whatever you may have. Make the Americans proud, we did that. We killed The Drug Pin. But the cartel doesn’t just die with its leader but that's it, to the DEA, the performance is over and it's time to move on. Send them all home, leave the country in shambles. So fuck it, Javier was tired of being congratulated when he just felt like a bad guy. 

He knew the government, his organization, were aware of its corruption. There hadn't been a care. 

The rest of the guys were being reassigned and they asked him to resign quietly. After all he did for them. Bled himself dry. And all it took was for him announcing his disappointment for them to threaten being fired, tarnishing his reputation. 

Or of course, leave quietly and tell his colleagues he was just ready to settle down. 

Escobar and George Peña died on the same day. Javier wasn’t home for 3 days, he missed all the frantic calls from his father. On the third day he was asked to resign quietly. 

He went home, slept and drank. Skipped a session with Dr. Hertz. Ignored the phone calls that came in. Stared at the resignation form on his coffee table. Buried himself in a different cunt each night. 

Until he signed, packed his home and picked up the phone. 

Chucho Peña was one of 2 children. He was the baby, his brother was twelve when he came into the world. It was a rough age gap. They weren't always very close. George was around for the big milestones: Chucho's wedding, Javier’s birth, a few birthdays and there for his brother when his wife left. But mostly, George spent his time in his high rise apartment in Houston. It's where Javier lived for a year at age 15. When he wanted to be a cop, when Chucho took a chance and paid an ungodly amount for The School of Law and Order. 

George had just entered remission. He was diagnosed with melanoma a year prior, it wasn’t life threatening but still scary. Javier made sure he took his medication on time. 

He didn’t, he got sick again, how could he know? 

He finally called home and he was already buried. His father had to do it alone. 

That's when Javier decided to see Dr. Hertz again.

“Will you be continuing sessions back home?” Dr. Hertz had a furrow in her brow since the beginning of the session. Since told her about the resignation, about the death, about how fucking stressful it is to pack. He wonders if she’ll miss him.

“Are you still married?” He uncrosses his legs and ashes his cigarette on the tray next to his seat. Dr. Hertz has dealt with him for nearly three years. She just waves off his flirtation, she calls it a defense mechanism. An attempt to change the topic, ease the waters with something he’s good at. She’s immune to his ways. 

She laughs, “Yes. I am. Will you? Continue, therapy I mean.” 

“Happily?” Javier tilts his head. Dr. Hertz doesn’t entertain him any longer. He chuckles, “Sorry. I’m not sure. I don’t think I want to tell my story all over again to another person. Or professional I guess. Sounds fucking exhausting.” 

She nods, lips in  a fine line like she’s holding back. Javier sighs in annoyance knowing that face well. “Just say it Hertz.”

“Well,” She closes her notebook and he knows he’s in for it. “I think that you have made significant progress in dealing with your past. With your mother, with Andrea, with Lorraine. But life won't stop hurting you just because you worked some things out. And I know you. Very well. I know that the second you go home you’ll be contacting her.”

“Doctor I-”

“Nope. You know that's the truth. You might go home and she might be married, or pregnant or maybe you’ll come home and she’ll want you again. All of those realities come with struggle, and with change, and growth. You are capable, and very emotionally intelligent for a man your age so I’m not saying this to coddle you. But you should continue therapy, in any form. We all need to be heard. I don't care if it's bi-monthly. Or on and off for a few years. If everyone had a therapist we all wouldn’t have such a hard time handling the ups and downs of life.” She crosses her legs and locks eyes with him. “But, do what you believe is best for you. I will miss having you as my patient.”

His eyes fall to his shoes because fuck. “You’re right. I’ll probably need a shrink for the rest of my life simply based on all the dead bodies I've seen before the age of thirty.” He chuckles but she doesn’t reciprocate. She just opens her book again and goes right back into what she does best. Getting him to talk. 

“Talk to me about the resignation.”

“It’s like cancer. This fucked up institution. You know, my uncle George had melanoma at first. There on his skin,” Javier points to his elbow. “On the surface, and yes it made him sick. They removed it, and made him go through that radiation therapy. And the solution was a good one for a few years, but until it wasn’t. He was more susceptible to other cancers and years went by, and it was just everywhere. His blood, his colon. Topical solutions just don’t work like that. The sickness was systemic.” He leans back into his chair, legs spread. He hoped he wasn’t in pain. “Me, Murphy…” He pauses and thinks of the casket. “Carillo… we can’t be the medication. We don’t work. We haven’t worked. I’m aware, and I couldn’t be quiet about it. So whatever, I’ll take their hush money.” It was a lot. He can start working on the house he always said he’d build on the ranch this spring. He could have months of relaxation. Maybe get a degree, something.  “I’m a part of the problem too I guess.”

“You’re human. You deserve to breathe. We worked together for a long time and you still haven’t learned how to give yourself grace”

It was what he needed to hear. She has said it a million times but today it stuck. 

He’ll be home for the holidays.

“Are you in the right headspace to see your mom?”

“Is anyone ever in the right headspace to see their parents?” 

You sit on the floor of your bedroom, folding clothes. Honestly, you haven't spent a Christmas at home in years. You had no intention of heading back to Laredo until spring break. But you heard about the passing of George Peña. You hadn’t known the man but you knew that many of the Peña holidays were spent up at his home. It won’t be that way anymore and you’d love to visit him for this holiday. Bring him a gift, be there for him how he’s been there for you. 

Of course, you’ll go home. Your bedroom has a new bed for guests, so says your mother. You’ll see if maybe she’s interested in spending time with you. You don’t even think you’re going to try. You’re still curious if maybe she will.

Jaya walks to your calendar. “So you’ll be back… January 3rd?”

“Mhm.” You stretch out your leg with a wince. You had the nastiest scrape on your knee from this morning. You knew it’ll dry and crust by the time you get to Texas. 

In a rush to catch the subway today you tripped on the last stair and split right through your tights. You tried not to cry when you settled into the cart with blood trickling down your stocking. 

Jaya, who was already preparing her house sitting duties, placed cream on the scrape. 

She offered to stay at your place while you go back to Texas. Which means liberal use of her spare key to your apartment even before you leave. Crashing at your place after drinks with her boyfriend in your neighborhood. Or just showing up. But hey, she’s your best friend and she’ll be watching your birds for free. 

“I took two extra days off. Mr.Fyre will be covering for me.” You side eye her in anticipation for her questions. She smirks at you with a head shake. 

She rolls over in your bed, “That poor man. His dick still big?” 

You blush, “Yes. Too bad he finishes after ten seconds. Last week he was fucking me right there.” You point to the dresser and Jaya widens her eyes. “And he came the second he put it in. It was kind of hot. He fingered me afterwards so I forgave him.”

Mr. Fyre, Gregory Fyre. The hot new 24 year old substitute that you’ve been sleeping with for two weeks. He came in right after you cut it off with Christian. He walked in that teachers lounge and asked you to stop talking so loudly. The two of you ended up making out in the parking lot. 

He had you there on the dresser, knuckle deep in your cunt. While you tense your stomach and picture another face in front of yours. Gushing on his palms in ten seconds. 

Yeah. You’re fucked. 

At the very least he’s a man who can take a hint. So it’s been fun and easy. Easy to get off and you know, bye, get off now. 

“Your sex life is so interesting. Did he question why you were moaning the name Javier?”

You giggle tossing your panties at her. She catches it and twirls it on her finger before flinging it back at you. “That was one time, many months ago with Christian.” You cringe, “So it does not count.” 

Jaya sits up again, her face changing slightly. Here brows knitting and her eyes scanning the room. The habit of no eye contact that comes before she says something you don’t want to hear. Which happens more than you’d expect. She kept it real. You tilt your head at her gesture. “What if he’s there this time?” 

Brows lifting slightly you look back down at the dress in your lap and you continue to fold. You shrug. “He hasn’t been there every other time so-“

“You would purposely go home on random days of the year. It’s Christmas, Escobar's dead and you told me his uncle just passed.”

You frown at the realization. Washed over with reality. You know he hasn’t come home at all yet, you’re sure his job just doesn’t stop because Escobar is gone. But if it was anytime to visit , it would be now. You don’t respond and just place the dress in the luggage. “Will you be okay to see him?” 

“Yes?” She gives you a crazy glance and you can't even convince yourself.

“No. I don’t know. I'm not like angry at him because somehow his decision was a good one. I feel like… if he asked me to see him that day I would have never left town. Which by the way, has been the best decision ever.” You smiled at her and she smiled back. 

“So there’s no hard feelings.” She says it like it's bad. 

You know exactly why it could be a disaster. It's impossibly difficult to be angry at a person that could die at any moment in their line of work.

She continues to read you like a book. 

“It would be extremely easy to fall back into him when the only emotion you feel is sadness and longing.” You nod because she was always right. It would be so easy. So easy to find comfort in each other. So easy to see him and-“Whatever you do just promise me you won’t forget about your life here.”

You narrow your eyes and extend a pinky to her. 

She leans over the bed and you interlink. Sun peaks through your window and warms the two of you.

It’s the same sun. 

He knows it. 

It's the same. He knows you sit and feel it too. He can see you, looking outside the fire escape of your apartment. The sun offers you warmth in thirty degree weather. He does the same except it isn't so cold. It’s warm all around, hot even. He shares a sun with you and still feels like it's different. He misses you so badly that the thought of being warmed by the same star offers him a comfort beyond comprehension. 

Look where life has taken us. 

Javier is at the steps of the place he called home for a few years. All his belongings already ahead of him, delivered at the footstep of his fathers ranch. 

In less than a day, he’ll be dropped there just the same. Murphy has come to see him before he goes and they’ve been in a comfortable silence for a few minutes. Javier clears his throat, afraid to reveal himself. He was an open wound, a live wire. Afraid to come home and not see you. Even more terrified to come home and see you. 

“You tell Connie?” He asks. Murphy sniffles, holding his fists together. 

“That you're leaving?”

Javi nods, “Yeah.”

Murphy exhales, “Yes. She said it was the right choice. Then told me to break the rules so I could come back too.” He laughs a hearty one and Javier follows, rubbing his chin. It was professional, sure, but Steve and Connie became like family during his years. They were older, had their shit together, they were making it work. Connie could read Javi. She was the reason he decided to just go to see someone. “Maybe I should. Olivia can walk now. Can you believe that?”

Javier purses his lips with an exhale. “Jesus.” What he wouldn't give to have a family with you. He’d leave it all, all over again at least. He’d ruin his name, leave in the most dishonorable way if it meant coming back to you and his baby. It's silent again and it's too late. His thoughts betray him. You're all he can think about. You hated the holidays with your family. There was no way you’d choose to just come home now. 

The silence rang loud. Loud enough for Steve to hear his thoughts. 

“You’ve got to talk to that girl. Don’t waste anymore time.”

“She wont want to.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she's stubborn. Because I abandoned her when that's all she knew.”

Murphy shook his head , tapping his knuckle on the step between his legs in frustration and turned to Javi. “But you didn't. You let her go. You needed to. She needed to heal in her own way. You needed help, you fucking got it.” Murphy’s lips twitch. “And listen man, I know we made that pact two years ago. If you go, I go. When it came to therapy, I stopped going to that shit after 2 months.”

Javi’s jaw drops, brows furrowing. He was almost there, on the verge of tears but there Murphy goes. Making him laugh. “What?”

“Yup. And I’ve been lying to you because I saw something in you change-”

“You fucking asshole.”

“You’re fucking welcome Agent Peña.”

Javi scoffs with a chuckle and reaches in his pocket for his pack. “Yeah whatever.” 

“Yeah yeah. If all the stories you told me about that girl are true, there is no way she isn’t waiting for you.” 

“I didn’t wait.” There it is, that guilt he felt for years. The guilt he felt after finding pleasure with others. The stomach churning pain that came with being forehead to forehead, breathless, coming down, and opening his eyes and seeing a face unfamiliar.

Murphy shakes his head. “I didn’t mean it that way. None of that matters.”

A beep has the two flinching. Looking up at the taxi. Javier's heart is suddenly loud enough to ring his ears. The two stand to their feet and hug. Tightly, a brotherly hold he isn;t used to but welcomes. “Sorry If I was ever-”

Murphy shakes his head, “Don't worry about all of that. Make sure you check in on my girls.” They part and Javier nods like it's his duty. “And you know. Be kinder to yourself and just…” He pats his shoulder, “Just reach out to that fucking girl.” Javier feels the pat like a push, like a shove. 

Then he goes on his way, thinking of you like he does.

Melissa Diaz knows that it’s too late and frankly she feels like she’s too old to repair her relationship with her daughter. Each time you come home there's a thick air of discomfort. Like you're a stranger in your childhood home. Each conversation is laced with the unspoken toxicity that is your relationship with your mother. Too many years of hurt just to speak comfortably. 

Which is precisely why you decide to get a hotel room this time around. 

You unpack what you can, glancing at the clock to figure out if you have time to shave before driving to your moms. You promised to help her bring the gifts to Chucho’s house tonight. You had only flown in 5 hours ago. You decided those 5 hours were for your own mental preparation. 

The truth is, when you remove yourself from a toxic environment the second you get back you realize that your tolerance is close to none. So you decide to not only stay away but also give yourself time to brace yourself so you don’t ruin Christmas. 

And this Christmas was different. It was for Don Chucho. You knew that he’ll be over the moon to see you. Thrilled to have the kids running around his house. Javier always said that Chucho would have had 10 children if life hadn’t gotten in the way. He loved the holidays but now that his only family is gone, you knew you had to be here. You had an hour so you scurry to the bathroom and shave, wash the New York off of you and step out a true Texas girl. 

Black sweater dress and stockings rubbing against your split open knee. Chanting, fuck, fucking fuck, fucker, fuck when rolling the thing on. Spritzing yourself in the orange blossom of Night Musk by Prince Matchabelli. Feeling strangely anxious to spend the holidays back home. There was a sense of excitement to see your siblings and niece. Excitement to watch the kids open gifts, yet splitting nerves at the thought of being back on the Peña ranch. 

Excited to drink Coquito, listen to Hector Lavoe, dance and eat. 

You grab your purse, grab the sack containing all the gifts you accumulated for your family over the month and head out to your car. 

You get to your mothers house in fifteen short minutes, not even given time to get into the house and say hello before she’s out on the steps very frantic. Cursing in Spanish about Sol staining her dress. James, not taking anything seriously as always, unloading the Christmas gifts into the trunk of your rental and kissing your cheek welcoming you back home. You hardly had a relationship with your mothers husband, sometimes you wondered how a dynamic like theirs worked. He was a reserved, ultra-relaxed and goofy guy. Your mother, a tornado of frantic emotions and anxiety. It seems he was never phased by all of it. Maybe a part of you envied it. Envied being loved enough to be accepted. 

Your four year old sister seemingly unphased as well by Melissa’s tirade while she’s on her knees at the doorstep wiping ice cream from her red dress. Sol zeroed in on you, waiting for her mother to quit the distressed cleaning so she could run to hug you. Her knees buckling and moving from side to side in anticipation. “Stop all the moving.”

“But it’s my sister!” She whines and you smile at her with arms crossed at the side of your rental. Your mother sighed and let her free. She patters against the driveway in tiny black flats and into your arms.

Disfunction and all, you head to Chucho’s house. Sleigh Ride by The Ronettes ringing loud on the local station. Not a flake on the ground, fifty degree weather, Frankie’s car trailing behind, homes and picket fences littered in green and red.

 Christmas in Laredo was in full swing. 

The moment you notice that Don Chucho’s driveway was full you begin to panic. 

The second you park, Genie crowds your car. Little Annie’s face squished against her mothers shoulder. Asleep already. You hop out of the car and pull her into a hug that stirs the baby. “Sorry!” You whisper, a December breeze causing a rise of hair. Your brother joining in on the hug. 

“Merry Christmas.” He whispers, kissing your cheek and his daughters who stirs again. A little girl, too big to be carried but he grabs her anyway. Spoiled little thing. “All of Chucho’s friends are here already apparently. The whole town is in there.” He laughs and you furrow your brows.

“Amazing.” You deadpan. Of course, what could you expect from a Christmas Eve in your hometown. A place where everybody's family is yours even if they don’t like you. You nod and look around to see if everyone is ready to head in, hoping they weren’t so you could breathe. But when you look up you see James picking up Sol and heading toward the house you knew you were running out of time. Frankie’s gaze is burning and he’s reading your body language like a book. How much has changed between the two of you. It took a marriage and a baby to understand you. You'll take what you can get because when he places his hand on your arm you feel the surge of courage.

Genie comes to your other side and you follow your mothers footsteps. 

Despite the Chucho house being a second home to your family, your mother still knocks. Even when the holiday music is so loud it bleeds through the windows covered in Christmas gel clings. She knocks politely, of course. Then pounds after a few seconds of silence. Making her fiance snort and Sol giggle. 

The door swings open, meeting a smiling Chucho whose eye’s haven't landed on you. “Que bueno! Feliz Navidad.” He brings your mother into a hug, then James, and tickles Sol. His eyes then fall to yours and he takes a step back. His brows furrowed for a moment and you wonder if he knows something you don’t. But then he smiles and pulls you into a hug at the doorway of his home. “Andrea, wow. I’m so– when did you get here?” His hold is tight and he smells like he’s been in the kitchen all day. He smells faintly of Javier. 

A smell you thought you forgot until you were hit so rudely with it. It creates a pit in your stomach that you know you can’t shake. He’s excited you can tell but his body language isn’t what you expected. 

“We're going to settle the girls in.” Frankie holds your shoulder for a moment and your family leaves you in the hall. You hear them in the next room giving excited hellos and cheek kisses. Giving you privacy in a crowded room. Still, with a face of worry, anticipating your response. 

“I flew in this morning. You know it’s the holidays.” Which meant nothing, considering you hadn’t stayed for Christmas in the past two years. You smile weakly, afraid of his reaction. Eyes shifting across your face and he lifts an arm to hold your own. Like he’s bracing you. 

His hat casts a shadow on his face in this dimly lit hallway. Behind his head is that god awful picture of you in your cap and gown. Surrounding it are baby pictures of Javier, Frankie and Genie at their wedding, images of his brother and Javier straight faced in police attire. “I didn’t know you were coming– I was going to call to tell you–”

“Papi, was it fifteen minutes for the artichoke?” 

You and Chucho both snap your heads at him. Your brain short circuiting. Chucho letting out a sigh and you so desperately want to let out a sob. Your chest rises and he’s staring at you with stars in his eyes. Fork in hand, hair overgrown and a Kiss The Cook apron. 

You gaze at Javier Peña after three difficult years. Three years of concern, of healing, of yearning. Of–of, fuck you can’t think. He’s here. He’s here and all you want to do is hug him. Wrap your arms around him and melt into one. 

But he’s there in between the cased opening of the kitchen and the living room. Stealing the attention of your family that havent seen him in just as long. Still, his brows furrow and he takes a step forward. “Andrea.” He doesn’t say it like a question, he says it like it’s been on the tip of his tongue for years. 

“Javi!” Your brother shouts from the living room and runs straight into him. Taking the attention from your body while it floats somewhere unknown. Genie follows, and your mother. Hugging, and kissing and questioning and shoving babies in his face. Still you stare and he looks over his shoulder at you and his father at the doorway. There, you float, unable to feel, zero gravity. Soaring with your feet on the ground and your heart pounds so loud you feel it in your ears. 

Chucho looks back at you. “He came home today too. If I knew-”

You frown, absolutely turning down whatever blame he must be putting on himself. “No-no. Please, it’s okay.” You wonder if other fragile things would like to be treated with less care. You suck in a sharp breath and nod. “I’ll– I just need a moment.” Your jaw clenches trying to prevent your emotions from steam rolling your logic.

Your emotions that tell you to cry and run into his arms. Or your logic that tells you to take a step back to remember the speech you practiced if you ever saw him again. You swallow and look up at him again and turn away. 

Javier watched you open the front door and walk out. His heart sinking, he wanted to fall to his knees and beg you to look at him for just more than three seconds. He tunes out the questions from everyone he loves. He’ll feel bad about it tomorrow. He looks up Genie who noticed his fixation on the front door you just stepped out of and she presses her lips together and tilts her head toward the door. 

Javier takes the olive branch. He just needs to talk to you. Even if you tell him to go fuck yourself or slap him, or spit in his face. He’ll invite it in. Accept it. Accept anything if it’s coming from your dear hands or delicate mouth. You rot him from the inside out, spoiled love for him. He can’t love anyone else. So it’s worth a try. 

He steps away from the chattering circle with a murmur of, one second, and he walks out of the house. 

The brisk December air cools his cheeks instantly. Christmas time is strange. Its the only holiday that has a distinct feeling. A feeling of stress, comfort, and emptiness only served with a red bow and yellow lights. He expects to find you right on the porch but you're at the bottom of the stairs. Arm supporting your elbow while you bite your thumbnail nervously. The string lights on the porch roof illuminating your beautifully made up face, and the tears that came with it. 

Javier stands at the top, afraid to speak. Twirling the stupid fucking fork in his hand. Feeling like an idiot in his outfit. I would have dressed nicer if I knew you’d be here. You look just as beautiful, different, but still. Your natural curls framing your face, black dress high up on your neck and stockings connecting to black boots. Please speak to me. 

You wipe your tears and turn your chin up. Strong girl. Arms crossed, you begin your interrogation, 5 steps between you. “How are you home?” Not a quiver in your voice.

He fights the urge to just ignore your question and run down those stairs and kiss you, wipe your tears, take you away. But he decided to stop being selfish years ago so he answers. “I resigned two weeks ago. I’m back home indefinitely.” He clears his throat. “Forever- I’m back here forever- I mean.” He rasps and you don’t hide your shock. Still you hold composure, eyes gaping a bit but shrinking in an emotion he can't read. Your brows furrow. 

Licking your lips, “Your turn.”

Javier’s brows knit closely, “My turn–?”

“Your turn.” Gesturing for him to continue. “You ask a question.”

“Andrea– can we please-”

“No- This is how I want to do it. So we can fucking get back inside and enjoy Christmas.”

Don’t you know I can't seem to enjoy anything if you aren’t mine? 

“Are you single?” It’s his first question and you scoff. He shrugs, finding no shame. He needs to know now, before he becomes too hopeful. Before he creates a mess because let's be real, if she’s seeing someone, she won't be after this week.

“Yes. Did you really see a therapist in Colombia?”

Javier smirked, pleased to know that you asked about him. Still you don’t crease at his growing smile. So he bites it back because it looks like you want to rip his head off. “Yes. I went every Thursday for almost three years. She’s finding me a new one in our area.”

“She?”  You snap. 

And lord forgive him for how the blood rushed to his dick. All of this felt like the conversation you had in 1986 when he came home. He hopes this Christmas ends with you pinned against his bedroom door and him telling you that he will do anything to make it work. His chin juts in a mocking way, playing with fire. “You jealous?”

Your nostrils flare. “You fuck her?”

“Eh. My turn.” He reminds you of the rules of your own game. You purse your lips and he likes to way they pout. “Are you mad at me for asking you not to come see me after the wedding?” It's the question that haunted him. He begged forgiveness from no one, torturing himself for pushing you away. Hoping you understood his intentions and didn’t see it as an invitation for you to stay away forever. But the more time that past, more days of no calls from you, he feared that maybe he fucked it all up.

Your eyes drop. Allowing the sounds of Christmas bells and chatter fill the wind between you two. 

“I was angry for a brief amount of time. Then I just felt sad for you. Because I know–” There it was, the crack. “I know you were put through so much and you didn’t want me to pick up the pieces. I would have you-” You look up at him, cheeks stained now. And he knows.

“You would have. I couldn’t let that happen again. I was tired of hurting you.”

“My hands are still scarred. I’ll re-open any wound for you.” 

His gums itch and his chin quivers at that. “Do you still feel that way?” He breaks the rules and you don’t seem to care anymore. 

“Of course. It's hard being angry at someone who is so far–who was putting their life on the line of their work. Javi– I’d get so sick from worry-” Fuck it, he takes those steps down to you. Cradling your soft face in his hands, thumbs brushing away tears. You fade into him. “I missed you so much.”

“Andrea, I missed you. None of my colleagues liked me because I was so riddled with grief.” He leans in so close, so close he could see the small freckles that hide in the winter. “I didn’t even want to try to get to know anyone.” He thinks of the faceless women that took him to a climax before they were on their way. Sadistically, he hoped you at least found comfort in someone. 

You close your eyes and he leans in to kiss you. You turn your face, rejecting him but he doesn’t care. He kisses your cheek in earnest and tastes your tears. Planting soft kisses up your cheek.

 “Are you seeing anyone?” 

He pauses his kisses and chuckles. “No.”

“Okay.” Eyes, opening you get on your tiptoes and wrap your arms around his neck. Nails entangling in the back of his hair and he’s in heaven. What a privilege it is to be touched by you. Kissing his cheek yourself. “I won't kiss you.”

He was in heaven, your soft lips nipping at his face and his neck. He groans, “That's okay.” You nod against him. Moving your head to the other side of his face, exposing your neck while you kissed his face. He presses his lips to your neck. 

“I need time…” You moan, “To think.” Your nails scrape the nape of his neck and he’s getting harder each passing second. How the fuck did I end up here? 

“That’s okay– When do you go back– fuck don’t press up on me like that.” Her belly caused a friction in his pants that would definitely spoil the holidays.

“January third– sorry.” You suck on his neck and he groans once more. “Will you sleep with me tonight?”

“Yes.” He says it like it was a no brainer because it was. Whatever mess came with this, he was fully equipped this time. Nothing holding him back. Besides the fact that she lives in fucking New York of course. You pull back from him and he feels the pit in his stomach grow darker and deeper. No, come back, bite me. 

“Not like that. I just want to be in bed with you.” 

He shrugs, he’ll take whatever he can get. “That's okay. My place or–”

“I have a hotel.”

He shakes his head, craning his head to press his lips against your ear. “If we get into that hotel room I’ll have no choice but to fuck you into that mattress.” he whispers but he means every word. He doesn't care if it’s too fragile to be this forward.

“Your place then.” You step away from him and he feels a great loss in his soul. Eyes roving to the door. “We are being suspicious. We should go inside.”

“I’m not hiding anything this time. If you want to use me for this week as a sleeping companion or a fuck toy or I don’t know a mortal enemy I’ll take it and everyone can mind their fucking business.” Javier snaps, he doesn’t care if you're just making an irrational decision because you miss him. He fucking misses you too, if it means two weeks of playing house- so be it.

Dr. Hertz would be so disappointed. 

“Or… Maybe just a friend.” You lie straight through your teeth and he lets you. You straighten your dress and wipe the remaining tears on your cheek and walk right past him. 

“Wasn’t it you that told me that you didn’t know how to be my friend in the winter?”

 It rings out in the air. He can picture it, Christmas eve 1979. You half asleep at The Smithfield’s Christmas party. You had been so jittery and distant. His idiot teenage brain couldn’t comprehend that the love you had for him made you act outside yourself, especially since for the first time ever you watched him show love to another girl. 

Your lips twitch in a smile, seemingly shocked that he remembers just as much as you. 

“Merry Christmas.”

[yanderes-galore]

May I ask for a romantic tfa swindle with a human oneshot? I absolutely love transformers x human!

This is going to be based on one of the lines in my Swindle concept :) I hope you enjoy! Using the design of TFA, doesn't actually take place in a futuristic time period.

I could've taken this a lot of ways but this is what came to mind first, sorry if it was poorly executed-

Out of Gas

Yandere! TFA! Swindle with Human! Darling Short

Pairing: Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Stalking, Threats, Manipulation, Kidnapping, Implied forced relationship, Transformer/Human pairing, Murder.

How long were you on the road? By the time you left your home in your car it was daylight, wasn't it? Now the sun was setting... your heart kept hammering in your chest like a rabbit's kick.

You wondered if you were still being followed? That greenish vehicle with the purple windows was still following you. You first encountered it circling your home hours ago, then you thought it was following your every move-

You had no idea what they wanted from you! Were you targeted by something? Either way, your instinct was just to drive.

Drive until you can get someone to help you.

As a result you had no idea how long you were driving. You were scared to get out of the car. All you wanted to do was drive until they lost interest... or ran out of gas.

You tried to slow your breathing, looking into your rear mirror. Nothing was there anymore but that still didn't calm you. That car was still out there.

Your grip on your steering wheel doesn't relent as you look at your gas gauge. Your heart sinks when you realize it's near empty. Speaking of running out of gas... you sigh.

Your next stop was a gas station where you could hopefully get help, rest, and relieve yourself of this issue. You bite your lip in thought before executing your plan. Using the fact your stalker has parted from you to your advantage, you look go to the closest gas station.

It's relatively quiet with very few cars in the parking lot. You quickly park your car and tap away at the pump. Your eyes dart to the road periodically to scan for purple windows and new headlights.

Nothing.

Once you were done you park your car and quickly head inside. You make your way to the front counter and motion for the cashiers attention. They catch your worried face.

"Can I help you?" They ask.

"Someone's following me, they've been doing so all day. I need to call the cops."

"Sure, sure... here, I'll get you the phone."

The wait is an agonizing few seconds before you're passed a phone. You focus on typing the emergency number, barely hearing the heavy footsteps as you answered the phone and gave your details. Until they got close enough to shake you.

"Hellooo~ Anybody in there?"

Glowing purple eyes, large ones, peer through the glass of the station. Oh you couldn't believe your eyes... no one in the store could. A large robot scanned the store.

Then those eyes landed on you.

"Oh there you are, doll! Gave up on our game of chase? Ran out of gas? Poor you... now you're sheltering with all those humans."

You stand still, paralyzed with fear.

"How cute..." The... robot (?) purrs. "But you're coming with me still."

The cashier gives you a fearful look. The cops were on the way, but what could they do against this? His colors were very similar to the car...

Was he...?

"Now humans... I have a deal for you." The purple con starts. "Give me that human right there..." He points to you. "and no one gets hurt, okay?"

You feel eyes staring into you... you feel your skin crawl. Did it just turn everyone against you? Could you hold out?

"Doll..." The con drawls. "Won't you come out? I promise I'll spare their lives if you just come with me...."

Fearful silence.

"Do you think I'm bluffing?" He pulls a large laser canon and points it at the building. "I'm fully capable of danger, dear...."

"Who even are you!?" You ask, still unable to move.

"Call me Swindle, doll... Sorry I never told you. Hard to do when I have to be in alt mode all time...."

"You've... been the one following me-"

Swindle is clearly impatient and vents, tempted to just smash the glass.

"Of course! I thought you'd be a great partner for me. It was just so hard to talk to you with all your paranoia! Now... come out, will you?"

"Partner?"

"Oh, you humans have so many questions.... Yes, partner! You are quite the cute little human, you know that, doll? This may sound... sudden to you, but I've picked you to travel with me! If you just come with me... I won't hurt any of these humans! I'll just acquire you and we'll leave."

Swindle sees your face of confusion and realizes he's only going to hear questions. He just wasn't sure how to explain this to you. How does he when he's a Cybertronian whose fallen for a human? How does he exhibit the internal conflict you create within him to the point he wants to take you away?

You don't.

You simply take what you want.

A robotic hand crashes through the gas station. Screams fill the air, yours being the loudest when you feel the cold appendage wrap around you. Swindle ignores it, simply picking you up as if you weigh nothing before glancing around the area.

The Decepticon scoffs, running away from the scene before aiming his laser cannon. You look horrified at his actions... get used to it, doll. This is punishment.

The sound of an explosion nearly bursts your ear drums, the sound of ringing blocking your hearing as Swindle watches the carnage he's caused. He's grinning. No evidence.

"It's what happens when you don't hear an offer out, doll..." The con chimes, purple eyes flicking over you. You can't hear him... you only stare. Swindle then gives a closed eye grin before opening a drawer on his chest. "Now I think it's time I claim the merchandise, right?"

Your fear rises when he hovers you over it. It's... hard to see what's inside. Swindle gives you one last look... one of triumph... before letting go.

"I'll let you out later, okay, partner?"

[accidentally-in-fictional-love]

The Simon fic with the prompt hit me like a brick.

It was SOO GOOD, i really bow before you, you’re very good at what you do. The Hotel was such a nice little unique detail, really feels like you’ve given Simon more depth which i appreciate. Overall it’s such a nice change of pace from what i normally see written for him. Thank you for “fixing him” <3

ohmygosh thank you so much 💗😭💗 like I said in the notes I have a lot of feelings about him, and when I was thinking up how to tie the prompt to his canon I was wondering how to get the reader close enough to him to say it when we don't really see a ton of him outside of his villain plot, and what we do see is everyone just beating him down the whole time because they think he sucks.

It's good for short things where you can make him into whoever you need him to be for your plot and use those brief moments to still keep him in character however you interpret him, but since the prompt is intimate that made it a little harder for me to work up to, so I decided to go a little deeper and add him to my Deep Dive List of Characters I Really Enjoy and Need to Fully Interpret My Way.

More under the cut, it's finally deep dive time and I ended up writing a ton, here we goooooo

Okay so to start, here's what we do know about him from on screen things and context clues, things mentioned in passing:

He really is good with building things. Obviously the bomb collars weren't bought online, his credit card statements mention 'electronic equipment' and they have to figure out on the fly how to disarm them, they're something they haven't seen before. He also owns a giant satellite so he more than likely figured out how to hook it up to his minicam system so he could get the feed no matter how far they travelled, as well as keep his stream from being properly locked onto. He was only training in the Academy so he never actually made the bomb squad before he was kicked out, and it all just tells me he's gotta be smart, handy, his memory must be damn good to remember what he learned before his removal, and he for sure knows how to work with tech well enough that he didn't blow himself up while building the things.

He has a temper. It's seen the most when Jeannie is saved, that entire end of the stream did him no favours with him broadcasting how she felt towards him while everyone was on her side. When he hears her call him creepy he looks hurt, but to have everyone agree switches it to anger, panic, how dare she do this to him when he was finally getting the attention he deserves. When she's saved it's just insult to injury, she gets to bring him down this time to his face pretty much, have 5000 people join in on that, and when she not only lives he becomes the target of their hate before leaving him. It's no surprise he breaks his screen after this, he's just been insulted to high hell, and he's just learned that the man who did it got a second chance after doing way worse things than he did. I believe his temper stems from other emotions first, like sadness and panic, he only gets mad after everyone leaves, when the cops show up to save Kennex and them being on site could mean his arrest or worse, and when he's already emotionally vulnerable about venting about his black marks. He's never mad right out the gate, annoyed or frustrated yes but never truly angry, so I'll bet a lot has to build up first before his temper turns vocal or physical. I don't doubt a bit of this showed itself during the loan meeting, which got him the title of unstable if he started getting overwhelmed and worked up when things started going south.

He's desperate for attention and getting it makes him emotional. This one doesn't fully show until the end, but the entire episode is nothing but him vying for attention and approval and even respect. He's been nothing but rejected leading up to this, 'unstable,' 'unqualified,' 'creepy,' 'gives a bad feeling,' he had a bad psych evaluation, so when he finally gets that approval when he tries his killing game something clicks, this is it, this is what he's been yearning for. No more doubt, the viewers love it, he gets to enjoy seeing the people who hurt him get hurt, and having those two things overlap fills him with actual joy to the point that it makes him cry. It genuinely makes me wonder just how lonely he had to be and how bad his mental health had gotten for it to build up to this point, get this bad all around, and I truly believe that having someone there for him while all the bad things were happening could've avoided his turn to villainy entirely.

He truly believes that this is justice. They hurt him, insulted him, they deserve to pay. He really is a villain here, there is no denying that, but I also think he's probably completely isolated outside of work, and all that loneliness and isolation and pain can convince you to do anything, that what you're doing is right, and this time it convinced him that revenge was the best medicine. He thinks that using them to get him the attention he believes he deserves will also help his pain, no more reminders of being rejected, it'll be cathartic, and when people start cheering him on it only solidifies that thought. This is what they want to see, now he can deliver and feel better at the same time, two birds with one stone, no more villains out there to hurt him and others while he's finally respected.

He might work from home. When he sees Kennex during the stream he appears to look him up immediately, so he might have access to the trashed data from home, or he's made it so he can access it away from work, which again ties into how smart he is. This one isn't as big, but working from home would only isolate him more and send his mental health straight into the garbage with how much I already doubt he gets out, which would make his desire for positive attention even stronger; this is something I can relate to since my only means of social interaction is through my family and work seeing as I don't have any local friends, I know how your mental health can tank when it's just you alone in your room for days with no one to talk to, think pandemic times only it never ends, so I just know if this one is true then this is probably why he latched on so hard to every other point.

He's 'creepy'. This one I cannot fathom, since we don't get to see him outside of villainy stuff, but I will also fully admit that my DD bias also doesn't believe he was creepy enough to ditch before the date even started, that is legitimately so cold. I mean, he brought roses and packed a picnic, he was clearly trying, and he did want to meet someone enough to make a dating profile, even left it up after he was dumped, although I do bet he abandoned it after that since oh my god my heart would be so broken if that happened to me, writing that part of the fic nearly made me cry. Since she did leave before the date started he must've said or done something to give her that vibe, but like in the fic I bet it was something probably along the lines of not knowing how to talk to people and having it come off wrong; maybe he was overly affectionate right away and asked for hugs or a cheek kiss that first meeting, gave off the impression of needy/clingy right away and like she'd have no choice but to leave early? Like if she said something he would put her in danger and/or not let her leave? If something like this had happened before there would probably be more warnings in the forums for people to stay away, not just hers, so my guess is that a bunch of things happened that made her too wary, and that mixed in with the callout that he may or may not have seen hurt him bad enough to make sure she was on his list. She was probably the first match he made on the site as well, or really was his first date, so finally feeling wanted and then getting burned so bad did not help his already bad mental health.

Despite his knack for tech, he wanted to open a bar. This one is so interesting to me because why of all things would he want to open a bar? He was training to be on the bomb squad, he works part-time in Data Waste Handling, and he's smart enough to build things and quite possibly code and/or hack, so why a bar? This is another thing I really had to think about while writing since it stands out to me so much, and I think I might've been onto something with his desire to connect with people; they could've given him any reason to want that loan, it could've been to help get a better place or at least expand his trailer (my aunt and uncle did that and goddamn it turned into such a beautiful two-story house, no joke you can't even tell unless you already know), it could've even been to start a different business entirely based around the previous things they built up for him, and instead he wants to open such a social thing in a future where tech is already super advanced. I truly believe he was really trying to connect with people via this desire, his attempts to date, but thanks to his black marks haunting him as well as his social and personality problems it only pushed him further into his isolation.

I don't think he ever realized that not everything was terrible because of his black marks. As mentioned above I think his isolation and poor mental health convinced him that hurting people was the right thing to do, but I also think that he genuinely could not see that not everything was because of that bad psych eval. I think that he started rationalizing things away, blamed everything on the eval, and refused to acknowledge when something was actually his fault, creating a terrible personality that did not help his cause at all. I don't think he knew how bad he himself had gotten, and as such saw no need to work on himself, since it all went back to that black mark, so all that rationalizing warped his personality and made him bitter, stubborn, and cruel.

He really did kill someone. I had forgotten about this since it's only shown on screen so you have to pause, this one will be talked about more below.

Now, here's some things that the reader's presence and I changed based on canon:

He has a second job. We don't know how long ago the loan was, but I'm guessing it had to be recent and stacked on top of the heartbreak, which was only a couple months ago according to Jeannie. I don't think he'd have been a pretty good bartender with that little social interaction, so having him work in another bar to learn the ropes and teach him first would've been very good for him while he saved up. In my fic I never had it mentioned on his dating profile since DWH seemed more professional, and since he didn't actually get the bartending job he wanted he might not have wanted to add in Waiter to that section to make himself look a little better.

He doesn't drive, or at least doesn't currently own a car. It's a small detail, and Jeannie does mention that she bailed when he went to the car to get the picnic basket, but I wanted to give the reader an excuse to drive him around. This one was a purely plot-related choice but it works so well with how much things aren't going for him. Maybe when he got evicted he lived in his car for a while, it's how he was able to keep his computer and remaining things safe, and when he was buying his trailer he had to sell it to get the money? I can see that, I should've written that in the fic itself OTL

Jeannie asked him out, not the other way around. Since the reader was there to tell him to wait, he didn't rush into things, which he might've in canon, but he still did ask her to meet him at the park. I also chose to go the tech route instead of clingy route for their date because yeah it's such a bad start to tell someone you know where they work within five minutes of meeting them. Still creepy, but in a consistent-with-my-narrative misunderstood way since the reader knows him and how that wasn't his intention, in fact he probably thought it was okay because he was blinded by excitement and the fact that the reader already gave him permission to look them up, so he figured it'd be fine to do it again in case he did want to surprise her. Dumb of ass and clueless, not malicious or dangerous.

He needed encouragement to go through with his canon choices. He still would've done them, but having the reader there to cheer him on has him go into both situations with hope and more confidence than he probably had in canon, which only makes the fact that he still had to fail hurt so much more. He also probably went in with less volatile reactions, especially with the loan, since my version of him has him actively talking with people and has his emotions more under control, so I wanted to blame his rejection entirely on the psych eval instead of what had to be a mix of both.

His self-worth is directly tied to his canon situations. It isn't mentioned at all straight out in either canon nor fic but I dialed this one down; in canon he believes that people should've respected him, which screams delusions of grandeur based on too many times getting rejected mixed in with being unable to see the problems in his own life caused by himself, and blatantly ignoring them while blaming them on his black marks. In my fic the highest it gets is him believe that he deserved basic human decency after he keeps getting shot down over and over due to misunderstandings. This isn't a man who's about to become a vigilante for the views, this is someone who just needs anybody to be there for him, tell him it's okay, help him work through where he went wrong and adjust what he did so he doesn't fail in the future. Maybe one canon presence in his life could've led to this path and the episode could've gone entirely different with someone else while he lived a normal life, but sadly it isn't which is the entire reason I'm doing this deep dive in the first place.

He was able to open the bar with the reader's help. This one is only implied, as well as the fact that he now lives with them, but I feel like if he did have someone like that on his side then he'd have had a better chance at getting that loan, and he would be so much happier and social and mentally well thanks to it. Running the place would take up a lot of his time but it would also get him outta his own head a lot more, and having so many other people around directly interacting with him as the boss instead of sometimes ordering him around as an employee would really help him fix any remaining personality issues all around as well since he'd be more aware of how he was acting and treating others.

He killed someone in self-defense, not to actually hurt them. This was a big one, since it happened before the episode and he obviously was released prior to this, and I feel like if this was an actual homicide he kinda would still be in prison, right? His mugshot looks recent (only because of filming which I get but I'm rolling with it), so it couldn't be too long ago, but it's more than likely closer to present in canon than the five years ago I timed his eviction around, since I think if that happened too close then he would just be a mess. I can't see him getting his DWH job immediately after either thing happened, going for a loan after either is so out of the question as well, and killing someone and then going on a date is just ridiculous. For canon, my guess is that an argument escalated and that temper of his as well as the unstableness and reasons for his bad psych eval all came out at once, or maybe this was a test to see if he actually could kill someone, and it either had to happen before or while he was in the Academy like in my fic, or it happened in the two months leading up to the episode, even though I can't for the life of me explain him getting out so soon if he did do it on purpose. And that's fine, it does make sense if either of those are close, they needed something dramatic to put on his rap sheet and make him terrible so he's not just randomly jumping straight to murder, but I personally like the idea of him being broken down so much that this is just the icing on the cake, another black mark on his life that'll follow him forever, and it's only through him being acquitted and a miracle that he gets his two jobs a year or two later.

Things I'd love to explore in future fics:

He might actually enjoy streaming. This one is obvious but I wanna do my own take on it! I don't know if he would be the type to stick to only games, but there is someone I watch who does whatever makes him happy now as well as games, and I think Simon might mesh with that a lot. He would obviously put a lot of weight on the numbers aspect of it (again, very me-coded, it doesn't matter how much I do things for myself, having that approval makes all the difference in the world and I know he's the same), but the reader would help him try and get over that in time. When he's able to hire more staff and spend more time at home I think he would do random weekend streams, and if he got AH's version of the youtube play buttons he would definitely cry and put it on display with pride. He would treasure all his viewers, and make his streams very personal because of that, learning frequent viewers' names, doing stuff like giveaways and shoutouts, give all the appreciation back to them.

He would need to realize he needs to work on himself, no more excuses. While he is miles better in my fic, he still very obviously has depression, emotional issues, and relies too much on what others think of him, so him working on that and finding happiness in what he does have will do him wonders. Of course having the reader there every step of the way will also help him heal that much faster as he goes through it all.

I think that's everything! I did not wake up this morning expecting to write my first deep dive on Simon of all people lol but I'm glad I did, I relate a lot to parts of him, this is how I personally see him and how I wrote my fic based around all this, and I mean no harm if any of my thoughts conflict with anyone else's who checks this out 💗

Also as a bonus, I said it in the tags but the Hotel is real :D it's an ooooold restaurant in my small town directly across from where I live, and back when I was either in or just out of highschool they rebranded from the Hotel to what it is now, had to shut down and everything as they changed everything up inside and added in a bunch of new décor to fit the theme. Everyone calls it by the new name of course, but my family never really started, so whenever we talk about ordering from there we'll say something like, 'wanna get Hotel tonight?' I too have to correct myself whenever I accidentally say it around people who don't know about the old name lol

I always add in stuff from my personal life into my fics in some way, and since Simon wanted to open the bar I thought it'd be sweet if he and the reader bonded over something food related like I did with Joshua, instead of say meeting up for drinks instead and just getting afternoon drunk every Friday since it directly went with him wanting to be a bartender.

Maybe in the future I can do a drabble about a bar date before he and the reader get together, tie in that he also started to take lessons in preparation for applying for the bar he works for at the start of the fic, something sweet like that as they get closer 🥰

[ourdillo]

Since you keep giving me homework I'll give you more homework TWO can play at this game >:v

🌌 🍃 🍀 - Pip

💥 🍰 ❇️ - Jet

I'll get my revenge when my brain works and I can ask more good or silly ones!

[PIP.]

🌌 "What was the inspiration behind your OC? What was the first thing you decided about them?"

So the main inspiration was late 90s/early 2000s platformer mascots in videogames like Ty, Crash, Banjo as well as none furred ones like Shantae as a huge example of inspiration. As for the design I wanted to make someone cute who could roll around on adventures and then my mindset wondered *"What would he search for?"* for neat collectibles that's when I thought of cheese and settled on a mouse! Worked out great too as I've already thought of how he could use his tail in his moveset like a tail whip as a attack or using his tail as a spring for higher jumps. The first thing I decided about him was his fur and costume, I wanted him to have a more silverish grey compared to his brother who has white fur. The outfit is due to his adventurous style and is inspired by Indiana Jones mostly!

🍃 "Do they enjoy being in nature? What is their favourite activity?"

He does! He and his brother, Pep, even live in a small wooden home in the jungle where Pip mostly swings on vines and searches for treasures or excuses to be outside and explore. His favourite activity would have to be cave exploring, which is much easier given his smaller form (he is 4ft incase you were curious!) so he can't get stuck much unless the gap is too tight.

🍀 "Do they believe in luck? Are they lucky?"

He believes life happens the way it's intended and that the only "luck" that comes is earned through work, hardship and determination to push yourself and succeed. In general however, he is quite lucky against the dastardly bad guys of his story such as King Rat-Thaniel who kidnaps Pep via Cage With Cheese Inside. Pip has a horseshoe up his ass, Pep is hated by leprechauns.

[JET.]

💥 "What emotions do they have trouble dealing with?"

Okay so while in a RP he loses his arm and lower half, in actual canon he only loses the arm and has a prosthetic. This gives him some confidence issues as well as depression over losing a part of himself (now imagine how the RP version of him feels). Another emotion he has trouble with is romance, he always feels as though he wouldn't make a good partner for anyone. Reasons for this thought include his lifestyle being too much for someone, his conflicting thoughts regarding his sexuality that he still isn't fully sure of (he definitely likes dudes, just not in a sexual way) and he has troubles building up the courage to confess even when high off his fuckin mind. Even worse is he'll be finally ready to confess but it's too late and the person he grew feelings for is with someone else or uninterested. He can handle rejection (he is used to it sadly) but the feelings still linger and he tries to suppress it sometimes by drinking.

🍰 "Favourite cake flavour? Are they specific about cakes?"

He loves all kinds honestly but he does like how chocolate and banana cakes taste, but his favourite would have to be chocolate weed cakes which is something he's very skilled at preparing.

❇️ "What is their most prized possession? What do they value?"

His abs since he always has his jacket unzipped. Nah jk, his most prized possession would have to be a photograph of his parents that he keeps for memory sake, usually in safe keepings (bottom drawer of his bedroom drawers). They died before he even reached his teens, had to live the life of crime which is ironic given he's now a (cool) cop today. At age 14 he was arrested for stealing some food, Chief Coby could tell he was troubled and alone so he offered to take care of Jet at the station. At age 19, Jet decided he wanted to join the force which is where he met his eventual best friend Freddy who he would later nickname "Fimbo" when they briefly dated. He's thankful for Coby, viewing him the same way Batman would view Alfred as an example. Worst part though is he never found out what killed his parents, though he assumes it might have just been a group of thugs wanting to rob them and making sure there was no witnesses.

[queendeeshorrorimagines]

The Rancorous Heart| VIII

Previous. Ending One

Former! Poly! Ghostface x reader

Gender neutral reader

Warnings: Stu and Dale both have guns, Canon typical violence, cliffhanger ending, slight descriptions of a character getting stabbed.

This is the last chapter of the main story of The Rancorous Heart series. The next few chapters will be the endings. Thanks to everyone who has been there for me throughout this series. I hope you enjoy!

Your heart was thumping rapidly as you quickly took off your seat belt. Stu grabs your hand before you have the chance to exit the car. His blue eyes looked into you before speaking up.

"Before we go in, I want you to have this. If anything happens to me or if we're successful, I want you to read this."

Grabbing his suitcase from the backseat, he pulls out a letter addressed to you and a knife. You felt your body pump pure adrenaline as your hands held the two items, all of your revenge fantasies are finally happening.

Pocketing the note, your eyes widened at the sight of the familiar blade, remembering the first time you've seen the knife in Stu's bedroom all these years ago.

"Okay. I promise I will read it. Hopefully, everything goes well and there's not many deaths."

You promised, feeling a heavy pit in your stomach as you try not to imagine the worst case scenario. It felt rather nerve-wracking yet euphoric to finally have this face to face with Billy after all the years of anger and revenge filling your heart.

"It's not much but it's best if we both are prepared. We both know how Billy is, especially since he's definitely armed."

Stu grabs his pistol from his coat pocket, loading it before getting out of his car. You quickly followed behind Stu, still not fully trusting Stu. You turned on the video recording of your cellphone before quickly hiding it in your shirt pocket.

Entering the main facade of the building, you see Tara on the ground with a pool of blood surrounding her. You quickly ran to Tara, your hands quickly ripped the curtains off the window, tightly wrapping the curtain around her torso to compress the bleeding.

"Tara, Tara. Please hang in there. I'm getting you help now."

Your voice quivers as you see her eyes begin to flutter shut from the loss of blood. Stu quickly goes on the other side of Tara to help you move her behind the front desk before hearing a chuckle. Stu points his gun towards the stairway, aiming it to the too familiar mask of Ghostface.

"Well, well, well.. look what we have here. A reunion."

Billy's voice echoed as he took off his mask. Blood coated his knife and gloves as he walked closer towards where Stu and you were. Looking at Billy, all you saw was rage from all the shit you've been through for the past twenty years.

"Two of the Woodsboro slashers and their former lovesick lover.. You're so easy to manipulate, made you take the blame for us because you think we love you."

Billy's words were slaps across your face as you fight back the look of disgust. You wished that you could be angry but after being in prison, you've learned to hold back your emotions. Stu keeps his gun aimed at Billy as he moves closer.

"I would love to disagree. You're the stupid one Billy. Have you ever thought about what I've done for the past twenty years? You know, solitary confinement has taught me so much. Give me so much time to reflect."

A smirk made its way to your face as you see Dale quietly entering the back entrance of the lobby, with his own gun in his hands. You held the knife behind your back, ready to attack whenever you needed.

"Have you ever wondered why I got freed in the first place? It wasn't only because you're stupid enough to start reliving your high-school years again, it's over."

You spoke in such a serious tone, causing Billy to actually believe in your lie. Stu keeps quiet, appearing stunned hearing you speak. Dale made his way closer as you see Billy wiping the blade of his knife.

"You're bluffing. You gotta be fucking bluffing. If the cops had proof that Stu and I did it, we would be arrested. "

Billy tried to discredit you as he made his way closer to you. Although he looks more mature than the last you've seen him, you knew that Billy was still the same boy with mommy issues.

"Have I ever been the one to bluff, Billy? You two are only freed because that's where I wanted the both of you to be. I've thought so much about getting revenge that I've planned on bringing both of you down."

You fought back your rage before looking back at Dale, him nodding before you gave a condescending smirk at Billy. Stu kept quiet as he sees Dale aiming his gun behind Billy's head.

"I've been planning this for twenty years. You see, people like you are addicted to killing. That's what fucked you over and made my plan blossomed. You had to kill those innocent teenagers, Billy."

The sound of Dale's gun being cocked caused Billy to grab you roughly, using you as a human shield. The blade of his knife was pressed against your throat as both Dale and Stu pointed their guns at Billy.

"Now son, it's best not to do this. Put the knife down."

Dale's southern accent was stern and fatherly to Billy, his knife pressed deeper against the delicate skin of your throat.

"Fuck off, or I'll cut this bitch's head off their soulders."

Although you were supposed to be scared for your life in this situation, you felt a wave of peace go through you. 'If I were to die now, at least it shows who the real Stab killers were.' Your mind wandered through all the friends you've lost back in '96. All of them died from the same knife that you might die from.

"Kill me and you still will be arrested for not only my death but also the recent killings and the one's from '96. How smart does that sound?"

You spoke, even though at the moment Billy has the power to end your life. His grip on you tightened, almost certainly leaving bruises for you to worry about if you do make it out alive. It was a temptation to pray to any diety to help you through this but you weren't a very religious person to begin with. Closing your eyes, you tried to quickly focus on a plan to get out of this situation.

[qm-vox]

So You Want To Play A Fairest

(Portrait of Erin Peters by cantankerousAquarius. The character originally appeared in Night Horrors: Grim Fears, published by White Wolf; catch my take on her in New Avalon)

Previous Articles: So You Want To Play A Beast, So You Want To Play A Wizened, So You Want To Play An Elemental, So You Want To Play An Ogre, & So You Want To Play A Darkling

You ever wonder, flipping through a Monster Manual for D&D, or a Bestiary for Pathfinder, why nymphs and hags are both always, always, women? It’s older than you know. Dig into the sordid history of tabletops and you’ll find sylphs that Gary Gygax wrote, Chaotic charmers who use mind control to reproduce with non-sylph men; you’ll find the legacy of the matriarchal drow, who follow a mad goddess, and you’ll find the medusae, whose sexual dimorphism is so complete that their men are beautiful and can turn stone into people.

Dredge deeper and you’ll find the tales that Gygax and his wretched ilk based such creatures off of.

You ever wonder why we assign such powerful Gender to creatures of beauty and horror?

Fairest don’t. They know, every time they wake up from a nightmare that is also a wet dream. They know, every time they get hit on at the bar and have to decide how they’re playing this. They know, every time they look in a mirror and see not their own face, but the ten thousand horrors that made it beautiful.

If you are very patient, and lucky, and kind, they might tell you why.

If you aren’t, they may show you.

This article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost and Winter Masques, as well as Swords at Dawn and Night Horrors: Grim Fears. Other sources, when used, will be cited. It requires Content Warnings for sexual violence, sexual slavery, abuse, gaslighting, addiction, substance abuse, self-harm, self-image problems, mentions of fascists & fascist ideology, and just, so very much incel bullshit.

Bonus Material Part Two: The Seeming Part

The end of this article, just past the customary Sample Fairest, will include some additional material intended to help you select a Seeming for your character and otherwise build them up as one of the Lost, much as So You Want To Run A Spring Court included material for Courts as a topic.

Take Me To Wonderland - Fairest Overview

Fairest is the fourth Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost and possibly the most confused about its own identity. Its sections in Winter Masques present depths and nuance that are completely absent in core, essentially making Winter Masques required reading for Fairest players in a way that no other book is - especially since Fairest keep getting written in a particular way alluded to in the Ogre article, which I will expand on later in this article. Fairest is numerically well-represented in canon and popular in the fanbase, home to many memorable character concepts, but its bones with folklore and tradition are weaker than it fronts as.

Ogres and Darklings claim an innate relationship to physical violence; so too do the Fairest claim a relationship to violence. The violence of Perception and its dark twin, Judgement; of Rumor and its mad dog, Prejudice, the violence of Lies and their merciless master, Truth. Fairest, alone among the Lost, have casual access to the resources of a society that refuses to service or acknowledge Changelings, and with access to that society comes both opportunity and temptation. To be Fairest is to wield power that many other Lost cannot, but the opportunity that power offers is a lie; a Fairest can smile until her face breaks like a mirror, but she’ll never be “sane” enough for the masses to see her as anything but a useful pet.

Life’s Lush Lips - Homecoming As A Fairest

Fairest can make the dubious claim of having the least clear memories of Arcadia amongst all the Lost, with Darklings and Beasts jockeying for second place. This isn’t to say that the experiences Fairest have are necessarily more intense or more inherently traumatic than that of other Lost, but rather that the abuse Fairest suffer is so emotional, so targeted at their perception of their selves and their situations and their self-image, that the memories which do form are inevitably colored by those emotions, coloring the dreams they have of Arcadia with both the emotional resonances they had at the time and with their later attempts to grapple with their own trauma and transformation. For many Fairest, who cannot trust even their strongest memory dreams, attempts to understand their own Durance must rely either on the word of their Keepers (and Faeries lie, oh, how they lie), or on reverse-engineering their own behavior to try and conceive of a trauma that could cause it.

Inevitably, however, some things are seared into their minds. For almost all Fairest, their Keeper is high on the list of things they remember with absolute clarity. Other facts, shattered and scattered, vary more widely. Erin Peters remembers stretched years kept in a cold, dark room lit only by her own hatred; every detail of her cell is scorched onto the back of her eyes, but the otherworldly balls her Keeper took her to blur together like food coloring in syrup. The slaves of the Candle Countess have terrible nightmares of the choices they were confronted with, the decision, offered over and over again, to become complicit in the Countess’s cruelty or to be victimized by it. Metallic Flowering from the Shining City struggle not to use drugs to mimic the rush of pleasure they’ve grown used to receiving for performing their jobs well; they also scream in terror if people touch them. A Draconic and a Shadowsoul both remember being used for the sexual pleasure of alien horrors; the one dreams of coiled scales and terrible teeth, the other a lifetime of lurking in an alien maze, tasked to perform the duties of a living trap for the “wicked” and “unwary” who had not yet shed the last vestiges of kindness.

There are no “wild” Fairest. For worse and worse still, to be Fairest is to have been defined by the inescapable and all-consuming attentions of your abuser, and it is this more than anything that other Lost so often fail to understand about the Fairest. Their Keepers heap them with reward and punishment, manipulating the Fairest with honeyed praise, godly wrath, gaslighting, neglect, withholding food, wondrous rewards, drugs from beyond the realms of earthly pleasure, and other hooks and crooks designed to make the Fairest dependent upon their abuser. It is hideously effective, and the first obstacle, maybe even the mightiest, that a Fairest faces to their escape is the simple horror and joy of being alone again. Their masters will try other tricks to keep them in place - tempting them with pleasures, horrific punishments, oh-so-sincere apologies - but before a Fairest can escape into the Hedge she must face, in her mind’s eye, the lonely flight back to the Iron Lands.

The memories that draw Fairest home often have parallels to their experiences in Arcadia. A slave in the Shining City bites into an otherworldly pastry and recalls her grandmother’s pie in its place; the bride of the Demon Lover, curled up under the sheets, thinks about the broken smile of the boyfriend she left behind at home. A Dancer remembers the roller rink where he fell in love with skating, while across the endless tides of the Fairest of Lands, a Shadowsoul holds on like grim death to years of work at haunted houses, scaring kids for fun and for Halloween. Fairest, so famous for their skill at words, struggle to articulate to other Lost why this should be so. Darklings assume it’s because these memories are less intense than Arcadia, and that the Fairest are fleeing to safety. Beasts get it a bit more right by thinking that these memories taste like home. The truth of the matter is that those memories have an intrinsic and nameless meaning; the highs and lows of Arcadia are divine, flawless, absolute, and therefore worthless. They are the proclamations of merciless gods. What draws the Fairest home, more than pain and pleasure they can have on their own terms, is the understanding that those gestures - for weal or for woe or for anything else besides - were made because someone cared about them, personally. Once they fully internalize that their abuser views them as disposable, the Fairest comes home to someone who won’t.

Three Kiths And Flowering Is One And A Half Of Them - Fairest Kiths

Yeah we’re about to be like that about it.

All Fairest can excel in the social arena; their Blessing can be used to flare almost every social roll in the game, and Fairest can never be caught off-guard in a social context (they suffer no untrained penalties to social rolls). With the sole exception of Empathy (usually rolled with Wits) and sometimes Streetwise, there’s no time a Fairest can’t fall back on their words and expect to win through or at least buy time. This is, as you might imagine, a godsend when it comes to attempts to pass in mortal society; Fairest can usually front, charm, bluff, or Manners(tm) their way through things like renting an apartment, nailing a job interview, asking their roommate to do the FUCKING DISHES, or getting stopped by a cop, but both the books and the fanbase miss something here. While Fairest are superb at active social events, they’re no better at keeping a lid on themselves (Composure-based rolls) than mortals are - and given both the nature of their trauma and the fact that they are, you know, Lost, Fairest have a lot more to keep a lid on day-to-day than the human society they’re trying to blend into. Thankfully, Fairest are pretty good at being able to politely leave a situation and go somewhere else to scream, shout, cry, or have a psychotic break, as appropriate.

Of course, Fairest can’t make something from nothing. As discussed in So You Want To Play An Ogre, you can’t win a social game someone else refuses to sit down to, and social rolls shouldn’t be mind control. All the Glamour in the world can’t make your roommate do the FUCKING DISHES if they’re deep in the throes of executive dysfunction, nor can it make the cashier at Walgreens fail to card you for wine when their computer literally won’t advance without an ID. People who are keyed up about honeyed words or whose own trauma came at the hands of manipulators and abusers might refuse to play that game on the terms the Fairest is setting, which makes it hard to, as it were, turn this problem into a nail. Lurking down this path as well is the specter of becoming like the masters who made you this way; if you get used to saying what will get people to listen to you, eventually you start seeing people as enrichment puzzles that dispense the things you want. Madness waits down that road, and it waits for Fairest with a giant spiked bat, thanks to their Seeming Curse.

There’s no pretty way to say this so I won’t: Fairest are always on the verge of losing their minds. Their curse hits them with a flat penalty to all rolls against losing Clarity, which means that Fairest lose Clarity faster than other Lost and they do so more consistently. This necessitates a balancing act with avoiding becoming heartless manipulators; Fairest must engage in control-seeking behavior in order to stay mentally well, must be able to trust and rely on people close to them, structure their lives, and anticipate important changes or they end up on the fast way down. Other Lost often don’t understand this need or the Fairest curse to begin with, and so Fairest end up in unofficial support groups for one another, similar to those run by Darklings except no one will admit it’s a support group even at gunpoint. Woe fucking betide the friend or life partner who gets between a Fairest and her “book club”, “girls’ night”, “D&D campaign”, or other excuse for this vital community support.

Fairest Kiths are...bad. They’re bad. This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to talk about thematics and symbolism and metaphor, and I cannot do that here, because they are bad. Fairest has three viable Kiths that are actual Fairest Kiths, one that’s a Beast Kith who got lost and wound up here by fucking mistake, and a pile of garbage bigger than my self-esteem problems. I’m almost tempted to only talk about those four Kiths and save myself the time but I suppose I should show the work like I’ve done for all the other Seemings, so here we fuckin’ go I guess.

Flowering - This is it. This is the Fairest Kith. If you want to roll any other kind of Fairest you must first pass the trial of justifying why you’re not playing Flowering. In theory, Flowering draws its mythic heritage from nymphs and dryads, charming flower sprites, Knights of Flowers, and the like, but in practice Flowering’s only mechanical effect is 9-again on Persuasion, Socialize, and Subterfuge with no qualification or requirement, which doesn’t just make you better at everything Fairest is good at, it makes you better when you spend Glamour to flare it too. Want to represent a biobahn sith’s hypnotic dance? Flowering works. Want to create a vampiric Fairest with a sultry voice? Here comes Flowering. The siren at the bar who smells like sea air and gunpowder? Flowering. Everything is Flowering. Even the things that aren’t Flowering are Flowering because all Fairest Kiths have a social focus, which is Flowering’s undisputed arena of mastery.

Bright One - In theory, Bright Ones represent beings of light in the vein of Victorian fey (which...ugh...Victorians), but their Goblin Illumination is, how you say, useless, only becoming vaguely useful for a total of 2 Glamour as a passive defense that took you 2 turns to set up. Anything you want to represent here can be found in Flowering and with Elements or Communion (Light).

Dancer - You know how Flowering gives you bonuses on all social rolls? Would you like those same bonuses but on 1 less skill and only on rolls that “involve physical grace”? No? Run Flowering here and give your character a Dance specialty in one or more skills.

Draconic - One of the game’s premier melee options and a Beast Kith who took a wrong turn and ended up getting a free makeover intended for someone else. Draconic in theory represents Fairest as dragons, monster girls, demons, and in general at their most physical, but that idea sorta...falls down a bit? Draconic’s bonuses are all about Brawl and all the sample Draconics are swordsmen, which might suggest to the discerning reader that someone in the office wasn’t reading their own fucking game. Draconic Fairest don’t make bad melee boys if you invest in Lethal Mien, but honestly this is Dual Kith bait; slap it on your Hunterheart or your Razorhand and go apeshit.

Muse - Close but no cigar. In theory Muses are, well, muses; figures of inspiration, mentorship, teaching, creative fire. Their Kith Blessing is strong but requires access to mortals, which is complicated and roundabout on the best of days. If you have an idea that you think is Muse-shaped, use Playmate instead.

Flamesiren - Behold, we enter the realm of Okay(tm). Flamesirens are what Bright Ones wanted to be, and their hypnotic aura is actually a pretty neat tool; with cunning you can make it a one-sided penalty, and even if you don’t it’s an interesting method of de-escalating a social or combat situation by subjecting everyone to the tar pit that is your presence. If your concept involves light and color and you’re resistant to Flowering, Flamesiren will do more than nothing.

Polychromatic - Polychromatics don’t have a lot of roots in mythology; their modern inspirations are, well, Manic Pixie Dream Girls. But they get a shout-out here for being the only Fairest Kith who can muster up decent emotional defenses; not only can they magically boost their Composure rolls (and non-Composure rolls to resist magical and mundane emotional attacks for that matter), but others get a flat penalty to Empathy rolls against them, which makes them talented dissemblers. You’re still probably better off with Flowering - in a world of passive Kith Blessings, Polychromatic’s is extra passive - but I can see this Kith passing muster, and even being worth the two dots to Dual Kith in-house.

Shadowsoul - This one’s insane. Ostensibly Fairest Does Darkling, Shadowsouls get their Wyrd to Intimidate rolls which could be the whole Kith on its own and still be worth the slot, but in addition to that they get 9-again on Subterfuge (matching Flowering and Darklings there) and access to Contracts of Darkness, one of the most powerful in the game line, as an Affinity Contract. Is your Fairest spooky? Would you like them to be spooky? Here’s your one-stop shop.

Telluric - This is a Kith made of ribbon bonuses. In theory related to stars and celestial light, Telluric’s bonuses to rolls “with precise timing” isn’t...really worth considering. Run ‘em as Flamesiren and move on.

Treasured - In theory also able to muster emotional defenses, Treasured are Fairest who are literally made into works of art. They’re Okay(tm) but in their niche are beaten out by Polychromatic with a better effect for less resources.

Playmate - The last Real Fairest Kith(tm), Playmate appears in Night Horrors: Grim Fears where White Wolf tries to sell it as Peter Pan, but its powerful team-oriented bonuses mean that Playmates are useful anywhere Muse is wanted and more places besides. The front woman of an indie rock band could be a Playmate; so too could be an idealized baseball captain, the director at your local theater, the middle manager of a sinister conspiracy, or the night shift lead at a research lab. Do people do a thing in teams? Playmate does that thing.

And She Had Huge Titties, I Mean Massive Badondadonks, Absolutely Enormous Bazoggahoggas - Lost’s Canon Fairest

Remember when I said we had to get back to this after So You Want To Play An Ogre? Now we’re getting back to this. I’m not gonna re-state my caveats from that article and I’m not really gonna go back over the bit about So White Wolf Was Run By Fucking Nazis because, in all honesty, I do not have the fucking time to restate all of that in new words. Give thanks that OPP got out alive and let’s get right down to it.

Fairest have a very consistent characterization in canon that is only really challenged in Winter Masques; the narrative put forth in Lost is that Fairest, being attractive, have an uncomplicated power which privileges their lives. Which is a rather bloodless way to describe how White Wolf kept writing and publishing Fairest as heartless abusers and manipulators getting their jollies and emotional needs met by casually destroying their fellow survivors, manipulating them through sex appeal, outright lies, cattiness, cruelty, and betrayal. Much as simply queering Ogre does not help Ogre in and of itself, queering Fairest only takes you from incel and Nazi propaganda about women into...incel and Nazi propaganda about twinks, femmes, & in general anyone with the temerity to be found attractive by straight white people.

I’m not bitter, you’re bitter.

So what do you do at your table, with your Fairest concept? Lemme open up by saying that like, Fairest qua Fairest is perfectly solid, and if it wasn’t there wouldn’t be an article here; Fairest has a lot to say for itself about feminized violence, about your personhood being reduced to a product for the consumption of others, about emotional abuse & neglect, gaslighting, and sexual assault, but the conclusion White Wolf arrives at (”Fairest have unalloyed power over mortal and Lost society and they abuse that power”) is super fucking obtuse and betrays a serious lack of concern for what the Fairest undergo. It ignores the way a Fairest’s ordeals will force her to confront her relationship to her own gender and alter her willingness and ability to be consumed, disconnect her from her former society while also isolating her from her new one, and these questions are important for you if you’re looking to play a ‘classic’ Fairest.

But that leaves some hanging questions. Male Fairest face the almost inescapable fate of “failing” maleness on patriarchal terms; even the most strapping, broad-chested, athletic Adonis of a Fairest has become a man of layered words and reflexive empathy, whose Manly Stoicism(tm) is a cracking facade at best and entirely abandoned in a more typical circumstance. Men who become Fairest thus face a second journey after their escape from Arcadia; confronting what being men means to them and building their gender identity back up from the rubble it’s become. The temptation to accept success on society’s terms is always going to be present, and it’s always going to be offered like it’s possible, but it’s a losing game for these Fairest; they simply cannot be the men that other men demand they become.

Now, the discerning and loyal reader is surely about to ask, hey Vox, where’s the butch Fairest I was promised back in the Ogre article, to which I respond WE’RE GETTING THERE but I gotta use this as a bridge to talk about something that cuts across Fairest of all genders, be they cis or trans. Lost 1e makes a lot of hay out of the idea that Fairest “are rarely conventionally attractive”, and core even provides some interesting written concepts for that...which make it into exactly none of the art. Every published Fairest is conventionally attractive for various definitions of conventional, be it as a supermodel or a waif, but that leaves the question of Fairest who genuinely are not - and, tragically, Fairest who were not, and were then made into someone more easily consumed by their Durance. You know what I’m about to say, and I know you know I’m about to say it, but I’m gonna say it anyway: all bodies are beautiful, but Fairest know well that beauty and attraction aren’t the same, and neither are beauty and happiness. All Fairest, from the roundest bear to the most wide-eyed waif, are the products of Keepers who valued their bodies in that state, and that idea is going to haunt them day in and day out for the rest of their extended lives. There is no such thing as a Fairest with an uncomplicated relationship to their body, and that White Wolf seems to think that an uncomplicated relationship is their default state is...disgusting, frankly.

Which brings us, at long last, to butch Fairest (also bear Fairest but I’m gonna stick with the one set of terms or I’m going to go mad and this will never be published), who have a complicated journey ahead of them. On the one hand, the assertion of control and ownership over their own bodies, their own identities, cannot be overstated. On the other hand, elements of those bodies are going to be completely out of their control; a nascent butch Fairest may well hit the gym to get swole only to discover that she literally, physically cannot, that she has been Assigned Dex Build At Durance. Hauling your corpse out of Arcadia with an extremely feminine appearance shaped by your Keeper might complicate attempts to present in a more masculine manner or even just to appear androgynous, and those complications can be discouraging. For those that stick to it, this journey will take them two places; one is the bared-teeth, bloody-knuckled assertion that this life is theirs and you can have it if you can fucking take it, and the other is into the ranks of the Freehold’s retained warriors, usually in Summer or Autumn, though a vibrant representation of Spring knights will make it seem as if Spring has more butch Fairest than it actually does. These Fairest are aware, or will become aware, of how much of their job involves de-escalating or pre-empting violence; a focus on Physical stats or skills is not necessarily common, but hyper-specialization therein likely is. A butch Fairest is a lot more likely to have, say, Brawl 4 (Multiple Opponents) and no other Physical skills than she is to have Brawl, Weaponry, Athletics, and Stealth, in part or in whole because her first weapon of choice is going to be an Intimidate roll.

At every turn you’re able to, challenge White Wolf’s narrative about Fairest by asking yourself what your Fairest wants, why they’re this way, what they’re frightened of, and how the way they behave relates back to these. They’re not products; they’re people, just as hurt and Lost as the rest of their peers.

Princesses And Pastries - Fairest In The Courts

Fairest have a complex relationship to the society of their fellow Lost. On the one hand, they have the same need for community, support, companionship, understanding, honesty, and material aid as all Lost; a Fairest is not magically proof against being homeless, against starving, against the dangers of existing in the modern world without things like a photo ID or car insurance, and Freeholds provide all of these things. On the other hand, the thing most Fairest fear most, even if they can’t articulate that fear, is their own power - social influence, emotional trust and betrayal, status, political power, and authority. Fairest are all too aware that being good at this game does not make them immune to it - after all, that’s the lesson they learned at the hands of their Keepers.

What follows from this is a complex dance of interactions that each Fairest in some ways has to feel like she’s managing on her own, even if she’s not (and she rarely is; those support groups exist for a reason). If you give a Fairest a doughnut in a social setting, she will lick that doughnut even if she doesn’t intend to eat it right away, solely to hear someone else say something along the lines of “well it’s yours now”. As Fairest filter into Freehold society and take up social roles at all levels of power - officers, messengers, ‘ambassadors’ to mortal society, secretaries, pledge-smiths, teachers, monarchs - their responsibilities and rewards become their doughnut. That Fairest make a big deal out of both their job and the benefits that come with it is rarely, as other Lost sometimes think, about aggrandizement or reveling in power for its own sake; it’s about the sheer relief and assurance of hearing someone say, to the Fairest’s face, that this is her doughnut and no one is going to take it from her.

Younger Fairest tend to flit between two or three Courts; their initial selection may be based entirely on friendships, Vibes, or a gut-check decision based on an initial pitch by that Court, and Fairest can go quite far even in a Court that doesn’t quite actually fit their needs. Eventually, though, those Fairest who survive their youth will gravitate towards a Court whose ideals speak to them, even if its current social order isn’t living up to those ideals. If they’re going to be condemned to live as exiles in the world of their birth, the Fairest can at least be the person she wants to be, god damn it. Fairest aren’t any more or less vulnerable to a toxic Court environment than other Lost, but they’re good at detecting it beforehand. Unfortunately they’re also good at telling themselves they can change it.

Spring - Though early Spring joiners are of course rare in general, Fairest are among those Lost who more commonly choose Spring as a first Court. Spring’s highly social focus and chaotic internal organization is almost tailor-made for the skill set of your average Fairest, but therein too lies a sense of threat; for many Fairest, Spring can remind them of their Durance, and their joining of the Court is as much motivated by fear of a powerful cultural body as it is by any genuine Desire, maybe even more so. Many such Fairest end up caught in Spring’s middle-road trap, spinning their wheels without recovering or worsening more or less until they finally die, but when Autumn can sniff out the fearful ones it puts a lot of work into cooperating with Spring to get them out and where they can be helped.

Summer - More Fairest dabble with Summer for dreams of glory, or because they want to believe in Summer’s apolitical sales pitch, than ultimately stick with Summer. Those that do stay often serve as officers, as the Sun’s Tongue or the Arrayer of Distant Thunder, and as Court sorcerers. Fairest skilled in Contracts of Separation can make for surprising Jaegers, hounding their prey down more like a private investigator or a serial killer than a traditional hunter, but while striking this is fairly rare. Fairest who stick with Summer are those who are looking for its high ideals and are often among those rare Summer Courtiers who can competently articulate both those ideals and their pitfalls without falling prey to cynicism and bitterness.

Autumn - For those Fairest who hurt others to feel safe, Autumn is waiting. The Leaden Mirror can be attractive to young Fairest because it’s easy to perceive Autumn as atomized, defined by personal relationships rather than webs of political influence, but when the Fairest discovers those webs the existence of Option Two: Resort To Violence as an acceptable tool to the Ashen Court is perversely reassuring rather than threatening. The image of the Fairest as a witch, tempting and threatening, clings to them in Autumn but it’s honestly not their most common role; Autumn employs its Fairest as rumor-mongers, the Other Woman who seems a little too familiar with your husband, therapists & counselors, oneiromancers, and ambassadors to Hedge communities. The work Autumn does is harsh on Clarity, and Fairest are especially vulnerable to that harshness, but if the Court invests the time in helping its Fairest members, the self-awareness and self-confidence it offers can be a godsend that no other Court can give them.

Winter - As the Court which is actually selling what Fairest think Autumn has - to wit, the ability to simply say “no” to all social interactions with no justification required - Winter has a strong undercurrent of Fairest membership at all tiers of its power. Fairest often end up directly involved in Winter’s money-making enterprises, and flourish as Squires and Armigers with their fingers on the pulse of the Court’s morale. Winter’s hands-off approach displays a tremendous amount of trust in its Fairest from their perspective, and the demeanor of the Coldest Court - Winter’s indifferent equality - has a potent, merciless appeal. The trap of drowning in Sorrow sucks more than a few Fairest under, but if their peers can be there for them there’s always a way back out.

This Is Not A Pipe - Fairest And Lost’s Themes

My many thanks to Izzie M for her extensive help on this section. I’m not sure I’d have been able to grapple it down, emotionally or intellectually, otherwise.

Fairest go through some intense shit, and the shit they go through can never fully be addressed, never fully be recovered from. It’s no mistake that Fairest, like Wizened, are among those Lost likely to never fully gain resolution with or from their Keeper, and this is because they embody the dark truth that no matter how much progress you make, how much you heal, your trauma has changed who you are as a person and you will be dealing with it until you die. But, as alluded to extensively above in the discussion of Fairest and gender, Fairest also embody the way in which society will attempt to stamp you, mold you, turn you into a product to be consumed or an archetype to be placed into its churning machine, and its attempts to reshape who and what you are and can be are, in themselves, a form of trauma and abuse.

Fairest deal a lot in expectations. They’re expected to be perfect victims, they’re expected to be happy (because they’re beautiful and attractive, because they can front as Doing Okay, because they have a form of access to ‘normal’ society), they’re expected to want romance and sex (since everyone else wants those things out of them), to perform emotional labor, to be available, intimate, understanding, to keep up appearances. Fairest escape the chains of their Keeper only to be clapped in the chains that extend into the eyes and minds of their peers, and they cannot move without hearing the clink of them.

Fairest are primed to represent victims of ongoing emotional abuse and neglect; sex slaves and victims of child abuse might find themselves in Fairest, as might husbands or wives of abusive partners (and boy, re-living my bullshit there was a bonus prize I didn’t want to receive for writing this article), children pushed to over-achieve (here overlapping with Elemental) until they break, pastor’s daughters and cult kids (here overlapping with Beast), and others. However, Fairest also hit their thematic stride when talking about trauma from a society that will not give you an exit. A trans person is first punished by society for “failing” to perform their assigned gender, then made to perform their new one to expectations that they cannot set, do not control, and do not consent to; such a person might easily be Fairest, as might a man breaking under the expectations of Maleness, a college student losing their mind in finals week with no one to help, or even more ‘ordinary’ sex workers expected to perform emotional and physical labor for a society that rewards their work with violence and dehumanization.

Fairest are people with complex internal worlds and they damn well know it, but the temptations to let others define them are numerous; society promises all manner of rewards for being who and what it wants you to be, for wanting the things it tells you to want, for being the kind of person who wants and does those things. To be Fairest is to know at any time you can start faking it and receive those rewards insofar as they’re actually on the table, but it is also to know, every second of every day that you’re performing that role, that it is fake. If you can’t find a community with which you can be genuine...well. You can always get more hurt, and in this way Fairest also bring another theme of Lost into focus: that the Lost owe compassion and understanding to their fellow victims, because failure to care can only hurt both them and everyone in their blast zone.

Feet Pics For Legos - Coping As A Fairest

Fairest are among those Lost who are most concerned with their day-to-day social interactions and safety rather than their immediate, very physical environmental safety. They are perhaps the Seeming most likely to live in a group setting (in an apartment with roommates or romantic partners, in a house shared between multiple households, splitting the bills in a condo, with their parents), and are definitely the Seeming most comfortable with the idea of living with mortals who aren’t ensorcelled. Indeed, Fairest don’t tend to do well living alone; even a Fairest who wants or needs a private place to be, choosing to keep a home in which others cannot lay a claim, will likely crash at friends’ places, sleep over at the Freehold commons on some pretext or another, stay the night with a lover, or otherwise have a place to flop down while surrounded by other people. Having other people - their greatest reality check - around the place helps keep the Fairest centered in the real reality, better able to pick apart the mortal from the Wyrd from their own unrelated hallucinations, and a Fairest who is isolated - or who is permitted to isolate herself - quickly begins to dissociate and may soon be incapable of caring for herself until someone can get her back into the present.

Those invited over as guests to a Fairest’s home may note a lot of concern for those she lives with. She likely schedules the event well in advance, is clear about the boundaries of those she lives with (”That’s Brenda’s room, the door stays shut.”) and in general treats her communal home with a lot of respect and love. Respecting these boundaries and in turn having her own respected is very validating for the Fairest and is vital to be able to feel safe and at ease in her own home, and impressing their importance on guests further reinforces that this is, as it were, her doughnut. While not dismissive of their own literal physical safety per se, a Fairest’s anxieties rarely center around her body being violently attacked by strangers. For those that do have such anxieties, they may choose to solve that problem by simple expedient of rooming or living with someone large and scary.

Another detail of note which is touched on in Winter Masques is that Fairest tend to seek out life’s little pleasures. Though they are not necessarily wealthier than other Lost, how a Fairest chooses to spend her money tends to follow particular patterns. Rare is the Fairest who doesn’t have clothing they like, a phone that works, a wallet or purse that can actually hold all of their stuff, and in this regard most Fairest without a special interest in fashion as a hobby in and of itself will have an aesthetic that is self-expressive but serviceable and hard-wearing, but any place the Fairest haunts, frequents, or lives in will get little touches everywhere. Fairest spend the little bits of extra money for good toilet paper, soft soaps that won’t hurt the skin, good shower supplies, high-quality razors, boots that won’t wear through - and they spend their serious money on their hobbies and preferences. A Fairest with a passion for cooking scrimps and saves to get a fully-stocked kitchen; a Fairest who likes building and connecting invests in Legos or Hot Wheels and creates elaborate environments for them. A gamer Fairest has headphones that can vibrate your constipation away and a fiber optic connection to ensure that lag will not stand between her and your doom. The reasons for this are manifold, and Lost’s canon writing suggests that Fairest seek pleasure to alleviate a desire to return to Arcadia. This is, to put it mildly, a stupid assertion; rather, the Fairest provides her own pleasures in part because it is one of the most emotionally clear ways to lick the doughnut, and in part because it reminds her that she can be happy under her own power, can seek pleasure, stimulation, engagement, without placing herself at another’s mercy - ironically making it easier to go out every day and do exactly that as a member of her various societies.

As a Fairest settles in she tends to look for “her” people, and quite often they’re good at compartmentalizing this, wearing different hats and having different feelings about those hats without feeling fake or distressed about the bare fact of that. She’ll have her personal friends and family, like her housemates, her girlfriend, maybe her mortal family, her neighbors, and then folks like her Motley (which are like her personal friends and family, but In The Know), her fellow Fairest and the Freehold broadly, her work friends and fellow hobbyists. A Fairest who does, say, sex work, thinks of herself as a Sex Worker and understands herself in the context of that broader social group. It can be a lot! Many Lost barely have a handle on being a member of both the Freehold and a Court, and the way Fairest flit to and fro between many communities, slipping seamlessly from one role to another, can be exhausting to watch - but by doing so the Fairest also builds bonds between those communities, highlights their common needs and interests, draws them together over their similarities and strengths. Darklings and Wizened get a lot of the work on the ground done, but it’s often a Fairest in the role of whistleblower, figurehead, and champion all at once.

After all, this, too, is her doughnut.

Example Fairest - Clara Belltower, Spring Playmate

Clara Belltower is a mime.

Well, no, not exactly. Clara Belltower is a self-employed porn actress, erotic script writer, and director, whose primary thing is mimes, clowns, and more broadly circuses and performance venues. She came back from Arcadia eight years back fleeing life as her Keeper’s Stepford Wife, and ran face-first into the money issues that haunt the Lost in general. What started out as a practical choice in new career - and an attempt to find and express an identity not created for her by her abuser - became a creative passion that has stayed strong with Clara and propelled her to status in the Spring Court, which retains her keen eye for decoration, direction, and theatricality in service to its high rituals and revels. Clara’s livestreams and online presence are also a convenient avenue for the Freehold to launder its less legal revenue streams, which has endeared Spring’s “silent siren” to the Winter Court and cemented her as a mover and shaker.

Clara’s ambitions reach beyond erotic miming, as talented as she is at both creating and purveying such. She has her eyes on four different strip clubs in Freehold territory alone whose owners and operators need to fucking go, and she wants Winter’s help making it happen; further, she wants the Freehold to take over operation of those establishments for the benefit of the workers. Clara’s vision is popular in Spring and has its supporters in Summer too, but the Declining Seasons have been cool on the concept, citing a need to maintain subtlety and avoid entanglements with the mortal world that might invite the eye of, say, the IRS - or mire the Freehold in a protracted war with local police departments. Clara’s passion burns with a righteous simplicity, envisioning a Freehold that is active in improving the city around it - if the cops want to throw down, bring it on! Her influence over Winter means the Coldest Court cannot simply dismiss her desires, but neither is it willing to go to war. Something is going to have to give, soon.

This concludes the Fairest portion of the article. Some additional thoughts on Seeming follow.

Bombing Your Own Position - Choosing Your Seeming

So it’s been six articles and I’ve talked about the ways various Seemings can represent responses to the things which traumatize us; neurodivergences for which society abuses us, the machinery of capitalism, violence, prison, and more. But how do you go about choosing your character’s Seeming? The obvious choice is to make a character that puts a lot of yourself at the table; to seek out a Seeming that reflects your own traumas, your own issues, your own anxieties and struggles, and then grapple with them in this fictional context. But RPGs can be an emotionally challenging medium, and you may well not want to deal with your own bullshit during your magic trauma fairy game. That’s valid!

Now, the second obvious piece of advice is to think about your proposed character’s themes and traumas and then select a Seeming from there, but this can get complicated. Many Lost players feel as if they need two Seemings, and to those players I say: no the fuck you do not. But it is true that people are messy and do not fully resolve, that the broad spectrum of the world of sorrow and loss is not easy to fit into 6 discrete categories whose creation was often managed by, not to keep repeating this point, fucking Nazis. I have found in my experience that it can be helpful, when you’re torn between two Seemings or you have a character you’re sure is this Seeming even though they look like or could be that one, to ask yourself why the character is not the other option. Why is this alluring and sensual Darkling not a Fairest, what makes this brutal and violent Wizened not an Ogre? This question naturally leads to others about their abuse and their reaction to it, and can start your momentum for writing your concept out.

As an addition, while I’ve spoken of various Seemings as being well-equipped to represent specific traumas, they don’t own those traumas. Elementals are metaphorically autistic, but there’s nothing stopping you from running an autistic Fairest or an autistic Beast instead. Rather, those Seemings outlined as being “for” or “about” certain traumas are those whose selection will make those traumas thematically central, cause you to return to them as a topic over and over by virtue of being who and what they are. Real people have complicated problems which intersect with one another, spawning new problems that are more strange than the sum of their parts, and it’s both valid and interesting to write your Lost that way - just keep in mind that it’ll still be complicated at the table too.

Van Helsing Hate Crimes - Seeming Politics

White Wolf spent a lot of time waffling back and forth on whether or not Seemings represent distinct cultural and political identities in a given Freehold, drifting towards ‘yes’ when the writers thought about the way Blessings and Curses create consistent, measurable differences between Lost of various Seemings, and towards ‘no’ generally whenever they were asked to actually outline a Lost society such as a sample Freehold or Entitlement. Some Entitlements are locked to specific Seemings, often times with little thought as to why, while other times Seeming-based power blocs are alluded to as worldbuilding elements (such as in Lords of Summer) without much in the way of supporting detail. Why should these things happen, when, how, what does the buildup of this violent fracture in a Freehold society look like?

On the whole, I have taken the stance in these articles and in my own worldbuilding that some amount of fantastical prejudice exists amongst the Lost, but that the systems of oppression have not taken root. Maybe it’s idealistic of me to view the Lost as unwilling or unable to produce internally racist power structures that create an underclass for the benefit of an appointed elite, but in general I feel as if Freeholds are too small, each individual member too precious by simple dint of being a living being in a physical body, for this kind of evil to flourish. That said, you may have also noticed that I identified two Seemings - Darklings and Fairest - as explicitly self-uniting and in some senses self-governing on the basis of common traumas that they often cannot fully explain to outsiders, and indeed community with people that understand your bullshit without you having to say it aloud - that is, those who share a Seeming with you - can be invaluable to all Lost. Ultimately, however, I want to advise against looking at Seemings the way that, say, Vampire: the Requiem looks at Clans, and instead to treat them as reactions to trauma rather than a kind of alternate racial identity.

Next up: So You Need To Write A Fetch

[sequinsmile-x]

Defence

They can’t stop each other from being hurt by the past so they do what they can now. They protect each other, their love fierce and soft in equal measure.

Words: 2.5k 

Warnings: Canon typical violence 

Thanks to @aubreyprc for reading this for me to ensure it made sense because I wrote 98% of it in a sleep deprived state. You’re the best, bestie <3 

Read over on ao3 or below the cut.

Let me know what you think!

Emily was sure she had never been so grateful for a case to be over. Eight days in a small town, with almost as many dead young boys. Lost at the hands of a man who was taking out his anger at losing his own son out on innocent local families.

She had watched as the man she loved struggled with it, the similarity between the dead children and his own son not lost on anyone in the team. She knew she’d hovered, stayed maybe a little too close, but she missed Jack too. She kept thinking about the homework she had been helping him with before they were called away, how it was probably still spread out on their dining room table.

She couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel to never finish it, to walk back into a home that only had memories of the boy she loved as her own. They finished the case a little too late to fly home that evening. Aaron’s disappointment was sharp, his frustration coming out in barbed shouts at the team and the local cops as they packed away, broke down the room they had called home for more than a week. Some work needed finishing in the morning, the finilalsing of interviews that Aaron had said they would help with before they headed back to DC.

Dave had given her a silent look, asked her to work her magic. Emily led Aaron down a small, quiet, hallway and she gently assured him they’d see Jack the following day, that they’d pick him up from school and take him to see the movie he’d been raving about for weeks. It drew a smile out of him, and she had squeezed his hand, quipping that he owed everyone a drink.

It’s how they found themselves in a local dive bar, all crowded around a table. Aaron had his arm around her, slung over her shoulders, and she had hers around his waist. Any discomfort of public displays of affection in front of the team had melted away years ago. She could feel some eyes on them, cops they had worked with over the last week casting curious gazes in their direction, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. The case was over, they were heading home in the morning. They could allow themselves to act like a normal couple.

Emily looks up at him and smiles when he looks back at her. She reaches up to press a quick kiss to his lips, her hand coming to rest on his cheek.

“I’m going to the bathroom, I’ll be back in a sec.” She kisses him again, and flips Derek off as she walks away when she hears him making a fake gagging noise.

As she enters the hallway she sees two of the officers from the case. Officer Peters, a difficult man who had looked at them all with contempt since they arrived, and his partner Officer Hayes. Peters was clearly a misogynist, his defiance towards her when they’d been partnered up on a couple of interviews over the last few weeks made that clear. She gets closer to them and stops, their conversation loud enough for her to hear.

“I looked him up, you know?” Officer Peters says, taking a sip of his drink, leaning in towards his partner like he was about to tell some grand secret, but not lowering his voice. “Do you remember The Boston Reaper?” He waits for a nod. “The suit killed him. With his bare hands.”

The mention of Foyet always made her blood run cold even all these years later. Haley’s last words echoing around her head as she remembers them finding Aaron with Foyet’s body, still beating him as if the man wasn’t long dead. She lived with a little boy who had very few memories of his mother now, who would still sometimes find his way into her and Aaron’s bed. Nightmares fused with half remembered moments of the worst day of his life. The things he had overheard, but could not understand, twisting into something that was somehow worse than reality.

“Wouldn’t think he had it in him.” Officer Hayes says in disbelief.

“There's got to be something interesting about him to bag Agent Prentiss. You know she's a wild one just by looking at her.” Officer Peters takes another swig of his drink. “He’s a stern bastard, didn’t crack a smile the whole time they were here.”

She knows it’s true, she makes fun of Aaron for it herself often enough. Good natured jibes to make him relax a little, to remind him that they were all there too. Hearing someone else say it, someone who didn’t know them, set her on edge. She knew how Aaron wore his stoicism like an armour, something to protect himself from the things they saw, from the responsibilities he carried. She was there when it all fell away, when he became her Aaron, not Hotch, and it made her protective of him. Something fierce building in her chest.

She clears her throat before she can stop herself, and the officers both turn to look at her.

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” She says, an eyebrow raised. “I’ve got to get past you.” She nods down the hallway towards the bathrooms, indicating the amount of room they were taking up.

Officer Hayes has the decency to look caught out, and he steps back almost immediately. Officer Peters, however, stands in her way. Purposely blocking her with a defiant look on his face.

“The case is closed.” He says, and she can smell the alcohol on his breath. Emily wonders how long they had been here, if they had been drinking since the unsub was brought in several hours ago. “Your team can’t tell us what to do anymore.”

Emily rolls her eyes and walks past him, easily getting by, and he grabs her arm, yanks her back towards him. She tries to pull her arm free, but he holds on tighter, squeezing her skin in a way that hurts. She doesn’t let it show.

“Let go of me.”

“Terry-” Officer Hayes tries to warn his partner, cut off before he can get beyond the man's given name.

“What are you going to do?” He asks, getting closer to her, making rage as opposed to the fear she was sure he was after rising in her chest. “Tell your boyfriend.”

When she looks back on it in the weeks to come Emily isn’t sure what made her say something. What made her push past the voice in her head, that sounded suspiciously like her boyfriend, telling her to leave it. To walk away. She thinks it’s down to the brutality of the case, the way she knew it had impacted Aaron much more than he would let anyone other than her know. His facade cracking when their hotel room door closed at the end of a long day, too many hours worked behind them and too few hours of sleep ahead.

Emily had watched as he loosened his tie every night, the stoicism on his face giving way to sadness and something too close to guilt for her liking. She had held him tightly in her embrace, trying to transfer some of her strength to him, kisses and words of love pressed against his skin. A loan she gave freely but knew he would pay back, and then some, the next time it was her turn to fall apart behind closed doors.

“I don’t need to tell him anything.” She smiles at him, and it pisses Officer Peters off more. “I’m a federal agent, this is assault. I’d think long and hard before making me involve him. It won't end well for you.” She tears her arm free, holds back the wince when she can feel her skin bruise. She starts to walk away, forgoing the bathroom altogether to walk back to the team, to Aaron.

“Is that a threat, bitch?”

Emily doesn’t exactly know what happens next, Officer Hayes and Peters move at the same time. She’s sure the former is trying to stop his partner, but she ends up getting a blow to her left cheek either way. She cries out, her hand coming up to her face, pain spreading from the point of impact. She hears Derek yelling from across the bar and she sighs.

All hell was about to break loose. _______________

Emily finds herself grateful that Aaron is not there when everything happened, that he’d stepped out to call Jessica and speak to Jack before he went to bed for the night. When he walks back into the bar she can tell he immediately knows something has happened. She watches as he pauses in the doorway, the relative silence in the bar deafening in comparison to the noise he had left behind.

Aaron looks over and sees Derek and Dave talking to a couple of officers from the case, Officer Hayes included, and then he looks over at where she is sitting, JJ holding ice wrapped in a towel the barman had given them against her cheek.

He’s by her side in seconds, JJ handing over the makeshift ice pack silently, linking arms with Spencer to lead him away to give them some privacy

“What happened to your face?” He cups her jaw gently, his thumb ghosting over the swelling already appearing under her skin, bruising blooming on her cheek.

“It’s ok.” She says, her self deprecating laugh turning into a wince as he presses the wrapped ice to her cheek. “It’s nothing. You should see the other guy. Derek did a number on him.”

“Em.” Aaron says, grabbing her hand with his spare one, gently squeezing it. “Please.”

She sighs and closes her eyes. “Ok.” She swallows and looks at him again, attempting a smile to reassure him. “But you’ve got to understand it is not your fault.”

His face falls, eyebrows furrowing enough that the crease she loves to soothe with her thumb appears on his forehead.

“A couple of the officers from the case were over by the bathroom, I heard them talking about you.” It riles her up again, frustration burning in her chest. “I let them know I was there. One of them was pretty drunk and he grabbed me. I got away and he managed to get a good punch in whilst his partner tried to stop him.”

“Where?” He grits out.

“What?”

“Where did he grab you?” He asks, his voice dangerous. She sighs, rolls the sleeve up on her sweater to show where the finger shaped bruises were forming on her arm. She sees him clench his jaw, the hand not gently holding ice against her cheek forming a fist.

“Honey-”

“I’ll kill him.”

Emily stops him from moving, wrapping her hand around his fist. “Aaron, just breathe. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, Emily.” He seethes, anger vibrating off of him in a way she couldn’t remember seeing in years. “He hurt you.”

“Come on, love. I can take a punch just as well as the rest of you.” She says, smiling at him. “Probably better actually.”

“Em.”

“It’s not worth it. He’ll already be losing his badge for this. I’d rather you didn’t go to prison for killing him.” She reaches out and cups his cheek, tries to coax a smile out of him. “I don’t think I could keep up with the mortgage payments by myself and it would be a shame to move.” She presses her forehead to his. “I love the bay window too much.”

Aaron does laugh at that. It’s cracked, catching in his chest, but it’s something and it relieves the tension. “I always knew that’s why you agreed to move in with me. The house.”

“You’ll do too, I suppose.” She kisses him, and becomes serious when she pulls away. “Let’s just get out of here, ok? I’d like to go climb into that tiny excuse for a bath in our hotel room with you.”

She doesn’t have to ask twice, their goodbyes to the team short as they leave the bar. When they get outside Officer Peters is there, his superior officer having arrived once the incident had called through.

Emily has to physically pull Aaron in the opposite direction, she feels the tension in him build again as they take a couple steps away.

“She threatened me first, you know.” Officer Peters yells after them, his anger at Emily still clear. “This is what happens when you let women do this kind of work.”

Aaron rarely used his strength against her, unless she asked him to, but he was out of her grasp before she even knew what was happening.

“Aaron.” She calls after him, catching up with him and grabbing his arm again, her fingers digging into his bicep. “It’s not worth it.”

“She is better at her job than you could ever hope to be.” Aaron spits out, anger flowing from him. “When I’m done with you they won’t even let you direct traffic.” He turns to the detective in charge of the case. “We won’t be back in the morning as discussed, we will be leaving first thing. My team will liaise with you on anything you need.”

He walks away, pulling her with him, before there is any chance of a response. _______________

She wants to distract him, his fingers grazing gently over the bruising on her arm as they sit in the bath together. She was on his lap, crushed up against him so they could both fit. Emily could feel how delicately he was treating her. Even though she couldn’t see his face she knew he was frowning, on a downward spiral, blaming himself for not protecting her.

She links her fingers through his, drags his arm around her so he’s no longer focused on her injuries. “That was pretty hot, you know.” She turns her head to press a kiss into his throat, her fingers dancing across his skin. “What was?” He asks, and she turns her whole body to look at him, settling herself back over his thighs. She bites her lip before she kisses him so he can’t focus too much on her bruised cheek.

“You wanting to go all caveman like that.” She says, moving her lips to his ear lobe, nipping at the delicate skin. “However unnecessary it was.”

His hands grip her hips, pulling her closer to him, and she knows she’s achieved what she had set out to.

“Oh really?” He asks as his hands trail up her back.

“Really.”

She kisses him, and all other thoughts are lost.

[kingwuko]

Wuko in the comics

Welcome to my first post discussing Wuko in the LoK comic books!

This first post will be discussing Turf Wars- which unfortunately does not feature Wu. But there are lots of excellent Mako moments, and there are some major plot points that carry over into the next comic trilogy.

Turf Wars is the first LoK comic trilogy released after the finale. Though it was released two and half years after the finale aired, it picks up right where we left off. While the creators confirmed after the finale aired that Korrasami was canon, the last moments of the animated series were a little ambiguous (on purpose, since this was a time when queer representation was just not considered "acceptable" in children's media-it was truly the only way they could get away with it). The comics definitively remove all ambiguity. Turf Wars features multiple frames of Korra and Asami kissing, holding hands, and coming out to their friends and family. 

The overarching plot of Turf Wars is a conflict over the land upon which the new spirit portal sets. There is also conflict between rival Triad gangs, the Triple Threats and the Creeping Crystals, over turf in Republic City following the chaos of Kuvira's invasion. These two sets of turf wars overlap when a business tycoon hires the Triple Threats to secure the spirit portal for him by driving others off. The new Leader of the Triple Threats, Tokuga, is attacked by a spirit defending the portal, causing him to gain a dragon-like appearance and a new agenda-seizing control of all Republic City. In the midst of all this there is a refugee crisis, a presidential election, and Korra and Asami trying to navigate their new relationship once they return to the real world with all their responsibilities.

Notable plot points and character developments:

Korra and Asami canon is confirmed (repeatedly)-They come out to family and their friends

Business owner Wonyong Keum, who owns the land upon which the new portal sits, demands everyone vacate so he can turn it into a tourist attraction for profit-prompting Korra to enter the Avatar state to temporarily drive him away.

An unhappy spirit requests Korra closes the portal to prevent exploitation of the spirit world.

Bolin joins Mako as his rookie detective partner.

Zhu Li is running efforts to care for refugees who lost their homes during Kuvira’s attack and teams up with Asami to begin rebuilding homes for everyone displaced.

Tokuga is introduced as the leader of the Triple Threats, fighting for control of the streets with Jargala, the leader of the Creeping Crystals.

Kya reveals she is queer and gives us a history lesson on the context of LGBTQ+ history in the world.

Tokuga is attacked by the afore-mentioned spirit and his right arm and half his face become dragon-esque.

Raiko is a colossal idiot. He is way too focused on getting reelected and making his decisions based on what his campaign advisor suggests, rather than just, you know, governing his city. He calls the military to occupy the portal, prompting the Airbenders to peacefully protest.

Zhu Li runs against Raiko for the presidency. She rallies more protesters to protect the spirit portal while her husband films her for his newest project- a “docu-mover” which he presumably uses to influence the election. 

Asami and Keum are kidnapped by Tokuga and forced to make a poison gas device bring the city under Tokuga’s control.

The Krew manages to save the day of course, thanks to Asami’s wit, Korra’s unstoppable stubbornness, and back-up from Bolin and Mako. Except Mako, bless him, says he’ll “take care of Tokuga”, and then promptly loses him.

Tokuga mysteriously disappears into the spirit world.

Zhu Li wins the presidency.

Korra and Asami share a lovely, romantic moment where they exchange their first “I love you”s at the conclusion of the comic.

Mako scenes

There is no Wu in the Turf Wars comics (Unless you count one line of dialogue where it is mentioned that the Earth Kingdom is sending supplies to help the refugee situation) - however, there is plenty of Mako! Mako’s primary role in this series is as a detective trying to find and stop the Triads from waging their turf war in the city.

Our first scenes with Mako shows him back to being a detective- and his brother is his partner. He doesn’t seem super thrilled to be working with Bolin, but I think it’s just because he knows how his brother is- not that he doesn’t want to spend time with him. They are trying to track down the new leader of the triple threats and control gang activity. Mako’s arm is still in a sling, he’s got his usual brooding grumpy facial expression, and his hair is spiky again! He and Bolin arrest two-toed Ping and try to interrogate him. Two-toed Ping is weirdly proud of Mako and Bolin for rising up from being “nobodies” to a couple of “bigtime cops”.

They catch up with Korra and Asami, and the four of them are alerted by Jinora that the Triple threats are attacking the Airbenders that were meditating at the portal. Asami gets hurt in the battle and she and Korra share a kiss in front of everyone:

Look at Opal’s sweet face. She looks like she’s barely containing her excitement and is maybe squealing a bit, and she’s looking directly at Bolin which I think is a sweet moment to show their relationship. Bolin calls dibs on the first double date.

Mako probably needs time to process the information....

Mako and Bolin do some detective work to try and find Tokuga. There is an interesting scene where they are questioning Scoochy (We saw him in the first season, he’s the kid that told Korra and Mako the Bolin went to do some work for the triple threats before getting captured by equalists) Bolin tells Mako they should do “good cop, bad cop”, with Bolin being the good cop. Mako gets annoyed, and Bolin asks if he’s grumpy because his exes are dating. Mako insists he’s cool with it- though he’s got a distressed look on his face. They catch up to Scoochy and Bolin actually loses his temper and is rather menacing. Mako pulls Bolin back and genuinely connects with Scoochy- relating to his past, pushing him to do the right thing and help others. I really liked this moment because it shows how much character growth he’s had when you compare the way he treated Kai in season 3. (They are ultimately unsuccessful and Scoochy’s tip leads them to a room rigged with explosives- but I don’t think Scoochy knew that, I think he was fed false info).

There’s another touching scene, after Asami is kidnapped, where Mako notices how upset Korra seems as everyone is trying to form a plan to stop Tokuga. He steps aside to check in and see how she’s feeling. He comforts her’ empathizes with her, and reassures her that they are going to find Asami. At this point he seems to have fully processed that they are together and seems to fully accept it and is very supportive. Not easy considering the awkward position he’s in as both their exes. In this scene, Mako also informs Korra that he can’t firebend with his injured arm.

Mako and Bolin helps Korra to find Asami by requesting help from Jargala- in spite of the fact that Chief Beifong told them not to… They show up for Korra and Asami even if it means risking their jobs. They team up and fight the bad guys together, just like the old days.

We see many examples of how bad the damage is from Mako’s injury in the Colossus. He can’t bend with his left arm, it’s in a sling almost the whole comic, and he really doesn’t seem to be at the top of his game. He told Bolin he would take care of catching Tokuga, but apparently couldn’t and lost him. Mako’s injury is pretty bad and it’s probably really frustrating.

At the end, Bolin decides to quit the force (surprise. The guy loves to hop from calling to calling!). He makes a big dramatic speech to Mako, talking about how it’s time they go their separate ways. Mako is like “Um I’m going to see you at home in like two hours”, so it sounds like they are living together.

What all this might mean for Wuko

So now I’m going to try to tie things back into how all this affects the potential of Wuko- whether that’s for headcanons or fics or whatever- and just try to give you an idea of what this comic means for Wuko shippers.

Wu is governing in the Earth Kingdom right now. It is mentioned by Zhu Li that the Earth Kingdom sent supplies, so one can assume Wu has taken his place on the throne and the Earth Kingdom is in a stable enough position to be sending supplies to aid another nation. Nothing is mentioned about efforts to transform the Earth Kingdom into a democratic nation (we’ll get to that in the Ruins of the Empire comics).

Mako’s primary relationships that are explored are with his brother and with Korra. His relationship with Bolin is just as it always is. He loves his brother even if he is a little exhausted by his upbeat, enthusiastic attitude. We build up on his final interaction with Korra from the animated series and continue to firmly establish them as friends and amicable exes. Interestingly, we don’t get any meaningful Mako and Asami interactions. When he is comforting Korra, he relates to her by remembering how worried he was when Korra was kidnapped by Amon. He doesn't try to say “Yeah I’m really worried about Asami too”, which, to me is bizarre because he and Asami are friends too, right? I don’t know if we should read too much into it though- most likely it was just a writing choice that we aren’t meant to psycho-analyze- but it could also mean he is being careful with his words so that Korra doesn’t wonder if he still has feelings for Asami. The love triangle is completely resolved and Mako is out of the picture romantically with either of them and has no lingering romantic feelings. In other words, he is 100% ready available for a relationship with someone else.

The scene where Kya gives us a history lesson establishes how LGBTQ+ people are viewed in the world of LoK. In short, Korra and Asami are fully supported by their friends and family, and even their enemies acknowledge their relationship without any homophobic tones. The closest we get to homophobia is Korra's father, who, after expressing his happiness at their relationship, warns Korra to be cautious going forward because not everyone will be as understanding. Kya gives us a quick lesson on how same-gender relationships are viewed across the nations: The water tribe, being a patriarchal culture, expects discretion. The Earth Kingdom is not particularly accepting-Kya says that Avatar Kyoshi was bisexual but couldn't affect "real change" and that the earth kingdom is the slowest to accept change and is also militarily repressive (full disclosure I have not read the Kyoshi comics, maybe there is additional insight in those?). And in the fire nation, Sozin made same-gender relationships illegal when he took power (I hope Zuko undid all that when he became Firelord). The air nation is the only one that seems truly accepting-Kya paints a picture of total acceptance and says that Aang was supportive when she herself came out. Korra is worried that maybe her father was right, but Asami points out that a lot has changed over the years and everyone seems accepting, especially in Republic City. 

I think what we can take away from this as far as Wuko goes- is that in Republic City, same-gender relationships are not much of an issue, while in the Earth Kingdom it could be viewed negatively. One could make a case that Wu might have cause to be closeted, while Mako might not. (Feel free to reject this history canon and substitute your own. I’d just as soon say that no one in the avatar-verse cares if you aren’t cis or het).

In conclusion. Mako is just a guy trying very hard to be a good, supportive friend to his exes who are now dating each other. He loves them (platonically) he loves his brother, he’s kind and has matured a lot, but he still always has a grumpy look on his face so it’s time for him to move on and get together with Wu.

Well, that’s Turf Wars. I did cram the plot of three comic books into one post, so I certainly did not hit all the details. If you feel I missed something crucial, feel free to reblog with your own takes. Next I’ll discuss Ruins of the Empire, in which we get lots of Wu and potential Wuko moments, a sizable helping of angst and even some Wu & Korra friendship! RotE is a really fun comic trilogy and I’ll be breaking it down into multiple posts. Thanks for reading everyone!

Wuko In RotE part 1

Wuko in RotE part 2

[thedivinedemom]

An AU of DC with a mass crossover of PS4 properties.

Provisional name: Players Searching for Detectable Changes (Get the pun?)

The setup:

This is the future of DC, a world where the old guard has slowly withdrawn and the newer generations have risen to the occasion. The original Titans in particular, most of which have formed the new Justice League while many other, very similar teams had started to form across the world. One of which was a resurgence of the Teen Titans, led by an older and purified Raven. She wanted to make the Teen Titans something akin as it was for her, a place to belong and learn to use one's powers.

The first 'class' of such individuals include:

Stargirl (of the now-disbanded JSA and still getting used to the Starrod)

Blue Beetle III (Freshly attached to his alien symbiote and freaking out a bit)

Robin V (to work on his anger issues, mostly at the new Batman's request)

Kaldur (a half Atlantean half metahuman who is struggling with his identity and the surface world, Aquaman feels a kinship for the boy seeing their similarities)

Static Shock (a promising new hero but little experience working outside his city or in groups)

Mary Marvel (she's... she's going through alot. Fresh from a coma, her brother is distant as he acts as the new Wizard, and she may be, sorta kinda, being corrupted by Black Adam's gifted power)

The team was rough and there was plenty of head butting (Mostly between Stargirl and Robin/Damian as one is almost the unanimous leader while the other thinks he should be) but they were getting there. They were more of a clean up crew for the Justice League, they did more than the "kiddie missions" that the Outsiders didn't do, and they meant more than the PR grab that was the International team. Though they didn't seem to amount to more than that. They still did their best, pushing past the silent ridicule, as they went about their missions.

This may be why tempers were so high that day.

One day, outside a little city by the name of Weller's Point, the prisoner transport for the villain Plasmus had an "accident". Released and awakened the creature went on a rampage, heading ever closer to the populated area. Luckily, the mentor of the New Teen Titans could teleport. The new team did fairly well in the fight, though they did struggle a bit as Plasmus was not a being where simple brute force would work. It made the fight tricky and more than a bit... messy.

Messy enough that juvenile and emotionally compromised Mary Marvel lashed out against the downed villain but was stopped by her teammates... things escalated from there. Restraint turned blows and the whole team struggled to stop their powerhouse without hurting her. The ones who do the best are Raven, Stargirl, Blue Beetle, and oddly Static.

While both of the former could use their abilities to restrain her to a very effective degree Static was actively draining her of strength, or at least of the electic aura she was radiating and blasting with. Frustrated, done with the situation, and a bit petty Mary launched her largest attack yet by saying her magical word.

SHAZAM.

Virgil did what he did best, he handled that lightning as it came crashing down towards Mary and the Titans restraining her. Well, he tried. The bolt was just too powerful, too unlike anything he had ever encountered. He could not handle it and it was dissipating, if anything it clung to him or tried to jump towards the girl. He had to get rid of it and he had to get rid of it quickly, safely too if he could help it.

He shoved it into the ground, into the power lines. He did it as carefully as he could, trying to prevent overload or flashover as guided the charge into the power grid.

What happened next was a combination of a few things. 1. The Mystic and transformative properties of the Lightning, 2. It is effectively being filtered through a bang baby, 3. The kryptonite power plant owned by, provided by, and operated by Lexcorp.

This interaction, this new charge, cycling through the power grid interacted strangely with a number of devices but none more so than PlayStation 4s and the devices connected to them. This new electricity changed things, literally. It brought fantasy into reality.

Whatever game was loaded into became a part of our reality in a small way. Sometimes TVs, Controllers, and even the system changed to reflect items from the game but the bigger change came with the Players. If a person was playing their console during the surge then they would become a metahuman with abilities based on the playable character they were playing.

The city, the county even, was now flooded by an abundance of metahumans and items of varying power of devastation. Static felt horrible.

He couldn't help but compare what has happened here to what happened in Dakota City but on a wider scale. And this time it was his fault. His sense of responsibility wouldn't, couldn't, let that stand. He had to fix his mistake and his team was dragged along for the ride.

The story to follow is a mix of Final Crisis and Kingdom Come with a bit of the Young Justice cartoon in events and themes, a few twists and likely a bit lighter in tone but to the DC geeks this should give a rough idea… Maybe a bit of Marvel's Civil War but hopefully not the rushed knee-jerk mess that that ended up being.

But it's here that I start having issues with my planning. One part in worry as outside the set up we start to follow the perspective of OCs (something rarely smiled upon) and another part in wondering which OC to focus on.

Now, one thing I love in fiction is progressive powers and the conflict escalating from the different paths people take in said progression. In that vein, I have a pair of protags in mind as well.

The main two/co-protagonists:

The Lawkeeper- a cop before the change and now a member of a task force made up largely of those affected by the surge. A gamer, a man of color, and a believer of the spirit of the law. He doesn't always get along with his fellow officers but he believes in what the blue does. He believes that an organized response is what is best.

His abilities are based on those of Jesse Fades of Control. Meaning he has tremendous psychic potential but he needs 3 things to reach his full potential.

1.Items to bond to so he can generate these psychic abilities. Jesse's used altered items of her universe to get thematic abilities from them (ex: a safe to generate a shield, a carousel horse for a dash ability, ect). Here he can use items generated by the surge.

2. A patron/partner entity to help guide, give insights, and empower. It also let's the user enforce reality, basically becoming an anti reality warper.

3. A bonded morph weapon or a weapon to come to his hand when called.

The knight- a recent college graduate who instantly decided to go the route of the caped hero. She, after figuring out how to get her powers to work, instantly went the route of a caped crusader. Going out to the streets, saving lives, stopping instances of surge item abuse, and (in the humble opinion of the local Police Department) getting in the way of operations. In her opinion they were taking too long to get things done.

Her abilities are based on those of Prince Noctis of Final Fantasy XV. This means she has tremendous physical and magical potential but like the above she has a number of check marks needed to gain access to the character's full power.

1. A gem/crystal to draw power from.

2. 13 magical weapons to boost strength. The generated game weapons will do and I have most picked out in a way that likely would help the plot progress.

3. The blessing of 5-6 gods.

4. A power ring of some king to channel all this power.

I keep debating the two above as I do like the idea of both of them climbing in power and clashing over conflicting ideals of what to do with their power. At the same time, I think that just smooshing aspects of both into one (which is actually where they started, a single character) and play off the different ideologies of how best to help people from within her friend group and precinct along with internal conflict. Maybe have the one be a fellow officer they butt heads with because of the... precarious nature

Another OC I was thinking on, keeping with the theme of what to do when you have power, is a thief who played Persona 5. Like both of the above they would be crippled in their ability to use their abilities without a way to fake the connection to. In this case, without the Mementos App, they would need an item that could affect or enter the hearts of others. Luckily, more unlucky really, there are plenty of items floating around that can do just that. Namely Keyblades.

Most other Players are an odd mix but most are variations of the Shooter build. Peak physical humans who heal quickly and often have bullet time. But there are enough other variations to cause trouble. Demigods of unreal strength, men and women who can easily tap into a patron for powers from the outside, 2 variations of spider powers, cat eyed men and women who can cast magic with simple gestures, and so much more. But the real issue was the first two, the demigods without a parent to protect them and those easily connected to a divine source.

The disembodied New Gods of Apocalypse were very happy with those groups. For how bad this can be please look at what happened to Mary Marvel in canon Final Crisis.

Thoughts and opinions would be appreciated.

[whiskeyjack]

I absolutely hear you on a lot of what you said about Rio’s development this season, but I don’t think the show is saying that Nick’s comment about Lucy’s murder is what we’re supposed to think about it. That’s just what Nick thinks, and considering the way they’ve portrayed him, I really don’t think we’re meant to agree with him. In fact I thought we were supposed to do the opposite. Why do you think the show itself is reframing what happened through him? I’m curious in your reading of that

(x)

you know? you make an excellent point. this one also got unintentionally REALLY long, so it is too, under the cut haha

-shout out to @jade-marie and @00gangfriend00, without them I don’t know how coherent this entire response would be haha

Alright, well firstly, I think it’s unfortunately clear that even some of the show’s writers don’t actually have a good grasp on the events leading up to Lucy’s death, both during s3 and now. It seems like depending on who is talking, and the timing of the discussion, the answer will shift. It is… really hard to speculate sometimes when the writers don’t even know the reason behind a scene. However, since it’s canon - whatever the reason or goal of the scene - I’m just going to go on my merry way and create/keep my own interpretation.

The more I thought about your ask, the more I realized, yeah, through Nick’s scripted words alone, they aren’t necessarily reframing what happened, since Nick does seem to be unaware of much of the entire sequence of events regarding Lucy: “So… you were just gunna, what, keep it to yourself?”. Assuming the diner scene with the cop was the first time he heard about it, his impression most likely wouldn’t be a fair representation of what actually happened. So, this is me eating my own words from before, so I apologize for using his quotes to reinforce my idea. This is simply my opinion, and it does regularly change quite a bit… I am wrong a lot haha

To some degree, I think reframing or shifting of some sort is kind of unavoidable when a show continues a plotline from a previous season, especially in addition to incorporating new characters into the past events. Nonetheless, I do think that the show is deliberately in fact reframing Lucy’s death and why it happened - through Rio’s backstory & POVs, Nick’s character development, and the show’s choice to show Rio having a lack of scars.

1. The backstory and Rio POVs

According to the backstory we’ve been given so far, Nick is this person who apparently is so deeply entrenched in Rio’s life and decision-making but he doesn’t know 1) that Rio killed someone, 2) the fact that Rio killed Lucy for Beth (as opposed to killing Annie, Ruby or Beth), and 3) why, which makes me wonder how exactly they are using Lucy’s death as a plotline in combination with Nick and Rio’s relationship. As I said in my previous post, I believe that the events leading up to and including Lucy’s death were heavily tied into if not directly a reaction to the shooting in 2.13.

According to this season, it seems Nick is Rio’s backstory, and Rio is Nick’s. So far, we’ve gotten approximately eight Rio POV scenes, separate from the girls, including flashbacks (excluding the Fitz kill):

4.02:

-the police station

4.08:

-baby Rio (rotten eggs with Nick)

-teenage Rio (the boxing scene(s)/contrasted with Nick’s POV on the golf course)

-teenage Rio (locker room theft)

-teenage Rio (grandma/stove and locker room arrest)

-adult Rio (outside the police station)

-teenage Rio (with Nick, kitchen flashback - I think this is more just an omniscient POV, however)

4.09:

-the boxing scene (with Nick)

With the exception of the police station in 4.02, Nick has been present in some capacity in each one of these Rio POV scenes. Since it’s only been through the flashbacks that we’re getting the main context of their relationship, it’s clear that the storyline the show is perpetuating this season is that Nick and Rio’s characters are very tightly weaved together in some capacity. And have been historically.

Rio, as a teenager, was a victim of Nick’s early manipulative actions, but in the end, it made him money, so (we are able to gather) he was able to justify falling into a criminal relationship with him. After Rio’s six-month stint in prison, he spent (probably) the entire time resenting Nick (and also, this is where he most importantly - in my opinion - developed adult Rio’s mannerisms haha jk).

So, moving forward with this knowledge, let’s take a look at their adult relationship.

2. Nick’s character development (in relation to Rio)

First and foremost, with Rio, in s1-3, he was an enigmatic, charismatic, clever, powerful, king who loved money, was in charge of every decision, well-connected, and a man of few words etc etc. Now, while Rio is being given more facets as more and more of his relationship with Nick is revealed and explored: he is being illustrated as someone who is dependant on his likely long-time abuser. This may be the case, absolutely, but, in my opinion, takes away from the last three years of work the show put into the character Rio mentioned above, including Manny’s nuanced acting. The reveal of Nick’s current power dynamic over Rio (at least the abusive part) in this past episode was quite jarring and seemed incredibly OOC of the Rio I personally know and love from past seasons, and, it kind of came out of nowhere, in my opinion. To be clear, I have nothing against the storyline of Rio being a victim (have you read my fic? haha), but I think that the way they are progressing this storyline is too abrupt and lacks the subtleties that I would have preferred to see with something like this. Especially considering this is canon.

Returning to the original point though, by assuming this abuser/abused dynamic is where the show is taking Nick and Rio’s relationship, that means that Nick likely seeks to control Rio’s life and decisions as much as he can (props to @00gangfriend00 for this articulation). Related and important side note: @jade-marie pointed out to me that by setting a preceding occurrence of physical mistreatment, the show is (unintentionally) establishing Rio as someone who is stuck in a cycle of abuse, and who seems to seek out abusive relationships and probably misunderstands abuse as intimacy. Rio’s relationships with both Beth and Nick demonstrate this. How much shit they’re both clearly able to get away with, and still have power over him. Which I think is an incredibly problematic message to be sending. This is a critical point, especially regarding the scars/acknowledgement of the shooting, because it offers the writer’s an excuse to write off the entire shooting, and by doing so, they are validating this cycle of abuse. (I won’t apologize for this particular tangent, because I really hope the writers acknowledge the damage this storyline could do if they don’t properly see it through this season)

Since it was confirmed that Nick didn’t know about Lucy (even though Rio supposedly got the alibi of the boxing tickets from him) Rio was, presumably, hiding the true extent (or the entirety) of his relationship with Beth from him. Which - I think from a writer’s perspective - does benefit the show, if they choose not to circle back to the shooting. This also allows them the freedom to ‘pretend’ that Rio got over it by himself. Obviously, there are a lot of issues and plot holes with that in itself, but to me, because Lucy’s death wasn’t something that Nick already knew about, combined with the lack of clarity of who Beth is to Rio in Nick’s mind - he doesn’t know about either the shooting or the consequences of it.

3. The lack of scars

Alright, so lastly - the show’s decision to not put scars on Rio. I think this was absolutely a conscious decision, there must have been at least one person in the building that thought of the fact that a shirtless Manny without scars couldn’t just be brushed aside. As a result, I, personally, think this demonstrates that the show is done with shooting. Pretending it never happened, erasing the trauma, moving on, yeah. Obviously, as I said, I vehemently don’t agree with this direction but I think it’s clear it’s a storyline the show doesn’t want to circle back to. Otherwise, Nick would know about Beth and Rio’s history. Otherwise, Nick would know about Lucy. Otherwise, there would be scars. This is my own opinion of course, but I’m making it based off of a couple of Nick’s lines: “Did you [kill Lucy] for [Beth]?” and in 4.08 when he talks to Beth, “So what’s the deal with you and [Rio]? […] Anyone who wears a cardigan, shouldn’t be doing what he does.” He generally seems unaware of the true state of Beth and Rio’s history and is probably genuinely curious about it considering the amount of control he has (or wants to have) over Rio.

I think that because all of the Rio POVs we’ve had are linked to Nick, I made the jump that we are supposed to believe Nick’s influence is/was at the heart of many of Rio’s decisions in the past. Obviously, during s2 and s3 writing and production, they didn’t actually know they were going to get a s4 or do a Rio backstory, so the fact is, that the character they wrote called Rio then, was someone entirely different from today’s Rio. However, we’re watching different seasons of Good Girls, not a different show from one year to the next. I think because this is the backstory we’re getting, the show is implying that this was the case all along. That s2 and s3 Rio made all of those decisions with Nick, someone he was scared of, hanging over his head in some capacity. Or somewhere in his vicinity. That’s why I have a problem with the implication that Lucy’s death was phrased the way it was, without the scars present. They coated that dialogue with innuendos about Beth and Rio’s sexual history, which is also quite layered, but at least that connection I get. It reminds us that Rio was betrayed in more ways than one. However, without the scars present, and Nick seemingly unaware of the shooting, how does the show intend to justify Lucy’s death with the audience? None of it makes sense. Jade was so incredibly helpful; she cohesively summarized the events - by erasing 2.13, they are erasing Rio’s motivations for 3.05. I just want it to make sense 😩

[northoftheroad]

Recommeded reading for Dick Grayson / Robin and Nightwing

This is an updated repeat of a couple of lists with reading recommendations with Dick as Robin and Nightwing (Pre-Flashpoint) that I've made earlier. But since I wrote them as answers to asks, the posts don't have a headline, and I find that they can be easy to miss (for me, when I want to look something up...) So I thought I might as well make a new, single post of them.

The stories are in what I imagine would be an in-universe chronology. They are from all periods, ignoring that the Golden age stories and Silver/Bronze/modern age stories have at times been considered two different universes. Most of them are stories that, at the time of their publishing, were canon and in continuity. None is explicitly Elseworld, so you can certainly imagine that they have happened ;-)

To be honest, not all of these comics are examples of great storytelling. Older superhero comics, for instance, are definitely something else compared to modern comics, for better and for worse. I've picked some because they are "the first time" or significant in some way (e.g. the first time Dick was almost killed, when Bruce has to fight to keep custody, an infamous fight between Dick and Bruce, the most well-known different origin stories, panels that are often quoted); others because they have a cute or fun moment. I have also included some books that I don't like myself but are well-known.

Storytelling has changed a lot since Dick was Robin. Back in the Golden and Silver age, with very few exceptions, comics were stand-alone short stories. In later decades, it's usually arcs that span at least a couple of issues and some stories have consequences for years.

Dick has been an active team member since the 1960s, and he has arguably been at his best in some team titles, but I still don't have a lot of team books here. I find it difficult to, off the top of my head, recall any "special Dick issues".

Obviously, these are very personal preferences, and the list is based on what I've read and remembered best.

Robin the Boy Wonder. Detective Comics # 38 (The original origin story. There has been maaany more since then – I've made a list just with origin stories....) (1940).

Batman: Year Three. Batman # 436-439. (An origin story where Dick spent some time at a nice orphanage before he came to Bruce.) (1989)

Robin Annual vol 2 # 4. (Another origin story, where the Gotham authorities remove Dick him from the circus, and he is put in the Gotham City's Youth Center. Not my preferred but it's well known.) (1995)

The Gauntlet. The Batman Chronicles #1. (The test before Batman let Dick start out as Robin.) (1997)

Grimm. Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #149-153. (A story set when Dick is new as Robin and still uncertain about his place. For a while, he wants to leave Batman and stay in a children's underground paradise.) (2002)

Robin: Year One. (Traumatic events during Dick's first year as Robin. He was nearly beat to death by Two-Face. When Bruce said he was not permitted to continue as Robin, Dick ran away because he didn't think there was a place for him at the Manor any more.) (2001)

The case of the honest crook. Batman #5. (1941)

The Batman plays a lone hand. Batman #13. (The first time Bruce ended the Batman and Robin partnership and left Dick to take care of himself.) (1942)

Robin studies his lessons. Batman #18. (1943)

Bruce Wayne loses the guardianship of Dick Grayson. Batman #20. (1944)

Clay. Batman Black and White #6. (2014)

Don't know where, don't know when. Batman Black and White #1. (2013)

Dick Grayson, author. Batman #35. (1946)

The Clocks of Doom. Star Spangled Comics #70.

The man Batman refused to help! Star Spangled Comics #88.

A birthday for Batman. Star Spangled Comics #91.

Robin, the Boy Failure. DC #145. (Dick gets amnesia, and Bruce tries to get him to remember that he’s Robin, without telling him outright.) (1949).

The killer-dog of Gotham city. Star Spangled Comics #100. (1950)

The trial of Bruce Wayne. Batman #57. (1950)

Race of the century. DC #157. (1950)

Dick Grayson, detective. Star Spangled Comics #111. (1950)

The strange costumes of Batman. DC #165. (Dick’s first time as Batman.) (1950)

The robberies in the Batcave. DC #177. (1951)

Partner for Batman. Batman #65. (1951)

Batman II and Robin, junior. Batman #66. (1951)

The plainclothes Robin. Star Spangled Comics #112. (Batman forbids Dick from going out at as Robin; he finds creative ways to use it in other ways.) (1951)

Operation Escape. Star Spangled Comics #124. (1952)

The new team of Superman and Robin. World's Finest Comics #75. (With Batman out of commission, Robin teams up with Superman. Batman is a bit apprehensive about Dick’s joy.) (1955)

Batman, jr. DC #231. (1956)

The grown-up Boy Wonder. Batman #107. (1957)

The last days of Batman. Batman #125. (1959)

Robin's new boss. Batman #137. (Dick wants to leave Bruce and get into a new partnership. Bruce is very distraught indeed.) (1961)

Robin Dies at Dawn. Batman #156. (Batman gets PTSD after participating in an experiment and he has to hang up the cowl becuase he is endangering Robin. Doctor Simon Hurt, who became a main villain when Grant Morrison wrote Batman, is the nameless doctor in charge of the experiment.) (1963)

The Olsen-Robin team versus the Superman-Batman team. World's Finest Comics #141. (1964)

The thousand-and-one dooms of Mr Twister. The Brave and the Bold #54. (The first team-up of Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad – the first step towards the formation of the Teen Titans.) (1964)

Teen Titans: Year One. (A retelling of the origin of the Teen Titans. The original version was told in Teen Titans vol 1 #53 from 1978, the last issue of the Silver/Bronze age comic book.) (2008)

Midnight raid of the Robin gang. DC #342. (1965)

The Round-Robin death threats. DC #366-367. (1967)

Batgirl breaks up the dynamic duo. DC #369. (1967)

The Nemesis from Batman's boyhood. DC #370. (1967)

Batman! Drop dead… twice. DC #378-379. (1968)

Geometry. Superman #700. (Dick goes out as Robin on his own, against Bruce's order. Superman has to fish him up out the harbour...) (2010)

Menace of the Motorcycle Marauders. Batman #202. (1968)

Operation blindfold. Batman #204-205. (1968)

Angel… or devil. Batman #216. (1969)

Prisoners of the Immortal world. World’s Finest Comics #200. (Dick had moved to Hudson University by now. Together with Superman and a pair of brothers, he's transported to a different world.) (1971)

Daughter of the Demon. Batman #232. (First appearance of Ra's al Ghul, who kidnaps Robin from Hudson as a test to see if Batman is worthy of Talia.) (1971)

Vengeance for a cop. Batman #234-236. (1971)

Night of the Reaper. Batman #237. (1971)

Earth - the monster maker. Justice League of America #91-92. (A story with characters from both Earth-One and Earth-Two, including the adult Robin from Earth-Two who is a member of the Justice Society of America.) (1971)

How many times can a Robin die? Batman #246. (A criminal sets out to revenge himself on Batman by setting up murders of lifelike Robin dummies; since he has kidnapped the real Robin, Batman can't know if the killings are the real thing.) (1972)

The return of the Flying Grayson. Batman #250. (1973)

Color me deadly. Batman #316. (1979)

The Iron solution. DC #487. (1980)

The Man in Black wears Green. DC #493. (1980)

The Lazarus Affair (plus). Batman #331-335. (Another story with Talia and Ra's al Ghul, but also about generation gaps and slum buildings. Robin is angrily opposed to Bruce being with Talia because he doesn't trust her; he seeks out Catwoman to help.) (1981)

Yesterday's heroes. Batman #339. (1981)

To kill a legend. Detective Comics #500. (The Phantom Stranger transports Batman and Robin to a parallel Earth where they have the chance to stop that world's Joe Chill from murdering the Waynes.) (1981)

Who is Donna Troy? New Teen Titans #38. (Dick helps Donna Troy, Wonder girl, to find out where she came from. A great detective story.) (1984)

The Judas contract (when Dick becomes Nightwing). The New Teen Titans # 39-40, Tales of the Teen Titans #41-44, Annual #3. (1984)

Nightwing Year One. Nightwing vol 2 # 101-106. (I honestly don't care much for this story, but it's good to know that it's one of several retellings of how Dick became Nightwing.) (2005)

A Little Nudge, in the Robin 80th Anniversary Special. (An alternate take on Dick leaving Robin to become Nightwing, where Bruce and Dick don’t split on hostile terms – Dick is just a bit annoyed. It is very unclear in what timeline, if any, this is supposed to fit, but I like it a lot better than the Post-Crisis/Pre-Flashpoint versions.) (2020)

Trivial Pursuits. New Teen Titans vol 2 # 32. (A nice breather, when the Titans try just to relax together. It goes as well as can be expected.) (1987)

Wrath Child. (A story from when Dick was fairly new as Nightwing.) Batman Confidential # 13-16. (2008)

Batman # 416. (First post-Crisis meeting with Jason Todd) (1988)

The Cheshire Contract. Action Comics Weekly # 613-618 (Dick helps Roy find his daughter.) (1988)

The New Titans # 55. (Dick learns about Jason's death when the Titans return to Earth after a long period in space. He goes to Bruce to talk and what follows is the infamous scene when Bruce hits Dick, says he should never have had a partner and tells Dick to leave and leave the keys with Alfred.) (1989)

Batman: Year Three. Batman # 436–439. (Flashbacks with a retelling of Dick's origin, during Bruce's third year as Batman. In the "now", Dick tries to reach out to Bruce and Dick's parents' murderer is about to be set free.) (1989)

A Lonely Place of Dying. Batman # 440-442, New Titans # 60-61. (1990)

The New Titans # 65. (Tim turns up at Dick's place to learn what it is to be Batman's partner.) (1990)

Total Chaos. (In issues of Deathstroke the Terminator, New Titans and Team Titans.) (Mirage, a woman from an alternate future and who has illusion casting powers, takes the form of Starfire and sleeps with Dick, who is shamed by his team members for being unfaithful to Kory, even though this is rape. So, an important fact to know but not something I would recommend to read.) (1992)

Knightfall Prodigal (Dick's first longer stint as Batman. And he takes care of Tim and the Manor on his own!) In Batman #512-514 and three other titles. (1994-1995)

Nightwing Alfred's Return (Kind of fun, when Dick seeks out Alfred, who left Bruce's service because Bruce wasn't taking care of himself, in London.) (1995)

Nightwing vol 1 # 1-4. (I don't love this, but it is a milestone in that it's the first Nightwing solo series, Dick momentarily decides to leave the hero business, and gets his by now classic fingerstripe suit.) (1995)

Like Riding a Bike. (Donna checks up on Dick.) The Batman Chronicles # 7. (1996)

(Nightwing vol 2 began in 1996.)

Nightwing vol 2 # 6. (Tim and Dick talk and fight crooks.) (1997)

Nightwing vol 2 # 12-16. (Batman pays a visit and Dick makes his custom made car.) (1997)

The Flash plus Nightwing. (Dick and Wally on vacation.) (1997)

Then & Now. Teen Titans vol 2 #12-15. (The original four Titan boys find themselves fighting their past selves.) (1997)

Nightwing vol 2 # 25. (Tim and Dick talk and ride on train roofs. Dick has decided to become a cop.) (1998)

Detective Comics # 725 (A heart-to-heart between Bruce and Dick.) (1998)

The Technis Imperative. JLA/Titans #1-3. (1998-1999)

The Titans (1999) # 2. (The start of a new Titans team, Dick tells Superman to give them some room.) (1999)

Nightwing vol 2 # 32–34. (Dick at the Police Academy.) (1999)

Nightwing vol 2 # 35–39. (On a mission from Batman: To take control of Blackgate Prison. Afterwards, he recuperates at Barbara's when her place is attacked.) (1999-2000)

The Titans (1999) #15–16. (The original five Titans try to work out some difficulties.) 2000.

Transference. Batman: Gotham Knights #8-11. (2000)

Nightwing vol 2 # 45-46. (The Hunt for Oracle.) (2000)

Action Comics # 771. (Nightwing and Superman hang out and work together – what's not to like!) 2000

Gods of Gotham. Wonder Woman # 164-167. (2001)

Nightwing vol 2 # 52. (Yet another example of sexual assault when Catwoman kisses Nightwing, in an effort to make Batman jealous.) (2001)

Nightwing vol 2 # 54-58. (Blockbuster, Nightwing's main adversary in Blüdhaven, hires an old enemy of Dick's to deal with the vigilante: Shrike. A character from Robin Year One.) (2001)

Matatoa. Batman: Gotham Knights # 16-17. (Bruce adopts Dick.) (2001)

Who Is Troia? The Titans (1999) # 23-25. (A visit from the Titan's children from the Kingdom Come universe.). (2001)

Retribution. Batman: Gotham Knights # 20-21. (2001)

Nightwing vol 2 # 64. (Nightwing as Santa's elf.) (2001)

Bruce Wayne: Murderer and Bruce Wayne: Fugitive (in several titles). (Dick refuses to believe that Bruce can be a murderer and it causes friction with for instance Tim. Also, a big fight between Dick and Bruce when the latter says he is going to abandon his Bruce identity.) (2002)

Nightwing vol 2 # 75. (Flashback's to Dick's early years with Bruce. Plus the first appearance of Tarantula (Catalina Flores; a controversial figure in Dick's history, she straddled the line between vigilante and villain.)) (2002)

Hush. Batman # 608–619. (# 615 for Dick, but it might be confusing only to read one issue.) (2002-2003)

The Obsidian Age. JLA vol 1 # 68-75. (The Justice League members disappear, Dick leads a new team for a few issues. In # 73, Bruce is quoted: "The only time I ever feel pride is when I look at Nightwing. Sometimes I think he's the only thing I ever did right."). (2002-2003)

Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day # 1-3 (Donna is killed. Dick is devastated and declares that the Titans are finished.) (2003)

Nightwing vol 2 # 80-83. (Deathstroke is in Blüdhaven to kill someone close to Dick. Bruce asks when he will quit the force, Dick wants to stay as a cop, but when he saves Amy Rohrbach, she recognizes that Dick is Nightwing and fires him.) (2003)

Nightwing vol 2 # 86. (Dick, forced to rest after being injured, solves crimes on America's Most Wanted and drives Barbara up the wall.) (2003)

The Outsiders vol 3 # 1 (Roy talks Dick, who dissolved the Titans after Donna's death, into leading a new team, promising they will not be a family.) (2003)

Nightwing vol 2 # 87-100. (Definitely one of the darkest periods points in Dick's life pre-Flashpoint. Tarantula breaks up him and Barbara. Blockbuster destroys his circus, his home and kills people just for talking to Dick. Tarantula kills Blockbuster and Nightwing is too exhausted to prevent it, and afterwards, he has a panic attack and she rapes him (# 93). Not necessarily something I would recommend to read, but fans discuss it a lot.) (2003-2004)

The Outsiders vol 3 # 11 (Roy is angsting about going back to the hero business after narrowly surviving being shot to death, sparring and heart-to-heart with Dick follows.) (2004)

Under the Hood. Batman # 635-641, 645-650, Annual # 25. (2004-2006)

Supergirl (2005) # 3 (Supergirl has a huuuge crush on Nightwing... ) (2005)

Silent partner. The Outsiders vol 3 # 21-23. (Dick goes ballistic when he realizes Batman has been funding the Outsiders, Roy admits Batman has been feeding him information. Only it wasn't Batman – it was Deathstroke in disguise.) (2005)

DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy  # 1-4. (2005)

Nightwing vol 2 # 107–117. (Dick leaves Nightwing, starts working for the mob and trains Deathstroke's daughter. I think the author has some kind of resolution to the crisis Dick had gone through the last years in mind, but Infinite Crisis got in the way. Blüdhaven is destroyed in a nuclear explosion.) (2005-2006)

Infinite Crisis. (DC had planned to let Dick die, he is central to the story even if he's not very visible.) (2005-2006)

Targets. Nightwing vol 2 # 125-128. (Dick hunts for a day job in New York and gets buried alive, which leads to some retrospection on his behalf. There's also fights with a guy with a weaponized armour.) (2007)

The Brave and the Bold # 15. Nightwing and Hawkman. (Deadman, inside Hawkman, says that Dick Grayson is the one guy that every crimefighter trusts.) (2007)

Outsiders: Five of a Kind – Nightwing/Boomerang. (It ends with Batman telling Dick: "Go back to the good fight, Dick. Leave the bad fight to us.") (2007)

Freefall. Nightwing vol 2 # 140–146. (Dick starts freefalling as a new hobby; Bruce is not pleased. And he gets a new daytime job, as a museum curator. Oh, and there's Talia al Ghul, too.) (2008)

Robin # 175. (Some fun panels with flashbacks with Dick and Tim.) (2008)

Superman/Batman # 55. (Batman has got Superman’s powers while Superman loses his. When Batman starts to get out of control, Nightwing tries to stop him.)  (2009)

The Great Leap. Nightwing vol 2 # 147–151. (Two-Face wants Nightwing to save a life.) (2008-2009)

Titans (2008) # 10. (Dick leaves the Titans because he needs to go back to Gotham and "take care of my other family." (2009)

Nightwing vol 2 # 152-153. (That time when Ra's al Ghul called Dick detective. And Dick packed up and left New York to move back to Gotham.) (2009)

Batman # 682. (Just for the line about how Dick made colour come into their monochrome lives ;-) ) (2009)

Detective Comics # 85, Batman # 684 (Dick mourning Bruce) (2009)

The Secret Six # 9. (Some of the members of the Secret Six feel they should be the new Batman.) (2009)

Battle for the Cowl # 1-3. (2009)

If you don't mind reading comics that are not in the main comic universe, there are also a lot of fun reading in comic books that are tie-ins to Batman The Animated Series, and in Batman '66 which builds on the tv show from 1966. There is also Dark Victory from 1999–2000 – and tiny Dick is adorable in Batman/Scarecrow: Year One from 2005. Dick has about two panels in Darwyn Cooke’s DC: The New Frontier from 2004, but I think it’s kind of worth reading just for those. 

[visionsofus]

Regarding Scarletvision prompts.....I’m such a sucker for the trope where one member of a couple goes apeshit and all protective/NO TOUCH when they think the other member is grievously hurt, maybe something like that with Vision instead of Wanda? With potential fluff/comfort once things are fine. Your fics are wonderful!!

anon you are totally speaking my language with this prompt!! I absolutely love this trope so much too (and was actually halfway through writing one where Wanda loses her shit). Decided to go with Vision for this because we don’t often see him lose his cool in canon. Thanks for this request!

Really hope you enjoy! 

| read on AO3 here | send me a scarlet vision prompt |

Wanda and Vision’s Mixtape Track #17: Can You Feel My Heart

One year into being a fugitive Wanda gets cornered, Vision sees the news in real time and runs to her aid. Aka Vision going apeshit when he thinks Wanda is dead.

Warnings: angst, references to guns and blood. 

“Vision, look at me,” Tony said waving a hand in front of Vision’s eyes in an attempt to get his attention. “You can’t go. You understand that right?”

Vision dipped his chin in acknowledgement even as his brain ran furious probability equations through and through again. But they came back low again, and again, and again. There was only going to be one option.  

“Yeah, I don’t know about that,” Rhodey said from his seat before the flatscreen occupying half the wall of the strategy room they had gathered in. “Tony, this looks pretty bad.”

Vision turned his head and his gaze to the lights flashing across the screen, a live news report of everything that was going down in New York.

Tony swore at the sight before them, and Vision put a pause to his maths in shock. The camera was tracking a hooded redhead through a crowded street, suddenly zooming in on the individual’s face as she turned her head to look over her shoulder.

“Wanda Maximoff has been a fugitive since 2016 when she was decreed an international criminal by the United Nations,” the news reporter said over more footage of Wanda blending in as best she could with the crowds of the city. “While Maximoff has evaded capture for over a year, authorities now believe they are close to apprehending her.”

At this Vision had to quickly let go of the chair he was sitting in, lest he split the arm rests in two.

“We go live now to New York. Please be aware the next clip could be distressing to some viewers”

Tony scrambled to turn the news off even as Vision overrode his authority, ordering the compound AI to keep the report running.

The scene changed once more, and Vision watched as the crowd parted around Wanda as she engaged in a close combat fight with a man clad all in black. Her red magic had him restrained immediately as she spun around, a clear attempt to identify her best exit route. From that moment Vision knew her chances of getting out unharmed were dismal. In those precious seconds another agent was at her back, smartly keeping his distance and instead engaging her with his taser. Wanda’s head snapped up as her body jerked, but she somehow managed to twist around and send the man flying away. All around her agents emerged from the throngs of people trying to get off the main street. They began to close in like a pack of predators.

“Vision—” Tony said reaching out, but he was too late. Vision had risen without thinking when he saw the first taser, his legs moving of their own accord so that he had phased through the wall and was flying out away from the compound in moments. He’d never pushed himself to see how fast he could really travel and now he’d need every ounce of power to get to Wanda’s side in time.

The world was a blur, even to him. The only thing that kept his worries at bay was her in his head, the closer he got the louder her cries grew. He didn’t know how she was doing it; she’d always needed direct physical contact for her voice to be this loud in his head. He reached the streets of New York with her voice as his guiding light.  

‘I need you.’ She was weaker now. ‘Hurry.’

He was close now, all she had to do was keep talking.

‘I hear you, I’m coming for you,’Vision thought back, but he couldn’t say for certain if his voice reached her.

It didn’t matter though, he had arrived.

Vision managed to slow himself down enough to land, though his feet shredded the asphalt beneath him. Bullets flew his way immediately but he sidestepped easily and used the mind stone to blast two agent’s guns to pieces in their hands. The few bystanders left at the edge of the arena now before them, realised this was their indication to leave. They were quickly replaced by what must have been a hundred soldiers.  

Another agent took a run at Vision, electrified baton raised but all it took was a well-placed foot to send him to the ground. Vision continued walking forward, reading for the next onslaught even as Wanda’s voice echoed in his head again. ‘You shouldn’t have come’.

That made him angrier. He didn’t blink as he took out the next three agents before disarming two soldiers who’d mistakenly decided to try their luck against his inhuman body and the power inlaid in his forehead. They’d had enough difficulty restraining Wanda with carefully directed electrified pulses that had her incapacitated, on her knees in pain. They tried the same, turning the pulsing weapons his way but the energy passed harmlessly over him as he phased, carefully avoiding it. He was almost at her now, if he could just get to her side and get her out of the square, away, safe, alive. It was all he could think about.

Someone must have figured that out because next thing Vision knew, all weapons were trained on Wanda.

“Stay right where you are,” a voice crackled over a loudspeaker from a waiting cop car.

Vision didn’t stop until someone took a carefully aimed warning shot and he heard Wanda cry out in pain as she was hit by something. He didn’t know if it was just another pulse or if it was something more final.

The loudspeaker crackled again. “You take one more step and we won’t be taking her into custody, she’ll be going somewhere much more final.”

Vision had been learning a lot about feelings in the last year with Wanda. He’d experienced joy, love, lust, longing. He’d discovered these were warm emotions. Now he knew what rage tasted like.

Rage was cold, so cold. Rage made him irrational. And he was about to discover what happened when he turned that rage against others.

Wanda was on the ground again, clutching at her knee. So, it had been a bullet then. Vision’s shoulders trembled with unrestrained rage as she locked eyes with him, and a bloody, desperate hand reaching out.

And Vision exploded.

Eye-witness accounts would later say it was like the street had come to life. Others would say they thought a Chitarui ship had broken free from beneath the city, that the street had risen from the ground like a huge snake. Others still, would describe the red man, who had supposedly faced down two hundred members of the defence force, as impossibly fast, the yellow energy crackling around him like lighting. They’d say it felt dangerous, it was an ancient power that made the hairs at the back of your neck rise and your gut scream at you to run in the opposite direction. Those testimonies would never reach the news because no one could believe them.

Vision himself couldn’t be entirely sure what happened. He only recalled that he acted without thinking, his movements entirely guided by the immensity of rage crackling through his blood, calling to the stone at his forehead.

The stone, which so often sat dormant at his forehead, acted without his control. The power spread throughout his body and in his anger, he raised his hands, the golden light phasing and crackling about his arms, and thrust them towards the ground with a cry.

The soldiers didn’t have time to use Wanda as bargaining tool as he did this. As the power hit the tarmac the street shuddered and cracked. It didn’t reach the surrounding buildings, restrained only to the street and those who tried to weaponize Vision’s lover. She’d already been used that way once; he’d never let her be trapped again.

With the armed forces in varying levels of disarray, some injured while others just stunned at what they had seen, Vision darted towards Wanda.

The news would later say that an unidentified man and woman arrived on the scene some point into the chaos, but they would never be able to identify the individuals. Something about their cameras conveniently cutting out just in time.

Steve and Natasha raced for Wanda, lying prone and vulnerable in the middle of the street. They’d sent her out for the regular grocery run but hadn’t anticipated her getting caught. Afterall, they’d been in New York often in the last year and had never had problems like this. Vision was quicker and again it was as though the stone acted on his emotions. It took him a moment to recognise Nat and Steve past the caps pulled low over their heads and the masks taking up lower half of their faces, but by then the stone had already done what he must have deemed necessary, at least subconsciously.

As he reached Wanda’s side, throwing himself to his knees beside her and desperately surveying her body for injuries, a barrier appeared crackling in the air around them. Whatever irrational part of him that had seen his old teammates as a risk, wasn’t going to quieten down until he was sure Wanda was safe.

Steve didn’t manage to stop in time and went flying off the barrier. Nat helped him to his feet even as they both hesitated behind the crackling ring of gold energy. Vision didn’t know how to lower the barrier, but at that moment it was the least of his concerns.

“Wanda,” he whispered lifting her carefully and drawing her into his lap. He supported her shoulders and laid a hand against her cheek even as her eyes cracked open. Her lip trembled even as she winced, trying to sit up.

“You weren’t supposed to come,” she said, coughing slightly. “I had it covered.”

“Evidently,” he murmured absentmindedly looking over her knee, glad it had only been grazed by the bullet. The rest of her was fairly scratched up from hitting the ground so many times, but she was remarkably okay. “You know I couldn’t stay away.”

“We promised,” she said, and Vision saw the tears welling in her eyes. “We promised we wouldn’t put each other at risk.”

Vision sighed, if she had the time to worry about him in her state then she really had to be okay. His relief was immeasurable as he dropped his shoulders and pressed his forehead to hers lightly, taking comfort in their shared breaths, evidence they were both still alive. He had thought the worst for a moment.

As he closed his eyes the barrier around them dropped and Steve and Nat were finally able to get to the pair.

“We need to leave, now,” Steve said with all the authority of the leader he had once been. “They’ve called for reinforcements and with the guns their bringing in, we won’t stand a chance like this.”

Vision helped Wanda stand but when she staggered on her injured knee, he immediately scooped her up.

“You understand the decision you’re making her, Vision,” Nat said as they started away from the scene they had caused. “There’s no going back now, are you staying or coming?”

“Staying is not an option anymore,” Vision said without hesitation. His decision had been made the moment he left the compound.

Wanda sighed sadly but rested her head against the crook of his neck in defeat. “You’ll lose everything.”

“As long as I never have to lose you.”

[miskatonique]

HERBERT WEST CHEAT SHEET !

since my muses are not super well known in the contemporary rpc ( and i’m too lazy to do a full about page at this very moment ) i decided to put together little posts for them that give their general backgrounds, vibes, and plot possibilities !

this is a mix of canon and headcanon, and these are subject to change / adapt as i get more used to writing the characters

BACKGROUND:

Films: Re-Animator 1985, Bride of Re-Animator 1990, Beyond Re-Animator 2003

We don’t talk about Beyond Re-Animator......

Dr. Herbert West, 24 in the first movie, 27 in the second movie, idk like 40 in the third movie. Mad scientist to the MAX. In the novelization Herbert is an orphan who gets passed around in foster homes before eventually going to undergrad at NYU and pursuing his theory about the re-animation of dead tissue. Mostly people think he’s sort of crazy until one of his articles catches the eye of Dr. Hans Gruber at a university in Switzerland, and he invites Herbert to come work alongside him. Herbert eventually grows to respect Gruber as both a mentor and father-figure.

Herbert and Gruber develop a reagent that affects re-animation in dead animal tissue but they know that for their results to be taken seriously they need to do a human trial. Dr. Gruber volunteers but the dosage of the reagent is too large, and though it brings Gruber back to life it quickly overwhelms his system and he dies again. Herbert is taken into psychiatric custody in Switzerland but is eventually released.

Herbert returns to America and specifically sets his sights on Miskatonic Medical School in Arkham, Massachusetts because one of the staff, Dr. Carl Hill, used to work with Gruber years ago, and even went on to plagiarize some of Gruber’s work and publish it in America. Herbert makes it his secondary goal to absolutely terrorize Dr. Hill, and because he’s a chaotic gremlin in human form he’s very good at it.

Herbert continues working on perfecting the reagent, rooming with Dan Cain and eventually pulling Dan into the experiments as well when Dan’s cat dies and Herbert is able to prove his research by reanimating it. Herbert isn’t perturbed when Dan’s talk with Dean Halsey goes south, and just digs his heels in and insists that the only way to truly prove that the reagent works is to reanimate a human cadaver.

Results are just as bad as you’d expect. Sure, the cadaver reanimates but it also wrecks the morgue and kills Dean Halsey. RIP. Herbert insists that they reanimate him and the dean comes back less like himself and more animalistic, trying to kill both Herbert and Dan before his daughter Meg shows up and stops him. Despite it all, Herbert manages to wriggle his and Dan out of any suspicion from the police but Dr. Hill takes an interest in Herbert’s work once he does exploratory surgery of Dean Halsey and finds out he’s technically dead.

Dr. Hill confronts Herbert in his laboratory and threatens to steal Herbert’s work and take it for his own, offering Herbert the meager honour of being his assistant. Herbert promptly murders Hill via decapitation but decides not to let his fresh corpse go to waste and reanimates both Hill’s head and his body, which come back to life and knock Herbert out and steal all of his work.

Yada yada, Herbert gets Dan to help him go after Hill, the big climax happens. Herbert is able to prove his theory about overdose by shooting up Dr. Hill’s headless body with a bunch of reagent, which backfires and Herbert is left for dead all tangled up in Hill’s intestines, but not after he ensures that his research is safe with Dan.

They never explain how Herbert survives the first movie but he sure is alive in the second movie! It’s roughly 3ish years after the first film, so he’s got his doctorate now and he’s drug Dan all the way to Peru so they can be volunteer medics in a civil war. This obviously gives Herbert an unprecedented access to fresh bodies for his experiments.

Eventually he and Dan head back to Miskatonic Hospital, where they’re able to get jobs and a creepy cute little house that used to be a mortuary so they can continue the work. Herbert is now obsessed with the reanimation of separate parts and convinces Dan to help him build an entirely new life from parts. Dan’s not on board until Herbert shows him Megan Halsey’s heart and promises that they’ll build the body around it.

Dr. Hill’s head also somehow survived the first movie and it tries to terrorize Herbert, along with a cop who’s investigating Herbert for stealing corpses. Herbert eventually kills and reanimates the cop, and then gets into even more trouble when all of the other strange creatures he’s been reanimating start coming after him because they’re being mind controlled by Dr. Hill’s nasty head ( don’t ask me okay, this script was written in literally 6 weeks it makes no sense )

Anyway Herbert and Dan successfully bring their creation to life right before getting attacked by Dr. Hill and his army of weirdos, all while Dan is having a mental breakdown because he thinks the creation is his dead girlfriend Meg. In the chaos Dan and the creation escape separately while Herbert and Hill and co. get trapped under buried rubble and are left for dead ( AGAIN ).

But surprise! Herbert isn’t dead! We don’t know how he survived but we do know that at some point in time Dan turned over evidence to the authorities that led to Herbert’s arrest and imprisonment. The third movie picks up with Herbert who’s been in prison for 13 years and the dumbass new hospital doctor is a fanboy of Herbert and brings in some of his reagent. Herbert basically starts a prison riot, chaos ensues, this movie is Not Good, but the important thing is that Herbert escapes prison with his work and gets to walk off free and definitely alive into the night <3

VIBES / PERSONALITY:

His work is EVERYTHING to him -- there have been multiple times where Herbert has put his work above his own bodily safety or chance of survival, and I guarantee he would do it again, too. Herbert is mostly focused on being able to do the impossible simply because it’s “impossible.” He’s able to convince Dan to help him because he reasons the practical applications of his reagent, like saving lives by aiding in surgeries or helping with amputations, but at the end of the day Herbert is only concerned with discovery, acclaim, and giving classical science a big ‘ole middle finger.

He can be incredibly manipulative when looking for a specific action or behavior in the people close to him. This mostly is seen in how he treats Dan, often reeling him back in with promise of how much good their work will do in the world when Dan starts to get squeamish. Herbert is also really good at finding the sorest spots in someone and pressing on them, but usually only does this when he wants to prove a point or if he really hates someone.

He gains a lot of power by seeming like the more “level-headed” person in an altercation, but he can get extremely excitable or aggressive, especially when something goes well with his research or if it’s being threatened.

He’s genuinely a good doctor, doesn’t freak out under pressure, has neutral-good bedside manner, is very decisive and isn’t afraid to make difficult decisions when it comes to a patient’s life. However, Herbert considers himself a scientist first and a doctor second. The work on reanimation will always come before anything else.

He’s a HUGE fucking nerd, he loves making puns or little zingers whenever he can fit them into a conversation. He also likes playing practical jokes, though he doesn’t do it often. He’s got a great evil giggle.

Oh he’s terrible at taking care of himself. There’s a deleted scene from the first movie where Herbert is shown to be injecting himself with a weakened version of the reanimating reagent because it helps keep his brain sharp and makes it to where he doesn’t have to sleep. What a NUT. I think he probably weans off this habit, by force or choice. His sleeping and eating habits are still pretty bad, though. Definitely the kind of person who doesn’t eat/sleep/rest unless he’s genuinely about to collapse because of it.

Oh he’s also sooooooooooo gay. gay gay gay homo sexual.

There are very few people he outright respects or enjoys spending time around, and with everyone else he is absolutely so bitchy and rude. He doesn’t give a single shit about being polite. Also ACAB.

PLOT POSSIBILITIES:

Got any canonically dead muses? Want them to be alive again? Herbert can help with that! He’ll definitely want to make sure they stick around and observe them to see why the reagent worked so well, maybe do some extra tests, so he can also double as a really annoying, creepy roommate. Score!

Med student muses? I have a new classmate for you

Ever wondered what your muse would do if they saw someone graverobbing, or smuggling body parts into their house in the middle of the night? Do they stop him? Ask questions? Offer to help? Now’s the chance to find out!

He could always use a new assistant since Dan keeps abandoning him after every movie, jfc, loyalty is so hard to find these days

Meet-cute where one of his reanimated creations tries to murder you and he saves you from it <3

[avengerscompound]

Running to a Standstill - 3

Running to a Standstill: A Captain America Fanfic

Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Buy me a ☕ Character Pairing:  Bucky Barnes x Steve Rogers x F!Reader

Word Count:  2219

Rating:  E

Square filled: none

Warnings: canon typical violence

Synopsis: While on the run from an unknown organization trying to take your son, you meet two super-soldiers.  While they try to help you get to the bottom of who is hunting you and your son, feelings come out and admissions are made that make your personal life even more tricky.

Chapter 3

You were starting to feel antsy.  You’d been living in your small apartment in Bedstuy for much longer than you had stayed anywhere since you’d gone on the run.  You were growing actual roots and it was starting to make your skin itch.

Being in a building owned by an Avenger had lulled you into some sort of sense of security.  Clint was low key enough not to draw too much attention to the building while also adding the protection because of the fact he was an Avenger.  You’d let that make you think you were safe.  You’d made friends.  There were kids that Geo played with.  You had semi-regular jobs so you could actually buy furniture and other things that couldn’t just be shoved into your bag when you had to run.  You’d started to think of it as your home.

That alone had been enough to make you antsy.  You’d find yourself relaxing and forgetting that there were people trying to take your son from you and then it would suddenly hit you and you’d start double-checking there was no one there watching you.

Then Captain America got involved.

You worried that him just being around would attract looks from the wrong people.  The fact that Steve was actively searching for the people looking for you made you worry that it would draw their attention and they’d find you like that worried you too.

It put you on edge and you felt torn.  In the past, as soon as you felt like this you’d pack up and run.  You didn’t ignore your gut feelings like that.  The couple of times you had, you’d ended up nearly getting caught.  You had a home now though and you were reluctant to leave it.

The other problem was, the longer you waited to run, the more reasons you found to stay and two of those big burly reasons were currently at your apartment trying to balance talking to you and playing with Geo at the same time while you were in the middle of an anxiety cleaning session.

Over the last month, they’d been around a lot.  After your first date with Steve, he’d called and asked you out a few more times in much more casual settings.  He always spoke to you about your ‘situation’ as he liked to call it, but it wasn’t just that.  He told you about his friends.  He asked you about yours.  You each spoke about your childhoods.  They felt like a mix between genuine dates and being questioned as a witness to a crime.

Bucky had come by a few times on the pretense of coming to see Clint or Natasha and wanting to check to see if you were okay.  He brought you and Geo lunch another time saying he was in the area and he thought he’d check in on you.  And another time he brought a little Stark Pad as a gift for Geo saying Stark had asked him to drop it off.  He always spent a little time talking with you and you wondered if Steve had actually asked him to check that you hadn’t run and that there was no one watching you.

Whatever the case, they both became comfortable with just visiting after not too long, and you quite liked when they did.  They were kind and funny and they understood what you were going through in a way most people didn’t.  Geo liked them too and with all the running you’d been doing, he didn’t warm up to people easily.  Even Clint and Natasha had made friends with him through Lucky initially.

You really liked them.  Really, really.  You could see that becoming more than just the slight crush you were harboring for each man if you let it - and god did you want to let it.  Yet that desire made you feel anything but good.  You had a tight knot of anxiety in your chest and you were jumping at every shadow, yet anytime you considered actually running, it made you feel sick.

“... and then he just turned into 100 birds and flew off,” Bucky said.

You’d been staring out the window and you slowly looked back at him as the words sunk in.  “Huh?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Bucky said.  “I was asking if you wanted to order in.”

“Oh… uh… I probably should cook,” you said, looking back out the window.

“We can pay,” Bucky said, but your attention was back on the man who’d been standing in the entrance to the alley slightly down the street again.

Steve put down the Lego bricks he’d been adding to the structure he, Bucky, and Geo had been assembling and he got up.  He came over to you and looked out the window, putting his hand on your hip to pull your attention back to him.  It was quite an intimate gesture for Steve.  Despite the fact you’d been sort of dating for a month now, neither of you had made any kind of move to make it at all physical.  You hadn’t wanted to make a move because it was just one more push towards having a life here that you were unwilling to leave.  Why Steve had kept his distance you weren’t sure.  Part of you thought he was taking his lead off you, but there was also his confession about how he’d been carrying a torch for Bucky his whole life and maybe it was just that you still hadn’t cleared the Bucky level of minimum attraction he had admitted to.  “What’s wrong?”  He asked.

“I don’t know,” you said.  “There’s been a van parked across the road all day.  Not the same van, but always a van.  And now that guy has just been standing in that alley for an hour.”

Bucky tensed and stood.  “I’ll go check it out.”

Steve held out his hand for a second as he assessed the street.  You don't know what he was looking at but he gave a small nod.  Bucky stalked out the door with his jaw set and Steve looked back at you.

“How about you go get some things together.  We’ll have a sleepover at the tower,” he said.  His voice was far calmer and upbeat than the implications that the suggestion held.

You nodded and as you hurried off, there was a squealing of wheels from outside, followed by a gunshot.  Your heart started hammering and you spun back around and nearly slammed back into Steve.  He was holding Geo who had his Stark Pad clutched in his chubby little hands. “Okay,” Steve said in that same cheery, calm voice.  “We're not going to pack.  I assume you have a ‘go bag’?”

You didn't even answer, you just went to your closet and pulled it out from under a pile of blankets.  It was a duffle bag and contained spare clothes, all your ID both real and fake, and rolled up wads of cash.

As you went out, Steve put his arm around you and began to escort you outside. “Just nice and calm. We’re going to take Nat’s car.”

“You have the keys?” You asked.

“Don't need them,” he answered, as you both entered the street.

It was empty now, and as you went around the side of the building you saw Clint sitting on the fire escape shirtless but with his bow out.  “Bucky took after the van, Nat went for the guy,” he yelled down and dropped some keys as Steve passed under him.

Steve caught them easily and looked up at Clint.  “Thanks,” he called up.

Natasha’s Chevrolet Stingray sat a little further up the ally and Steve pressed the button on the keys to unlock it.

“I thought you were going to break into it,” you said with a nervous laugh.

Steve chuckled as he opened the door for you.  “I was going to.”

You looked around wildly.  “I don’t have a seat for Geo.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said, putting Geo in your hands.  “Just hold him on your lap.  I’ll drive carefully.  If a cop stops us, I’ll get them to escort us.”

You got into the car shaking and put the seatbelt on, holding Geo tightly.  Steve started the car and started it.  “Hey little guy,” Steve said, softly.  “You think you can get the traffic lights to be green for us all the way?”

“Umm…” Geo hummed and the tablet in his hand began to flicker.  You recognized what was happening.  Your son was talking to the network that ran the traffic lights through the network connected to the tablet.  The light on the street ahead turned green and as you passed through it, the one at the next intersection turned green too.  All the way over the bridge and into the underground garage at the Avengers towers the lights changed to green before the car reached them.  You got out of the car with Geo and Steve went and grabbed your bag.  Geo looked up, his eyes wide and his mouth opened.

“Mommy,” he whispered.  “She’s everywhere.”

“Who is?”  You asked as you tried to see what he was seeing in this dark, underground parking lot.

Geo raised his hands in the air as you carried him to the elevator with Steve.  “Is Fwiday,” he said.

“No, sweety.  It’s Wednesday,” you answered as the elevator door opened and you and Steve got in.

Steve chuckled.  “FRIDAY can you introduce yourself?”

“Of course, Captain Rogers,” a disembodied female voice replied.  She had an Irish accent which surprised you almost as much as a random woman’s voice coming out of nowhere.  “Good evening, ma’am.  I’m FRIDAY, I’m the Artificial Intelligence system that runs both the tower and Mister Stark’s Suits.”

“Fwiday!”  Geo said excitedly, bouncing in your arms.

“Hello Geo,” FRIDAY replied.  “I’m so happy you are visiting.”

“You is nice, Fwiday,” Geo said and the elevator doors opened.

“Thank you, Geo.  You are very nice too,” the AI replied.

“Oh man,” you said, putting Geo down.  “I don’t think he’s ever been near an AI before.”

“I told you he’d like it here,” Steve said, putting his hand on your shoulder.  “Get comfortable.  We’ll have a sleepover.  You’re going to be safe here.”

He put your bag down and went into the kitchen.  “How about we order a bunch of comfort food to be delivered.  Pizza, mac and cheese, fried chicken.  I’ll make some popcorn.”

You looked around nervously.  “You sure we’ll be safe?”

“I promise,” Steve said smiling.  “Now, the two dark blue couches fold out.  But you just need to press a button on the side of them.  And there are blankets in a hidden cupboard on the wall.”

You looked around and Geo pointed at the door as the couches opened up on their own, you assumed because he’d asked them to.

You set up and made a food order together.  You calmed down for a little while as you all sat eating popcorn together.  Steve put his arm around you and you settled in against him feeling the closest to actual boyfriend and girlfriend you had yet.  When the security guy brought the food back you panicked again.

“Where do you think Bucky is?”  You asked.

“It’s fine,” Steve reassured you.  “If there was a problem, FRIDAY would have told me.”

“You’re sure?”  You asked.

“Yes, ma’am.  Sergeant Barnes is currently on the way back to the Tower,” FRIDAY said.

You relaxed again.  “Okay.  Okay.”

Bucky arrived about twenty minutes later looking a little beaten up.  “Man, they took me on a chase.”

“Did you catch them?”  You asked as he hopped up on the fold-out bed beside you and grabbed himself a slice of pizza.

“Yeah, don’t worry.  They’re being held,” Bucky said.

“By who?”  You asked.

“Don’t worry,” Bucky said, rubbing your back.  “The good guys.”

You let out a breath and leaned your head against his shoulder.  “Thank you,” you whispered.

“Of course,” he said rubbing your back. “You’re with us now.”

It took a little while for you to relax again.  Geo babbled happily to FRIDAY while Bucky ate and you all half-watched a movie.  By the time he was asleep on the fold-out couch, you felt relaxed.  Actually relaxed too.  Not in the way you usually were where you kept checking out the window or squirreling away money in your go-bag for when you weren’t anymore.  Not safe for now.  Actually safe.

You drifted off to sleep between them quickly once that feeling of contentment hit you.  Plates and containers of food were scattered around you.  You woke again as Bucky started climbing off the couch.  It was dark in the room except for the lights from things like the microwave and the power button on the tv.  Steve was sleeping beside you, his arm draped over your waist.

“Where are you going?”  You whispered.

He looked back at you and ran his hand down your arm.  “To bed.”

“Stay…” You said, looking up at him.

“You sure?”  He asked.  “It’s pretty squashy on that bed.”

You nodded and grabbed his hand.  “Please?”

He climbed back into the bed and wrapped his arms around you, pulling himself up close.  It was warm and quiet between the two super soldiers and it wasn’t long before you were asleep.

// NEXT

[crystalessenceswrites]

Shadows- Chapter Four

Shadows

A modern monster AU Pairings: Din Djarin x fem!reader Rating: T (at the moment- subject to change) Warnings: swearing, canon-typical violence, dark themes, death of unnamed and background characters, descriptions of blood, descriptions of a dead body Summary: Crypto- concealed; secret. You have always lived your life in the shadows; after all, you’re one of the creatures who go bump in the night. He has sworn his life to a creed that aims to protect the world from monsters like you.

[Masterlist] [Chapter Three] [Chapter Four] [Chapter Five] Cross-posted to AO3

Why was it always vampires?

It seemed like the bounty lists were chalk full of them these days, more so than normal. Which was not awful for slayers. They were generally high paying jobs, considering most of them were wanted for the murder of the humans or cryptos they’d been feeding on. You just preferred to stay away from the fangs. The superhuman abilities of a well-fed vampire were difficult to match in a fight, even for seasoned slayers. While you had the training and equipment to deal with them, the bounty was not always worth the medical bills after the fact. You specialized in the kinds of bounties that were more brains than brawn. Preferring the chase over the actual fight. Today you did not have much of a choice, apparently. You’d come into the office later in the morning and arrived to find all the new non-vampiric bounties had been promptly snatched up by the early birds. Leaving you stuck with the fangs. Great.

Your target was a vampire named Qin. He was active and was not doing much of anything to cover it up. A serious threat to everyone if left unattended to. The urgency in needing to deal with someone like him had bumped his bounty up fairly high, even for the usual vampire fair. There were plenty of breadcrumbs to follow, making your afternoon much easier. He was holed up in the old industrial district during the day. Most of the old neighborhood was being retrofitted for industrial lofts and modern condos, so there would be plenty of construction sites and condemned buildings for him to hide in and a steady stream of workers to pick off for food. Sightings and intelligence had his location narrowed down to a three-block radius. The was all easy enough. Killing him would be another story.

Vampires did not have any one magic bullet weakness- they aren’t susceptible to iron or silver- making them harder to handle. Staking one through the head or heart was usually the best way to incapacitate one, until their body was burned and ashes were scattered. That required getting closer than you were comfortable with. The last thing you wanted was a fanged creature with arms reach of your neck. You really should have just taken the day off. Too bad your landlord never took a day off when it came time to collect your rent.

Starting with the largest warehouse on the southside and moving north until you got lucky, or rather unlucky, enough to run into your bounty, seemed the best course of action. And today kept proving to be an unlucky day for you. You’d barely broken into the first building when you came across two completely drained corpses left out in the open, bodies still cooling. Your bounty was here and full of fresh blood.

Well shit.

Sword drawn you continue to sneak through the abounded building. Vampires were natural predators; their sense of smell was leagues above your own. It was more than likely he already knew you were here-unless he was occupied with another victim. That must have been the case, considering he hadn’t jumped out at you yet. On high alert you continue farther into the warehouse with a white-knuckle grip on your weapon. The main body of the building is split into two storage areas, the first dark in the overcast afternoon and empty. There are signs someone’s been around, a mattress and blankets in a corner, duffle bags and a pile of dark clothes next to a tower of take-out boxes. Odd.

You drop to the floor as the crack of a gunshot splits the silence. Mind reeling you wonder what vampire needs a fucking gun. Another scan of the space confirms you’re still alone, no shooter in sight. It must have come from the next room, too loud to have been outside the building. As you approach the partition the familiar metallic sting of fresh blood reaches your nose. Vampires don’t bleed.

Three more shots ring out, definitely from the other side of the partition.

Vampire’s don’t use guns.

Another deep breath draws more of the scents in, the dust and mildew of the building, the spark of gun powder and the overwhelming musk of human. Your bounty was not alone and wasn’t with anyone friendly. It wasn’t another slayer- once a bounty gets picked up its pulled off the lists- and most slayers didn’t smell so strongly of human, so the next logical assumption was a lone hunter. Not that it would have been hard for any human to pick up on this vampire’s trail, but if it had been law enforcement to find him the building would be flooded with cops.

You truly had the worst luck today.

Odds were probably one to four against the hunter. Humans rarely stood a chance against vampires unless they caught one out in sunlight.

A loud crash, like something heavy collapsing, shakes the silence. As a slayer you’re obligated to help the human but considering all that’s gone on in the last few weeks you’re feeling much less inclined to do so.

“Come on Mando! I thought you freaks were proud warriors and all!”

Fucking hell. Kira was right, you are a Mando magnet. The vampire’s taunt is not reassuring in the slightest. You did not need a dead Mando on your hands. Creeping into the next room you’re quick to find cover behind some dust covered work benches. Surveying the space leads you to believe the Mando and Qin have been at a while. The space is trashed, boxes toppled over and crushed, shelves up ended, and bullet holes are scattered throughout the space.

The Mando’s back is to you at the moment while he and the vampire stare each other down. You don’t need to see his face to know who you’re dealing with; you’d been on the look out for this particular mop of curls since your last run-in. How was he everywhere you needed to be? Why couldn’t you shake him?

He suddenly springs into action again, drawing the spear he’d been carrying on his back, swinging it in a wide arch at the vampire. Qin’s too fast and easily dodges the attack before going in for his own, trying to get within arm’s reach. Mando doesn’t let him, blocking each attack with deadly precision. Neither gives in, pushing back against the other, jumping around the other in attempt to land a hit.

You’re hesitant to say you’re impressed by Mando, but only out of spite. He moves like a well-oiled machine, despite not having the upper hand he does not give up control of the fight to his undead opponent. This is the most dressed down you’ve seen him, baring the silver tac vest over a dark colored shirt. You can safely assume its beskar, the metal harnessed solely by the Mandalorians. Just one of the things that made then unique to other hunters. As he circles around Qin you catch sight of blood dripping down his sharp jaw, the hair just above his ear dark and matted with it. He’d taken a pretty serious hit already.

Now you really had to help him.

This was the kind of opportunity you never had when dealing with vampires. Qin’s attention was solely focused on the hunter. There was no indication from either that they’d noticed your silent arrival. You had one shot with the element of surprise, and you needed to make it count. If you could incapacitate Qin, stun him long enough for you and Mando to finish the job you could make it out of here in one piece. Mando in close to one piece.

Although there was no magic bullet for vampires, a bullet wound did still require time and energy to heal. Even though vampires and the like were technically “undead,” they still felt and registered pain to some degree, meaning bullets also provided a certain shock factor. You lose the sword, reaching for your thigh holster instead. While you were not a fan of guns, you weren’t willing to risk a fight with a vampire for your pride. You always came prepared when dealing with a bloodsucker.

Qin and Mando continue to circle each other in their tense dance. Despite the dark look in both their eyes, Qin has a smug smirk plastered across his face, probably under the impression he was going to be having a Mandalorian for lunch. Too bad you couldn’t allow it. All you needed was a clear shot. You mentally will Mando to put some distance between him and the bloodsucker, as if that would actually work.

Your breath catches in your throat as Mando sweeps his spear in another wide arc, forcing Qin back. Maybe you were lucky today after all. The moment Qin lands back on his feet, far enough away from the hunter, you jump out from your cover and take the shot, tagging Qin in the temple.

Damn good shot.

Mando jumps as Qin’s body crumples to the ground, face drawing together in confusion. That feeling akin to satisfaction returns. You could get the jump on him and a vampire. Third time would not be his charm, you are sure of it. You would not let it.

His brain catches up with the situation and he swings around, staff pointed at you as you vault over the workbench. Next comes the recognition, his jaw dropping just a bit at your sudden materialization. You’re thankful his first reaction isn’t to attack as you’re quick to re-holster your gun.

“Focus Mando,” you quip, directing your attention back to the vampire beginning to move on the floor.

“Fuck!” Qin curses, already starting to come back to it. That seemed too quick, even for a recently fed vampire.

Mando snaps into action, kicking Qin down before his spear finds its way through the vampire’s rib cage. Judging by the ear-splitting screech Qin let’s out, Mando found his mark, staking Qin where he lays. Mando does not move as you approach with sword in hand. He does not move as you bring your blade to rest on the bounty’s neck.

“You have one chance to surrender or I collect the bounty on your head, Qin.”

“You bitch!” He snarls, thrashing around the pole shoved through his torso. “Working with a Mando, that’s low- even for a slayer!”

You roll your eyes. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“See you in hell one day, bitch.”

Smug even in death. Ugh. You don’t feel much as you chop his off with one swift swing. Not after you saw those two innocents on your way in. People like him were the exact reason humans called your kind monsters.

“Sunny disposition on that one,” you grumble, stepping back from Mando and the decapitated bounty. The hunter doesn’t even offer you a curtesy laugh. Stick in the mud.

“Why are you here?”

He doesn’t bother to hide the suspicion. Did he think you were following him now? That was rich.

“Doing my job. I took on the bounty for this one.” Pulling your messenger bag off, you begin to organize your supplies, “which I’d like to finish up if you have no objections.”

Mando just steps back, leaning against his staff. You can feel the weight of his gaze boring into you while you work. His eyes tracking your every move, detailing each item you pull from your clean up kit. You didn’t spot any bag of his lying around, you wonder how he had been planning on dealing with the body.

“You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Why did you help me?”

Questions, questions.

“You let us go last time- I owed you for that at least,” you shrug. Now you were even. Well, as even as you could be with a human Mandalorian.

He’s silent for a moment, watching as you pull a few jars and a water bottle out of the bag. One contains a small collection of thistle bulbs. Mando doesn’t ask but you can see the curiosity growing as you stick the sharp plants into the vampire’s wounds.

“Vampires are weak to thistle, introduce it into the body and it halts their healing abilities. Aloe vera works too, it’s just not as flammable.

“Aloe vera and thistles?”

You chuckle, “what, did you think garlic would work?”

Mando scoffs, his sharp eye still following your hands. Next comes the burning of the body. You want to get that done as quick as possible. Thistle was not an end all weakness and even decapitated vampires could regenerate. You douse the body and head in gasoline from the water bottle.

“Light?”

Eyebrows raised you gingerly take the lighter he offers, catching the edge of Qin’s shirt with the flame. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the corpse to catch. The flames cast shadows over the Mandalorian’s face as you watch him from the corner of your eye. The air is heavy between you and not with the smell of burning flesh.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to let him kill me?”

“Why would I want that?” Had he not come to the realization that you couldn’t kill him?

“You get rid of nuisances, right? So one of you will have to kill me eventually.”

It takes all your will power to not burst out laughing. There was no way he was getting anything from an inside informant if that’s what he thought slayers did. You had this Mando pinned down about as wrong as he had you figured out. No wonder no one had been able to find a turn coat when one didn’t exist to begin with.

“I don’t know where you’re getting your info, but you need to find a different source. Trust me. As much as most slayers want to get rid of hunters, we can’t without very good reasons. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be any better than the ones we hunt.”

He quirks an eyebrow, arms crossed over his chest, “so what? You’re just monsters hunting other monsters?”

“One,” you hold up a finger, “we use the term crypto.”

“Crypto? Like cryptid?”

“Where do you think humans got the word from?”

Mando scoffs at that but doesn’t press.

“Two, most of us don’t actually qualify as cryptos. Slayers are primarily half-bloods.”

You revel in the confusion on his face. Never did you think you would find yourself completely altering a Mandalorian’s understanding of the world. This was priceless.

Why were you telling him all this?

“Half-bloods?”

“You know, half human?”

“That’s possible?”

Now you cannot hold back the laugh this time, “human genetics are surprisingly adaptable.”

A look of disgust washes over his face and your heart drops.

“I just want you to know we’re not so different… our job is to stop those who hurt or take advantage of humans, to stop those who threaten to expose us. I imagine that’s not so different from what Mandalorians want…” after all, they couldn’t want to kill you all, could they?