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seyaryminamoto · 4 years

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Masterpost: answering a single anon in a single post

So. I wasn’t going to answer asks today but frankly, considering what I should be writing I’d rather answer asks, might actually get a laugh out of it. Most of all, because of what I intend to answer here.

To spare y’all from the pain and annoyance of having to read through any of my answers to we-know-who, I’m going to do it differently this time. All in one post. Because frankly, filling my blog with their TWENTY asks, no less (and it’s official this time, used to be sixteen but then I reblogged that post about conflict in stories and they went wild, as usual) isn’t worth anyone’s time. Hell, it’s not even worth mine, but procrastination is overpowering.

Here we go. If you’re not the anon in question and still want to read this, I hope you have fun.

This is a free world. That means multiple things some people can’t seem to accept. One such thing is that people have no obligation to even interact with each other, let alone to do what others demand of them, especially when they don’t want to. The fact is, being harassed (because, yes, there’s no other word for it) by someone has been a pretty irritating and stressful thing for me, to the point where it has impacted my ability to write...

And the harasser doesn’t give a single fuck about it and just keeps going :’)

With such introduction, I decide to engage my least favorite person in this site once again because clearly, ignoring them, blocking them, closing asks, deleting and rewriting reviews, is still not enough to get across the message that reiterating an opinion a million times doesn’t automatically make it more valid. So let’s see just what’s going on with this very much desperate person who apparently can’t stop seeking my attention:

First of all, I asked this person, point-blank, to address their asks, if they would continue sending them, to my main blog. Let’s see how that request turned out:

Oh my, astonishing! They sent it to Gladiator’s blog instead! And what a bigger shock: they’re, as usual, trying to control and direct what I write and how I write it. While sprinkling empty compliments that don’t mean a thing, such as claiming RESPECT for me and my work when every single ask they’ve sent is an outright disrespectful act against me, considering how many times I’ve requested, directly, that they stop this, and how many times they’ve ignored me. It even is extra poignant considering my request for them to send asks to my main blog instead, and yet they deliberately sent it to Gladiator’s blog. This is what RESPECT looks like, in this anon’s head. Fascinating stuff, isn’t it?

And then comes the mad onslaught that left me facedesking for days:

... I mean. Can someone please read this and tell me the person on the other side, with their vague condition, whatever it may be, has any idea what an apology even MEANS?

For someone who’s so obsessed with alleged consistency, you’re damn bad at it yourself, Anon. You can’t send four asks in a row, to the WRONG BLOG, demanding for explanations you don’t even care to read, because every single time I’ve taken your whining seriously you’ve disregarded all my responses and gone right back to the same BS as before, and THEN pretend you’re here TO APOLOGIZE.

You don’t feel any remorse. To this day, you don’t even KNOW what you did wrong. This is NOT expressing yourself: THIS IS HARASSMENT. Need me to define the word for you to understand what it means, seeing as it’s becoming abundantly clear your reading and interpretation skills are not the greatest?

Definitions of harassment:

1. (n) the act of tormenting by continued persistent attacks and criticism 2. (n) a feeling of intense annoyance caused by being tormented

I’ve said it before: PEOPLE HAVE HAD COMPLAINTS ABOUT THIS STORY, FAR MORE VALID THAN YOURS, AND I’VE NEVER REACTED THIS WAY. Care to guess why?

Because you NEVER stop. Because you keep going, constantly, never slowing down to think YOUR behavior is affecting a REAL LIFE HUMAN BEING. You’re obsessing over what happens in a fictional story that, by the way, is a fanfic, ergo, it obeys certain rules that general fiction does not. Among such rules is abiding by ORIGINAL characterization to a certain extent, and that means, hahaha, that Azula ISN’T an experienced character in any social or romantic situations because she ISN’T in canon, and there was no reason to change that, especially considering the worldbuilding I crafted, which makes it CRUCIAL for Azula to be careful with her virtue, despite she doesn’t want to be and realizes the whole notion of female virginal purity is absolute BULLSHIT.

But why am I explaining anything anyway? You won’t understand it, because you don’t want to. You claim, constantly, that you’re asking things OUT OF CURIOSITY, as if that makes ANYTHING better, when the truth is you’re just here to impose your cursed opinions on everyone else, especially me, and pretend you somehow own this fic and ship and your demands mean more than anyone else’s. Meanwhile, oh, I understand you PERFECTLY: you don’t want Sokka to ever have any experiences with any other women because you only believe in pure, untainted love of virgins who wait for each other and don’t ever make mistakes or are forced into unwanted situations. Because, again, you can’t understand that those sorts of things CAN happen. Because you don’t see there’s nuance to human beings, nuance I attempt to capture through my characters too.

I said it semi-jokingly, back in my past answers, now I say it directly: IF YOU CAN’T STOMACH THESE SITUATIONS AND CAN’T ACCEPT THEM, THIS STORY IS NOT FOR YOU.

An M-rated story doesn’t owe you any apologies for being what it is. An M-rated story, at the end of the day, is a STORY. You are a human being who should be capable of controlling not only your impulses but your reactions to things, at least to some degree, and yet you refuse to. You, in fact, continue to prove you CAN’T control yourself in the least because hey, just now, halfway through writing this post? I got THREE MORE ASKS by you. No less than three. And you finished them off, again, with a pretense that you’re going to stop pestering me...

... But hey. You said that at the end of the last ask I pasted up there. Hmm. And yet...

You came back, over and over and over again? :’)

RIGHT ON ALL ACCOUNTS! So... how do TWENTY ASKS, after claims that you’d finally stop, count as “regret”? You’re not changing at all, anon, because YOU DON’T WANT TO. You don’t, to this day, see what you did wrong. You don’t get it. And you won’t get it. So how about we just keep going with the next four?

Oh! But hey, you actually switched blogs this time. Super sweet of you to finally listen to ONE thing I said. Very nice.

I’ll just point out: I received the last NINE asks I’ve pasted here in a SINGLE DAY.

Nine. In one day.

I only ever got that many asks in a single go during review parties (admittedly, there were more than that, but still). The fact that you felt the need to send me NINE ASKS, to beg for forgiveness with a completely dishonest apology, is all the proof of harassment anyone could possibly ask for, right? If you weren’t an anon and at least had the GUTS to own up to your opinions, which you seem to consider absolutely sacred and completely correct, you’d have never gotten away with this. Ergo why you don’t have those guts, and why you keep sending anon reviews and asks too.

The fact that you’re so obsessed with this problem, to the point of believing Sokka’s best sex was with JUNE? We’ve literally finished an entire arc of Sokka and Azula banging across the Fire Nation with no restraint, with the two of them repeatedly remarking this is the best time they’ve ever had, and you’re so completely obsessed with this problem that you apparently think Sokka angrily fucking someone WHILE DECEIVING HIMSELF INTO THINKING IT WAS SOMEONE ELSE is... better? Are you FOR REAL? Are you seriously THAT BAD at reading?

Please, click here. I can’t even stand it anymore. It’s not even for my own sake but yours. You need it.

Also... you’re projecting so bad. Like, so bad. June’s teasing in that chapter is 100% intended to piss them off. The fact that she starts asking for Azula to lend her her “second boyfriend”, AKA Rui Shi, should tell you just how much stock June puts in what happened between her and Sokka: SHE DOESN’T GIVE A DAMN. She’s honestly more entertained by pissing off Azula as a consequence of it than over the sex she had with Sokka, especially considering she even lost her temper with him after he started apologizing in 28. You’re so completely beside yourself you can’t see ANYTHING clearly?

If you REALLY need it spelled out, no, Sokka wasn’t June’s best sex. June has probably done anyone and everyone she ever wanted to, and chances are she absolutely found someone, or several someones, who actually wanted HER, for HER, just as much as she may have wanted them. And that, you insecure mess of a human being, would absolutely make for a much better lay than what she got with Sokka. Why don’t I outright state this in the story, you’ll ask? Because despite what you may believe, this story ISN’T a love triangle between Azula, Sokka and June! Oh my, the horror! We’ve literally spent 198 chapters building up the story and developing Azula and Sokka’s relationship but the ONE TIME encounter with June apparently makes her that pivotal for your whole existence?

Dude, I literally don’t look at 28 AT ALL these days, because I don’t care to. Because even when I wrote it, it hurt me so bad having written it that I was crazy about getting to everything else so I could put it behind me. Whenever I reference it, I do the same way I reference ANYTHING ELSE. The only person who seems to think I’m doing it to further torture anyone IS YOU.

And yes, did I just say it hurt me too? Oh, my, what a SHOCKER! The fact is, that scene is only as intense as it is because I literally couldn’t bring myself to write it. It wasn’t until it came to mind that Sokka COULD imagine Azula in June’s place that I finally found the way to do it: it wasn’t just Sokka imagining Azula instead, it was ME. Because if it had been anything else? I wouldn’t have been able to write it at all. I basically wrote it as hatesex Sokkla because I NEEDED to in order to write it. “THEN WHY DID YOU EVEN WRITE IT?!?!?”, you’ll scream, I’m sure: BECAUSE I TREAT MY CHARACTERS AS HUMAN BEINGS WHO MAKE MISTAKES AND DO THINGS THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE. BECAUSE SOKKA WAS IN A DARK PLACE AND DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT AZULA WAS FEELING OR THINKING. BECAUSE AZULA WAS IMPULSIVE AND CONTROLLING AND COULDN’T REALIZE THAT THE MORE SHE TRIED TO FORCE SOKKA TO BEND TO HER WILL, THE MORE HE WOULD TRY TO BREAK FREE.

But all this is clearly too complex for you. Can’t even fathom understanding anything remotely close to characterization and conflict within relationships, no. You’re something else entirely.

And so, we move on to the post-apology Anon: you DO realize that forgiveness is something earned? I mean, it’s kinda funny because Sokka actually earned his own. He spent ages working for it, and even AFTER Azula told him he was forgiven, he still feels so bad about having hurt her that, to this day, he regrets it. Being FORGIVEN was not a condition for him to feel remorse. He regretted his actions because HE KNEW THEY WERE WRONG. Because he’s an actual, decent human being who, when faced with a catastrophic mistake, actually wants to amend it and wishes he had acted differently despite he can’t take anything back anymore.

But you? You can’t even begin to understand what regret means. I guess another dictionary definition would help?

Definitions of regret

1. (v) feel remorse for; feel sorry for; be contrite about

2. (v) feel sad about the loss or absence of

3. (v) express with regret

4. (v) decline formally or politely

5. (n) sadness associated with some wrong done or some disappointment

So, your attempts to beg for forgiveness fall completely flat. And I say it in plural, ATTEMPTS, because in case you think I’m daft and forgot your old reviews and asks, I didn’t: THIS ISN’T YOUR FIRST ATTEMPT TO APOLOGIZE FOR THIS BULLSHIT. I thought I should clarify that, because heh, you have claimed you won’t come back, you have claimed you’re sorry, you have said many platitudes in the past that actually had no meaning... and I could tell they didn’t, which is why I never answered them. Because there was no way someone who had exhibited such obsessive behavior would actually control themselves and get over their issues after MONTHS of persistent harassment.

And so, you didn’t disappoint, because I had zero expectations that you’d actually abide by your apologies. Empty apologies, again, because to this moment you don’t even know what you did wrong. You don’t get it. To put it in the way I did for someone else who talked to me about this mess:

You could be complaining to me about something else entirely. You could be here, demanding that I explain why I’ve been writing Sokka killing people, for instance. You could be disregarding all sense, reason, historical precedents and what-have-you as to why a warmongering, canonically genocidal nation like the Fire Nation would ever have a system like the Gladiator League and enslave other cultures to do their bidding.

And if you came back with those complaints PERSISTENTLY, FOR A YEAR, I’D BE JUST AS ANGRY AS I AM NOW.

It’s NOT about the situation you’re throwing a fit over. It’s NOT about me having it out for you. It’s about YOU not knowing limits or boundaries, going as far as you constantly, consistently have, ever seeking to twist my story into whatever warped, fucked up perception you’ve developed over it, without ever slowing down to think that your actions and your behavior are affecting someone else. I’m not just a rambling robot who can’t seem to stop talking or writing or whatever you may think I am: I’m an actual person with a FUCKLOAD of problems, who literally just had the WORST year of her life, and you just decided to continue adding to the pile, never slowing down to consider that your feelings, and your opinions, and your pain, does NOT invalidate other people’s, let alone does it make you EXEMPT of hurting others. Which, heh, if you knew how to read, you could’ve even LEARNED this from Gladiator! :’D

Because Azula, so hurt as she was, took to hurting Sokka too, in many, many ways. And Sokka, once he understood how wrongly he had judged Azula, simply let her hurt him because he thought he deserved everything she threw at him. Later on? Azula realizes all the pain she caused Sokka COULD have led him to choose the White Lotus over her. She’s in a life-or-death situation, unable to fight back, and the ONLY reason she doesn’t get screwed over and captured by the enemy is because Sokka decides she matters more to him than joining forces with sketchy people who are out for revenge. But what if she’d hurt him more than she had? What if she’d done WORSE than she did? Maybe he would’ve been so hurt too that, at this point, he would’ve chosen the White Lotus and not only abandoned her but handed her over to her nation’s enemies! :’) oh, the horror. Is it really that unthinkable? Why, it’s not to me. And why not? Because if Azula had been as unforgiving and unyielding as you are, if she had been so obsessive over whatever caused her pain and refused to move on... this story would SUCK. BADLY.

Makes you wonder what that says about your mentality, doesn’t it?

Alas, after all this digression as to why your behavior is absolutely appalling to me, let’s see what you did indeed, right after your absolutely shallow apology that was obviously not sincere, because you don’t regret having bothered me at all, you just regret that I won’t abide by your whining...

Is THIS what an apologetic, remorseful person looks like? Really, now? Honestly, if Sokka were half as bad as you are, he would’ve slept with half the Fire Nation by now while constantly coming back to Azula like “Oh woops did it again, sorry!”

Yes, I can honestly make the link pretty easily. Must be why you keep assuming he’ll ever be with someone else, because if you were in his place, you would do exactly that :’) beautiful how things just come full circle, isn’t it?

That ask came as a response to another, potentially ill-intended one, potentially sent by you too. An ask I answered with a whole list of unique things Sokka has done for Azula. Not only did you NOT understand the list’s purpose despite you may have even been the one to ask for it... but you took a line directly referencing OBVIOUS events like chapters 64, 69 and 93, moments in which Azula either put a stop to opportunities where she and Sokka might have ended up going too far, and he accepted it without complaint... or Sokka himself put a stop to them, KNOWING that Azula would be taking a huge risk if she gave herself to him completely as she does from 97 onwards. That you literally took something that was SO VERY OBVIOUS, and twisted it into chapter 28 again speaks LENGTHS of how absolutely messed up your perception and interpretation of this whole story is. You have issues. Serious issues. And I’m not saying this just to be an ass, I’m saying it because it’s clear as day that if you CAN’T stop linking absolutely everything I say or do to chapter 28, whether it’s being referenced or not (and in this case, it was NOT), the problem isn’t me, IT’S YOU.

And here we go again. You are actually trying to POLICE the Sokkla fandom at this point? An ANON? And hey, you returned to the Gladiator blog! Which means you were so pissed that I didn’t answer your previous asks and your phony apology because I KNEW you’d come back that even your teeny, tiny behavioral correction was pulled back because you were MAD. And you HAD TO MAKE YOUR OPINIONS KNOWN, AGAIN.

Do tell, are you the same ass who harassed a pretty new friend I’ve made in this fandom? An honestly solid writer who happens to feature Sokka having other, prior relationships to Azula because, haha, if you work with CANON settings, that’s basically guaranteed since Sokka already has canon relationships before even knowing Azula exists? And then, even if in those experiences Sokka ends up going “... I bet it’d be better with Azula”, you STILL take this as a slight and you consider it a reason to go around harassing writers and potentially even THREATENING to report their content because you’re mad that Sokka isn’t exclusively Azula’s in every single story you pick up?

The worst part is, I actually wrote at least 2 stories in my Saturdays’ oneshots where Azula and Sokka are each other’s first everything, absolutely so. And I got nothing from you for it, not even a teeny tiny “HEY THANK YOU YOU FINALLY WROTE WHAT I WANTED TO SEE!”. No, you only come out of your hole to ATTACK writers. To tell us what to do when you think we’re not doing it right. As if you had the SLIGHTEST right to tell ANYONE what to do.

I literally have been here for EIGHT YEARS. I’ve been creating content for this ship for that long, when nobody else was anymore. I won’t take credit for the ship’s rise in popularity, despite yes, it’s far from a major ship no matter how far we’ve come... but my story didn’t reach the heights it has out of sheer dumb luck. I worked my ass off with Gladiator in every way I could to make it a story of the scope and depth it deserved to be, and the fact that people who didn’t even ship Sokkla were interested in reading the story all the same has always been something I take pride on. A ton of multishippers read this story, and support Sokkla too: neither you nor ANYONE has any right to demand or claim or pretend that someone else has no right to be part of this fandom or to set guidelines as to what their content should be. There’s LITERAL stories out there of Sokka having a goddamn HAREM, just so you know, with Azula included amongst the women involved in it... and you’re here, throwing a fit over people featuring Sokka having one-time encounters and brief relationships with other girls before committing completely to Azula.

I’ve been here, working my ass off for Sokkla, not only in writing but literally developing my art skills to the best of my ability so I could ONE DAY create the visuals and images these two evoked for me...

And yet I don’t feel I have any right to tell ANYONE how to make their content.

If there was a set number of words in fics or artworks someone needed to make for a ship to prove themselves worthy of obtaining the skill of GATEKEEPING, I am 100% positive I have more than outdone that limit.

And yet I DON’T play gatekeeper. I NEVER have, and I NEVER will. People can create whatever they want to create, whether I enjoy it or not is up to me, and if I DON’T enjoy it, I DON’T read it. If there’s Sokkla content out there I can’t even STOMACH? I would ignore it and move on with my life. You? You make it your whole life’s crusade to attack people over anything that tickles you wrong. That’s how it works, isn’t it?

Unless you’re planning on pulling a Scooby-Doo-esque twist where you remove your mask and reveal you were a known Sokkla fan and content creator all along, which I find ABSOLUTELY unlikely, then this means you haven’t done anything, ANYTHING, for this fandom beyond sending anonymous harassment to people who are actually taking time out of their lives to create content for this ship. The main reaction I’ve seen at you from ANY of us, whether anons like yourself or actual content creators like myself, is that you have too much time on your hands and need a better hobby. And I agree, completely.

So, where people like me and my fellow Sokkla creators are actually making content that convinces people, if not to ship it, to at least CONSIDER this ship a possibility... you’re out there, in hiding, pretending you have any right to tell us what to do and going ignored on most accounts. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if I had any respect for someone, and they either stopped responding to me or started responding by telling me to leave them alone, I’d feel like such stain of garbage I’d never even try to interact with them again. While people absolutely can be different and react differently to things... I can’t see how, exactly, you have any respect for me when knowing you’re a problem for me has never stopped you and most likely never will.

I’ll admit, this one actually made me laugh. Like... you’re seriously trying to tell me that a sex scene was way too good and that’s why I have to change it. I actually disagree on every account, because the last time I revisited 28 I thought the scene was absolutely distant from my best work? I’ve written soooo much smut recently and literally any of those scenes kicks 28 out of any “best smut” contest by MILES. But... heh. This one, apparently, was too good.

I mean... thank you? For telling me that my smut skills are apparently that great they need to be toned down? Fascinating, really.

But again, “it sadly seems to be a too late to write chapter 28″. Sadly?

SADLY?

You can stick your sadness up where the sun doesn’t shine, dude:

SOMEONE WHO THREW SUCH A FIT OVER THEIR REVIEWS BEING REWRITTEN SHOULD

NEVER

TELL SOMEONE ELSE THAT IT’S TOO BAD THEY CAN’T REWRITE ANY OF THEIR CONTENT.

EVER

You can’t pretend, again, that you were EVER sorry for ANY of what you did... while still trying to tell someone they should rewrite their content. Honest to gods, you’re an asshole. You are. And if you think I’m one too, great, I own up to it gladly. But you’re the one willingly intoxicating their brain with my content, only to consistently go MAD over it, and then unleash this kind of illogical nonsense right back at me. I know art can generate a myriad of responses, but I am NOT responsible for your immaturity and inability to handle serious subjects and topics that SHOULD MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE. If you don’t KNOW how to deal with the fact that there’s a lot of questionable, dislikeable things in this world, then my damn story is the least of your concerns because you’re well on your way to leading a VERY miserable life, Anon. Better get ready for it, will you?

And again, the Gladiator blog. Again, pretending to be well-mannered, and also, again, using the world “sadly”, same as the ask above. Like... man, what on earth is wrong with you. Are you seriously this masochistic? Do you also drink arsenic for sport? What on EARTH brings you the belief that asking how far or how much was done between Sokka and his previous one-night-stands would help you IN ANY WAY, WHATSOEVER?

I think I’ll answer that question, for once, with actual quotes, taken right from some of your favorite chapters, no less:

"When you and Ruon Jian got married, was he…?" she asked. Mai only raised a confused eyebrow, and Azula had the distinct feeling that Mai knew what she was talking about, but would force her to blurt it out anyways. She sighed: "A virgin."

Ty Lee's hands flew to her mouth as Mai raised her eyebrows. To Azula's astonishment, she merely shrugged.

"I don't know. I never asked," she said. Azula snorted.

"Then you're smarter than me. By far," she grunted. Mai smirked.

And as things digress there into Azula explaining what happened, let’s skip that and go straight to Mai’s direct answer:

"I've never asked Ruon Jian about whether or not he had anything serious with other girls before me because I seriously don't care," said Mai. "If I knew about it, I'd probably have a bout of jealousy like yours, I suppose… but it's in his past, and he left them behind to make me his present and his future. So, whatever he might have experienced before, with however many women there were, isn't something I'm overly concerned about."

"You're awfully mature compared to me if that's the case," said Azula, slipping her fingers through her hair again. Mai smirked.

"You've been complimenting me quite a lot today, Azula, that's not like you…"

"Shut up," Azula grunted. Mai chuckled.

:’)

This is the only answer this ask warrants. The fact that you’re so immature and so obsessed as to want to know more about what happened with something you HATE is completely cringeworthy and absurd. If you want to get angry imagining Sokka having wild sex with every woman who crosses his path, go ahead and do it, but do us both a favor and torture yourself, and yourself alone, with those thoughts rather than coming back TWENTY TIMES to my inbox looking for MORE reasons to get angry. You’re honestly unbelievable.

You know, that reading comprehension site I linked up there? Courses, 20% off! Seriously, perfect fit for you. You need it, direly.

Like... how can someone read a story built on the premise of Azula literally defeating Sokka painfully in battle to the point he’s left unable to move, taking Sokka away from home, turning him into a slave, being objectively responsible for the WORST TWO YEARS OF HIS LIFE... and then come to my inbox asking if Azula will ever hurt Sokka?

Dude, you’re off the deep end. You can’t even pretend you have a grasp on reality if you SERIOUSLY THINK Azula has NEVER hurt Sokka. Like, seriously, it feels like you’re reading this truncated version of Gladiator that’s only chapters 28, 111, 112 and perhaps 123? Is that what’s going on?

I’ve had Sokka and Azula arguing over ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING, whether for humorous or for serious purposes, since the very beginning of the story. Their first serious falling out is LITERALLY caused by the direct conflict of their worldviews clashing in chapter 12. Their second falling out was indeed caused by women: by Azula’s discovery that Sokka didn’t want to fight women, which of course, doesn’t bother you in the least because you and I both know that’s NOT what your problem was.

I could literally run through the whole story listing every single argument they’ve had, every single time they’ve hurt each other if that’s what you want: their first time? It literally comes from a very serious argument where Sokka believed he had reached the pinnacle of his potential as a fighter and feared Azula would need someone else to achieve her goals instead of him.

AND YOU’RE SERIOUSLY HERE ASKING IF THEY’LL EVER ARGUE OVER ANYTHING ELSE.

You don’t read this story. This ask absolutely proved it to me. You only read chapter 28 and everything potentially connected to Sokka having anything with other women. You don’t CARE about anything else, simply. Because if anything actually had ANY impact on you? You’d say something about it. But the only thing that touches your weird heart is Sokka sleeping with anyone else or having any potentially romantic interactions with someone else, whether he rejects them or not.

You don’t care about Gladiator. You only care about your ego, and the validation of your worldview and puritanic morals.

And to that I say, fuck that noise. I write whatever the hell I want to write, and you’re not going to rope me into playing it safe just to please insecure harassers who don’t know boundaries and are completely incapable of empathizing with anyone while demanding everyone should understand their feelings.

Final note on this matter: you, also, have no idea what love is. You plain and simple don’t understand it. You’re even more confused by what love should be than Azula was at the start of this story. You don’t get it, AT ALL.

All you want is for them to get even on things? You literally asked me, when I was in my angry spree of deleting your bullshit, to make Azula and her future husband have happy consensual quality sex with who knows how many orgasms... because it was only fair!

AGAIN: YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND LOVE IN THE LEAST.

If you think love is about getting even, you’re seriously an asshole. If you think love is about both people being 100% equal in social regards and experiences, you don’t even UNDERSTAND human relations. Do you live in a bubble, by any chance? Maybe you do! You must have zero contact with anyone other than people with your same puritanic beliefs, right? So that means you assume everyone who’s different from you is fundamentally a bad person? I take it?

Like... literally at this point I think you’d hear about someone who was abused in their childhood, molested, and your reaction would simply be “Oh wow I hope someone molests whoever they end up marrying too, so that way they may be even in the future and been molested by the exact same number of people, otherwise it’s not really love”.

This is fucking sick. I’m not holding back at this point, it’s SICK. It’s TWISTED. It’s VILE. Your mentality is absolutely repulsive to me. You don’t know what love is, and you have the most literal, obvious change to understand it better by reading this story properly, but instead you just read chapter 28 over and over and over again, isn’t that right?

And here’s the evidence of that. You really want me to answer that last question?

No, it doesn’t bug me to read that AT ALL. Because unlike you? I don’t obsessively reread 28 while disregarding everything else in the story. Unlike you, I don’t revisit the chapter every day to pick apart every line to look for reasons to get extra angry at those developments.

Most of us, when faced with things we DON’T like in fiction? We move past it. You, instead, dig yourself into a hole and continue digging, and then pretend to hold other people responsible for whatever impact this may be having on your psyche. Because yes, you’re holding me responsible for whatever trauma or insecurity this is awakening inside you when you continue to pester me as you have: if you’re an adult, you should have the tools and brains to determine what is and what isn’t acceptable behavior, as well as to curate your own experiences with media, with fandom, with EVERYTHING to do with these communities. If you choose to look for things to hate instead of things to love, THAT’S ON YOU.

And if you’re allegedly looking for things to love but can’t find ANY that suit your purposes (which... is bullshit. Clearly, your only priority is “Sokka must be a virgin who never had anything with anyone else”, and such stories DO exist, which I guarantee considering I’ve written at least THREE of them, where it’s absolutely stated that Sokka’s first and only one is Azula)...

Well, it’s funny. Because when I got here? I was looking for some very specific fics so I could explore whether or not Sokkla made any sense. And I didn’t find them.

Which resulted...

... In me writing the very stories I wanted to see.

Oh, my. Imagine taking your impulses and channeling them into something productive rather than looking for reasons to get angry 24/7! Must be such a NOVEL CONCEPT for you!

Seriously, you have no right to dictate what anyone does. Again, worth bringing up because you INSIST on the rewriting matter. Even if you’re claiming you’re done asking for it, you somehow KEEP bringing it up. And then you act like me mentioning 28′s events here or there in the story is absolutely outrageous... but you just go right on ahead and do the same thing yourself, don’t you? Funny how much of a hypocrite you really are, isn’t it?

The fact that you’re bringing up something I have NEVER written, and have NO INTENTIONS of ever writing, as some sort of stupid, ridiculous argument to be made AGAINST the post I literally reblogged TODAY... is just absurd beyond belief.

The fact that I ever even wrote Sokka cheating on Suki with Azula, which I DID, still bothers me. Because yes, it made for a good story, but the truth is, it doesn’t sit well with me. It worked in The Reason, worked in my collab story with a friend, but it doesn’t mean I feel 100% happy with that choice. Even if the cheating only amounted to a kiss in The Reason, and then a lot worse than just that in the other story, it’s still not cool! :’) I know this!

... And yet no one, NO ONE, has ever caught me writing Sokka cheating on Azula. In fact, when my collab story with my friend seemed to start moving towards that angle I BEGGED her not to do it, and then she didn’t, and my heart was deeply relieved and blissful for it. Because not only did it mean we wouldn’t have to deal with the very controversial and unsettling notion of someone in a good relationship cheating on their significant other... but because in that story, it also showed how much he had grown, and how he was truly devoted to Azula despite he hadn’t been to Suki.

But alas, I have my qualms with that concept, of course I do. And I don’t like it. Ergo, I’ll never write it.

Which begs the question as to WHY, exactly, you’re so obsessed with the notion of Sokka cheating on Azula? Like... do you get off on it? Are you wanking at the idea of Sokka and June every single night and then wake up feeling like crap and then take it out on me, by any chance? Is that what’s going on? Because I’m seriously starting to believe it is.

You clearly don’t understand anything about storytelling, which is probably why you don’t have the guts to create your own content in the first place. But the fact that I reblog a post about how conflict in a story is GOOD, and your first thought is “THEN THAT MEANS YOU APPROVE OF SOKKA CHEATING!” actually says A LOT MORE about you than it says about me. You need help. Clearly, the therapy site I was sending you to the last time wasn’t much good, was it? I guess you just ignored it in the end. Hopefully the reading comprehension one will suit you better, right?

Fuck you, seriously, for coming to someone who has been working this hard for this long, for a ship that they’re completely devoted to, to spout this kind of senseless shit. To think you seriously ever believed I’d accept your half-assed apologies when you’ve been doing this sort of bullshit for this long... you’re a piece of work. If you have the time to write that BULLSHIT into my inbox, at the very least use that time to look INWARD and ponder just what your damn problem is, resolve it on your own, AND LEAVE ME THE HELL OUT OF IT. Someone as immature and unstable as you has no business reading M-rated fiction, and I honestly rue the day you ever clicked my story. Both your life and mine would be countless times better if you simply had scrolled past it.

And on and on we went today. The THREE MORE ASKS that arrived as I was typing this insanely long response. Which resulted in you bumping the total, successfully, to 20. MIGHTY NICE OF YOU TO PROVE ME RIGHT! :’)

Now then, getting serious here... I must say your priorities are fucked. Like. Really fucked.

You’d rather Sokka tries to KILL AZULA than have a one-time sexual encounter with someone?

Like... you’re here, condoning VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN to that extent...? :’D and then you... you actually have the balls to whine because apparently him hurting her feelings is WORSE?!

Are you EVEN LISTENING TO YOURSELF???

You know, I think I have to offer you some REALLY good advice right now: go watch Naruto. Seriously, all of it. Go watch it, and enjoy your sweet loins’ release once Sasuke and Sakura start trying to kill each other, ONLY TO END UP TOGETHER AT THE END! :’) They were both 100% faithful to each other too, in the sense of Sakura getting depicted as a girl who can’t ever get over the guy she had a crush on when she was 6, no matter if he tries to kill her or her friends once he starts to go off the deep end, and Sasuke getting depicted as a guy who treats everyone like garbage, even the people he loves, because his manpain story somehow validates him being absolutely toxic to everyone he knows, so that’s absolutely up your alley! 100% the love story you’ve been looking for! You’re gonna LOVE IT.

Man, I just can’t believe you. I really can’t believe you. You’re seriously asking me to feature Sokka trying to kill Azula because that’s more acceptable to you. There was a story out there, you know? With Azula basically using Sokka to commit suicide, impaling herself on his sword and dying? You should just go look for that too, perfect fit for you (though it may be gone from the depths of this wretched site by now, which tbh I’d be grateful for, since it was the most unsettling, disturbing read).

Also? Thank you, truly, for all the remarkably shallow compliments you’ve thrown at me to “soften” your “criticism” (which, again, is whining, not legitimate criticism). Calling me a capable writer is super NICE of you, especially after all these months of persistent harassment and constant repetition that I should rewrite whatever you don’t like. I mean... that’s definitely the way someone treats a capable writer, isn’t that right?

“The problem isn’t conflict it’s what the conflict is”, the anon says. I’ve been writing a story for 8 years, 198 chapters and counting... and I’ve had a ton of different types of conflicts for Sokka and Azula to deal with. If your problem is “I don’t like this conflict”, FINE. But... hey. There have been THOUSANDS of other sources of conflict across the story, so many I don’t think I can even promise I’d ever take my time to count them all... there’s whole ARCS with conflicts regarding world politics and the war’s consequences and both Azula and Sokka completely changing their worldviews as they realize their realities are soooo much more complicated than they ever knew...!

Ergo. There ARE other conflicts. There are SO MANY of them that there’s no point in even listing it all out.

And yet you are obsessed with the one conflict you didn’t like, outright acting like THIS IS THE ONLY CONFLICT THERE EVER WAS, as proven by that preposterous and mindless “when will Azula ever hurt Sokka” ask. The one development you were pissed at, because it tickled your loins the wrong way. Oh yes, I’m a capable writer, I could’ve done things differently...!

BUT I DIDN’T!

And aren’t you thrilled that I didn’t? You would be a complete nobody in this fandom if this hadn’t happened, because otherwise what would you POSSIBLY have to complain about?! To harass someone about?! You’d be SO BORED! You’d be so unknown, nobody would even be aware of your existence...!

Though.

Wait.

You’re an anon.

You’re unreachable and nobody really knows who you are.

... So never mind, you actually still are a complete nobody in this fandom and your only attempt to even take part in it is to be a negative, irritating presence that literally makes people facepalm, laugh and ridicule you to the extent I and many others have laughed at you.

And yes, that post I reblogged was 100% worth reblogging. Why? Because it hits the nail on the head:

I DIDN’T WRITE 28 SO YOU’D BE HAPPY WITH SOKKA.

I DIDN’T WRITE THAT CHAPTER TO MAKE PEOPLE THINK “OH WOW WHAT A WHOLESOME SITUATION”.

I WROTE IT BECAUSE IT WAS MEANT TO DETONATE CONFLICT AND SPEED UP CHARACTER GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT, WHICH IT DID.

And the thing is? Maybe, in the future, I’ll write other stories, just as I wrote the Saturdays’ stories, and Sokka won’t have either meaningful or worth mentioning encounters with anyone else in them. Maybe I’ll write original fiction, and there won’t be any twists like what happened in 28!

But you will never get over this.

You will never care about any other content beyond this.

And that’s your failing, not mine.

If you would rather obsess over what makes you angry, that’s on YOU. But I’m damn sure I wrote a pretty reasonable conflict, character-wise, that was not only consistent with characterization but with the slightly darker take of the Avatarverse I’ve been working with. Not only that, but I NEVER skipped the consequences of their actions. I literally had them facing those consequences for whole arcs. Sokka assumed he’d never have a chance to be with Azula and made his peace with it, WITHOUT EVER PRETENDING HIS DEVELOPING FEELINGS FOR AZULA WERE ANYTHING THAT ENTITLED HIM TO HER LOVE IN RETURN. But oh, that’s too complex for you to understand, isn’t it? The fact that Sokka actually loves Azula for her, and not for himself, that he devotes himself to her in every imaginable way, that he fights people who dare disrespect her, that he would stop at NOTHING, even coming close to killing someone, to keep her safe despite he’s completely against killing people? That all means NOTHING to you.

And again? THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM. THAT’S YOUR FAILING. THAT YOU’RE SO OBSESSED WITH 28 AND CAN’T MOVE PAST IT IS NOT MY FAULT, IT’S YOURS.

Because I damn right moved past it. I’ve moved so far past it I literally don’t ever THINK about that damn situation until your stupid asks start arriving. Heck, maybe if you didn’t ASK so much about it, I’d stop bringing it up in recent chapters of the story :’) how do you feel about that particular kernel of unexpected information? Maybe you’re impacting the story in a whole shocking manner by inception-ing 28 into my head all the time and that’s why I can’t seem to stop throwing in lines referencing it for you to go completely BONKERS over. How about that? :’)

Say... how exactly do you think this fic is special? Literally all I know is you think I’m a capable writer who can create something perfectly catered for you, and yet ALL the feedback I’ve ever gotten from you is “REWRITE 28 AND EVERYTHING ABOUT SOKKA HAVING ANYTHING WITH OTHER GIRLS I DON’T UNDERSTAND ANY OF THIS I’M GENUINELY CURIOUS THIS IS LEGITIMATE CRITICISM SIGNING OFF BYE”. Your compliments are completely devoid of meaning because they’re literally just a handful of “you’re a good writer” and you don’t even say WHY you think I’m good. You don’t ever come here to tell me how much you enjoyed a certain scene, or how happy you are with a certain development... No.

Because when Sokka and Azula got married? What did I get?

“HOW CAN YOU LET SOKKA AND AZULA GET MARRIED NOW WHEN HE SLEPT WITH SOMEONE ELSE IN CHAPTER 28?!”

I wish I had screenshots for those, but you and I both know the truth, you irksome anon, and the truth is you did exactly that. And with every new development in Shu Jing, I got yet more reviews and ask(s), persistently whining about how UNFAIR it is that now Azula apparently is locked in marriage with this unfaithful man who has been unfaithful to her a grand total number of ZERO TIMES ever since their relationship began! How DARES he even think about marrying her?! Scourge of earth, let’s murder him in cold blood because DEATH IS BETTER THAN CHEATING!!!

If you think highly of Gladiator for ANY REASON, you’ve kept those reasons well and safely tucked away in the depths of your broken heart or shared them with anyone but me. Look at all these asks, damn you, and tell me at what point in time did you convey ANYTHING beyond “why don’t you write what I want you to write?”, huh? Because hell, I don’t see it in any of them. Literally nowhere. No backwards (: emojis are compliments or evidence of how much this story allegedly means to you. All I know is that you hate 28 and everything about it.

And you see...

I don’t give a flying fuck.

I don’t.

You can hate 28 all you want.

You can hate June.

You can hate Sokka.

It is, INDEED, a free world.

But you have no right, NONE WHATSOEVER, to commit to this level of harassment as you have, for A WHOLE YEAR, and pretend the problem is that I, Seyary, the “evil super-sensitive author who writes Sokka sleeping with other people and doesn’t even break a sweat but then crumbles to pieces when “negative” feedback arrives”, can’t handle your comments properly.

I’ve said it before, damn you: NO ONE NEEDS TO REITERATE THEIR OPINIONS A MILLION TIMES. NO ONE. NOT YOU, NOT THE PEOPLE DEMANDING FOR THE PLOT TO KICK INTO HIGH GEAR, NOT THE ONES WHO THINK THIS SHIP IS GARBAGE, NOT ANYONE.

NO ONE HAS ANY RIGHT OR REASON TO COME BACK PERSISTENTLY THORUGHOUT A YEAR TO HARASS SOMEONE NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES THEY’RE TOLD TO STOP IT.

Point being: HATE WHAT YOU WILL! But keep it the fuck off my blog. And if you CAN’T? Get used to these responses. Because you’re going to get them, constantly. I guarantee it.

I know your damn opinion already. I know it by heart and I damn wish I didn’t. You are perfectly free to go read all the other stories where I’ve had Sokka staying faithful to Azula, with Azula being his first, or with Azula being much more experienced and sleeping around while Sokka stays mostly chaste... but you don’t. You come back, every time, to my miserable inbox that must cry every time you show up in it, to make these demands and pretend you have any power over what I should be writing.

Again, no, I have no idea why this story matters to you at all. And at this point? I’d rather NOT know. Because I’m 100% sure the only thing that matters most to you is chapter 28. So you know, go ahead, wank to it again and cry yourself to sleep. It’s kind of fascinating to have written something that has such a visceral emotional impact on a complete and total stranger. Makes it clear I’ve made a lot of progress as a writer if I can fuck up someone’s life to this extent with what I’ve written.

Yeah. Sure. You really think I’ll buy it? You really think this is goodbye? Oh, no, Anon. You can’t stay away. You’ve been told to, you’ve been asked to, but you can’t.

So no, I’m not wishing you good luck back. And I’m certainly not wishing you any fun with my fic, because it’s more than clear that the only source of entertainment it provided you was chapter 28, seeing as it’s the only impactful thing I apparently ever wrote. And someone who’s that obsessed with one of the chapters I most disliked writing despite I knew the plot would benefit from it in the long run simply can’t deserve to have fun. So... good suffering over Gladiator, if anything? Go ahead and continue to wrack your brain while trying to unravel why, oh, why would ANYONE ever write what I wrote and still call themselves a Sokkla shipper?!

I dunno, maybe go on and write something similar yourself. Could be you’ll finally figure out what your problem is if you take to writing the cheating storylines you’re so very much obsessed with. Only, heh, I can guarantee I’m not touching anything you write, out of principle more than anything. I plain and simple don’t want anything to do with you... but as I don’t intend to close my inbox again, it seems I have no choice, do I?

Good fucking luck sticking to this alleged goodbye... but we both know you’ll be coming back very soon, won’t you? No worries, Anon, I’ll be waiting this time. Let’s see if you can break your 20-ask-streak record next time, shall we? :’)

It’s December 13th, at 2:32 PM, in my location. Let’s see how long it takes you to come back, shall we?

EDIT: I neglected to check constantly so it definitely arrived earlier than this, but officially received a response at least 2 hours after this post went live.

Didn’t I call it? Yep, absolutely called it.

#I need a name for this anon #though I guess stalker-harasser anon would work?#yep #stalker-harasser anon #there we go #honestly it feels so utterly backwards to still talk about this to this day #and yet #it never ends #:')#here we go have this dumpster fire of a post #I'm legit going to time this shit #and report right back to you all #once the stalker-harasser comes back #it's the only genuinely hilarious part of this whole thing after all

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carabas · 4 years

Text

So I’ve just finished reading the Dragon Age Tevinter Nights anthology, and short reaction: enjoyably hit and miss right up until that final extremely thorough direct hit, thank you Patrick Weekes.

Much, much longer version:

1. I don’t know how reasonable it is to try to extrapolate about what’s going to be in the next game based on a random short story collection, but hey, the novels that came out before DAI were about the mage rebellion, the Orlesian civil war, and eluvians, so.

So things I’m now expecting to see in the next game, aside from the Tevinter-Qunari conflict and Solas of course: Nevarran necromancy, Antivan Crows, Wardens who are struggling with decimated numbers after DAO and DAI (would be the perfect time for Razikale and Lusacan to both wake up at once really), and the Lords of Fortune, a never-before-mentioned Rivaini treasure hunting organization which appeared in I think three different stories here.

Plus a few stories were very much signalling This Specific New Character Will Be Showing Up Again, whether in the games or elsewhere; I'll be shocked if Lucanis the “Demon,” reluctant heir apparent of the Antivan Crows who just got into a cliffhanger conflict with a Tevinter magister, doesn’t have more to do.

2. THERE IS A MAP, there is a great big fantasy map surrounded by nifty little illustrative details to poke at.

There’s a label reading “White Spire,” not in Val Royeaux, but on a mountain beyond the Arlathan Forest. Is that an error or is there really a White Spire mountain? If not an error, has it always been named that or is that new, possibly a new center for the mages after the war, after the original Spire fell? At no point is either Spire mentioned in this book aside from this map.

Lots of astrological sun and moon patterns prominently featured around the edges. Is that one moon chart depicting moon phases or an eclipse? Is it too conspiracy theory of me to be counting the nine dark moons (or spheres? like in that DA4 idol illustration’s seven slots?) on the dragon’s wing? Probably. Or are those spheres a reference to the second moon that never seems to actually be visible, is that missing moon actually deliberate.

Most of the astrological charts are fairly straightforwardly showing sun/moon phases but what is the crowned figure in the one on the lower right meant to represent? The Maker? What’s going on with the horizontal lines passing through it/behind it? The two moons beneath it - is that an illustration of the moon in two phases or being separated into two (metaphorical moon in that case, presumably), do those horizontal lines also indicate separation, do I need to move on from the astrological depictions here, definitely.

Love the big horseshoe crab sea monster.

3. Patrick Weekes’s first story in the collection: halla shapeshifting! An elf named Strife who I fully expected to be revealed as an agent of Fen’harel mimicking ancient elven names like Sorrow and Pride, though I was wrong - would it be charming or just annoyingly unsubtle if that became a thing among his agents. An ancient forest guardian with lyrium blades who hunts magic in a way that struck me an awful lot like a forest-themed equivalent of a golem, though I may be wildly off base with that one.

4. Nevarran necromancy story. An odd bit of the chant to highlight for a funeral: “And the Maker, clad in the majesty of the sky, set foot to earth, and at His touch all warring ceased.” I continue to squint suspiciously at overlaps between Maker and elven god imagery. Also, evidently mortalitasi believe that when someone dies, an inhuman spirit is pushed out from the Fade into the physical world, and that’s part of the reason behind their housing spirits in bodies - neat! The existence of Curiosity spirits, also neat!

5. Is Ghilan’nain’s horrible body horror place supposed to be spelled Hormak like in the title and previous canon references, or Hormok like throughout the text here? I know this was just a mistake but maybe I’ll use this to say that in-world there’s multiple ways of transliterating Dwarven.

6. Lukas Kristjanson story #1, the one featuring approximately a million minor Inquisition character cameos and a meditation on Solas’s regrets, introduces a character with the phrase “free mage by special commendation,” and I was briefly thrown by that little signal that we are Not In My Worldstate, that the mages aren’t all free by default - except then the story went on to destroy Solas’s fresco so I wound up quite grateful for that little heads up that this isn’t my worldstate actually.

(Unfortunately I can’t get into this guy’s writing style at all, which is a shame because it’s one of the big Solas stories in the book.)

7. There’s a little plot point in the Wigmaker Job story that demonstrates those elven artifacts Solas had us activate all over Thedas do indeed strengthen the Veil - like, he wasn’t lying to us about what those orbs do, that is how they work, here we see a Crow stab one in order to deactivate it, weaken the Veil and unleash a horde of vengeful demons. Nice confirmation.

8. Genitivi is the Randy Dowager. (Possibly. At least, Philliam wrote a scene in which Genitivi alludes to being the Randy Dowager. I do appreciate an unreliable narrator but after a certain point it does make the lore hard to keep straight.)

9. By the time we got to the story about adventurers stealing an incredibly powerful healing amulet just to donate it to a mysterious contact at a makeshift hospital trying to help people where the Qunari-Tevinter war has spilled over, I knew better than to expect any cameos from DAO/DA2 characters. And with the mention of the squire, I was pretty sure the mysterious contact was going to be Vaea, and it was. Still. Anders would approve. And for a moment I was fantasizing that it would turn out to be him, or connected to him. A new mental setting for him and Hawke post-mage-freedom - makeshift hospitals at the edge of the invasion, secretly sponsored by a certain pair of absurdly overpowered, dungeon-crawling, treasure-hunting fugitives.

Yes, my Dragon Age interpreting is still all about Anders even when he’s not remotely present.

10. You know, I really expected the leaders of the Crows to be a bit more ruthlessly competent than this. Someone is setting up a grand demonstration, recreating infamous historical assassinations carried out by the Crows but now with the leaders of the Crows themselves as the victims, incredibly flashy, incredibly clearly sending a message, and yet not one of the characters trying to figure out whodunit is speculating about the meaning behind that message??? the motive in going to all that trouble??? it’s all, hm, perhaps it’s the qunari invaders. hm, this one was posed with a pearl necklace just like the one in the historical murder it’s recreating, i bet the culprit owns a pearl-fishing business! I know they’re assassins not detectives but at least show the professional courtesy of paying attention to the message in the show your fellow assassin is putting on for you, geez.

Anyway. Interesting Crow details: they talked about neutral ground and territories divided between the Crow households here, does that just apply to Antiva or like, does Arainai have claim to all jobs in Ferelden?

And the line “Teia's back was bare except for a tattoo marking her as a member of House Cantori” puts Zevran’s tattoos in a slightly different light for me - he’s mentioned that some symbols are sacred to the Crows, and logically it follows that having that symbol tattooed on him would indeed mark him as a Crow to other people in the know, but that his tattoos mark him as belonging to House Arainai is a thing that did not hit me from that.

11. An agent of Fen’harel muttering “Felassan” to activate a rune. In memoriam? Charming. I mean it’s a rune that’s intended to kill an entire city, so possibly the more literal slow arrow is meant, but I’m still charmed.

12. PATRICK WEEKES CLOSING OUT THE BOOK BY JUST DUMPING THE CONTINUING DREAD WOLF HUNT PLOT ON US.

So much.

An actual giant wolf in the Fade, I’m so happy for tumblr user corseque.

A character again raising the possibility that Solas is not an ancient elf but rather a young elf who stumbled onto old magic, a theory I thought debunked by Trespasser but here we are considering it again.

A minor side note that a lot of Kirkwall’s templars went rogue after the explosion - that’s not relevant to the post-DAI plot really, I’m just noting it for my generally-DA2-focused fanfic purposes.

The possibility that somniari (presumably) can kill even dwarves who don’t dream in their sleep. Somniari in general or did Solas personally step in here?

A ritual involving the red lyrium idol resulting in the phrase “As if we were the blood and the cavern the body through which it flowed” right before the POV character enters the Fade, which is a rather Titan-esque turn of phrase.

The Dread Wolf again asserting that all creation is in danger and he’s trying to fix that. A biased POV character recognizing that, huh, funny how those spirits around the Dread Wolf which surely must be demons actually look an awful lot like Justice and Valor.

And Charter’s notes at the end, so direct, not only spelling out the new details on the idol for us (that the figure represents a crowned figure comforting another) but thoroughly hitting us over the head with Solas’s essential characterization in his own words, as if Weekes is still trying to clear up any possible lingering misinterpretations there. (Prideful, hotheaded, foolish. Doing what he must. Sympathetic to elves. Said that he was sorry.)

And the quiet simplicity of Solas coming to this meeting of spies in person because, pause, “...the Inquisition was involved,” written in such a way that you could read all sorts of things into that pause, whatever the Inquisition and the Inquisitor might mean to him.

The book would have been worth reading for this last story alone, what a note to end on.

#dragon age #tevinter nights #inquisition #da4 speculation #this is a deeply inquisition- and post-inquisition focused book #lots of neat continuing plot stuff and cameos from DAI or comics characters #no updates on your favorite DAO/DA2 companions

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scarlettswxtch · 5 years

Text

Darkest Side of Me | 2

Characters: Bucky x Reader / Steve x Reader

Summary: You’re recruited as a new Avenger with powers unlike any other. With a tragic past blurred from birth, who will be at your side when you realise who you truly are?

Word count: 2,400

A/N: I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED THE ORIGINAL POST. Lol. So sorry to anyone who wondered what happened but please let me know if you enjoy the Bucky and Steve thing or if you’d prefer a Bucky x Reader only fic. I apologise for any spelling mistakes in advance.

On another note, I’m terrible at summaries 😬. It’s changed from my first one if you remember it, just felt like it didn’t describe it well enough. Hope you guys enjoy anyway!! (P.S. I’m SUPER sorry for the late posting I’ve been so busy). Message me if you’d like to be on the tag list :)

Warnings: This fanfiction is M Rated, and the men (really only Steve and Bucky) will all be dominant guys, if you’re into that sorta thing. So..beware cause some chapters may be smutty ;)

DARKEST SIDE OF ME

PART 1

You woke as the sun rises like a canopy of gold, bright amid the blue, bidding the stars to take their nightly rest. As darkness surrenders, every colour changes from tinges of charcoal to a vibrancy.

A third cup of coffee was now nestled perfectly into your hands as you stood outside the compound’s kitchen balcony. The avenger’s facility was truly impeccable with its finely trimmed grass fields and blue coastal views. When you had returned from your encounter with Bucky, you sat in bed restlessly, wondering what was so magnetic about him. After millennia of being alive, encountering countless beings, human and alien alike, none of them had made you feel such a strong state of wonder as that damned soldier. There was something about him - his gaze, how it so daringly held yours, the way his presence could make your heart skip, mind wonder. It was ridiculous. He was a stranger you had met merely 24 hours ago. Yet, it was intriguing, made you want to know more. It was seldom someone made you feel this way and you wondered what the fates were trying to tell you.

You closed your eyes to the lullaby of the ocean, breathing in its poignant salty breath, sighing in silent content. Quiet mornings were your most cherished part of the day.

“Mornin’.” You hear behind you. Startled, you whirl around and almost spill your coffee everywhere. A splash of it lands on the floor and thankfully not on you. You’d think a goddess would have a little more grace than this, you think to yourself and scowl at the now brown spot on an otherwise perfectly pristine floor.

Your eyes turn to meet a lovely pair of wonderfully azure orbs now shining with amusement. You gather yourself, your scowl deepening...which apparently only adds to his amusement because he chuckles.

“Good morning, Captain.” You say, unimpressed with his humour. Inner you squealed at his sudden presence. Steve Rodgers was like a GQ model with all the charm in the world.

He sauntered over to your side, keeping a friendly, and (unfortunately) professional distance. “How you settling in?” He says, his eyes level to yours.

You didn’t miss his loose grey t-shirt, which quite frankly did nothing to hide his very obvious god-like build. The muscles of his biceps flexed with every slight movement and damn if you didn’t want to reach out and take your time tracing each ridge with your fingertips. Maybe even your tongue. You wouldn’t be opposed to either. Jesus Christ this guy was hot.

Your eyes snapped to his. If he noticed you checking him out, he gratefully didn’t show it. Although, you assumed he was used to swooning women. “Fine,” you said, your voice holding a hint of hoarseness that he didn’t miss. “Might take a little getting used to, but everyone seems great” you finished, with a smile.

Steve nodded and gave you a smile of his own. “Yeah it can be tough, first coupla days”.

“The whole welcome committee made me feel more at ease”

“Yeah, you stick around long enough they’ll start to feel like family” he said sympathetically, correctly guessing family was a sore spot for you.

Your eyes turned to him, unsurprised “You read my file.”

“Always do my homework on new recruits” he explained “Fury runs files through us before approval...it’s not often someone gets recommended for the team. When Fury found out about you, and what you could do, he wanted you on board ASAP. We didn’t protest.”

You raised a brow “So I got the Tony and Cap stamp of approval? I’m flattered”

He grins “No doubt your file is quite impressive, the team could definitely use someone like you on our side. Thor didn’t seem thrilled with the idea the idea, though. He protested to say the least.”

You chuckled, but there was nothing but bitterness behind it “Yes. I can imagine” He raised a brow and you looked away from him in memory. It didn’t go unnoticed that he wasn’t part of your welcome party last night. Odin disliked you for reasons unbeknownst - Thor and you were the best of friends, once upon a time. He took pity on you, swearing to convince his father to allow you refuge on Asgard. Days later, he returned with a wary look on his face, claiming to know ‘who you really are’. You never saw him again.

“Long story,” You told Steve.

His hand gave your shoulder a gentle squeeze and his next words were said like velvet, “If you ever need to talk, I have all the time in the world. Literally,” you appreciated Steve, he was like a beacon of safety and warmth. The kinda guy that would take your deepest, darkest secrets to the grave because he promised.

You smiled at him warmly. It was unlikely you’d take him up on that, but you were grateful for his sincerity. “I’ll keep that in mind” He simply nods in response.

Moments later, he sighs loudly before downing all his coffee, placing the cup on the table beside him and turning to you with a mischievous look in his eyes. “Wanna spar?” He asks, both hands on hips and lips tipped up in challenge. You raise a surprised eyebrow and he grins “What? Scared you’ll lose?”

You chuckle, appreciating the change of topic. “I see you didn’t do all your homework on me, Captain” you say, placing your unfinished coffee on the table. You levelled his challenging gaze with your own, “Both know I could beat you with my eyes closed” you retort, teasingly, and he smiles with wonderful curiosity.

“I did read your file. Thoroughly” he retorts, stepping closer to you. You suddenly felt very small against his ridiculously tall frame. “You’re enhanced. Healing powers, fast reflexes, better than any Soviet-trained assassin according to SHIELD” he stopped with pointed humour “although I’m sure Bucky and Natasha will contest that”, that made you scoff. “Besides, new recruits need training”

“I’m impressed. Although I think you’ll find your time as a popsicle has nothing on my literal thousand-year-old experience.” You said with a grin

“Oh, so that’s how we’re playing it?” He asked with a hearty laugh and right then you were certain no galaxy in the world could show you anything more pleasant.

“Hey, you started it Cap, I’m known for my retribution”

“I’m sure you’ll go easy on me” he adds.

You gave him a smirk “No promises”

~~~

“You okay down there, Cap?” You say, your voice trembling with humour.

Steve Rodgers looks up at you from the hard floor of the training room. Salty droplets flow down his face like soft summer rain, dripping onto the concrete as he sits to regain his breath.

He lets out a huffed breath and repeats your earlier words “I’m impressed”

You tuck a piece of hair behind your ear, eyes shining with obvious pride. You had just taken down the world’s favourite golden boy with nothing but a few fight moves. Needless to say, Cap had some good moves of his own and had almost got you down a few times. Then again, you are of a completely superior alien race, so you’d give him some credit.

“Well, not like Fury to employ any average gal- “you began, before a strong hand wrapped around your ankle and you were suddenly falling down, moments away from head butting the floor before strong hands wrapped around your waist, guiding you to land quite snug on Steve’s lap.

He gave you an amused look “You were saying?” Suddenly, you were very aware of his warm hands against your waist and you couldn’t think of a better feeling.

Actually...maybe you could...because right now your hands were resting on his chest and holy hell does it feel nice. All you wanted to do was rip off his shirt and set it ablaze. In fact, you wanted to march to his room and set all of his shirts ablaze. It would be a blessing to all humankind to watch Steve Rodgers walk around shirtless, all the time...24/7...would definitely add years onto someone’s life. Especially if they had their hands on him, just like this.

He squeezes you as if you gain your attention, his eyes twinkling with amusement because he had very obviously caught you checking out his chest. You blinked, sure enough your cheeks were now stained pink. Thank god mind reading wasn’t on his resume.

You cleared your throat “You distracted me, that’s cheating. Besides, I’m not using any of my abilities on you. Fair game and everything” you finish with a smirk.

“Thought you weren’t going easy on me?” He said teasingly.

“You could’ve let me fall and you didn’t.”

He grins “Yeah, I had a good reason”.

You raised a brow “And what would that be?”

You feel his hands softly squeeze your bare waist and your breath hitches. “Didn’t wanna ruin that pretty face of yours, darlin’” he says, and inner you sighs in upmost content. Well...damn. Safe to say Captain America could charm anyone’s pants off. You were just happy this time they were yours. His hands move lower, thumb now drawing circles against your back and you feel your mind wonder to places it shouldn’t. Gosh his eyes are nice, and you’d be damned if his face wasn’t even more beautiful up close. You were dazed, and if you weren’t mistaken, so was he because his eyes glazed over with a very familiar look of lust. Perhaps if you just leaned a little clo-

“Well don’t you two look cosy” you hear from the doorway and your head whips around to meet an icy cold stare. Bucky Barnes. What terrible timing.

You promptly lift yourself off Steve, almost giving yourself whiplash, hand shooting out to hold the bars of the ring. You clear your throat. “We were just sparring” you explain, and frown to yourself. Why did you feel the urge to justify yourself to this man?

He lifted an eyebrow “If that’s how you spar, doll, you’ll have the whole house lining up for a piece of that”

Your eyes narrow. Did he just -. Your mouth opens, but before you can reply he cuts you off: “Stark wants us at the conference room in 5. So, when you two love-birds are done ‘sparring’” he says, pointedly air-quoting the last word and your eyes narrow further “we’ll be waiting for you”. And with that, he turns on his heel and leaves.

You turned to Steve and your look of disbelief must’ve been evident on your face because he chuckles as he lifts himself off the floor. “Don’t mind him, he’s always grumpy.” He walks out of the ring, suddenly turning to you all Captain America like as if he didn’t just have you on his lap 2 minutes ago. “Get cleaned up”, he throws a towel at you “I’ll see you in the conference room in 3” and with that, he leaves, and you’re left wondering if all super soldiers are this perplexing.

~~~

The conference room was nice to say the least. Tony Stark did nothing half-way. You were watching him with all his authority and confidence, but your thoughts were a million miles away. Cap sat at the head of the table and you could see his lips form words your mind wasn’t quite registering. Probably not a great idea considering this was your first mission debriefing. Your thoughts were in fact on the man opposite you. His metal hand tapping restlessly on the table, you could tell he was paying as much attention as you were. You tilted your head in silent wonder and observed him with careful consideration. If the hard line on his lips and slight frown were anything to go by, something was bothering him, and you could tell.

He doesn’t look any less gorgeous when he’s annoyed, by the way. If anything, it added to the masculinity of his features; hard jaw clenching deliciously, eyes miraculously darker, that perpetual murderous look in his face magnetised by a million. Jesus Christ you felt like a teenager. Why are these stupid, gorgeous super soldiers taking up all your damned thoughts?

You didn’t know what it was about Steve either. His in-your-face all-star golden boy beauty was fucking gut wrenching. He was sweet, ever-so welcoming, he joked, had this calm, comforting aura that made you feel warm and lovely. Like you knew him all your life - as if he were your long-lost best friend your soul wanted to hold onto with every ounce of her being. Your eyes flickered to him and you watched as his mouth made yet more unheard words. Your interaction earlier had been unprecedented. Sure, you were attracted to him, but who wasn’t? Steve Rodgers is Adonis embodied and every woman knew it. He was blinding and warm like the sun.

And Bucky...he was different. The complete paradox of Steve. Bloody beautiful in all the rough ways. There was nothing in-your-face about him, no. He was mysterious, extraordinarily so. There was nothing light about him - just stormy, agonising beauty. You could tell he was that intense guy. The kind women would look at and want just because he looked dangerous. Just because they knew he’d give them the ride of their lives and probably break their heart on the way, but it didn’t matter cause that was part of the adventure. The guy that would wrap his hand around your throat and squeeze until you were on your knees, clawing for breath while telling him how every inch of you belonged to him. Then he’d fuck you bloody just to prove it.

You watched him with a calculated gaze. You had only brief interactions with him but every one of them felt like eternity between you and those icy blue whirlpools of his. There was much more to the Winter Solider than his cold, broody exterior and you wanted to dive deep inside that ocean of his mind and uncover them.

His eyes turned to you then. He had obviously felt you staring. He raised an annoyed brow in question, and you said nothing, just looked away in silent consideration.

Natasha poked your thigh from beside you and you turned to her, her green eyes held a mischievous glint as her eyes flickered to Steve, then Bucky, and then you in silent questioning. You rolled your eyes; she had clearly sensed your distraction and your very obvious staring at the two soldiers probably confirmed whatever thoughts she was having. Damn Widow always noticed everything. She smirked, mouthing “Later” and her eyes promised an incoming, post-brief interrogation. Metal note to nicely ask Natasha to debrief you on the debriefing too.

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wilshirehq · 6 years

Photo

And you thought the Wallace kids were bad - just wait until you meet their parents. The air in the dining room pf the Wallace manor is tense to say the least. With the Wallace parents suddenly amongst the living again, it only makes since that the family would come together for an all too extravagant meal. How will the evening pan out? Will everyone survive? Will tears be shed and hearts be broken? Stay tuned to find out what happens in the next episode of Wilshire's Gone to Hell.

below is a chatzy log for a dinner involving the wallace family, including their resurrected parents! please be sure you read the trigger warning list before continuing, as there are some heavy topics discussed. if you are afraid you can’t get through it, message the main and we’ll give you the main details!!

as always, please like this post once you’ve read it!!

TRIGGER WARNINGS: violence, abortion mention, death ( including the death of a child ), mention of blood and gore, car accident, child abuse mention, neglect mention.

Parents

As she watched their children and their...partners, Elizabeth barely kept her disgust hidden behind the carefully crafted mask of politeness, poised as ever with on hand delicately placed over her husband's. She'd already made mention her disappointment in her children - namely their partners and the abominations they called children - several times over, and couldn't help but find a certain satisfaction in their reactions. Elias, on the other hand, did nothing to hide his disdain for the filth that had filled into their presence. It was bad enough that one of their own had allowed herself to become one of those abominations - the thought that she'd had the audacity to breed, or that their sons had thought to further sully their bloodline with mixed shadowhunters, or that Leonard had taken a warlock as his partner - disgusting. Still, he'd yet to pay much mind to any of the women - instead focusing his attention on Leonard himself.

[ This is simply to set the scene. The dinner has been going on for about half an hour now, with no clear end in sight. Both Wallace parents have been berating their children, albeit in different ways. Elizabeth - the mother - is focusing her spite on Elena, Nora, Lilian, Thea, and the children. Elias - the father - is more focused on Leonard, and anyone that attempts to stand up for him in any way. ]

Jeremiah

Jeremiah casts yet another concerned glance to his fiance, gaze flicking between her and his parents. He'd known a dinner with the Wallace elders would end in disaster, all he could do now was damage control. He wasn't doing it successfully. " Mother. Father. " he starts through gritted teeth, trying to drag the attention off of the others. " Nora and I have an announcement to make . " Is this the best time? Likely not, but with any luck, it may just improve the mood. " My beautiful fiance is pregnant ... with triplets . "

Leonard

Leo could already see that the dinner wasn't going as planned (he knew trusting their parents' promises of having it going smoothly was a mistake but at least they could act like nothing was wrong, he had hoped) but there was no turning back now. Casting a glance at Lily who was seemingly tense as well, his attention was caught by his eldest brother who started to speak, the hope that he'd be able to put an end to the tension building in the shadowhunter. The announcement was a surprise, but unlike everything else about the dinner, was a pleasant one. A smile (surprisingly a genuine one) spread across his face, Leo looked at his brother, leaning back in his seat. "What delightful news," he said cheerfully, a grin taking the smile's place as his gaze drifted towards Jeremiah. "I see someone wasted no time. Congratulations to the both of you."

( Status of Nora: Tense, avoiding the gaze of the parents and casting a smile at the other pleasant faces around the table. Status of Elena: Quiet, holding Quill's hand through the whole time and hoping not to be seen. )

Thea

Thea had been on edge since she'd heard her parents were alive at all, and the idea of having to face them was not something she'd been looking forward to - especially not with her kids around. Yet here she was, casting glances between her siblings and her kids and really anywhere that didn't have her looking at her parents. Every dig her mother had made thus far had pushed her just a little further, and she could already feel the ache in her bones as the tiger lurking inside practically begged to be let out. Her brother's sudden announcement, however, was enough to send a momentary wave of calm through her as a grin spread across her lips. "I'll second that - congrats on joining the multiples club!"

( Lily - very clearly unhappy, has a spell up around the kids so they don't hear the awful things their grandparents are saying about them. Really wants to stab Elizabeth with a fork. Poppy & Quinton - honestly pretty okay thanks to Lily's spell and the tasty food, plus there's a baby and there's Lukas. Pretty good atm 💗 )

Amalie

Amalie had been keeping quiet, knowing that the family dinners always were awkward and painful each year. The years passing by didn't make it any easier. It was like pulling teeth. She normally did keep her quiet, one because she wanted to stay out of the mess that was the arguments that always ensued, and two because she wasn't exactly the best socially in the family. But when she heard the news from her eldest brother, she smiled and rose her head from her mobile. "Congrats you two. I'm so excited for you both" she beams.

Parents

Elizabeth remained silent for several moments after her eldest's revelation, expression shifting from shock to disgust to something akin to anger. When she finally does speak, her voice is cold and low, eyes flicking between his son and his so-called fiancée. "Unfortunate. And how far along are you, exactly?" It takes nearly all her will not to say anything further, though she couldn't help but grin as her husband seemed even more irate at the idea than she.

Elias slammed his wine glass down hard enough that the stem cracked, though it didn't quite break fully, jaw clenched as he turned his attention from their demon-blooded son to their eldest, fixing him with an icy glare. "Excuse me? You mean to tell us that you and your little half-fish mutt intend to further drag our name through the mud?Is there even a single one of you that deserves to carry the Wallace name? No, no I don't think there is. You're just a bunch of idiots, useless freaks who can't even uphold your duty."

Jeremiah

Jeremiah tenses, eyes narrowed and jaw set as he glares at his parents. " Her name is Nora and she's worth more than either of you could ever be . It's not unfortunate mother , it's a blessing . " It's a struggle not to raise his voice, one that he ultimately ends up losing as he rounds on his father. It's odd. For so many years he'd been terrified of uttering a single word against his parents. " How dare you , " he spits. " Tell me , who upheld the Wallace name for the past eighteen years whilst you were rotting in graves that frankly , you should've stayed in ? Do you think any of us care ? This isn't about you ! This isn't about either of you and fuck what you think. These useless freaks ? Quill just married his best friend . Thea has raised the most beautiful children on her own . Amalie is one of the smartest shadowhunters in the institute. And Leo ? Leo might just become the next Head of our Institute . They did it all , with no thanks to either of you . Go and crawl back to your graves , we were fine without you before , we'll be perfect without you now . "

Leonard

Not many things in this world can manage to make the demon-blooded shadowhunter flinch, but as soon as he heard the glass slam and crack on the table he did, eyes darting towards the man, the so called father of the family. His words making his blood start to boil in his veins, Leo could feel the anger in him rise; his eldest brother, Jeremiah, was probably one of the best thing that had ever happened to this mess of a family. That bastard had no right to insult him like that. "Cut the crap will you? Your existence itself is enough to ruin the family name. Those children will meet a fate brighter than the one you provided for all of us combined. Don't act like we both don't know Jeremiah had always been a better father than you, even when he had no children on the way." Leo said, in between hissing and glaring daggers at Elias. He had nothing to say to their venomous snake of a mother, and even if he did, he'd stop right away as Nora began to speak.

"These are my children," Nora began, voice shaky as her gaze was locked on the table for a moment before she raised it to look at the other 'mother', eyes slightly glassy and breath hitched. "...and his." She continued, gaze flickering to Jerry before she swallowed, hand coming to rest on her quite small but apparent to the eye baby bump protectively, the motherly instincts in her kicking in. "You have no right to talk about them like that, grandparents or not. Please don't let things get unpleasant." She said, trying to keep her voice steady but she was quite hurt by their words and especially under Elizabeth's glare, something else just kicked in; fear. And that made her wrap her arm around her belly tighter, sinking in her chair.

(Elena: Starting to get scared, clutching Quill's hand tight and caressing his arm, hoping to keep him calm.)

Thea

The growl that slipped past Thea's lips was unintentional, a response to the cracking glass and raised voices. Bright blue eyes are suddenly a golden yellow - fight or flight mode is kicking in and the werecat's not the sort to flee, not when her family is involved. Her touch is gentle as she reaches out to rest a hand on the arm of the woman beside her in an attempt to offer reassurance, gaze locked on her parents. She had nothing to say, not this time - her brothers seemed to be handling it beautifully, but it was clear from her posture, the way she'd shifted closer to Nora, that she was ready for the fight that she felt was inevitable. Jeremiah or Leo, Elizabeth or Elias - she wasn't sure who'd swing first, but she could see the look in her mothers eyes - a look she knew all too well - that said she wasn't done prodding.

( Lily is shifting her spell, trying to work in a protection charm and move it to include Lukas and Nora and Elena. She's barely keeping herself from saying anything. Poppy and Quinton, while not really able to hear what's going on, can feel and smell their mother's unease - they're eyes are the same golden color that Thea's are and they are trying to sink under the table. )

Amalie

The fight kicking off, Amalie felt her own anger building as she heard the frankly disgusting words towards everyone, especially Nora. She was sick of all of this, sick of the fighting, sick of being treated like a lesser. She stood up abruptly and glared at their parents, hands clenched to fists by her side. "How can you be so disgustingly rude and thoughtless. I'm sick and tired of you acting like we're all dirt on your shoes. You're both nothing but a pair of snobby, stuck-up bastards who have done nothing to help us ever. You think we're just going to take it after all these years? No! I'm not standing here and letting you do this again. Fuck you!!"

She walked over to Nora, putting her arm around her sister in law to be {nora} and urging her to come with her before glancing over to Elena, Lukas, and the Kids, "come on, let's get out of here"

Parents

"And who was it, pray tell, that brought us back? Better yet - who put us in those graves? Certainly not you, dearest Jeremiah. No, as a matter of fact the answer to both questions is one and the same - would anyone care to take a guess?" Elizabeth's voice was filled with something between venom and the lilt of a song, a laugh spilling out as she once again turned her attention to Nora. "You know, it's not too late to terminate the pregnancy - save yourself the trouble this family brings. After all, who's to say your offspring wouldn't turn out just like their uncle. And you, dear sweet Amalie," she muses, a wild glint in her eyes as she calls out to her youngest, turning to study her for a moment before continuing. "Tell me, what were we meant to do for you from the grave? The grave your brother put us in, all those years ago? Should we've followed you around, two ghosts like lost puppies who could do little more than bark? No, I must say we had no desire to watch you each grew into such disappointments. Besides, you had you're fantastic older brother there to look after you, didn't you? Sad that your half brother didn't have that luxury."

Elias knew better than to speak over his wife - for all she was on his side he knew her anger could snap to him just as quickly as any other - and as such he waited for her to reach a pause before speaking again, standing as he studied each of his children. "'Upheld the Wallace name'? We paved a path to greatness for you and yet each and every one of you squandered it away as if we'd done nothing. Alexander, to my understanding, wasn't even here until just this last year - yet here he is, likely one of the brightest of you but married to that half-breed girl. Leonard wasted whatever little potential he had left after becoming a murderous bastard by shacking up with some half-demon bitch and what, raising an infant just like her and a grown man? And tell me where were you, Jeremiah, when your sister ran out and got herself turned? Tell me what sort of father figure would let that happen - had she been raised by her actual father she would've had the skill needed to avoid such a fate. And can you tell me, did any of you even know Alexandra bore these children before this year? because the vast majority of people I've spoken with said it had come as a surprise when two six year olds suddenly turned up following her around. And Amilie, full of so much potential that has undoubtably been wasted after being raised by your foolish brothers, such a pity and I'm honestly sorry." He paused then, lifting his glass to his lips before continuing. "And don't even get me started on you, Jeremiah. Foolish Jeremiah, always trailing after your brother and cleaning up his messes. Tell me, did you cover for our murder too?"

Jeremiah

Jeremiah flinches, fists clenched and wisps of smoke slowly rising from his skin as he stands. He needs to calm down, his angel blood and it's ability he'd kept from his siblings, and now wasn't the time to reveal it. " Hey - don't talk to them like that . " He snaps, stepping around the table, closer to their father. " You want to go on about how we're the disappointments in the family ? Well I guess we got it from our parents . " At the mention of their murder he stills, casting an anxious glance at the others before shaking his head. " Would you like to know something Father ? I did . I covered it . And if he didn't kill you , I would've ; And I would've burned every shred of your precious legacy to the ground . You want to talk about your deaths ? fine . Let's talk about how you got there . Let's talk about everything you did to your oh so precious sons that made them hate you enough to want your heads on spikes . "

Leonard

As soon as the 'father' mentioned the murder, Leo felt as if his blood turned ice, a breath hitching and being stuck in his throat. No wonder if Lily felt it as well, it was evident in her eyes as he turned to look at her that she felt it all and had it not been for the somewhat mustered up stability in her eyes, he would've already been attacking one of them, if not both. He had never been one for stability. Slowly, his gaze turned towards Elias again, fire burning in those eyes as Jeremiah stood up, the smoke rising from him concerning and confusing him for a moment. But before he could focus further, his eldest brother's words wiping the small strike of worry from his face, bringing out the courage to speak again. "Let's call it a humble gift from me to my siblings and well, rest of the shadow world." He said, giving a pause as he heard Quill trying to begin with something to say, out of confusion. "Not now, brother -- yes, I did it all. That was for a reason, just like you are here today for one." Leo's lips formed into a sly smirk as he stood up from his chair, unlike Jeremiah, quite calmly. "See, father, the people we've collected around us; Jeremiah's fiance, Quill's wife, Thea's brilliant children," he began to say, unlikely words to be heard from the shadowhunter. He had never showed sympathy for that girl his youngest brother married and ever since Thea was turned, their relationship was clearly strained but right now he was looking at each one of them with such genuine flame in his eyes, which finally landed on Lily. "and my lovely partner." He finished off, taking a breath before the flame was replaced with one of hate, gaze returned to the father as he opened his hands to the sides. "We've found our seperate ways all the while remaining as one, strained or not. While you two were rotting under seven feet. May I ask -- how was hell? I reckon it must be quite hot at this time of the year?" He taunted, grin spreading before he turned towards the rest of the table, pointing a finger around. "And yes, yes - yes I did. I killed them. With my bare hands. At 16. Ah, these mighty bastards, I ripped them apart as a young boy. You all should be thanking me. Had it not been for me you all would end up corrupted in one way or another, like they did to me." At the end of his sentence, the unstability in him was clear than ever, eyes flashing golden for a second before his fist landed on the table. "I murdered them. I did. It was the best fucking thing I did for this family."

(Nora stood up the moment Jerry did, standing right next to him as she refuses to stay if he's leaving, though since he remained so did she; hurt by the parents words and fearing the safety of her babies Elena is on the brink of tears, holding onto Quill's arm tighter as she casts glances at her parabatai; the tension scaring her quite a lot.)

Thea

Something in Thea snapped as her mother suggested Nora get an abortion, yet she still managed to bide her time as her brothers spoke. Somehow she wasn't shocked to learn it was Leo who had killed them, or even that they'd had some secret half sibling. She is surprised when Leo speaks up for them all - she loves her brother, really, but she's never known him to be the sort to be soft on his family. She's out of her seat as her older brothers finish, her voice low and dangerous as she finally speaks after remaining quiet for most of the evening. "Say one more word - a single vile thing about them - and you'll find out just how easy it is to meet my fate, dad." She grimaces as claws break through her fingertips, though the look simply shifts into a snarl as she sees her mother moving. Her control is waning, and she knows her kids have picked up on her displeasure - knows there's now two tiger cubs curled together under the table trying to hide - which only has her more on edge. "You keep going on and on about our failures, but what of your own? Because as I recall it was you who started my on my path to who I am now. The neglect. All the training. The way you'd go after Leo, and then Jeremiah when he'd stand up for him. You abused us - do you really think anything you say now could turn us against each other, after everything you've done that pushed us together?" Her carefully crafted American accent is gone, leaving her resembling her family even more than ever. "This? All of this? If anyone's to blame its you. You created us, and you have no right to belittle us for your shortcomings as parents. Jeremiah and Nora will make wonderful parents, and their babies will be beautiful. Elena makes Quill happy and is an absolutely amazing woman. My kids? I was too afraid I'd be like you to raise them myself, but in the few months I've had them they've brightened my life so, so much that I can't imagine another day without them. Lily, Lukas, and Rain have changed Leo so much that he's almost bearable to be around," there's a slight teasing tone as she casts a quick glance at her brother, but it's gone again as soon as her attention is back on their mother. "And for the last goddamn time - My. Name. Is. Amalthea."

( Lily is livid, plus Leo's anger is flowing through her, but she's doing her best to bottle it up and keep herself even. Still she's shifting her spell, she's got a nice safe little bubble that she's subtly urging Elena, Quill, Lukas, and the kids into, and she's trying to urge Amilie and Nora as well but she can only do so much.

Poppy and Quinton are curled up on the floor under the table, just outside the bubble - meaning they can hear everything now. Q is wrapped around Poppy in a protective manner and softly growling in the direction of his grandparents. )

Amalie

It had all reached a boiling point, insults being thrown around, tempers flaring quite literally, Amalie had had enough of it all. She shook her head and stepped back, fingers raking through her long brown locks as she stepped back, stressed and angry. "No. I have had enough. I'm leaving. If anyone wants to join me, then i won't blame you" she cast a fierce glare at her waste of space parents and stormed outside, slamming the door behind her.

She practically sped down the street, her mind a tumultuous mess. She was completely in her own head, buzzing with anger... That was until she was crossing the road, unaware of her surroundings until she heard a loud lorry horn accompanied by said lorry hurtling toward her. Before she could even react, it hit... everything went black

Parents

Elias moved first, though watching them from the outside he and Elizabeth moved perfectly in sync - as if they'd planned and choreographed everything beforehand. As he darted for Leo, brandishing a knife seemingly out of nowhere, Elizabeth made her move against Nora - a matching blade in her hand.

She managed to slice the woman across the slight swell of her belly, though not as deeply as she would've liked, Thea leaping into action and knocking the resurrected shadowhunter away and putting herself between them. Elizabeth, enraged at the fact that she'd failed to take down her target, turned her blade first towards Thea and then towards the tiny orange blur that had launched itself at her from under the table. Between the cub and Thea, Elizabeth was kept preoccupied for several moments - up until she tossed the cub down and focused her attention on her daughter.

At the same time Elias' fist met Leo's jaw, the latter managing to land several hits before the elder had lifted him by his shirt and thrown him backwards into a mirror, landing a swift hit to Lily's gut when she tried to get between them, leaving her both breathless and bleeding from the blade still in his hand, before continuing his pursuit of his son - determined to erase the mistake he and his wife had created all those years ago.

Jeremiah

He's frozen as it happens, close enough to watch the blade slice through his fiance's stomach, but too far to stop his mother's attack. Jeremiah moves to Nora instantly, pulling the half mer into his chest as he presses his hands to her bump, a lump in his throat as he checks her over. His panic recedes slightly as he examines it , " it's just a flesh wound . Just a flesh wound , you're okay , we're okay . " The assurance is more to himself than anyone else and it isn't until he catches the glint of a blade from the corner of his eye that he forces himself away from her. The panic gives way to fury and Jeremiah feels himself igniting, lunging towards his father and grabbing the arm wielding the blade with his own, covered in flame. He feels the flesh as it sizzles and burns beneath his grip, and twists behind his father, blade falling from his grip as the patriarch screams.

Leonard

Nora was too late to see the woman approaching her fast with a knife in her hand but luckily, Thea wasn’t. In fact, the werecat was just in time to push Elizabeth out of the way, leaving her only with a cut down her chest and belly, which would be healed completely without a scar if it was treated within a few hours by an iratze. But in shock, panic and instant fear the half mer let out a scream, her knees giving in just when Jeremiah arrived at her side to hold her and check her slight baby bump. It was a blur as Nora began to cry, too shocked to even move, but she heard him telling that they were okay which was enough to keep her from passing out — yet. As soon as her fiance left her side she sunk onto the floor against the wall, hands clutching her belly as she cried uncontrollably.

On the other side of the room, things weren’t any brighter. Just having been thrown into a large mirror, Leo took a moment to recover, dark demon ichor dripping from every single cut on his body, clothes ripped everywhere. But the moment he saw (and felt) Lily getting hurt, he was trying to get on his feet to help her, only to be pinned down again by their father. Growling, he tried to fight him off, the blade too close to his face for a moment before suddenly the struggle relieved a bit and that was when he realized his brother had came to his rescue. Jeremiah, his confidant, his savior — as always was there for him, keeping him safe from the merciless hands of their father. Though now he was actually able to overpower their father, the flame is confusing but nevertheless an advantage, one he’d question later. Now was time to move. With a burst of power Leo lunched forward, toppling down the elder shadowhunter. With no weapon, Leo’s best bet was his own hands. He had ripped them apart bare handed at 16. He could do it again. And with the little bit of magic that he had tapped into with the help of his demon bloof and Lily, his fingertips buzzed and dug into the man’s chest until he was clutching his heart and he eventually pulled it oyt, forcefully ripping it out as he fell backwards. Panting, he looked at his older brother, the still heart still in his blood covered hand, not realizing that in the other side of the room the struggle hadn’t stopped yet.

Thea

Thea let out something akin to a roar as the cub hit the ground with a thud and a whimper, her shoulder driving into the woman's ribs and propelling her into the wall, claws digging into her in spite of the blade she'd lodged into Thea's side. The werecat was angry, wounded, and above all her children were in danger - any thoughts of controlling herself were long gone as she tore into the woman who bore her. She's barely aware when Quill moves up to join her, her twin joining in her fight and disarming the woman. By the time Thea dropped her the light was gone from her eyes and the were was a mess, panting as she tried to catch her breath - which caught in her throat the moment she heard it. Poppy was whimpering, the girl still in tiger form as she nudged her brother and tried to wake him, crying for her mother. In an instant Thea was there at her childrens' side pulling the limp cub into her arms just as he whimpered and shuddered and shifted back, eyes glossy and empty. The sound that tore itself from her lips wasn't human, the woman clinging to her son's broken form as she sobbed and begged him to wake up - begged for someone to help her, to bring him back. She couldn't do this, she couldn't lose him when she'd just gotten them back...and yet he was gone. Poppy had shifted back and nestled herself against her mother, sobbing in a much quieter way as she clenched her eyes shut.

Lily, who had finally caught her breath and been on her way to Leo when she'd heard the woman's anguish, had tears in her eyes as she wrapped her arms around herself. She managed to tear her gaze away and make her way to her partner's side, one delicate hand reaching for his as she let her wards down. The danger was gone, but the pain....the pain would never go away.

#wilshire:plot drop #pd.#violence tw #murder tw #child abuse tw #death tw #child death tw #car accident tw #neglect tw #blood tw #abortion mention

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beautifulramblingbrains · 7 years

Text

Woke

Pairing: Eric/OC Fandom: Divergent / Insurgent Rating: M - Frequent bad language and sensitive subjects.

In the middle of corruption, our Leader deviates through a twisted world - and mind. Can he save himself? Does he want to be saved? He isn’t playing a heroes game. But something might just grow on him.

A/N: It’s been a while since I posted something. Apologies. Have this mammoth chapter as my offering.

Tags: @2toastersbang @singingpeople @pathybo @equalstrashflavoredtrash @clublulu333 @jojuarez26 @tigpooh67 @murmelinchen @vitaevandal @lilu46 @mom2reesie @frecklefaceb (If I have forgotten anyone please message me.)

Waking up is one of the things I dread the most.

Everything is more painful, and the mind tends to linger in the land of regret; regret about every possible god damn thing. If I let it wander too long, there would be only dust between my hand and the gun in the holster beside my bed. I could reach down, put it into my mouth - so the last thing I taste is my own misery - and pull the trigger. But I don’t. I never do.

The air lingers with the mixed smell of smoke and alcohol. Even in my bedroom, while I find it hard to rub the sleep from my face, pushing deep into my eyes, the heaviness of expectations weighs like lead on my shoulders. I’d passed out with my uniform still intact, a normal routine that could be classed as almost a habit by now.

Questioning at what point did my life take such a turn is pointless and I ignore it - a dry mouth and a foggy head tend to do that.

I’m not alone in my bed. Being slightly aware of the silhouette under the covers, I see my flies laying low. Though, I’m not too bothered. I’d be surprised if I even got it up as a bottle of whiskey currently curdles my stomach.

I step over the devastation - a bottle, a shirt, which is not mine, papers with a list of names. Heading for the door, I peer out to the living area. It’s as I expected, both couches occupied. My mate, Jimmy, is down on the floor with a jacket under his head for a pillow. It looks harmless; they all look harmless, and I wonder how men like this change for the sake of advantage and points.

We don’t have to do what we do, but we do it anyway. And there is no chance of backing out. Frank made sure of that. I’m hitting twenty-seven, but to youngsters like this, a promise of good times, no struggle, and women are irresistible.

And that’s what all of this is, right? A good time? - That’s life. That’s how it should be.

Wrong.

It’s wrong when your priorities change for the sake of a faux brotherhood. When the only way out is at the hands of Frank. When the motto isn’t faction before blood, but us before them.

In my haze I make it to the bathroom and rub a speck of dried blood from my cheek in the bathroom mirror, feeling like I could retch at any minute. It’s not my blood. I didn’t shoot them. But I may as well have, as, like the others, I took a step back and let Frank deal the final blows with a hungry, crazed look on his face until the man’s head was nothing but pulp and his wife’s screams blew my eardrums.

“Sick motherfucker,” Jimmy, our newest and youngest member, had whispered to me. He was white as a sheet, jaw swinging, praying to some God that he doesn’t get sent straight to Hell for all the bad things he's done.

All I could think in that moment was that this was all over antibiotics and few measly points that weren’t coughed up in time. But the man’s name was on the list, and if their name is on the list, then they’re already dead.

And while I’m being honest with myself, if they’re on the list - if Frank doesn’t do it - I will. That, admittedly, is becoming hard. Especially as I try to face myself in the mirror.

Shrugging off my jacket and stripping off the musty shirt that smells like yesterday’s mistakes, I’m interrupted. “Yo, Eric.” It’s Heath and I barely acknowledge him, turning on the tap and putting my head under the water. He looks like death himself, and if I was in a better state of mind I would almost believe he had come to collect me. “You got anything to eat?” The water feels glorious and I rinse my mouth out.

“Go to your own damn place and eat,” I grumble, flipping him off.

He shrugs off from the doorframe. “Fuck you, man.”

“You’re not my type.” The water drips down onto my chest, the coldness reminding me that I’m still alive for one more wretched day. I catch a glimpse of a result from my own stupidity - a pink jagged line and rub my shoulder, the everlasting result from a break in my collarbone that leaves me with a persistent ache and a bad temper.

I open the mirror, for inside is an array of shelves and my painkillers; the beginning of my lifetime agreement to abide by the rules - and to the list.

Every morning is a briefing that requires me, Frank, Max and a few others who invest their time in training and running Dauntless. And every morning it’s the same loathsome shambles as it was the day before. I enter the room and every head turns to see me. Somehow, I’ve managed to fake normality, a shower fixing most of my woes, the smell no longer stuck to me.

“Well, if it ain’t the boy.” Frank’s sitting with a specific smile planted on his face, slack back in a chair on my left facing towards everyone else. He manages to pull off the burden of our lives without a single trace of evidence from the night before. It’s almost inhuman. With his jet black hair slicked back, his long trademark trench coat still on, I could beat him off his chair. “And he looks mighty beautiful, don’t he guys?” He laughs a laugh I sometimes hear in my dreams.

Max is never impressed with him, and he’s not afraid to show it; his jaw tense, boring holes into him from across the room. “Let’s just get this done, shall we? I don’t want to have to explain to a class that their Leaders were testing each other for points on flattery before breakfast.”

“It’s always a pleasure with you.” Frank gyrates in his chair, motioning for him to continue with a long exaggerated sweep of his hand. I take a seat next to him and rub my shoulder. I’m not in the mood for fighting words, not yet.

“We have a few days left on the batch of initiates we’ve had for the last six weeks. We keep the pressure on regardless of what we already know about who’s passing and who ain’t.” Max gets up and walks over to a whiteboard that has names on that I don’t even recognize. But it’s all the same shit. We’ve done this a million times. I’ve done this since I became a Leader and Frank way before me. “These names are who is passing, split into groups into what section will be given to them after the ceremony…” Max’s voice drones on as Frank hits my leg.

“Make sure this afternoon is clear,” he speaks in a whisper. My eyes would be the only give away that I’m listening while Frank sniffs and leans on his legs, hunched over. “I got a list. And there are a few initial warnings for our little scandalous debtors.”

I look to Max again only briefly, kind of jealous that he isn’t involved in anything we do. “Who’s to go?”

Frank’s eyes are as dark as his hair, his teeth blindingly white when he chuckles. “You, me, Jimmy, Heath, Leroy-”

I sigh in exasperation, Leroy is my least favorite person. We don’t read the same lines from the same page, and he licks Frank’s ass, ready to attack anyone that doesn’t take the same viewpoint as them. The thing is, I see different to Frank all the time, and I’m not afraid to say so. What annoys me most though, is that Leroy will be whispering treacherous things afterward - some of which Frank laughs off with me like it’s all fun and games. But I don’t like people who talk shit like a little bitch while my backs turned. He’s not in my click, and it’s safe to say I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him.

“Leroy can stay in the car.” I bite back to stop myself from further insulting him, or wasting my air.

“Come on, man.” Frank taps my leg. I don’t like being touched in the mornings, my frown almost painful. “He’s just learning the ways of our brotherhood. Look, he’s been good to me so far. I trust him.”

“I don’t.”

“Who do you trust? That’s a pretty hard fucking question,” he scoffs, but it’s heavy.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I lean back. “If he stays out of my way, we aren’t going to have a problem. But he makes it perfectly clear he likes to step on my toes.”

I was just about to reminisce about the last person who did such a thing but Frank beats me to it. “Shit. Just don’t go all fucking terminator on him like the last one. That was messy to clean up.”

“You’re one to talk,” I smirk over my shoulder, just as Frank fakes his arm as robotic and grabs his throat, pretending to throttle himself, the letters spelling HATE across his fingers prominently showing on that hand.

He laughs too loudly, reaching into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette, lighting it carelessly. It’s only after he’s done it that he looks up to the others in the room staring at him, a burning of hatred flashing across Max’s face. “Can you not smoke in the boardroom?” Max asks into the silence.

Frank takes a long drag and lets the smoke billow out in curls before he replies, “We do this every damn morning. Everyone knows what they are doing.” Max doesn’t let it go by continuing to glare, and I keep myself expressionless. There’s a tip of the iceberg between these two and what lies beneath isn’t going to be pretty once it melts. “Excuse me.” Frank drops the cigarette on the floor and stubs it out with his boot. “I thought this was a room full of Leaders, not the granny knitting patrol discussing who’s going to pick up the next grandpa. Why don’t you cut us a little slack and let us just get on for the day?”

Max has puffed up to twice the size and I know some murderous thoughts wander through his mind. I’d be a fool to think Frank doesn’t see it too. “Maybe you should be standing up here instead?”

“Jeez, I’m flattered. And I’d like that. But unfortunately, you are still alive.” Frank smiles. “But you know, since we’re all rather tired, I’m just going to be the first and exit this shit show. You call me if you need me now.” Frank stands up and dusts his pants off. “Eric?”

For the sake of Max being my trainer, I hesitate. But I know I’ve got things to do. “I’ll watch my emails,” I say, standing up and following Frank out the door. Beyond it, our small group waits, and Frank makes a display of greeting each of them enthusiastically. I nod to Leroy without a word, and Jimmy comes to stand beside me.

“That man in there is a dead man!” Frank announces. He walks ahead, turning every now and then, trench coat flapping behind him. “I’ll see to it.”

“Thanks for letting me crash at your place,” Jimmy says to me over Frank still swearing revenge.

“You crashed on the floor, don’t thank me for nothing.” The boy’s still new to it all and I can’t blame him for remembering something his mother taught him. “Jim, you stick with me later.”

“Sure.”

There’s nothing to him, he’s not built like us. I don’t know why Frank has allowed him into the circle and I’m highly suspicious. I should trust this group, I should. But I’m smart, and it’s only a matter of time until someone clashes with the other or one wants out. I have a feeling Jimmy is going to be asking to leave as quickly as he came. And I think Frank knows it too.

Leroy turns back and looks at Jimmy, and I don’t like it. He’s unafraid to meet my eye, and just by staring straight back at him, I let him know that I’m watching him.

My class is ready. They are trained. They fight orderly. No one gives up until they give in. The women are as good as the men, and I don’t have to do as much work as I did before. Most of the time I linger back, pacing, and judge for the sake of fights that only break out in anger - which most of them don’t anymore, they are beyond that. This is my individual class that has got me on the relatively good side of Max beyond the irritation that Frank gives him. I’m still respectful because he was my trainer, but I outgrew him years ago.

And between those multiple discrepancies, it keeps anyone off my back and free to do pretty much as I please. I drew a fine line under my class management years ago, using different techniques for punishment rather than the infamously rumored ‘dangle over the chasm’. I was young, the same time that I fell into Frank’s group after my injury had healed, which I earned trying to fight drunk at the bar.

But reality is still hard. Years of self-inflicted abuse fuck with my mind. I could be watching my initiates train and my brain would freeze frame in jumpy pictures and disassociate as I stood there. It was like a train, pummeling from in the distance. I could sense it coming - for a long time before it arrives.

It gives me a bad case of the shakes. And it reaches far into lunchtime where it peaks. I take a seat on one of the many tables, clenching and unclenching my fists, anxious of the crowds pouring in, the voices too loud, my knee jack-hammering under the table. I pop a painkiller dry like my life depended on it.

Sex, money, drugs, loyalty - it’s all passed around like the common cold. There is nothing nobody holds dear that they aren’t willing to give to get what they want.

Sometimes I wish a comet will just fall from the sky and burn us all into oblivion. We deserve it. Or maybe, I alone do. But I’m not hesitant on taking everyone with me.

I walk out to find Frank perched on a wall in the Pit, random people surrounding him, trying to get a nose in. Heath is closest to me when I step into the circle and nudges me. “You okay, man?”

“Dandy.” Maybe I’m not pulling it off as well as I think I am.

“Eric!” Frank calls and motions for others to get closer. From here in, he speaks quietly. “The deal is, ladies and gentlemen, that we are leaving at Five. We have about seven house calls for a premier warning. After that, we know the deal. We take two cars. Abnegation and Candor is our sweepstake tonight. Place your bets.”

“Abnegation,” I say immediately. Candor does nothing for my patience. “Jimmy’s with me.”

“Interesting,” Frank hums. “Well, I’m with Eric, Leroy’s with me. That leaves you, Heath, to gather the rest and go to Candor. Can I rely on you?”

“Totally,” Heath says in awe. “I got this.” He gets patted on the back and looks like Christmas has come early.

“Keep your head cool.”

Through it all, I see Leroy staring at me out the corner of my eye. And with my mood slowly dissipating, I turn to him. “What the fuck’s your problem?”

“I’m wondering if you’ve got a stiff one for the young’un.” He smiles and shows a set of teeth, the front two chipped.

“I got a stiff fist for your face-” I grumble. But before I either of us can get at each other, Frank jumps up and steps between us.

“Boys, boys, this is our fucking brotherhood, that we, yes we, have brought up to speed.” He grabs my shoulder and squeezes hard. “We will go down like a pile of shit on a slope if we start going off at each other.” I can barely hear him, my fists curled at my sides, counting to ten as Leroy continues to smile. “You like the lives you got, right? You don’t want that to change?” The others agree and answer but I only glance at Frank, his eyes passing judgment on me quickly. “Right?” he asks again.

Everything screams for me to defy, but I’m also a terribly good liar, and certainly don’t want the advantage of my painkillers taken away. “Right.” I hardly sound convincing, imaging myself snapping back his hand so fast that it splits the bone. I comfort myself with my father’s voice from years ago: never hate your enemies, it affects your judgment, then his smile as he ruffed up my hair and added, but make sure you have a good time riling them. When my lips rise to form a smirk, Leroy’s expression falters, but it satisfies Frank.

“Good. I’ll meet you outside at five, no later.” The group shifts to move off but Frank holds me back. “Eric, can we talk for a minute?”

“I’ve voiced my opinion and that asshole. You know what I think.”

He waits until we are alone, putting an arm on my shoulder and guides us back towards where he was sitting previously. “This animosity has to stop, for the sake of the group. They get a sniff there is a divide, it spells trouble. People start taking sides.”

We stare at each other for a moment. “Is there sides?” I ask. “Sorry, if I’m a little defensive that I hardly know the guy and yet he keeps talking at me, over me, and not to me. And the others see it too. Who’s place did they crash at last night? Mine!”

“Leroy has a good relationship with Erudite. He pulled through for us. He got the stock in and the cover we need so we don’t get our asses handed to us by Max.”

“It’s just all a little convenient.” Like me, Leroy deflected from Erudite. He’s been in Dauntless for three years but only recently went to Frank in the last few months to see if there was an opening. The checks I’ve run say he has no relations and no dependents in Dauntless, so it can’t be for the benefits.

“Jesus, Eric!” Frank throws his arm up in the air. “There’s always a fucking problem.”

“Because I think before I act,” I point out, saying the words slowly. “Last night was unacceptable.”

Frank grins, then says, “Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft.” My shoulder begins to throb and I roll it out, turning my head towards a bunch of overly loud teens. He licks his lips and moves closer. “You are the only one who gives it to me straight, no sugar-coating. Don’t tell me I’m losing that boy?”

“You wanna tell me the plans you have for Max? Or is that between just you and Leroy now?”

Frank laughs lightly. It turns into a hum and he looks up far to the glass ceiling above us. “Who am I trying to fool? I merely wanted it to be a surprise.” Not answering, he continues, “There is a shift in hierarchy. Max and his group of goons are losing it. Every interaction comes from Jeanine first, through us.” He pulls out his cigarettes and offers me one, which I take gladly. “We have more info on each faction by our visitations. We know what’s going down way before Max, and hell, the factionless have put in a plea for our medicinal meanderings.” He cups a hand and lights his cigarette, lighting mine on the same stroke.

“Taking on the factionless is a wasted thought. They have no loyalty to anything.”

“What if, we can make them have a loyalty, through us. That the last word on whether points or favors that don’t get paid are still reinforced with no intervention from… whatever the fuck is the policing they abide by because they sure as hell don’t give two damns about Dauntless.”

I sigh heavily, flexing the quake in my hand and state the obvious, “You’ve already broached it.”

“Mrs. Queen Bee likes the idea. It gives a strategic advantage. And better yet, in the future, there may be no rebellion or snotty little mix-ups Dauntless have to get involved in and waste our fucking time over. But it’s to be all hush-hush. Factions won’t like it.” He takes a long drag. “I wanted time to think it through and of course, I wanted to ease the idea onto you.” Frank chuckles. “But it seems you know me all too well.”

“And yet, you don’t want to hear what I say about Leroy?”

Holding the cigarette between his teeth, he lifts his shirt. “Why we didn’t crash at yours last night,” he explains, a bandage over a wound which I assume was from a knife. Ash drops down onto his leg and he dusts it off. “You walked in on my cameo after I got dug out by the man. Leroy was there. You weren’t. I got sloppy.” Shaking my head, I don’t know what to think. But Frank seems to be on an epiphany and can't see beyond his nose. “This gets bigger, I want you and Leroy tight. We front this thing.”

“We are already fronting this.”

“Your pain, it still there?” Frank asks out of the blue. He’d seen me earlier no doubt. By not answering it speaks the truth. “We make this bigger and better. We make it official. We take Max off the high-horse and from chewing our asses, our medical bills are cleared and we get to run this piss poor fucking rubble. Hard work pays off.”

“We are dealers and debt collectors.”

“And Mary was a virgin and birthed a baby. We all lie.” He stands up, rubbing his forehead quickly. “Think about it. I’ll give you some time, a few days. You’re still with me, man, aren’t you? You’re my number two. You’ve been there for me.”

He knows he can’t make this all work without my influence. The Eric Coulter, the once epitome of Dauntless, a leader the moment I passed my initiation, the face people will accept easier if Max suddenly disappeared. Flicking my cigarette, I meet him straight in the eye. “I’m told first.”

Who am I kidding? Power is why I joined Dauntless. If I lose that sense, I’m going to lose myself.

Frank’s giddy with laughter, growling as he claps my shoulder. “I fucking knew it. You fucking had me there. You fucking little…” he trails off, nodding his head for me to follow him.

I stare off down the street to a lone lamppost in the Abnegation street, one hand gripping the wheel, the other resting on my leg. The car is smoky from Frank puffing in the back, Leroy next to him, and Jimmy barely taking up the passenger seat next to me. It’s the hit of the evening and it’s still early. There is always one that can never chalk up in time

I’m busy chewing my lip when I hear Leroy roll his window down and throw something out. “The kid does this one,” he says gruffly like acid is burning his throat.

“Interesting choice. What do you say, Jim?” Frank taps the back of his chair.

My eyes briefly flick towards Jimmy as he turns, holding the seat belt. “What? You want me to-”

“It’s the house directly in front of the lamppost, you can’t miss it,” Leroy insists. Jimmy looks to me but I turn away. “You’re not pussying out on us now, are you?”

“No. I just didn’t think I’d be going in alone.”

“You’re not,” I say, glancing in the rearview mirror. “We’ll be behind you.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but a stiff drink is calling me. So, whenever you two decide…” Frank trails off, opening his door. “Lead the way, Jimmy, there’s a good boy.”

Jimmy hasn’t lead a hit yet. This will be his first. I know, and they know, that he’s the worst physically and mentally of our group, let alone being the newest and only viewing the late-night meet and greets from a distance.

“The house... by the lamppost?” Jimmy asks unsurely, pushing a hand through his hair and his breath curdling in the air quicker than the rest of us.

“Yeah,” Leroy says, leaning on the car and flicking his hand when we all look to him. “Some Mr. Gordon. Late payment. Ignored the premier warning. He pays now with points or with his life. You know the drill.” He pulls out a drink in a small flask and downs some before Frank snatches it off him.

Jimmy is panicking internally, his face paling considerably even in the patchy moonlight. “Just get it done,” I hiss, grabbing his gun from his holster and shoving it into his trembling hands. “Confirm who he is, before you pull the trigger.”

Jimmy nods slowly, then takes a quick stride towards the house, a wheeze of laughter sounding off behind from Frank. Instead, those two stand by the car with their flask, still chuckling, and I take it upon myself to follow to at least make sure he gets it right. I’m not a fan of sitting out here for the rest of the night.

My eyes automatically close in exasperation when Jim holds the gun up the moment the front door opens and somebody screams. “You’ve had your premier warning!” Jimmy’s uncertain voice is anything but authoritative. He moves inside the door and I follow quickly behind, closing it. “You have to pay!”

There’s an old man on his knees, hands held up in mercy, a younger girl clutching to him, all in their fucking pajamas.

“We-we don’t have anything to pay!” he begs, erratically glancing between us.

There’s movement on the stairs; an older woman that has Jim throwing his gun around like he’s lost the plot. “Keep it steady,” I demand from behind him, but I don’t think he can hear me.

“You can’t pay, you die. Now’s your chance!” he shouts like a lunatic.

“We don’t-” I’m not prepared for the gunshot that rings in my ears. It takes me by surprise, but it’s no surprise to see that Jim didn’t hit where he intended to. There’s screaming and sobbing from everywhere and we’ve no doubt woken the whole neighborhood. Blood spills out of the man's hand from where he tried to defend himself. In slow motion, I see Jim take aim again, firing a second shot but this time somewhere in the old man’s stomach, sending him backward and into the arms of the young girl.

“Jim!” I knock his gun away, disarming him. He’s managed to fuck it up, just like we all knew he would. I steel my face to make my point, and ask calmly, “Is he Mr. Gordon?”

The old woman rushes down the stairs, arms flailing, “No! He’s not! They live across the street! What have you done!?” Between the chanting pieces of abuse and blame, I find Jimmy over my shoulder. “Why did you shoot him?!” the old woman demands, filling his silence perfectly, and asking the question I want to.

Jimmy’s shaking his head, backing off as the man begins gasping, tensing up while breathing his last, the wound gushing as he bleeds out. “Congratulations, you just killed an innocent man,” my voice is steady, regardless of the mayhem around us.

“It was a mistake!”

I unclip my gun, shoot three shots without a pause, and holster it. “Make sure it’s only them in the house.” My eyes are still locked on the three bodies now slumped in front of me. Jimmy peels up the steps and I crouch down next to the young girl, rubbing a hand over my face slowly. She could only be sixteen at most.

That train, it’s coming. That rhythmic beat flooding every one of my senses.

“No one,” Jimmy breathlessly replies as he stumbles back down. I stand up, Jimmy following me out the front door. “Eric?” he says my name maybe in an attempt to stop me or talk to me. But I don’t respond.

Frank and Leroy watch us approach, stopping whatever conversation they were just having. My chest hits Leroy’s as we come face to face. “House directly outside the lamppost, huh? That’s what you said.”

He puts his hand on top of the car door to steady himself and I turn away as if my anger had got the better of me. “My bad. Abnegation doesn't exactly have house numbers on them now, do th-” I boot the door and it bounces off him, jarring his hand, and Frank grabs me, pulling me away.

“I’ll see to it that he gets this written up as a factionless incident,” he holds both my shoulders steady. “You listening?”

“I’m not working with him again.”

“It was a mistake,” he tells me.

“Funny, because that was what Jimmy was saying when he shot an innocent man by accident.” I shove him away but he comes right back, holding me steadfast, gritting his teeth together.

“And when did you start to care for the innocent? Huh? Bullshit, Eric. Bullshit!”

“Do you know what, get the fuck off me…” Pushing him away, Frank shakes his head. “Get in the car.” Jimmy’s still gawping at us and as I pass I slap him upside the head - hard. “Get in the car, idiot.”

Leroy is still gripping his wrist and Frank gestures for him to get in without a word; just a shrug - a knowing shrug.

That train has hit the station; that anger that I can never seem to control, the one Frank likes to mock, rears its ugly head. Frank sparks up a cigarette and I turn on them, “Mr. Gordon has paid his debt,” I say affirmatively.

“Bullshit,” Frank calls.

“He’s paid his debt, every morning waking up to a family wiped out over his own doing. His debt is paid. Jimmy doesn’t make a hit again.” The car revs loudly as it starts, my foot on the pedal to skid us back around towards Dauntless.

“Easy there, boy,” Frank says, watching through the back window until we are straight again. “Someone might say you’re trying to get one of us killed.”

“Out of this car, I could pick quite easily.”

Jimmy has been looking into his lap the entire time, only moving to grab the side of his seat as the car takes a corner sharply. “Eric, I’m sorry, man.”

“Don’t talk to me.”

“I mean it, I’m sor-” He’s cut off as I lash out sloppily, hitting him wherever, his hands guarding his face.

“Fucking sorry, huh? You’re sorry?” Finally, I land a hit to his face and split his lip. He’s like a whimpering child and I can’t even bear to look at him. In my mind's eye I see myself turning the wheel too sharply and rolling this bitch; maybe wrap us around a tree or an old building, or if we’re lucky, hit head-on and go up in flames. They always say fire is the best way to vanquish evil.

Dauntless open up the gates without question in the parking lot, and when the engine dies, Jimmy and Leroy almost jump out. But Frank leans up from behind, grips my shoulder in one hand, and holds a small paperlike square on the tip of his finger in the other. “I don’t want that,” I say. The high I was feeling earlier is gone, leaving nothing but a heaviness.

“You don’t want it, but I think you need it.” He keeps the little dissolvable, sweet paper presented to me. “Go live the Dream for the night. Feel nothing.”

The letter D imprinted on the paper is tempting me. It could almost be a D for Dauntless. In my contemplation, the inside lights die in the vehicle and it’s the darkness that grips a hold, forcing me to choose. I take it from him, hearing him exit the car, and put the paper in my mouth, feeling it dissolve instantly.

I wake up in a sweat, sitting bolt upright in my bed, fully clothed, and alone. I’m not sure of the night; to what extent or where it had ended or who with. But I remember Max. I remember the disappointed look he gave me; lowering his head and brows furrowed - flashes of different surroundings

“You said you’d check your emails,” his voice is echoing while I rub my face in the morbid morning, trying to put the pieces together. I know I was in the Pit. Heath was there. Frank with some girl in the corner. “Have you taken something?”

“No,” I say into my bedroom, but hear it faintly in the back of my mind.

“I think it’s time you went home.”

“I am home,” I say, but Max shakes his head.

“Check your emails.”

As the dream fizzles out, my shoulder brings me back to the now, and I rush up for the bathroom. I open my door a crack and I’m surprised to see Jimmy on the couch this time and no one else. We must have put that shit behind us.

My phone beeps in my pocket and I pull it out to scroll through the messages. Random missed calls, multiple emails, a lone message Frank had sent branding me a dickhead. The latest one is from Max, saying I should get to his office now.

I’m still studying the message, trying to figure out why he’d need me so urgently. “Jimmy! Get up and get out!” My voice is off, dry like I spent all night shouting.

Just an ordinary night, then.

Max’s office is not what anyone would imagine from a Leader of Dauntless. Hell, I don’t even visit my own - if at all, for days on end. It’s bright apart from a section of a neighboring building being the view from the window. His desk is clean, files organized precisely, and the most amusing thing - classical music on a low volume. My skin is still buzzing from a freezing shower, and I roam inside, my hands are pocketed, using the back of my boot to let the door close slowly behind me. He smiles, for what it’s worth, and then motions me to the bucket seat in front of his desk. “Coffee?” he asks. From this display of polystyrene cups and a brewed pot of coffee, I know he’s been waiting for me

I express a grand smile for him only, casually dropping into the seat. “What’s all this about?”

“Did you check your emails, or were you too busy having fun yesterday?” We stare at each other for a minute while I try to process what he knows. “Apparently there was a factionless robbery-gone-wrong last night. You know much about it?”

“First time I’ve heard,” I successfully feint sincerity.

Again with his condescending grin, leaning forward to pour out two coffees. “I’ll update you when I have all the facts.”

“Thanks,” I say, taking my coffee, checking it before I sip it.

“I’m not one to lace a coffee, Eric, you know me.”

“Shall we just cut to the chase? Morning meeting starts in half an hour.”

Max leans back and drums the desk. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

Rolling my eyes, I down a fair amount, letting it burn my tongue. “I’m not interested.”

“Why? You got too much to do?” The silence after says everything and nothing at all. Eventually, his face softens to one I can recall from when I was a teenager. “What the fuck you doing? Where did all that spruce that you had get up and leave - at what point? Is it the job, Dauntless, a relationship I don’t know about? Did you get fooled by a girl-”

“I didn’t come here for a psych analysis. I thought you may have needed me for something a little bit more important, you know. And besides that, it’s none of your goddamn business.”

“Despite the fact that I’m head of command, this involves you, whether you like it or not. Where your interest lies - for the good of the factions, is being called continuously into question. It’s a headache I am beginning to get tired of. Did I make the wrong choice to put you forward all those years ago to watch you go off and spit it back in my face? What would your dad say-”

I crush the empty cup feeling like he’s just dug the knife in and twisted. “Don’t you fucking talk about my dad.”

“Why? People never want to talk when there is guilt involved... You feel guilty? Is that what plays on your mind?”

No words escape me apart from a scoff. My will to retaliate against the old heartfelt, cold grip of family ties lays placid. Yes, if that is the answer he is looking for, guilt is one of the things I feel. He had expectations of me for staying on in Erudite, taking over his life-long work of faction cohabitation, to see the in-depth point of view many miss as to why the factions work, why everyone needs a place, and to spend my life writing about it like he did. But I didn’t do that. I told him Erudite wasn’t for me, and though he was disappointed, he sat down and explained the good I could do with such a steady head and a constant drive to firmly get my point across. To make it work, even if it was in Dauntless.

And on that cold December fifth, while waiting at the station to meet me - a train I never took because I was too busy with my head up my ass - Coulter senior was struck with a sudden heart attack there and then, and died alone, cold, perhaps suddenly, but who is to say? The fact is, he is dead, and maybe he wouldn’t be if I’d taken just a little time out and went to meet him.

“He was a good friend of mine,” Max breaks the trance I’ve been sat in for I don’t know how long. My posture is terrible, I look downtrodden, but the moment he wheels himself closer to the desk and sits upright, I mirror him, holding my head high. “The world works in mysterious ways. It’s not your fault, you couldn’t have known.”

I could have sent a message, I could have called, there is a lot of things I could have done.

“And in some ways, you are exactly like him. That stubbornness. You want to know how I met him?” Max asks. I don’t know how they knew each other, I’ve just known Max most of my life, and more so when he became my trainer. “He was trying to get a personal account from the factionless. Surrounded by them as we pulled up. Must have ruffled some feathers. He’d gone in alone with an audio recorder and a notepad and pen. I asked him what the hell he was doing and what he thought he was going to do if they turned on him. Do you know what he said?”

“Kill them with words?” His voice is the one I hear when I say it.

Max only nods, gripping his hands together on the desk. “Look, I called you here because Amity have an inspection they were hoping for me to participate in. I can’t be there, and I can’t send just anybody to represent Dauntless. If you read any of your father’s work, he talks about reliable, known faces and presence consistency. His books are my guide.”

“You want me to go to Amity to write up a report?”

“It has to be precise. State the sources you use. Your conclusion. Amity is off the beaten track and not much is ever provided informatically or timely, that’s why it’s important. ...You look like you could do with the country air anyway.”

“Is that your sweet way of telling me I look like shit?” I ask, a smirk tugging at my lips because it is no lie. My class coming up to the finals do not directly need me to watch over them anymore, they will all pass. And Frank always talked about broaching Amity. But with their herbs and home remedies, the interest and distance have always been a bother.

“Well, I didn’t wanna say, but some vitamin D could do you some good…” He begins laughing loudly with its signature rasp. “Your pale ass is looking whiter than a white man’s bare butt cheek.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” I say as I stand up, feeling incredibly lighter than I did before, but worse in my sense of confliction with loyalty. Turning to Max, remembering mine and Frank’s previous conversation the moment I meet his eye, for a split second, my mouth almost begins moving before I can think it through, wanting to mention something; a warning of some type. But then that disloyalty is on me because I know and without a prompt, I wouldn’t have mentioned a word.

In fact, it’s the first proper thought I’ve had over it. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time after just speaking with him so personally. He’s right, it is guilt.

“Oh, hold on,” Max says, reaching down to a drawer and pulling a book out that looks well-read and dropped a couple of times. “Why don’t you take this and read it? It was your dad’s first ever copy of it. I know it well. You should have it.”

It’s hard-backed and in a navy blue cover, Michael Coulter printed on the bind. I pick it up and feel the weight of it in my hand. “By the way, the young kid, Jimmy, I’ll be taking him with me.”

“No problem,” Max says while picking up the phone on his desk and putting it to his ear. “You have an hour before your departure. Two days to get a summary together. Don’t worry about the granny meeting this morning.”

“This doesn’t mean I’ll be picking up every Amity-Adventure-Pack from here on out. I’m not being alone in this.” He’s smiling at me but is too busy talking down the phone to reply. Once I’m out in the hall and close his door, I breathe in a lungful of air. I better find Jimmy and pack some shit.

I find out later that I’m not driving, nor is Max allowing a truck to rest at Amity for the length that I’m there. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll hightail it as soon as I feel like it. I sure do now more than I did before

Jimmy is next to me keeping quiet, a reluctance to go that seeps off him. But I try to focus on the task at hand while gripping the handle of my holdall with all my possessions. We know we hit Amity when the road widens, turns to dirt, and there isn’t the usual rubble of the buildings. Whatever was left in this part of Chicago had been torn down and reused by these folks. On some of the houses out from the center of Amity - holding cows in pens and I can practically smell the shit in the air without a window being open - I can see parts that have been reused on the structures, parts that don’t blend in and stick out.

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” Jimmy mumbles, staring ahead of us as we come hurdling in our truck straight for some brave cock strutting in front of us.

“To get hit by a Dauntless truck,” I humor him, just on time for the thump under the wheel. Not driving and being a passenger makes me nauseous, but I can’t bring myself to open the window, opting to run a hand down my face while it’s still clean.

It’s about eleven at the latest, and for our arrival, a lot of the Amity people have gathered along with a small squadron that lives out here and swaps over every two weeks. Though, there has been no hostility or problems like there has been around the other factions and their presence seems useless. Amity like to keep to themselves. Johanna is the representative of this faction by the people’s vote, but her voice is not the only voice that has to be heard on any decision, but it may as well be.

Everything is too bright, too joyous, the sun shining warmly, not like the grey feeling Dauntless seems to cast. There are carts and horses, women carrying firewood in baskets, and children running down the tracks. I feel Jimmy’s stare on me. “I’ve never been to Amity before,” he says but not sourly, it’s like he’s enjoying the view.

“Trust me, in a few hours you’re going to be wanting to leave.” Throwing the cab door open I drop down, straight into a fucking puddle. Lifting my foot to view the damage, Jimmy almost bumps into me. I grab his arm and pull him back from wandering forwards. “Get the bags.” He huffs and turns, shouldering mine and his.

“There was a storm last night,” a voice says, an old man with greying hair and a beard, his clothes loose and flapping in the slight breeze with a smile on his face. His eyes are dark while he watches the truck unload, the former squadron packing their stuff on board. It’s always two birds with one stone with Max. “Johanna’s dealing with some laws of the land but will be with us shortly. I’ll take you to where you are staying in the meantime.” He steps forward and holds out a hand. “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Coulter. Amity welcomes you.”

I grip his hand firmly and shake it with Jimmy as my witness over my shoulder. “We’ll only be under your feet for two days. Today being one of them.”

“I hope your stay is as pleasant as possible,” he says, motioning a hand for us to follow. “Only good weather is predicted from here on out. Seems you brought the sunshine with you.”

I make a face at Jimmy who smirks and follow him. We stopped the truck just down the track from the classic dome glass building that represents Amity. The long wooden structure of the stables and offices merged together on my left, further in the distance. Between the trees, the path is winding and offset to what I assume is living quarters. The old man stops by the nearest cabins that are opposite each other, covered by trees, ones that I can’t help but look up to as the leaves sway high above us.

“Keeps it cool in the summer,” the man explains. “And covers us in the winter.”

“Practical,” I hear myself say quietly.

“How rude, I’m Joe. You’ll find me around. If you need anything.”

The cabins have their own dark wooden porch, basic infrastructure, and I dread what is inside. “Keys?”

Joe laughs. “What on Earth for? They are both open.”

Staring after him when he begins to walk away, I look to Jimmy who hands me my holdall. Without a word, I step up to one of the cabins, the wood creaking underfoot, bowing and distorting, and I wonder how old it is - or whether I’m about to fall through. It’s a simple hooked doorhandle and it opens up to a studio type room; small sink and counters for the kitchen below the window, a bed on the right made-up. The lamp is on beside it.

I stand in this compact space, loathing the seconds being in it. But what I can appreciate is the silence. There is nothing. But it’s a lighter nothing to what I feel in Dauntless. I take a seat on the edge of the bed and put my elbows on my knees, peering down to my bag. Tugging on the zip, the first thing I see is my father's book inside, the navy cover and his name in print staring up at me.

I pick it up and open it, viewing the contents. There is a section at the end of the book about Amity, which I flick to.

The Amity way of life. Broken down easily by stepping one foot onto the overturned soil. It is not power or hierarchy that they value, nor tend to have any interest in said subject. It is just living.

Biting my lip and leaning back, I’m not in the mood to read further. I check my phone instead, seeing a missed call from Frank a few hours ago after I messaged him that I wouldn’t be around for a few days. The moment I see it is the moment the signal goes. Could have expected as much. No signal, I type, sending it, hoping he will get it when the reception comes back.

Johanna has a section of her office on the first floor over the barn with a long wooden table - a poor effort to the boardrooms at Dauntless, but at least nobody smokes here. It’s warm and stuffy, smelling like pine with a fire lit on the furthest side of the room. Johanna’s wrapping up a conversation she’d brought to the meeting, conveniently set over lunchtime.

While Jimmy tugs at the collar of his uniform, plates of food offerings are set in front of us. I ignore them, scowling at Johanna’s ignorance to leave us lingering for so long. She catches me watching and waves off the woman hanging over her shoulder.

“I apologize, Eric. It’s been a rather…” she side-eyes the woman. “Torturous morning.” At least she has a sense of humor. “Max was too busy to attend, I see. When you see him tell him I said hello.”

“It’s an inspection, but that doesn’t mean we are expecting any other additional treatment. Normal everyday life can continue as is, otherwise, the assessment is misinterpreted. I’ll write up a report and be out of your way by tomorrow afternoon.” Licking my thumb, I flick through some notes in front of me. “It does mean I need access to everything.”

“Nothing is locked so your access is already granted.” She smiles at me when I frown upwards, her bangles on stubby arms hitting the table in front of her.

“About that-” I begin, but I’m interrupted by a bowl of fucking strawberries being placed beside me. “That’s already an issue. It’s hardly safe. Trust in your people can only go so far.”

Joe is here, placed to her side, and he sighs to himself.

“It’s been this way for many years. I will not change it now.”

“Either way, it’s going in the report,” I shrug. “I’ll need access to stock, law, initiate quotas… the works. But I already suggest a reassessment on security. It would be good to prepare.”

Jimmy’s eating next to me, Johanna even divulging herself. I begin to get the feeling I’m in the canteen and not in a provisional meeting. “What’s ours is yours, I have every faith in Dauntless,” she says.

I’m offered cold meats on a tray and wave them off. I’m losing my patience. “Is there anything you’d like to say now before I begin?”

“Oh, yes…” Johanna licks her fingers. “We had a group of factionless come by. We fed and watered them and sent them on their way. It didn’t go down in one of the files, so…”

I’m offered something to drink, this time turning to show my displeasure but stop when I see henna tattoos along the woman’s arms serving me. “Why?” I ask, my question sounding off as I watch her round to Jimmy.

“They were a very poor looking group. There was no threat. And it was hardly a good use of the Dauntless soldiers time chasing after them,” Johanna says. I’m caught watching the woman because she looks up at me from serving Jim. Not one to look away first, I wait until she does.

Kicking my legs out under the desk, I try my best to realign my thoughts and bite my tongue. “Did it not occur to you that this could have been a potential risk?”

“It occurs to me that Dauntless despise the factionless and don’t like time wasters.” Johanna smiles so sweetly, I think she’s beginning to mock me and I narrow my eyes for good measure, words burning in my throat. “But I can get a report for you if you need it.”

“I don’t like being misinformed.”

“You also don’t like strawberries.” The bowl is taken from beside me by the same woman I spied before, a smile on her lips.

“Eric, we wouldn’t mislead you knowingly or on purpose. It’s not how Amity works…” Johanna drones on while I watch the woman with the long red skirt down to her ankles, a midriff from a small white top, shoulder-length hair hanging limp. I’m hardly being subtle and neither is she because her hazel eyes find mine again. Jimmy taps me and I realize that Johanna is staring blankly at me.

“Don’t let it happen again.” I sit up and sip my water. “It makes it difficult when it shouldn’t have to be.” I’m not making sense. I don’t even know if that is what she was expecting me to say. “We done here?” Jimmy gestures sarcastically to all the food left on his plate while I see the girl slip out the back, and I stand up, patting his shoulder. “You finish your food.”

“Mr. Coulter,” Johanna half-stands on my exit, a confused glance around the room on maybe why I’m hurrying so quickly.

The door brings me to a flight of stairs, and peering over the banister I just catch a glimpse of red. The stairs lead down to the ground floor, a waiter’s exit and entrance with a path leading to the dome. But she hasn’t gone that way, instead, I find her refilling a jug of water on the adjacent wall of a makeshift counter and sink with food that hasn’t been served yet. The bowl of strawberries is beside her and I stroll up quietly and pluck one out.

“It’s rude to assume.”

She tenses up, but other than that she continues. “A man showing no interest in food has more troubles enough to fill his plate.”

“That’s still assuming,” I say, mirth in my voice by how she won’t show her face to me. I may be in Amity, but a guy still needs something to do here, and by the looks of her...

Shutting off the tap, she turns, holding the jug. “Good day, Mr. Coulter.”

Maybe I was wrong? I keep her cornered so she can’t get past without spilling her bounty. “It’s Eric. But you know who I am, don’t you?”

“Yes. Were you assuming I didn’t?” She smiles back at me and I scoff, dropping my chin and pocketing my hands, suddenly feeling like I have never spoken to a girl before as my confidence dwindles. In reality, I’ve never had to try very hard, and they have certainly never been so deflecting. It annoys me that I have misread the signals, forgetting I was in Amity and not in the Pit’s playground. I’ve been in Dauntless too long. “Can I help you with something? Are you lost perhaps?”

“No,” I breathe and step aside for her to pass. Maybe I am troubled? Too troubled to even hold an enticing conversation. What could I even bring to the table for someone to be interested in me other than my name or title? It angers me that I can’t express myself beyond the dark cloud hanging over my head. I now even look like a fool, watching her skirt sway when she reaches the stairs. I drop my eyes, squeezing my shoulder that begins throbbing and then eat the strawberry. But she stops before the partition of wall and I don’t feign my surprise.

“It’s Fleur.” She passes judgment on me in an instant through a long look. She is the definition of the word reluctant. “My name... is Fleur.”

“Meaning flower?”

Her smile is weaker this time and she averts her eyes elsewhere. I wonder if she regrets telling me. The first ebbings of paranoia begin to dot my skin at the back of my neck. “Something like that,” she mumbles.

“La vie est une fleur dont l’amour est le miel.” I begin to wonder if she can hear the shake in my voice that claims my hands.

“I…” she sighs quickly to herself and tilts her head, shifting from one foot to the other. “I don’t speak French.”

“No, of course not... It’s a dead language,” I shrug it off. She forces her lips to form a pathetic attempt at a sheepish grin that spells ‘fuck off’ politely and then disappears up the steps. It is the last time I’ll try my hand. She may as well have shot me.

The aftershock sure feels like she had, and as I turn, leaning on the counter, I pull out my painkillers. Swallowing them dry, it takes a few minutes for the fog to clear in my head. Eventually, I pick myself up, straightening my spine, and head out for the first evaluation at the dome, alone.

#woke #eric divergent fanfiction #fanfiction #eric coulter #jai courtney #divergent #insurgent #chapter 1 #beautifulramblingbrains

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mayviolet · 4 years

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#Can You Fall Back In Love With Your Ex Surprising Useful Tips #How To Get Your Ex Boyfriend Back Afte

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wcprice2opinions · 7 years

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I guess I am an Oprah Centrist

Okay so I know this is mostly just “this week in social media” and everyone is going to move on tomorrow but the Oprah conversation has brought several things to the front of my mind that I want to get out there. Whenever I try to write one of these it usually turns into an illegible mess so apologies in advance to the 2 of you that actually read past this point. On another note I am well aware that I have a 3rd graders understanding of grammar and spelling so no need to tell me by correcting all my mistakes.

I am blown away how passionate people I know to be liberals/progressives became overnight about whether or not Oprah would make a good President of the United States. Didn’t any of you pay attention in middle school? Sometimes you have to read all the multiple choice answers even if B really jumps out at you. Sometimes option “E” is “Not enough information provided”, “none of the above”, or “sometimes B and sometimes C.” I think all of these are better reactions than 90% of the “Hot takes” on the Oprah subject. I’m not saying you personally do not have legitimate evidence to support your opinion on how Oprah would do as president. It is possible you do. What I am saying is: it is highly unlikely that every liberal/progressive in my social media circles conveniently finished the research necessary to form an informed opinion right before they sat down to watch the golden globes.

But since all of you seem to have done just that can one of you please highlight some of the key points from your research for me? All my other friends are playing some cruel joke where they are fixated on the kinds of arguments I’ve come to expect from conservatives. The ones where you boil a complex question down to a simple point that is easily agreeable on the surface and is based almost entirely in ethos or pathos with no logos to be found. I am going to focus on the one I have seen the highest volume of but believe me regardless of what side of this “debate” you’re on the arguments I’ve seen from you I find equally illogical.

“Oprah doesn’t have any experience in politics therefore she is a bad choice for president.” I had quips w/ this narrative during the Trump campaign and regret not voicing it more at the time. I think my main issue with it is it gets thrown around so nonchalantly and is incredibly loaded.

First off there was a time in our nation that you had to be white and male to be a politician. Do you realize how whitewashed and man washed congress is even today? 91% of the Senate and 88% of the house is non-white[1] (compared to almost 40% of the USA[2]). Curiously enough only a fifth of congressional representatives are women when they make up something like half the country.[1] So yeah I think we are going to have to elect some officials with no experience if we are ever going to balance those scales. Or you know we can make the same arguments the white male executives that run my company make every time they have to appoint a new Senior Vice President who happens to also be a white male. And look I’m not saying experience isn’t a good reason to pick somebody for a job - I’m just saying nothing will ever change if it is going to be a deal breaker every time. You’d think a bunch of millennials always posting memes about entry-level jobs asking for 8 years experience would get that.

Second of all where the hell are you drawing the experience line? Barack Obama had only been a politician for 9 years when he started his 08 campaign. Only 2 of those were in DC. I am sure you learn a lot as a state legislator but I can’t imagine you touch on things like diplomacy and military strategy as an Illinois State senator two things that the president is actually supposed to do. The point being is Obama had not spent anymore time working on peace in the middle east than you spent doing GenEds for your bachelors degree. Actually maybe that explains why he kind of sucked on that front… I joke but I don’t think outside of serving in a high ranking cabinet position there are very many people that you can really say have the “experience” of being president. A general may have all the military strategy in the world but not no the process of a Bill. A 30 year senator probably has the bill thing down to a science but might be completely lost in his first national defense brief. I imagine Oprah has both those two beat on a lot of the soft skills that go into being president such as public speaking and outreach.

Third and most obvious of all - those people with the “experience” are the ones that got the nation to where it is today. (I am just going to assume you probably have some problems with where the nation is today if you do not just go ahead and skip this part.) Look I’m not saying there aren’t people in the Senate, House, Governor Mansions, etc that wouldn’t make great presidents. I am saying that the vast majority of the people in those positions are opportunist, crony capitalist, and/or owned by lobbyist. Like it or not there was some truth to Trump’s “drain the swamp” message and a reason it resonated with people. (I think it is pretty clear that was just a convenient campaign message and he abandoned it minutes after taking his oath but it doesn’t mean there wasn’t some truth to it.) Once you take out the people who are complicit in the broken system you’re left with a pretty thin field of potential presidential nominees to choose from.

I personally want anything but a thin field in the 2020 primaries. I think the most important thing to do is consider all the options on the table. Legitimately research and understand their platforms and differences. And most importantly of all make them take a stance outside of “I am not Trump.” Maybe Oprah will actually put together a team of people and a platform that can offer real progress to the American people. Something that will ignite people not just to cast a ballot for her but also to campaign heavily down ticket to make sure her well laid out plans get have a snowman’s chance in hell at implementation. Maybe Warren, Booker, Sanders, Zuckerberg, or Gillibrand will do it. I do not know. What I do know is that we should not back or discount any of them before they have even announced their candidacy, let along delivered us a platform.

There are a couple of other points/things I wanted to talk about but didn’t find the right place for here maybe I’ll write a different blog post some other time to discuss it. Anyway thanks if you actually read this jumbled mess. I love you!

#oprah #oprah2020 #election 2020 #democrats #liberals #progressives #2020 #oprah winfrey

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bkroger7793 · 7 years

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-Ice to Meet You-

It was March 2016, I had been on a ship doing a contract for about 4 months by this point. I had some ship flings here and there but nothing crazy serious. My two people that flamed this mistake, are actually two people who I was just jealous of and I am grown enough to admit it at this point. Noah and Matt. Noah was an incredible British musical theatre performer who was playing our Kenickie in our production of “Grease”. He’d done ships before and was currently in a great relationship with another cast member on board, but had just gotten out of a very serious relationship that sounded incredibly mentally damaging. Matt was our Doody, he had a keen way of making me feel like shit (whether on purpose or accident). Either way, at the end of the day we had a very interesting on board friendship. Now I can look back and see that this was all entirely my insecurities and jealousies.

Now that the exposition is out of the way, on with the story!

It was March and the ship had three shows. Our production show, an Aqua show and an Ice skating show. The gossip train had gotten around our cast, that Noah’s ex boyfriend (the one that made him an alcoholic and broke his heart) was coming on board to join the new ice cast. Naturally, my sadistic mind was curious. I was excited to see what the hype was all about, because Noah is a gorgeous boy. So to think someone would break his heart, they had to be something special. Me and Noah weren’t the closest, but we were still friends.

*What happened in these 7 months, I’m not proud of but they happened and it’s my journey and I’m owning up to this all.*

One day while I’m sat in the mess, I look up and see this new boy walk in. He was a very handsome young man, with curly brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. He was very tall and lean, he was what the Weather Girls were singing about in “It’s Raining Men”. The boy who I’d never seen before looked at me and didn’t take his eyes off of me. I looked back with an interested but quizzical look on my face. I never like to fully give away if I’m into someone or not, but when I was looking at him I felt excited, scared, sick and anxious. I thought it was love at first sight that I was feeling, but it was something completely different.

From that moment on I was always excited to run into this mystery boy, who I instinctually knew was Noah’s ex-boyfriend. I told one of my friends on board, “I’m in trouble. Keep me away from that boy.” They told me, “That’s Noah’s ex. He’s off limits and really messed him up.” My brain translated that to “That’s Noah’s ex but let’s see where this takes us.”

I went up to the smoothie bar with my best friend in the cast Frank, we ran into one of the current skaters Ashley and she was with Noah’s ex, Wyatt. I got my typical smoothie and he asked me what was in it, I told him “it has peanut butter, banana, whey protein, almond milk and a shot of espresso.” He looked at me and then the smoothie and then back at me, “sounds like everything I need and more.” I looked at him kind of incredulously and he read that as me not been interested. I walked around and said by to Ashley and nodded bye to Wyatt. Noah was planning on leaving the contract early, and I was trying to fight it off. He was attractive but way to forward for my taste at the time. I would go around to crew parties and people would come up to me and tell me “someone in the new cast has a crush on you!” There were only 2 gay guys in the cast and one of them was already talking with one of the aqua cast members so the message came across pretty loud and clear. I was nervous! I didn’t want anyone to think I was truly purposely swooping in on my cast mates ex boyfriend, but I did kind of use “the secret” for it. We ran into each other at the crew bar and we talked for a bit and then I offered to buy him a drink, to which he responded that he quit drinking a year ago. I then left to get a drink and make sure I was far enough away from him for the rest of the night.

A few days later, I was with my same friend Frank and received a message on Facebook.

Wyeth: Hey Cody 🙂. I think you're really handsome and a nice guy... always want to talk w you more but both of us are always going from one thing to the next and I never really get the chance. Would you be interested in maybe gettin lunch or dinner with me some evening soon? 😃

Me: Hey Wyeth,

I'm flattered to say the least haha and in normal circumstances I'd definitely go to dinner with you but I don't feel like with certain company present on board/in my cast, that I should really do that. I hope this doesn't come across in a bad way but I'll still be nice and down to chat in the mess and crew pubs and stuff. Hope you got to get off today and I'll see you soon : )

Wyeth: Yes I certainly understand. It was my only hesitancy in asking, but I am working on moving forward, and I definitely have interest in getting to know you better... I don't want to put you in An uncomfortable position at all. Perhaps we could just see how things go and wait a few weeks. 😉 if you have any interest, once things change a bit around here, perhaps you could revisit the notion. And yes, I look forward to hanging out a bit more. X

Me: That sounds like a plan cuz I'd be lying if I said I didn't have any interest in you

Wyeth: That's certainly exciting to hear 😜. Looking forward handsome 🙂

Me: I’ll see you around, Wyeth.

These messages made me feel the most attractive I’d ever felt. He knew that. The only thing holding me together was my uncertainty and my initial rejection. I don’t know why I gave in. At the time I wasn’t that attracted to him. I just didn’t want him to try to go back with Noah or potentially go out with Matt (because rumor had it that he flirted with him as well).

We secretly would hang out in his cabin and watch movies, laugh and kiss…a lot. We went on our first date at a really nice restaurant in Miami. Our server was so taken a back about how beautiful we looked together. That was our thing. Everyone had to stop and tell us how beautiful we looked together. It was an amazing ego boost. After all of this time feeling like I wasn’t worthy or going to amount to anything, I was finally with a guy who was seemingly head over heels for me and who looked amazing next to me.

One night we were watching a movie in one of our friends cabins and we were all snuggled up. It was two days before Noah was going to leave. Up until this point the only thing that may have given us away was that I went out to Jamaica with him and his friends and we rode a canoe together and he posted it on Instagram. For reasons I don’t know, because I asked him to try to keep this a secret. I felt uncomfortable and uneasy but didn’t want to jump to conclusions because he said “he was trying to work past and change”.

But we were watching a movie and were snuggled on the floor, then theres a knock on the door. Our host goes to open the door and its Noah, he immediately see’s us together on the floor and looks stunned. I look back scared and ashamed, Wyeth seems oddly at ease, almost as if this was everything he wanted from this. Looking back on this now, I feel very used and taken advantage of.

The next day again, I received a message from Noah wishing me the best of luck and that he couldn’t be upset because he was in a happy relationship at the moment. I told him thank you and that I would never have wanted him to think I would do this for any reason beyond wanting to give Wyeth a chance.

The contract went by and we stayed together. It was amazing sex, incredible memories and I was treated like a prince. He wanted me for him all of the time, all day, everyday. It felt scary, it felt comforting and it felt intoxicating. I was beloved by his friends and even when I met his mom (who is not an easy critic) grew to form a positive opinion on me. I thought this one was it, he was the one.

We got off of the ship and he came to visit my in New York. He had missed me so much and I had missed him as well(he finished the contract earlier than me). The first days were great, I met his family friends who we were house sitting for and a few other friends. I liked them a lot. We went out to an HBO premiere party and it was the biggest deal to me. I looked over and he had a glass of wine in his hand. “I thought you don’t drink?” I asked. “No I’ll be fine, it’s just some wine. Besides I only gave it up on the ship.” I didn’t want to be his mom and tell him that that was not what he told me, but instead I let him go for it. It was nice, we both could have a social drink together. He would look around the party the entire night as if in search for something or someone else. When we met his friends he tried to put me down a lot because I was so excited to be at an HBO party (mind you I was just acting grateful, I wasn’t being like dough eyed baby ingenue). We stayed out till 4 am. It was very odd in comparison to our picture perfect life on the ship where we went home straight after work and where I was expected to be back in his cabin at a certain time and I couldn’t go out with my cast. Anyway, we went out again the next day and I brought him to visit and meet my closest friends that were in the city. He was good, but always with my friends he would get super quiet and would never try to initiate conversation. Wyeth always had to make it a point on how young everyone was as well, because he was 31 and so ahead of the game than me because of it. I tried to shrug it off and have a fun night. We then got on the topics of ex’s and then he started talking about this boy named Chris who in the 5 months of dating I’d never heard of. “Who’s Chris?” I asked.

“He’s my ex boyfriend,” he pulled out his phone and showed me his Instagram. Chris looked like a white version of that bad boy model guy with the mug shot that was famous online for a spell. Nothing like me, or even Noah (who I was also compared to on multiple occasions).

“He’s very handsome.” I say, trying to be nice and hoping for him to turn and say that I was more handsome than him or something sweet.

Wyeth proceeds to say, in front of all of my friends, “Yeah he is,” he said this like he was ‘the one that got away’. I was left mortified, my friends were looking at me like I was dating the hugest douche bag ever. He then asked if we could leave early to hang out with Chris’ best friend Brandon. I said, sure why not. We went and immediately felt weird, the Brandon boy was like no friend of Wyeth’s I had ever met, and could have given less of a shit that I was in his home. I was then ignored the entire night and didn’t sit next to Wyeth the entire time. I left him at the bar and didn’t see him until he got back to the apartment at 4:30 am.

He then woke up at 9 am to visit with his “manager” and told me he’d be back soon. He then went to get a massage, then to run an errand at Sprint, and then never answered me back. He disappeared. I called all of his friends who I knew, to which one of them responded and said.

“Oh no, he does this sometimes. He’s probably doing drugs, the city isn’t good for him. Just stay there and be there for him when he gets back.” Like I was indebted to him, and should accept this behavior of his if I wanted to be with him. I stayed up the entire night and tried to sleep whenever I could. I couldn’t sleep at all. Wyeth didn’t come back home until 11:20 am the next morning. Looking terrible and feeling like shit. We cried and he explained more of his problems and past with me, I didn’t know what to do. In front of me I saw this sincere guy who had a trouble past who needed someone like me. Someone loyal, trusting and loving. He asked if I wanted to do this still, and that he knew he was difficult to date. I couldn’t say no to him then and there because I was just on this emotional rollercoaster and saw someone so broken. I was willing to sacrifice so much of myself because he couldn’t take the time to just go out and get professional help. Now, I may come across rather cold in regards to this but that is what this relationship came down to. He thought I could fix something that was so broken and deeply rooted in him, when all it was doing to me was breaking me. His problems were becoming my problems and my problems were becoming non existent, and worse of all irrelevant.

Wyeth left for another contract, our relationship went from ‘we are in this for the long run’ to ‘we’re taking it day by day’. He started telling me about this other skater who’s from Canada and was going to be in the Olympics this year and they were becoming great friends because they both were in very serious relationships. I was happy for him that he was making these friends, he told me that the other skater was engaged to be married to another skater who was around my age. I then started to get a little weirded out because he would talk about him all the time, and still was continuously talking about all of these ex boyfriends he still was in serious contact with. To which we got in an argument about when he came back to the city, why all 100 of his ex boyfriends were still so relevant in his life. I understand an occasional text or message on a birthday or a holiday, but this was constant contact. Wyeth then proceeded to get angry and tell me in the train station that I couldn’t understand because I had never been in a “real” relationship before so I wouldn’t understand. It was fine if it was one ex, but ALL of them, all of the time. It wasn’t normal the way he talked about them either but he gaslighted me into believing I was overreacting. I then started apologizing for caring and trying to add up his behavior, actions and words. He then left for his next contract and while he was gone I had constant anxiety, I couldn’t sleep. Wyeth was drinking and partying on a regular basis, he was distant whenever we talked on the phone and would never want to actively be sexy or show true affection.

I then found out from an anonymous person that he was being super flirty and entertaining thoughts of being with the Engaged Canadian Skater, and that the Engaged Canadian Skater was entertaining the idea as well. They had a “genuine connection”. I knew my anxiety was leading me to the right direction. I never told him I knew that, but I broke up with him. He looked at me in the eye on FaceTime so angry and I said “It’s not fun always thinking that your boyfriend is looking for something or someone else, when he has something already amazing in front of his face.”

He responded saying, “I have to go to work, because thats what people do.” He then hung up.

I thought I had overreacted and he continued to not own up to any of his odd behavior saying the only thing he wish he could have taken back was when he disappeared on me in NYC. I’m still trying to shrug it all off, because I really thought he loved me for a moment. He didn’t. He loved the idea of me and knew that he should have loved me, but he will always love himself and “the game” more. I feel tired, I feel played but overall I feel strong. At such a young age and having not have been in any “real relationships” (as he says), to know what I deserve and want out of life that is bigger than any dick, or hotter than any face or ego. I want a patient love, an honest love and a love that respects me for how strong I am. A love that believes in me and is greater than stereotypes.

Not all that glitters is gold. But sometimes you can take the glitter from that experience and get your sparkle back.

My anxiety is gone, my thoughts still cloud my brain but I know when this negativity leaves, a power that is greater than anything I’ve ever experienced will be in the horizon.

#truthseeker #free #love #ice skating

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homeofthevan-a · 7 years

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Rules Page

Sorry these are lengthy; a lot of them are standard. TL:DR - I’m 18+, don’t be a jerk, please talk to me!

1. If I seem to have missed our thread, and you’re looking for it and can’t find it, please tell me. I’m extremely scatterbrained, and Tumblr’s hecked up the activity in general.

2. Mun and Muse are both over 18 (Mun is 20). This blog will be occasionally NSFW for adult themes including sex and violence. I will tag for common triggers including blood, death, rape, and violence, but please tell me if there’s something in particular you would like tagged. Triggers are tagged “tw triggernamehere”.

3. My style of writing tends towards para- and multi-para. It’s sometimes difficult to get anything moving in less words than that, unless it’s crack or the like. You needn’t match my length all the time, especially when I get wordy, but if it’s a common imbalance where one side writes a lot more than the other every single time, it might not be right for us to RP. If your writing style tends to be a few lines, then we can try and work something out, but it’s less likely to happen. This isn’t meant to be a comment on the quality of your writing - sometimes, styles just aren’t compatible. And spelling and grammar are fairly important to me; I have a really hard time processing things that are very improperly written - this isn’t meant to be a statement against newer or EL writers, it’s just the way my brain works, and I’m sorry if it comes off that way.

4. RPing is a hobby, and a personal choice. I reserve the right to refuse or discontinue RPs with anyone at any time for any reason, just as others have the right to refuse or discontinue RPs with me. If it’s a permanent thing, I would appreciate a message stating why - and I will NOT take it personally, sometimes things just don’t work out - and will attempt to do the same for others.

5. I am selective with both shipping and RPs, though I am multiship and non-exclusive. I don’t do mains. Ships will be tagged respectively. This OC is not here just for shipping, and force-shipping without prior discussion will not be tolerated. There’s as much to be explored in friendships, rivalries, camaraderie, and hatred as much as any ship.

6. There is no rule number 6.

7. Please don’t reblog any personal posts, or any RPs that you aren’t a part of. It makes it hard to keep track of replies, and also is just…rude. Please. Anything that’s not personal or directly RP is fair game, though.

8. I’m not a meme archive. I don’t like to be treated like a meme archive. I DO encourage you to reblog memes from me, but if you do it on the regular, send one in every now and again. Please? I don’t actively practice reblog karma, though I do try to either send one in or reblog from source, and would appreciate at least an attempt at the same courtesy. However, if there’s no meme that works for your muse, I WON’T BE MAD IF YOU REBLOG IT FROM ME. Just don’t make it every single one I ever do, with none ever returned. Honestly, it’d be nice to have the activity.

9. My Askbox and IMs are always open, with anon on. Feel free to approach me IC or OOC! I know that I have an OC, which means there aren’t exactly pages of prewritten references beyond the 13 pages on here, and there will be questions. I don’t bite unless you bite first. I track #loosedhope.

10. I read rules, and try to remember to send in passwords. I don’t have a password myself, but if you pop in to say you’ve read my rules, you’ll probably make me smile. I don’t do greeters, because I can’t always keep track of it, and I’m aware sometimes people follow without wanting to IMMEDIATELY RP(especially with an OC; that’s a whole other bucket of bears). I will do starter calls, however, and those are pretty much permanent. They will be tagged “Come One And All : {Starter}”.

11. Don’t godmod. Come on. It’s…whatever year you’re reading this in. If something is unclear about my character or her abilities, or the situation, ask me.

12. All threads will be assumed to be in main verse unless previously discussed or otherwise indicated. If you’d like to interact with her as Soulclaw working for Talon, or in the verse where she is losing control of her abilities, please say so - in asks/starters, adding “Talon Verse”/“Talon?” or “Loosed Verse”/“Loosed?” to the end would be sufficient.

13. None of the art that appears on this blog will ever be mine. Any generic images are from google with “usage tools: marked for reuse” on, and I will NEVER claim any art or work not done by me as mine. If I have missed or miscredited a piece of artwork, please contact me asap so I can correct my mistake. Some of the references may be done by me, however - things like the scar reference. Is it super bad quality? Probably mine.

Talon Suit Reference drawn by: @blubloodmedic

14. Mallory has a soft heart, but that does not mean she will roll over for you. She’s been hurt before, she knows she will be hurt again, and if cornered, she WILL fight back. Don’t think that just because she’d rather be gentle if she could, she won’t get rough. Mallory WILL rip you apart, and mourn you later, when she’s safe and alive. (This goes doubly so for Talonverse - Soulclaw does not have the luxury of mercy). I am absolutely here for darker topics with her - in fact, it might be difficult for her to consider anything too gentle after what she’s been through. Her outlook may be forcedly, intentionally, and knowingly naive, but don’t handle her with kid gloves. Challenge her. Spite her. Grind her into the dust for daring to believe, and see what happens when you’ve lost your last second chance.

15. To clear up concerns: Mallory’s backstory does NOT require her to have previous interaction with any canon character/OC unless the player of that character wishes otherwise. She may have been created by Talon, but she was very low on the totem pole, and would not have NECESSARILY had interaction with the higher-level agents or doctors. This can be changed, of course, and there is plenty of room for interaction with the Talon elite (and that’s something I’d love), but I never assume pre-interaction with anyone, so if you WANT pre-interaction, feel free to talk to me about it!

#Rules Page #That's Not Who I Am : {OOC}#On The Go : {Mobile}

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reactingtosomething · 7 years

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Kris Reacts to Game of Thrones: 701, “Dragonstone”

“Would That Be So Terrible?”

The Setup: I (Kris, aka @omeletsforpepper) am not the only one of us who keeps up with Game of Thrones, but I wanted to try my hand at solo reacting. This could change, but my plan is to pick out a theme (not necessarily “the” theme) of the week’s episode, and discuss in depth just one or two scenes/sequences that involve it. I’ll also include some extra thoughts at the end, in the vein of The AV Club’s “Stray Observations.”

SPOILERS for the season 7 premiere of Game of Thrones immediately after the jump.

Though it isn’t actually one of the scenes I want to spotlight this week — largely because I’m sure it’s the one most discussed already across the internet — the bloody cold open gives us a pretty clear thematic statement: this is an episode about debt, and desert. (As in, the condition of deserving something, spelled like the geographical feature, but pronounced like the thing that comes at the end of a meal.) After killing almost everyone who was still eligible to be punished for the Red Wedding, almost everyone’s favorite Stark turns to the late Walder Frey’s newest wife to deliver not only a certain weather announcement, but also probably everyone’s second favorite Stark line: “The North remembers.”

That the North remembers is critical to both Jon and Sansa in the surprisingly nuanced scene that ends with the loyalty oaths of Alys Karstark and Ned Umber. For Jon, Northern and more specifically Stark memory is tied up in the very sense of tradition that kept him a lesser member of his family in the eyes of the late Catelyn, tradition into which he always wanted to be accepted. In spite of everything he’s learned, and all the compromises he’s made, Jon Snow (or should we be calling him Jon Stark now?) still holds as tightly as he can to the ideals and customs of his father. In this case, that means not taking away the ancestral homes of families who fought against him, under the Bolton banner. The Karstark and Umber heirs, both children, will inherit their fathers’ titles. As Sansa points out, although the specific Karstark and Umber men who fought for Ramsay Bolton are indeed already dead, the rest of the North will not receive the message that betraying the Starks will be punished. And more importantly, they will not receive the message that loyalty to the Starks in difficult times will be rewarded.

This is where the “surprisingly” part comes in. Though it’s often been a fiercely intelligent show, and always one that reveled in moral grayness, Game of Thrones isn’t really something I’d describe as subtle, or as being particularly adept with philosophical uncertainty. It has always claimed to be a show concerned with subtlety and ambiguity, but in practice that ambiguity often just meant subjecting characters (partially or completely naked women, disproportionately) to heavy-handed awfulness. Something like Joffrey’s sadistic torture-murder of Ros isn’t a marker of cleverness or depth, it’s Dark and Edgy for the sake of Dark and Edgy. Also, this is just one of those shows that typically doesn’t do subtext in its dialogue. It just has much better-sounding dialogue than your typical network procedural. And that’s not nothing!

A more interesting reason for the show’s incomplete success in delivering on true moral ambiguity is perhaps that it hasn’t often pitted its traditionally heroic characters against each other, especially post-“Blackwater.” But now that the two characters who’ve perhaps suffered most (not that it’s a contest) find themselves at odds, the show’s creative team clearly understands that doing both those characters justice means using a different kind of suspense from the sort that drove episodes like, say, “The Mountain and the Viper.”

We’ll have to wait to see the consequences of Jon’s very public refusal to take Sansa’s very public advice — advice with which most of the Stark bannermen seemed to heartily agree — not only in the military and political spheres, but in Jon and Sansa’s relationship. But I was glad to see that, perhaps owing to Lyanna Mormont’s influence, the men in the room weren’t dismissive of Sansa’s counsel, and were indeed on her side. I was also glad that even when Jon pushed ahead with his own agenda, we weren’t subjected to a repetition of the “everyone sure is angry at Jon” beats we saw so often at Castle Black. Maybe like the men of the Night’s Watch, they’re all tired of arguing with each other.

Or maybe it was that though Sansa very clearly won the logical argument in this scene, Jon kind of got to win the emotional one. Is it really any wonder he’s so opposed to taking away anyone’s ancestral home? It’s not only that he just took back Winterfell. It’s also that Winterfell was, before all of this, never intended to be his ancestral home. He was born a Snow (cough cough, yeah, I know, but the show didn’t go there this week so neither will I), not a Stark. The reclamation of Winterfell doesn’t necessarily mean more to Jon than it does to Sansa, but it does mean something different.

This layer, important as it is for us, probably didn’t occur to the Stark bannermen. For them, the emotional force of Jon’s case is much more concrete once Jon calls forward Alys Karstark and Ned Umber, the former of whom looks no older than Arya was in the show’s very first episode, and the latter of whom may well be younger than Bran was. Look, on the level of strategy, Sansa is right. Sansa is right! Jon is clinging to an ideal for the sake of the ideal, at least as much as because he thinks it’ll help him win. But even as we acknowledge that he’s making a bad decision, we can also acknowledge that there’s something laudable in it. Despite their agreement with Sansa, the bannermen get solemn when those kids — those kids, who indeed do not deserve to be punished for the sins of their fathers — approach their king and bend the knee, and cheer when those kids say the words they have to say. And when Alys Karstark cracks a smile out of what’s surely a heady combination of relief, gratitude, and newfound purpose, we can’t help but be moved.

Unless we’re Sansa, tragically world-weary and out of fucks to give. Thank the old gods and the new for her bluntness in calling out the dearly departed Ned and Robb for “stupid mistakes.” And for her quiet but firm response — “Would that be so terrible?” — when Jon asks if being smarter than them means taking her advice. And for Jon’s wisdom in not pushing her away (yet, at least).

Something else to keep in mind about Jon and Sansa: Despite their heartfelt reunion and the shared trial of taking back Winterfell, we should remember that they held no special fondness for each other way back before their lives and the world went to hell. I can’t help wondering if that lack of pre-existing closeness will quietly become a complication now that Jon and Sansa both finally find themselves with the tiniest bit of breathing room.

Of course, Danaerys Targaryen gets the prize for longest-awaited homecoming. (Here’s a cool little Vanity Fair piece about the production design of Dragonstone.) I don’t want to go on much longer here, and I guess there isn’t that much to say, other than that the choice to make this scene almost-wordless was a good one, and that Team Targaryen’s tailor wins.

When it comes down to it, I like the fact of Dany’s arrival to Dragonstone a lot, and I’m still pretty fond of her as a character, and of basically everyone in her entourage. (Varys is one of my very favorite supporting characters on this show.)

But throughout this whole sequence, I also couldn’t shake a meta-criticism, I guess, that the columnist Ross Douthat has made of the show and at least a theoretical subsection of its fans (emphasis mine):

“Game of Thrones” is still working within the framework of its essentially romantic genre — critiquing it and complicating it, yes, but also giving us a set of heroes and heroines to root for whose destinies are set by bloodlines and prophecies, and who are likely in the end to save their world from darkness and chaos no less than Aragorn or Shea Ohmsford or Rand al’Thor.

Put another way: On “The Sopranos,” there is no right way to be a mafioso. But on “Game of Thrones” there is a right way to be a lord or king and knight, and there are characters who model the virtues of each office, who prove that chivalry and wise lordship need not be a myth. Sometimes they do so in unexpected ways — the lady knight who has more chivalry than the men who jeer at her, the dwarf who rules more justly than the family members who look down on him. But this sort of reversal is typical of the genre, which always has its hobbits and stable boys and shieldmaidens ready to surprise the proud and prejudiced. And it coexists throughout the story with an emphasis on the importance of legitimacy and noblesse oblige and dynastic continuity, which is often strikingly uncynical given the dark-and-gritty atmosphere. […] In the end, whatever their politics in this world, both the show’s bad fans and its good fans are rooting a queen or for a king.

I am not, in general, a Douthat fan, mostly because of his hand-wringing in opposition to abortion and other “culture war” matters. But I think he’s a pretty solid pop culture writer, and very often the sort who’s helpful to read precisely because he doesn’t think the same things I think. And in this case, I’m even inclined to agree at least a little.

It’s pretty hard to deny that Game of Thrones has Bad Fans. Most of those Bad Fans are the kind who tweet endless harassment at culture writers who've criticized, say, the show’s use of sexual assault and its racial politics. But I would also love to see more critical and fan engagement with the idea that our designated protagonists are all protagonists-by-blood.

(One of the reasons for my arguable lack of generosity toward my fellow viewers here is that I remain convinced that Steve Rogers’ position in Captain America: Civil War is baldly anti-democratic, and that #TeamCap loyalists generally fail to reckon with this.)

Yes, Jon and Dany and Tyrion have all learned a lot that in theory makes them worthy of leadership. But does any of that actually mean that Dany (let’s just focus on her, for word count’s sake) deserves to be Queen of Westeros? More so than Cersei, sure. But should we really assume that the war has to end with one of our heroes on the Iron Throne? And is Dany actually entitled to any throne at all? Not really, if we’re honest. There’s no great moral case for her to have left Essos, where she could have still done a lot of good (setting aside, too, the White Savior thing). She left Essos because she felt entitled to a throne her family had abused for generations, in a land she barely remembers, full of people about whom she knows next to nothing. She wants to prove that she can be a better monarch than those who’ve gone before her. Tyrion wants to see her be a better monarch. Varys wants the country to stop bleeding. That all matters. But none of it is the main reason Dany started out on this path before meeting either of her newest advisors.

I’m not saying that Game of Thrones, or A Song of Ice and Fire, needs to end like the first year of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s run on Black Panther, with Wakanda finally beginning the process of writing up a constitution to distribute power away from its monarch. And I definitely doubt that it’ll go that way.

But also, um, why couldn’t it? Why shouldn’t it?

Would that be so terrible?

I Don’t Want to Just Call This Section “Stray Observations” but I Don’t Have a Different Name for It Yet Either and Sure I’ll Take Suggestions

Anyone else want to see Brienne spar with Tormund?

I have, for all practical intents and purposes, no real idea who Ed Sheeran is, so I actually really liked that scene of Arya with the Lannister soldiers. Another Surprisingly Nuanced moment. (If you feel the same way I do about the Surprisingly Nuanced thing, definitely read Matt Zoller Seitz on GoT’s grappling with its own legacy).

People not only cross oceans very quickly in this show, but build ships very quickly.

Heh.

When I read A Game of Thrones forever ago, I pictured Thoros of Myr as kind of a Shaolin monk type. I don’t know if that’s what GRRM pictured, but I still wish it was the case. I mean I like this Thoros just fine. But, you know. Asian representation. Just would’ve been cool.

I’ll try to be back here next week! In the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter if you’d like a convenient feed of other, better, culture writers.

#Game of Thrones #Dragonstone #Sansa Stark #Jon Snow #Daenerys Targaryen #Kris #reaction #TV #got season 7 #got spoilers #Kris reacts to GoT

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thelegendofclarke · 7 years

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@themiddleliddle replied to your post “Severus Snape”

"Do you really want that on your conscience?" Um, YES.

kariomgaksdjhflakjshg **lays forehead on table** gdi fiiinnneee fine FINE! You and @tesadoraofphaedra‘s tags on this post have convinced me. But like I promise you, you are going to regret this!

Warning: Anti-Snape Opinions and Reflections under the cut...

To me, it comes down to the distinction between good people who do shitty things, and shitty people who do good things. In this case, try as I might, I just can’t see Severus Snape as anything but a shitty person who did a good, brave thing.

Ok so first things first: I honestly think Snape is a fascinating character with a really interestingly done arc. But this is also one of the most frustrating things about him for me… It’s almost as if Rowling purposefully put all the elements in his narrative and his background that would garner empathy and support and love for him, but then deliberately stopped just short of giving him a full redemption. There are so many narrative devices in Snape’s background that are designed to pull at your heart strings:

It’s stated that he grew up in the poverty-stricken neighborhood of Spinner’s End and was depicted as being unwashed and wearing ill-fitting clothes in a flashback, very heavily implying that he was on low socio-economic status.

He had a very unhappy home life. It’s heavily implied that he was neglected by his parents, that his parents often fought, and that his father was possibly abusive.

It’s also narratively implied that this lack of care largely shaped Severus's bitter disposition and cruel behavior later in his life.

He was lonely and friendless as a child until he met Lily (which makes his later betrayal of her even more tragic imo).

Information from Severus's own memories of his first interactions with Lily and Petunia suggests that he was an awkward child with poor social skills.

He was mercilessly bullied, esp. by the Marauders. Like this post mentions, Sirius even tries to get Snape killed (or at the very least turned into a werewolf) by sending him to the Shrieking Shack while Remus is there during a full moon.

It’s clear that Snape loves Lily deeply and that he is heartbroken by loosing her as a friend. His worst memory is of the day he lost Lily’s friendship, worse even than the memory of the day she died.

It’s also clear that Snape is remorseful and absolutely devastated after her death.

He risks his own life to protect Harry and spy on Voldemort for Dumbledore.

But, despite all this, it’s like his character development doesn’t quite come full circle, and that really annoys me. I want to be able to like him, I want to believe that at his core he was good, I want to think that when it comes down to it he had the best of intentions, but I just can’t. IT DRIVES ME CRAZY JOANNE YOU DID THIS ON PURPOSE I KNOW YOU DID!

So moving on from my salty frustration with Joanne Kathleen Rowling, here, generally, are the reasons why I just can’t board The Snape Train:

1) (This first one is a little random, so I am just going to get it out of the way here at the beginning...) The Sectumsempra curse just really fucking creeps me out.

Its effect is basically the equivalent of an invisible sword used to slash the victim from a distance, and is said to have the power to cause never-healing deep wounds. If it’s not instantly fatal, it’s meant for causing maximum pain and a prolonged death from bleeding out. If the damage is only minor a healing spell may heal the wounds and essence of dittany may prevent scars, but any body parts that have been severed by this curse cannot be grown back (see George Weasley’s left ear).

I mean... it’s just... I guess... This curse is pretty clearly designed to be fatal. The Latin for Sectumsempra actually translates to “sever forever.” (h a h a Joanne you think you’re SO! CLEVER!) The only other curse in the series that is specifically designed to be fatal is Avada Kedavra, and at least that kills instantaneously. Sectumsempra on the other hand is designed for a slow, painful death. And Snape created that curse sometime during or before his Fifth Year at Hogwarts.

That makes me uncomfortable.

2) Snape joining the Death Eaters while he was still in school and calling Lily a mudblood.

Ok so as this post:

and @tesadoraofphaedra‘s tags on it point out, Snape was just a teenager when the incident happened. It’s also clear that Snape used the slur in a moment of anger and humiliation, and that he obviously felt guilty about it and apologized to Lily. BUT, Snape calling Lily a mud-blood isn’t JUST about him calling her a slur, its about the entire ideology of the Death Eaters and what that word meant. To the DE’s, mud-bloods were lesser humans; the DE’s entire movement was based on eradicating mud-bloods/muggle-borns. And it’s not like the Death Eaters were a ~newfangled group for the youths~, they were a well established group with significant historical ties to House Slytherin. The group was stared back in 1940 by Tom Riddle himself during his time at Hogwarts, and were referred to as the Knights of Walpurgis. The KoW was simply a precursor to the Death Eater organization, which they transitioned to in 1945. Not only was the organization well established, it was also inherently tied to Snape’s own house, so there is no logical way he could claim that he didn’t fully know or understand the Death Eaters’ mission or purpose.

During the meeting at Malfoy Manner in The Deathly Hallows, Voldemort summarize the nexus of the Death Eater ideology:

“Many of our oldest family trees become a little diseased over time. You must prune yours, must you not, to keep it healthy? Cut away those parts that threaten the health of the rest... And in your family, so in the world... We shall cut away the cancer that infects us until only those of the true blood remain...”

By calling Lily a mud-blood, Snape was basically saying to her “I don’t view you as someone worthy of life;” it wasn’t just a slur, it was a threat. It was Snape choosing to align himself with people who, given the chance, would kill her and everyone like her. It’s him saying that, even though he was sorry he called her a filthy mud-blood, he still believes she is one and that he isn’t giving up any of his offensive views or changing his behavior, because he still plans to join the Death Eaters when he is done with school. I mean basically he is saying, “I’m sorry I said it to your face.” So yeah, that apology falls on deaf ears for me, but the underlying meaning comes through loud and clear.

Sirius was a teenager who was being a prick and made an admittedly huge and dangerous mistake. But Snape was a teenager who made a ideological, value based choice. This was a turning point; he made the conscious choice to live a life dedicated to hatred and to eradicating an entire demographic of people. And it was a choice Lily (and I) couldn’t forgive him for.

3) I don’t see Snape’s love for Lily as selfless love, I see it as selfish love.

Extremely selfish love. Yes, it is obviously possible that Snape might have started out really and truly loving Lily in a healthy way. But, at some point, that love clearly developed into an unhealthy and selfish obsession. He didn’t care about her, he cared about having her. For me, nothing makes this more clear than the fact that Snape quite literally tried to make some kind of fucked up plea deal with Voldemort in which he got Lily in exchange for James and a one-year-old baby.

“Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?” “No — no message — I’m here on my own account!” Snape was wringing his hands. He looked a little mad, with his straggling black hair flying around him. “I — I come with a warning — no, a request — please —” Dumbledore flicked his wand. Though leaves and branches still flew through the night air around them, silence fell on the spot where he and Snape faced each other. “What request could a Death Eater make of me?” “The — the prophecy… the prediction… Trelawney…” “Ah, yes,” said Dumbledore. “How much did you relay to Lord Voldemort?” “Everything — everything I heard!” said Snape. “That is why — it is for that reason — he thinks it means Lily Evans!” “The prophecy did not refer to a woman,” said Dumbledore. “It spoke of a boy born at the end of July —” “You know what I mean! He thinks it means her son, he is going to hunt her down — kill them all —” “If she means so much to you,” said Dumbledore, “surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?” “I have — I have asked him —” “You disgust me,” said Dumbledore, and Harry had never heard so much contempt in his voice. Snape seemed to shrink a little, “You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?” Snape said nothing, but merely looked up at Dumbledore.

Snape was a Death Eater, he was one of Voldemort’s soldiers, he knew what Voldemort was capable. He knew full well that he was trying to trade two lives in order to be given Lily Potter, and no one can convince me otherwise. And it’s hard to make the argument that he did so in a moment of panic or passion or desperation, ect. and that he didn’t mean it, because he doesn’t even TRY to defend himself when Dumbledore points it out.

To me, this says that Snape doesn’t actually care about Lily’s happiness. He doesn’t care that he would be essentially trading her life for the murder of the two most important people to her in the entire world. He would be taking everything from her and not by her choice. What does he think, that Lily will thank him for making sure Voldemort spared her life in exchange for he husband and son’s? That she would be anything but devastated after such a tragedy? Did he consider the possibility that she might have never been happy again, much less happy with him? Nope, I doubt it. He wanted to possess her, not be loved by her.

And the most tragic part? Some people argue (and I generally agree) that it is implied that Snape’s request that Voldemort spare Lily was what allowed her to sacrifice herself for her son in the end. Voldemort ultimately agreed to Snape’s request as long as Lily didn’t get in his way, and offered her several chances to step aside. Her refusal to do so even though she had a choice, is what created the magic that protected Harry. Because Lily's death was a pure, selfless sacrifice, Harry was marked with the protection of her love. However, while I could buy the argument that Snape asking Voldemort to spare Lily was what allowed her to save Harry, I don’t think there is enough to support the argument that he knew she would do so and planned it that way. While Snape may have known Lily better than most, there is no way he could have predicted the situation so exactly. Also, I would make the counter argument that had Snape planned for Lily to sacrifice herself for Harry, that Snape would be less hostile toward and less resentful of him; I feel like that would be reaching nonsensical levels of Snape projecting his own guilt onto Harry. As the story stands, while Snapes treatment of Harry is inexcusable, it is somewhat understandable why he would feel this way. If Snape had planned for Lily to end up dying by sacrificing herself for Harry, his resentment of Harry’s role in her death would definitely that would definitely be moving into the realm of not only inexcusable, but incomprehensible.

4) Snape didn’t actually change as he got older.

I think @tesadoraofphaedra made the point pretty well on the post above: #i understand the feeling of this post but isnt ...#huh #i mean the things we do as 'adults are what weight more in this case #someone help me here but #because of snapes actions in all his adulthood were trash #but sirius was awful as a teenager #but grew up (and soon) to be a good person as an adult #keeping in mind that he was barely twenty when the first order? #i mean... someone please#this is so awful... #though i feel bad also because i do currently and always defend pansy and she was an awful kid too #but she didnt actively try to kill anyone that i rember? #she only was a bully and we dont know whatnhappened to her so i like to think she became a good person #but... going back to the point #snape was The Adult Who Knows tm and still bullied kids #so we hate him for more than being a bad teenager...?

Agreed! I definitely dislike Snape for more than his crappy teenage bullshit, I also dislike him for his crappy adult bullshit. Snape is a teacher, in a position of power, who bullies and torments his pupils, and honestly to me this is the most reprehensible thing of all. He treated Harry like absolute shit, just because of who his parents were. On Harry's FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, as an eleven year old, Snape shamed him in front of his whole class. He gave him detention for things that weren't his fault. He automatically lowered Harry's marks. He victimized Harry and his friends. Remember when he forced Neville to feed his toad a potion that was potentially poison? Remember how Neville's boggart was Snape, because he was SO AFRAID OF HIS TEACHER? How about when he made fun of Hermione's large front teeth? I honestly can’t decide what I hate the more in this situation: that Severus Snape, a professor of Potions at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, mentor to students and responsible for turning them into successful wizards, torments Neville Longbottom throughout his Hogwarts career because he was NOT the chosen one, OR that he torments Harry Potter because he WAS the chosen one. Both of these children are innocent; they have done nothing to deserve this treatment except to simply exist.

Seriously one of the things that drives me so insane about Snape is that he could have been such an incredible teacher, HE HAD SO MUCH WASTED POTENTIAL! It’s the same thing that makes me so mad about characters like Bellatrix Lestrange (incredibly skilled in the Dark Arts and dueling, very powerful occlumens) and Narcissa Malfoy (master of apparition, possibly one of the most powerful occlumens ever), and also what just fucking kills me about Frank and Alice Longbottom (extremely talented and highly regarded aurors, were thought to be some of the best in wizarding history), THEY WERE SO GIFTED! They could have done so much with their skills. Just like the those people, Snape was not only clearly talented, but also powerful af.

At sixteen he was correcting and improving the instructions in his potions textbooks.

He was capable of unsupported flight. HE COULD FLY WITHOUT A BROOM... The only other person in ALL OF WIZARDING HISTORY who could do this was Voldemort. DUMBLEDORE COULD NOT EVEN PULL OFF THIS SHIT!

He was, like, creepily good at the Dark Arts. Even Sirius said "Snape knew more curses when he arrived at Hogwarts than half the kids in seventh year." At eleven he knew more curses that graduating students like wtf Severus for the love of GOD go outside and play bb!

He is credited with creating a good number of popular spells like Levicorpus and it’s counterpart Liberacorpus, Muffliato, and curses like Langlock and the Toenail Growth Hex, and the healing incantation Vulnera Sanentur.

By his FIFTH! YEAR! he had developed his signature (fatal) curse Sectumsempra which, as I have discussed, just absolutely give me the heebie jeebs.

As discussed a little later, Snape was an incredibly skilled occlumens, possibly even the best in history given that Voldemort was considered the post powerful legilimens, as well as a skilled legilimens. The fact that his cover was NEVER actually blown once in 17 years is honestly just kind of statistically amazing. Voldemort even ended up killing him in the end only because he mistakenly believed Snape was the Master of the Elder Wand, not because he found out Snape was a spy.

And the thing that makes me ~clench~ the most is that unlike those other characters, he was actually in a position to make a difference; HE WAS A TEACHER. He was supposed to be shaping the future leaders and active members of the wizarding community. He could have revolutionized how potion classes were taught. His improvements to and simplifications of potion brewing could have made it so that they could start teaching important shit like how to brew healing potions and antidotes, or how to identify poisons and their symptoms SO MUCH EARLIER! But instead, he just decides to be a salty dickhead who makes one of his first year students poison his own goddamn toad. Snape held a position of serious power and influence over his students, and he completely and utterly abused that.

Sirius Black grew up; he learned and he changed and he stopped being an entitled, mean spirited, punkass bitch. James Potter also grew up; he learned and he changed he took his absolutely overinflated fuckboy ego down several notches, and found some much needed chill and humility, and eventually figured out that being cruel and bullying those he perceived to be weaker wasn’t going to make other people like him or make him feel better about himself. Both James and Sirius, as well as Lily, devoted their lives to making the world a better place. During the First Wizarding War, the Order of the Phoenix knew they were fighting a loosing battle, but that didn’t stop them. They made the conscious decision to stand up and fight for what they believed; to fight for tolerance and freedom and the kind of world that they wanted to live in.

You know, there is this line that Sirius says to Peter in Order of the Phoenix that I honestly think sums it up perfectly:

Sirius: "What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard that ever existed? Only innocent lives, Peter!" Peter: "You don’t understand! He would have killed me, Sirius!" Sirius: "THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED! DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!"

To me, this says that the Death Eaters were fighting for the benefit of themselves, while the Order was fighting for the benefit of everyone. If you think about it, a huge number of members of the Order (as well as their Allies) were actually pure bloods who could have potentially benefitted from siding with Voldemort, or even just staying out of it all together. The Longbottom’s, the Weasley’s, the Prewett’s, the Shackebolt’s, the Bones’s (whose family line was almost completely wiped out during the First War), the McKinnon’s, several members of the Black Family; all pureblood families who were identified as “blood traitors” either outright or by association. They all had everything to loose by joining the order and essentially nothing to gain. But they all made the choice to fight for their friends and their families and their futures and what they thought was right.

The Death Eaters were radical pure blood supremacists that killed and tortured people on Voldemort's behalf who chose to join Voldemort either out of fear or out of actual support for his ideologies. Which leads me into...

6) If Harry hadn’t been the Chosen One and Lily Evans hadn’t died, Severus Snape would still be a Death Eater.

Snape became a Death Eater while he was still in school as a conscious choice based on his support for their pureblood supremacy and despite his own halfblood status. He learned through eavesdropping on Dumbledore that someone with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord would be born in July. Snape told Voldemort, who in turned assumed the child would be born to Lily Evans. **THIS RIGHT HERE WAS SNAPE'S TURNING POINT.** It was Snape’s love for/obsession with Lily that lead him to double cross Voldemort and ask Dumbledore to save Lily. If Voldemort had assumed that Neville Longbottom were the Chosen One, Snape would not have given one single flying fuck and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

Yes, Snape was heartbroken and just desperately sad about Lily's death. And perhaps the most tragic irony of all is that the only person he has to blame (besides Voldemort) is himself. But he was never sorry about what he'd done in his past. It’s out of anger and sorrow over Lily’s death that he agrees to spy on Voldemort and help protect harry. Never ONCE does he say he is doing it because its the right thing to do. He even says in The Deathly Hollows:

“I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe.”

Not because Harry was an innocent child, not because Voldemort was evil, not because it was the right thing to do... Just to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. And what does he do to honor her memory? His first friend, his supposed soul mate, the most important person to him in the world? He is a complete prick to her only child, the last piece of her left, the boy who has her eyes. Honestly, I highly doubt Lily would have thanked him for how he treated the son she died for, she probably would have kicked his ass.

This is what I mean when I say that I don’t think his development/redemption arc came full circle. All the elements were there: the depressing childhood, the tragic backstory, the broken heart catalyst (even though I ~hate~ the “woman dies so man can find himself trope more than anything in this world), the chance to make things right, the eventual turn to The Good Side, the Hero’s Death. He was this close to not being a complete douchecanoe, but he just didn’t quite get there, he never really had the necessary change of heard OR change of heart. Instead of just taking it all the way and Fighting the Good Fight, he bullied children he was in a position of power over, made other peoples’ lives miserable, and was generally a lonely, bitter, resentful, miserable old asshole... All over loosing a girl who was never even his.

But here is where we come to the part that makes my feelings on Snape so complicated, and where I think I definitely diverge from most other people who dislike him (and probably one of the more tragic things about him tbh): I don’t think any of this means that Snape wasn’t brave; and while I don’t necessarily think he was a hero, I do think some of his acts were heroic.

Just because Snape’s motivations for becoming a double agent for the Order and spying on Voldemort and protecting Harry were driven by selfish reasons, just because the were driven by revenge for the death of a woman he was obsessed with who didn’t reciprocate his feelings, does not objectively make them any less brave in my opinion. He may not have been a hero, he may not have even been a good person, but he still took tremendous risks. In fact, I could even argue that the risks that Snape took were second only to those taken by Harry himself. Voldemort was one of the most powerful wizards in the world, and he is considered history's greatest legilimens, and Snape was part of his inner most circle and consistently in contact with him. This means that for 17 years, Snape had to be on top of his game. Clearly he was an incredibly skilled occlumens, possibly even the best in history given that Voldemort was considered the post powerful legilimens (although I would totally make an argument for Narcissa Malfoy to hold the title of Greatest Occlumens given that she convinced Voldemort Harry was dead when she knew he wasn’t, but whatever that’s a WHOLE different convo). But this also means that if he let Voldemort in for ever a second, it would have cost him his life.

Snape essentially signed up to be a villain in the eyes of every one closest to him and to lead a lonely, largely friendless life. He had to face everything ranging from general distrust to forcible opposition from he co-workers. He had to stand by or turn away while his friends, colleagues and allies were brutally tortured and/or killed, the awfulness of which I think is really well depicted by Charity Burbage’s death scene at Malfoy Manner in Deathly Hollows:

Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy’s wand, pointed it directly at the slowly revolving figure suspended over the table, and gave it a tiny flick. The figure came to life with a groan and began to struggle against invisible bonds. “Do you recognize our guest, Severus?” asked Voldemort. Snape raised his eyes to the upside-down face. All of the Death Eaters were looking up at the captive now, as though they had been given permission to show curiosity. As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrified voice, “Severus! Help me!” “Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again. ... One of the Death Eaters spat on the floor. Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape again. “Severus . . . please . . . please . . .” “Silence,” said Voldemort, with another twitch of Malfoy’s wand, and Charity fell silent as if gagged. ... For the third time, Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape. Tears were pouring from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite impassive, as she turned slowly away from him again. “Avada Kedavra.” The flash of green light illuminated every corner of the room. Charity fell, with a resounding crash, onto the table below, which trembled and creaked.

How many times would Snape have to had done this in 17 years? How many times did he have someone he knew beg him to just “please, help me!” and he couldn’t do it. Because he had to appear loyal, because he was playing the long game.

He entered into an Unbreakable Vow to commit the murder of a man he had known almost his whole life. He promised to protect the students of Hogwarts from the Death Eaters who controlled both the school and the Ministry. HE HAD TO SPEND WAY TOO MUCH TIME WITH BELLATRIX LESTRANGE. He lived in a constant state of mortal danger. He saved so. many. lives. I honestly don’t know if the Second Wizarding War could have been won without him on the inside... I don’t know what else to call this besides stupid, amazing, unquestionable, unwavering bravery.

Snape knew what Voldemort was capable of, he saw it with his own eyes, yet he continued to spy for the Order even after Lily was dead. So when Harry says that Snape was probably the bravest man he ever knew, idk if I can exactly argue with that. Harry didn’t call him a good man, or a kind man, or a heroic man, or anything like that. I mean, for all we know he could have like mentally added “and he was also a fucking miserable twat who got what was coming to him.” But objectively speaking, I don’t think he’s wrong. Honestly, the only person I can really think of who was braver was Harry himself.

End Note: And now you know why I don’t ever do this, because I am physically incapable of being anything close to concise. I hope you have enjoyed this obnoxiously rambley wall of text!

End End Note: @themiddleliddle I bet you are so sorry you even asked :) And @sansapotter I just feel like, for some reason, this might be relevant to things you are interested in? Maybe?

#seriously this got ridiculous and i am SO SORRY!#really idk why i'm like this #themiddleliddle #tesadoraofphaedra #alys replies #anti-snape #anti snape #anti severus snape #harry potter for ts #alys opinions #sansapotter #this won't let me add a cut and it's DRIVING! ME! CRAZY!

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skimmonsfiction · 8 years

Text

Wherever You Go, Ch1

COWRITTEN with @pitkin084 (Pitkin on Ao3)

A/N: Hey! I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, but I’ve been working on this new fic with my new pal and it’s going to be a long one packed with angst (but plenty of fluff too!) so buckle your seat belts!

Chapter 1 (It’s the Falling):

When she felt she had no other option, Jemma sank down and tried to launch herself up, but the seatbelt partially over her stomach forced the air out of her mouth. Large bubbles escaped and darted to the surface and Jemma reached out at them even though they weren't something tangible she could catch again. Even if it wasn't breathable air, it had filled the space in her lungs. Now that they were empty, Jemma's body reflexively inhaled no matter how desperately she fought not to. Her lungs had hurt before, but once they filled with saltwater they stung and Jemma was overwhelmed by an all encompassing panic. She tried struggling out of the seat belt, but it was too tight. She was making the motions like she was trying to swim up, but it wasn't getting her anywhere. She expelled the water inside her, but there was nothing but more for her to suck back in and it felt like her head was near exploding. She jerked wildly as she felt the darkness taking over and she reached for Skye, finding her shoulder and gripping it tightly before it released and her body went limp.

The weather in Balikpapan, Indonesia was hot, humid and infiltrating the terminals of its international airport thanks to a broken HVAC system. Rather than having perfectly pleasant and adjusted air flowing through the large open terminals, there was stagnate, humid air thick with swampy exhales from the packed masses of sweaty humans waiting in a glass prison of an airport terminal which was acting more like a greenhouse right then. People fanned themselves with any form of paper or magazine or anything big enough to create a gust of wind. There were no free spots to sit in the terminal. Skye cut her losses. She parked her carry-on bag next to a row of seats that was near the gate she needed for her flight, popped the handle down into the top and sat down on her bag. For a brief moment she thought she’d made a colossal mistake and that her bag was about to collapse. Really, the wheels shifted and she quickly set her feet down and steadied the bag. Safe.

Skye picked this particular spot in the terminal because it gave her a view of one Mr. Miles Lydon. Technically, he and Skye were traveling together. Due to the nature of their acquaintance, they were pretending not to know each other. This had involved showing up separately to the airport. Now, the chump was chatting up some skinny redhead with long legs a few rows of seats away. Skye would escort him to Los Angeles. They would meet up with her people and she would hand him over with a copy of her hard drive and she’d gladly wash her hands of Miles Lydon for good. The problem was that they were being hunted. Skye had no idea who might be hunting them. Actually, she knew the organization involved, but she didn’t know the make and model aesthetic of their goons. She took a nonchalant look around the terminal.

To her 3 o’clock, a little boy played by the windows with a handful of Avengers action figures. He gave them full conversations, made all kinds of sound effects and seemed to have no idea how miserably hot it was in the terminal. Nearby his father stood chatting with a middle aged man, talking about his son as the man engaged in conversation with him. To her 11 o’clock was Miles and the redhead - she seemed to be eating up whatever he was dishing out. Skye almost rolled her eyes. 10 o’clock, she spotted a chestnut skinned woman in a bright floral dress who was chatting up a businessman with perfectly gelled hair. Skye spotted her distract him and swipe his wallet but, well that was none of her business.

To her 9 o’clock was a pretty woman avidly bickering on the intricacies of something Skye couldn’t actually decipher and Skye was distracted by the sound of the woman’s voice, anyhow. It was the accent. Skye couldn’t help it. She bounced her knee up and down rapidly, trying her very best not to think about the fact that she was getting on another plane. She’d been on far too many planes in the last month and a half and she just wanted to go home. She hated flying. It wasn’t a fear. It was just a distaste. She absently bit at her cuticles every now and then and checked her watch repeatedly. Her jacket was already in her lap since she wasn’t going to be putting it on until they landed but it was so hot she had peeled her shirt off until she was down to just her tank top and dropped that in her lap too. Her knee kept bouncing nervously as she pulled her hair up into a sloppy ponytail after hanging her reading glasses from the front of her tank top. Then it was back to bouncing her knee and absently drumming on her thighs with her fingers.

"Oh, Fitz," Jemma groaned, exasperated. She brought her hand to her forehead and rubbed at her sticky brow. The muggy air wasn't the only thing bothering her. She and Fitz had been debating about space time travel theories and whether or not people should be attempting to study it. After eventually reaching the conclusion that it was possible to achieve by humans, Fitz explained how he thought the best use would be to find the point in time in evolution where apes began evolving into humans and stop it, because "everything would be better if we were all monkeys". Jemma chose to abandon the ridiculous conversation and find a better pass time to distract her from the seeming lack of oxygen in the room. She fiddled around on her phone, checking her email and any messages she may have missed just to have an excuse to do anything but talk to Fitz. She'd had enough of that for the past month, him being the only person who spoke english other than her translator. She was happy to help all those who had fallen ill with the ravenous bird flu, but she was quite happy to be headed home. She missed her cool, air conditioned facility back in LA where she wasn't exposed to deadly diseases. Fitz was working on engineering a mechanical limb replacement for veterans with the other doctors and Jemma was sure they'd be happy to have him back. He hadn't done much on the trip, it was more of a vacation for him while Jemma had been working nonstop to help a village with their epidemic. Jemma looked around the terminal, hoping to see some sign that the plane would be boarding soon. There was a tall, dark haired man intimidating the air hostess with annoyed body language. She craned her neck to see two women in pilot's uniforms heading toward the jet bridge. It was something. As she spun back around to settle in her seat, her eyes connected with those of an anxious looking brunette who seemed to have been watching her. The woman quickly averted her eyes, but it didn't stop Jemma from smiling softly and reaching out. "Afraid to fly?" She asked, just hoping she spoke English so Jemma didn't have to awkwardly exit the interaction.

“Hm, what?” Skye had initially looked away as soon as the British woman had turned back around and spotted her. She was normally way smoother than that. Skye was willing to chalk this one up to the heat. “Afraid to - who? Me?” Skye pointed to herself, not entirely conscious of just how fast she was bouncing her knee up and down. “No,” she furrowed her brow and shook her head. “No, no. I’m not,” she cleared her throat and expelled a nervous chuckle as her eyes still made a nonchalant pass around the terminal to make a subtle check on Miles. “I’m not afraid of flying,” she insisted. As she said it, Skye finally settled her gaze directly on the woman’s and found herself a bit distracted by her eyes, which prevented her from explaining what it was about flying that made her jittery. Excellent accent, pretty, kind eyes and not willing to put up with her friend’s diatribe on devolving back to monkey hybrids? Skye picked herself a decent spot to set a spell.

"Somehow I find that hard to believe." Jemma chuckled, pointedly glancing at the brunette's knee, though her soft smile was letting her new acquaintance know that there was nothing wrong with it.

"I can assure you it's perfectly safe. You're much more likely to be involved in a car accident than in an aircraft malfunction." Jemma offered up the scrap of information like it would help, not quite realizing that it probably wouldn't lessen the woman's anxiety about the plane, but raise it for daily life. She cringed internally, but it was too late and unfortunately there was no unsend button for her mouth.

Skye looked down at her knee. Oh, right. That. She arched her eyebrows slightly as she looked back over at the woman. Her lips curled into an amused little smirk. She put her hand down on her knee in an attempt to at least slow its bouncing. “It’s the falling,” She said, as if that just explained everything. It didn’t. Skye’s nervous jitters about flying stemmed from a very specific incident, but it wasn’t exactly one that she could go and tell a stranger about, regardless of how pretty she might be. She felt the bob of her knee still going under her hand and tried to ignore it.

"Well then I'd say it's a very good thing that airplanes fly." Jemma didn't laugh this time, but the smile grew on her face. Something about her was pulling her in, telling her she should help.

"Simmons." Jemma came closer and thrust her hand out awkwardly and she didn't figure out how unwarranted and strange her self introduction really was until Fitz frowned at her. "Er, my name. It's Jemma. I mean, I'm Jemma. Jemma Simmons." She was grinning like a fool by the end, knowing there was no way to redeem herself and embracing how inept she was in social situations despite her continuous attempts.

Though she was acutely aware of her surroundings and the conversations happening in her periphery (the accented man and woman over her right shoulder near the two men talking while one’s son played with toys were avidly arguing over who had made the bigger discovery of treasure on their latest attempt to find some specific sunken ship, Miles still flirting away with the Redhead who was playing along, two strangers, one a middle-aged man avidly telling a younger well-dressed businessman an old, seemingly endless, war story), Skye’s focus was on the woman sitting next to her. She couldn’t help the way a lopsided grin overtook her lips, pushed her cheeks up and caused her eyes to scrunch just slightly at their corners. Skye didn’t get a chance to reply before Jemma had thrown her hand out and began to work her way through a multi-layered introduction. Her right eyebrow quirked up at the initial name since it seemed odd for a first name. Skye’s grin stretched farther across her lips as the woman – Jemma – went on trying to give Skye her name. She wiped her palm on her pant leg to make sure it wasn’t clammy from the heat then reached out and took Jemma’s hand in a firm, but not overly so, handshake. “Nice to meet you Simmons, Jemma, Jemma, Jemma Simmons,” she said with a teasing glint of mischief in her eyes as she smiled.

“I’m Skye,” she added her own introduction in return. “Just Skye.” It never felt quite right to give her full name, her birth name. She had only known her birth name for a couple of years after all. Skye was a name she had chosen when she was a kid (after the orphanage had given her an absolutely terrible name that only ever left the other kids picking on her). It felt more authentic, even without a last name. “What brought you to Balikpapan?” she asked as she released Jemma’s hand if only so things wouldn’t get weird. She'd been eavesdropping on Jemma’s conversation with her friend and had figured the two were in some science-related field of work, but it wasn't exactly clear what field of work they were in based off of a conversation that seemed like it revolved around time travelling space monkeys or something resembling that.

Jemma's cheeks grew just one shade darker at the teasing, and it would barely be visible to the untrained eye. Her lips pursed together, but in the form of a small smile. Her present company seemed to be much funnier than Fitz, and not because she was being so ridiculously serious that it was hilarious. "Well, Skye," Jemma's lips turned up slightly on one side into a small half-smirk. "You have quite an ironic name for someone as jittery as yourself about flight." Jemma made her own teasing comment and brushed an escaped strand of hair from her ponytail out of her face so she could see Skye more clearly. Her look intrigued Jemma more than anything. She looked like someone she would see in one of the awful action and adventure movies Fitz liked so much, but on Skye it made her wonder if she should watch more of them.

It took a moment for it to really register in her brain that Skye had asked her a question since she had gotten caught up in just enjoying looking at her. When she answered, it would be obvious to anyone that Jemma was proud of her job when her chest swelled up some.

"I work for the CDC, biochemist by name, but I'm here to confirm the presence of Avian Influenza in Indonesia. So I hope you've washed your hands recently." Jemma joked and gestured with the hand she'd just shaken Skye's with.

Skye was certainly perceptive. She'd learned to read people long before she'd ever learned to read her way through the intricate workings of software and various coding. She'd had to learn how to read people very early in her life, a survival tactic and one of her greatest self preservation tools to date. She felt a tiny tinge of guilt for making Jemma blush but since the woman was still smiling and talking to her, she knew she hadn't offended her. Skye tilted her head slightly in contemplation. "I suppose it is some level of ironic - put that in your song, Alanis," she chuckled. Skye watched the swell of pride as it shifted Jemma's posture in her seat. Just past Jemma's shoulder, she spotted Jemma's friend, eyeing them up and looking rather sullen about their conversation. She figured he must have been mad that his theory of Devolving to Simians had been curtailed. She arched her eyebrows, not sure she'd expected an infectious disease doctor out of all the various possibilities. Skye reflexively glanced at her hand at the mention of bird flu and washing them. "I did, actually, after I used the restroom on my way here. At the moment, I feel like I should go compulsively clean them again, now," she chuckled and then leaned slightly closer, dropping her voice ever slightly, she added conspiratorially, "But, between you and me...if you did confirm avian flu, I think we're royally screwed in this human soup," she scrunched her nose, still giving Jemma that crooked little smile and motioned generally to the overheated sauna of a terminal surrounding them.

Somehow, Jemma now found herself hoping that boarding would be delayed a little longer. It was a chance meeting, and Jemma hated to think that the woman she was sitting next to would disappear in five minutes when they got on the plane, never to be seen again. It had been a long time since she'd been so immediately been drawn to a person, or even enjoyed their company, other than Fitz of course, but he had his moments. "We are in optimal conditions for the spread of disease, aren't we?" Jemma chuckled and leaned back in the seat. Maybe relaxing her muscles would help cool her off, and if it helped even the slightest bit it was worth it. She was joking by pointing it out, but she did now have the urge to put a mask over her face and avoiding touching anything and everything. But she was pretty tired, and the severity of the bird flu outbreak was mild, contained mostly within a series of villages, not quite reaching the cities. When she noticed the look of distaste on Skye's face she quickly tried to ease it. "It's only a level one concern. Practice normal flu season cautions and you should be fine." Jemma promised.

Skye chuckled. "Thanks, Doc, I'll take it under advisement," she grinned. She wondered how old Jemma was since she looked rather young for the kind of job she described. Then again, Skye had no idea what kind of schooling requirements were involved in having a government agency send you to a foreign land to investigate communicable diseases. It definitely seemed like an at-your-own-peril kind of gig. Skye could relate to that. She felt a bit cooler since she'd removed her top shirt layer, so that was a blessing. "So you work out of a CDC office in Los Angeles or are you continuing on to somewhere else from LA?" Far be it from Skye to pass up an opportunity to see if the cute scientist with the selfless sounding humanitarian job and decent sense of humor might reside in the same city as her. She did her best not to sound too hopeful or overly eager to uncover these details. Seconds after she finished her question, the fluttering sound of wings drew her attention and she looked up in time to spot a very large pigeon swoop from high in the rafters right down to their area, where it used it's talons to steal the candy bar that Fitz was about to eat. In a swift whoosh, the bird took its dive bomb, snagged its bounty and was off again before Fitz had even processed what happened. "Speaking of birds," Skye quipped with a chortle she couldn't contain. Fitz glared at her. Skye cleared her throat and tried to bite back a laugh. "Sorry bout your loss, dude," she offered an apology for her laugh. She almost added, 'Bet that wouldn't have happened if you were a monkey,' but managed to bite her tongue.

Jemma's laugh was louder than most of the hushed voices in the terminal and it seemed to bounce off the ceiling. Unlike Skye, she had no qualms with openly laughing at the dumb look on his face. Fitz crossed his arms over his chest and refused to look at them or acknowledge Skye's attempt to speak to him. He reminded Jemma of an upset child and it took a moment for her to regain control over her lungs. "I do work in LA for the time being, yes," Jemma nodded and wiped away the near tears that had gathered in the corners of her eyes as Fitz continued to pout and sink in his chair. "Fitz works at the hospital in the tech division." She added. "What about you, is the city of angels your final destination?" Jemma couldn't help it if she too was a bit curious about her new friend's origins. She initially thought she was starting a brief conversation in passing, but she found she was anticipating any continuations with excitement.

Skye caught another round of the giggles, unable to hold back in light of Jemma's raucous, infectious laughter. It was a damn shame when that sound faded, just as she was taking it all in. Skye decided in that exact moment that she was going to do all she could over their twenty-two and some odd hour flight to make sure she spoke to Jemma as often as possible once she found where the woman was sitting on the plane; she wanted to find out all things possible about the woman sitting next to her. Granted, Skye could have easily pulled her phone out and fiddled with it for a few minutes and she'd easily have all manner of background information on one Jemma Simmons, but that wouldn't be nearly as fun as seeing if she could make Jemma laugh again, or doing whatever might make her keep on smiling like that. Skye was not the kind of person to fall fast for someone, but there was a draw to Jemma that she couldn't quite put her finger on. She just knew she wanted more of the freckled woman's general presence around her. Skye mentally cheered when Jemma said LA was her base of operation and it showed a bit as her face brightened at the confirmation. She did her best to play it cool as she nodded to this new information about Fitz, who was continuing to pout. Skye took a small amount of pity on him in light of his candy bar. "Yeah, it's my home turf," Skye grinned. She leaned over, a bit ignorant of the show she accidentally gave Jemma in doing so, and pushed her discarded shirt and jacket out of the way to reach into a section of her messenger bag. "I've actually hacked into your office's systems before," Skye said as he sat back up and whistled for Fitz. He was still pouting when he looked her way and she tossed one of her stashed protein bars to him. It wasn't strictly candy, but it was birthday cake flavored, that had to count for something, right? She turned back to Jemma and realized how she'd phrased her comment. "Officially, I mean," she paused and scrunched her eyes, shook her head at herself a moment and smirked a bit. "For security purposes. That's my job, I'm the," she inhaled a breath and put her hands up as if miming displaying the flashy title on a brightly lit marquee (she used the turn of her gaze to very subtly check that Miles was still alright), "Senior Electronic Security Developer for QKE Technologies." She dropped her hands to her lap, knee still bouncing, though not as much, and smiled over at Jemma. "I find all the weak spots and fortify them against malicious attack." She said.

"It's a small world then, isn't it?" Jemma's head tilted slightly with curiosity at Skye's apparent connection to herself through work. If Fitz wasn't in such a sour mood Jemma was sure he would have gotten along with Skye just fine. Of course it wasn't so strange that they both happened to live in LA, since they'd both parked themselves in the terminal for a flight to that location, but Jemma still had a feeling she was having a stroke of luck, despite how illogical it was to think it. "So, miss tech genius, how did you end up in Indonesia?" Jemma questioned. It was the one piece that didn't yet make sense, and Jemma liked to figure out people's puzzles.

"Small world, indeed," But a convenient one it seemed. Or fortunate, perhaps, was the better word. She let a bright smile flash across her face. She was enjoying this conversation, despite the couple of not-100%-accurate informational tidbits she had to hand out about herself. "I'm here on the company's dime," She said. "I've spent the last few weeks building entirely new infrastructure and software components for a banking firm affiliate of one of our bigger clients," she leaned over once more and this time came up from her messenger bag on the floor with a business card, which she handed to Jemma. It would pass muster and though the contact information on it wasn't exactly her everyday real life civilian contact information, she would know who she had given this business card to since she gave them so sparingly on purpose. Likewise, if Jemma tried to background checkup on Skye based on the information on the card, well, they'd check out. it was designed that way.

Jemma pinched the business card between two fingers and her eyes landed on the number. She instantly wondered if this was Skye's way of giving Jemma her number, but not in the literal sense. She wasn't sure if it was just to spread her business card or if she would actually want Jemma to call the number. She liked to think it was the second reason, so she unzipped her own bag and pulled out a card with the bright blue CDC logo in the upper lefthand corner. It had the full "Dr. Jemma Simmons, Biochemist" title and Jemma went slightly pink as she offered it up to Skye. She caught Fitz giving her the stink eye during her movement, but she paid him no mind. He could be grumpy on his own.

“It’s only fair I show you mine if you’ve shown me yours.” Jemma smirked.

Skye beamed a brilliant grin at Jemma. "That sounds like a challenge," she quipped. "And I accept." She made a deliberate show of eyeing up Jemma's business card and said. "You should know that giving this to me means you won't be surprised when I use it to contact you back in LA and advise you of my hopefully clean bill of health absent any avian flu," she said as she accepted the card, mostly as a way to inform Jemma that she fully intended to make use of this exchange of information in the future. She looked down at the card and grinned at the official information listed, including Jemma’s own fancy title just as the intercom in the terminal came to life with a soft, but relatively loud, ding. Movement all around the terminal halted and silence filled the overheated building as people listened for boarding information, which came at them in a number of different languages. When the announcement was over, suddenly the terminal was full of movement as everyone began to gather their items to prepare to board. Skye felt herself frown as she glanced over her shoulder toward the door to the gangway. Bummer. Skye didn't drag herself to her feet right away. She watched as people queued up with their carry-on bags and belongings, tickets in hands. Skye sat there, on her small carry-on suitcase, bouncing her knee even faster than before. She caught sight of Miles as he strolled by her with his backpack slung over a shoulder, still putting the moves on the redhead as she went with him. Up until just then (and mostly thanks to Jemma), Skye had forgotten just how much she was dreading having to be confined inside a flying plane that could fall out of the sky for any number of reasons at any moment, for the next twenty-two hours.

Only minutes before, the thing Jemma had wanted more than anything was the announcement telling her the plane was boarding and they would be on their way home. Now, however, Jemma's heart sunk and she watched people start getting into the long line to board. Fitz practically flew from his seat and appeared in front of Jemma, grabbing the handle of her suitcase and tipping it so they were ready to go. Jemma wasn't quite ready yet, and her insides lurched when she saw Skye's face wrinkled in thought and her knee bounced more aggressively. "Please don't tell me you've decided to stay in Indonesia." Fitz moaned and Jemma gave him a glare tell him to hush up. "Everything will be fine, we'll be in LA before you know it." Jemma felt like she was sticking her neck out, but it was just her hand, and she rested it firmly on Skye's knee to stop the shaking. After a good three seconds of uninterrupted eye contact, Jemma slipped her boarding pass out of her pocket and angled it so Skye could see. "You know where to find me." She grinned once more and squeezed Skye's knee before she finally gave in to to Fitz's whining and got up.

Skye hadn’t expected that. She’d spotted Fitz jumping to his feet from the corner of her eye but wasn’t all that startled by it. The hand, though, on her knee, was unexpected but not in a bad way at all. Quite the opposite. She blinked and looked over at Jemma’s hand on her knee which,while it had stalled her leg from bouncing, the touch had only started her heart suddenly skittering around wildly in her chest. Skye couldn’t remember the last time a simple touch like that had affected her in such a way, especially from someone she’d only just met. Her gaze shifted as she lifted her head and locked her eyes to Jemma’s. She heard her own pulse in her ears and wondered if Jemma could hear it. She felt her cheeks heat up, though they only went a very slight shade of pink. It only took a second to read off Jemma’s seat number from the boarding pass before her eyes were back on Jemma’s face. “Count on it, Doctor Simmons,” She offered up a warm smile. “Thank you.” She added as she climbed, albeit still reluctantly, to her feet.

"Fitz, move." Jemma grunted, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath so she didn't shove her friend into his seat. He was fussing about sliding through the tight space and he'd made them stop suddenly, causing the passenger behind her to press up against her full body. Jemma cringed and was positive this was much worse than the terminal. It was even more crowded, stuffy, and Skye wasn't there to talk to. Fitz finally managed to worm into his seat and Jemma slid in behind him with her messenger bag after cramming her roller-board suitcase into the very little remaining space in the overhead compartments. She finally plopped down into her seat and audibly sighed. Her face was red and hot and she was sure her hair was frazzled from the humidity. After fussing around with her shirt and adjusting her tie, an embarrassing moan escaped her throat as she leaned her head back and felt the blast of the air conditioning from the small, individual vent above her seat. She reached up and turned it on full power and closed her eyes, humming blissfully. She ignored Fitz babbling about this and that next to her and kept her eyes closed as the last of the passengers boarded so she didn't have to see how crowded it really was. When the vibrations of people walking by and the occasional brushing of a thigh against her shoulder finally subsided, she opened her eyes and was surprised to see, from her aisle seat on the right side of the plane, that Skye was twisted around in her seat, and it looked like she saw her. Jemma waved with one hand and pulled her ponytail free with the other (maybe a little bit for show) and ran her fingers through it to smooth it out.

Skye was far too jittery to get on the plane in the middle of the crush of people boarding. She watched to make sure Miles got into the gangway alright and eventually joined the tail end of the line. Skye didn’t enjoy flying, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t as efficient as possible when boarding. She spotted Jemma after she’d put her carry-on into the overhead compartment and slipped into her seat - a right hand middle seat in an aisle of four seats. The aisle seat to her right was empty, to her left sat the little boy who’d been playing with toys in the terminal and to the boy’s left was the man Skye assumed was his father.

“Hey, little dude,” Skye said, not sitting down yet. She dropped her bag into her empty seat and pulled a small pterodactyl toy from her back pocket. “I think you left this on the windowsill back in the terminal?” She held the toy out. She knew it was his since she’d seen the boy playing with it, but even so.

The boy turned her way and his eyes widened. “Yeah, it’s mine!” He cheered and snatched it free from Skye’s hand when she held it out. He immediately went back to slamming his toys together and making all the appropriate sound effects one would expect to hear while Captain America was battling a pterodactyl on a plane.

“Ace,” The boy’s father said in a stern warning tone. “What do you say, Bud?”

Ace paused, mid-collision of Captain America’s mighty fist to the pterodactyl’s jaw, and looked over at Skye. He flashed her a bright toothy smile. “Thanks, lady!” He said and then the battle was on again.

The boy’s father laughed. “He’s been waging this war since the breakfast,” The man said apologetically. He reached a hand out. “I’m Mike,” he introduced himself. “And this is Ace.”

“Skye,” Skye shook his hand. “Nice to meet you guys.” She smiled and moved her bag to the floor with her jacket and her over shirt. She sat down in her seat, her knee automatically bouncing again and took a look around the cabin. She needed to get an eye on Miles. Rather conveniently, as she’d noted when she’d looked over the boarding pass, one Jemma Simmons was also in the same line of sight as her informant. Once again, fortunate. When Jemma caught her eye, Skye smiled, mouthed out a ‘Hi,’ and gave her a small return wave. She watched, completely unabashed about her staring as Jemma pulled her hair free. Skye turned back around. She leaned over and swiped her tablet from a pocket of her bag. Quickly she pulled up a drawing app and drew up a terrible little stick figure version of Jemma (complete with tie), sweating and scribbled out the words ‘You look hot’ on it and drew her own winking emoji face next to it.

When Skye twisted back around in her seat, she caught Jemma’s eye again and held up the tablet for her to see from her spot, mimicking the winking emoji she’d drawn on the screen.

Jemma had looked away long enough to buckle her seatbelt, not without bickering with Fitz about which end was whose and eventually winning the argument. The metal clasp clicked into place and she tightened it. Her eyes immediately went back up forward and to her left and her face reddened even more when she saw Skye's pitiful drawing. She couldn't tell if Skye meant she was warm or attractive, but she still let out an exhale that could be interpreted as an awkward laugh. Fitz leaned over her in his seat to get a look at what was going on, and when he did he grumbled something about Skye being "very American", whatever that meant.

Jemma reached into her bag and pulled out her own ipad. It mostly had science books and a few movies on it for entertainment, but there was a pad for taking notes and she opened a fresh screen. Normally she typed, but she switched to a drawing pen. She tried to think of a witty, flirty response, but her quiet calculations led to no results. Before she could come up with anything, an announcement began repeating itself in multiple languages telling her to put away her electronic devices and stow her tray table. She had enough time to draw a sad face and hold it up for Skye before a flight attendant came by and asked her to put her ipad away for the beginning of the flight. Jemma jokingly (but also not so jokingly) closed her right hand into a fist with the exception of her pinky and her thumb and held it up to her ear like a phone, mouthing the words "call me" and grinning at Skye to let her know she could get a hold of her again once the plane was at a higher altitude.

Skye huffed out a laugh at the drawing on Jemma’s ipad. She sighed as the attendant talked to Jemma. She angled for a couple more people, including Skye who put her hands up in surrender after turning her tablet off and setting it into her lap. She twisted back around and flashed another one of those lopsided little grins at the woman and gave her a thumbs up. She turned back around in her seat and put her tablet away, quickly buckled up her seat belt and pulled it tight. The next stretch of time felt unbearably long for Skye. She couldn’t keep her knees still and she’d started drumming on them while chewing on the corner of her bottom lip as they taxied the runway.

“Are you scared?” Ace asked as he watched Skye fidgeting.

“Who, me?” Skye asked. She blew air out through her lips and they made a brief ‘pffft sound as she waved her hand as nonchalantly as she could. “Nahhhh. I’m good. I’m fine. We’re good. Noooo reason to be scared at all,” Skye replied, absently glancing around one more time before she leaned against the back of her chair and exhaled a long breath. Falling, she thought, I’m afraid of falling.

Ace snickered and then looked over at Mike. “She’s scared, Dad.” He announced.

Mike chuckled. He glanced at Skye and then leaned over and mock whispered. “Quick tip about girls, buddy,” He said, “Don’t tell other people the secrets they’re trying to hide.” He smiled at Skye over Ace’s head and gave her a wink.

Ace considered this for a moment and then turned to look at Skye again, whose ears had flushed red with embarrassment. He put his toys down in his lap and reached over to put his hand into Skye’s closest hand and gave it a squeeze. He tried to whisper but was talking louder than he thought he was. “It’s okay, I’ll hold your hand until we’re in the air,” He told her as he swung his legs since they didn’t touch the ground.

Skye exhaled another long breath and smiled. “Thanks, Ace,” she managed. “That’s...really sweet of you.” She put her head back and clenched her eyes shut as the plane sped down the runway and departed the ground.

When the fasten seat belt sign was turned off, Skye grabbed her phone, slipped it in her back pocket and climbed from her seat. She stepped carefully through the aisle, trying not to disturb anyone, bracing herself on the outsides of chair backs as she went, except for Jemma’s. She gave Jemma another one of those little winks from earlier and squeezed her shoulder then headed for the lavatory before anyone could beat her to it.

"Did she just-" Fitz's voice was an octave higher than usual when he frowned and made his exclamation. Jemma stared at him quizzically and had to lean back in her own seat to avoid getting smashed when Fitz leaned over and looked down the aisle to follow Skye with his eyes. "I can't believe her." Fitz huffed and finally got back into his own personal space. Jemma just crinkled her nose and furrowed her brow, confused.

"What on earth are you jabbering on about now?" Jemma questioned. She felt very badly for the poor soul who was stuck sitting in the window seat beside Fitz. He seemed annoyed, but angled himself away and appeared to turn up the volume on whatever was playing in his headphones.

"She just invited you into the lavatory, the succubus." Fitz was nearly yelling and Jemma wanted to slap a hand over his mouth to get him to shut up, because people had started looking.

"What are you even talking about, Fitz?" Jemma shook her head and continued frowning at him, but he had planted the seed in her mind and it grew very quickly.

"She's been chatting you up since the terminal and she clearly wants to do the hanky-panky." Jemma slapped Fitz's shoulder and made an annoyed sound. She turned away from him and made a point to open her book and tilt so her shoulder was facing him. He may not have been wrong though. Thinking their interaction over again, that could have been what that was about. The thought wasn't unpleasant, Jemma reimagined Skye's firm squeeze of her shoulder, but elsewhere, and she turned a thousands shades darker just thinking that she'd just thought about it. She crossed her legs uncomfortably and couldn't help but turn and look at the occupied lavatory for a moment.

Once Skye locked herself inside she turned her phone on and leaned back against the door. She kept a careful eye on the clock so she didn’t spend too long in the restroom and went searching through whatever signals she could find in order to locate the encrypted signal for the air marshal’s phone. She gave herself just over three minutes to handle this task. After that, she put her phone back in her pocket, flushed the unused toilet and turned to wash her hands in the sink. After her avian flu conversation with Jemma in the terminal, she spent a little extra time soaping up her hands and cleaning them off.

When she left the lavatory, she squeezed past the person waiting for it and walked the few paces up the aisle. When she was next to Jemma’s seat, she leaned over and conspiratorially whispered, “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Doc,” The crooked little grin was back. “But, your tie’s crooked.” The corners of her eyes crinkled just slightly as she grinned and headed back for her seat, though she was sure to look over her shoulder just to watch Jemma adjust her tie. What? It was cute. Skye could not be blamed for this little game.

Jemma reached for her tie without even thinking about it and shuffled it side to side to fix whatever error might have been there. When she looked back up she realized it was a joke she had fallen right into, because Skye's smirk reminded Jemma of the Cheshire cat. Fitz gave her a pointed look, as if saying "see?". Jemma ignored him. She already had her sights set on the empty seat beside Skye and her fingers were even underneath the buckle on her lap before her window of opportunity closed. "Hey there, beautiful." The tall, dark haired man from the air hostess' desk in the terminal slid into the empty seat uninvited and leaned into Skye's personal space. "I was headed to the bathroom but I saw you were sitting here by your lonesome. Want some company?"

Skye had just finished buckling her seatbelt back in place (nerves didn’t leave just because they were in the air - they were worse but she’d successfully distracted herself for a whole, what, five seconds there?), when someone dropped into the chair next to her. Before she even looked, Skye knew this was not the someone she was hoping might take over that seat. Nope, it was a man she didn’t know and he was trying to use that telltale ‘I’m the greatest human ever gifted to this planet’ tone to talk to her. Skye instantly felt her spine shudder at his invasion into her personal space. She reflexively leaned toward the opposite arm rest and narrowed her eyes as she looked him over, completely unimpressed. “You snag a lot of tail with that line about rescuing people from themselves while on your way to take a piss, Slick?” She arched her eyebrows slightly.

Anybody else would have taken Skye's reply as a giant back-off sign, but to Ward it only made her more of a challenge. He was still amused and gave a toothy grin that looked like it had been practiced in a mirror. "Hey now, don't be so hostile. It seems like you could use a little loosening up. What do you say?" Ward raised a brow and moved a little closer, hoping to wear her down. He was used to getting the things he wanted. Initially, Jemma had been disappointed and her hands shifted back to her book. But her eyes hadn't left Skye and the seat in question and she could feel a pressure building up in her chest as the man that had been rude to the air hostess before was invading Skye's space and looking like a general arse. She acted without thinking and unbuckled her seatbelt, ignoring Fitz's cry of "where are you going?". She quickly made her way past the few rows, apologizing quietly to the people she bumped into. "Excuse me, I think you're in my seat." Jemma feigned politeness. Behind her smile was a snarl waiting to be let out if he didn't back off. She put one hand on her hip and pursed her lips, waiting for him to get up and leave.

Skye was prepared to lay into this slimeball when she caught sight of Jemma in the aisle and her focus shifted almost reflexively. That Cheshire sized grin returned in full force after Jemma spoke. She was entirely distracted by the glare-happy, hip-holding, purse-lipped sassy Jemma Simmons. It was a far cry from the extremely sweet woman who had purposefully set out to calm Skye’s flight jitters despite the uncomfortable atmospheric conditions in the airport terminal.

Ward was plenty determined to wear Skye down until she accepted his offer, if he hadn't had anyone on his tail, of course. He didn't care if he bothered a few people, but the tiny Brit frowning at him seemed like the kind of prick that would pull a 1st-grader move and tattle on him if he didn't get out of her seat, so he raised his hands in defense and got out of the way. "I'll see you later, beautiful." He couldn't leave without giving another sleazy comment, but he did turn and actually head to the lavatories after. Jemma stuck her tongue out at his back for Skye's amusement before grinning and plopping down into the now empty seat. She was glad he hadn't called her bluff.

“Not if I can help it, Slimeball,” Skye retorted without missing a beat, her voice dripping with disgust as she practically sneered at him. She felt her shoulders sag in relief as the man left. The switch was almost instant as she caught Jemma sticking her tongue out at the man’s back and let out a snort of laughter. She was full on beaming at Jemma. “I think you just saved me from felony assault charges upon landing for breaking Rico Suave’s face.” She grinned. “I’m not positive, but I think this means I owe you a Wookiee life debt, Solo.” Jemma definitely seemed the type to be up on her Star Wars references, not that it was a particularly difficult one to catch by anyone with space fantasy movie knowledge.

Jemma chortled at the popular movie reference and buckled the seatbelt in her new seat. She intentionally glanced around her shoulder to see Fitz glaring at her and crossing his arms over his chest, annoyed that he was ditched. He would live. "No, that was nothing, don't mention it." Jemma waved her hand nonchalantly. She was pretty proud of herself for herding the vain man away from the woman she had taken such a sudden interest in, but she acted like it was nothing so she wouldn't seem too eager. "I am a boss where I work. I have the nit picky scolding thing down pat." Jemma added. She didn't fail to notice Skye's still bouncy body language, and she immediately made it her goal to ease it.

“Excuse me, don’t downplay my heroic rescue from Mr. Unwanted Personal Space Invader,” Skye teased in a feigned scandalized tone when Jemma brushed off her good deed. She shifted to lean closer to Jemma, much preferring her company to the creepy stranger dude. Her right knee bobbed up and down at a slower pace than in the terminal but it still bounced. "How are you doing? One half hour down, thirty-six more to go!" Jemma encouraged. It wasn't even sarcastic, she just liked numbers, but she didn't realize how small a fraction that actually was until she saw the nearly sick look on Skye's face. "It'll go faster than you think." Without questioning herself, Jemma lightly touched her fingertips to Skye's knee to settle the shaking. It didn't quite work, so she let her palm flatten out and gave Skye a smile with the comforting squeeze.

Skye’s eyebrows arched. Thirty-six half hours to go? She swallowed at the thought. Did that feel longer than other ways of saying it? Skye’s knee moved a little quicker. She was not aware of the few shades of color that drained away from her face as she thought it over. Instead, she tried to tame her nerves. Skye had been in much hairier situations than sitting next to a beautiful, charming woman on a cramped plane. This should be a cakewalk, right? She felt Jemma’s fingers on her knee and immediately the thought struck her that she’d prefer those fingers to be a bit higher and toward the left.

When Jemma’s palm pressed firmly to her knee, Skye felt her leg slow from its jittery bouncing. She shifted her gaze and arched an eyebrow at Jemma. “...Do you use your superpowers on all the girls you try and pick up in airports, Doc?” She asked, tone light and gently teasing despite her internally frayed nerves.

"Never, they're just for you." Jemma played along. It was actually very unlike her to be openly flirting with someone in public, but what could she say, there was something about Skye that made her special. She was glad and embarrassed all at once that Skye knew she was hitting on her, but she found herself caring less about what was normally acceptable for her. If she wanted to flirt with Skye she was going to do it.

They spent two and a half hours watching the second Harry Potter movie with one set of earbuds shared between them, since Jemma's were still back at her seat and she didn't want to chance getting up in case Slimeball was still around. It had the added advantage of giving Jemma an excuse to move the armrest between them and lean against Skye's side to share the headphones and be able to see the screen on the back of the headrest in front of her. They spent another hour chatting over the first in flight meal, which was not-bad at best, but filled their stomachs all the same. They spent half an hour playing the trivia game on the tv system (Skye gave up because Jemma was mercilessly destroying her, if that was a thing you could do in trivia). They played tic tac toe, connect the dots, and played several of them with Ace, even Mike when the boy could convince his father to join. Skye's leg still occasionally started shaking when they hit small stretches of turbulence, but a light touch of Jemma's hand to her knee or her arm was enough to quiet the anxieties temporarily. They continued playing games and watching movies and even took turns napping, using the other's shoulder as a pillow. Even after they had done all of this, unfortunately, they'd still only used up half of the flight time.

“It’s just cruel that they make flights that are this long,” Skye commented arching her back slightly to stretch it. She popped her seat belt buckle and moved to stand. “I’m gonna run to the restroom - pick the next movie while I’m gone, yeah?” She motioned for Jemma just to stay put in her seat and had no qualms about climbing (maybe a little purposefully) clumsily over her lap to get to the aisle.

"If I pick it you know it's going to be something British." Jemma warned. She automatically reached out and stabilized Skye as she got up with a hand on her hip, making sure she didn't sway too far one way or the other until she was safely in the aisle. Once she was satisfied Skye was alright on her own, she scooted over to sit in the space between she and Skye's seats and began swiping through some of the movie selections, eventually switching to television and grinning when she found a few episodes of Doctor Who on the list.

“Dazzle me with your homeland, Jemma Simmons,” Skye grinned, not at all upset about having Jemma’s hands all up on her hips. She headed down the aisle and stood at the back. Miles was asleep when she went by. It wasn’t the first time she’d checked but she’d used stretches and random walks about every so often as her way to make sure he was still breathing. At the back she waited for the restroom to open and squeezed past the person who left it and locked herself inside.

It took Skye less than six minutes to hack her way into the air marshal’s ‘secured’ messenger service. She sent the person messages that looked like they came from his(or her) own phone. She told them that there were U.S. government agents on their plane with an informant in protective custody and that there were also potential terrorists onboard hoping to recover the informant. She disconnected and erased all trace of her presence on the phone but left the backdoor to the messenger service on the system so she could get back in if she needed to. She quickly used the facilities afterward, scrubbed her hands (doctor’s orders, extra scrubbing, right?) and then made her way back out. Fitz gave her a rather sour look on the way by but she just waved and gave him a smile as she made it back to Jemma and her seat.

“What’d ya come up with, Doc?” Skye asked as she returned. They hit a small patch of turbulence before either of them could shift and Skye stumbled and fell pretty much almost face first into Jemma’s lap and chest, braced only by her hand on the back of one of the seats and on the seat next to Jemma’s hip.

Jemma made a sudden squeak of surprise and her arm instinctively wrapped around Skye's waist to stop her fall, but because she was sitting, of course it didn't do much good and Skye got a good faceful of her shirt. A tingle ran up her spine and she felt it as the hours of air conditioning was wasted on her, because her blush spread to everywhere and her body felt like it was on fire. She wanted to laugh, but she was embarrassed and she began sputtering out nonsense about the science of turbulence while Skye's face was an inch away from hers and Ace was staring at them quizzically.

Skye cleared her throat. She bit the inside of her cheek and felt the immense heat that lit up first the tops of her ears and then settled to pool between her hips. Hey, if fate wanted to literally throw them together...right? She bit her bottom lip and tried to hide the fact that her hands were shaking a bit from the sudden drop the turbulence had caused to firmly reignite her anxiety. When she picked her head up, she stalled, her face so close to Jemma’s while Jemma rambled science at her. Skye couldn’t help but smile at that. “Easy there, Tiger,” She righted herself and then moved down into the seat next to Jemma, which was originally Jemma’s stolen seat. Both of her knees were bouncing up and down now. Her hands settled, one onto each of her own knees both because the urge was now thee to reach out to touch Jemma and because she was trying to steady them. They left her knees only to fumble with the seat belts ends.

Jemma fell silent after Skye tried to calm her down. Her heart was still pounding in her ears and she could feel her pulse in her own neck without touching her fingers to it. She could still feel Skye's weight on her even though it wasn't there anymore and though they were avoiding eye contact, somehow she felt like her every move was being watched. They were both on high alert because of the potential for something that hadn't quite happened yet. Jemma was anxious herself, so she could only imagine how Skye felt with the added worry about the turbulence and the flight. She came back to her senses and her hand reached for Skye's, lightly touching her sleeve before her fingers wrapped around her arm. Her lips spread into a slow smile as she finally looked at Skye's face and saw that she too was blushing.

"So have you ever seen Doctor Who?" Jemma blurted out, holding up the second earbud with her free hand and giggling.

Skye gave Jemma's hand a grateful squeeze. She didn't get a chance to thank Jemma out loud because Jem was holding up the earbud and asked her the question. Skye arched her eyebrows. "Doctor Whatnow?" she asked as seriously as she could, but only lasted a moment before she cracked and grinned. "The guy that travels in a phone booth, right?" Skye took the earbud and popped it in her ear, distracted temporarily by the middle aged man that she'd seen talking with Mike in the terminal. He stepped into the back from the next section forward, in the plane. He made a show of stretching achy muscles as he walked through the aisle, trying to make it look like he was just on a stroll to stretch rather than looking for someone. 'Hello, air marshal,' Skye thought. She paid him no further mind just then and focused instead on Jemma, judging by the giggles that she was going to get some quality rambling out of the scientist over the next hour.

Jemma made them watch the three episodes of Doctor Who that the airline provided for free, but not without pausing every few minutes to explain the time travel theories and some of the more complicated ongoing plot, since the episodes were from random seasons and out of context. When they finished them and were running out of interesting things to watch, Jemma could tell Skye was getting anxious and her attention was wavering. Her legs were back to jumping up and down and her hands were fidgeting with the extra strap of her seatbelt.

"I have The Odyssey in my bag, maybe you'd be able to focus on that?" Jemma nudged Skye's side and rested her hand over Skye's to pause her fidgeting. It was chilled from the blasting air conditioning and her nervousness and it made Jemma shiver.

"The Odyssey, like, the book?" It was a stupid question, really, it was. Skye knew it was a stupid question. She'd even seen Jemma reading when she'd passed by on her way to the restroom the very first time. It'd been a really long day and, despite the awesome time she'd had with Jemma, eating up all of that distraction, Skye's nerves were still frayed from the flight. She still had many hours ahead of her and when they landed, she had to get Miles out of the plane, out of the airport and to the safe drop off location to deliver him as well as the hard drive copy. She cleared her throat. "Yeah, um, yeah, I've never read it before so, that could work," she nodded. "If you don't mind," her return squeeze to Jemma's hand was an automatic reflex brought on by the nerves. The longer the flight went, the more childish and pathetic Skye felt about her anxiety.

"You've never read The Odyssey?" Jemma exclaimed. Her face lit up in amusement and she unclasped her seatbelt. "You'll love it." Jemma promised. She stood up and scooted past Skye's knees to get into the aisle. Fitz was asleep in his seat, slouching in the seat with a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. Maybe he would be less agitated after some sleep. It had been an early morning.

Skye arched her eyebrows. As she watched Jemma head back toward her original seat, she wondered how much nerding out Jemma could do over this book. She hoped it was like the fits of science babble Jemma had been spouting every time she'd paused their Doctor Who episodes. Skye popped the seat belt buckle and moved to slide into the inside seat so Jemma would have easier access to sit back down when she returned.

The book she had been reading to ignore him was a collection of scientific studies and was still in the pocket in front of her original seat. The Odyssey was probably the better option, so she reached for the latch to the overhead compartments to retrieve it from her suitcase, but she didn't quite get that far. The plane jolted suddenly, and it was much rougher than any of the turbulence they'd encountered so far. Jemma had been on her toes to reach the compartment and stumbled. She frantically grabbed for anything, but it had been so quick Jemma ended up slamming into the aisle floor with a yelp. She cringed and grabbed at her side, which had hit an armrest on the way down and was aching fiercely.

"What was that?!" Fitz was awake, along with the rest of the passengers. It hadn't felt like normal turbulence and Jemma's first thought was to see if Skye was ok. "Simmons, what the hell?" Fitz got out of his seat and helped drag Jemma into her original seat as the seatbelt signal flashed on with a ding. An announcement even came over the speakers telling everyone not to panic, but to get to their seats and fasten their seat belts securely.

When the plane lurched, Skye hadn't managed to buckle her seatbelt back up again and as a result, the seat just suddenly wasn't under her as it had forced her a foot or so in the air. She came down hard and hissed in pain but was twisted around and practically out of the seat, halfway on her feet when she heard Jemma’s yelp. "Jemma!" The name was off her tongue before she'd realized she'd shouted it. She didn't even get a chance to move before Fitz was pulling Jemma into her original seat. The plane lurched again dropping, in Skye's wild mind, at least ten feet from the way her stomach surged right in her throat. She probably would have been thrown right up into the compartments above her head if both Ace and Mike hadn't grabbed for her arm and yanked her down into her seat. Wide eyed, her pulse racing and her hands shaky nearly uncontrollably, Skye struggled to quickly latch her seatbelt until Ace actually reached over and did it for her. Skye thanked him and he grabbed her hand with his, this time because both of them were scared. Skye tugged her seatbelt tight with her free hand She turned around as far as she could in her seat. Miles was still asleep, that bastard. Her eyes shifted and connected with Jemma's, face full of concern for Jemma's well being and also full of abject fear; It's the falling, she thought. That's the part I'm scared of. The lights in the cabin flickered and the body of the plane began a slow shake that, five seconds later amplified into what, to Skye, felt like a terrible earthquake. Everything happened rapidly after that. There was a large explosive sound from a section ahead of them, in the middle of the plane. The plane itself jerked and banked hard and then began a sudden rapid descent. Skye was fired to turn around, eyes forward, as alarms went off but we're drowned out by people screaming and crying and the air masks fell downward from their compartments. Skye felt wind on her face, blowing into her eyes and sending her loose hair flying about. In the first second, the thought struck her that it shouldn't be possible to feel rough wind, harder and colder than the air conditioning blasts. In the next second, her adrenaline spiked sharply. Skye reflexively reached for one of the air masks, pulled it down and helped Ace into it. She felt lightheaded and disoriented by the time she pulled a mask over herself. she looked over in time to see Mike struggling with his but couldn't reach him with the force of their descent holding her to the seat. She pushed Ace down do he was bent over at his torso and had him wrap his arms around the bottom of his legs. Skye kept a hand on Ace's back and forced herself around again. In the terrible shaking, her wide eyes found Jemma one last time.

With one hand still clamped onto her side while biting back tears, Jemma fumbled with the two straps at her lap, unable to get them together. Fitz reached over and grabbed them for her, snapping it together and tugging it so it held her in her seat firmly. When the masks broke free from the ceiling, Jemma knew something was very, very wrong. She had promised Skye everything would be fine and before she even reached for the mask, she was searching for Skye, but her visual was blocked arms reaching for the yellow oxygen masks. It reminded her to grab her own, and she reached out, but every time she tried to close her hand around it the wind had already whipped it in a new direction. She felt like she was trying to catch a laser dot until Fitz finally managed to snatch hers out of the air with his and help her get it onto her face. He grabbed her arm and Jemma clutched his, but it didn’t provide any comfort as Jemma was sure they were plummeting to the Earth.

Jemma managed to look back in Skye's direction and made eye contact. It lasted maybe five seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Jemma wanted to say she was sorry Skye was scared, but she was scared too. The only way she could communicate this by looking her in the eye from afar. Half of her face was covered by the mask but Jemma only needed to see her eyes to know she was terrified. Another blast shook the plane and Jemma only had a split second to register that she was looking at open air several rows in front of her instead of the cabin. A rattling sound finally gave way to a snap that was barely audible over the rest of the screaming and the chaos, but Jemma saw the suitcases flying from the broken compartment, and that was the last thing she saw.

#wherever you go #skimmons #bioquake #skimmons fanfiction #bioquake fanfiction

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ciathyzareposts · 6 years

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Legends of the Lost Realm: The Four Towers

The party emerges victorious from the fourth and final tower.

A few days ago, I was happy. I had put another 5 hours into Legends of the Lost Realm, but I was stuck, legitimately stuck, and nothing I could find online would help me out of it. I was on the second floor of the Magicians’ Tower and I’d only found one of four map pieces. I couldn’t figure out how to get into two large, closed off areas of the tower. A teleporter in a central room had led me to one area, but it only ever led to the same destination. I had bonked my head against every wall and found no secret doors. I had the perfect excuse just to wrap things up and move on.

Then yesterday, in the shower, my dumb brain had to go and say, “I wonder if the direction you enter the teleporter makes a difference.” I wasn’t even consciously thinking about the frigging game. What made my subconscious think that I actually wanted the puzzle solved? And why wasn’t it working on any of the financial issues I’d already given it? What do I even keep it around for?

Sure enough, that was the answer. And thus this entry ends not with a GIMLET. You may rightly ask why I don’t just quit anyway if I dislike the game so much, but I have two ready answers for that:

1. It’s not so much the game I dislike as the persistence of 1989.

2. I don’t want to bail on two Mac games in a row. Moreover, while I may not like Legends, at least I get it (mostly), while I’m not sure the same will be true of Taskmaker or Theldrow–also both Mac games–coming up.

Then again, my comment boards for Legends aren”t exactly filled with fans clamoring for the latest entry. Maybe if no one steps up to defend the game here, I’ll pull the plug.

Since our last outing, I have completed the four corner towers. I had finished the Tower of War last time and had just started the Thieves’ Tower. I then finished the Thieves’ Tower, the Magicians’ Tower, and the Tower of Pain. I finished collecting all of the map pieces. All towers were two levels, and all levels were 20 x 20 (but some of them were more 20 x 20 than others). All had an encounter on the first level that provided experience rewards to the class represented by the tower, and all had an encounter on the second level that indicated I had “completed” the tower and provided an even greater reward. Each tower offered four pieces of a map or puzzle; more on that in a bit.

Level 1 of the Thieves’ Tower and the four map pieces I found there.

Level 1 of the Thieves’ Tower consisted of a bunch of small rooms with locked doors between them–doors that I had to pick open, and which reset every time I left and returned. Each lockpicking expends one “spell point,” so there was a functional cap to how long I could explore the level before I had to leave to recharge. (You can recharge by sleeping, but the easier way is to pay the magic shop owner, a theme that goes back to The Bard’s Tale.) Occasionally, thieves would drop “Lock Blasters” (which allow you to pick without using a point) and “Thieves’ Stones” (which restore a few spell points) after random combats, extending my time.

Another common post-combat loot item was a 50-foot rope. In a grievous mistake, I didn’t realize I needed more than one of these–and thus stopped collecting them after I had one. This turned out to be a big problem when I reached Level 2 of the tower, which consisted of several sections connected by holes in the ceilings and floors. The thief can CLIMB up into a hole ceiling and then lower a rope for the rest of the party. For floor holes, he just has to lower the rope. Either way, the rope remains with the hole after you use it–you can’t pick it up again. I thus could have used about 10 ropes trying to explore this area. You can go through the floor holes without a rope, but you take a lot of damage.

Let me pause here to explore one of the game’s mysteries. The equipment shop sells ropes in 10, 20, 30, and 40 foot lengths, but if you try to use any of them at a hole, it says that they’re not long enough. You need at least 50 feet. That alone is pretty crazy; unless these dungeons have cathedral ceilings, 10 feet should be more than enough. But even if you accept the weird length requirements, all of the store’s ropes are useless. Only the 50-foot ropes that you find, relying on random chance, get you to where you want to go.

How is that remotely possible?

Maybe. I can’t help but think there must be a way to combine, say, a 10-foot rope and a 40-foot rope into a 50-foot rope. It seems crazy that you can’t, the same way that it seems crazy that you can’t combine small stacks of arrows into larger stacks. But I can’t find any explicit instructions for doing so, and I’ve tried COMMAND-clicking and COMMAND-OPTION-clicking and such to no avail.

Anyway, by grinding thief battles on the first level, I finally found enough ropes to explore the second. The holes eventually led to a large maze-like area with lots of traps, and neither my thief’s “Remove Trap” ability nor my magician’s “Zap Trap” spell did any good. I just had to eat the damage and cast healing spells. Eventually I got to the “completion” square and left. There are three doors on the first level that I still haven’t unlocked, as the game says my thief’s level is not high enough to pick them.

Trying to pick a lock in the dark.

The first level of the Magicians’ Tower consisted of a bunch of equally-sized rooms with unavoidable traps that caused electrical, fire, cold, and wind damage; fights with magicians and wizards; and the occasional message. Of the puzzle, I learned that “four [pieces] should be found in this tower” (that’s true of every tower), that “the blank must be used more than once,” that I should “beware the false pieces,” and that “Cirinik’s puzzle has but one solution.”

A repetitive level.

The battles weren’t too hard except that wizards inevitably cast “Fireball” every round, so I had to prioritize attacking them and try to clear them out as quickly as possible.

Killing the wizards is the top priority.

The second level had a central room with the teleporter described above. In its passages, I found an iron key and a Cap of Mind Shielding. I had to kill the game at one point when I faced a battle with three green slimes. They resisted every magical attack, and every physical attack just caused them to divide and create more slimes. I couldn’t run away, either. It was pretty infuriating. But eventually I reached the end of the level and the mage in my group got enough experience to make a level.

It didn’t take long for the slimes to get out of control.

The final tower was, for some reason, called the Tower of Pain. It was aspected to the shaman class. It wasn’t too hard except that my characters kept dying suddenly for no reason. I have no idea what was happening, but I’d be wandering down a hallway at full hit points, then I’d go through a door, and with no intervening message or anything, one of the characters would suddenly just die. I had to keep zipping out of the keep to get resurrected.

This was actually the answer. Didn’t we see the same “riddle” in another RPG?

To even enter the keep, I had to fight battles with shaman guardians, and shamans were frequent random encounters inside as well. Shamans are tough foes because they keep casting “Dancing Blades” every round, and two rounds of the spell are enough to kill at least a couple of characters. Usually, I could kill the shaman in the first round, but if I faced a couple of them, or I got unlucky, it was off to the temple at the end of the battle. I should mention that there isn’t much to spend money on, so I don’t really mind all the resurrections.

The Tower of Pain had a lot of messages. “Only those who solve Cirinik’s puzzle can conquer the moving walls,” one said. “The Great Tower must be conquered in four steps,” I learned, and “the second step is the teleport maze.” Another suggested that I “take the path of least resistance.” One message was maddening because it cut off: “The greatest resistance presents the greatest challenge, and the greatest–” What? The message didn’t continue.

Level 2 of the Tower of Pain was mostly 4 x 4 rooms.

Both the Tower of War and the Magician’s Keep provided special items to their respective classes–the Gauntlets of Ogre Strength and the Cap of Mind Shielding. The Thieves’ Tower may have such an artifact behind one of the locked doors. I’m pretty sure I explored every inch of the Tower of Pain and didn’t find anything for the cleric.

Last time, I talked about the experience imbalances and how all the experience awarded in the Tower of War obliterated anything I’d earned through combat. Well, the situation changed in the other three towers, but not necessarily for the better. Where the Tower of War gave a lot of experience to fighters and only a little to the other classes, the other three towers gave experience only to their specific classes, and that was only enough for one level-up. In eight hours of gameplay, then, my thief, mage, and shaman only leveled up once and my three fighters didn’t level up at all. It’s feast or famine with this game.

Why only mages?

At this point, I’ve found all 16 pieces of the map puzzle, and as per the clues, I know that some of the pieces are “false” and the blank is used multiple times to make up for those false pieces. Given those parameters, I started to get to work on it.

I’m assuming the pieces are meant to be arranged 4 x 4. Every piece shows a 5 x 5 grid, so if you arranged them 4 x 4, you’d get a standard 20 x 20 dungeon level. I could be wrong, but if there’s no 4 x 4 restriction, the number of variations is much higher and I would say impossible to deduce. Even with that restriction, there are a lot of possibilities. Here’s one:

In this configuration, the three pieces to the right are “false” pieces.

A3 and A4 are clearly end pieces, to they’re a “must,” and the A4, B4, and C4 all have to go together because no other configuration continues their lines. Same with B2 and C2. I also like this configuration because it ensures that no row or column is completely blank. But note that B1 and D2 are completely interchangeable (and either could be replaced with the pair in column F). A2 is superfluous; I could move A3 into its spot and replace A3 with a blank. Unless I get more clues, I’m not sure how to solve it. Then again, I’m also not even sure what the puzzle is for.

Miscellaneous notes:

And oddity that only an experienced RPG mapper would comment on: stairwells take up two tiles instead of just one.

This stairwell doesn’t look 20 feet deep.

The game’s copy protection is really annoying me. Because it’s so hard to read the codes in the manual, I decided to record each answer in a text file every time I had to look it up, assuming that the game would eventually re-use some of the same codes. Days later, I have 53 entries in the text file and do you know how many times the game has asked for a code I already recorded? Once. I don’t think it picks a random code so much as cycles through all of them. At least Pool of Radiance had the decency to only ever ask you for like six possibilities on its codewheel.

Mystery items in the general store: bottles of oil (ostensibly to refill lanterns, except that they cost as much as new lanterns), blow torches, crow bars, pick tools, dynamite, pieces of string, pieces of wire, and I suppose any of the ropes since they’re never long enough. I’ve tried all of them in various scenarios, and they do nothing. Pieces of wire don’t help with lockpicking, dynamite doesn’t create a hole in the wall, etc.

The icons across the top of the party indicate whether certain spells are active, just like in Crusaders of the Dark Savant. In this game, though, each icon has multiple purposes. The shield indicates whether any of the “Group Shield” spells are active. The eye lights up with both “Detect Traps” and “Detect Secret Doors” and perhaps others. The torch blazes when both magical and physical light sources are active. The circle contains the magic “Compass.” The “X” changes to represent a summoned creature, NPC, or other addition to the party, none of which I’ve been able to explore yet.

No prestige class is available yet.

I’m not sure about next steps. I figured that the four corner towers would take about half the game and the central tower would take the other half, but there are way too many spell levels left, without even considering class changes, for me to be anywhere near halfway through the game.

In addition to the central tower, there’s an underground to explore–the first level of every tower had one or two pits. To explore this area, I’ll need to find more rope. There’s also the dungeon attached to the magic shop.

Time so far: 28 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/legends-of-the-lost-realm-the-four-towers/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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