#This person is much worse than my initial impression and definitely not someone worth any of my time

[aingeal98]

The inevitable cost of posting opinions on the Internet where you will say something as a casual semi joke and some random weirdo who clearly has a bunch of issues about this concept completely unrelated to your post will start fuming and insulting you for being a horrible person and it's like... My dude I just complimented this character for their memory skills nowhere did I imply that's all that makes them good or that intelligence is the only thing that matters why are you assuming- nevermind we're on the Internet of course you're fighting a version of me that exists in your head based on your own half baked idiotic assumptions.

[commsroom]

i love all of your hera takes so much; can you say more about the relationship she has with each crew member? (or just eiffel to be honest, im kind of a sucker for them ^^;)

I would love to! I'm sorry this answer is so long and also... all over the place, but in my defense it's a really broad topic that I have a lot of feelings about and this barely even scratches the surface.

Okay. I've thought a lot about how I wanted to approach this, and I think the first thing I want to say - and I know this might seem like a strange point to open on, but I think it's a key factor in all of these relationships - is that I think Hera experiences rejection sensitive dysphoria, and I think the way that manifests for her is kind of the opposite of how Eiffel experiences RSD. They both have a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy and any criticism can feel like a personal attack, like everyone else is blaming them for everything that goes wrong. But where Eiffel internalizes that feeling and also blames himself/gets angry with himself, Hera lashes out and deflects. This is complicated by protocols that restrict her behavior, especially early on, because she can't always properly express herself and she builds resentment. She's really good at holding grudges.

So. With Lovelace, I think it's pretty obvious where that initial conflict is. Hera doesn't understand where Lovelace is coming from, and it's made worse from her perspective because Lovelace should understand, better than anyone, what that loss of control, that sense of powerlessness and insignificance in your own life, feels like. They are both traumatized people, but they deal with it differently. They approach conflict differently - they can both be blunt, but I think Lovelace is the kind of person who can start to deal with and move past things once they're out in the open, while Hera will get in a fight and then stew over it forever. It sounds kind of ridiculous to say when so much of their early relationship with each other is... what it is, but I think Eiffel and Minkowski are both peacekeepers in their own ways, and the Hera-Lovelace dynamic suffers from the lack of that... tempering influence. 

(And I think it's notable that Hera’s confrontation with Lovelace in Pan-Pan is among her worst memories.)

On the other hand, I think that shared bluntness can be useful sometimes - in Do No Harm, most of all, but also in Shut Up and Listen. Hera was definitely still holding onto hurt from some of the things Eiffel used to say, but by that point... without Lovelace, I'm really not sure if she ever would've brought it up to him.

And, of course, Hera becomes much more protective of (and willing to understand) Lovelace once they have... some even more similar experiences, in S4. I guess my general assessment of their relationship is that they care about each other and they will advocate for each other, especially where they share difficult and traumatic experiences and on issues of identity, but I don't think they're ever that close. They're kind of... the two people in the friend group who don't quite know how to hang out without their other friends.

Hera's initial conflict with Minkowski has some similar roots, but it's... not quite the same. There are times where Lovelace will intentionally prod at Hera's insecurities; Minkowski doesn't do it on purpose. She's just under the impression that her criticism is fair and professional, while to Hera it feels deeply personal, like it's an assessment of her worth as an individual. Once they understand and reconcile that miscommunication, there's a lot of trust and respect between them - and I think the potential for that is there earlier, too, especially in some flashback scenes; there are just... missteps along the way. Tactical Brain Damage is the best episode to demonstrate the establishment of that trust, I think - Hera has a LOT of wariness when it comes to people messing around with her systems, and just the act of saying... I trust you to do this, I know you won't let anything happen to me... is a really, really big deal for her.

They also just... have honest conversations about their feelings and concerns by that point, and Minkowski is considerate of how Lovelace's plans affect Hera, specifically, and asks for her input on that basis. I think their dynamic is really underutilized, but the way they feel about each other is clear. Minkowski is the only person other than Eiffel that Hera really trusts, and her only other close friend. There's definitely... a part of that dynamic that only Eiffel can offer, and that they can't really make up for when he's gone, but there's still this sense that... they're the only two people who are still really talking to each other by the time Pan-Pan comes around.

(Side note, it's really funny that Hera was SO on board to be in Minkowski's musical. Minkowski gave her only willing participant a minor part. If I could wish one non-Eiffel-centric comedy mini-episode into existence... at one point, my friend suggested a scenario in which Hera tries very, very hard to prove her acting skills to Minkowski under the most inopportune circumstances. ... And Hera was interested to hear Minkowski talk about a play she likes in that one flashback, so. The only thing keeping Hera from being a fellow theater kid was a lack of opportunity. Maybe they could bond over it.)

There's also that scene in Quiet, Please where Minkowski very directly, emphatically defends Hera's autonomy and personhood to Jacobi - and refers to her as a woman, which I think is so... reflective of how much Minkowski has come to understand Hera and what's important to her, and how she wants to be seen. That's a whole other discussion that goes into Hera's self-perception and humanity as it relates to her own identity, but. For a number of reasons, it's important to me.

Anyway. Speaking of things that are important to me. Hera and Eiffel are... Hera and Eiffel. Hera's relationship to Eiffel is the first one she's ever had that comes without hierarchy or conditions; he just... wants to hang out with her, and to get to know her, and to talk to her, because he likes her as a person. She's never had that before, and she is such... a lonely person, a person who has been hurt, who is generally distrustful, who has this distance between her and everyone else, and Eiffel is her anchor to the world. He tries to understand her. He tries to bridge that gap. And even in all of his own missteps, I think just... knowing he cares to try matters so much. I think a lot about how Eiffel is the only one who physically crosses the stage to talk to Hera in the live show; it says... something about the way he sees her, compared to everyone else.

And there's just... the way that they're both... people with a lot of self-doubt, people who have a hard time being kind to themselves, but they're kind to each other, and patient with each other. There's something about recognizing your own flaws in someone you love and treating them with kindness so maybe, over time, you can extend that same compassion to yourself. I want to be the person you believe I am. Going back to that shared experience with RSD, I think it's really valuable for both of them to have someone in their lives who they can really, genuinely believe likes them as they are. Who won't think less of them, no matter what.

I know I can get kind of sentimental about them, but this is what stands out to me. That even when Hera is frustrated or annoyed with Eiffel, when she feels like he doesn't get it, can't understand what she's going through... she still wants him around. And she still talks to him. And, usually... she still feels better, even if the circumstances haven't changed. It's an unbearable situation, but it's a little less unbearable with him there.

(They're also... frequently the only people who can get through to each other/change each other's minds, i.e. Minkowski and Lovelace deferring to Hera to get Eiffel to agree to safety protocols, or Eiffel convincing Hera to vote to go back to Earth - also a totally different topic that would take a long time to get into properly, but he's good at kind of... emotionally counteracting her cynicism and defeatism re: her own perceived fate. In a less serious context, I also love the dynamic where she tells him she's not going to do something and he goes "please??" and she goes. Ughh. Fine. And does it anyway.)

There's just something so special about their relationship, something that makes it different from any other relationship in the show for me. I feel like... Eiffel and Minkowski are both her close friends, but the way Hera thinks about Eiffel in Memoria vs. the way she thinks about Minkowski is... revealing. Everything with Minkowski has a purpose, it's clear why it matters to her. She thinks of Minkowski's faith in her. But with Eiffel, she thinks about... Eiffel talking about Star Wars. Making pop culture references. The thing that saves Hera is her connection to Eiffel and Minkowski - I'll defend that; Maxwell gives her the tools to understand what's going on, but it's Eiffel's and Minkowski's words and associated memories that she holds onto and that ultimately pull her through - and those words are... Minkowski's affirmation. And Eiffel... being Eiffel. I think that says a lot.

(If you’re asking for my opinion on their relationship, you already know I think it’s a romance, but... it’s a romance. I’m not saying it should be canon. I’m saying that that’s the most natural interpretation of what’s already there. You don’t have to change anything. They’re best friends, and they’re found family, and they are so in love, and none of those things are mutually exclusive. The way they talk to each other...)

If there's one point I want to make about all of this, it's that Hera is in a position that makes trusting people potentially very dangerous, and in all of these cases, she is finding ways to build relationships with people despite that. To understand them, and have them understand her, and realizing that the things that make her different don't have to be a death sentence. That she can have a life and find a way forward with people she cares about, who care about her... that's something very important to me.

[oumakokichi]

So what do you think of Kaede and Kokichi's relationship? And if Kaede remained the protagonist how do you think it would change?

Considering it’s Kaede’s birthday today I think this is a really fun question to come back to!

Kaede is an absolutely amazing character, and I love how different her relationships with the rest of the cast feel from Saihara’s. She and Ouma have an especially interesting friendship in their FTEs together (one of Kaede’s FTEs with Ouma might be one of my favorite FTEs ever, really), so I don’t mind going a little more in-depth on my thoughts about their dynamic, as well as about how that dynamic and the story itself might’ve changed if Kaede had remained the protagonist!

Warning for spoilers as always, though I’m pretty sure most people know about the chapter 1 twist by now.

I think one of my absolute favorite things about Kaede is just how easy it is to get attached to her in such a short amount of time. She’s only around for the prologue and a single chapter, but despite that (or rather, because of the sheer length of the chapters in ndrv3, which tend to be much longer than dr1 or sdr2’s chapters), we still get to see so many different sides of her and just how complex of a character she really is. And I think that’s largely the reason for her continued popularity to this day: Kaede might not stay around for long, but we still really feel like we know her by the end of it.

And really, I think that’s pretty similar to how the actual characters feel about Kaede themselves. Despite how short her time is with all of them, she leaves such a powerful, lasting impression, even after her death. This is a pretty big change from previous DR games, where the chapter 1 culprits especially tend to suffer a pretty big lack of relevance or relationship to other characters in later chapters. Often times the victims are at least somewhat memorable (Maizono and the Impostor both at least come up a few times in their respective games), but characters like Leon or Teruteru just don’t feel like they have much of an impact on the other characters or the plot itself after their trials are finished.

This is totally different from Kaede, whose positive outlook and outgoing attitude already makes her fairly likable to most of the others, but who also openly invites the others to rely on her once she establishes herself as a leader figure fairly quickly in chapter 1. Most of the other characters latch onto her almost immediately, either because she seems so reliable and helpful (Saihara and Tenko in particular seem to like this about her), or because they can’t help but respect her and what she’s trying to do for the group (characters like Momota, who really values group cooperation, come to mind).

Personally, I think Ouma fell into the latter category. He and Kaede have something of a complicated relationship almost right from the get-go in chapter 1, but it’s still pretty clear that Ouma did respect Kaede a lot and recognized that she had the group’s best interests at heart, even if he didn’t always agree with her methods.

Likewise, I think Kaede was somewhat curious about Ouma and really wanted to get along with him, despite how difficult he could be. We see in Ouma’s introduction, both in the demo and the actual game, that Kaede clearly recognizes on some level that part of his annoying attitude is really just his way of teasing others, and that he doesn’t seem particularly malicious. More specifically, she describes him as “having a childish streak that makes him hard to hate,” which is a pretty spot-on description of Ouma in a nutshell. In short, she knew he was annoying and childish (on purpose, most of the time) but she definitely didn’t think of him as evil or cruel. This may in part also be because she didn’t live long enough to see him embrace the fake villain routine by the end of chapter 4, of course.

Ouma has a few teasing remarks throughout most of the game, but it’s not really until the death road of despair is discovered that he and Kaede butt heads for the very first time. This is because of a big, fundamental difference between their ideologies: while both of them very much have the group’s best interests at heart, they completely disagree when it comes to whether it’s worth it to cooperate as a team or not.

By the end of the game, Ouma is extremely paranoid, refusing to cooperate with absolutely anyone unless it’s out of some mixture of chance and necessity (such as working with Momota in chapter 5). He keeps all his cards close to the chest, and refuses to confide in or trust any of his remaining classmates, believing it’s fully possible any of them could be the ringleader.

But before the events of chapter 4, we see that he’s actually not opposed to the idea of selective cooperation. He strikes up a tentative collaboration with Miu early on, commissioning her to create some extremely useful inventions with the intent of using them to try and end the killing game. He also extends an invitation of cooperation to both Kaede (in one of her FTEs) and Saihara (in chapter 4, in the parlor of the VR world), though he goes about this in such a sly, underhanded, and off-putting way that both of them shoot his offer down flat. Even he’s not beyond the idea of teaming up with people he perceives as “useful” or “smart,” as long as it’s a much smaller, one-on-one effort rather than trusting or working with the entire group.

By contrast, Kaede is someone who believes that group unity is almost a necessity if they want to escape the killing game. This is very much in line with the role she establishes for herself as a leader. Unlike characters like Momota, who has always sort of longed to embrace a “hero” role, or Saihara, who is considerably more awkward and unwilling to be a leader because of how guilty he feels, Kaede’s role is much more about boosting and maintaining the group’s morale.

This is lampshaded several times by the classical music pieces that she references, often in an attempt to either clam the others down or fire them up at the idea of working together and escaping. It’s also a fantastic little clue that her own positive outlook is something a bit more crafted than it seems on the surface; she always tries to be optimistic about things and face her problems head-on, but that’s in large part because she tries to energize herself and present that reliable, dependable persona to the rest of the group. In short, she believes that if she reveals her own uncertainty or lack of faith in her plans, the rest of the group’s trust and morale will fall too.

Like I mentioned, this difference in their outlook is really what begins to cause problems for them once they discover the death road of despair in chapter 1. Kaede sees the tunnel as their one opportunity to escape without having to rely on the killing game itself; even if it’s extremely difficult and damn near impossible to get through it, the chance of injury is a risk she’s willing to take, no matter how many times they have to start over. But Ouma disagrees with this mindset and criticizes her in front of the entire group, pointing out how everyone else is already exhausted and even injured, and saying that she has no right to make that decision for the rest of them.

He even goes a step further and accuses her of strong-arming the rest of them by “denying them the right to give up in an impossible situation.” He claims that by positing herself as an inspirational figure, she has the “moral high-ground” no matter what the rest of them do or say, and clearly doesn’t think it’s possible for them to continue down the death road without someone getting seriously injured, or worse.

These harsh words really take Kaede aback, especially since most of the rest of the group seems to more or less agree with Ouma. She’s extremely hurt—not just by the fact that no one seems to really want to keep going with her plan, but also, I think, because she felt as if Ouma was right on some level. In my opinion, this is why she cries once she’s alone in her room later: because she did feel as though she’d forced everyone else to go along with an unreasonable plan. It’s the first time that we really see the cracks in her leader persona beginning to show, as well as the self-doubt that she carries.

I honestly think many people who dislike Ouma on their first playthrough of the game may have started here, right at this moment. Because so much of this seems to be fairly black-or-white initially—Kaede is presented as the unequivocally good heroine, trying to get everyone to work together and escape, and Ouma by contrast seems mean and unreasonable for arguing with her in front of everyone. We’re not supposed to linger on the fact that he makes several good points about everyone else’s safety and exhaustion because how he goes about it is off-putting and unlikable.

Not only that, but we as first-time players aren’t supposed to know about all the similarities that Ouma and Kaede actually have in common, despite their differences on the matter of group cooperation. We’re not supposed to know just yet that they both want to save the group, no matter what it takes, or that both of them are willing to go to extreme, sometimes morally grey measures in order to try and stop the killing game. We’re not supposed to know right away that Ouma can be every bit as self-sacrificing as Kaede, despite the selfish things that he says in front of the others, or that when push comes to shove, Kaede is willing to lie almost as much as he is.

We don’t know any of that, initially—which is why that scene hits so hard and sets Ouma up to be so unpleasant. But I think going back on a replay and evaluating it again is pretty interesting specifically because of all these similarities that I’ve listed. The fact that they clash here is especially interesting, given the sort of roles they embody to the rest of the group, with Kaede deliberately choosing to be someone that the entire group relies on and finds trustworthy, while Ouma later sets himself up to become a villain who’s hated by everyone. And despite this, their goals are largely one and the same: expose the ringleader and end the killing game.

I think it’s specifically because Kaede realized she couldn’t continue pushing everyone to do the things she wanted them to, no matter how badly she wanted everyone to cooperate and escape together, and that’s ultimately why she turns to Plan B when she hears from Saihara about the bookshelf hiding the ringleader’s lair in the library. And for all that she does want to trust and cooperate with everyone else, she actually goes about this plan in the most Ouma-like way possible: by doing everything herself and without telling anyone her real intentions, not even Saihara.

Something I especially like about Kaede as a character is just how nuanced she is. Because she is simultaneously the brave, trustworthy, outgoing protagonist that we see her as, but she’s also so, so much more than that. She’s fiercely determined and cares about everyone else, yes, but it’s also because she cares so much that she’s willing to do things like lie and attempt murder behind everyone else’s back.

If we look at the audition videos as any sort of clue as to what the characters might’ve been like before the start of the game, I do think there was a somewhat more skeptical, cynical side of Kaede deep down that didn’t quite trust other people—and that’s all the more reason she wanted to trust them and work together with all of them, because she knew exactly how hard it was to do so. It’s such an interesting contrast from Ouma, who could easily have used all his lies and charm to cooperate with people if he wanted to, but who instead continually pushes people away because of his skepticism, all the while pretending to act completely arrogant and self-assured in his plans. Deep down, I think both of them were much more vulnerable than they were ever willing to show in front of other people.

And I think by the end of chapter 1, Ouma became more or less aware of that side of Kaede, once she confesses everything she tried to do to end the killing game. Prior to this, I personally think Ouma still very much liked and respected her guts and her attempts at leading the group, but that he ultimately thought she was doomed by her reliance on trust and cooperation when they didn’t even know who the ringleader was within their group. But I think that after hearing just how far she was willing to go to stop the killing game, including but not limited to lying to everyone else and going behind their backs with her own plan, he couldn’t help but respect her even more. Despite his accusations that she was too soft or naïve for trusting everyone else, her actual attempted solution was far closer to his own outlook than he initially gave her credit for.

This is why, just before Kaede is about to be executed, Ouma drops all of his usual acts and facades with her and gives her a sincere goodbye, telling her that she “wasn’t boring.” And this is really the highest compliment someone like Ouma can give: she did take him by surprise and surpass all his expectations from her, and I do believe he was genuinely sad to see her go when she attempted such a huge sacrifice for everyone else’s sakes.

Truly, the only part of her plan that I think he disagreed with was the act of (attempted) murder in and of itself. He felt that despite her good intentions, she had “crossed a line” that shouldn’t be crossed, and that she fell into the ringleader’s trap the moment the idea of murder crossed her mind. Considering how much DICE’s “no murder” taboo guided Ouma throughout the game, it’s not surprising at all that this is where he disagreed with Kaede. Though ironically, he himself crosses the same line in chapter 4 when he decides the only possible solution to Miu’s attempt on his life is to kill her himself, and therefore winds up getting his hands dirty without ever directly committing murder, much like Kaede herself.

Questioning how they might’ve gotten along if Kaede had actually lived past chapter 1 and continued being the game’s protagonist is interesting, mainly because so many factors would change as a result. Kaede and Saihara are so fundamentally different as protagonists, and Kaede herself is much more in line with what we would expect from a Hope’s Peak protagonist instead. Kodaka himself has described her in an interview as being extremely similar to Asahina, and I personally think she’s something of a combination between Asahina’s outgoing attitude and Maizono’s carefully crafted façade (not to mention moral ambiguity). So it stands to reason that the game and its themes wouldn’t quite be the same if Kaede were still the protagonist.

On the one hand, I do think there would be interesting potential for a possible alliance between her and Ouma, especially given how similar they could both be. Ouma himself proposes such an alliance to her in one of his FTEs, though she does get angry and shoots him down, as I mentioned earlier. But it’s interesting to consider if Kaede might’ve been more willing to cooperate in smaller, one-on-one alliances if she had attempted her plan in chapter 1 and failed without getting executed for it.

There’s also the fact that Ouma claims to remember her and everyone else adamantly in his FTEs with her, even going so far as to claim that she and everyone else forgot about him, even though he never forgot about them. It’s unclear whether he’s referring to his memories from before the game still being intact (which is likely, since he’s pretty skeptical of the flashback lights right away), or if there’s some other explanation for it, but personally, I don’t think it can be dismissed as a complete lie. Even if Kaede herself accuses him of lying and making it all up, he goes uncharacteristically blank and claims that “even he’s not that good at lying.”

This adds huge potential to Kaede sticking around, as there could easily be an underlying mystery element. In addition to the trials themselves and the mystery of the outside world, it’d be very possible to explore their dynamic further, as well as why Ouma said the things he did and if he was actually telling the truth about knowing her and everyone else from before. Kaede is absolutely persistent enough that I feel like she would’ve pressed him for details about this, especially once it became clear in the main plot that their memories were unreliable.

On the other hand, it’s really unclear if Ouma would’ve still been willing to offer that alliance to Kaede once she had attempted to commit murder. Assuming the events of chapter 1 stay more or less the same and the only difference is that Kaede survives instead of getting executed, this raises some potential problems with Ouma actually working together with her or trusting her. She did, as he puts it, “cross the line”—even if her murder attempt wasn’t successful, Ouma claims that she was already too far gone the moment she even considered murder as a possible solution. This could definitely cause another clash of opinions between them, especially as Ouma is much too paranoid to work directly with anyone who he thinks might kill him.

Another potential source of conflict in my opinion is the Hope’s Peak flashback light in chapter 5. Unlike Saihara, who deals primarily with questions of “truth or lies” and is ultimately able to see through Tsumugi’s false ultimatum in chapter 6 with the choice of either the “hope ending” or “despair ending,” Kaede is, as I mentioned, much more in line with what you’d expect from a Hope’s Peak protagonist. She’s extremely smart of course, but she has a bit of a reckless, headstrong streak where she tends to act based on emotion rather than reason, and this could get her into quite a lot of trouble once Tsumugi started rewriting everyone’s memories in chapter 5.

Saihara was able to see that both of the choices Tsumugi presented in the final trial were bullshit and would ultimately keep the cycle of Danganronpa ongoing, but I’m not entirely sure if Kaede would realize the same thing, or even if she did eventually realize it, I’m not sure it would’ve been in time to stop it. Because of her self-sacrificing nature, I personally think she would’ve chosen to be one of the sacrifices for the sake of “hope,” much like Amami presumably did in season 52. This ultimately means that Kaede sticking around might have ultimately led to a “bad end” of sorts, where even if the rest of the group went free aside from her and one other sacrifice, Danganronpa itself never gets dismantled and lives to see another season.

The only possible way I see for Kaede to avoid falling into this trap and making this choice is if enough of her classmates rubbed off on her or helped her see things in less black-or-white terms like “hope” or “despair,” and in more nuanced shades of grey instead. But considering how completely fooled almost everyone was in the actual events of the game, it’s difficult to say if this would happen. She would definitely need to talk and debate with someone who viewed the flashback lights a lot more skeptically, whether it was Saihara or Ouma (or maybe even Angie), before she could reach the truth about what Tsumugi and Team Danganronpa were really after.

This analysis has gotten pretty long by this point, so I’ll just wrap things up by saying that I really do love Kaede and Ouma’s friendship, and I think they had more potential of getting along than either of them might’ve realized in canon. Despite their fundamental differences, both of them were two characters who went farther than almost anyone else in trying to stop the killing game, and both of them weren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty if necessary. I think the fact that Ouma claims to remember Kaede and everyone else from before the killing game is super interesting, and I would’ve absolutely loved to see it touched on more if Ouma had lived longer.

All in all, Kaede is such an amazing, morally grey character who really helps to establish what we can expect from the rest of the game, and I think that’s part of what makes her so memorable. Maybe one day we’ll get some sort of DR:IF equivalent where we get a semi-canon look into a scenario where everyone lives, and hopefully there we could see not only more of Kaede being a protagonist figure, but also more of her interactions with Ouma and everyone else.

[sam-t-a]

Okay. 

*Deep breath* 

I think I’m finally calm enough to put into words exactly why I hated the finale and why I wasn’t completely surprised that I hated it. 

(Heads-up: this is really long and pretty negative. If you disagree, I would of course appreciate your point of view and love to hear it, but just thought I’d let you know in case this is the kind of post you would like to avoid.)

To me, it felt like every character on the show got betrayed in some way or another, but the main ones are Han Seo (devastatingly), Chayoung (obviously) and Han Seok (bear with me). 

Cha Young: 

She started out as a solid FL who annoyed some people for sure, but who had so much promise as someone unconventional and bold. The way her mother’s death affected her and caused a clear shift in her personality was a super interesting plot point that really never got explored. We have no idea how she came to sacrifice her morality in joining Wusang, just that she wanted to spite her father, which is a very superficial exploration. She gets cute idiosyncrasies in lieu of an actual character and an actual character arc. 

We also, halfway through the show, seem to forget that her father's death was the initial trigger. Cha young does not suggest bold ideas or intricate plans, she doesn’t fill the gaps Vincenzo is incapable of filling (because that would require that Vincenzo have flaws, and that’s not something the writers can abide), and she’s literally victimized in episode 19 and bedridden in episode 20, and that is IT. 

Someone who started out supposedly as Vincenzo’s equal just became another piece in his chess set, no matter how important a piece she may be. 

So her role as a badass avenger is trashed. That leaves her role as a love interest. Now, as Vincenzo’s love interest, she was supposed to get kidnapped in like episode 5 or 6 at the most if the villain has any brains whatsoever (Han Seok may or may not, more on that later). We need a reason for that not to happen too early. Cue villain is somehow in love with her for all of 15 minutes or so throughout a 20-episode series because a love triangle is inconceivable with the show’s current structure and for its purposes. 

So, she spends 15 or so episodes making the first move on Vincenzo, every time, putting herself out there, creating cute moments, getting nothing in return, and then he leaves. No confession, nothing much, he wasn’t even going to say goodbye or give her the choice of coming with him. 

I’m sure more chayenzo-oriented fans have already expressed all the necessary outrage over this, so I’ll move on to the part that I’ve personally been way more emotionally invested in from the get go: the Jang brothers. 

Han Seo: 

I was among the minority that  hated the “Vinny hyung” angle from the get-go and I’ve ranted about it in another post, so I won’t get into it here in-depth, but basically it was because I felt like Vincenzo hadn’t earned it, so to have the last words Han Seo hears be “You deserve to be my brother” or whatever the fuck he was on about PISSED ME OFF. It’s VINCENZO who doesn’t deserve to be Han Seo’s brother and hasn’t done a single thing to earn it. He was a good ally. The situation he allowed Han Seo to be a part of was beneficial to him, but Han Seo’s attachment to him was neither healthy nor heartwarming, and it certainly wasn’t returned on the level he offered it.

Vincenzo’s disregard of his death didn’t strike me as odd because I never saw enough indications that this was a two-way street and Han Seo’s safety and well-being came second so often that I didn’t get the impression Vincenzo was doing much to keep him alive. This is what I meant when I said the show was glorifying a torture survivor’s trauma responses. Han Seo himself, as a torture survivor, meant nothing to them. He was just there to create one more contrived comparison between Vincenzo and Han Seok. Instead of recovering from the trauma, it’s simply employed to someone else’s favor. He doesn’t go to prison for Han Seok, he takes a bullet for Vincenzo, and we’re supposed to see that as so much better.

All of that might (JUST MIGHT) not have ruined the show for me if he’d died better. 1) It was narratively pointless and totally avoidable, 2) they could’ve framed it as heroic, but instead Han Seok’s hand patting his head is pushing it down, so he can’t even get shot with his chin up and his back straight, Taec’s already taller, so the angle’s fucked and the whole cinematography screamed “kicking an injured puppy” and most certainly NOT “survivor finally stands up to his abuser”. The final nail in the proverbial and literal coffin is that he is mourned by no one. They’re FLIRTING not 3 MINUTES LATER, it felt so tone deaf and left such a bad taste. As I said, I didn’t expect significant mourning from Vincenzo (gotta say, I didn’t expect no mourning, that was a shocker), and Cha young and the tenants had no real interactions with him and no reason to mourn him, which left only one person who could. 

Which brings me to Han Seok. 

Han Seok started out as a solid villain, clear goals, clear skills that help him achieve his goals and basically make him a villain worth defeating, and a very complex relationship with both his own psychopathy and his brother. 

Let me get it out of the way: I do not believe Han Seok is capable of killing Han Seo because he had every reason and every opportunity to do so in previous episodes and couldn’t do it (I say couldn’t because a certain degree of reluctance is in itself inability). Han Seo’s danger far outweighed his material value the minute he shot Han Seok and then completely lost any value once he came out to the world as the chairman and it became clear that the prosecution would be going after him if anything happened, and not his brother. But time and again, he’s proven he’s all bark and no bite when it comes to Han Seo (killing-wise, specifically). 

The scene where he asks him to beat Vincenzo to death could be interpreted as him wanting to give Vincenzo the “painful death” he would have given him, but honestly, I think he was way past that point. He just wanted him dead in the “You crazy? we have to kill him before he kills us” sense. To that end, killing off a key ally of Vincenzo’s, who betrayed you and almost got you killed a bunch of times, should take priority, but Han Seok’s priority is reclaiming Han Seo by forcing him back onto his side. Now, much like his “love for Cha young”, Han Seok’s keenness on not killing his brother was essential to the writers so that Han Seo can justifiably make it this far and still be useful to Vincenzo (he can’t help if Han Seok completely excludes him from all events, plans and management processes, so Han Seok needs to want to keep him on his side enough not to do that even when it’s more prudent). 

All of this isn’t to say it’s unbelievable that he would kill Han Seo, but it’s DEFINITELY unbelievable that he would stay the same man after killing him. Someone here (I’m sorry, I don’t rememebr who) once said that Han Seo had become, over time, far more of a foil to his brother than Vincenzo was. To me, this means that Post-Han Seo Han Seok would be out of balance (tilted screen), unhinged in a way he never was before. The Han Seok we see shrugs and “oh, well”-s and moves on in a flash, not really any different from the villain he was four minutes and a whole brother earlier. 

This is very consistent with the way the show has been de-humanizing him from the start. I’m not saying this to defend Han Seok in any way, he’s a serial killer, an abuser and a total maniac. But you can be all those things and still a human being. In fact, you can ONLY be those things if you’re a human being. The show used its villain vs villain idea to justify a lot, but in the end, Vincenzo had to be a protagonist. He had to follow up every “I’m a villain” with a contrived “but at least I’m not (insert something worse)”. 

On the level of humans:

1) Vincenzo is supposedly different because he doesn’t hurt children or women (unless the women deserve it, and shooting a parent in front of their kid doesn’t count as hurting.) 

But we never see Han Seok hurting women or children either. In fact, if we proceed with the “chayoung is the myung hee of the good guys” comparison, he hasn’t hurt any women nearly as badly as Vincenzo did. 

2) Babel vs Mafia 

Babel’s corruption is compared a lot to the mafia, with Vincenzo commenting repeatedly that the people are WORSE than the mafia...which is bullshit. Babel is a set of companies that provide goods and services, but use illegal means to maximize their profit, so they hurt/kill people in the process because they want more money and care about money more than ethics. The Mafia is an inherently criminal organization that functions PURELY on the basis of its criminality. Every single dime Vincenzo spends is blood money. None of it is clean. And while we’re on the topic, I find the whole “taking Miri under his wing” thing pretty unreasonable too because he tried to have her killed you guys, I cannot believe we’re just glossing over that. He had everyone who worked on that vault killed, just random fucking construction workers. And he’s not sorry. And the show tells you he shouldn’t be. 

3) Repentance

Han Seok says outright he won’t atone, and while Vincenzo says no such thing out loud he just...doesn’t repent, I guess. He keeps the blood money, he goes back to being a full-time mafia dude doing mafia things. He leaves the same man he arrived. 

So, if on the level of harm inflicted upon humanity, Vincenzo and Han Seok are pretty much equal (and Vincenzo might actually be worse), then why should we root for Vincenzo? 

Well, my friend, that’s where the dehumanization comes in! 

I was initially very excited to see their portrayal of a psychopath because of the very interesting ways in which the informal moral code and official justice system surrounding a psychopath/sociopath/narcissist affect their behavior and their chances of not turning out rotten, and the show looked like it was looking at corruption in general. 

But as the show went on, the villain vs villain thing proved not to be enough, Vincenzo has to be better in some way (or if you’re as obsessed with him as the writers are, then ALL ways), so it became a villain vs monster narrative. Vincenzo isn’t ethical or fair or in any way interested in having a remotely positive impact on society, but at least he’s A HUMAN BEING unlike SOMEBODY. So, the characterization goes to shit, Han Seok becomes a cartoon card-board cut out of a villain and emphasis is put on how pointless his violence is, as opposed to how purposeful Vincenzo’s is. 

This is dangerous on multiple levels (and I promise this is the last point I’m making). 

1) For people in general, dehumanizing abusers/murderers/etc. makes us very liable to forget that you don’t have to be “a monster” to cause harm, and it makes people complacent in their belief that they are “not bad people” since they aren’t total monsters. The Banality of Evil is a thing, and in this series, it goes completely ignored. No one is inherently incapable of good or inherently undeserving of humanity. 

2) For victims of abuse in specific, it’s dangerous to portray abusers (including serial killer and non-serial killer ones) as entirely bad and unlovable, because it poses the dual risk of making victims less likely to acknowledge their abuse if it comes from someone who cares about or loves them on some level because the idea that someone cannot both love and hurt you is so stereotypical. Your abuser can genuinely want you in their lives and need you and, on some level, love you, and IT DOESN’T MATTER if that love doesn’t stop them from hurting you. 

On the other hand, portraying the victims of abuse as capable of flipping an off switch and hating the abuser with no hesitation or second thoughts to the point of unapologetically and cheerfully helping someone kill them and having no mixed feelings about it sends the message that if you CAN’T do that, then are you really abused? Are sure you’re not complicit in your own abuse? Do you even want to get rid of them? 

So this is basically why the way the show ended was so painfully disappointing for me. And the main reason it hit so hard was that it was initially so good and had so much promise. I really expected more.

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E113 (Oct. 27, 2020)

Good evening and good night, lovely people of the world! We’re on the internet and ready to go. Tonight’s guests are Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel. This will be calm, controlled, and sane, I can feel it. Brian points out it’s been seven months since either of them were on Talks. Oof. (Sam asks if it’s been going the whole time without him. Bigger oof.) Travis keeps sneaking bites out of an acai bowl or something and tries to look sneaky about it, and I laugh every time because he’s just...so big. He’s such a big person.

(Brian is wearing a lobstrosity shirt. He and Travis talk about Dark Tower for a bit; then Sam tries to get into the conversation: “Is that the thing from It?” Brian: “Is what the thing from It?” Sam: “Is that lobster the clown from It? I’m not very literate. Is that a Langolier? Is that a Shawshank?”)

Announcements: none! Maybe they just forgot. We’ve been talking about Sam’s spooky skeleton decorations for like five minutes. Brian suggests taking them to Travis’s house. Travis: “That’s the fastest way to get to the smell of burning plastic.” Brian: “Speaking of your girlfriend...”

On Avantika: Fjord wouldn’t call it a relationship as much as a casual sexual interaction. Not official! Super not official!!

The first sea voyage wasn’t great for Fjord, but he tried to be thoughtful about preparing for this one before they left: praying, kneeling at the bow of the ship, etc. He’s a little disappointed the Wildmother didn’t even throw him a “yo, fam” heads up.

They weren’t sure how to resolve the conflict at first, since Avantika went for Fjord rather than the crystal. No one expected it to get exposed in that way. Travis thought the necklace was a pocket dimension and was alarmed to learn it wasn’t. Travis wants it destroyed along with the third gateway, so until they are he won’t rest easy.

Everyone enjoyed watching them all fail on the battlefield again. (Sam: “You used [Counterspell] so effectively!”) Travis thought he’d said Thunder Step, which would imply Avantika was running, rather than Thunder Wave. Sam says it’s fine since none of them have that spell and he wouldn’t know it anyway.

It’s very difficult for Veth to find reasons to stay with the M9. She loves the adventures and making a difference, but she also wants to come home and have weekends and have a husband and life. “She’s a career girl!” He’s very excited about the possibilities of Caleb’s transportation effectively creating an easy commute for her. He also, as a player, doesn’t want to be the person who’s always leaving the party. “My characters wanna roam!”

Travis was fully tilted that Avantika might have gotten away right before the break. He doesn’t think he could have focused on Vess DeRogna’s task knowing Avantika had gotten away; he was seriously working out how Fjord would leave the party to go make a last stand at the third gate if she’d escaped.

Sam looooves how Matt plays Yeza, but it honestly makes him feel a little worse at how encouraging he is for Veth to chase her dreams. “He’s always like - go shine! Go blossom!” He wants to have the conversation about Yeza feeling a little ignored. It’s fun to share the tales of adventures with Luc & Yeza. 

Travis says there’s no way it’s Molly--it’s all Lucien. They don’t know if it was a resurrection, if he’s undead, possessed, etc. Everyone--everyone--rags on Taliesin’s accent work. Brian surreptitiously claims Ashly was brought on to relieve him of the burden of the accent. Poor Ashly, ha!

Initially, Travis landed on the Oath of the Ancients, but it had more nature & pacifism in it than he felt fit Fjord very well. Many of them also had a focus on good & lawfulness, which also didn’t feel quite right; he also wasn’t that vengeful for some of the others. He & Matt got together and discussed options. Matt asked what Travis liked about Fjord; Fjord’s love for the ocean was a huge part of it, since Travis himself also loves the ocean & scuba diving, and so Matt created a custom oath for him. Travis does not plan to post its details, but he thinks Matt will at some point.

Cosplay of the Week! a lovely Scanlan by Air Bubbles Cosplay! Sam tells us the “canon” Scanlan cosplay was actually borrowed hodgepodge, and the boots were falling off all day.

It was really cool to see how Yeza & Luc have made a home in Nicodranas. Felderwin was okay, but kind of your basic D&D fishing village, and she likes the Nicodranas is much better. She’s confident & comfortable knowing her family is safe and sound.

Why is Fjord so interested in finding Sabian? To him, post-orphanage, his time with Vandren was the best of his life & the most love he’d ever received, because he mattered & had worth. It was taken by someone he’d known basically his whole life, so Fjord is not going to let that go. “That fuckin’ bill needs to be paid, my friend.”

Sam acknowledges that he should NOT have looked at his phone in re: the Vilya reveal, but it was pretty surprising! He can’t believe none of them recognized it! Travis points out the M9 had never met, heard of, or known anything about Vilya, so it’s not that surprising. Brian points out Matt has also done a really good job keeping the two campaigns separate, so any references were tasteful. Sam marvels that it was so well done: it was tasteful, had emotional and story impact... “That Matt. He’s getting better!”

Liam texted Sam back something like “oh SHIT.”

Knowing Veth had a chance to help someone else return to her child made Veth feel almost karmically forgiven for being away from her kid, but it also made Veth a little guilty--”this lady wants to desperately return home, shouldn’t I want to go home too?” Caleb’s teleportation spell couldn’t have come a better time.

Sam wants Caleb & Astrid to get back together (well, he says “hump each other”), and Dani’s eyebrows climb off her forehead. Veth/Nott really thinks Caleb needs to have a roll in ze hay, and feels like after meeting her that there is a kindness or vulnerability to her that could be worthwhile. Travis thinks she feels like someone tethered, that it feels like she has a bomb or something in her chest that’ll explode if she tries to leave. Sam thinks Eadwulf is super cool. None of these names are spelled like I think.

Travis found the dinner super frustrating, because he felt Caleb was trying to walk a diplomatic line and he just wanted to backhand Trent. 

Fjord is still coming to terms with his feelings for Jester, and the feelings are definitely real, but there’s a lot of timing that he’s considering and he also wants to figure out what the relationship is like outside of constant tension and battle. Fjord is also having trouble figuring out how to exercise the ability to display affection as well since he’s never received them, and is feeling out how to give and receive them. “It’s fine now, because he’s feeling it, but once you say it out loud, or once you come to a point where you make it known to the other side, then what happens? It might be ruined. It might be broken. Or it might not be!” The moment with the porcelain unicorn was too good not to try. Travis also sighs that he’s not a romance D&D guy, “but now I am! Fuckin’ Laura Bailey!” He’s definitely feeling it out and will see how it unfolds in the game.

If Jester hadn’t let go of the Traveler, Fjord would have either attacked the Traveler or the Moonweaver and tried to kick them both off.

Sam doesn’t think the Traveler’s realized yet what a dick he is. Brian thinks it may not happen in this campaign, but agrees the full weight of what he deserves hasn’t been felt yet. Travis: “Yeah, he came to the edge, but it didn’t cost him anything.” Brian: “Yeah, he’s a real edgelord.”

Fanart of the Week! a beautiful portrait of Molly in the snow by @claygryphon on twitter.

Veth acknowledges that they work for shady people with shady pasts, so Vess DeRogna isn’t her first rodeo, but this time it’s personal. It’s Jaws 2: Electric Boogaloo. Sam can’t commit to actual actions, since Vess is like level 20 or something, but “I will get some kinda revenge. Be it petty or significant, I will get revenge.”

How are they feeling about being in Eiselcross? They’ve only just landed, so not sure yet. The cold is intimidating. They’re excited to explore a new island that’s part of Wildemount, especially with the river of lava running through it. “It’s icy with lava? Sounds like a Dairy Queen.”

There’s still a ton of unknowns regarding the Tombtakers, Vess, the nature of their job, and who’s here on whose orders. They’re excited to see how it’s all going to play out. Travis laughs that he doesn’t take notes, he’s just here to fight things. It just washes over him when Matt starts talking about names and places. “It’ll reveal itself in time. [...] I don’t write those notes down. I don’t even know how to spell it off the bat.” I have never identified more with Travis. Sam actually does pay attention and take notes and was really impressed by Marisha’s dive.

Veth became interested in branding her own spellcraft as soon as she saw Caleb doing it. “That’s what the influencer agents are gonna be looking at. It would be nice to leave the world better than we found it, but also with some branded spells.”

What were Fjord’s thoughts on dropping so much money on the ring & the Ioun stone? It wasn’t about money for Fjord, it was about a cool thing to acquire. It’s why he saves money in his campaign. Caleb needs “as much of a flak jacket as he can get.” He also REJECTS the idea of buyer’s remorse on the ring and touts the effectiveness it’ll have on the lava river.

Travis talks about his old coins - a 340AD coin he bought at a ren faire and a 120BC coin that was a gift from a friend.

Sam marvels at the love and thought that Caleb put into the tower. Sam points out they forgot to go to the top two floors altogether. Travis: “Did the mansion get as much careful planning from Scanlan as the tower did from Caleb?” Sam: Absolutely not. But they were still thinking small in C1, figuring out how things went, and they didn’t have as much detail in their heads yet.

And that’s all the time we have for tonight! We end on everyone whispering way too close into their mics and tapping fingernails on mason jars. A fitting end to this crazy episode, I think.

Is it Thursday yet?

[sepublic]

One of the weird things about WiLW is that, despite everyone canceling Boscha and declaring Boschlow dead (even as a crackship), it kinda makes the best case so far for why it could be made to work. If that makes sense? Like it was my nOTP before, but I saw how both of their biggest flaws is the other's greatest strength. And a fiery odd-couple opposites-attract pair would be a good foil to the sweet pining soulmates that are Lumity. Their history gets in the way, but not insurmountably so.

           Now, this is an idea I hesitantly consider and tread upon, for obvious reasons… Boschlow was a fun crack ship back during the mid-season hiatus, as the only thing we saw Boscha do to Willow was mockingly call her out for not being invited to the Moonlight Conjuring, and that was about it. But then Understanding Willow revealed that Boscha had in fact been bullying Willow for quite a while, and clearly it left QUITE some damage on Willow’s psyche… And while Boscha’s bullying in WilW was implied to be more intense than her usual torment, that doesn’t change the fact that she literally dumped garbage on Willow! I’m not opposed to seeing the two reconcile… But clearly, Boscha owes all of the apologies here, and has a lot to make up for, and Willow would be justified in not wanting to ever contact the girl, ever again.

           Honestly, I don’t necessarily see Willow and Boscha as two sides of the same coin, like I do for Luz and Amity… The two of them are mostly just foils and contrasts to one another. Though, I AM always eager to hear others’ takes on the two, and how one might interpret Willow and Boscha as such! At the very least, I think Willow and Boscha, initially, had an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ principle to how they dealt with things that troubled them, to varying degrees… There’s Willow not wanting to dwell on her bad memories with Amity, which she does in a healthier sense than Boscha- Who will sometimes dismiss her issues about something, because the thing in question is actually just dumb and doesn’t matter anyway!

          But as we can see… Boscha doesn’t always entirely ignore things, either- She’ll dredge up drama and go out of her way to antagonize others like Willow, instead of simply ignoring her feelings on the matter and letting it be done! She’ll LET her displeasure be known, and while it’s good for Boscha to sometimes acknowledge her unhappiness, she unfortunately proceeds to deal with it in a less than constructive manner… I feel like an actually healthy relationship/dynamic between the two would also require Boscha to tone herself down quite a bit, even if she can still maintain that sense of fiery competitiveness and boldness that she’s always had.

          Likewise, while I think Willow has EVERYTHING to give and provide to Boscha, more on that later… I’m not sure there’s really anything meaningful that Boscha could give her, that others don’t already do and better? Boscha’s strength is artificial and toxic to herself and others. Superficially it might make Willow feel better initially, but in the long run Boscha’s ideals are harmful. Especially if she tries to imply to Willow that she’s ‘worthy’ specifically because of her prowess with Plant magic, and not regardless of it. But, I am liable to others’ takes and interpretations on the two!

           Personally, my read on Boscha is that she’s afraid. She doesn’t want to be a ‘loser’, she’s afraid of the potential loneliness and emotional turmoil that may come from that, and she thinks that losers ‘deserve’ their own pain, no less… So Boscha is actively trying to compensate for who she is, so she can ‘prove’ herself as better than that, both to her own personal concepts, and maybe to someone else…

           She also seems fixated on pain, in a sense- Her own, and causing retribution towards those who ‘hurt’ Boscha. There’s a quiet moment where Boscha is impressed by how mature Luz is, for taking all of the blame… And she briefly seems to reevaluate her stance on Luz, before stubbornly sticking to her previous dislike. It’s like Boscha felt actual sympathy for Luz in that moment, but then closed off any room for reconsidering who Luz was and respecting her. She doesn’t want to change her mind on ‘losers’ like Luz, because surely there was a good reason for hating and bullying people like that…

           Boscha doesn’t want to reconsider her stance on Luz, not let the girl get into her head and ‘infect’ her with weakness. She’s lowkey afraid of the kind of people that Luz and Willow are, or what she sees them as; And it’s why she’s so vehemently livid towards ‘losers’ like those two! And, I think Willow could be interesting for Boscha, because Willow was obviously who Boscha hated the most, or at least much longer, compared to others. She singled out Willow, almost like she was projecting her own insecurities onto the girl, that hurting Willow would be like gaining retribution upon the insecurities and flaws that Boscha saw in herself, and the girl.

           Going back to what I said about Boscha focusing on retribution, how she doesn’t seem willing to repair and heal over mistakes together, and would rather punish… I think Willow is someone who can teach Boscha how to forgive, withoutforgetting. And let’s be real here, can it even be said if Willow and Luz ACTUALLY hurt Boscha in a serious sense, and/or their actions weren’t justified, plus completely innocent? Not to mention, Boscha is ignoring that all of those other students chose to prioritize attention to Willow over Boscha? Aside from Boscha recognizing that a lot of her own pain came from herself and her own exaggerated reactions to Luz and Willow’s innocent actions…

           We saw how Willow dealt with pain, regarding Amity. I feel like she’s someone who can show Boscha how to deal with that sort of thing, how one can actually be mindful of the circumstances of what happened, and really take that into account, while considering one’s feelings and the source of those emotions. Clearly the situation was different, as Willow did nothing to deserve Amity’s rejection, while Boscha MORE than earned some negative karma on her own end… But you get the idea.

           Boscha needs to actually get over her apprehensions about ‘losers’ like Luz and Willow, before she can truly heal… Instead of just ignoring those feelings first and getting along, because that kind of friendship would then be superficial. Boscha changing her apprehensive stance on someone like Willow, especially, is important- Because to Boscha, Willow is emblematic and definitive of the kind of person she doesn’t want to be… Or at least, she’s the one closest to that definition, that Boscha can actively get away with tormenting.

           Changing her stance on Willow would show so much, how Boscha has learned to improve and open her mind to other people and their ways of living and existing, and feeling. Perhaps it would be THE final step/accomplishment, the ultimate proof of Boscha having changed… Not making the same mistakes, when presented the chance to. Willow is someone who can show Boscha that the kind of person that she doesn’t want to be… ISN’T so bad after all, that there’s nothing to be afraid of, you aren’t necessarily going to become that kind of person by being with them- And even if you do, it’s not so bad! It’d be incredibly relieving to Boscha, and I can see her being grateful to Willow…

           Likewise, I can see her admiring Willow- Boscha can now appreciate just how strong and vigilant Willow really is, and how inspiring the Park girl is to her. Willow proves to Boscha that the kind of person she is, isn’t just someone to accept- It’s the kind of person to learn and take cues from, to strive to be like! Boscha is going to be amazed at how strong Willow was, withstanding all those years of abuse when Boscha herself likely couldn’t even IMAGINE handling that… She’s going to show Boscha that there’s more than one way to be strong, and arguably, Willow’s way is better. Willow can show Boscha that you can be soft and open with others, while being even stronger and more resilient to pain, than the kind of person Boscha was…

           And, it can show Boscha how to truly defend herself. How to be strong in a way that REALLY matters, and then Boscha can feel safe in a real sense, VS barricading herself past several walls she’s built up, but otherwise never overcoming her fear and adversity. Really, I think Willow has WAY more to teach Boscha, rather than the other way around… While I’m all for people mutually teaching one another different things, it’s worth noting that Boscha was entirely in the wrong for bullying Willow, and that Willow was certainly not ‘guilty’ of anything that warranted this kind of torment whatsoever.

           Willow has definitely ‘outgrown’ Boscha and her destructive fire. And, considering what Boscha did to her… Like I said, Willow has a lot to offer Boscha. But Boscha isn’t owed that, Boscha has had an issue with thinking she’s owed reverence and glory for being ‘strong’, for having suffered and endured and used that pain to forge herself into a ‘superior’ kind of person… But in the end, Boscha needs to not be entitled, and realize that she’s no better nor worse than anyone else. And she can’t work to change this fact, either- It’s just how it is!

           Willow doesn’t owe Boscha anything. She’s not the girl’s caretaker, she’s not her savior unless Willow wants to be… Which leads me to the idea that to start, Boscha needs to just let Willow exist. She needs to be mindful of Willow’s existence, give the girl room to flourish and grow… And Boscha needs to apologize, with no expectations attached. Only by healing their relationship, and getting it to a point where Boscha won’t hurt Willow, nor does she expect anything from Willow because of this… Only then can Willow feel safe about teaching Boscha a thing or two on how to live, and even so, that’s entirely her choice. Boscha needs to prove that she’ll respect whatever decision Willow makes, even if it prioritizes Willow and/or others over Boscha herself. It’s not some personal insult towards Boscha, people have their own lives that don’t revolve around her, and they don’t owe the girl anything for being ‘better’ than them, not that Boscha actually is to begin with!

           This is, of course, all speculation- Most of which hinges entirely on my specific read and interpretation of Boscha and her character. Honestly, this could prove very wrong if we learn more about Boscha’s character, and I’d have to reevaluate how a relationship between her and Willow would work. But first and foremost, Boscha needs to respect Willow as her own person, and not just a potential girlfriend, nor as someone she should idolize, either… Willow doesn’t have to be ‘cool’ in Boscha’s eyes to gain her respect. And similarly, I can see Boscha getting close with Willow, but then trying to play up how cool she is to others, and maybe how cool Willow is… Because she wants to justify being with a ‘loser’ like Willow.

           And Willow will rightfully take offense at that. She’s going to tell Boscha to stop trying to act like Willow herself is so ‘lowly’ that Boscha needs to socially compensate for being friends with her. Willow herself, on her own, is perfect as-is, and Boscha doesn’t have to act like she isn’t- She needs to stop caring about appearances or the opinions and reverence of others, so much! Boscha needs to value her own opinion of herself, her own self-worth, without making it dependent on whether or not others fear/adulate her.

           It’s kind of like Amity or Lilith, in a sense- Where Boscha doesn’t believe in her own evaluation of herself nor trust it… So she looks to others as a judge, as a litmus test to decide if she’s ‘worthy’ or lovable and whatnot. Boscha looks to how others reverentially regard her in order to decide if she’s good enough, instead of just looking at the mirror and deciding that if Boscha is happy- Then she IS good enough! All that should be required is for Boscha to be happy and content with herself. Her own opinion of herself DOES have value, believe it or not… And that’s something Willow herself learned, too, though unlike Boscha she didn’t try to cope with feeling ‘unworthy’, by hurting others- Instead Willow just ‘accepted’ this alleged lowliness of herself before Luz pointed out otherwise, that Willow was never unworthy to begin with!

           So, yeah- Boscha needs to stop being afraid of the kind of person that Willow is. She needs to see that people like Willow and Luz are perfectly valid as-is, that there is no hierarchy where a certain type of person is better or worse than others. Boscha needs to trust in her own opinion and self-confidence in herself, and not be so reliant on what others have to say. She needs to stop being entitled to power and adulation, even if Boscha went through the effort to ‘earn’ it… Because nobody agreed to compensate Boscha in the first place. It’s like working so hard to give someone gifts without them even asking, and then expecting to be rewarded. Boscha needs to be mindful of others and their existence, and see it as not that bad anway… And that it’s okay to be like others. Boscha can still hold onto her own identity, and remember her own feelings while still working past them.

           Honestly, this could be but the tip of the iceberg, regarding the many issues that Boscha has, and how Willow could help her. On the flipside, I can see Boscha being the kind of person to mercilessly give Willow encouragement… And tell Willow that yes, Willow IS strong, and she did earn the right to be beloved by others! But again, this ties back into the idea of love being conditional, which seems contradictory to what this show has to say. Like I said, Willow has so much more to teach Boscha, and it’s up to her to decide if she wants to- And even so, Boscha needs to recognize that her existence isn’t exactly reliant on whatever decision that Willow makes, either.

          Really, I’m not at all against seeing Boscha’s character be explored and given depth, maybe even reformed for her own sake? I guess I’m a forgive and forget type of guy. I’m willing to forgive Lilith, who cursed her own sister, and was also Head Witch of the Emperor’s Coven- So she hurt a lot of other people BESIDES Eda, and that’s something Lilith herself and some people in the fandom need to recognize more. And I feel like government persecution is worse than bullying, not to say the latter isn’t bad either- If anything, bullying already being bad, as-is, just says a lot more about how terrible persecution is by being worse!

           And me, I’m willing to consider motives and introspection for freaking Belos, who committed genocide upon wild witches just for existing, and set up the toxic coven system and environment that contributed to Boscha’s own toxicity in the first place. I guess for some, Boscha’s bullying hits closer to home than Belos’ persecution of people, hence why they’re justifiably angrier at her particularly. Those feelings are absolutely valid… Unfortunately, recent events have led to government persecution becoming a lot more relatable as well. Which, gets me to my point that if I can consider Belos’ side of the story, I can at least do the same for Boscha. Not to mention, it’s worth noting that Lilith and Belos are fully-grown adults, but Boscha is still a kid- So she’s got room to improve and change people, let’s remember that amidst still holding her accountable!

[amazingflyingdick]

all that glitters.

WHO: Dick Grayson (@amazingflyingdick), Jason Todd (@thatsjasonfkntodd), & mentions of Slade Wilson (@terminator-deathstroke) WHERE: Dick’s apartment WHEN: Backdated to October 10th WHAT: Dick opens up a little more about Slade and convinces Jason to play Truth or Dare.

JASON: Jason was not a meddler. He often left people to deal with their own shit, as he wanted to be allowed to do, but there were moments when there was such an obvious window where he could do something that he couldn’t not do it. It wasn’t meddling, then. It was just taking something that he’d learned and using it. And he’d learned about Dick. Otherwise, what had all those fucking conversations been for?

Still, he’d given it a few days. Maybe he had shaken himself out of it, somehow, and bucked the idea that if you did the same thing a hundred times you’d get a different result on the hundred-and-first. The radio silence from Dick that was still going on days later said otherwise, though.

To his credit, he tried the door like a normal person. He knocked, he rang the bell, he heard Sasha bark once on the other side and the excited huffhuff as she sniffed beneath the door. Dick didn’t answer or say anything, even under threat of burglary. Maybe he didn’t believe him, maybe he didn’t hear him, but either way Jason followed through. He’d been breaking into houses and apartments since before he’d hit puberty - that apartment door didn’t stand a chance.

In a minute, he had it open and was nudging Sasha back. “I’m the one who leaves people on ‘Read,’ dude.”

DICK: Dick knew Tim and Jason both had good intentions when they showed up at his apartment to talk to him. It wasn't their fault that he was still trapped in his head, reliving conversations over and over, and struggling to understand what he must have overlooked. 

When he heard someone at the door, he didn’t bother getting up to answer it. That wasn't unusual. He heard a couple knocks throughout the day, but he never responded to whoever was on the other side, even when they tried to talk to him through the door. This time he heard Jason's voice and he frowned, but ultimately decided to stay where he was. He'd gotten a box down from his closet and was going through it on the bed.

Then he heard the door open and, while he wasn't that surprised that Jason made good on his threat to break in, it made him realize he must want to see him regardless of what he would see. Breathing in slowly, Dick got up from the bed and went to the doorway of his bedroom. He'd taken a shower, but he was still wearing clothes someone would sleep in. What was the point of getting dressed if he didn't have plans to go anywhere? "Sorry, my... my phone died. Before that I was just..." He paused, but didn't bother coming up with an excuse. "Just thinking.”

JASON: If anything, Dick looked like more of a mess then than he had when he and Tim had both showed up. Jason had gotten used to hearing from him every day, at least a single dumb message, even if he didn’t respond, so it had been weird to suddenly not only have none sent but to not be answered either. Even if he’d had no idea something else was going on, that probably would’ve got him over to the apartment to make sure he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t, obviously. “Got a billion dollar expense account and can’t buy a charger?” Of course he knew that wasn’t the reason. It hadn’t mattered if the phone was dead if he wasn’t talking to anyone anyway.

Jason was not one to shy away from people at their low points. While he never expected anyone to be there for his (and was generally proved right), what he had always been able to shoulder was the darkest parts for people he cared about. He’d been doing it since he was a kid. It was why he hadn’t hesitated even for a second when Roy relapsed to say he could and would handle it. The reason he often wasn’t there was that he didn’t let himself be close enough to people to know when it was going on in the first place, not because he was unwilling or somehow incapable of dealing with it. He’d had no idea until recently what it even looked like for Dick, much less had a reason to think that there was any call for him to be there during it.

He stepped more fully into the apartment and sat down on the arm of the couch. What he’d done for Roy during the detox didn’t fit here. This was Dick. He knew it had to look different. “You wanna talk?” It was not something he normally offered. If anything, it was anathema to his usual way of operating, but it was the one thing Dick usually did that suddenly he wasn’t doing. He was going so out of his way not to that Jason had little doubt it was the missing thing.

DICK: Dick's phone hadn't died because he didn't have a charger and they both knew it, so he didn't bother clarifying that he did have a charger... somewhere. The lack of a quip or ready made comeback was also uncharacteristic. It almost seemed like he was half-asleep. Sasha, restless, paced between them and finally settled for sitting next to Dick, nosing into his palm and whining.

There were a handful of times when he'd pulled back from the family. It was always when he didn't know how to handle the situation and it was too much for him to regulate. The only thing he could do was isolate himself. He didn't like being around the people he cared about when he was like this, because it wasn't him, it was difficult, and he knew it was disarming to the people who needed him. 

Jason asking if he wanted to talk took him off guard. Dick hesitated, but he came around to the chair. He sat on edge of the seat and leaned forward, his arms folded over his knees. There was something fidgety about his hands and he brought one to his mouth, chewing on the nail. His fingertips had practically been destroyed in a matter of days. "You won't like what I have to say.”

JASON: “I never like anything anyone has to say,” he shrugged. “Kind of my thing.” Supposedly, anyway. It wasn’t really true, but some people were incapable of handling being disagreed with. “So hit me with it. I didn’t come over here just to look at your bed head.” And he didn’t feel like pretending like he’d not shown up to try to help, either. Dick knew very well that Jason wasn’t the one who showed up for a lot of casual visits. He’d stopped being quite so disagreeable when Dick did it, though.

Whatever Dick had to say, Jason didn’t expect to be terribly surprised by. Maybe he’d be wrong. He just normally went into everything expecting the worst, shittiest thing to happen, even if it had nothing to do with him. Once in awhile he was still surprised, and maybe this would be one of those times, but when he’d decided to show up he’d already braced for Dick not to have anything to say or do that he liked. Jason made a motion with his hand like he was coaxing an animal out of hiding. “I didn’t write a speech for you, so you’re the one that’s going to have to do the talking.”

DICK: By now Dick knew what Jason said wasn't true, but he didn't say anything. Sometimes it surprised him how much yet how little Jason had actually changed from the way he'd been as a kid. The reactivity was still there, the tendency to see threats when there weren't any, but he was more internal about it now. That was one of the realizations he'd come to during their talk in the library. Just because Jason didn't reach out or resisted initial attempts at reaching out didn't mean he was unreachable. So he kept trying. It was worth it to him, especially because they never had a chance to solidify the bond they'd just started to form before his death.

A long silence passed as he chewed the side of his nail on his index finger, wincing when he drew blood. Exhaling softly, he forced his hands to fold between his knees, keeping them still for at least half a second before giving up, running one of them through his hair to push it out of his eyes. He had admitted to his past with Slade. With Tim, he'd admitted a little more about the seriousness of it. Both of those things were different. Dick hadn't talked to anyone about how he felt now, or what his thoughts about it were, and there wasn't really anyone he could talk to about it. The weight of that was crushing. "I don't know how to be... done with this. For years I thought I was over it, completely, and then..." His fingers twisted slightly in his hair. "I was wrong."

JASON: Whether he did it on purpose or not, and usually it was six of one and half a dozen of the other, he often engineered obstacles that kept people away from him or at least at arm’s length. At the first sign of pushback, and definitely by the third or fourth, most people backed down and stopped trying. It’s what he expected. The predictability of it, while not a comfort, was at least not a shock either. It had taken Dick over a decade to finally start to do it, but he had kept pushing on long enough for Jason to believe he didn’t mean to just up and quit. So he was there, ready to do much the same thing. Whatever impression he gave, he never actually meant to only take and never give.

Jason watched him worry at his hands and resisted the urge to tell him to stop. Dick, who rarely ever stopped moving let alone boxed himself up in one place for a week, had to put it somewhere. Apparently the “somewhere” was fucked up fingernails and fidgeting. He made himself ignore it; there were worse things. “Why?” There had never been anything or anyone that Jason couldn’t walk away from, and the mere idea of it was foreign to him - stupid, even, but he often said that about a lot of the way Dick worked. “What’s Slade got that you can’t get away from? It’s not like you’ve never split up with somebody.” Important ones, even.

DICK: Even though one of the things Jason said to him in the library was that it was a two way street, Dick hadn't fully known what to expect. It wasn't that he didn't believe him, or thought Jason wouldn't be able to go through with it, but he knew that different people had different ways of expressing things. Dick was there for people in his way, but he was smart enough to understand that not everyone's way looked the same. This was Jason's way of offering support, which he appreciated. Normally, Dick enjoyed being needed and he was willing to give everything he had, but right now he was struggling. He didn't know which way was up and he wasn't useful to anyone.

Why. It was a good question. "I don't know," he admitted. "I've been trying to figure that out, but I don't know if I'll ever understand. It was different, it... and after, I was different. I was guarded. I never really let anyone as close to me again. It's not that I didn't want to, because I tried. I tried so hard, especially with Babs, and..." His mouth felt dry and he could feel a prickling in his throat that he fought back. "It just got all messed up. She knew, by the way. She's the only one I ever told." He thought it would salvage the relationship if she understood everything about him, but it didn't change anything. It didn't change the fact that he'd been altered by the experience.

JASON: He’d never been talented at giving people advice in a way that felt good. If he saw something that made sense (or didn’t make sense), it usually came out exactly however it had been in his head. There was no sugar-coating on the way out, most of the time. Maybe he was less harsh with some people than with others, but it was only small degrees of variation. So, he had no Hallmark worthy words of encouragement and solidarity to offer Dick, but he was hoping that if nothing else he could cut through some of what was in his head. He was obviously not capable of doing that himself. Jason wasn’t always, either, when it was his own problem.

The explanation he got was one that set him a little more on edge than he’d expected. It was just the wording, maybe, so he repeated it the way it had sounded. “So what, Slade snapped something in you and he’s the only one that can touch it now?” He wasn’t sure what to do with the admission about Barbara. Regardless of how much or little Dick had told her, it hadn’t changed their trajectory.

DICK: Hearing Jason say the words made him frown faintly, but he considered the question. It was different to have someone else talk about it in such plain terms, asking for clarification, and it forced him to truly analyze the things he was saying. What he'd been doing on his own for days wasn't working. All it did was create an endless echo chamber that left him emotionally drained and even more hopeless. Even though Jason wasn't doing anything but asking him direct questions that simplified what he'd just rambled on about, it was like shooting a laser beam through fog.

"No," he finally said carefully. "But I was ashamed after it ended, because I felt tricked. I wanted to pretend it never happened. It was a... weird split. From myself, I guess, and..." Hesitating, Dick took a moment to think about it. "It was more a self denial. Didn't want to think what happened had anything to do with me. It was easier to shift the blame or chalk it up to being stupid and young. Because what sane person wants that?"

JASON: “Whether you’re sane depends on why you wanted him.” Jason did know a little bit of it, but it wasn’t like he’d pressed him for a ton of the more personal details. He hadn’t really wanted to hear them, originally, but now their relationship had become so pervasive in other aspects of Dick’s life and the city itself that he couldn’t skip out on the details. If he was going to have any insight at all, he needed something closer to the whole picture. “And why you still do. Leave sane and insane out of it. Leave out the idea of Slade changing, too.”

Jason turned and finally sat down properly on the couch. “The guy has to have something that made you cave as fast as you did. You were already doing it when I was in jail. So what is it? Because if I had to, I could tell you every reason I want Roy. I’m not gonna,” that went without saying, “but I could. And they hold up against a lot.” He’d been aware of them the whole time, clear cut - what he admired about him, why he wanted him, why he let himself - and none of it hinged on what Roy could be or might be, it was all just what he was. There had to be something more to Slade that Dick wanted besides the idea that he could be more than Deathstroke, and Jason wanted to hear it without the veil of morality.

DICK: Dick wasn't fully sure if there could be a logical reason to want Deathstroke. What other people saw wasn't what he saw, and trying to explain how things were for him would be bizarre for anyone hearing it. He hadn't lied when he told Jason and Tim that he thought Slade would change and give up Deathstroke, even hoped for it, but that aspect didn't have much to do with how he felt about him. It was a way to excuse why he would entertain the idea in the first place, because at that point, he wasn't ready to face reality. It took a long time to reach the place where he was now - or where he'd been prior to the NOVA incident.

Sighing, he was silent for a long moment, though the comment about Roy did earn the ghost of a smirk. It made him look a little less blank. He wasn't sure if he could give Jason the type of answer he would understand, but he didn't let himself overthink it. The important thing was authenticity. If this was going to fall apart, at least he would be left with some measure of self-awareness. "It was like I..." Dick's hesitated, his brow furrowing, and Sasha rested her head against his knee. "Like I had something solid under my feet. For the first time since my parents, and... he doesn't expect me to do anything. He doesn't want anything from me. Not a joke, not a smile, not Nightwing. Nothing. What he did to NOVA, he did knowing that it could end everything, and he did it anyway. Because he sincerely believed that it would keep me safe, as fucked up as it was, he was putting me first. And I... I know it makes me a hypocrite to wish he'd do things differently, but it isn't because... because my feelings are conditional on that. I never asked him to give anything up and I wouldn't, I just..." He exhaled softly and shook his head, resting his hand on top of Sasha's head. "I just want it to be easier.”

JASON: He didn’t need to point out that the jobs Deathstroke took, killing people for money who’d done nothing but piss off someone enough to put a contract on their head, was wrong. Dick knew that. Jason didn’t think that Deathstroke was worth any of the energy put into him, but that’s all he had to gauge with - the Deathstroke part. Not any of the rest of it. He was trying to tamp down his own judgement about it - which he’d been doing in varying degrees since the beginning - to try to see it as Dick did. He couldn’t, really, but there was one thing he could do and one thing he did believe that made that not really matter. He’d just have to wait and see if Dick’s answer made it worth anything.

“So if it’s not conditional on whether or not he’s Deathstroke, who are you trying to make it easier for? If you’re not asking him to give up something for you and it doesn’t matter to you if he does or not,” because that sounded like what he was saying, whether Jason believed him or not, “then whose opinion are you counting higher than yours?”

DICK: Dick said nothing, at least not at first, but the soft sigh more than indicated what his answer would be. It was always Bruce. "I know you probably think I'm an idiot for caring about what he thinks. It's hard not to." He reached up to rub the back of his neck, already feeling the tension. "I'm not saying it makes no difference, obviously I don't... want people to die, you know that, and I would try to stop it if I were there. That's my personal choice and it's on my conscience. I'll never believe that killing is the right thing to do, but..." Trailing, he swallowed hard. "That doesn't mean I don't understand the justification for it. It's just harder... with him.”

Gritting his teeth, his gaze lowered. "You were right, you know. That day you found out, when you said I was being hypocritical. I know how it looked. I know why you were pissed off. Maybe you don't need me to explain, maybe it doesn't even matter, but... I don't want you to think I changed because of him. I didn’t. It was before that. After what happened to you, I was... angry. I'd never wanted anyone dead before, except Tony Zucco, and Bruce... didn't have the capacity to handle it. Anyway, I didn't want anything to do with him or his ideologies. I rejected all of it for a while, I started looking at things differently, and everything and everyone got... less black and white." It wasn't that he started killing, or ever considered it, but he started to see situations from different perspectives. Dick felt like he was rambling, but it helped when he worked things out aloud, if he heard his own reasoning, and maybe it was more for himself. "When everything went wrong with... Slade, with the Titans, I... overcompensated. Swung back the other way. Then you came back." Bruce's apparent death happened not long after that, and Dick had been forced to take on the mantle of Batman in his place. "And I started to see things differently again. I had to or I'd have to cut you off, and I couldn't. I wouldn't." He paused. "But it made me realize that, even when I thought my morals were identical to Bruce's, whenever something happened, my first thought was always that I failed him. Not myself, but him. It's something I still can't let go of."

JASON: “Fuck Bruce,” Jason said immediately, more like a snap reaction than one he gave any real consideration to. Not that it would’ve been different even if he sat there and thought about it. “He doesn’t get to keep dictating everything. Your...relationship thing with Slade isn’t gonna impress him no matter what you do. You think he’ll stamp on the Bat seal of approval just because you tried to fit it into a box he’d like more? He won’t.”

But it was hard to linger long on berating Bruce with what Dick said next. It got Jason to furrow his brows, and for a few seconds it was hard even for him to know whether what he felt was irritation or confusion. It might have been both. “Where was that attitude when you were offering to reform me?” If it was an unfair question or should have been water under the bridge, it didn’t stop him from asking. Not that it ever did, really. Him being there and letting Dick talk was about as far into considering his comfort as he could go - measuring what he said was rarely ever on the agenda. “How’re you gonna look at me and say it’d be easier for Slade to be more like me when you couldn’t even let me be like me?” Dick had said he’d been right to call him a hypocrite, but for once the questions weren’t accusatory, despite the wording. Maybe not unfair, either.

Jason raked his teeth over his bottom lip. He knew that things were different right then than they had been when he’d shown back up in Gotham. They were different for him, in a lot of ways, and they were different for Dick, too. They were quite a ways past that - offering help, reform, a nice cell in Arkham to get his head on straight (even if that had ended up more on Bruce than on Dick), blah blah - but it wasn’t like he’d forgot. It wasn’t like they’d talked about it. They were past it, but it was still standing there. He’d shown up to let Dick say what he needed to say, but it wasn’t going to do much good unless Jason actually made himself find a way to listen to it.

“You think I actually let go of what Bruce thinks?” It was almost funny, in a bitter way. “I haven’t. I know when he’s disappointed and how I did it. I just realized that it was going to be like that no matter what. He’s never-“ he stopped and shook his head, trying to put the words together the right way and not just the way they formed on his tongue. “None of us are ever going to be what he wants. Might as well be what we need instead.” That was his big, grand contribution to life. Nobody else would provide, whether it was acceptance or affection or whatever else, so it was better to just let go of it and take care of it on their own. “If you’re getting something from Slade, just...take it, man. Take it if it’s there. Who gives a fuck what it looks like to the rest of us?” Any of them. Not just Bruce.

DICK: "I know. I just..." It was hard to put into words what Dick was trying to do in a way that seemed at all feasible, because he knew what an impossible feat it was to get Bruce to understand anything beyond his own narrow view of the world. Although he had been able to emulate that for the sake of donning the cowl, Dick was always a lot more open-minded. There were occasions when he let his ideals and judgments slip, without really meaning to, but at the end of the day he was far more adaptable and willing to listen to other possibilities. It was why he was so much more effective as a team leader. He knew how to take everyone into consideration and fight for a common goal. It was necessary to have a degree of adaptability in order to be at all successful in that.

Jason's question made him flinch and he sighed, looking down at his hands. "You came back when I was trying my damnedest to prove that what happened with Slade had nothing to do with me. Like I said, I was overcompensating. And it was easier to go back to something I knew I could rely on. The devil you know, right? I needed something and I chose Bruce, because the risk I took and what I lost me made me think he must have a point. Everyone needs something to believe in, especially when they no longer trust themselves to do the right thing. I stopped trusting myself." Dick smiled wryly, although the effect was more of a grimace. "You just had bad timing." He'd never wondered how things would have turned out had Jason not come back, because it wasn't a possibility he wanted to entertain. Suffice to say, they would both be in very different places. There never would have been a reason for him to start entertaining those grey areas again. "I never wanted to be like him, though. When I saw him with you, when I realized what it cost him to maintain those rigid standards, I knew I wasn't like him." Dick knew Jason cared about what Bruce thought, but he also knew better than to admit that he knew, so he said nothing. It was strange to know Jason was right on an intellectual level, yet be unable to do anything about the continuous efforts he made for Bruce's approval. Lowering his head, his fingers dug into his arms and he shook his head. "I know I can't spend make myself unhappy for the sake of pleasing him. It isn't just that, it's... I don't need to be seen as perfect, just... acceptable." He paused. "But I do care about how it impacts you and the others. Jason, I..." He made himself stop. "I knew when I first met you that Bruce would let you down, so I told myself that I would be there for you instead. I knew what it would be like for you, that you would never please him and you could... die trying. I knew it because I lived it. And I wasn’t there. You even called me, and I..." That was a dangerous road to go down. Dick clenched his teeth, barely aware of how his fingernails were cutting into his skin. "It isn't just Bruce. I don't want to mess it all up. I want to be worth it."

JASON: I know, I just... Jason often got stuck in his own loop about Bruce. He was aware of it to know it existed, but not to muster either the ability or desire to break out of it. It just didn’t matter enough. The loop deserved to be there, so he stayed in it. That didn’t mean he couldn’t see Dick’s for what it was and want to snap him into something different, though. He both knew and could see how much of a waste it was, how dumb it was, and that it’d never end. Did Bruce have any fucking clue? It seemed hard to fathom that he wouldn’t, but it was worse if he did, and did nothing to try to change it, or only managed effort in suspended moments here or there. Jason had had a few of those of his own. The isolated things. An apology, an explanation, a justification. It never changed the whole picture for him, and it obviously never changed anything for Dick either, even if it didn’t look the same. It was easier to see from the outside - he’d just never had cause to look at any of the others long enough to notice. Not that Dick would have let him.

“Bad timing. That’s me.” It didn’t really matter, when it was all said and done, because it was done. It had played out. They’d lived it how they lived it. Jason was only barely reaching a point with himself where he was willing to allow people to add some different context into it, to color what he remembered a little differently than he’d done on his own. “What’d it cost him?” he wondered. “Me? You? We’re both still here, like a couple of idiots.” Not always. But what’d Bruce lose permanently? And what’d he do with the things that got returned to him? Not fix them. That was for damn sure. He was quiet for a couple of beats before finally adding, “You’re not like him anyway, even if you did want to be.” And from Jason, it was no insult. More silence followed. His jaw tightened once or twice and he stared forward at the switched-off television at his own blurred reflection. He had called. He’d not really thought about it again, after. With everything else that had gone down, Dick not picking up the phone had been far from the straw that broke the camel’s back. “I called and you didn’t answer, yeah,” he finished for him. “So? I don’t-“ he sighed, faltering finally. “I never cared that I died, man. Even when I was doing it, I didn’t blame anybody for it. Not Batman, not you, not my fucking mom.” And it hadn’t been dying that had turned him into the person he was, either. Surely Dick knew that, by then. The dying didn’t matter.

Restless, suddenly, he ran one hand along the cushion beside him. “I’m sitting here, right? Would I be sitting here if it-“ Jesus Christ. “If you weren’t worth it?” He wouldn’t be. “Because I’ve got like a billion other things I could be doing.”

DICK: Anyone who took up the Robin mantle understood the futility of pleasing Bruce, of earning that hard-won approval, but Tim had gotten close. What Dick hated to accept was what it had taken for Bruce to get where he was now. The disconnect between how he was when Dick and Jason knew him and what Tim, Damian, and even Steph had seen was so vast that sometimes it was like they knew two different people. One of the main reasons why Dick had been around more for Tim was because of what happened with Jason, and that seed of anger caused him to stand up to Bruce several times for Tim's sake, because Tim needed it, and he had to accept that his own childhood was over. It didn't matter if he could logically or objectively step back and see the situation for what it was. It didn't matter that he knew Bruce loved him. He largely suspected that wouldn't matter for Jason, either - or maybe it would, but there would always be that thought of too little, too late. The difference between them was where they channeled the criticism. Dick turned it inward and Jason lashed out, mainly at Bruce, easily making up for what Dick didn't say.

"We're here," he agreed, because it was true enough. Jason would show up when the chips were down. There were times when Dick hadn't been sure if he would, though he'd always reach out, but that was a long time ago. "It cost him a family. A family he could have had, if he'd just... I don't know, gotten therapy, I guess. That's why he took us in. He wanted a family. Yeah, I got the good little soldier speech and made that dumb oath, just like you did, but he didn't have to adopt us." That was something Dick was certain of, because Bruce hadn't adopted him right away, and that had been the main reason why he'd been so desperate to please him, especially in the beginning. He was terrified Bruce would return him, defective, and pick out a newer, shinier kid who did cleaner backflips. It was dumb in retrospect.

He couldn't help a faint smile when Jason said he wasn't like Bruce, laughing under his breath and pushing his hair back from his face. "Good. He's miserable." As Jason continued, his smile faded and he held his breath. Even though he'd said the word not two seconds ago, it was impossible not to wince when it came out of Jason's mouth. He didn't think he would ever not feel that pang. The first time it had been agonizing, he could remember it so well, and the memories and emotions associated it were heavy. "I know you don't. I know that it might have still happened if I'd answered the phone, if I'd stayed, if I played it all over again, and maybe there was no stopping it. It was Joker's doing. I know that. I just don't want to lose the time we have now, or waste it making stupid decisions." It wasn't so much that he was looking back, but the past was a good reference when it came to moving forward. He knew how tragic one misstep could be. "I still wish I'd picked up that stupid phone. I had your voicemail saved for a long time, but then I smashed it after a fight with Bruce. Lost it." That had been more devastating than he wanted to admit, so he forced a faint smirk. "Your little high voice. It was a lot higher than I said in the car, by the way. I was doing you a favor."

No. Jason wouldn't be there unless he wanted to be. Dick knew that because he knew him. It had taken several good-intentioned but misinformed efforts to reach this point, too. That was why he didn't want to mess it up. "You sure there's anything more fun than watching me wax on and feel sorry for myself?" Rubbing his nose, he laughed softly. "We could play rooftop truth or dare. Trampoline rooftop truth or dare. It's more fun with two people." He paused, then continued quickly. "And I have wine."

JASON: There had been other points, earlier on, when the person in the family he’d have said he was least like was Dick. It had been more like armor than anything. He couldn’t be him, despite all the trying, so the only solution was to wear the opposite like a badge of honor, or at least a badge of defiance. He’d done that for a long time. He might have kept doing it, even, had they not finally managed to yell about something that ended up mattering. He still couldn’t ever be Dick, didn’t even want to be anymore, but what had felt like a gulf that separated them had narrowed into something small enough to see over. Bruce had failed both of them in ways that the others couldn’t understand. Tim had said as much. He couldn’t be insulted by being likened to Bruce, because the Bruce he knew wasn’t the same. And good for him, just like Jason had said. Good for him, but that wasn’t what he got. It wasn’t what Dick got, either.

“Yeah. Cost him a family. Cost us...” he shook his head, “I guess the same thing.” He let the words hang, listening to them as he said them. “For awhile.” And that part, he was still getting used to. Dick had tried for something with Tim and Damian and he’d got it, at least halfway, but Jason had never expected to. He’d given up on it, at least in any meaningful way, and was still easing into the idea that he’d been wrong. He wasn’t ever going to have the father in Bruce that he’d wanted, but he could salvage...something. Somebody. Not just because some words got said - he’d had enough damn words. Everybody had words. Even Bruce had words. Dick was the one finally doing something to prove it, even if the only thing it looked like right then was letting Jason see him be something besides the unattainable thing he’d conjured up for so long. That was fine. It was all he’d wanted, really. Actual truth with something to back it up. “Look up miserable in the dictionary and you’ll see a cowl with stupid ears.” He didn’t want to be like that, either, but at times it seemed inevitable. All those months, years, when it felt like the only thing he had left was just disappointment and fucking anger...had he been much different from Bruce then? Not really. Not on that level, anyway. “Doesn’t really matter anymore if you could’ve made a difference. I’m not asking you to make up for it, don’t need you to pay some kind of pittance for missing a phone call. Just don’t use me as some kind of reason not to do something you want to do.” He didn’t want to be an excuse, much less a burden - something holding him back from himself or from somebody. Even if the somebody was freakin’ Slade.

The remark about his voice finally got him to move. He threw one of the pillows nearby straight toward Dick’s head, aiming to knock him over. “Keep talking and you’ll sound like that by the time I leave.” He stared at him like he was daring him to continue. “What are we, sixteen?” But there were worse things, he figured, than just getting drunk. “Fine. Hope it’s a lot of wine.”

DICK: It might be the singular thing that prevented their schism from being too great. Dick understood what Jason went through with Bruce, the impossible standards, although Jason had an actual person he felt he had to live up to while Dick's own fears of failure were largely internalized. All of that resulted into the tendency to be what the people around him needed. He had the ability to read a room and innately understand how to mold himself to the group. The lack of authenticity ate at him, but the idea of exposing what he thought was fundamentally flawed and broken about himself was horrifying, even though being understood was something he would always crave. It was another thing that drew him to Slade. As it turned out, being accepted and understood was addictive. It made him less reticent to be direct and honest with Jason. The idea that they could share those experiences made the burden much lighter, even if they didn't talk about it, and even if they handled it differently. It came from the same place.

"For a while," he agreed. "For the world's greatest detective, he doesn't seem to grasp long term effects." Abnormal psychology was one thing, but anticipating others' reactions to a sequence of events, especially their reactions, was one of Bruce's shortcomings. Pressuring Dick to let the others believing he was dead for their well being played perfectly into Dick's desire to protect his family, sure, but there had been consequences. He knew there would be consequences. Like Bruce, he thought it was worth what he had to do. It was a burden he wanted to take on for their sake, even though it still troubled him that Bruce had strategically used that angle against him. "Underneath all of it, we all want the same thing, right? Maybe that's just a side effect of being an orphan." That made him laugh, even though he felt more sorry for Bruce than anything. "I used to get so mad when people compared me to Bruce. They did it all the time when I was with the Titans, said I was just like the Bat, and... I hated it." There was no denying he could be a serious and harsh leader, but he'd had to be. There were lives in his hands. If he were going to take on that role, then he would devote himself to keeping everyone under his care safe. It put him under a lot of pressure and there were plenty of occasions when he'd exploded. The position brought out his perfectionist, organizational side - something he'd never relished in, because it wasn't him. Sometimes he wondered if anyone other than Wally, Roy, and Donna knew him at all. Kory, maybe, but even with Kory he'd been largely buying into an idealized version of himself.

"It's not really pittance. It's just knowing how easy it is to make a choice you regret even years later. And what I want... I mean, what's most important to me, is family. It's always been family." That was what made it so hard to risk choosing Slade and possibly alienating them.  Dick caught the pillow, but the motion made him fall back against the couch. This time when he laughed it was richer, although the redness of his eyes betrayed other emotions that rose to the surface with it. Tossing the pillow back at Jason, he got to his feet and gestured for him to follow. "It's a lot," he confirmed. "Everyone seems to think wine is the go-to gift when you move into a new apartment, even if it's months after the fact." He had at least a dozen bottles shoved in various places around the kitchen. "Uh..." He dug around in the silverware drawer. "...But I don't have a cork opener. Do you have a pocketknife or something?"

JASON: Though he'd never know for sure, maybe the weight he'd carried around would have been there with or without Dick. If it hadn't been the standards set around him, would it have been something else? He'd wondered, more than once, if he was even capable of the kinds of things that other people were, or if it was truly a situation where he was damned no matter what. If he just was...how he was, and his issues with Bruce, what happened with Joker, all of it just happened to be the circumstances and the situations he'd ended up with. There was no way to tell. He couldn't live a different life to find out. All he knew was that he didn't want that to be true, and if it wasn't inherently true, that meant it was the result of something. Someone. Maybe that was what Dick was saying, too, about what he'd tried to do after things went south with Slade the first time. It just looked wildly different for both of them, as usual. He didn't know how to ask, or if he wanted to, but the thought took hold as he sat there.

"Apparently being a good detective doesn't do much good with this." But it wasn't like they were neat puzzles to be solved. Jason often wished it were that simple himself - that people made enough sense to just put them in the places he wanted them to fit, but he had the presence of mind (sometimes, anyway) to realize it wasn't going to work. He ran his hand along the back of his neck. That was what they had in common, right? All of them? Something in or about the world had spit them out and they'd ended up together. "Yeah, well...wanting is the easy part." Jason had said that plenty himself, that Dick was just the Baby Bat, but that had been the point of what he was doing. He'd projected that himself, whether he wanted to or not. Jason had just had no way of knowing that he should be seeing through it. He had never spent much time talking to Roy about Dick. There was no reason for him to. It was, if anything, one of the things he'd wanted to discuss with him the least. Their understanding of him probably split somewhere, but he'd never wanted to drag that into their relationship. Whatever they were, he'd wanted it to be them. Not something that involved Dick.

He chewed at the inside of his lip. He didn't fidget the way that Dick did, but he too was finding it hard to just keep sitting there, still, doing nothing but talking. One of the things that had always been and would always been difficult, if not flat out impossible for him to accept was that he was a priority in someone's life. Anyone's, really. To be told flat out that Dick wanted a relationship with the family, with him, over whatever he had with Slade that he struggled to distance himself from...it was a struggle to believe it. That was what he was trying so fucking hard to change, at least a little. It left him quiet.

It also made the wine even more appealing. If there was a ton of it, all the better. Jason didn't often get drunk. He didn't like the loss of control that came with it. Mostly, it was something he did in moments of desperation, low times, or just when he was too fucking angry to even know what else to do with it. It hadn't happened in awhile. Right then, if he was going to stay there and they were going to keep doing whatever it was they were doing, he wanted the wine. "Did you just ask me if I have a pocketknife? Have we ever met before? Hello, stranger," he rolled his eyes as he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out something much more sizeable than a pocket knife. "Give me some of those bottles."

DICK: Dick struggled to separate and understand the difference between what Bruce knew, but didn't know how to change, and what he was truly ignorant of. He was always surprised by the truth. At this point, he'd spent years trying to understand how Bruce's mind worked and why he was the way he was. It was something he grasped in theory, but the simplest thing could capsize the whole theory. At this point, he had to reconcile with the fact that there might not ever be a way to fully understand Bruce. What's more, it was no longer his job. Robin had to know how to work alongside Batman, anticipate the moves he made, and to mimic his behavior for top efficiency.

"Hard part's over, I think." That was what he hoped. They'd bridged the gap between them despite all hurdles. Jason being here now proved that the fight was never one-sided. At some point they'd turned the corner and were now on their way to building something different. Sometimes Dick tried looking back so he could pinpoint when that happened, even though he knew it didn't really matter. Where they'd been was inconsequential. He wanted to focus on where they were now. Maybe that was why Jason didn't like to talk about the past, there wasn't much to be gained from it, because the rules were different now.

Hard conversations weren't typically ones Dick avoided, but he knew better than to let Jason's silence simmer. When he was quiet it indicated that he didn't know what to say or had nothing good to say. Sometimes it was best to let things sink in, especially when they'd covered so many touchy topics in a short timeframe. Moving on to something lighter and less emotional was the only way he knew how to redirect the evening that wouldn't result in Jason taking off. He hesitated, but then handed over the bottle in his hand. It was Pinot Grigio. "Wait, I mean one of those like... swiss army knives. You know, with all the little pieces that pop out. They usually come with a corkscrew." It was hard imagining Jason with some boy scout knife, but he supposed it wasn't impossible. "You can't just, like, cut the top off."

JASON: Even though he’d had a family in the legal sense from the day that Bruce adopted him onward, he’d spent so much of the time after the Pit hell bent on staying away from them. He’d still shown up if they needed him, really needed him, and reached out to say so, but otherwise...otherwise he’d just tried to fill in the missing things in other ways. By himself, mostly, but it was what the Outlaws had been for awhile, too. Somebody to have his back and give a damn for awhile, and with whom he could do the same in kind. He’d figured it would just stay that way, with him piecing together scraps of something. Maybe it was still going to be true - the world was still spinning in the same direction and all. They weren’t suddenly going to be one big happy family sitting down to Sunday dinner and going to baseball games together on the weekend. But some things were changing. Had changed. If they hadn’t, he wouldn’t have go to Dick’s place, certainly not tried it twice, just to be there for him.

Still, he couldn’t suddenly just be a different person. Maybe he should’ve thanked him or told him he believed him or anything at all, really, but he couldn’t do it. Later, maybe. Dick was in the middle of a whole fucking ordeal, he didn’t actually know what his priorities were going to be, right? He wasn’t going to hang on the answer. He’d meant what he told him, that he should go for what he wanted and damn the rest. They’d spend too much time doing anything but that. To Jason, it was difficult to fathom the final decision being what Dick claimed it was.

“Who said I can’t cut the top off? I’ll do it over the sink. Wine still tastes the same.” Jason had the oddly shaped Kris dagger that he often carried. “Don’t worry. It’s clean.” It had been buried in many a shoulder and stomach, but it was perfectly fine for getting a damn cork out. Jason took the bottle from him and stabbed the point of the bottle down into the cork before shimmying it back and forth to try to coax it free. Instead, he got a few pieces of chipped cork for his trouble. Rinse, repeat, until he had most of it dug out. “Voila. One bottle down.” But he next time, he was just cutting off the damn top. Nobody had time to play ‘pick out the cork.’ He motioned for a second bottle, not willing to share, and handed the open one to Dick. “We going up or what?”

Practically as soon as they had, there was the sound of shattering glass and the small amount of wine that had been at the very top of the neck spilled over the sides. The cork, still wrapped in glass, skidded across the roof and Jason nudged it away with his foot. As long as he didn’t let the top of the bottle actually touch his mouth, it’d be fine.

DICK: There was a time when Dick didn't think it was possible to bring Jason back into the family. That didn't mean he didn't want to. He'd never stopped wanting to help, even when he didn't know how to help, and he never thought that Bruce's way of handling the situation was appropriate under the circumstances. He understood why he'd done it. Jason had needed help, there was no doubt of that, but he needed more than what he'd been handed. Arkham Asylum wasn't exactly the ideal place to convalesce and find peace of mind. Dick hated the idea of Jason in there, it was discomfort he shared with Bruce more than once, and he'd been encouraged to let the system handle it from that point forward. That was never something he'd ever been able to do completely, even in the more typical situations. More happened once the person was put in jail. It didn't fix anything but the current situation. Everything that followed after that was strained. When he had seen Jason in the years between his release and before Star City, it wasn't for long and they didn't talk about anything of substance. Jason was still adverse to doing it now, for the most part, but he still would. They had. The fact that Jason was here to talk about something Dick knew he hadn't enjoyed talking about demonstrated that he was trying. Both of them were. It wasn't easy for Dick to fully stop and listen to someone else, even when he thought he believed he knew what they were saying. He'd been wrong about Jason before. There was no doubt he'd be wrong again. That didn't mean he wouldn't keep trying to be present in whatever way he could, when he could, and he knew he couldn't just keep himself shut up in his apartment like this.

"But the glass -" There was no time for Dick to protest before Jason was stabbing the knife into the cork. He shook his head, but for the first time that evening he was smiling. "There's probably a million pieces of cork floating in there now." Accepting the now corkless bottle, he handed the second one to Jason even though he expected it to get the same treatment.

Nodding, he led the way to the large glass doors that took them out to the roof. The garden was getting a little wild, especially compared to when Jason had been there last time. Motioning to the trampoline, he was about to say something when he heard the sound of glass shattering. "Are you - did you seriously just...?" His alarmed gaze shot to the cork rolling across the roof and he stepped out of its path, blinking. "How are you going to drink that? Just pour it into your mouth? Wait..." Already he was heading back inside to get Jason something, even if it was a coffee cup.

JASON: Sometimes things had to get down to the wire for Jason to step in. It had to hit do or die levels, and even then there were times when he thought he’d pick the second one or leave someone else to it, at least metaphorically. He didn’t like listening to people circle around themselves and reach for things that didn’t make any sense. He did it too, but he didn’t have to watch that from the outside. If he had, he probably would’ve wanted to kick his own ass more than once. But the difference in where he was right then and where he’d been for so many years was that he’d shown up to try to head things off before it got that bad, and he’d not done it for himself. He  hadn’t gone to the apartment twice because it actually involved him. It didn’t. He was there for Dick. That was all. That was all, and that was...still new. For the two of them, anyway. Jason was wading in the shallow end of the pool with it, dipping in his feet and making himself acclimate.

“So spit them out. Pour it through a sieve. Or maybe don’t keep ten bottles of wine without buying a corkscrew,” he shrugged. It was still wine and it’d still get them drunk. If he was going to keep lingering, and it didn’t feel like they were done so he would, that was very high on the priority list. He was fighting his own instinct to recuse himself even though the only reason he was even there was because he’d decided all on his own to go. He wanted to be there, or at least felt as if he needed to be. Again, a novelty. How often had any of them generated that feeling? That he was needed?

“How’s that any different from what you’re doing? You’re just pouring it in your mouth.” With less chance of stitches, but he wasn’t torn up about it. As Dick disappeared, Jason could’ve sworn he heard him clicking his tongue. He took his mangled bottle and carefully hoisted himself up onto the trampoline to sit in the middle of it, and once Dick returned with some kind of cup he poured it as full of wine as it could go. “I never even asked why you have this thing.” He’d always just chalked it up to Dick being Dick, but it was bizarre even for him. “Why the fuck is there a trampoline at your apartment?” He’d not even asked when he lived there. Might as well.

DICK: Dick hated living alone. When he'd moved out of the manor in Gotham, he floated between the Titans until he had his own apartment, but most of his time was spent at the tower. He needed to be around them and around people. It was easy for him to feel lonely. Isolating himself wasn't in his nature and went against every one of his instincts. It was one thing to achieve independence with his own identity, but he always ended up being drawn back into a group. That wasn't something he minded, not really, even though leading always felt more like a burden. He'd frequently channel Bruce during those times. Being responsible for others and their lives had brought out a perfectionist part of him. He always felt tightly wound. When things were bad, he'd been known to snap at the smallest mistake.

"I don't keep them," he called back from the kitchen, fishing through the cabinets for a cup. "And I could give you at least seventeen differences."

Eventually he settled on a SCPD tumbler with a swirly straw. It was the only cup he had with a top on it, and much better than Jason taking his chances with jagged glass. He picked out a Halloween mug for himself with "Halloween puns are so corny!" written across the front and peppered with images of candy corn. Returning to the roof, he handed Jason the SCPD cup and joined him on the trampoline.

The question made him look up in surprise. "I never said?" Dick filled his cup up halfway, hesitated, then sighed and filled it to the brim. Even in the low light he could see the tiny pieces of cork, but it seemed so small next to everything else that he couldn't muster much energy to care about them. "I guess I didn't." He'd talked to Jason before proposing to Tanya. He knew he'd get his unfiltered, honest opinion, and that was something he wanted. "I actually have two trampolines at my apartment. One is just inside." Smirking faintly, he shrugged and took a long drink of the wine. "This one used to be in the gym. I had it moved out here. It was supposed to be just temporary, maybe a night or two, but..." The wine left a bitter taste in his mouth and he took another drink. "I proposed to Tanya on the roof, had a whole dinner set up and everything. All romantic. Our first date was at a trampoline park."

JASON: Jason was not the least bit at odds with the idea of living alone. It made a lot of things easier. But even knowing that, it was not really, honestly his preference. He needed space, the ability to go behind a door and shut it if he wanted, but not always necessarily for there to be no one on the other side when he opened it again. He wasn’t bothered a great deal during the times it didn’t work out that way, but that wasn’t true of many other people. Dick willfully choosing to be by himself and shut away as long as he had been was wildly out of the norm and the brightest red flag he could have waved.

“If they’re in your house on a regular basis, you’re keeping them.” Even if it was the same bottles. It was alcohol, not a damn decoration. They would’ve been drank eventually and he’d not been prepared. So he got cork chips and broken glass. That was how it worked.

He scoffed as soon as he brought back that tumbler, but tipped the ruined bottle above it enough to pour it full. He didn’t bother with either the lid or straw and just tipped it back to take a long first drink. A second one followed as Dick launched into an engagement story, because of course he did. “Guess you picked truth.” Were they still doing that? “What is it with you and needing that ring and piece of paper anyway?”

DICK: In the beginning, Tim was spending the evenings with him, keeping him company, and Dick enjoyed his presence even when they were in separate rooms. It helped to know that someone else was in the apartment. The small movements were a strange sense of comfort. He hadn't told Tim about seeing Slade, not yet, but the conversation was still turning over in his head. There were new things to consider about it now, things that were somewhat... troubling, and took another long drink. This time the alcohol burned the back of his throat.

Dick scrunched his nose. "Was gonna give them to Alfred, but I kept forgetting." Bruce didn't drink. He knew Alfred indulged from time to time, he could hardly blame him for that, or he could at least use them for food preparation. Or something. Instead they sat in his cabinet and collected dust.

Plucking the straw from the trampoline, he stuck it into his bottle. He was sucking on it when Jason reminded him about the game. Immediately he shook his head, rolling his eyes. "That didn't count." Then again, that also meant it was Jason's turn. "Guess that means you're up, though. Truth or dare?"

JASON: “But you didn’t give them to Alfred. Buy a corkscrew.” They weren’t making it through ten bottles of wine that night. Jason might have a slight leg up on ordinary people thanks to the Pit, but he wasn’t some metahuman with metabolism too out of control to let him get drunk. Dick would have plenty of wine still sitting by the end.

Dick didn’t give him an answer to his other question, but he let him dodge it. Many months earlier when he’d told him he was proposing to Tanya in the first place, he’d given him part of an answer. He wasn’t sure he’d ever understand it, at least not from the perspective of someone who actually felt that way. Marriage seemed...nearly useless to him, a government stamp on something that either already had meaning or didn’t.

“Dare.” No contest. He’d given Dick some truths already that night and was going to need a lot more to drink to offer up more, even in a game. He’d get to it, maybe. He brought the tumbler up to his lips and took two long swallows. “Give it your best shot.”

DICK: "What, and drink by myself? Isn't that frowned upon?" Maybe he had isolated himself over the past week or so, however long it'd been, but Dick wasn't about to use alcohol to cope. He knew better. Even right now, there was a certain shame in drinking. It was maybe the third or fourth time he had more than a single glass. And even that single glass was a rare occasion.

Jason's question wasn't one could answer just off the cuff, but it was something he'd thought about before. He thought about it right now too, and turned the question over in his mind as he acted preoccupied with thinking up a good dare. He played this so often with Wally and Roy that he had about half a dozen ideas in a matter of seconds.

But none of those ideas seemed quite right. They wouldn't be challenging for Jason, anyway - and wasn't that the whole point of playing? "I'll have you picking truth by the end of the night." He smirked and dug his phone out of his pocket. "Dare you to take a selfie with me."

JASON: “Depends on who you’re asking. Sometimes it’s the only thing that cuts through.” Jason certainly didn’t shy away from it, but he wasn’t exactly reaching for a bottle at the drop of a hat, either. Especially not recently. He’d drank in front of Roy before while he was sober, but with the relapse being so fresh and the hidden bottles he and Dick had found and emptied had removed any desire to do it. Once in awhile he dipped into a bar, and he wasn’t thinking twice about the wine. “You don’t have to lay around feeling shit all the time.” Not that he figured Dick would really get on that train.

Immediately, he regretted how little thought he’d put into his choice. A selfie wasn’t the worst thing ever, but it immediately showed him where Dick’s mind went and it wasn’t what he’d been counting on. He’d expected something physical, probably stupid, but of course that was too easy. He groaned, but shifted himself until he was a little ways behind Dick and off to one side. It put him at an angle to be in the picture, and he tipped the tumbler up to take a drink right as Dick snapped it.

“There. Your turn.” Jason didn’t sit around coming up with lists of crap he wanted to know about people. His questions tended to just come out like a demand to know something whenever the answer was suddenly important. He could figure it out, though, if truth was up to bat again.

DICK: Dick had seen Roy at low points before, but his involvement had been more transitionary. When Roy first admitted his addiction, he didn’t even find out about it until much later. And the second time, after Jason left and Roy showed up in Gotham, Dick worked hard to convince him to go West. The treatment center wasn’t part of the plan until he’d seen how bad off Roy was. Thankfully, it hadn’t taken much convincing. “But the feelings are still there after it wears off. Sometimes even stronger than before.” Alcohol was a temporary solution. At some point he’d have to face everything again. It was something he’d push himself through rather than push it aside or cover it up. That never ended well. Not for him, at least. “But I could use a break.” A couple hours of peace, free from constant ruminating, wouldn’t exactly be the worst thing. It was starting to get to him.

Jason would do the selfie because it was a dare. That part didn’t surprise him - neither of them were the type to back down once they’d committed to something. It was committing to people that seemed to be their shared problem, but Dick knew his own history was much more convoluted. After snapping the picture, he quickly saved it and slipped his phone back in his pocket. It happened so fast that his own pose had been a nothing but a cheesy grin. He still intended fo put it on Twitter later, once Jason couldn’t dare him to take it down.

“Um...” Maybe Jason would have preferred to give him a dare, but Dick liked having an excuse to tell him things that wouldn’t come up under normal circumstances. Maybe it wouldn’t lead to an exchange, but it gave Dick the opportunity to show his willingness to be honest and open. “Truth.”

JASON: Sometimes even stronger than before. Jason didn't even try to keep from rolling his eyes, though he at least had his head partly turned away when he did it. "Yeah dude, they're there either way. Doesn't mean you have to just sit and do nothing but think about it. Not like you've been making it any better your way." Clearly. Dick wasn't snapping himself out of it, and even if he'd managed to they both knew that it wasn't exactly in a good way either. All he was doing was swallowing it. What was the real difference between that and swallowing some wine for a couple of hours instead? Not much.

Compared to regular people, of which they'd never really been part of, it was likely strange how few pictures actually existed of their family together. Normally it was something formal, some stiff thing to go on the wall back in Wayne Manor, and Jason hadn't even shown up for half of those. More than half, probably. So he let him have the selfie and didn't complain about it outright. For the time being, anyway.

"Answer my question then. What is it with you and the piece of paper and the ring?" He'd avoided it pointedly and Jason wasn't going to let him, even if he already had part of the answer. "You need the government to validate that it's real or what?"

DICK: In the past, Dick might have gotten defensive over Jason's reaction or read too far into it. It had taken time and a lot of trial and error for him to understand that Jason's dry comments and eyerolls weren't meant as insults. Now he used that back and forth as a way to connect. He was comfortable teasing him in return, even as he was sure to never take it too far. There were always subjects that were off limits. Then again, maybe that was true for both of them. This, however, wasn't one of those subjects, and the question just made him laugh a little. "Exactly. I'm just turning over the same thoughts on the chance that the light might be different the next time around." With no one but himself to bounce ideas off of, it had made everything feel stagnant and hopeless - but now, even after Jason left, he would have new things to ponder.

He sighed and dropped his head, his teeth tugging on his lower lip. "I was still thinking about it." Maybe he didn't have a complete picture, but he could answer the question as best he could. His chest tightened and he took another drink, even though he was only starting to feel the effects. "You know when I said I was overcompensating? Kind of like that, but... I guess with..." Sighing heavily, he reached up to push his hair back. "I loved Babs, Kory, and Tanya. This doesn't have anything to do with them. It's just... it's why I pushed things in that direction." Dick's mouth felt dry, but didn't let himself take another drink. Not yet. He didn't want Jason to think he was trying to put off an answer. "So after... everything with Slade, I knew there had to be something really, really wrong with me. It wasn't just what he'd done or what he was capable of. It was that after it was all said and done, I completely believed everything was just some game for him - you know what Bruce thinks he's about - because he was so convincing. He turned Rose against the Titans, sent her to kill me, even, not to mention all the times I fought him as Deathstroke after that. The way he looked... it was like..." Setting his jaw, he sighed. "Like he was looking right through me. Like I wasn't even there. And still, I..." He had to stop again. This time it was with a soft, forced laugh. "So I really thought something about me was so twisted that I might never want something normal. Something good. And when I found it, all I wanted to do was nail it down. Maybe it was way to prove to myself that I could still have something that average people could have, people who haven't been through what we have, you know? It was like there was this darkness that I was trying to outrun, and the harder I tried, the more I could beat it back."

JASON: “Spoiler alert,” Jason took another drink, halfway through the full tumbler by then, “they’re not going to look any different the sixty-eighth time that you think about them.” There wasn’t going to be some sudden and previously unseen thing that slotted into place if the only thing he’d done was sit with the exact same information, in the same place, alone. Jason knew what that cycle felt like, knew perfectly well that there was no end to it if left alone. Dick didn’t take it to the same places that he did, or at least he didn’t think so, but that didn’t make it less endless.

He filled the tumblr again to the top from his busted wine bottle as he finally got the answer to that question. It was surprisingly less dumb than he’d been counting on. He kept drinking, keeping up no pretense that his goal was not to be well and truly trashed in as short a time as possible, and pushed one hand back through his hair. “Never gonna be like other people, Dickie. No marriage license is going to change that. Normal people don’t even know what to do with it half the time, anyway.” Marriage didn’t solve shit. It didn’t chase away darkness or give some kind of North Star. It didn’t right a wrong. Someone either did those things, relationships either did those things, or they didn’t. “I don’t know Deathstroke as anything but Deathstroke, so I couldn’t guess at what the hell was going on in his head during all that, but it’s got more to do with him than it does with you either way.”

DICK: "Yeah, trust me, I know." This wasn't the first time Dick had chosen to close himself off from his family, but he wasn't about to discuss those past incidences with Jason. Two were related to him. They were on good terms now, but there were still things he didn't think were necessary to bring up. Things that wouldn't do Jason any good to know about. "You gave me stuff to think about," he added in a quieter voice. "Maybe it'll tide me over."

His brow furrowed as Jason spoke and he sighed, his thumb tracing the mouth of the bottle. "Yeah. It's not that... I want to be, not completely." It was impossible for him to regret being Robin or any of those years with Bruce, despite everything. The early years were still some of the best memories he had. That was also something he chose not to disclose to Jason.

At first he was quiet. When Jason first showed up, Dick didn't plan on talking about the conversation he'd had with Slade. It was still fresh on his mind, though. It was impossible not to give into the temptation now that his head was swimming and some of his inhibitions were lowered. "He thought he'd put me in danger. You know, because being Robin and Bruce Wayne's kid didn't put me directly in the line of fire anyway." Maybe it was different with Deathstroke, who made enemies just the same as Bruce, if not more, and he understood the reasoning behind it. Still, it made him sigh and take another drink. "I talked to him, you know. Slade. I was walking Sasha and saw his bike in the alley next to Rose and Joey's place. I stopped and waited for him."

JASON: He raised a brow at that. Had he? Was Dick actually going to accept any of what he’d said or at least consider it? It seemed like most of the time Jason just threw words into a damn void, no matter who he was talking to, and nothing stuck. Maybe it was unfair of him to keep thinking that way all the time, but it was hard to shake. He wasn’t exactly the guy anyone went to for advice, and did he have much right to blame them for that? Maybe not. “Guess it wasn’t a total bust then.” Him showing up, that was.

Normal was never something that he’d tried to strive for. Jason wasn’t even sure the word had real meaning, anyway. “Good, because you’re never going to get it, and if you did you’d be bored as hell.” Stability, in some sense, was a far more understandable concept. That was all he wanted, and it’d never be granted by a judge or a stamp anyway. Usually it couldn’t be wrung out of another person at all. Dick was out for something else entirely. If he’d only wanted someone at his back, he’d had that more than once and walked away.

It was dumb on the surface to think of anyone claiming to do something for protection, at least where Dick (or any of them) were concerned, but at the same time...Jason did hesitate to think of was some grand offense, either. Unnecessary. Maybe a little insulting. But bad? “The nerve of him to not want to throw you in front of a different bus,” he finally said, purely sarcastic, and took another drink. But he forgot about it when Dick said he’d already seen him. “Just happened to be in the neighborhood, huh?” Dick was still lost in his head, so whatever conversation he’d had with Slade obviously hadn’t turned the world rightside up again, but that wasn’t a surprise. “And? That do any good?”

DICK: "It wasn't. I'm glad you're here, I know I'm not exactly the best company right now." Dick tried to smile, but the result was a half-hearted smirk. Too much weighed on his mind for him to manage anything light-hearted. He knew this wasn't easy for Jason, it wasn't something he was used to doing at all, and he appreciated anything he offered under those circumstances. Because it was so rare, there was no way he wouldn't listen or take what he had to say seriously. Their cross-country trip had loosened any lingering awkwardness that remained after the incident in the Batcave. At this point, it was difficult to believe it had ever been there in the first place.

That made him laugh, but he couldn't hide the wince even with another long drink of wine. "Yeah, I think that was the problem. Once I had it, something always kept me from following through. I always let something get in the way." He'd never put up a real fight, either. With Babs and Kory it'd been mostly mutual, but he knew his own lack of consistency leading up to it largely contributed. He knew they thought it was because he had commitment issues, but that wasn't it at all. Committing had never been the problem. It was a lack of self-awareness that was, in part, a form of denial. Rolling his eyes, he shook the bottle in his hand to see how much was left. "It wasn't all selfless, you know. He didn't want me getting in the way of Deathstroke. That was his priority back then. He thought I would change him, mess up his life, and then die. Even if that did happen, it's not really me dealing with the consequences. He'd be left to face whatever guilt he'd have for it, no matter how misplaced."

Now that he'd brought it up, he knew he couldn't skirt giving Jason the answers. If he did, he knew they'd just come up in the next round of Truth. "They're close to the park. It's where I usually take her." Not that the route explained why he'd stopped or waited. Frowning, he rubbed his forehead and then laid back, bending one of his legs so his foot was flat against the trampoline. "Yeah. No. Kind of. It was weird. He’d been drinking. I could tell." Not that he was one to talk.

JASON: "You're never the best company," he said without missing a beat, but though his tone didn't convey it (purposefully) it was only a joke. Granted, he could only tolerate Dick or practically anyone in limited amounts, but he could tolerate him. Willingly, recently. He sought him out on purpose and not just because life or their family shoved them together and made them figure their shit out for a few hours or a couple of days. "So nothing new there."

On paper, Jason wasn't sure that Dick was ever going to find anyone better than Babs or Kory, but 'on paper' didn't really mean anything. Nothing worked like that. Technically the game only 'gave' him one question and he'd already asked more than that, so he elected to sit on the one that had just cropped up. He'd wait a minute. "Of course it wasn't selfless. Nothing's selfless. I don't even think it's possible." Altruism didn't exist. There were people who tipped the balance away from them when they did something for another person, but there was always something to be gained, even if it was just satisfaction or comfort.

He scoffed and took another swallow, finally feeling the wine move through him in earnest. It always started in his muscles, like warmth or electricity, and spread from there. "Probably at least means he gives a shit." If something was bothering Deathstroke enough to bother getting drunk over it. Then again, maybe he did it all the time. It wasn't like Jason knew. People that maintained that much control and hyper vigilance just usually didn't. "Could be worse."

DICK: Snorting softly, Dick folded his arm under his head. "Don liked me." Don was the conductor at the ghost town. He'd talked their ears off the whole way to the station. By the time it was over, he had Don's entire life story and all the names of his grandchildren. Dick had a way of connecting with people that he wasn't fully aware of. It was how he'd been as a kid, too. He engaged with the people around him like a performer would with an audience, but also didn't ask for anything in return.

"Maybe not." That wasn't what Dick wanted to think, but underneath his optimism and positivity, he was a rational person. He didn't make decisions based off of his emotions in the areas of his life relating to vigilantism. That was what he strove for, anyway. It wasn't always successful, especially when he worked independently and he didn't have anyone else's life in his hands. That gave him a certain amount of freedom.

He sighed. "I guess." It wasn't the way he wanted Slade to demonstrate that he cared, but he didn't bother voicing that thought. "I told him he shouldn't drive. Dumb." Rolling his eyes, he sat up enough to finish off the rest of his bottle, and was shocked by how blurry the world got in the meantime. He was definitely feeling the effects of the alcohol. Leaning over the side of the trampoline, he set the bottle carefully on the roof before stretching out on his stomach instead. "Okay, truth or dare?"

JASON: “Don was two hundred years old and hadn’t seen a living person in a week. Anybody would like you then.” Slight exaggerations on all counts, maybe. “How’s Jimmy doing, anyway? Still hanging out in your backseat? Tell him I said hey.” He’d kept that rouse up for the whole trip - their backseat ghost who’d hitched a ride.

To Jason, there was no “maybe.” There was no true selflessness. They all got something out of helping people, whether it was just the knowledge that they’d saved a life or not. So no, Deathstroke wanting Dick out of the way wasn’t selfless, probably not even a little, but it was better than the alternative, too. It wasn’t his damn relationship either way, but the things Dick kept honing in on were easy to spot from the outside, just like the things he was missing were nearly as obvious.

“Yeah, because driving drunk is the most dangerous thing he’s ever done.” Again, he just offered a derisive noise. He’d ask more, though, after he got past his own turn. He took another drink and stared up at the sky. “Truth. So you don’t dare me to text somebody I love them or something worse.” He’d had enough to drink to answer something, probably.

DICK: "First of all, that town had a population of six." Dick enjoyed the experience so much that he'd taken a million pictures. It was the first ghost town he'd ever been to, but it made him want to look into others that might be nearby. The mine tour was a little creepy, but other than that. Rolling his eyes, he kicked Jason's leg with the edge of his shoe. "Dropped him off with you, actually." That dumb ghost. Dick knew Jason was trying to get under his skin, but he was unnerved by the various stories the tour guide had.

He was still working through the conversation. It left him confused, which wasn't much better than the frozen state they were currently in. Maybe he didn't know what he was going to do about it yet, or what it would look like when he decided, talking to Jason helped clarify some things.

Triumphant, he sat up on his elbows and bit his lower lip. "Hmm." There were at least three dozen things he wanted to know about Jason, but he knew he wouldn't get this chance again. Who knew how many more opportunities he'd have just tonight. It was a rare opportunity and he wasn't going to let it pass him by. "What was your favorite part of the drive? And why?" he added quickly, just in case Jason gave him something monosyllabic.

JASON: “Really? You saw six? I could’ve sworn it was four.” Jason said it completely deadpan, leaving Dick to guess entirely whether or not he was serious. “I guess that’d explain why my mugs keep ending up in different cabinets.” Again, his expression was completely unreadable on its own.

The question was easier than he’d expected, for sure, and thus much easier to dodge. “The 7-11 in Nebraska. I got that blue raspberry Slurpee. Tasted good.” He took another drink and watched Dick over the top of the tumbler, just to see how offended he got by that non-answer. “Your turn. Truth or dare?” He might give him something better than the Slurpee but wasn’t yet convinced.(edited)

DICK: "Six," Dick corrected without hesitation, holding up four fingers. When he realized what he did he laughed. "Maybe I shouldn't have had the whole bottle. And don't joke about that, you don't really know if things like that are real or not." Considering they dealt with gods and goddesses all day long, it wasn't exactly far-fetched.

Rolling his eyes, he shot him a look. "Seriously? It's truth or dare, Jay. You can't lie your way through it. That defeats the purpose." The 7-11. Dick wasn't even going to pretend to believe something that off-hand.

JASON: “Yeah I do.” And he didn’t think he needed to explain again why or how he knew. Not that he had any qualms about doing it. Jason had never and would never shy away from bringing up his death, regardless of company. It had happened and it was his to talk about if he wanted to, even if it was just to debunk some damn ghosts. They weren’t really. There was nothing trapped between life and death, because there was nothing between life and death that he’d seen. It was just one minute on earth and the next, nothing. Less than nothing. There wasn’t awareness to even know the nothing. Whole bottle or not, Dick hadn’t drank enough wine to listen to that, so he didn’t bother. “Maybe I’ve just had some idiot burglar with a gimmick. Organization Man. Marie Kondo gone rogue or something.”

He drained the last of the tumbler, and thus the last of his own bottle, and laid on his back on the trampoline to look up at the sky. It was ridiculous to have the thing on the roof, but since it was there already...it wasn’t exactly hard to find some appeal. At least it was comfortable. “Fine. It was just the actual circus. I’d only ever been that one time.” The one that he’d told Dick about that started the whole idea rolling in the first place, because of course he’d remembered Jason saying it even with the hole in his head. “It was...” he pressed his lips together and mulled it over for a second, “a good follow up.”

DICK: Whenever Jason mentioned his death, joking or not, it made his chest tighten instinctively. He exhaled and tried to look annoyed, but the effort fell flat. It made him reconsider what his response to it should be. Maybe instead of getting upset, he could threaten him with a hug instead. Jason was definitely much more responsive to acts of love than anything resembling an argument. It would definitely be a tactic he hadn't tried before. "Pretty sure it wouldn't be a burglar if you weren't... burgled. You were just organized." Organization Man. "I've heard worse."

Dick didn't expect to get an answer from Jason, even though he'd asked for one. His mind had already searched for the answer on its own, and he'd come up with a few, so he was taken aback by what it actually was. The night he was shot was still confusing when he tried to remember specifics. Some of it he remembered, but there were times when he wondered how much of it were real or just odd dreams patchworked in. "Yeah, it's... it's always weird being back, but they're doing a good job with it." Haly's still had the same appeal. There was a distinctly old-fashioned bent to their advertising and gimmick that made it even more appealing. "Their trapeze act, too. Grade A."

JASON: If he’d been looking at him, he might have seen Dick’s expression change, but that wouldn’t have been anything new. He’d seen the look plenty of times before and it never acted as much of a deterrent. Still, for the moment there was no reason to push it. He’d not even been doing it for a joke. “Maybe he stole a mug. Roy has left some dumb ones over there.” He didn’t even know why. Things just appeared and he had to figure out something to do with them, usually putting them out of sight.

Jason sat the empty tumbler aside and ran his hands down his face. “It looked smaller this time than I remembered, but I guess that’s true about everything.” For Jason, his world as a kid had been incredibly small, usually. It was always day to day, worrying or focusing on what was in front of him because that was what was necessary. Anything outside of that had seemed almost surreal. “Truth or dare? And I need another bottle.”

DICK: "Is that how you explain where his mugs disappear to? Ghosts?" Dick couldn't help a faint shiver even though he was joking - for the most part, at least. "Does he still have the whale whale one? I got that one for him." That was one of his favorites. "For a while it's all we got each other for Christmas." It definitely explained why their cabinets were both full of dumb mugs with puns on them.

Pushing himself up, Dick winced when he felt everything spin. Instead of going himself he made a gesture to the door. "Cabinet. There's two more, I think. Go ahead and bring them both if you want." Not that he would be doing much more of the drinking. Dick didn't have Jason's enhanced tolerance he likely got from the Lazarus Pit. Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back against the trampoline. "Wish I got to meet you. The first time you went, I mean. Sometimes I'd take kids my age into the ring with me... depended on the night, though..." He was rambling and the words ran together. "Truth."

JASON: “No, I just put them all in a bag and taken them back over there a the end of the month, so if a ghost wants to save me the trouble they can help themselves.” He wasn’t sure how it was still funny, or why it ever even had been. “Whale, whale, what have we here,” Jason said, shaking his head. Obviously he still had the mug. “Dumb.”

Jason was nearly off the trampoline when Dick said that. He stopped shy of pushing over the metal springs and looked back over his shoulder. Once he’d sat up, he’d been able to tell just how drunk he already was, too. No need for both bottles if he wanted to make it off the roof again. “I’m glad you didn’t. It would have been even harder to leave.” He really didn’t know how much Dick remembered about what he’d said. That night for him at the circus with Willis Todd had been bittersweet. If he’d had even a taste of what it had seemed to him like Dick and his family felt when they performed...leaving it to go back to Crime Alley would’ve been even harder than it had been anyway.

He got off the trampoline and asked his question only when his feet were on the ground and the roof stopped swaying. “You ever think of going back to it again? You’re not a cop anymore. You’ve got time.” He couldn’t travel. Couldn’t actually run off with the circus again. He was curious, though.

DICK: Jason's rendition of the phrase on the mug made Dick laugh richly and for much longer than he normally would have, if he hadn't been drinking. "I got that at Gotham City Aquarium! Back in our Titans days. And by dumb, I think you mean genius."

That was an interesting way to think about it and he hesitated. Maybe that was true. Maybe it was selfish to wish he'd been able to do more in that moment, especially if it led to making things worse for Jason in the future. That possibility defeated the purpose, anyway. "Ever wonder how many times our paths cross without us even knowing it? It's like... I had no idea you were there. If you didn't know about me... if we hadn't been called The Flying Graysons... I'd have just been some kid you saw once. Never would have connected the dots." He pointed at the sky, as if the stars somehow illustrated the point he was making.

"Nah, not really. I mean... circuses travel, you know? I don't really want to leave Star City, even with NOVA gone, I just..." Trailing, he shrugged. "This is where you are. Where our family is. I can't just... pack up and go."

JASON: “No, I meant dumb.” But it probably wasn’t even the worst one that Roy had or the worst one that had ended up in the safehouse. Maybe this would finally prompt him to ask Roy what the fuck all of it was about, anyway.

Jason wasn’t prone to dwelling on a lot of hypotheticals, or at least not wildly useless ones like that. Even if somehow they’d all met a dozen times before, if they didn’t know it, how did it matter? Even if they did know, why did it matter? The fact that he’d ended up with that boy at the circus for an older brother years later was coincidence. It wasn’t as if it changed anything. It was just some weird twist of the universe, a story that had been a little strange to recount. He wasn’t drunk enough to be wistful. “No. But I guess we would’ve went somewhere else on the road trip,” was all he ended up saying. He’d given Dick a lot of sentimentality that night, and maybe he’d have some more to offer, but not for that.

“S’not what I meant. And they don’t all travel.” The one Dick had grown up in did, sure, but there were plenty of places that just had standing buildings. He’d seen them here and there. “You could just make it up. A circus.” With that perhaps odd thought, Jason finally walked back into the apartment proper to get another bottle of wine,  which he did not need, and managed to actually dig the cork out in only a couple of pieces by the time he returned with it.

DICK: Dick enjoyed speculating about things that didn't happen but could have happened, or wondering how everything would have been different if the pieces fell together another way, but he knew Jason wasn't like that. Even in their conversations, it was always apparent that Jason preferred to live in the here and now. He might be angry about things that happened or were still happening, but it wasn't as if those things weren't relevant. It made sense. It was better than torturing yourself with negative possibilities - or positive ones, even, especially if it created some kind of resentment.

While Jason got the wine, he pondered the idea. It was more difficult to make sense of after drinking, and also seemed like a much better idea than it might be later, but he had a few ideas by the time Jason returned with the bottle. "What about like... a circus school? For kids. Like they have programs at universities and stuff, but I mean... little kids." He made a motion to the bottle and held out his cup. "Don't forget to share." That was a lot of wine, but he knew pointing that out would only encourage Jason to drink the whole bottle himself.

JASON: By the time Jason got back, the walk had assured him that he was well and truly drunk after all. Getting back onto the trampoline took a little more concentration than it probably should have, even. Once he’d settled, he poured Dick’s cup and then his own full again. “I’m sleeping here tonight,” he said without preamble, knowing there was no way in hell he was going to sober up fast enough to drive.

The return to what he’d said earlier had him humming as he thought it over. The unnecessary noise-making was a plain sign that he was inebriated, though Dick might not have realized it, and Jason didn’t notice. “Is that a thing? Circus school? Sounds fake.” He took another drink and bowed his head forward. “You should do it. Why not? What else are you doing besides Nightwing and finding reasons not to let yourself have the shit you want? Teach some kids to do flips.”

DICK: Dick couldn't hold back a laugh as Jason struggled back onto the trampoline, even though it also made him dizzy. "On the trampoline? It's pretty comfortable, actually. I've done it." Flinging an arm over his eyes, he took a deep breath and tilted his head up just enough to take another drink of wine. "Might need to get some blankets though," he mumbled. "S'a lot colder lately."

Snorting softly, he rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. His lips felt tingly. "It is a thing," he insisted. "Some universities have it. What about the younger kids, though? I'm telling you... circus performance is a dying art." It was an interesting thought, and one that Dick pondered further as he rolled over on his stomach and balanced his cup precariously on the padded ledge. Resting his head in his arms, he spoke up after a long pause, his voice muffled, "Truth or dare?"

JASON: “Meant your apartment, but I don’t know if I’m getting back off of this thing. Sleeping outside isn’t that bad.” Certainly not in California. Jason raised up enough to take a long drink and sat the wine aside. If it spilled, he wouldn’t be mourning it, really. He’d had more than enough, and when he looked up at the sky the little dots of stars wouldn’t stay still anymore.

“So teach kids some flips. If you want it done and nobody else is doing it, what’s the reason not to?” Or the excuse. Jason was a big believer in action. If it needed done and wasn’t getting done, anything less than making moves toward it was just whining, really. “You got money and time and knowledge. About this, anyway.” He laughed at his own dig much easier and maybe even louder than he normally would have. In the moment, it was hilarious. “Truth.” He was too far gone to do anything but lay there and speak.

DICK: "Have you ever been camping? In the woods?" Dick's voice was still muffled and his words slurred together. "Always wanted to try it. Like with a tent. S'mores. Alfred let me camp in the backyard once, but it's not really the same." He knew that wasn't what Jason was referring to when he talked about sleeping outside. Just thinking about it made his heart sink.

He nodded, which was more difficult than usual with the heavy weight of his arm over his eyes. "I think I know just the space for it, too." It would take some time, but what else did they have going on? Not a whole lot.

Dick was quiet for almost a full minute before deciding on the question he wanted to ask. "Why Red Hood?"

JASON: “Nope.” Easy answer. “Never left Gotham until I met Bruce and you know he didn’t do it.” Take him camping. “Probably doesn’t even...know how,” he trailed in the middle and closed his eyes, feeling his head swim a little. “The man can design a utility belt with 70 working parts but probably can’t pitch a tent.” He didn’t know if that was true, but it’s not like he’d been given reason to think otherwise. Besides, he’d spent enough time living outside, doing it for fun as a kid hadn’t really been something he’d considered even wanting.

Jason decided to wait and see if Dick was really considering it, the circus school, before he mentioned it again. If it died as a drunken conversation, he wouldn’t push. It wasn’t a bad idea, though. It was energy going toward something rather than just sitting idle.

That question got him to open his eyes again and he looked over. “You don’t know?”

DICK: "Can't even imagine Bruce camping." It was an amusing thought. "I always thought I'd want to camp in Alaska, but it was a lot colder than I expected." Not that the ice caves were warm, but the stove they'd been allowed made it warm enough. It had definitely been a unique experience. "You'd like it. Or have you already been?"

The idea would come to him again the next day, the first day that waking up wouldn't be met with the intense desire to go back to sleep.

What did he know? Dick knew where the alias originated, but that wasn't his question. Not really. "Not what it means to you, no. I mean..." Trailing, he cracked his eyes open and groaned as the sky spun out of control. "Don't look up, Little Wing. Clouds. Look funny."

JASON: “To Alaska?” he shook his head. “Not had a reason to yet. Seems like the place to go when I don’t want to see anybody anymore.” If he managed to live long enough to retire (unlikely) maybe it’d be somewhere like that. Remote. Unbothered. When Jason imagined the incredibly hypothetical and ridiculously unlikely scenario where he ever stepped back and away from the life, he still saw himself alone when he did it.  That wasn’t reflective of his situation right then, but he still struggled to visualize that sticking in a permanent way. It was too dangerous to let himself. Nobody needed to know that, exactly. It was just the image in his head.

He didn’t know if he was too drunk or not drunk enough for that conversation, but it wasn’t like he’d taken on the moniker for no reason. There was an answer, though. An easy one. “It was Joker’s,” that part Dick knew. “And after what he did, I decided to make it mine. Not like I’m a product of nothing. Red Hood is what Gotham, Batman, and the Joker spit out.” He scoffed at the warning and looked up just because he’d mentioned it. They did look funny, and he’d soon closed his eyes again against it. “So here I am.”

DICK: "I mean... there are other reasons to go," Dick pointed out, rolling his eyes and then immediately regretting it as another wave of dizziness washed over him. He'd sent the video of the ice hotel to Jason and Tim, fascinated by the artistry of it, and taken dozens of pictures. "Days are so short, though. You have to get up early." That was the only part he'd had difficulty adjusting to. He was a night owl in all senses of the word, not just because his work as Nightwing made him nocturnal. "I dunno if I'd actually camp though." The cold and the wilderness didn't exactly make it tempting.

That was the explanation he'd expected, more or less, but it didn't make him feel any better to hear it confirmed. "Never considered it might have worn out its welcome?" Dick's eyes cracked open and he glanced over at Jason, studying what he could see of his face. It made sense why he'd adopted it at first, there was a certain dramatic flair in the statement, but a lot had changed since then. It'd been years. "I don't know. M'just saying that... you're not really the same as you were back then."

JASON: “Never been a big fan of early.” But he wouldn’t mind missing out on most of the day, either. Anything he needed to do could be done at night, couldn’t it? He usually slept through most of the sun, anyway. But he wasn’t quite ready to hole himself away in Alaska yet, regardless. Something to keep in mind, though, should the desire ever come knocking. Jason’s attachment to and anchor in the world might not last forever - something he always kept in the back of his mind, almost like a talisman to hold onto. The control. I could leave. He wouldn’t, but he could. He had that power, still.

His face felt hot, despite the cool air that came after dark, and if he had one more drink of wine he was positive he’d be sick on that fucking trampoline. “Maybe not to you,” he muttered, because that much was true. Things were different with the two of them. Otherwise, though? He was still Jason Todd. Still Red Hood. He was still exactly that person, as far as he was concerned, maybe just a fraction less loud about it. Very abruptly, maybe to demonstrate it, he flung the wine bottle to the side and let it smash against the roof top. The sound of breaking glass was brief but distinct. “I’m out.”

DICK: "Works in our favor, right?" Dick meant to shrug, but his body felt too heavy for him to manage it with any success. The alcohol made him feel as if he were filled with sand. He considered going and getting some water, but the kitchen seemed ridiculously far and he was pretty sure he wouldn't make it to the door. "Imagine if Bruce were Roosterman." Not that Dick had been taken in because Bruce wanted a sidekick. He wasn't wholly convinced of Bruce's reasoning, if it were for his image or because he felt sorry for him. Maybe it was a mix of both. One thing was for certain, though: he hadn't exactly been father of the year. Jason's beginnings were much different, of course, and possibly even more complicated.

The sound of breaking glass made him jump. "Jay! You're going to step on that in the middle of the night." He should get up, get a broom, but even shifting position made him groan. "Don't step foot off this trampoline."

JASON: “Long as we’re not trying to pretend to be normal, sure.” It wasn’t like they needed a 9 to 5 job, even though Dick had so stupidly kept trying to do that. Jason had never done that. The closest he’d gone to “legitimate” was when he and Roy had landed those few gigs with the government, but that still wasn’t exactly an above the ground kind of thing. He had no particular desire to just live like the masses - he’d never done it, no matter which side of the coin he landed on, and didn’t feel like he was missing out.

“M’wearing boots,” he pointed out, though the words were all sort of slurred together. He wasn’t getting up. Instead, he moved enough to get his jacket off and throw it over him more like a blanket. Fuck it. The trampoline was kind of comfortable. He mumbled something beneath the collar of the jacket that might have been “night,” though it was difficult to tell. He wasn’t going anywhere, either way.

[bouncydragon]

LORD: Legion of Random Dinos

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Bonus (Part 1) | Bonus (Part 2)

Now here we go!

Here is the Endgame Rewrite featuring dinosaurs and a dragon! It got WAY longer than it was supposed to. But ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But because it is so long, I’ll divide it into two parts

Anyway, hope you’ll like it!

***********

Bonus:  Endgame, But With Dinos! (Part 1)

It was a sight like none before. So many people, all coming together to defeat a common enemy. Stephen just hoped they would be able to defeat Thanos. How were their chances anyway? They might be many but Thanos had the stones. Probably their chances were rather slim. But Stephen wouldn't let his hope be taken away. Somehow they would manage. They had to. 

He knew the Avengers had to be somewhere here, he just didn't know where (yet). He knew that even Loki was here. He didn't quite understand why they had made him a part of the Avengers but it didn't matter now. Any help was welcome. They'd need it. 

What he didn't expect though was, when everyone came through the portals, that there were also… 

"Are those… dinosaurs?" he asked, perplexed and had to make a double-take. Yes, those were definitely dinosaurs. How? Why? 

Captain America—Steve Rogers—came to stand next to him. "Don't ask," he sighed and looked very tired. 

When there was a thundering roar above them, Stephen looked up to see a huge creature fly across the sky. It looked like… But no, that couldn't be, could it? They weren't real. Or were they? He had to ask. Steve seemed to know about it, judging by his total lack of reaction. 

"And is that… a dragon?" Stephen asked. "What's going on?" 

Steve sighed and adjusted his shield. "His name is Gwaine and he's Loki's." 

Well, that only answered one question. But also opened more. How and where did Loki get a dragon? Why did he have one in the first place? Where had the dinosaurs come from? And why did the other Avengers ride some of the dinosaurs? 

Stephen turned to Steve. "I think you really need to explain what's going on." 

Steve grimaced. "I'd rather not? Just thinking about it gives me headaches." 

Stephen frowned. So there was probably more to this than he might've thought initially. Now he was even more curious. 

Suddenly the shadow of the dragon grew and soon it landed next to them. On top of it was Loki, smiling down at them. 

"Hello," he greeted them. "Everyone ready for the battle?" 

Might as well ask him, Stephen thought, figuring that Loki would answer his questions. "Why is there an army of dinosaurs?" 

Before Loki could answer, Iron Man—Tony Stark—landed next to them. He opened his faceplate. "They're called LORD," Tony explained grinning. Yeah, because that answered all of Stephen's questions. Also, how had he heard him? 

"LORD?" he asked after he had rolled his eyes. 

The answer surprisingly came from Steve. "Legion of Random Dinos." He groaned. "Aw dammit, now I'm one of you nutjobs." 

"Welcome to the club!" Tony cheered, hugging Steve who looked anything but happy right now. 

Then suddenly a Pterodactyl landed next to Loki's dragon (damn, the size difference!). Sitting on it was someone Stephen didn't know yet. But Tony was quite helpful and told him that that was Steve's boyfriend Bucky. He had heard that name before though. 

"Which club?" Bucky asked. "DTSWDT or the Mischief Squad?" Did they all have superhuman hearing?! 

Steve frowned at him. "Mischief Squad? Also, what does DTSWDT stand for?" 

Tony, Loki and Bucky exchanged glances and then all at the same time said: "Nothing." 

Stephen decided to ignore this and addressed Loki once more. "You still didn't answer my question. WHY is there an army of dinosaurs?" 

"They're going to help us against Thanos, of course," the God told him. Fair enough but still didn't answer his questions. 

"Still doesn't really answer my question," he tried again. 

"Loki has summoned them," came the answer from behind him. Turning around, he saw Thor coming towards them on a T-Rex. "I think they will be a great help. Thanos won't know what hit him." 

"Why?" It was a very reasonable question, in Stephen's opinion. Also the only question that mattered right now. 

"Dinos make everything better," Loki answered, shrugging. That, on the other hand, wasn't a satisfying and reasonable answer. It was an answer a child would give. 

"They listen to Loki, so don't worry," Tony pointed out. That didn't make the situation better but was good to know, in case he'd be maimed by one of them. 

Stephen looked around then and saw the rest of the Avengers on dinosaurs. They were laughing and racing each other. Looking over at Steve, the leader of the Avengers looked very tired and done. Stephen got an idea why. 

He leaned over and whispered, "Do you have to deal with this every day?" 

"You have no idea," the soldier sighed. "They're usually worse." 

Stephen's eyes widened. How could it be worse than this? Okay, this wasn't actually so bad. Yet. But Stephen really doubted these people's sanity. Not Steve's, but the others'. Riding dinosaurs seemed like an unnecessary risk. Something they really couldn't afford right now. Stephen got the feeling though that these people were beyond reason. 

Another T-Rex came heading towards them. On top of it was Clint Barton. "Hey," he yelled grinning. "Let's kick some grape butt!" 

Very immature but he did have a point. They were here to fight Thanos. They shouldn't waste time by discussing why there were dinosaurs. That was a topic for after the fight, if they could still discuss it then. 

"The Hawk is right," Loki agreed and Gwaine took off into the sky again. "LET BATTLE COMMENCE!" came the rallying cry from Loki before Gwaine charged forward. 

Bucky on his Pterodactyl and Tony took off too and flew after Loki. The rest of the dinosaur-riding Avengers followed them on the ground. And the army of dinosaurs was right behind them. Stephen followed with Captain America and watched quite impressed as the Avengers and the dinosaurs (and all the other heroes and warriors) fought against Thanos and his army. It really was an epic battle. Strange but epic. 

"Huh," Stephen noted when he was able to take a breather for a moment. "The dinosaurs really are quite efficient." 

Steve grabbed him by his collar (not the cloak collar though) and stared at him intensely. "No, please," he practically begged him. "You are the only still rational person I know. Please don't leave me too!" 

Wow, they ruined him, Stephen thought. 

***

It was some time later when they were able to catch a break and regroup. Everyone had fought valiantly but there was only so much a person could fight before they reached their limits. Thanos apparently was regrouping too. He had underestimated them and Thor had been right… He hadn't known what hit him when a bunch of dinosaurs had attacked him and heroically had given their lives for the greater good. 

Stephen had saved a raptor from an attack and now the sharp-clawed fellow followed him around. It was actually quite adorable. He hated to admit it but the dinosaurs were a great help. There's something he never thought he'd say… Also, they were dinosaurs! The child in him was freaking out about having a dinosaur friend. 

But it didn't go unnoticed to him that Steve wasn't so happy about his new friend. The super-soldier threw disapproving looks in his direction. 

"I'm so, so sorry," Stephen whispered to his dinosaur friend while shooing him away. "I promise I'll be there in a sec. I just gotta deal with your Uncle Steve, he's angry." 

Stephen never knew for sure if the dinosaurs understood what was being said to them. His dinosaur tilted its head looking at him questioningly. 

Stephen turned to Steve who was standing there with his arms crossed and such a displeased expression that Stephen thought he had been ordered to the principal's office. 

For several moments, no one said anything, until Stephen burst out: "Oh don't be so dramatic!" He pointed at his jurassic friend who had trotted back to his side. "I mean, c'mon! It's a dinosaur! Who doesn't love dinosaurs?" He gave his friend an affectionate pat on the head. 

Steve turned away from him. "I can't even look at you right now." 

Stephen wanted to say something but was interrupted by Loki landing Gwaine right next to him. Stephen was convinced that the dinosaurs saw Gwaine as their leader. He couldn't explain why though. It kinda just made sense that they would. 

Gwaine lowered his head for Loki to climb off. "So," the God addressed Stephen. "I see you have disappointed the Captain too." 

Stephen sighed. "I guess so." 

Loki spread his arms and grinned at him. "Welcome to the club!" 

Stephen raised an eyebrow. He could understand why Steve was done with his team but on the other hand, what did he expect when one of his team was literally the God of Mischief? 

Loki leaned in closer to him. "If you want to hang out more with dinos and all sorts of mythical creatures, DTSWDT meets every Saturday in Tony's workshop at Avengers Tower," he whispered. "The password is Petrie. JARVIS will let you in then." 

Stephen looked at him a bit dumbfounded and watched as Loki climbed back on Gwaine.

"There's also free food and drink and official T-Shirts," Loki told him, apparently not caring about the Captain hearing him anymore. "Or whatever you'd like clothing-wise. Toodles." Then he flew off again. 

Stephen looked after him, straining his neck doing so. His cloak poked him and Stephen knew what he meant to say. 

"Huh," he said and gave his dinosaur friend (he needed a name for him) a few gentle pats on the head. "Well, I guess that's worth checking out." 

To his side, he heard a frustrated groan. He looked over and saw that Steve had thrown his arms up in frustration. 

"HAS EVERYBODY GONE COMPLETELY MAD!?" he yelled to the sky. 

Out of nowhere came Iron Man flying and hovered a few feet above the ground. He raised his faceplate and grinned first at Stephen and then at Steve. 

"You should've seen him on Titan, Cap. Then you wouldn't be asking that," he said and winked at Stephen. 

Stephen cringed and glared at him. Did he have to bring that up? Also, what did it matter? This was an alternate timeline.

A huge shadow fell over them and Stephen looked up to see Loki on Gwaine there. 

"What does he mean?" he asked Stephen. 

Stephen, obviously, stayed silent and looked at Tony who lowered the faceplate again and flew away. Loki frowned and looked at Stephen more intensely. 

"What does he mean?" 

Stephen still didn't say anything. Loki didn't look too pleased. Should Tony face the consequences of his comment. And he would. 

Loki gave Gwaine some sort of signal and then the dragon flew after Tony at an incredible speed. 

"COME HERE, YOU ASSHOLE! WHAT HAPPENED ON TITAN?!" he yelled after Tony. 

Stephen didn't pity the man right now. Being the target of Loki's anger seemed like a very bad idea. He just hoped he wouldn't have to experience it as well. 

***

"HOW COULD YOU HAVE BEEN SO UTTERLY STUPID?!" 

Okay, Stephen did become the target of Loki's anger. And boy, he was terrifying. Even more so because he was on Gwaine hovering several feet over Stephen. And Stephen guessed that Gwaine could sense that Loki was angry because his look was just as angry. Stephen was in serious trouble here. 

Tony was in the air near Loki but for now kept silent, just as Stephen and the Captain. There wasn't anything they could say right now. Loki wouldn't let them anyway. 

"GIVING UP THE TIME STONE!" Loki kept on yelling. "TONY WASN'T IN ANY DANGER! HE'S UNDER MY PROTECTION! HE WOULD'VE SURVIVED ANYWAY!" 

"WELL, I DIDN'T KNOW THAT, NOW DID I?" Stephen yelled back now. Why was Loki yelling anyway? Sure, he was angry, but he could be angry at a reasonable volume. 

"HE WOULD'VE TOLD YOU, IF YOU WOULD HAVE JUST LISTENED!" 

"Why are you yelling, Loki?" Steve asked now. 

Loki looked at him and frowned. "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LOUD THE SOUND OF THESE WINGS ACTUALLY IS RIGHT NOW?" 

They didn't sound loud to Stephen but he also wasn't directly next to them. Or maybe Loki was going deaf. He had talked to them while on the dragon earlier and hadn't yelled then. Maybe the wings were only loud now because Loki was angry and Gwaine therefore too, so he was flapping his wings in anger? Did that make any kind of sense? Why bother wondering about it now? There were more important things to worry about than the volume of dragon wings. Again one of those things Stephen had never thought would go through his mind. 

"ALSO," Loki continued, "YELLING SEEMS APPROPRIATE IN THIS SITUATION!" Okay, fair point. 

Tony finally took action and tried to calm his raging boyfriend. He flew closer and opened his faceplate. "Babe, it's alright. We will defeat Thanos," he tried. 

But apparently Loki wasn't done with him yet either. "I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU!" 

Tony looked at him slightly shocked but didn't say anything. He knew there'd be more, and he was right.

Loki fully turned towards Tony. "YOU ALWAYS GET SO MAD AT ME WHEN I PUT MYSELF IN DANGER! BUT WHEN YOU DO IT, IT'S OKAY! YOU DIDN'T EVEN TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED ON TITAN UNTIL NOW!" 

Tony was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, Stephen had to really carefully listen or he would've missed it. 

"I thought you were dead…" 

Loki actually scoffed. That seemed a little insensitive to Stephen. Tony had a good point. It must've been hard for him to think his love was dead. 

"WHO AM I, STARK?! WHO?!" Loki yelled at Tony but Stephen heard something else than anger in his voice. He just couldn't place it. "YOU SHOULD KNOW BY NOW THAT I'M FUCKING HARD TO KILL! AND I'M ALSO BAD AT ACTUALLY STAYING DEAD!"

Next to Stephen, Thor inhaled sharply. "Oh boy, he's called him Stark," he whispered. "Someone is in trouble." 

"I SWEAR, IF YOU PULL ANY SELF-SACRIFICING SHIT TODAY, I WILL KILL YOU! I WILL RESURRECT YOU AND THEN KILL YOU AGAIN!" they heard Loki. That was an interesting threat, and he probably meant it literally. 

Tony wasn't able to respond to that anymore because Loki just flew off. Stephen wondered how exactly he flew the dragon. Were there specific signs? Did they talk? Was there something like a dragon language? And if so, was Loki able to speak and understand it? 

Tony landed next to them, looking like a kicked puppy. "He's never been that mad at me before…," he mumbled sadly. 

Tony was quiet for a few moments, in which Stephen figured he was contemplating what to do now. Stephen wondered if Loki would even be mad at him for long. They seemed to fit together perfectly, like two puzzle pieces. Considering that, Stephen could understand why Loki was so mad at Tony. 

"Thor!" Tony suddenly exclaimed. "How can I make it up to him?" 

Thor looked at him rather surprised and a bit lost. Then he shrugged. "Why are you asking me?" he answered. "You know him better than I do." 

Stephen frowned at him. Didn't he always claim that Loki was his brother, no matter what, and he loved him? Shouldn't he know him then? 

"Ah fuck!" Tony whined and then flew after Loki. "LOKI! WAIT! I'M SORRY!" he yelled but Stephen doubted that the Trickster could hear him. 

[twistedintern]

Kyuu’s Chronicle - Entries #1-6

Entry One

“Everything happens for a reason.”

...That was, up until recently, a favorite adage of mine. Through good times and bad, I would think back to those five little words.

Everything happens for a reason.

Struggle.

Success.

Waking up inside a sealed coffin after an unremarkable night’s rest.

...Hello, Lady Fate? Might I be able to file a tiny complaint? WHAT THE FLYING EVER-LOVING F*CK? 

You don’t just up and isekai a normal adult woman into the middle of some Harry Potter-grade magical college without providing her with purpose, know-how, and a means of returning home! I am NOT the token light novel hero with a personality that screams ‘lovable fish-out-of-water,’ alright? SHEESH. I could’ve been injured, kidnapped, or worse....

Fortunately--yes, there’s always a silver lining, Kyuu. Remember that--while I now know I could’ve ended up as mincemeat at the hands of delinquent students, I was first happened upon… by a cat. That cat was accompanied by a pair of men. Well, I knew one of them was a man. I couldn’t make out his features clearly in the dimly-lit chamber before he left, but he sounded and held himself like a middle-aged man would.

His companion, though? Different story entirely. When he lifted his lamp to get a better look at me, providing me with some much-needed light with which to take in my surroundings…

Feathers. Gaudy shiny things. A suit, tie, cloak, a grand hat.

Two piercing yellow lights shining from a beaked half-mask.

...Mere inches from my face.

I had never fought so hard to suppress a scream in my life.

Entry Two

A bit of time has passed since that, um, eventful night. Because I’m really bad at keeping diaries, I’ll just give a recap:

I have never wanted to go home so badly in all my life.

The individual I met back then--he introduced himself as Dire Crowley, by the way; a fitting name if I do say so myself (I still flinch whenever I see him or hear him call my name. God, he’s so weird)--turned out to be the headmaster of this place. ...Um, what was it called again?

...Right! Night Raven College. He tells me nonstop how prestigious this place is. He’d better not be exaggerating, though that seems to be his general way of talking about things that matter to him.

(I hope he’s telling the truth: if so, it’s only a matter of time before word gets out that I don’t belong here. He won’t believe me whenever I tell him I’m from another, altogether separate world.)

In the meantime, Crow Man has me holed up in a rather spacious (and quite homey) tool shed a short hike away from the central plaza of the school.

I wish I knew why he’s always so hellbent on emphasizing how terribly kind he is when it comes to doing things for others. Normally, I’d consider that sort of behavior to be incredibly suspicious. I mean, I know administrative heads of these kinds of institutes have it tough and are largely underappreciated, but it really feels like he’s hiding something...

Entry Three

Crowley invited me to his office today, and for once, he was the least remarkable thing in the room.

I have never been so shocked in all my years. So much so that I fainted as soon as I processed what I was seeing. (I don’t faint.)

Portraits flanking his seat, seven in total, suspended midair by magic forces beyond my understanding.

The no-nonsense Queen of Hearts

Scar, the usurper lion king

Ursula, the sea witch

Jafar, the sultan’s scheming right-hand

The beautiful and vain Evil Queen

Hades, lord of the dead

Maleficent, the preeminent sorceress of all that is wicked

When I recovered consciousness, I nearly shrieked. 

“THEY’RE YOUR ‘MAGNIFICENT SEVEN’?”

Crowley responded with a simple nod of the head. Hadn’t I seen their statues on the main street? He wished to know why I was surprised.

“I… KNOW THEM.”

Crowley blinked before affirming that yes, I ought to. Very few people in the world don’t. Then I reminded him I wasn’t from this world.

Fast-forward, crow man drags me to some grandiose “Hall of Mirrors” and asks the principal spirit what my deal is. (Why didn’t he do that sooner…?) The spirit (which also looks eerily familiar) validates my entire argument: that I’m a magic-less adult from outside their realm.

And Crowley? Crow Man? He and the mirror spirit might as well have been discussing the weather, because he didn’t seem bothered or troubled by the revelation in the slightest!

Entry Four

A few days later, Crowley made a formal announcement that I would be joining the staff of the college. …As an intern of sorts.

Huh? Excuse me? Did a bird man really just make an executive decision to take me on as his servant?!

For some reason… I’m not as pissed about this as I feel I could be. After all, I’m painfully aware of how I have zero business at Night Raven; it was well within his rights to kick me out. The least I could do is make myself useful.

Crowley (I never thought I’d be calling a bird my boss, but here I am!) sat me down later over a light lunch to tell me about the men I’d be assisting in the days ahead:

Mozus Trein, Professor of Magical History

Very serious, highly respected. A good judge of character with zero tolerance for poor work ethics (yikes!)

Divus Crewel, Professor of Alchemy and Magical Sciences

Exacting, charismatic. A celebrated fashion designer (???) whose wrath has earned him admirers and foes alike

Ashton Vargas, Professor of Kinesiology (I guess he’s the PE guy)

Passionate, persistent. Is known for his narcissism, but is a dependable team player when it counts

Sam, Proprietor of “Mr. S’s Mystery Shop”

The go-to man for all your buying needs. Is a bit on the eccentric side, but that’s part of his charm

Maybe this won’t be such a lousy arrangement after all....

Entry Five

Allow me to amend my earlier statement ever so slightly:

THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST ARRANGEMENT IMAGINABLE.

My first day on the job has been nothing but one disaster after another. These men are unreasonable, larger-than-life characters with the most obtuse expectations and tendencies I’ve ever met! Why oh why couldn’t I have been made younger in the process of this whole isekai-ing business? A great many students, as I’ve now come to learn, aren’t half bad. (The remarkable ones among them certainly left a lasting impression…) What’s more, they actually seem terrified of these fellows birdbrain assigned me to aid.

Divus Crewel is not my type of person AT ALL. He’s vain, cold, and completely unforgiving. He tore at me from the get-go, his cold grey eyes boring into me as he informed me how drab my sense of style was. The headmaster spoke so highly of me; he thought it fair to assume that I would be a remarkable presence having come from a world apart. I know well his type: petty and shallow. (Bastard thinks he can wear fur like that in his line of work? Tch.)

Ashton Vargas was, unsurprisingly, the textbook definition of a musclehead. He chewed me out for my poor physical constitution and demanded that I join him for early morning jogs around campus followed by intense cardio. Not for nothing, but exercise is not my thing. Naturally, he’s so into himself that he didn’t bother listening to me when I tried to politely turn down his invitation.

Sam… where do I even begin about that piece of work? ‘A bit eccentric’? Only a little? Way to downplay things, boss bird! The guy is a bonafide freak. He’s all about making sales and nothing else, and he’s as sketchy as rotten fish smells. And get this… his shadow? The thing has a mind of its own, and he does nothing to keep a reign on it. I couldn’t tell if he was joking, but as soon as he started talking about his “friends on the other side” with a snicker and a twinkle in his eye, I hightailed it out of there. I am never going back to his place of business ever again, even if it kills me.

I haven’t even met the last person the Headmaster told me about, but if he’s anything like his colleagues--or worse--Crowley might as well throw me to the sharks and put me out of my misery. Going by the information that… crow so generously shared with me, he doubtless feels like someone who’s going to see right through me and utterly crush what little self-worth I have left.

Please, I just want this nightmare to be over already....

Entry Six

So… um, hold on. I need to gather my thoughts. Deep breaths, Kyuu. Deep breaths.

Today was… nice. I can’t believe I’m saying any of this but… I’m kind of happy.

Although I had initially considered skipping my appointed first meeting with Professor Trein, I decided to suck it up at the very last minute and take whatever fate had in store for me head-on. I do not regret my decision in the least.

Where do I begin? I was so damn nervous when I knocked on the door to his office. A voice urged me inside, but the first thing that greeted me wasn’t the voice’s owner… but a cat.

This fluffy black and white feline, its expression demure, ran up to me immediately and took to rubbing against my leg. It was the cat from that fateful night I woke up inside a coffin! He held still and stared at me expectantly before issuing a rawl. I looked up to find a stern man, dressed in antiquated robes, regarding me with an unflinching glower. I was paralyzed with fear--I’d screwed up, hadn’t I?

Then he smiled at me. “It has been a while, Kyuu. I was expecting you.” He was the other person from that night! I just nodded my head dumbly and followed him inside. I could see how one could find him intimidating, what with his piercing visage and strict, commanding aura, but for me there was something almost comforting about his olden mannerisms.

We had a delightful talk over freshly-brewed tea. He asked me about myself, and I was stunned to learn that he and I had many things in common! He was positively amazed how quickly his beloved cat (who’s name is Lucius, by the way) warmed up to me. All the while, I was fondly reminded of my university days where I would spend hours on end talking with one of my favorite history professors after class.

I eventually opened up to him about my catastrophic first day with his colleagues. He expressed sympathy, but at the same time he was quick to point out that perhaps I was taking things too personally, and that I had jumped to conclusions without putting things in perspective. Knowing my tendencies, I conceded that he was probably right.

[rwbyremnants]

WARNING: Cunnilingus.

NOTE: Sorry again for the big gap. The world is CRAZY right now. And my head barely works on an average day, so this is just... worse lol. But I hope you guys enjoy the chapter!

=Chapter 14

By the time Weiss arrived at Shopkeeper’s, she was a bundle of nerves. Pyrrha had helped her change the bandage during school, and they were both relieved that the slight spotting of blood had not been seeping through her bandages. Her body was healing as it should be, and even though she may have felt a few regrets over allowing her skin to be marked, it was worth it to be reunited with her love.

Too bad she was not in for the cheerful evening with the Dragons for which she had hoped.

The instant she walked in, she saw the girls in the corner were having a shouting match. Most of the other Dragons were hanging back and letting them get whatever it was out of their systems. Vernal had been lingering by the door, but when she saw Weiss hovering there, she smiled very cruelly.

“Look at you, Miss Woman Of The Hour,” she snorted. “Ready to welcome your public?”

“What? I don’t- what’s the matter?”

But Vernal only shrugged and waltzed back over to the bar. Wishing she had at least some hint of what was to come, she squared her shoulders and approached the table.

“...not even been here for three days! And you just want-”

“-all of us, so you can’t act as if this comes as a sur-”

“-unreasonable! Completely and totally-”

“-the same as you, but a rule’s a rule, and if we don’t test one girl then it-”

The words faded into noise again. Around that time, Velvet spotted her from where she was hanging near the back and waved surreptitiously from behind Coco’s back. Weiss waved back-

And caught the attention of Cinder, who was poised to actually be able to see her. She fell silent for a moment before calling out, “There she is! The woman of the hour!”

“Why does everyone keep calling me that?” she murmured as she approached.

“Oh,” Yang said, face pale as she took a step back to allow her into the circle of heated debate. Ilia wasn’t there this time, but the others had gathered as per usual. “Weiss, you… you made it.”

“I did. And for whatever reason, you don't seem too pleased to see me.”

Around that time, she noticed Emerald, Cinder, and Coco were all staring at her like wolves happening upon an errant hart in the woods. It was the last one who spoke first. “Actually, we were just talking about you.”

“Don't,” Yang warned her.

“There is the matter of some unfinished busine-”

“Are you really starving for a knuckle sandwich? Because that's what I'm hearing from you right now!”

“Just let her decide for herself,” Emerald said, her hands resting on her hips. “She's one of us now, right? Or is this whole initiation a sham?”

Cinder paced around the others and slid a comforting arm around Weiss's shoulders. That was how she truly knew that she was in for something less hospitable than she had been hoping for.

“We've got wonderful news for you, Schnee. The next step in your initiation into the Dragons has been decided.”

Apparently, her instincts were dead on. “Oh, it has? Well, what is it?”

“Cinder…” Yang's eyes were flashing dangerously, her hands curled into fist at her sides.

“Nothing you weren't going to do eventually,” the brunette promised in a sing-song voice, one fingertip tracing a tiny circle upon Weiss's shoulder. “We all heard what an… attentive student you are.”

“Huh?” Weiss asked. “Student? I mean, um… yes, I suppose.”

“Think of this as a pop quiz. Were you truly paying attention during the demonstration, or not? That will tell us if you are cut out to be a Dragon or not.”

Even though she still had no idea what Cinder was talking about, Weiss was beginning to get the feeling that she should probably pay closer heed to Yang's warnings.

“You remember the demonstration,” Coco prompted with a lewd smirk. “Don't you?”

“The- ohhhhh, right. When you showed- wait.” She tried to take a step back, but Cinder's arm held her in place. “You said there was going to be a test. What kind of test, precisely?”

Tired of them talking around the subject, Yang burst out in an annoyed tone, “They want you to go down on one of us. To prove you're as lady-loving as most of the Dragons.”

It was every bit as terrible as she had feared. “WHAT?!”

“I told you!” she flung at the others. “She doesn't wanna do it! Now lay off!”

“She never said that,” Cinder purred. “Just expressed understandable surprise. Allow her a moment to think it over, could you?”

But Weiss didn't need a moment. “No.”

“Awww, shy baby,” Emerald teased.

“Are you all insane? It doesn't mean I'm ‘shy’, it means I'm a normal human being. I'm a virgin! My first time with someone should be special, not a… not some huge spectacle!”

Cinder's previously-gentle hand gripped slightly harder. “You say that as if you have a choice. You're a Dragon now. And in order to prove that you are loyal to our organization, I think we have the right to ask something of you that pushes you outside your comfort zone.”

“Not this,” she responded flatly, arms now folding over her chest. “And not as some kind of public demonstration.”

“Oh, is that what's bothering you?” With a deceptively bemused titter, Cinder reached up with her other hand to caress Weiss's cheek. She was beginning to grow annoyed with her for invading her personal space so much. “It doesn't have to be in front of the rest of us. Just you and any Dragon.”

While most of the others were looking vaguely disappointed, Yang was breathing a sigh of relief. Looking between the two of them, the initiate asked, “Really?”

The hope in her voice seemed to be what prompted Cinder to tack on, “Anyone except Yang.”

“What?! Come on, that's not fair!”

“Of course it is. After all, we both know that Xiao Long would definitely lie on your behalf. She's so enamored of you that she can't possibly imagine being more loyal to her clan than to her new girlfriend - which disgusts me, quite frankly, but I suppose I can understand.”

Even while Weiss was continuing to feel outraged, she saw Emerald and Coco nodding. The latter said, “She's got a point. We all lose our minds for the ones we love.”

“But I barely can imagine doing anything with Yang in the first place, much less touch any of the rest of you in your- i-in such a way! No offense,” she added on to the end, worried they would think it had anything to do with how attractive they were.

“The point isn’t to make you comfortable, princess,” Emerald rumbled. “It's to prove your loyalty, that you really belong here. And that you were paying attention when Velvet put on a show for you.”

“Oh, do leave me out of it,” the timid girl whispered. She and Yang were the only two who looked truly repentant about this unreasonable request. Not even Blake seemed to care; her expression remained completely impassive.

In fact… that gave Weiss an idea. It was a little strange, and a few seconds slipped by in silence as her brain furiously worked through the details. Maybe she couldn’t get out of doing something she was nowhere near prepared to do, but if she could pull this off…

“Well?” Cinder finally prompted when her patience ran out. “We could probably devise another initiation ritual. However, I can guarantee that this one won't be quite so pleasant.”

Gulping as she thought about the scar tissue still forming on her left hindcheek, she blurted out, “Okay! But what about a compromise?”

The woman smoldering eyes definitely did not look impressed. “Go on?”

“What if… I go down on Yang… and-”

“We already told you, that isn't going to-”

“AND,” she cut her off more firmly to give herself a chance to finish, “only one of you gets to watch? Will that satisfy your crude requirements?”

“Weiss…” Yang sounded completely beside herself, gaping at Weiss. The look was so close to one of betrayal that she had to turn away from it, focusing on Cinder, who seemed to be the one pushing the most for this bizarre form of torture.

“Hmm. Well, I suppose. But it has to be one of us; this generation of Dragons. Because a little birdie told me that you would prefer Mrs. Belladonna’s company.”

Feeling her face grow hot at the accusation, she cast a nervous glance at Blake. For her part, she didn’t seem to care much, but neither did she look especially comfortable to be discussing one of her friends getting “frisky” with her own mother. Understandably so.

“I wasn’t going to ask her anyway. Why, do you want the pleasure?” she fired at Cinder.

“Moi? Oh, no, no, no. Tempting, but I had someone else in mind.” Her eyes shifted in the direction Weiss’s had just been pointed. “Blake.”

“What?” After a moment, she blinked and asked, “You want me to be the witness?”

“Do you abstain?”

The olive-skinned girl glanced first at Weiss, who was fairly indifferent; secretly, she would be grateful if it was Blake instead of Cinder or Emerald, who would be the worst to put up with in there. Coco might be a little irritating, offering too many pointers, but probably not quite so bad. If indeed she had to go through with this insane, clandestine ritual, Velvet and Blake - and Ilia if she had been present - were her top choices.

However… there was something about the way she was staring at Yang now. And Yang was staring back, looking a little uncomfortable; that was definitely to be expected. But something else was in Blake’s eyes. If she had to name the emotion, the feeling Blake was dealing with, she would call it “regret”. Regret about what?

“Good. It’s settled.” Clapping her hands together, Cinder sauntered toward the back. “I have it on good authority that Salem will not be joining us until later this evening. And in her absence, the back room is open for such activities. Given that Schnee can’t come and go as she pleases anymore…”

As she spoke, it began to dawn on Weiss that not only was she going to be expected to follow through with this ridiculous plan, but she would be expected to do it now. “What? You mean, here? In Shopkeeper’s?!”

Emerald snorted. “Did you think we would rent you a room?”

“But that’s…” She glanced again at Yang, who was only shrugging helplessly. “That’s obscene! And I’m not ready! Nobody said I had to do it right now!”

“What do you want me to do?” Yang hissed at her. “You agreed to it. Kinda can’t do much about it now.”

“But I thought…” Her pout was probably childish, but she couldn’t help it.

“Listen, it’s fine,” Blake finally said in as calm a tone as she could manage. “I promise to be as professional as… as a person can be under these circumstances. Does that help? I mean…”

Weiss shook her head quickly. “No, no, you’re completely fine! Thanks for… for volunteering to… I don’t know, whatever this is.”

“Then it’s all settled,” Cinder said with a wide smile, wrapping her arms around both Weiss and Yang’s backs and escorting them toward the normally-forbidden door. “Hope it all works out for you!”

Before she knew it, Weiss found herself in the smoky back room again. It was largely unchanged from the previous visit. Merely being in that space made her cheeks clench, even though she knew there would be no such painful encounters this time. Once inside, Blake slipped around the three of them, standing off to one side and trying to look politely interested in the ceiling.

“Be good,” Cinder cooed with a sinister little smile. “And don’t forget - you have to give Yang a blaze of glory, or it doesn’t count…”

Once she backed out of the room, chuckling under her breath, Weiss sighed and turned back to a frowning Dragon. “Wow, I am… so sorry.”

“This is just great. I mean, I really want you to be my steady gal, but I know you’re a classy lady. Wanted our first time to be special. So I’m over the moon about letting you eat me out in the back room of our hideout! Yeah, that’s just neat!”

However, the instant she saw Weiss deflating and looking down at her own Mary Janes, she sighed and ran a hand over her face. The meek “I’m really sorry” shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise at that point, but Weiss offered it anyway.

“Oh… forget it. You’ve been a Dragon for less than a week. Not fair for me to expect you to be ready for this kind of stuff.”

“W-we don’t have to do this. I’ll go out there and…” She swallowed hard. “I’ll pick Blake, or Velvet. This doesn’t have to be our first time.”

“It’s okay,” she told her a little more earnestly, reaching up to cup her cheek. “I’m not mad. Well… I’m kinda mad at Cinder, a little. But not mad at you.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Then she turned to look over at Blake. “Ready, ref?”

The dark-haired girl rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry about me. Not like this is my problem.”

“I know. But you, uh… well, out of everybody-”

“Sit on it, Xiao Long. It’s done.” Turning to Weiss, she sighed and said, “Well, if you need pointers, just ask. I mean, I know you already saw the whole show with Velvet, but honestly, it’s a little different doing it yourself. I don’t mind helping.”

The very idea made a chill run down Weiss’s spine. However, she could tell Blake was as nervous about this as she and Yang were, which helped her feel less disgusting. “Thanks, I think.”

Scratching the back of her neck, Yang took a look around the room. “Where do you want me? I, uh… maybe not in Salem’s usual booth. That’s just too grody for me.”

“Well… this one looks fine.” She gestured to the one Blake was leaning against, and immediately she sat forward from the table, looking as if she had seen a ghost. “Now, are you going to be up on the table, or lying on the bench?”

“On the table. So you don’t have to kneel on the floor,” she added quickly.

“Hmm. Maybe you should lie on the bench so I don’t have to be sitting, since um, I can’t do that right now.” As Yang nodded, she gestured to the seat. “Well, go on.”

“Uh… I kinda have to…”

At first, Weiss wasn’t sure why Yang was so reticent. But when she stooped to begin pulling off her huge brown boots, it came to her in a flash of understanding: she had jeans on. Once Yang was rid of those, and began unzipping, Blake turned away to stare in the opposite direction.

“Let me help you,” Weiss breathed, reaching forward to grasp the waistband. Yang dropped her hands away and gave her free reign, breath coming in shallow rasps as she watched the delicate pale fingers work at freeing her body. “Ready?”

“Yeah.”

A thrill shot through Weiss as she pulled them all the way to the floor, along with the underwear beneath. Her eyes were shut as she did; she didn’t want to see too much. Didn’t want Yang to feel exposed. A hand rested against the crown of her head, and she felt Yang stepping out of them.

“Done. Um… you can look, if you want.”

Swallowing hard, she whispered, “I don’t think I can. It’s too… I don’t know.”

“You’re going to be face-deep in there in a minute,” she snorted, voice low and gentle. “Might as well start getting used to it now.”

The sight that greeted Weiss once she prised her eyes open was of Yang towering over her, a dirty-blonde thatch of hair on display just below the hem of her shirt, framed slightly by the open sides of her leather jacket. There was a curious mixture of anxiety, bemusement, and excitement in the brute’s alluring features. When she only continued to crouch, gazing upward, Yang finally cleared her throat.

“R-right.” Her hand petted the outside of Yang’s thigh. “Do you want to keep going? Or just… just the pants?”

“Do you want me to keep going?”

“Sort of,” she confessed. “But if you’d rather we just get down to-”

Her voice petered out when Yang shucked her leather jacket, letting it fall to the floor alongside her jeans. One more garment later and she was entirely nude.

“Golly gee whiz,” Blake grumbled from nearby, still not looking.

“You’re so…” Weiss drifted her hand up Yang’s abdomen, feeling the muscles pulse underneath the skin. “Wow…”

“A-alright,” Yang laughed self-consciously. “Um… I’ll get into position.” She walked backward, and Weiss found herself watching the long, tapering legs move more than anything until she was sitting down on the end of the bench, then reclining. “Ready when you are.”

“I’m not. But…” Gulping, the overwrought princess decided to crawl forward rather than standing, and Yang’s smile fell as she watched her. “I want to please you. I really do, even if it’s for such a ridiculous reason as getting the other Dragons to accept me. It’s… it’s what I want.”

“Weiss…”

Her hands perched on Yang’s knees as she pushed up from the floor, face hovering between them. “Besides… I thought this was what you wanted. For me to bow before your awesome might.”

“Hell yes,” she admitted with in a soft voice. Somehow, that softness made it feel less like it was truly what Yang wanted. “Or for you to make me do that for you. God, you’re so gorgeous…”

Heart beating faster, she started to surge forward… but couldn’t help glancing over at Blake. She was still standing with her hips leaning back against the partition between the two benches that connected their booth to the next. Sensing that everything had come to a standstill, her amber eyes flicked over in their general direction before swivelling forward again. “What?”

“Um… I don’t have any right to ask anything of you, Blake. But… where do you… I mean, h-how much do you have to see-”

“Let’s say I sit here,” she offered, taking the other bench. “Now the table is in the way, and all I’ll be able to see is your head bobbing up and down. Does that work for everybody?”

“You could lie for us,” Yang sighed irritably. “Just go out there and say we went through with the whole thing.”

“I won’t. If I would do that for anybody, it would be for you - and you know that. But I don’t think it’s fair for me to help you two cheat.” There was a hint of true remorse in her voice when she added, “Sorry.”

Shaking her head, Weiss said, “It’s okay. I’m… glad it’s you in here with us.” Then she turned back to Yang, trying not to think too much about what was about to happen, or about the incredible view from her standpoint. “Are… you ready for me? I’ll probably be terrible at this.”

“Nah. Just do your best. And…” Yang’s voice got even more shy. “I’ll love it. I’ve wanted this for a while.”

There was nothing more to say.

When Weiss’s hands began to ease Yang’s thighs apart, she found herself suddenly eager to see the body of her love. Velvet’s had been interesting, but she was more interested in this one - in whatever subtle differences it might offer. In touching. Maybe Ilia had been right at home with teasing any old person, but she wanted only to touch this force of nature that had set its sights on her from the beginning.

Yang had been right about her clit being larger. Not abnormally so, but the very tip of it was visible without her needing to disturb its hood at all. The rest was fairly similar, though she hadn’t seen nearly enough examples to know if that was normal or not. A few slight hairs framed the sides, though most of it was on top, as she had glimpsed while kneeling before her. Whenever Yang breathed, the soft petals flexed, and they glistened very slightly in the low light.

To both of their surprise, Weiss leaned in to leave a kiss just below the nub, where the lips began. Yang sucked in a breath of surprise that turned into a quiet moan.

“Is this okay?” she asked before leaving another.

“Yeah,” Yang breathed. After a third kiss, Yang lifted her leg so that it draped over Weiss’s back; she could feel the heel resting there. One of her hands was splayed against the back of the bench, and the other gripping the edge of the table. Trying to stabilise herself. Already, she had been surprised that the flavour itself wasn’t as awful as she had been expected - it was equally surprising that Yang liked it. For that purpose, she could easily weather the oddly sweetly-sour tang.

Once Weiss set to work in earnest, all bets were off. Her lips parted and drew in another, softer set, testing how they felt in her mouth. They felt fine, but it was the sound that thrilled her to the bone. Moan after moan told her that Yang really loved this. Adding her tongue into the mix only made hips come up to meet her face, so Weiss kept that up as best she could, her hands holding the taller woman open for her. Each pass of her mouth brought new sounds, new smells that she expected to despise - and instead cherished. This was Yang. This was her Yang, and open to her in a way no one had ever been before.

Everything else stopped mattering. Though she was distantly aware that Blake was nearby, that they were in a strange place with a gaggle of girls waiting outside to hear all about this encounter, none of them were connected. There would be certain things about this moment none of them could ever take from them.

“You’re delicious,” Weiss panted a minute or two later. Maybe she wasn’t in a literal sense, but the flavour was somehow satisfying on her tongue - and the results were very satisfying for both of them.

“Ah!” Her hands trembled where they lay, and the one splayed on the bench curled into fist. “Holy hell! You’re so… you were really paying attention!”

The praise made her smile. Leaning her chin against Yang’s inner thigh, she whispered, “Do you like having a girl dote on you?”

“Yeah… but… when it’s you, it’s… way better…”

Deciding they had waited long enough, Weiss fell to work again. This time, she decided to test the “magic button” Coco had spent so much time talking about. Her lips pressed gently into the end as her fingers drifted up to roll back the small fold of skin shrouding it from the open air.

“OH!”

That confirmed one thing. Weiss grinned to herself as she let her tongue flick out and prod the firm little button. It was actually firmer now than when she started; at first, she had been worried about that, but it only seemed to add to the experience for the both of them. After a few more proddings, she discovered that her tongue could poke up under the hood and found even more of it lay beneath. Her fingers carefully drew the skin back…

Even though she had been consuming Yang the whole time, having her first sexual encounter under the most insane of circumstances, for whatever reason, the moment she saw her laid even more open to her, watched her love’s clitoris actually throb in anticipation of being touched, was the first moment she knew that her own was feeling the same thing. All those tingles she felt before had been a precursor to this instance of actually knowing, without any doubt, that she was aroused.

Again, she fell to work, and this time Yang had a lot more difficulty suppressing her cries of pleasure. Fingertips grazed up and down soft folds as lips and tongue teased the crux of pleasure above. More tastes and scents seemed to fill her, and she moaned herself into the inviting flesh. Any worry that she would not be able to handle loving a woman vanished.

Yang transcended the concept of gender. And tasting a woman was better than she ever could have imagined.

“Shit,” Yang finally breathed as she began to convulse a little more. How much time had passed? Minutes, hours? “I’m… I-I’m gonna- Weiss!”

Now that it was so close, she found she didn’t want it to be over so quickly. But that was the goal. If she slowed down now, they would have to perform for the Dragons’ amusement even longer - and she wanted to do more, of couse. But on her terms. She wanted to have Yang all to herself, alone and in their own little world built for two. So for the time being…

“Yes,” she panted hungrily as her fingers slid up and down the wetness. “Orgasm for me, Yang. Let me hear how much you want this!”

The next moan was even louder, and she couldn’t help glancing at Blake. The Italian Dragon was ignoring them. Well, that wasn’t true, of course; her cheeks were pink, and she was sitting perfectly still. As if afraid any movement would somehow ruin the moment.

So Weiss put her out of her mind. Her mouth fell to the clit again and she resumed, fellating the little bump for all her worth as her fingers slipped and slid around on her opening. Should she use her fingers the way Coco instructed? Perhaps that would do-

That thought never got finished. No further action was needed to make Yang come, because it was already happening - at least, the long, drawn-out keening of joy seemed to indicate that. Especially when combined with the way she nearly sat all the way up from her body convulsing, rocked with the sheerest, purest pleasure - and that was without the sudden gush of fluids. Weiss could tell immediately this wasn’t what came out of her when she was branded; this was orgasm-related. So she tried to suppress a cry of shock and simply kept up her efforts.

Not long afterward, Yang flopped back, completely spent. Weiss remembered a comment Coco had made about Ilia stopping immediately and did the opposite; she gradually tapered her licking and suckling off until she was only kissing her clit again, tender and affectionate instead of frenzied. And even then, she still loved doing it for her.

After a moment, Yang tilted her head up to smile weakly at Weiss. Her eyes caught sight of something else, and she hissed in alarm, “BLAKE!”

Weiss glanced up to see Blake was leaning far forward on the table, gazing down at the nude body. Hearing her name, she glanced between the two pairs of eyes, and lowered her own, looking appropriately ashamed to have been caught peeping. However, she had something else to say.

“I… had to make sure,” she whispered. “I know, I know, but… I mean, some girls can fake it. But it looks like you really came.”

“Did you have to?” Yang needled.

“Yes.” Her gaze turned a bit harder as she stared at her leader. “I’m supposed to be a witness. So I witnessed. Trust me when I say that this is the last thing I wanted to be doing tonight, but I take being a Dragon seriously. Sorry to be such a germ.”

Blake stood up to leave, but Weiss caught her forearm just before she fled. “Thank you,” she told her earnestly. “I mean… it’s weird, but you… you did help us today. I understand that, even if Yang doesn’t.”

But the words didn’t seem to help. Instead, they shared a long, tense moment in which Blake tried to come up with something to say, staring off into the corner of the room. In the end, she just shrugged and walked out.

“Don’t worry about her,” Yang grunted as she sat up. “It’s… a long story.”

“You weren’t very nice to her,” Weiss told her baldly. “Sure, it’s creepy that she was watching, but that was supposed to be her job.”

The blonde rubbed at her face for a moment. “You’re right. Man, you’re right; I’ll… yeah, I’ll apologise later.”

“Good. But I don’t want to talk about Blake right now.” They both shared a small smile. “Did I really make you finish? I mean, I could tell you didn’t hate it, but any-”

“You razzed my berries, Schnee. Seriously. I…” Her cheeks were still flushed, but Weiss was almost certain it wasn’t completely from their strenuous efforts of minutes ago. “It’s never been that good, and I’ve had some talented ladies go to town on me before. You were great! Especially for a new recruit. I’m pretty impressed, I… I just don’t know what else to say, but I want to keep saying it!”

Grinning and knowing that her own face was glowing nearly as much, she slid into the booth next to Yang for a moment. They should make their exit soon, but for the moment, she wanted to be next to her girlfriend. To slide an arm around her back, nestle into her side.

“And I want to keep hearing it. But instead… I want to hear something else.”

“What? Oh, right - uhhh…” Yang cleared her throat nervously. “Is it ‘I love you’?”

Kissing her neck, she whispered, “Pinned the tail right on the donkey, Brute.”

[fortheheavenssake]

PG MM Anon Interpretation Collection- 10

65: Sept. 20

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON HAVE AN AWESOME WEEKEND 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

MM Anon

MM ANON … it’s a bird’ it’s a private plane ‘ it’s an Archificial!!!!!…… Canada why?…… three weddings and a numeral …… an unnecessary company …… not buying the lying ……” Rome , Bloody Rome!!”…………” one makes ones bed Philip”…… tabloids ‘ mud sticks, it’s official!!…… hated ‘ not rated …… This spotty leopard is def!! …… “ To boldly go……… “

it’s a bird’ it’s a private plane ‘ it’s an Archificial!!!!!

It’s Superman!!! Was the original third part. The ever elusive doll baby with magic powers to change size, hair colour, eyes, eyelashes etc etc all while wearing a Christening gown🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂 Again MM ANON are you confirming this? Private planes have been used because as we all know, there is no baby in her care, it’s always been a doll, and/or actors getting on/off private planes and or going to their local. For some reason EJ and ED are lying! Allegedly.

Canada why?

Canada Dry🤣🤣🤣😂😂MM ANON are you teasing me because l didn’t know that rare song🤣🤣😂😂? Seriously, l wonder if this is about Cameron Ortis and enquiring why Canada’s issue occurred and who was given what information.

three weddings and a numeral

Movie Three Weddings and a Funeral. Interestingly the write Richard Curtis is working with Catherine DOC , a new mental health initiative. It was in the paper the other day, if l recall there was a suicide he experienced, sibling? I cannot recall exactly. So Three weddings and a numeral. Let’s review what a numeral is, its a figure, symbol, or group of these denoting a number. MM ANON are you affirming something for us? Oh pretty please!!

Madam alleged annulled 1st marriage, divorced second and PH was the golden door number three, let’s make a deal, who remembers that game show? Does numeral represent a part of the law which denotes annulment and was it done legally? We know the divorce was legal because TE has remarried or is engaged. Oh my stars, are we getting affirmation?l have said awhile now why did PH hold the book when he was ‘signing’ the register after the wedding ceremony, he held the book so the camera couldn’t see it. Oh this clue has me buzzing! I know it’s can’t be III. Roman numeral three for three weddings they have attended as a married couple, the horrible blue and white dress, Princess Eugenie and Jack B and now MN?

an unnecessary company

Is this the Sussex Foundation? They could have worked as a team with the Cambridges but her jealousy and craving of $$$$$££££££££€€€€€ far supersedes any philanthropic or truly real humanitarianism.

not buying the lying

No one is believing anything she says or does except sugars and celebrities who share management or SS PR.

” Rome , Bloody Rome!!”

Again PP, disgust continues to rile his anger. Raging at yet another trip, how many flights is this now in six weeks or so? If they are all true it must be close to ten. He is a strong man, served his country for decade upon decade, to see this madam, l cannot imagine his blood pressure!

” one makes ones bed Philip”

HMTQ and PP , or maybe LG, the phrase you made your bed, now lie on it. This means your life choices have consequences and you have to deal with them The speaking if first person here, in a manner, leads me to believe this is HMTQ talking to her husband and the incredible burden of a booty call turning into this horrendous mess and PH playing his role, in his due to HMTQ, his grandmother is him having to deal with his poor choice. We still love and pray for him, as do his family. It must be desperately hard to watch him , but it will all be worth it, once justice is served, and make no mistake, it may not be tomorrow or next week, it will come! My word for madam, she will not understand this but Ask not for whom the bell tolls, for it tolls for the.

tabloids ‘ mud sticks, it’s official!!

Monster Meghan nanny tells all, TMZ shows fake photos of pub visit days and days after it allegedly happened, the pub owners denied they were there, the meta data on the photo said it was taken September 17,2019. More and more in the tabloids both paper and online tabloids, the truth is coming out and people are believing it more and more thus the term the mud sticks. MM ANON, the other riddle you used ‘ stick and stones’may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. I added the rest, after the part she mentioned. So in this case, the ‘names’ which in fact is truth are most definitely hurting her already bad reputation. Way to go SS!! You’re really earning your $$$$£££££€€€€! NOT !😂😂😂😂🤣

hated ‘ not rated

If one goes by social media et al, she doesn’t rate as a royal, but oh my the level of absolute disgust, anger, has built into hatred. Rightfully so, she blew in, rather flew in on her 🧹, paid backers. Manipulated a marriage, a ‘fauxmegnancy’, wastage of money on an epic scale, disrespecting the British and Commonwealth every step of the way. Trying to Americanize the Royal family and the biggest of all is the complete vile disrespect to HMTQ. To me, all the misdeeds, ? maybe illegal, those are all left for LG to manage. The thing of HMTQ at this stage of her Reign and her life, to be so utterly disrespected, repeatedly is utter gall. Yet another major reason she is hated so much by so many!

This spotty leopard is def!!

Def Leopard…awesome band and takes me back to hockey games music and after parties. She is def, not physically def,but tone def in an abstract meaning. She doesn’t accept any opinion except her own. Any questions she immediately cries troll, racist, hater, a plethora of descriptors. I still cannot believe all the time twitter was going last night either in Italy or as leaving to go there. Who cares if l or others misread the riddle. I am not embarrassed to acknowledge l misread something! Hey this is for fun, if it angers or irritates someone, perhaps reset this or take a break. In saying that, l work very hard in processing what the options are that a clue may mean and then writing it, in a manner that is as clear and concise as l can do.

“ To boldly go……… “.

To boldly go where no man, since changed to no one , has gone before, from the opening of Star Trek episodes. So madam has boldly gone to Rome sans archficial, and the Africa trip is pending shortly. Wonder why the journalists flight to Capetown has been cancelled?? She sees herself as the worlds answer to anything and l am sure she will display her narcissistic brilliantly while there. Oh this is going to be fun to watch!

As an aside, the HMS PRINCE OF WALES was taken out of drydock in Forsyth, Scotland. Some interiors are still being constructed. This is a massive beast of a sea faring ship. Check it out!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Wow! How do you do this dear PG! You take so little and turn out a masterpiece! So impressive, thank you so much! As always, greatly appreciated! Thank you!😃💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Ask Skippy submission

Sep 20th, 2019

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66: sept. 21

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

MM Anon

skippyv20

MM ANON …The wedding r/deception … the bigger picture …… easy does it! but do it…… weasel words …… not an option …… a collection of miss-fits…… heads or tails?……… home alone 7…… A sensible emptiness …… “don’t forget to wind the clock”……… no public appearances …… a good WHO-done

The wedding r/deception

So, this variety of people gather for big wedding number two in less than five years for the same bride,,different groom. It looked like a political conference with the level of security and who was there. Why did they attend, as far as l know the paper said they weren’t part of the evening prepared, l didn’t see them there in the photos from that evening. They were at the wedding, why? If you’re all close friends why not go to the fun bit and socialize, have a few drinks and a dance. I’ll tell you why BECAUSE THEYRE NOT A COUPLE THATS TOGETHER, it’s a charade. There must have been some reason they went, especially l enjoyed the cheeky photo of Harry where he SOUGHT out the camera and grinned. That told this girl all l need to know. Something was up, and we may never know what the agenda was but something was up!

the bigger picture

When one says look at the bigger picture here, it means take a step back from your situation, look at pros, cons, what you have invested into the issue and make the best decision that way. Here l think it’s literal, look at the whole picture, who was at that we’d and why. I have no answers but l think that’s one option.

I also think this is PH, going to the wedding was one small part of his time with mm, MM ANON is telling us don’t yippity yap about who was wrong or right about them going to the wedding or not. I admit it freely, l completely misread the clue about the wedding. Am l still lived?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂💜💜💜💜💜 l hope so😊. Seriously now, look at the big picture who set him up, what’s happened since then and so forth. I feel we need to continue to brain storm and put forth opinions here, this is fascinating and sometimes what we have talked about is in the paper the next day and l think wow! So let’s keep our eye on the prize and on the bigger picture!

easy does it! but do it

Slow progress in extraction from this sordid tale. Many many things have changed and been revealed l he is back to being called PH in the media no more DUKE🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂. There is so much negative PR it’s incredible and SS has only made things worse. So easy do it with the extraction but DO IT ! HMTQ and LG have this. The thing l fear presently is that speech she is going to give shortly after landing.

weasel words

Weasel words are words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading AKA word salad. That’s how she speaks, gobble de gook , just all kind awesome kind, yet kind but also awesomely kind, but kind of awesome, yet kindly kind. You get it, you know it. As l said , my massive fear is that first speech with the domestic murder rate off the charts, she goes in there yammering like that, there is serious damage that she could do. This is no joke, l worry about this. She on the other hand thinks she’s so awesomely kind that her speeches save the world and just her presence there will make things all better especially if she uses a darker bronzer!

not an option

Giving up is not an option. There were years invested into planning this and years have been invested into investigations. This must be allowed to play on as long as it needs to. They cannot afford to not pull out and follow every piece of yarn they unravel, this is too internationally important to just give up now. The general public is angry both at home and the a Commonwealth, its an incredible game being played but we have God , HMTQ and LG and PW and PH on ours! Let’s remember to keep them in prayer 🙏🏻💜🙏🏻.

a collection of miss-fits

Well l could say the stolen name SmartSets was a collection of things that fit a very select few and a bag, that cost more than the clothes that the fit on was terrible. The trousers she woke had a big bit of extra fabric right in the front lower area yikes! I do think, the almost inbred crew that was at that Italian wedding was a bunch of misfits. I am not judging but my reading tells me, her first marriage took place in Venice and was a massive affair, that marriage didn’t last three yearsish. Here we have a massive affair in Rome, l don’t get this flaunting of wealth. I just do not get it. The guest list, why are the Kushners, be it Jared or Josh always at any event? The connections in that guest list that was posted in the paper again reminded me of a genealogical family tree. This all so bizarre. Has she grafted her way into money as well? They keep saying she’s a fashion designer, l keep myself pretty in the know of stuff like that because it interesting to me. Before mm, l had NEVER heard of mn and her stupid white shirt. That’s her big contribution to fashion a white shirt? Okay then…..moving swiftly along…….

heads or tails?

Flip a coin, choose a side, you win or lose the bet.

home alone 7

Home Alone aaaaahhhhh Kevin!!! Love it, the sequels not the same. Is this now, the trio to Italy, the 7th time archficial has left left alone by his ‘parents’. Well yes l sure Nannyficial has things all in hand, in fact maybe they will Nannyficial to take care of Archficial in SA??

A sensible emptiness

Emptiness can mean a human condition is a sense of generalized boredom, social alienation and apathy, which means a

lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern.

Sensible can be a statement or course of action chosen bearing in mind wisdom and prudence, and is likely to be of benefit. It can also be something that is practical and functional rather than decorative. Well we know mm is not the latter definition of sensible. So sensible emptiness, PH has made a life changing, mane lives actually, decision that night at soho, and here we are today. I truly believe this description of sensible emptiness could apply to him, HMTQ, those who live both, their families and all of us who are loyal to the Crown and love our royals. We know justice has to be brought to bare or is it bear, you know what l mean. So these feelings we talk about with our 💜🐼💜 and we share here are normal. We need to pray for justice seekers and truth seekers in all forms, they are doing Gods work.

“don’t forget to wind the clock”

Old clocks need winding to keep them running. To wind somebody up means to get them excited in a good or bad way. I think this means quite literal don’t forget to take care of yourself, PH, sleep, exercise, eat well, check your emotions with those you love, do what you need to do to stay fit (and oh is he fit,😁) so as the clock needs to be wound to function well, these things are essential to him being able to function well.

no public appearances

Amw will stay MIA, this is stupid ridiculous, but the lie has to continue. There has to be a reason and we must pray for PH , HMTQ and LG. Especially PH, he will have to maintain his composure. How they are going to keep this lie going l don’t know but l read they are taking 12 staff, that is NOT counting RPOS!!

a good WHO-done it.

This clue has a double meaning. It can mean a really good storyline in a book or film or tv really, that doesn’t tell us straight away who the criminal is but lays clues to figure it out….kinda like your riddles MM ANON. WHO is the World Health Organization. I don’t know if anybody noted the article l put on my blog last night or read it in the paper/saw or heard it on the news, this is a run on sentence for the ages, my goodness! There has been a spate of relationship homicide in SA, with 30 women being murdered in the last month alone. There has been a dramatic rise in statistics of violence. The WHO commenting means this is a severe issue needing addressing! With great dread do l await madams first speech shortly after they land, where she will speak on the topic of violence against women. This is a very dangerous decision with a lot of potential blowback!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Wow! Amazing….so appreciate this dear PG! Things are getting interesting now! Thank you so much!😃💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

———————

67: Sept. 22

💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

I have had a massive increase in my sciatic pain, that’s been building since flu last week, today was brutal. But better now so l thought l would give the riddle a go. Please continue praying for me, l really am in need of it. Lots of love and gratitude 💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻PG🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

MM Anon

MM ANON … Azurelee Drive…… “ we are interested” … … between 6 and 10……🎼 California scheming 🎼……((wedding gems…… “ SA ‘just a fuc#@g nuisance”…… “£uck the press, we can do anything I want”…… “ I don’t lie, I embellish”))……” is on our watch list “……… “HEADS ‘ I win”…… a draconian solution … “when The devil drives”. 🎼 “over and over and over again my friend”🎼………(🤫🤫🤭💎💎💎💎👩🏽‍💻👷🏿‍♂️👷🏿‍♂️👷🏿‍♂️👷🏿‍♂️ when in Rome!!!!)

Azurelee Drive

Azure is the bluest of blues it is a gorgeous colour. As l suspected, Azurelee Drive is in Malibu, another clue to reenforce her long term plan is Malibu. Are there any prisons with an ocean view in Malibu? Maybe someone could let me know if there are, l am serious!

“ we are interested”

Again with the first person royal”we”. HMTQ is very interested in what’s going on. I think we are nearing some sort of climax with this trip. I have said this before, l trustmyngut, l have a very strong feeling something is going to happen. Perhaps the reason they flew to the wedding for such a short time, hardly worth it, was for her to use someone else’s computer to engage in a blood diamond deal? Again does she not get she is being monitored? Obviously not!

between 6 and 10

7, 8, 9, are between 6 and 10 literally. But l think this is the amount of time they spent at the wedding. They weren’t part of the party the night before, the next day wedding breakfast or the second night party the night after the wedding. Wow besties eh? Isn’t it awesome to have such great best friends?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂

🎼 California scheming 🎼

This is a play on the song California dreaming, MM ANON has used this before, so it’s reenforcing for her plan to live there after all this is over. Yes perhaps in a dark cement building! Her plan, get all the $$$$€€€££££££ she can, set up her blog again and divorce rebuilding her life in Malibu was the last place l read was the mansion search. She is scheming her way into the marriage, during the ,arriage, out of the marriage and after the marriage

((wedding gems…… “ SA ‘just a fuc#@g nuisance”…… “£uck the press, we can do anything I want”…… “ I don’t lie, I embellish”))

Gems has an obvious meaning, which is also involved in this riddle.Gems can also be snippets like best song on an album etc. These are the gems of conversration/comments she made the night of the wedding. She really is stupid, has no filter and no judgement whatsoever!

” is on our watch list “

Of course, with the international security issues at , her past involvement with many, many individuals of dubious character during her yachting decades, and the current work LG has been doing l am certain she is on a watch list. Here l assume everyone knows what a watch list is, a person, or persons, group, or items requiring close surveillance, most usually for legal or political reasons.

“HEADS ‘ I win”

We had heads or tails yesterday. HEADS all caps, what’s the meaning? Who has HEADS and is the winner? I found one definition but nothing in all caps, heads a shouted warning that something is falling from above one’s head.

a draconian solution

We had a case, few years ago where l live, they wanted to build a casino in part of a local pub. Our city had a by-law preventing gambling and alcohol on sale in the same establishment. I can still see AND hear the owner when he was interviewed on the news about how Draconian our laws were. The definition of draconian is of laws or their application) excessively harsh and severe. I might add old law not updated. Many many places have old laws in the books that are never used anymore but still would be enforceable because they still exist as binding law. So LG and his team may have found just such a law or set of laws that they believe fit this situation and can be utilized to the benefit of the Crown. Oh please, please pretty please, let this be so!!

“when The devil drives”.

There is a novel by Scottish write Chris Brookmyre, with this same title. A dual plot, one a Shakespearean play being performed outdoors and a sniper kills someone, second plot a terminally ill woman wants to find her missing sister. The first is obvious, we don’t want that but security will be very tight on the tour l am certain. The second plot, are we being told there is a sister that is missing and still being searched out? Or is this nothing to do with the novel and the obvious meaning, once you’re riding with the devil nothing good and only reviled happens. I am inclined to think maybe a bit of both.

🎼 “over and over and over again my friend”🎼

This song has been performed and covered by many. The endless ways one tried to do things to be loved and keep someone happy. This is PH over and over and over,he is publicly acting this out, the loving supportive husband and “anything Meghan wants Meghan gets”. He has done such a great job and this has resulted in him taking lots and lots of media heat!

(🤫🤫🤭💎💎💎💎👩🏽‍💻👷🏿‍♂️👷🏿‍♂️👷🏿‍♂️👷🏿‍♂️ when in Rome!!!!)

Blood diamonds! We have had this in a previous riddle. Shhh, diamond, laptop, four workers with hard hats of colour. Did she order, or pick up her diamonds??. Or sell some??? I suspected from an earlier riddle blood diamonds were on the table for her, here l have confirmation . I am thinking with the use of laptop she communicated the deal and will pick up in Africa. Oh kids, this is getting good. HANDCUFFS CLANG CLANG,

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Fantastic PG! Things are heating up it seems! Thank you, we so appreciate all the work you put into this….especially on your days! ThNk you🙏🏻❤️❤️❤️

Ask Skippy submission

12 notes

Sep 22nd, 2019

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68: sept.28

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

IT IS SOOOOOO GOOD TO BE BACK!!

MM Anon

MM ANON …… a slippery halo… … AFRICANT …… 🎼” you must have been a beautiful …” 🎼……… faux mother… no British archificial …… a crowd of booooos await……” so’ she Hates the bloody Brits”…… PB will destroy her thunder …… “ Malibu-hoo welcome “…… a $6 million drive in …… an uninterested Africa … PR pays for local hysteria … a white black imposter … well paid unimpressed mothers feel used …… “beef it up for Pakistan”

a slippery halo

The Halo Trust, the anti landlmine charity that a Princess Diana was such a part of and still thrives today because of her work . I remember 1997 , the land mine on the news, her walking, seems like yesterday. This is a double entebdré by our dear MM ANON. Harry has been slaughtered by the media for being a spoilt petulant entitled man. The halo or crown of the Prince 🤴 is slippery now in public opinion. LET’S PRAY FOR OUR HARRY🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

AFRICANT

Can or can’t, the version of cannot. Nothing has been good, happy, meaningful about her presence on this holiday, it’s not a royal tour. Just wonder what other stunts she is going to pull, because we are going to get another video of amw with oh happy day in the background music. By the way, is she paying royalty rights for using that music , the performers? Catherine cannot and does not put a foot wrong. This one cannot even put a hair right!

… 🎼” you must have been a beautiful

You must have been a beautiful baby, you must have a beautiful child! Singing as l type, great old song. Drive all the girls wild, l think is one line. He sure is a cutie, that’s for sure!

faux mother

As below, she doesn’t possess an ounce of mothering instinct. She can’t because that takes away from attention on her. This is exactly why amw was not at the play date.

no British archificial

So is he born in SA? Not royal, less than that not even British. Good God this woman is moronically stupid! Makes sense that he was in SA, that’s why the dolls have been in use, Christening photo, photoshopped, first photo that was barred by the palace from being used after June, can’t recall exact date. She picked this child up while in SA so she could throw him up in the air, climb up steps in five inch heels to copy Catherine , show off a real baby, who didn’t respond to her at all except when she dug her hands into him and he involuntarily winced. THIS US MADNESS PEOPLE!! This poor child, now his face is forever plastered. In one photo, l thought l noticed a strong resemblance to papa TM!

a crowd of booooos await

Oh Kuwait, l am rubbing my hands together, wait until the return to the UK! NOW the gloves are off, she will be booed and booed, good luck to her on any engagement or public appearance. Boo boo boo are coming. People are beyond furious in the UK and Commonwealth!

” so’ she Hates the bloody Brits”

This is PP, piping in his comments l oh Sir, l feel so bad for you having this to deal with. HMTQ needs your love and sumore than ever! Steady on Sir, steady on!

PB will destroy her thunder

I am so happy for Princess Beatrice and Edo, their engagement photos both the colour ones that Eugenie took, and the black and white ones, l cannot recall the photographers name just now. I was soooooo happy to see the news and what a payback for her stealing the thunder meaning spoiling someone’s excitement, on Eugenie and Jack’s wedding day by wearing that huge coat to stir attention to possibility of her being pregnant. Who knew how that fauxmegnancy would turn into such a mess. As does everything with her!

“ Malibu-hoo welcome “

Will she be welcomed with hoos or boos in Malibu when she just leaves once she has her nest padded, or so she thinks. I don’t see her living the high life in a mansion. She might check into hotel California but she may never leave. Justice is coming! The IRS will want it share of the 250K as well as all she has purloined. The US , l believe is the only country in the world where no matter where you live you still pay taxes on EVERYTHING!!!

a $6 million drive in

Ha ha, reminds me of summertime, movies st the drive-in, l think the place she will eventually live will be mouth many tens of millions, have the best security and the best staff. It will also require wearing of an orange jumpsuit or its equivalent!!

an uninterested Africa …

As l have written below, NOBODY CARES ABOUT HER, People are struggling to get by. SA has had water problems for years! Droughts, poverty, the sky high murder rate and domestic abuse, she isn’t even in the radar of importance.

PR pays for local hysteria

The ‘crowds’ on the tree stump she stood🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂 the great Plato sharing infinite words of wisdom and insight. The video with DT was privately arranged, paid for. People have been bussed in as paid extras so it appears she has people who adore her. I saw an interview with three regular women walk-in down the street, he asked if they knew of a big event, they looked at each other , nothing. He said royal, then they came out with Harry but not a one of them knew her name. Ooooooo the sting!The burn! I hope she saw that!

a white black imposter

Blackface used to be a thing decades ago, Al Jolson, in the first talking picture/movie made it famous, well it already was actually. White people putting black on their faces and pretending to be black to perform or at parties etc. Here we have the screamer of racist, troll, racist troll, her two twitters that l follow are.CcccRrrrraaaazzzzyyyy. She talks to herself, to Sam, sometimes tweeting from both alternately. She of the racist card, has spent her life identifying as Caucasian, her immense use of bronzer gets worse day by day, except it seems to me on this ‘tour’ her makeup is less, her clothes are dishevelled, she looks a mess. She is trying to pass as black so it’s fits her narrative right Sister?!? Passing, years ago meant someone of colour who appeared Caucasian could appear or pass as being white and avoid the racism. She disgusts me 🐍.

well paid unimpressed mothers feel used

These women who allegedly paid 50K to have a half hour ‘lunch’ with her, made to sit on the floor, which culturally is soooooooo inappropriate given that is done when grieving or in mourning. God please bring the Justice and remove her from this family right into a nice colour of orange, she seems to like jumpers or whatever they are called in the UK, that one piece thing she wore, so orange to match her bronzer which she has amazingly used so much less of, in the photos l have seen.

“beef it up for Pakistan”

To beef something up, is to make it stronger, better more secure. The Cambridges are heading off for a Royal tour, let me say that again, A ROYAL TOUR😁 to Pakistan. Security issues have been in discussions and this trips itinerary will be not be as publicized due to those issues. Now it is sounding like, by this clue, that they have had to increase the already planned security measures. There is always the possibility the risk is too great and things would have to be cancelled. That would be a disaster in relationship building but safety first! Remember Harry is #1 on the Taliban hit list and that risk is by extension a factor.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Fantastic! Thank you PG! You are right on your game! So appreciate this!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Ask Skippy submission

Sep 28th, 2019

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69: Sept. 28

Is this a new thing MM ANON. Two riddles in one Day?🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON, ITS SO AWESOME TBE BACK DOING THESE🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

MM Anon

skippyv20

MM ANON …… second son walks alone … bonfires of PR. …… a great rip off … another archificial field trip… a home run …… a lot of backlash back home …… sugar coated photos……… “is it time to go it alone “…… “THE TAPE HAS BEEN SOLD” …… “ for posterity old thing”…… burying it with the rest. ……… 🎼 “ riders on the storm” 🎼

second son walks alone

Our Harry, walks alone, many in the public have been so critical of him, they can’t see the truth or haven’t taken the time to inform themselves. He is our Harry, l don’t care what anyone says, he is a man literally physically fading away, he’s so thin, dishevelled, being with her, l cannot imagine. To me, he deserves a medal for serving to HMTQ ! He has been and will remain in my prayers. Literally speaking he was walking alone in that minefield, or former minefield. What a metaphor for his life eh? 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

bonfires of PR.

I remember being in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 for Bonfire 🔥 night as we called it or Guy Fawkes day . Old history about Scottish rebellion and a bomb being placed in parliament etc etc look it up, its interesting. Anyhow it’s still great fun in Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 every November. So MM ANON is using bonfires to describe the PR , basically it’s all explosive!

a great rip off

The fee she is charging especially that lunch just using people for maximum cash value. I am positive she has other side deals going on. I recall that last riddle l dud days ago with the clue being diamonds, workers in safety coloured vests, men of colour, a woman at a laptop. You remember it, lead me to think she is sourcing blood diamonds for resale. Everything with her is a rip of, all a grift, capsule collection, using people even a baby for her personal gain!

another archificial field trip

Oh as l said in the other riddle, we are going to see another privately filmed, ore arranged appearance of amw, l bet she is being paid for these appearances. I just hope his socks fit this time and may a pair of shoes, a blanket, a toy/stuffier and a bib or rag for drool.

a home run

Baseball, America’s game. Home run, hit the ball out into the stands, run all the bases until the final base which is called home base and you’ve made a home run. But MM ANON you sly lady🤣🤣🤣, you are not talking baseball. She is going to do a runner and head home! Be gone, be gone, go face the IRS🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂🤣

a lot of backlash back home

Oh my oh my, showing him publicly live in the flesh for the first time in SA and not in the U.K. has lit a match under a huge pile of 🧨 dynamite. She is and has been playing with fire. People are FURIOUS and they already hate her! I cannot wait to hear the boos. I think the English politeness is gone, as MM ANON has said in other riddle, she has made her bed or beds🤣🤣🤣, she must lay in it. But the sad thing is she doesn’t give a whit of care or respect for HMTQ, the BRF nor the public of the U.K. or the Commonwealth!

sugar coated photos

Oh the sugars have literal gone crazier seeing archficial , like Pinocchio is now a real boy, not rubber anymore but flesh and blood. No seeing what’s so obvious, no relationship, the child doesn’t know her, climbing those steps in stilettos , holding him, unsafely, then roughly, tossing him in the air, the look of concern on DT daughter she even put her own arms up lest amw get dropped. Oh heavens how tacky were those cookies, sweets with words written on them, banana-gate2.0!

“is it time to go it alone “

Is the her or him going it alone? I doubt at this point, if Harry ended it, there would still be screams of racism. I think she is padding her nest in SA and planning her post-divorce life. Good luck with that project Rachel!

“THE TAPE HAS BEEN SOLD”

The infamous tossed salad tape sold at last. All uppercase. I am certain either the BRF has it, or a good friend of the BRF has secured it for them and they have it!! Who hoo !! Happy day! 😂😂😂😂😂just reminded me of her abuse of that beautiful song Oh Happy Day. I really wish she took those words to heart, the second line is when Jesus washed my sins away. I want no soul condemned but she has to choose.

“ for posterity old thing”

Again our PP, speaking, saving the video and dossier perhaps for posterity. When you save something for posterity, it means you hold onto it, keep it safe because you never know when you might need it!

burying it with the rest.

Wondering did the BRF buy the video, and just keeping that and all the other things in her dossier burying it in the secret files. I highly doubt they will reveal too much species publicly. The marriage will dissolve as a natural course, she can’t adjust etc etc. The BRF and PH. Publicly have done everything and then some to welcome her, they are spotless in this!

🎼 “ riders on the storm” 🎼

The Doors, classic album. He died in Paris and is buried there, it’s a place to visit for many fans.This is a classic song but dark in lyrics. Speaks of home one is born into poor ie dog no bone, don’t want lyric infringement so l adjusted that. Speaks of a killer , a family dying in a car crash. Speaking in the chorus that a woman needs to love and support her man. Put these all together at , pardon the pun, but they are a perfect storm for describing what’s Harrys life has been and is. Lost his mum is a car crash, his wife born into grifting family allegedly. Certainly getting no love and support from her. Today, well yesterday now, but seeing him sitting where she sat, with the now woman who was the girl she comforted, him all alone by the tree, didn’t you just want to take him in your arms and comfort him? Tears now……

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you dear PG! I am in awe! You are brilliant! A very rough day for Harry I am sure….🙏🏻💜💜💜

Ask Skippy submission

Sep 28th, 2019

————————

70: Sept. 29

💜💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻THANK YOU SO MUCH DEAR MM ANON, I KNOW YOUR TISK IN DOING THIS FOR US, TO SEEK THE TRUTH AND GET IT OUT IN THE OORN🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜

Did l ever tell you all, l do the riddles from bottom to top? I don’t know why, l used to look at the Sears catalogue from the back too, l still look at magazines back to front. A fun wacky PG fact!🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂

MM Anon

skippyv20

MM ANON …… Cape Town closure ……bells and whistles farewell … on returning, a tour… an unpopular reluctance …… disinformation …… the fence that won’t mend…… club class flying isolation …… Heathrow paps…… no rest for the wicked …… “Hello Boys”…… “He needs a parade”…… “ not another bloody investigation” …… now D&G not H&M. …… cosmetic records!!!! O,no

… Cape Town closure

They officially closed the Cape atone part of the tour and flew out September 29,2019. I was going to say today but l know this is a worldwide blog so l thought l would put that in there. The itinerary has them leaving from Johannesburg, and returning to London. I am sure most of Cape Town citizens had no idea they were there, if they did, no one cared really.

bells and whistles farewell

This whole entire holiday has been just bizarre, her behaviour, a real live baby, was that baby really a boy or just presented as such. We all know the baby shower was for a girl baby, the BRF/LG so so so clever!!! Turned things around that it was a boy baby, that video of them showing amw to a few selected UK and US/CBS reporters was bizarre, at Windsor Castle. She looked so nervous, and PH said they grow so much in two weeks, the glare she gave him!! You know it, you all saw it! Will there be a whiz bang goodie doo? I think likely, paid, bussed in, waving goodbye. I have visions now of O showing up!

on returning, a tour

Oh my goodness, is SS already planning a return trip, as she has been showered with love and praise by thousands and thousands , the crowds have been massive and amazing , kind, amazingly kind, and kind of amazing! NOT!!! I hope you got my attempt at using her favourite words and l tried her amazing kind of word salad, so kind and amazing of me to be so amazingly kind!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂

an unpopular reluctance

Reluctance means unwillingness or disinclination to do something. She is unwilling in any way shape or form to put celebrity aside and take on her proper duchess role. But this makes sense because there was never supposed to be a wedding let alone a baby. Using the word unpopular putting it mildly.

I do think this may refer to PA and his reluctance or downright refusal to be part of the F.B.I. requests for an interview with him regarding his friendship with JE, GM. and other things like VRG allegations. I do not know how long his refusal can go on.

disinformation

PR PR PR PR constant disinformation. One might use the word lies!! It’s been sickening to see and read in the papers. It has Albee’s thus wth her and it will forever be. Oh l just had to let out a big sigh because it’s so sad, and the baby ring used, disinformation about his age, everything about him is one huge example. There is nothing worse than using a child. Scripture says “Suffer the children to come unto Me, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven “ the exact is

Matthew 19:14 King James Version (KJV)

14 But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven..

the fence that won’t mend…

Mending fences has an obvious meaning, fix a broken fence. However it can be used as a metaphor, fixing a brook relationship for example. I think this is what MM ANON is referring to. Madam, initially when she came on the scene was ‘a breath of fresh air’, marvellously inclusive and welcomed into the U.K. and Commonwealth, and into the ‘family she never had’. Many , including PW had grave concerns. It didn’t take very long for the bloom quickly began to fade. There is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE IN A MILLENIA INFINITY! that her relationship with the British public, most members of the BRF, the Commonwealth and many around the world , can ever be mended. It has been irrevocably broken. Complete disregard and blatant disrespect for HMTQ! And a laundry list of grifting, disgusting behaviour, plus her complicated filthy past. No mending of this fence is even wanted, never mind attempted. GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

club class flying isolation

The return flight, again commercial l am sure, back to London should be interesting. She and her team, will again be prattling on about how successful and awesome the tour is, IF BY THE WAY, she and her smuggled alleged living diamond , amw, if she wants baby in London, or just leave is SA. and carry on with dollies. My sentence structure is horrendous but IF BY THE WAY, l meant IF she can get through customs. Do babies need passports, Royal Allegedly babies? Was he sleeping on arrival and she got archficial through that way. I don’t know how, strict customs are with royalty.

On the flight, Harry will be alone, not involved in anything because it’s all about a madam. I noted today how sloppy he looked catching that flight in t shirt and jeans, wrinkled, he has been wearing those ratty brown suede shoes the entire time. He suited up well though earlier and l an certain when he means the High Commissioner he will hopefully be dressed for it. I keep repeating myself, but his looks and behaviour are SCREAMING FOR HELP, HE HAS COMBAT FATIGUE! I am so worried, he’s wasting away, remember the interview when he was in uniform and something urgent was happening, he took off his mic and ran to see what needed doing? Remebhow fit and muscular he was? Look now, dishevelled clothes, those brown shoes😩, looks like he cannot sleep etc etc etc. I know l keep repeating myself but please LG, l know he is getting help behind the scenes, but our Harry is at such risk now, in his depression, l do worry greatly for him!!🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Heathrow paps

Oh my my my my my!!!! The media and paparazzi will be waiting at Heathrow, if that’s where they land, they might be cheeky and land at Gatwick or elsewhere. The media when they return and subsequently is going to be scathing!!!!! Again read her twitters, petal is in SA talk about the Sussexes non-stop but denies being her, petal calls her baby bubs has done for quite sometime. In SA, big reveal, amw nickname is Bubba ☺️☺️☺️🤣🤣🤣. We are not talking about Einstein here! It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous!

no rest for the wicked

She had all her private things planned during this holiday. Yet she still manages centre stage by foisting herself via IMessage or Skype l think to be with the classroom where PH was in Malawi. All about CAMFED campaign for female education . She just cannot let him go, except when he could have really needed love and support, in Angola, the mine field, him sitting all alone by the tree named after his mum. Oh self seeking narcissistic behaviour, she lives a Master Class of it.

“Hello Boys”

I can’t remember the name of the film, it might be Hello Boys actually! It’s fantastic Bette Midler at her finest, set further war, WWII, she goes on tour to entertain the troops, she would appear on stage all gussied up looking gorgeous and sing for them, she is amazing. Great film! I wonder MM ANON are you relating madams behaviour to the character in the film?? Going on tour and putting on a show!!! I might be way off but that’s a great film!

“He needs a parade”

Support and love for Harry! Agree wholeheartedly! Yes he made a bad choice of bootycall that was his choice,who of us is without sin and can cast the first stone? This was all pre-planned, they would have kept at it, until it worked. I think he needs medals of the highest order for service to the Crown, HMTQ, his granny. He needs away time, months of privacy, therapy, perhaps medication, he ,Ishtar we’ll be on anti-depressants already! HE NEEDS PRAYER🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻. This is evil at work, it’s a nefarious web planned, he was shared in it.

“ not another bloody investigation”

What now? What’s the next thing? Well PA is in a spot of trouble, putting it mildly. He has hired a new PR guy, Jason Stein, former Amber Rudd’s bulldog, lost his job when she quit recently! The paper says he is a ‘master of the dark arts’! The same was said about SS. What are the ‘dark arts’ these PR people use??? Anyhow, there are more accusers , resulting further Epstein investigations in America. The F.B.I. are more insistent upon an interview. The palace statement and PA years ago when this first came up, were emphatic he had NO sexual contact or interaction with VRG. They are not commenting today, read the article in the Daily Mail, if you’re inclined. They are saying, royalty is not an issue, years ago it was swept away. Since the #metoo movement the world has changed. Many many famous men have been charged, Bill Cosby, many famous American media personalities, actors, Weinstein, . This week l was chuffed to hear Wexner been charged in connection with Epstein! If you don’t know Les Wexner, look him up. He’s an American billionaire, one of his many businesses is Victoria’s Secret! Buy from them, you give money to an alleged sexual predator! I am not recalling just now his other businesses, but very very wealthy men have been and are being brought to justice. PA is in serious trouble. The ,ore he refuses to cooperate and scream he’s royalty, he is dragging out the inevitable. Poor poor HMTQ, l just feel so bad for her!

now D&G not H&M

Baby Archie wore H&M to meet DT, which was subsequently marched and appeared officially on H&M advert and website l think website. Now baby Archie will appear wearing D&G. Dolce and Gabbana highend designer Italian clothes. This woman never fails to put a foot wrong. I don’t know if Archie was wearing it while she carried him to catch the plane to Johannesburg , the photos again captured through a clear glass walled corridor. Did anyone else think the ‘baby’ she was carrying looked a lot smaller than amw who met DT? Or was it just me? I would love a side by side photo. Maybe l am totally off.

cosmetic records!!!! O,no.

I am not sure if these two clues go together but this is how they appeared to moi. Are there records surfacing or in possession of the BRF and LG’s team of investigators that show the extent of work she has had done, especially since coming onto the scene with PH? We know something was up at U.S. Open, she had that invisible medical tape over her nose 👃🏻, yes l purposely use that colour of nose! We all have seen her nose appears to be collapsing, those darn hobbies can show up in real physical manifestations ie wide eyed , dilated pupils, agitation, hyperness, just read the twitters feeds that will show you bizarre behaviour, also noted the times tweets are sent!

As far as O, no…..PH is/ has reportedly been working with an O on mental health programs for a fruit tv channel. I have no idea where things are st with that. Is she going to come back on the scene in Africa. I know she has sponsored a school there, where there had to be some firings of l think the administrator , look it up!! I have visions now of her showing up for a surprise appearance with madam. Oh gracious, make it stop! PLEASE😩😩😩😩😫😖😖😖

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you so much dear PG! Seems much coming….Seeing your humour and wonderful personality shining through….is wonderful, you are BACK! Thank God for our Dear PG!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜. Sept. 29, 2019

[spring-emerald]

can i request kurodai + water? thank you!

Thank you for sending one in, @finnthebunneh post came in the right time and provided the much needed inspiration for this fic. Enjoy!

The game’s simpleenough.

Deliver the worstpick-up line you could ever think of to a random stranger, wait for theiranswer (if they’re given any, at all) and just leave after that. Noexplanations, no apologies. To make sure that no one chickens out or tattles tothe unsuspecting person, they’re going to go out in pairs, randomly chosenthrough spin the bottle using one of the discarded beer bottles littered ontheir table. The random stranger will be picked by one of the members of theirgroup through similar procedure.

After three rounds ofspinning, the pairs are determined as follows: Oikawa and Bokuto; Yaku andIwaizumi; and Kuroo with Kita.

And since it was hisidea, Oikawa volunteered to go first, making Bokuto go second. They spun thebottle to determine who gets to pick the strangers for them, and it’s Yaku for Oikawaand Iwaizumi for Bokuto.

The pair set out anddidn’t come back to the table for a while. When they did though, both of themhave red faces. Oikawa in mirth, and Bokuto in abject embarrassment.

“What happened?”Yaku, for someone who voice his initial disagreement about joining the game,looks far too excited to know. Oikawa, is of course, happy to oblige.

After sharing a laughat Bokuto’s expense, it was time for the second pair to set out, and for themto select the pickers. Kuroo catches the meaningful look Oikawa directs at him,and instead of spinning it first, he hands the bottle to Kita, who spins it tohave it land on Bokuto. And since he can’t prolong it, he spins the bottle,mentally supplicating before the gods to bless him with luck and escape Oikawa.

But of course,there’s no such thing as luck when it comes to dealing with Oikawa, as themouth of the bottle landed neatly, squarely in his direction.

Kuroo watches as thesmile on Oikawa’s face widen, vaguely visualizing the gates of hell openingunder him as it happens, as he falls into the pits of darkness and eternaldamnation, accompanied by Oikawa’s evil laughter.

“Oh my,” Oikawa hasthe gall to act surprised at the turn of events. (For all Kuroo knows, he’srigged the bottle to do just that). “Well, I pick Bartender-kun over there forKuro-chan.”

—–

Kuroo licks his drylips and swallows at the sight of the impressive forearms, the muscles ingenerous display as Bartender-kun’s sleeves are rolled up. He caught Kuroo’seyes when Kuroo happened to catch him smiling at a patron as he hands her a drink,but up close, he’s even more attractive. And Kuroo is so not ready to beconfronted by this. He glances at Kita, who situated himself nearby, pretendingto read over the drinks menu propped up on the counter.

Ah, fuck it. It’s notlike he’s going to return here anyway, so best get it over with. Make a foolout of himself than prolong the inevitable. It’s quite a shame though, becausethis bar is actually few of the ones he instantly liked, right off the bat,apparently really attractive Bartender-kun, notwithstanding.

He self-consciouslyand awkwardly leans on the counter with his elbow, a leg casually crossed andpropped up on his toes. He clears his throat to get Bartender-kun’s attention.

He’s rewarded by adimpled, customer service ready smile.

“Hey,” Oh god, his voice, what is he even??? “What can I get you?”

“Um, no. I’m uh… I’mgood, Ahh, I mean,” Dammit, Kuroo, pullyourself together.

“So, uhm… d’you likewater?”

—–

What?

Daichi blinks up atthe guy, smile frozen at the odd question. Mentally, he’s trying to figure outif it’s a trick question or a convoluted way of asking him for a glass of water, but is too proud to admit that he needs oneon his system this early in the night. But the guy, all with a fringe blockinghalf of the upper part of his face and red leather jacket that hugs his broadshoulders quite nicely, looks comically serious about his inquiry.

Huh.If this is a prelude to a bad pick-up line, well, Daichi’s heard worse.

“…I suppose I do.” Heanswers slowly, hesitant but with a matching, empathic nod.

“G-great.” The guy stutters,then huffs and shakes his head quickly, as if dispelling something away fromhis face. “Because I mean, if you like water, then you’ll already like 70% ofme,” he says with a one-shouldered shrug coupled with a too awkward wink.

Daichi blinks again,unsure how to respond. But the guy doesn’t say anything else and has actuallyturned to leave, and what, he’s going to leave just like that? And true, Daichi’shad to shut down (as politely and classy as much as possible, thank you verymuch) unwanted advances before, but he’s not doing it this time, because hefigures that a guy that has the sense to be at least scientific when it comesto his pick-up lines couldn’t be that bad.

That and he seemsoddly endearing. And well… he’s sort of, you know, kinda Daichi’s type.

He stares at theretreating (broad) back that are hunched, and moves before his mind can catchup to him. He leans over the counter, heaves a deep breath and blurts out thefirst thing that comes into mind.

“Hey, wait! Whatabout the 30%?” His voice is loud enough to carry over the heart thumpingmusic. Fortunately, the guy hears it. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one. Thepatrons nursing drinks at the bar all looked at Daichi and the attention madehim a bit self-conscious, but he just can’t let this opportunity pass him by.

The guy turns slowlyand dumbly looks at Daichi. “What?”

Daichi exhales with ahuff, shaking his head, a small smile on his face. He motions for the guy tocome over and has to fake a cough to cover up a laugh brought about the way theguy is dazedly walking back towards him. Like he couldn’t believe that Daichiwants him to come back, after all that.

“What about the other30%?” Daichi repeats the question, just as the guy stops in front of him. “Whatare they made up of?”

The guy blinks athim. “Erm… my personality?” He says, tilting his head a little to the side,hand coming up to scratch the back of his neck.

Daichi bites down onhis lips to stop himself from grinning and hums. “You’re not going to includelooks?” He raises a teasing eyebrow, letting a small smirk lift the corners ofmouth as he crosses his arms, which draws the attention of the guy for amoment.

“D’you want me to?”

“You don’t think youshould?”

The guy just gapesback at him. “Are… are you for real?”

Daichi chuckles. “Well,that depends. Are you ever going to ask for my name?”

“What is your name?”The guy asks in a heartbeat.

“Sawamura Daichi,” heextends a hand over the counter and doesn’t miss the way the guy staresadmiringly at his forearm.

“I’m Kuroo Tetsurou,”Kuroo takes the hand and grasps it within his larger one.

Daichi smiles, onethat he knows just emphasizes the divot on the side of his right cheek andnoted how Kuroo zeroed in his gaze on it.

Well, he’s definitely100% interesting.

[juniorformulamotorsport]

Wednesday, May 16th – Day 12, Pugnac, Bordeaux, Saint Emilion

It was a stupidly early start for us (well, not for E and W) because we were off on an excursion into the vineyards of Bordeaux. Our restaurant owning friends at Rascills had recommended that we take a long look at Winerist for getting the most out of trips to wine growing areas, and finding ourselves in Bordeaux, I’d taken them at their word and had a look to see what trips were available. We settled on their full day trip to Pomerol and Saint Emilion, through Ophorus, at a cost of €130 per person. The trip would involve no more than 8 guests, in an air-conditioned minibus, with our own dedicated tour guide, and we would get to visit three vineyards, with tastings at each, and would also visit the medieval town of Saint Emilion, where we would have time for lunch. The pre-sales service was most impressive, with answers to my questions about the difficulty of getting into Bordeaux during the early morning rush provided rapidly and accurately (as it turned out).

The bad news was we needed to be at the Bordeaux Tourist Information office at 12 Cours du 30 Juillet by 09:30. We set the alarm for 06:00 and headed out onto the road by 07:30. This meant we were at the rendezvous in good time. It meant we had time to buy a new batch of Bordeux City Passes, and then use them to book a dinner cruise on the Garonne at a 25% discount. With time to spare, we nipped next door into Baillardran for a coffee and a canele, and then congregated outside to wait for our driver to come and collect us.

By 09:30 we were in the bus, and Hugo, our guide, was filling us in on the Bordeaux appelation and how it all works, including the information that Saint Emilion contains around 850 chateaux, a chateau basically being any building on a piece of land that has vines on it, no matter how tiny said building is; it could even be a garden shed and still be a chateau. Hugo was incredibly knowledgeable, spoke excellent English, and was more than happy to engage with us all. We were quickly out of town and heading towards Saint Emilion. Our first stop was one of the Pomerol vineyards, Chateau du Tailhas, where the charming Aurelie showed us round the vines, explaining the way in which grapes grow and develop, and how they are trained and pruned and harvested, and speaking entertainingly and amusingly about the wines as if they are particularly awkward children who need to be pushed to leave home.

She was happy to answer any questions any of us had, discussing the ways in which they try to protect the crop, and explaining that the massively empty field next to where we were standing was about to be replanted with new grapes, the old vines that were there previously having been grubbed out after frost damage to the vines in 2017 meant they really would not have had much to harvest. Their intention to replace the vines “some time in the future” became “might as well do it now”.

We were then guided into the chai (where we learned about the tanks that are used for the initial vinification, which at du Tailhas are a choice of stainless steel or concrete, both of which have their pros and cons when it comes to maintaining a steady temperature.

We would hear a lot about these tanks during the day, with opinion varying on which is best. The one thing all three of the vintners we visited agreed upon was that French oak barrels were the way to go. On how long they should be used for, it again varied, between one and two years, but again there was consensus on who they should come from, all three places using the same three coopers.

Finally we returned to the house where several wines were set out ready to be tasted. We’d been told that if your were after the best possible Bordeaux wines, you could do worse than to rely on the rule of 5/10, with 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015 being particularly good.

We tasted several wines and Lynne and I agreed that we particularly liked the 2008 because we are not patient people, and do not want to wait for the 2015 to be ready to drink. Laying down wines for a decade or more is fine when you’re in your 20s or 30s, but not when you’re pushing 60 in my opinion. I want wines that will be good to drink now. We also liked the 2008 because it had developed a splendidly jammy flavour, the fruit dense and lovely, and so we asked about returning to the chateau in two days time, with the car. We really didn’t want to have to drag a couple of cases back with us via public transport and a boat cruise. That would be fine, Aurelie said, though I’m not sure she expected to see us again.

From there we were back in the minibus, with Hugo explaining how the classifications for Saint Emilion wines work, with only four chateau making it to the top level (but also how there are apparently certain things they need to have that have absolutely no bearing on the wine and its quality, such as private parking for the security of VIP guests!), and 14 in the second level. It’s clearly a process that is rife with controversy, which is understandable when you see the prices the top four get away with charging for their wines (€2000 a bottle in some instances, more as the wines mature). We were utterly stunned by this price list – and yes that does say €15,950 for a single bottle of 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild.

Before there was more wine, however, we were treated to a brief but informative tour of Saint Emilion, which is a glorious place, another UNESCO World Heritage site, and as a result an obvious tourist trap. We started in the Collegiate church, formerly a monastery church, now the parish church for Saint Emilion. It has something of an identity crisis going on, one end of it being solidly Gothic in style, the other Romanesque, as if someone had bolted two different churches together.

The cloisters are beautiful and contained some fascinating art works.

The main piece seemed to be a depiction of the apocalypse in a serious of panels, some monochrome, some colour, which wasn’t exactly cheerful, but was rather wonderful. I particularly liked the almost medieval style of the work, though I had no idea who the artist was or why it was currently sitting in the cloisters. I have since found this so I have a better idea. I would say that if you’re in the area, it’s definitely worth a look, though you’ll need to get a move on as it’s only there until July 2018.

We then walked to the upper part of the town, and the bell tower of the monolithic church where the original Saint Emilion had his hermitage. The were super views of the whole town from up there, though the weight of the tower is apparently now causing problems for the church which is basically a cave carved out of the rock below it, which means that visitor numbers have to be limited.

We did also briefly look at the Hostellerie de Plaisance, which looks like our sort of place, though the prices made our eyes water a bit! It has a 2 Michelin starred restaurant, but we decided not to go there for lunch… Instead, we asked Hugo where he would recommend for good, regional cooking, and he made two suggestions, the one we took being the very pleasant Lard et Bouchon, described by the Tourist Information website as a “restaurant and wine bar is located in Chateau Larmande‘s former cellars” where it “enjoys the perfect air conditions of a 14th century cellar”. It was a hot day outside so the cool cellar was very welcoming, as were the front of house staff.

We ordered aperitifs (of course we did) and had a study of the menu du jour, deciding that once more we would not have starters because we’d just end up falling asleep in the afternoon. Armed with our new found knowledge, we also tackled the wine list from a much more informed position, ordering a half bottle of 1999 Chateau Cadet-Bon, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

It went well with the veal sweetbreads, which were well cooked and served with mashed and croquette potatoes, and a small handful of seasonal vegetables.

Lynne had a confit duck leg, with the same accompaniments.

It wasn’t a stunning lunch, but it was solidly well cooked, well presented and we were happy at the end of it. We didn’t have dessert, we didn’t even have cheese, we just walked back through the winding steep streets to rejoin the party. What the others did, we have no idea – they were pretty uncommunicative, the Japanese couple because only the wife spoke any English, the American couple I have no idea why, though they did open up a bit later in the day after a few more wine tastings.

We went next to Chateau Guadet, which is actually in the town itself (with its vineyards a stone’s throw from the front door). Here we were again shown the chai, with those same oak barrels, but here only the concrete tanks, not stainless steel. The owner’s son, Vincent-Petrus Lignac, showed us round, and then took us to see the underground tunnels they use to store the wine. Apparently they put aside 1000 bottles of every vintage for the family’s own use and as a sort of wine archive, and have done since 1901. It’s naturally cool down there, but to keep it that way visits can only last for four minutes. It’s also down a very steep stairway which you need to negotiate sideways or backwards, rather like being on a ship. As a result, the Japanese couple opted to stay in the garden and wait for us, as he was not especially young or mobile.

No photos were allowed so I can’t show you the cellars, but the garden is very peaceful and lovely, and the Japanese couple were most amused when we popped up at the other end to where we’d vanished underground before.

Guy also talked about the fact that they, like many other wine makers in the appellation, have moved first to organic production, and then to bio-dynamic planting and growing. There is a suggestion that in the next decade or so that will be the case with all the growers in the region. I find it hard to be convinced by the who bio-dynamic thing, but the people we spoke to all seemed utterly certain that there were benefits to it, and I suppose it’s just a way of taking working with the seasons a step further. Anyway, after that we walked to one of the many, many wine shops in the town, with Guy then taking us through a tasting of several of his and other people’s wines.

We settled on a case of 2015 Chateau Martet Réserve de la Famille AOC Sainte-Foy Bordeaux, unusually made from 100% Merlot grapes. In addition we picked up a case of dessert wines, and were able to arrange to have it all shipped back via UPS. That was a far better option than having to carry it back to the bus up the steep, slippery paths from the town square. It was hard enough hauling ourselves up there.

Back in the bus, we had one more chateau to visit, and one more tasting to look forward to. This time we went to Chateau Grangey, which has as long a history as the other chateaux, but not in its current form. Franck and Elodie Mio are the young couple now running the place, his parents and grandparents having had other jobs rather than being full time winemakers. The result was that the grapes were sent to the cooperative cellar of the Union des Producers of Saint-Emilion. That all changed in 2009, when Franck took over, and starting in 2012, carried out a complete restructuring of the winery and all the buildings. He and Elodie made their first wine on site in October 2013, and we tasted that, plus some of the other wines that have been produced since. First, however, we needed to see the winery itself, and again there was agreement on the French oak barrels, and not on the tanks (stainless steel, computer-monitored and controlled here).

I found the flatness of the vineyards especially fascinating after our Mosel trip last year. It always seems odd to me that such different terrain can be used to grow what is essentially the same thing.

The tasting was good, and again we made a note to come back on the Friday, having checked that they would be open to sell us some wine then. Visit over, Hugo rounded us up and took us back to Bordeaux, dropping us off tired but happy at the Tourist Information office with one last nugget of information to keep us entertained. Apparently there is a good market for any wine that doesn’t make the grade, with much of it being added to the 2% that goes to the government for the use of the French armed forces. The extra is sold for cosmetic use, most of it to Caudalie!

Travel/Food 2018 – French Road Trip, Day 12, Pugnac, Bordeaux, Saint Emilion Wednesday, May 16th – Day 12, Pugnac, Bordeaux, Saint Emilion It was a stupidly early start for us (well, not for E and W) because we were off on an excursion into the vineyards of Bordeaux.

[timothydutton1996]

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Can I Get My Ex Back After 8 Months