#also i do like the idea of hunter being born as a young teenager and just assuming the attack that killed almost his entire family left him | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dystopianam · 2 years

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Not Always Happily Ever After Challenge - Disney Princess Edit Challenge (W.I.P)

A Original Challenge by MissPlaying. I also used some ideas from the edited 2022 version by qwerty. I apologize for my bad English. I am Italian, I have not studied English "professionally". I learned on my own on the internet and barely in school.

🆕 ADDED THE THIRD GENERATION!! (TIANA)

⚠️ The challenge must be played with the "normal" lifespan, but if you find it too difficult and has too many goals for you, you can set the lifespan to "medium".

⚠️ In some points of the challenge you will be asked to use cheats. Even if it doesn't seem right to use them and it would seem to ruin the gameplay experience, in reality it will not disturb either the gameplay or the challenge at all. Let's say that in some points to make the story more "pleasant" we should do a bit of roleplay, because not everything that is required in the challenge can be had, since many things are random and they can only be obtained by causality.

⚠️ When you have to kill a sim you can also use cheats or mods. Being able to kill a sim isn't part of the challenge after all, it's just for the plot.

Edit: Thanks to @justneilio which is helping me fix most of the text!

𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍

Generation 1: Snow White 🍎

« I’m wishing for the one I love to find me today...»

Born into a noble family, your life is exactly like that of a princess ... because you are a princess! It's all wonderful and magical, your parents, the King and the Queen, love you very much, but one day a tragedy looms in the Royal family.

Your beloved mother suddenly falls ill with a mysterious illness and the bells of the biggest church in the kingdom herald her death.

You are the only most precious person in the world left to your father, the King, but shortly thereafter, a mysterious figure sneaks up on your family with dishonesty: she is a beautiful woman with long raven hair. She looks a lot like your deceased mother and this makes the King fall madly in love with her.

After the king marries that woman and becomes your stepmother, she will continue to ask your father the same question every night: "My King, who is the fairest of them all?" and as long as you live your infancy, the answer will always be "You are my queen, you are the most beautiful in the whole realm".

The new queen is happy with the answer and sleeps peacefully every night.

However, everything seems to go as the queen wishes as long as you are a child, but when you begin to grow, everything starts to change, you are now a teenager.

One of the many nights after that moment, the queen asks the same question to the king, and as per usual she says: “My King, who is the fairest of them all?” this time his answer begins to shift, changing into: “ my queen, you are certainly beautiful, but you are not as beautiful as she is. ”

The queen, who has always been a very vain woman, widens her eyes and feels betrayed by this bold statement, to which, filled with jealousy, sourly asks who this woman is.

The King, then replies: “Skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony…she’s my beloved daughter, Snow White.”

Overwhelmed with rage and a heart full of envy, the Queen slowly kills the King, day after day, tainting his plate with poison and grace.

After the king has passed away, you sprout, and reach young adulthood with supernatural beauty, equal to none.

The queen continues to strongly dislike you, reaching her limit when the kingdom begins to strike, naming you as fairest of them all, she hires a hunter to put your chapter to a close.

The hunter will have mercy on you, pondering to themselves: "I could never kill such beauty! Which monster could ever ask me to fulfill such duty?"

From this act of kindness, this is where our story begins to unwind.

You once were a princess, never surrounded by filthiness, who now lives hidden in the woods, encircled by dirtiness. A small abandoned house you have made your residence, where responsibilities will be a nuisance, washing and cooking all by yourself where food is scarce and hopes are low. You are not a hunter, you wonder to yourself, so you decide to plant crops and one single apple tree in the garden.

One day you meet a man and you think he is the love of your life whom will bestow on your life a blissful freedom. From there you develop an urge, a sense of obsession, towards a family lifestyle since you have lost your parents, so you decide to extract many children from this man, seven to be exact, let the woohoo begin.

At the seventh child, the man starts to tire out, reaching fear towards you, screaming "that's too much to bear!"

He cheats on you with a younger mistress, leaving you torn, sad and lifeless.

You try to console yourself by eating an apple from your garden, but that beautiful fruit was cursed by thy stepmother, who turns out to be a spellcaster and after the first bite your heart beats faster… is this the end? no, there's more, let's not follow that trend.

You will not fall into a deep sleep, but your heart will harden like stone, killing your husband will give you your new moan, poisoning him like he poisoned you, so out of spite and hate, he falls before you.

Treating your children badly, will feel madly right.

You are alone, with seven children and now victim of a curse, to your stepmother you resemble the tone.

There is only one way to break the curse and this is… to have a show true love. Not a kiss, but a show, aren't we are all good at kissing after all?

🍎RULES:

You can't use any cheats. (You can use some specific cheats only if required by the challenge)

Your sim must be a young adult female sim. If you want you can play her life since she was a toddler as in the introduction, recreating with the imagination the situation that brought her up to the beginning of our challenge, but it is not mandatory.

You have to live in a small starter house in Windenburg or any scenery that resembles a wood. You can use the money you have with you to decorate the house, but when they run out you won't be able to use the cheats to add them, but you will have to work hard to make a living.

Aspiration: Freelance Botanist. (Complete it)

Traits: Good, Animal Enthuasiast, Green Fiend.

Career: Gardener (Reach lv.10)

Skills: Singing and Gardening (Maximize them!)

You must have a well-kept vegetable (not flower) garden with at least one apple tree. You can sell the vegetables to earn money or use them for cooking.

You can't let strangers into your home and you can't talk to elder sims.

If you need money you can buy the wishing well and wish for money or, if this is already some lot, use it from there only once.

Make friends with a wild animal (a fox, birds or a bunny).

When you find the love of your life, you must have 7 children with him. (You can use a lot trait to be more fertile and have twin pregnancies to hurry up).

All your children must have the "Sloppy" and "lazy" traits, only one, the future Cinderella, will not have them, but must have the "neat" trait.

Before becoming children, all your toddlers must reach level 5 in one skill or level 3 in all skills.

When they are children, all of your children will have to achieve a goal before they become teenagers. They can complete their aspiration, maximize a skill, or get high grades in school. (10)

When they are teenagers, at least ONE of your sons must learn and maximize handiness skill, to earn money they can build wooden furniture (to use or sell) and work part-time in a career with manual jobs. They have to repair all the broken objects in the house, look for and sell crystals in the scenario and open the hidden cave of Oasis Springs to allow Snow White to try to find the cowplant seed there. (She will need it for her aspiration). Your daughters, on the other hand, will help you in the garden, but only one in particular (the future Cinderella) will take care of cleaning the whole house and cooking for everyone. Only she cleans and cooks. The others, male and female, don't.

Before they become young adults, your children must be all 10 in school, everyone must at least earn one negative personality trait but only Cinderella must earn the trait "empathic".

After the seventh child, your husband has to cheat on you, so, eat a apple, change the "good" trait to "evil" with cheats or in the CAS and kill him with a badly cooked puffer fish or in any way you want.

When Cinderella is young adult, you will move with her to another house. You will treat her badly, she will be your little slave for everything. You will discover the way to defeat your curse only in gen 2. You will die of old age in your daughter's house.

𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍

Generation 2: Cinderella 🥿

« A dream is a wish your heart makes...»

Since you were a child you have spent your life between studying and cleaning the house. You never complained, because your mother always told you that for every reward there must be a sacrifice and you always listened to her. Except... you wished your brothers and sisters had been a little tidier, at least a little, just to rest!

One day, going to buy pumpkin seeds in the rural town of Henford on Bagley, you meet an elderly woman on the street. The woman seems to have difficulty walking, so you help her. To thank you, she gives you a cage with a little rodent inside it. You find it to be a very strange gift, but you can't refuse, that cute little animal looks so sad all alone!

As time goes by, you happen to meet that old woman at the market very often, she always recognizes you and little by little you two become very close friends. You feel like you can confide in her and she becomes almost like a second mom to you, so when you feel stressed you always visit her at home or at the market.

At home you don't have many ways to relax, those few moments when your family doesn't order you to do things, you spend them sewing and knitting clothes, one of your biggest hobbies, looking after the pumpkins in the garden and playing with the small rodent that the old woman gave you.

Everything proceeds as usual, when the invitations for the great royal ball of the near Kingdom arrive at the house. Looks like the prince is looking for a wife! All your sisters are excited to be a possible wife of the prince, but they start yelling at you when you ask if you can go with them.

They have always been jealous of you. In addition to being the most beautiful of daughters, you always had a perfect body and small feet that made you look so fragile and delicate that you look like the perfect woman.

Your mother forbids you to go to the prince's dance party, but it's always been your dream to live the princess's life at least for one day, so while your family is at the party, you run away from home and go cry to the elder lady.

She encourages you not to be discouraged and angry about the situation, gives you a beautiful dress that belonged to her when she was young and some weird but beautiful crystal shoes. So she advises you to go to the party anyway, but on one condition: you should be home before midnight.

You can't understand why at exactly midnight, but you imagine it's because after midnight your family would come home from the party.

You are afraid to disobey your mother, but once at the party, you finally get to meet the prince and you both fall in love with each other immediately and end up dancing together all night.

But at midnight you realize that your clothes are disappearing on you. Could it be that magic?! Then you run away, but in your haste you lose a shoe, which the prince takes and observes. You have very small feet and the prince notices it all too well from that shoe.

When your mother discovers that you disobeyed her, that the woman at the party was you and that the prince is looking for you, then she decides to hide you, but the prince manages to find you after trying that shoe on the feet of all the women of the two kingdoms. Only you have such small feet.

Despite finding you, however, your mother forbids you to get married.

You remain a slave to your mother, but even as the years pass you continue to see him secretely.

By the time your mother is old, you will discover the truth about your family's origins and your mother story. You understand how much she sufferer and just before she dies then you will decide to forgive her and... that will break your mother's curse, letting her stony heart return to normal.

That was the demonstration of true love Snow White needed. Not a kiss from a man, but the gesture of love from a daughter who truly loved her mother despite everything.

Your sisters were right to be jealous of you, you were really beautiful. But you weren't beautiful in appearance, you were beautiful in soul. The ability to love and forgive even those who hurt you the most made you the most beautiful person in the world right at that moment.

It wasn't a kiss that broke the curse, but the simple phrase full of love and empathy: " I forgive you... ".

After her death, Snow White was able to have her eternal sleep in serenity, you married the prince and soon after you had a baby with him.

🥿 RULES:

Cinderella begins to be a slave for her mother as a child, but the real challenge begins when she is young adult.

You have to live with your mother and siblings until you are a teenager. Once you are a young adult you will need to move to another home with your mother. Your siblings will be able to live alone.

You have to be enemy with two of your siblings (if they are both girls it's better), they will be the "evil stepsisters".

Aspiration: Soulmate. (Complete it)

Traits: Good, Neat & Proper.

Career: Style Influencer (Reach lv.10)

Skills: Singing, Dance and Knitting. (Maximize them!)

You have to be the only one cooking and cleaning in the house and you have to take care of the pumpkins.

When you have nothing to clean or cook, knit or dance!

Befriend an elderly woman, she will be your fairy godmother. (The elder sim can be an elder townie or a sim created by you. Whether she is a spellcaster or not is your choice.)

When you are stressed try to talk to your fairy godmother. (You can call her via phone or meet her somewhere, never at home).

As a teenager always tries to keep high grades, as a young adult works as a style Influencer (let's pretend to be a seamstress) and sell what you crochet on plopsy. (Let's pretend Plopsy is the market.

You can never argue with anyone, not even your mother and siblings. Others can insult you, you cannot insult them. Always be gentle with everyone.

You have a curfew, you can leave the house, but you must always come back before midnight. If you come back after midnight you will have to get grounded by your mother.

If the house is dirty you cannot leave the house. First you have to clean everything.

You must be very friendly with a rodent (He will be the mice of the fairy tale). To do this, buy a rodent from "My first animal" SP.

Since you are a great daydreamer, put some object that gives the "inspired" moodlet next to your bed.

You have to meet your "prince" at a party but you must be back before midnight. If no one invites you, create a party in a lot. (After a few patches it's very rare that sim invite you to a party)

You must have a very bad relationship with your mother, but a few days before she dies, you must forgive her by becoming friends with her again. This will break her curse. At that point with cheats or in CAS, change Snow White's trait from "evil" to "good" again.

You have to dress in rags while living with your mother, you will only be able to dress well after you get married. Before, You can only dress well for the party.

(Optional) This is just to be more accurate and immersive, but if you want you can make Cinderella's feet very small in CAS to be consistent with the story.

After your mother dies, you can get married and have children, but only AFTER she dies.

𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍

Generation 3: Tiana 🐸

"The only way to get what you want in this world is through hard work."

When you're just a toddler, your mom decides it's time to change her life and after living a lifetime in [insert scenario name] she decides to move with you and your dad to Willow Creek.

There the air is certainly new and the lifestyle is distinctly different from the village and country life you were used to.

The lights, the colors, the jazz music, it's all wonderfully animated! It would really be a dream, the kind you often hear from your mother, but unfortunately, like any story, it can't be a story if there isn't a tragedy around the corner.

Your father, conditioned by the voodoo fashion of the place, fell into the trap of black magic and all of a sudden passed away due to an unfulfilled pact.

You're just a child when all this happens and like any sane person, after what happened you should hate voodo, right? NO! Because you are not a sane person, at least not about that, so you end up getting hooked on voodo too, but for totally different reasons than your father. You want to talk to the souls of the dead. You want to talk to your father and understand what happened to him.

You are a determined sim and although your mother tries to distract yourself by teaching you how to cook, you continue to have strange séances... and this is where you discover that your house is haunted by a strange (but rather nice) ghost named Guildry!

Guildry at first, seeing that you are only a child, pretends to be an imaginary friend. It's normal for a child to see ghosts, these are pure beings, but when he realizes that by continuing to grow, you continue to see him, here he begins to understand that something is wrong. That you have a gift.

When you finally reach teenage age, Guildry reveals that you have dormant powers that need to be awakened, so he sends you to visit the Magic Kingdom through the Glimmerbrook magical portal. You will become a spellcaster there by letting other spellcasters awaken your powers.

Now on your wild teen list are three things you like: voodo, jazz, and food.

To get you to give up on black magic completely, your mom will buy a restaurant with her life savings to make you work there. She doesn't know of Guildry's existence and she doesn't know that you are now an awakened spellcaster, but this must remain a secret.

Unfortunately, while your dedication leads you to try hard to find a spell or a magical potion to speak directly to the world of the dead, specifically to your dad, one of your attempts goes wrong and you end up being the victim of a curse. The curse of Repulsiveness.

Your face has gone completely green and pimply like that of an evil witch! Guildry warns you that there is a way to break the curse, but it's a method that requires three ingredients and a lot of patience.

The ingredients are: frogs, a magic tome and a kiss. How it works? Guildry explains that you must catch a frog of every species, eat a frog stew, find and study the magic tome to remove the curses and kiss your true love! But... who would ever kiss a monster like you?!

You are desperate, convinced that you will never be able to return to normal, but you have to go back to work in the restaurant, so while you are looking for all the ingredients you put on a mask and go to work anyway.

Your mother doesn't understand why you are wearing a mask, she thinks you are completely insane now but by now she has given up hope with you and whatever you do until it's summoning Satan in the living room is fine for her.

Eventually, on a trip to Sulani to look for one of the ingredients there, you will meet a sim you will fall in love with. He/She is your true love and he/she will break your curse by kissing you.

Resigning yourself to the fact that you must leave the dead in the afterlife, you accept the idea that your father is dead, you abandon witchcraft forever and you will move to Sulani with the sim you love, because this is what you REALLY, want and it's ok if you have sold your restaurant too to stay with him/her.

Now you feel you have found a balance in your life, everything is normal and all that hard work has led you to find your new family. Your mum is happy with your new life in Sulani, Guildry too, although he will now feel a little lonely listening to jazz music in the dusty ceiling of your old house all alone. It all sounds perfect... but there is something fishy.

Yes, there is something that definitely smells like... fish...

...WAIT, WHAT?! What does it mean that your partner is literally a fish?!

🐸 RULES:

Aspiration: Master Chef. (Complete it)

Traits: Ambitious, Self-Assured, Foodie.

Career: Culinary Carrer (Chef Branch, Reach lv. 10)

Skills: Singing, Cooking and Medium. (Maximize them)

When you are a toddler, your family needs to move to Willow Creek. In this case you can use cheats to take any home you want even if it costs a lot. It would not be realistic if after marrying a rich partner (the "prince" of Cinderella) you went to live in a dump. Use the real estate cheat but DO NOT add money to the household.

When you are a child, your father has to get into voodoo and play a lot with the voodoo doll (Which you can get in any way: cheats, the San Myshuno festival, by purchasing it with the mischief skill etch) then the player will have to kill the father in any way the player wants.

Your house is haunted. You must befriend the spirit that haunts the house, Guildry, who will be your best friend for life. Your mother does not know that Guildry exists and this must remain a secret forever because only you can see him. The player must avoid in any way that Cinderella talks to Guildry or that Guildry talks to Cinderella (it would not be appropriate for Guildry to flirt with Cinderella...)

When you are a teenager, your passions will be voodo, jazz music and food. As a teenager you will need to start developing medium skill and write at least 3 jazz songs.

While still as a teenager, you have to become a spellcaster, your mom will buy a restaurant for you to work there, to get you away from black magic. You can buy the restaurant with the money you have earned and if the restaurant costs too much you can "ask for a loan" (add the amount you need with cheats and subtract a small amount of simoleons from your household every week until the loan is paid off. If you get confused you can, in this case, use the Sim National Bank, a mod that works as a bank. Isn't against the rules of the challenge if you repay the loan honestly afterwards.)

You have to get the curse of repulsiveness (To get it you have to experiment with the cauldron or fail to create a potion while you are an inexperienced spellcaster. Since the chance to get the curse is random, if you can't get it you can use cheats to add it to your sim .)

As a young adult you start working in the culinary career and in your free time you dedicate yourself to the restaurant (the restaurant is yours, but you do two jobs since your father wasn't that rich, he was a prince who risked the bankruptcy!).

You must reach level 10 of the career and make your restaurant a 5-star restaurant.

To break the curse, you must complete the frog collection, eat a frog stew, find and study the tome to remove the curses and kiss true love. (To be able to remove the curse you will also have to increase your spellcasting ranks a bit, you will have to do this honestly, without cheats).

When you find true love, you will decide to sell the restaurant, abandon the magic, returning human, and will spend the rest of your life with him/her in Sulani. But your partner must be a mermaid/merman.

You will need to have a merman/mermaid child (if your baby is born human then use cheats to make him/her merman/mermaid)

𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍𑁍

🐚 Generation 4: Ariel

"Someday I'll be part of your world...!"

(COMING SOON)

#the sims 4 #disney princess challenge #not always happily ever after challenge #NAHRAChallengeRules

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everlarkficexchange · 3 years

Text

Like The Stars Hold The Moon

Written By : @katnissmellarkkkk

Prompt 59 : "Katniss dad is a victor, he won his hunger games and is a mentor. Peeta is reaped for the games and Katniss begs her dad to help him win the games. [submitted by anonymous]“

Hi! It feels like there’s so much I need to say here and I can’t remember any of it now! This is obviously–if you read the summary, which I assume you did and that’s why you’re here hahaha–an EFE prompt. It was submitted by an anonymous person, so I don’t know specifically if this is what you wanted but I really hope this is good enough that you’ll be fulfilled?

I don’t think there is much more to say? I hope everyone who reads this has a good day! I wrote plenty of this on Easter so I’d like to thank Jesus for rising again. And I feel like the prompt alone is a sufficient summary but just so you know, this heavily features Katniss, Peeta (obvi), Haymitch and Katniss’ father, Hunter (I named him, that’s not canon, I know).

This fic I likely going to be a three-shot with an opportunity for a sequel three-shot. Oh and also, thank you to the anon who sent the prompt!

Oh and this got really long, so I’m just going to submit the first part on here and then I’ll add a link at the bottom to continue reading on AO3. I’ve never done this before so I don’t know if I’m doing it right?

Okay, if you read all my talking, bye now!

Rated T for the canon violence.

At the reaping for the Forty-Seventh Hunger Games, Matty Knick drew out the names of a ”very special boy“ and ”a very special girl“ from the reaping bowls. She read them off in a bright voice and matched the sentiment with an out of place perky smile. The girl’s name was Heather Branch.

And the boy’s was Hunter Everdeen.

Of course, everyone knows the story of Hunter Everdeen.

Year of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games.

"So Hunter,” Caesar Flickerman leans toward the victor, absolutely electrified, and says, “tell us, tell us. How excited are you for the games this year?”

The camera focuses in on gray eyes, the color of a storm cloud or a cleanly polished knife. Dangerous and hard and cunning.

Or protective and frightful and angry.

Or warm and loving and kind.

“I’m about as excited as I always am, Caesar,” he shoots back, not a trace of even so much as a smirk on his face. Not even so much as a lift from the corner of his mouth.

And still, the crowd of Capitol idiots burst out in laughter, as if they just heard the funniest joke in the world, as if this was Hunter’s desired response to the words.

As if the conversation wasn’t about teenagers—and some as young as twelve—killing other teenagers.

“And what about you, Haymitch?” Caesar asks next, segueing from one aggravated man to another.

“I’m looking forward to the free drinks,” Haymitch says while tipping back dark gold colored liquid into his mouth. Almost as an afterthought, he gestures wide and sloppy to the crowd, igniting cacophonous sounds from the population once more. “And of course, the social interaction with all you lovely people.”

No one in the audience recognizes the insult. No one understands the blatant sarcasm at their expense.

Here in District Twelve though, we do. As exemplified by Peeta’s laugh, vibrating against my back. “Shh,” I hush, laser focused on the enormous television screen before us.

“Daddy’s not speaking anymore,” Prim reminds me from the other room, where she’s currently flipping through a magazine our father sent.

“Well, be quiet before he does,” I snap, elbowing Peeta when he rolls his eyes now. “Stop it, I haven’t seen him in weeks,” I complain, fixing him with a fierce glare.

“I know,” he murmurs agreeably, gently kissing my temple. “But he’ll be home in a few days.”

As if they could hear our exchange from inside the television box, Caesar turns his attention back to my father. “Hunter, how excited are you to get home to District Twelve?”

At that, his eyes genuinely light up with ferocity. “I’m counting the minutes,” he replies, but still manages to keep his tone cool. He adamantly refuses to give away his true emotion to even a single soul in the Capitol. It’s his way of withholding power from their greedy, glitter covered hands.

But I see the change in him. Prim, from her position against the doorframe, sees it. I’m positive my mother, who’s watching with our brother from the comfort of our house sees it as well.

Our father’s eyes are now alive again, the permanent frown his mouth resides in on every televised appearance loosens a bit, his brows aren’t knit so closely together any longer.

Caesar Flickerman sees the change too evidently.

“Look at those silver coins!” He bellows, gesturing for the cameras to put my father in a close up now. “They just lit up like the stars when talking about home. Tell me, Hunter Everdeen, how’s the family back in District Twelve?”

At that, my father makes a considerable effort to transform his entire expression into a mask of indifference. “They’re good,” he states evenly, his tone clipped. Making it blatant to even the airheaded Capitol citizens that he refuses to speak publicly about his family.

“Because you’re not property of the Capitol, baby,” he told me once, while on a walk in the woods. “You’re not anyone’s property.”

“What about you and mommy?”

“You’re our responsibility, but not our property.” He’d knelt down to my height, which happened to be the shortest in my second grade class. “Property implies ownership, Katniss. And no one owns you. No one owns you or your sister. Remember that for me. And never let yourself forget it.”

“You’re daughters are both old enough for the reaping, am I right?” Caesar presses further, and my sister and I automatically sigh. Knowing the response that’s bound to come.

“What’s wrong?” Peeta asks, as he still remains completely clueless. I shake my head instead of offering an explanation though, leaning further into his chest.

Peeta won’t understand. He was raised in town by merchants—the owners of the bakery, to be specific. He’s never understood the fierce protectiveness, the instantaneous fury, the irrational tunnel vision, that appears when a victor’s child is mentioned entering the games.

Peeta’s never even met my father. I’m not impatient by any stretch of the imagination to put the two of them in the same room, to watch my father chew my boyfriend up and devour him alive, to abide by his rules and regulations that will surely come with dating.

He doesn’t know Peeta and I have even so much as shaken hands. I’ve never so much as left him even the slightest hint. Not even when I’ve accompanied him to the bakery for the occasional trade with Peeta’s father, the baker himself.

Like both Prim and I predicted, our father is now on edge, his breathing uneven and his nostrils flaring. “Yes. Both my girls are of age,” he says after a long beat, his tone hard and jagged.

Caesar though is either oblivious or is extraordinarily practiced at appearing obtuse. “Well, wouldn’t it be something if either of them were chosen for the games? Am I right?” He directs his questions to the audience. “Don’t we all love a family story?” His words elicit cheers and hollers and a murderous glint in my father’s silver eyes. The camera only catches it for a moment’s time before quickly flitting away, towards the much more enjoyable image of the Captiolites chattering like chipmunks at the very idea.

And suddenly I feel Peeta’s arm tighten around me, the vision of me—the only person in the world he’s certain that he loves—being taken away from our home here in Twelve and tossed into an arena with kids twice her size, too much for even his naïve mind.

“Don’t we all believe in Mr. Everdeen,” the talk show host continues to push and I feel my typical annoyance with the odd man bleed into anger. “I mean, he brought home Mr. Abernathy here.” And with one single hand gesture from Caesar, the entire interview’s focus re-centers on Haymitch.

And unlike my father, he doesn’t even miss a beat before replying.

“Barely,” he mutters with a last swig of his drink, cleaning the glass. “And he was stingy with the gifts.”

Next to him, my father relaxes a bit. Haymitch always brings out a bit of levity in him, even on his worst days.

After all, in my father’s eyes, the paunchy drunk is a symbol of hope.

Haymitch is the only person my father’s ever brought him. He’s the only other living victor inside the confines of Twelve.

Not to mention his closest friend.

And my surrogate uncle, I note, a bit ironically. Haymitch and I have a far different relationship than he has with anyone else in my family but he’s always been there, has known me since the day I was born, often has dinner at our house, rain or shine, no matter how much he annoys my mother, and he’s an irreplaceable member of my family.

The audience is still riled up from Haymitch and howling with laughter—a bit too much, in my opinion—but my father can’t let the subject of his children go before adding one last sentiment.

“Don’t worry, Caesar. If either of my girls are reaped, trust me,” he states, louder and far more pronounced than anything else he’s said the entire interview. “They will be the victor. There’s not a tribute in the arena that would survive against my girl.”

For as long as I can remember, my father had taken me to the woods. He sometimes claims the first time he looked down at me in my mother’s arms, at a mere two days old, he saw a familiar hunger in my eyes.

Not a hunger for food. District Twelve is the smallest and the poorest in the country of Panem, but luckily, my family is one of the richest.

Unlike my schoolmates, I’ve never once had to worry about having enough to eat for lunch. My parents never worried that we’d starve to death or that Prim and I could be taken from their grasp by authorities. They never worried about supplying us with whatever we needed—they gave us more than we ever could have wanted—and they never had to fret that we’d be sent to the mines for work one day.

No, we were far too wealthy and far too famous for any of that.

But my parents had a far different batch of worries to keep them up at night. Not about food or finances or anything remotely common in Twelve.

No, they had to worry about cameras peaking into the privacy of our home and photos being taken without our knowledge and my face or Prim’s face being splashed across every magazine and newspaper in the country.

They worried about the almost insatiable thirst the Capitol seems to have for more family dynamics among the victors.

Especially after the recent back-to-back sibling victories led the hunger games to higher ratings and revenues in the Capitol.

When I was a child, my mother coached me to never go into town without my father by my side. Which sounds easy enough, until my father’s extensive vacations to the Capitol are taken into consideration. For as long as I can remember, my father would leave at random stretches of time, for weeks on end. To go play puppet for a population so dumb, so completely isolated from the rest of the country, that they took his anger for sarcasm. They took his bite as charm. They believed his glare was an act, was part of his appeal, when in reality my father had rebelled against performing for the last twenty-seven years.

When he was gone, our lives became strict. Bedtimes came earlier, curtains remained drawn day in and day out, our mother never wanted to sing or dance or even so much as smile with her husband gone.

But when he was home, sunshine peaked in our windows again. It danced on the floor and it swept us away with its gentle affection.

There was music and laughter and sweets and toys. He never returned from the Capitol empty-handed. He brought back expensive jewels for our mother, he built me and Prim a fancy treehouse in the backyard, put up a large, golden swing-set, went as far as purchasing as many cakes and breads as he could hold from the Mellark Bakery.

Peeta’s parents bakery.

Since I was two, further back than I can even retain, my father would take me out to the woods, would hold my hand and tell me old stories of District Twelve’s past, detail insane urban legends, teach me about plants and berries and trees and the direction of the wind.

And for as long as I can remember, I idolized him. He was so confident and so charismatic and so kind. For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be exactly like him when I grew up. It felt like an honor to me that I received far more his end of the gene line than my mother’s. She was regarded as a beauty in her youth, but he was one of the most magnificent people in the country. Having his coloring and the same silver eyes felt like a special gift, awarded every single time someone marveled at how similar we appear.

But my father was gone often and the unpredictable lengths of his stays in the large, foreign city was one of the only constants my family ever knew. So it really came as no surprise when my mother phoned the cabin only minutes after Caesar’s interview was over.

“I’ll get it,” Prim says flatly after a moment, throwing a sardonic glance at me and Peeta on the couch. Now in a much different entanglement than we had been while watching the talk-show.

“Thanks,” I murmur unintelligibly against Peeta’s mouth, before closing my eyes in pleasure.

“Don’t strain yourselves,” she can’t stop herself from tacking on the end.

“We’ll try not to while you’re still here,” Peeta murmurs cheekily, moving his lips downwards, towards my neck, right onto my pulse point. I let out a somewhat ridiculous squeak in response.

“Hello?” Prim says lightly into the receiver, already knowing it’s our mother. No one else calls this phone, inside this hidden cabin, located in the woods surrounding Twelve.

The woods in which officials fenced off years ago. The woods in which it’s illegal to enter. The woods in which my father has taken me to hunt for families less fortunate than ours since I was a small infant.

It’s not a typical cabin found in the outskirts of Twelve. No, ordinarily a cabin out here—a cabin anywhere in Panem, really—is nothing more than a broken down shack. There’s normally nothing other than an unsteady foundation, a freezing damp floor and an unlit fireplace.

But somewhere along the lines, in the years before I was born, my parents resurrected this place from the depths of despair and expanded it, rebuilt it, refurnished and redecorated and turned it into a vast, warm, safe second home for all of us to run away to when we felt the need.

Prim listens into the receiver for a long moment before she sighs deeply and beckons me. “Katniss, can you?”

Instantly, I break away from Peeta’s embrace, cupping his face and pulling him back from my collarbone.

“What’s wrong?” I ask as I scramble off the couch, my anxiety abruptly spiked. “Did something happen?” I search Prim’s eyes as I take the phone from her but, to my utter relief, all I find there is blatant, unmasked disappointment.

I already know what my mother is going to say before I put the phone to my ear. “Hi?”

“Hi, honey,” she murmurs, her voice both strained and higher than typical. Which indicates she’s trying to put up a front for us right now, when she’d rather be moping in bed. “Your father just called. Evidently Effie Trinket informed him he has more scheduled commitments to fulfill before he can come home.”

I deflate, already prepard, knowing this was coming. Isn’t it always coming inadvertently? My father has never been home when he was scheduled to be in my life. No matter the holiday, the birthday, the emergency or event, the Capitol demands that they comes first to him. Not even my birth could upstage his commitments. He wasn’t allowed to return home to Twelve, to meet his firstborn child, until his press events were done and over with.

It’s no wonder he refuses to put on show for those people.

“Okay,” I mumble after a moment, not even convinced my mother is even still there on the other end.

“It’ll be alright,” she says, as positively as she can. “He’ll be home as soon.”

“Yeah.” I try and fail miserably to match her tone. I inherited my father’s ability to act. Or inability, that is.

There’s the faint sound of crying in the background, and my heart aches a bit. “I’m sorry, honey, I have to go check on Archer,” she apologizes as a way of saying goodbye.

I make my way into the kitchen as soon as we hang up. Prim is standing by the counter, staring at the same magazine our father sent three weeks ago.

Peeta comes up behind me then, his hand rubbing my back in comforting circles. “Your father delayed again?”

I nod silently, as my eyes focused on my little sister now. She’s trying her best to hold back the upset that’s threatening to take over.

And without hesitation, my instincts to protect my family from anything and everything painful kick in. “Prim, it’s okay. It’s probably only going to be another week before he’s back,” I console, stepping closer to her small frame and touching her back.

It’s all the initiation she needs before spinning around into my arms and clinging onto me tight. “He’s never around,” she cries into my neck—I’m not much taller than her—as her shoulders shake with tears.

I feel Peeta’s eyes on me, measuring my reaction to Prim’s words. He’s heard me cry the same thing time and time again, he knows the familiarity of this scene better than anyone should.

“He tries his best, Prim,” I whisper thickly into her long, blonde hair. She’s fair and light, like our mother. Like a merchant or peacekeeper. Looking at my little sister, you’d never consider her to be the daughter of a man from the Seam.

But you’d easily believe that she was a girl raised in Victor’s Village and I suppose that’s what counts. Where we were raised and not where we could have been, if things had gone different.

“He’s never really going to be ours though,” she weeps and I don’t have words to comfort her now. Because she’s right.

Our father will always belong to the Capitol, first and foremost.

And not even his children can upstage that.

Prim leaves not long later, to head home to Victor’s Village and more than likely curl up with our mother for the night. They’ve both always been so alike, so much softer and more hopeful than me. I half expect every trip of our father’s to double in time, if not triple. After a lifetime of disappointments, I can’t help but prepare myself.

It’s not that they’re weak for believing. It’s that I have too much Hunter Everdeen in me. I have too much pessimism crawling inside my bones to ever fully trust that he’s really coming home until he’s already stepped off the train in Twelve.

Too many hours of my childhood were spent, wearing fancy stockings and warm, fur-lined coats, standing at the train station, only to welcome a load of cargo and no father in sight. Too many times were phone calls answered in tears. Too many night spent crying, clinging to my father’s hunting jacket, so disoriented by the hazardous schedule in which our lives were ran, waiting for my father to phone, waiting for him to walk through the front door, waiting for him to sneak up on us in the middle of the night or pull us from class on a school day.

That was the true constant in my life. Waiting for my father to finally come home, knowing every moment we shared was on borrowed time. Knowing that he’d never truly belong to us. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting to hear my mother’s bedroom door slam and lock, waiting to hear Prim cry or Archer wail, waiting to see that defeated glint in my father’s slate gaze.

I close the cabin door behind my sister now, knowing with confidence that she’ll make it home alright, even with the sun currently setting in the faded blue sky.

Our father never took Prim hunting like he did me, never brought her out to the woods and taught her to shoot a bow and arrow, never showed her how to trap and kill an animal. But even still, the path from the cabin to our home in Victor’s Village is imprinted in our brains, like a birthmark or tattoo. We’d be able to find our way to and from, even if we were sleepwalking.

As would Peeta. Considering this is the place he spends the majority of his time.

Considering this cabin may as well be his permanent address.

And if it weren’t illegal, it very well might be, I think to myself wryly as I walk over to where he’s leaning against the doorframe now.

“Hello,” I greet again, hopping onto my tiptoes and kissing his lips lightly.

He grasps my hips, smiling against my mouth. “Don’t you have to get home too?” He hesitantly asks, his desire to keep me here bleeding through every caress of his fingers, as they trail underneath my loose shirt, sliding upwards and causing an electric current to ripple through the core of my body.

But I just shake my head at his inquiry, moving my mouth from his to kiss down the side of his face, underneath his jawline.

“Mmm,” he moans after a long moment, before suddenly putting a few more inches between us. “Are you sure your mother won’t miss you?”

Peeta’s always been considerate of my mother. Too considerate sometimes, if I do say so myself. Bordering on obsessive.

He is obsessed with keeping her approval, with never crossing any invisible line, with never even so much as mildly exasperating her.

I suppose it’s only natural though. She is the only parental figure he has in his life.

I’ve never been too enthusiastic to introduce him to my father and he’s never pushed the issue too far. Hunter Everdeen is a practical legend around Twelve—and beloved across the entirety of Panem—but he’s the reason, I’ve always privately felt, that I was isolated from all my classmates.

Sure, I’m already not the most friendly person to start with, in anyone’s book. As Haymitch never hesitates to tell me. But there was already very little chance of me making friends in school anyway. Being the victor of the Forty-Seventh Hunger Games’ child dropped the chances of play-dates or sleepovers drastically. My father trusts no one. Not with his children.

And I didn’t mind for the most part. I’m too like him to enjoy people much anyway. This whole notion was much harder on Prim, who adored her fellow classmates and easily endeared herself to them as well. But no matter how darling my little sister may be, nothing changed our father’s mind and when he was set on something, it was practically written in stone.

I can’t even imagine how Peeta must feel, having to live in fear for the entire last year of our little secret being exposed. I may be nervous about how my father will react, but Peeta has to be outright petrified.

“My mother will be fine,” I murmur, rolling my eyes as I lean back against the wall now. “She’s got Prim and Archie to keep her sane until my father’s home.”

Peeta chuckles at me, a mirthful smile in his eyes. “And you got me,” he teases, tapping my nose with his finger.

I giggle in a way I withheld until Prim left. I wasn’t about to give her ammunition to mock me later on. “All to myself,” I add, matching his expression now. “For unlimited hours of the day.”

“That’s my girl, looking on the bright side.”

I snort. “Yeah, that’s me.” I’m the exact opposite of an optimist. I prefer expecting the worse and setting expectations low. Maybe it’s a learned behavior but, at least that way, I’m not crushed like my mother when things don’t pan out the way I want.

Peeta mistakes the look on my face to be one of hidden disappointment. “You’re father will be home soon, sweetheart. They can’t keep him in the Capitol forever.”

“Can’t they?” I mumble, not expecting an answer. Before he can offer one—because Peeta is nothing if not a fixer—I quickly segue to a new topic. “Where do you think you’ll go when my father does come home?”

He just shrugs the question off though, completely unbothered. “Anywhere but home,” he says simply, his stunning blue eyes clear as the sky they remind me of.

“Anywhere but there,” I agree, my smile twisting into a grimace.

A year ago, when I was barely fifteen, President Snow—Panem’s true Gamemaker, my father always said—demanded every victor extend their stay in the Capitol, even after the games ended that year. He gave no outright reason and my father was cagey to speak on the subject, but in the end, the president’s word was law and there was no room for argument. President Snow can demand of us whatever he wishes.

It was a cold, dreary autumn that year, with early snowfall, which was the leading cause to the significant increase in accidents and injuries. My mother, the born healer, had more patients than she could handle, and even while training Prim as her assistant, she required my help. I was to head to town and purchase a list of herbs from the apothecary shop her parents still owned. The people who disowned her, who had little to no interest in her after she married a man from the Seam, victor or not. The people who never cared to meet their own grandchildren, to acknowledge our existence even as we passed right by their shop, in their plain sight.

I was dragging my feet the entire walk there, already with a sour taste in my mouth, when I heard the loudest wail my ears had every registered. When I heard sharp words being screamed out, when the sound of a boy sobbing filled the air.

And my instincts took over, my every sense focused on finding the hurt and helping them, altogether forgoing the trip for my mother’s herbs.

I followed the commotion to the bakery’s backdoor. Right through the open threshold, it was crystal clear, the baker’s wife—the witch, as many of the kids at school referred to her—had beaten her youngest son senselessly.

He’s in my year, I’d realized abruptly, staring with an agape mouth at his bloody face. His eye was swelling and his nose and lip were smeared scarlet and the only thing that crossed my mind at first, was I recognized him as the blonde boy with the colorful notebook, who could never meet my eyes and always wore long sleeves.

Of course, I snapped out of the daze after only a moment. The witch turned and caught sight of me, snapping that no Seam brat was going to get any free handouts from her and to scatter before she called the Peacekeepers.

Something about the unmasked prejudice against the Seam, a place where people in Twelve had next to nothing and were seen as lesser than the merchants, jolted me into action.

“Get your hand off him!” I’d demanded, using my entire body weight, just as my father taught me, to push the door open as she tried to close it in my face. “Let him go or I swear I’ll make you regret it.”

At that, I heard an ugly laugh and the door flew open again, my exerted force throwing it back into the wall.

“I’m serious, child,” she snaps, her blue eyes narrow and her mouth in a snide smirk. “I will call the Peacekeepers to remove you from my shop-”

I didn’t even let her finish. I wasn’t one to be messed with. Not when I just witnessed something awful firsthand, not when I had it in my power to do something.

I knew then I couldn’t bring my father home. He was owned by the president and the Capitol. To an extent, we all were. And I knew I couldn’t stop the games from happening or the possibility of my name being pulled from the reaping bowl. I couldn’t always make my mother come out of her room or even out of her bed, when her illness struck bad. And I couldn’t stop my siblings from crying for our father at night.

But I knew that day in the bakery, I had the power over Mrs. Mellark and I wasn’t going to let her get away with hurting her son anymore.

“Call them,” I dared, not an ounce of insecurity in my voice. “Cray is an old family friend.” He was actually indebted to my father, who’d kept the man’s secrets for too many years to count. But family friend rolled off the tongue more effectively.

“Head Peacekeeper is now making friends in the Seam?” She spat in disbelief. “No wonder this district is so rundown.”

She laughed humorlessly, but my focus was pulled towards the boy. He was covering the left side of his face, as if it hurt too badly to release. As if he was trying to stop his eye from swelling, stop his nose from gushing blood. As if he could hold his now split lip together with nothing more than the palm of his hand.

The sight hurt my heart to see. It burned a fire inside of me that only a true injustice could set alight.

“My father is Hunter Everdeen,” I snapped in the woman’s direction, not even basking in satisfaction when her face drained of all color. The idea that a scrappy little girl with olive skin and dark hair was the child of the most powerful man in all of Twelve struck a cord inside even the witch. “Still wanna make that call?”

The woman’s face was caught between anger and shock when I glanced at her again. And I hated her for it. I hated her and every single person in this district who hurt their kids, who took out their grievances on them, who made them cower and quiver in fear. Who raised them to be afraid of those they loved in a world already so awful.

I know I live a privileged life but, deep in my bones, I know even if things were different, my parents wouldn’t have laid a hand on us. Even if we were so poor I had to take tesserae, even if we were starving to the point of no return, even if we were practically homeless in the Seam, my parents would never hurt us.

“Leave,” the witch spoke then, but her voice was void of all emotion.

“Not without him,” I refused, my eyes planted on the wounded boy in front of me. The boy who was doing everything to avoid looking me in the eye, too busy covering his battered face.

I heard a sound caught between a groan and a shriek, before a cutting board was tossed across the room. “Just go!” She shouted at her son, causing him to flinch severely. “Just go with her!”

On her order, which sounded more distraught than angry, the boy had stormed out the back door and into the chilly evening air, still covering his face desperately, still looking utterly ashamed.

But he waited for me to catch up with him. He waited for me to guide him away from that awful woman he was forced to call his mother.

He didn’t flinch when I touched his arm nor when I took his hand. And when I led him away from the town and towards the village, he followed me without complaint.

Actually, he followed me without a single word.

I realized this just as my house came into view. “You never told me your name?” I whispered, looking up at him gently.

He had tears leaking from his eyes that he was doing his best to ignore, the bleeding on the left side of his face had barely even lightened up, his eye was swelling bigger and bigger, and yet, he chuckled a little at the question. “I’ve been in your class since kindergarten, Katniss.”

I felt my cheeks burn pink, even under the darkening sky. “I know.” But I still peered up at him, curiously waiting for him to tell me.

“It’s Peeta,” he finally answered, maybe a bit satirical.

“Peeta Mellark,” I suddenly recognized.

“Mhmm. Figured you’d pick up the last name.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s printed across the bakery in huge letters?”

“Oh.” He chuckled at my ignorance, causing my blush to deepen.

And I realized immediately how much I liked the sound of his laugh. How I liked being the reason for the sound.

My stomach did a complete flip at the notion and my ears abruptly felt hot, but I tried to push all this away, needing to get him to my mother.

“Wait,” he halted before I could even reached the front door. “Is your mother in there?”

I shot him a confused look. “Yeah, of course? Who else-”

I didn’t even get a chance to finish though. “I really don’t want anyone else to know about this,” he pleads, his eyes looking as frightened as they did with the witch.

“Peeta-” I start, opening my mouth argue, to convince him to go into the house and let my mother treat his injuries. To let me get him help.

But one look inside his desolated, defeated, terrified eyes and I couldn’t make myself do it. I couldn’t put him through any more than he’d already gone through. Not when he’d eventually have to go face the witch again at home.

“Okay,” I whispered, and I felt him squeeze the hand I didn’t realize I was still clutching. “Let me take you somewhere else. And I’ll try to fix you up myself.”

I wasn’t a healer like my mother and Prim. I was a hunter, just like my father, just like his very name, through and through. But I had witnessed enough of what my mother did—my father had forced me to witness enough of what she did, in case I ever needed the knowledge—and I was confident I had the expertise to help him.

My decision was validated by the relief in Peeta’s eyes, by the visible exhale he expelled from inside. He was ashamed, I realized, of his abuse. He was embarrassed to let anyone know what was happening behind closed doors.

I guided him by the hand outside the village, through the Seam—a place in which he’d never been before—and to the fence line.

“Isn’t it electrified?” He asked, his grip on my palm tightening. I liked the sensation for some reason. I liked the way his big hand felt wrapped around my small one. I liked how he wanted to hold onto me in the darkness.

“Nope,” I say, and let out a proud giggle. Or maybe a nervous one. Whenever I think back to this night, I can never tell.

“How do you know?” His blonde eyebrows knit together, still afraid in a way I’d never had to be. My father had taught me everything there was to know about the woods from a young age.

“Listen,” I urge softly, leaning my ear towards the fence.

He cranes forward too, waiting for the buzz of electricity to fill his ears. Only, just as I knew, it never does. Because it never has. The fence’s electricity was shut off long before we were even born.

I watched as his face registered the silence, as he realized and trusted I was right. And I beamed at him, before showing him the way my father slips beyond the fence and guiding him through the trees, towards the cabin, buried deep inside the woods.

It took an hour to find, not because of the blackened sky, but because Peeta’s face hurt so badly that his gait was slowed. But I remained patient, even though that was never my strong suit either. I waited for him to pick up the pace, to be ready to move, to find our way through the tall green trees. I pulled all the branches I could see out of his path, used the moon as our flashlight and didn’t complain once when he stumbled along the way.

By the time we got to the cabin, it had to be past Archer’s bedtime. My mother would be worried sick for me, but I soothed myself that she had plenty on her plate. I’m her firstborn. The child she understands the least, the one who’s like her husband in body and soul. I knew I was probably near the bottom of her worry list.

The very first thing I did when we entered the cabin was order Peeta to sit down in the dining room. I gathered my mother’s first aid kit from the bathroom, wet a rag in cool water and I got to work cleaning the blood from his face.

“This has to be gross for you,” he murmurs after a long stretch of silence. His eyes betrayed how self-conscious he must have felt.

Trying to alleviate his anxiety, I pretended to shrug it off. “My mother cleans wounds all the time. At our kitchen table, no less.”

Peeta made a noise that indicated he didn’t buy my act of ease. “I heard at school that you run from the sick and injured.”

I raised my eyebrows at the comment. No one at school talked about me. No one knew me well enough to. People stopped trying to get close to any of Hunter Everdeen’s kids years ago.

The longer I stared at Peeta in disbelief, the more he seemed to lose confidence in his statement. “Maybe I didn't hear it,” he finally amended. I brought the damp cloth back up to his face again as a reward, tenderly wiping away the blood, before using the clean side to set against his swelling lid, hoping to offer some pain reduction there as well. “Maybe I saw it,” he added sheepishly.

I furrowed my brows, even more perplexed by the elaboration. “Saw it?”

“When Leaf Barker tripped and broke his knee in Physical Education last year? You were almost green when you bolted out of the gymnasium.”

His words conjured up a vague image. Still though, something about this felt odd to me.

“How do you remember that better than I do?”

At that, Peeta shrugged. “I guess, I notice you sometimes?”

“What do you mean, sometimes?” I pressed, none of his words suddenly making a bit of sense.

“Why did you stick up for me tonight?” He abruptly segued, his expression shifting into something of defense, like he’s trying to deflect.

But I’m not one to be deterred. “I wasn’t going to stand there and watch your mother hurt you,” I stated, my voice remaining firm. “Why?”

He continued to walk around my question. “Is tonight the first night you ever noticed me?”

I pulled my hand and the damp cloth away from his wounded face, reaching in the kit to grab a white cream I’d seen my mother and Prim both use on swelling before. “Yes,” I finally replied, because I don’t know what else to say. That I saw him glance at me sometimes and then watched as his eyes flit away? That I noticed how he doodled in math class, because he found the subject boring? That I’d seen him lift a sack easily over his shoulder at the bakery and watched him beat almost every upperclassmen at wrestling, even while three years their junior?

None of that seems even remotely relevant to mention.

“When was the first time you noticed me?” I shot back, still being careful to apply the cream with only the lightest pressure to his battered eye.

“Kindergarten,” he instantly blurted out, his tone simple and bold.

I stared at him in disbelief for a long moment before chuckling, catching the joke. “Funny.”

“I’m serious,” he refuted, peaking his good eye open, the sky meeting a silver dollar as our gaze locked. And I see that he is serious somehow.

“What?”

“The first day of kindergarten,” he continued, after a long beat of me just staring him. His confidence had wavered once again and he was looking a bit regretful that he’d put this out in the open. “You were wearing a red velvet dress and brown stockings. Your hair was in two braids instead of one and your ribbons matched your dress. The teacher asked during music assembly who knew The Valley Song and your hand shot right up. She put you on a stool and you sang it, clear as day, for everyone to hear. Even the birds outside stopped to listen. And from that moment on… I was a goner.”

I just continued to look at him in disbelief, unable to put the pieces of what he’s said together. Finally, I whispered, “you’re telling the truth?”

“I’ve had a crush on you for forever,” he admitted, his singularly open eye giving away his nerves at the admission. “And I know you probably don’t feel the same way. I know you didn’t even know my name until tonight but I just wanted to say, in case we never have the chance to speak again-”

“Stop,” I cut him off, my mind already about to explode. “Stop, um…” I refused to look at him as I spoke, furiously staring down at my lap. “I need more time to… process this.”

He had a crush on me since the first day of kindergarten? He’d heard me sing and from that day forward he held a hidden candle for me?

And he never once worked up the courage to talk to me?

Dozens of moments suddenly race through my mind.

Cerulean blue eyes finding me in a crowd countless times and then pulling away as soon as I meet them. The time I wanted to play a stupid game at recess and a stocky blonde boy volunteered to be team captain, and then picked me first. The stunning drawing I found in my locker last year on Sweetheart’s Day, that I was convinced was put there by mistake, though it bore a striking resemblance to the doodles on Peeta’s notebook.

And before I could stop it, I felt myself begin to shake with nerves.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he apologized, seeing my frightened reaction. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just… I didn’t know if I’d ever get the opportunity to tell you again-”

“Shhh,” I hushed, picking up the damp cloth once more. “Let me take care of your face. And then…” I hesitated again, unsure what to say in this situation. I had exactly zero experiences to compare this to. “Tomorrow we can talk more.”

Peeta nodded amicably, staying silent for the reminder of my ministrations. I felt a terrible pang of guilt for not responding the way he’d probably hoped, but there was still a part of me too stunned to even fully register the confession.

I was an outcast. I’d never fit in with the kids at school, neither town or Seam. I don’t look like the merchants and I’m too rich for the Seam folk. I would have been alone all the time at school if it weren’t for Madge Undersee, the mayor’s daughter who sat with me at lunch and partnered with me in class.

How could anyone have even noticed me to be anything other than strange? I barely spoke, even in classes where I knew all the answers. And I hardly participated in games or gossip. I had a father who insisted most days on picking me up himself from school, not allowing me to walk home alone like the other kids.

But the look in Peeta’s eyes was earnest. He wasn’t playing some elaborate trick on me, he wasn’t trying to coerce me into confessing something as well so he could humiliate me. He was being genuine in every way I could tell. And I had my father’s senses.

The same senses that helped him win his hunger games.

A new thought struck me out of the blue. Peeta seemed too kind and too considerate to have a mother who beat him like this. He doesn’t fit the profile of the kids in the community home, brought there by even less abuse than I witnessed firsthand tonight.

The insane urge to get to know him more, to learn more about this complete stranger who I went out on an impulsive limb for suddenly surges through my brain.

It wouldn’t be a good idea, I told myself. He’s a merchant and I’m the daughter of a victor. Two titles that seem not far apart in theory but are miles away from the other in practice. And I’m not experienced with people the way he is. I don’t know how to make friends or how to maintain them. I don’t know what he expects from me but it’s surely more than I know how to give. I don’t know what to say in a situation like this. Haymitch always tells me I’m as romantic as dirt.

But is that what I want to be? I asked myself as I finished fixing Peeta up. Do I want to be romantic? Do I want to be that girl who holds her boyfriend’s hand in the town square and kisses him under the moonlight? Do I want to put an embroidered ribbon in my hair and wear an expensive dress from the Capitol to go to the Sweetheart’s Dance? Do I want to sneak in through my bedroom window at the crack of dawn so my father won’t know I’ve been out all night?

If I could learn to be romantic, would I want to be?

And naturally, the answer I’ve always known automatically seeps through my brain. No. I’m not like my mother and Prim. I’m practical by nature, rather than fanciful. I’ve never truly obsessed about falling in love or fawned over even the most incredible looking men on the television.

But something held me back now. Something inside me said that answer, the truth I’d always known, is suddenly not entirely accurate anymore.

Because I find that I did want those things I just described. I did want to have someone to hold, someone to laugh with, someone who conjured up that same flip in my stomach as Peeta did earlier when he laughed.

I wanted the same kind of love my parents had. The kind of love that brought them both to life, despite the horrible circumstances they’d both separately endured. I wanted the kind of love that they showed me was possible, even in a world as bleak and as inhumane as Panem felt at times.

I only realized how long I’d been silent, contemplating my inner desires, when Peeta offered a minuscule smile and stood up slowly to leave.

I opened my mouth to speak but when his eyes met mine, every thought in my head was magically wiped away. I had nothing to say, nothing that could be of any sort of consequence, that could mean anything in comparison to his confession.

“I should head back to town,” he murmured, trying to appear nonchalant. “Face my mother. Hope she’s in a better mood now-”

But I couldn’t stand the idea of him returning to the witch, the idea of going to school tomorrow and acting like his words weren’t still spinning around my brain, the idea of even sleeping soundly tonight.

“Peeta,” I called just as he was about to reach the front door. “Wait!”

He turned towards me, looking puzzled by my outburst. “What’s wrong?”

And I don’t know what came over me. I still can’t place what made me—a girl who had never been decisive a day in her life—fling myself across the room and smash my lips onto his.

He didn’t respond at first. I caught him too completely by surprise. His lips hung there, frozen, as mine pushed against his, with too much force and an overload of desperation.

But I felt an incredible stirring in my chest, an odd sensation that felt akin to a giggle amplified.

And when he finally recovered from the shock of it all, his hands both came to rest on either side of my hips, his mouth began to move against mine, his knees bent to reach my height with more success, and the stirring turned to a fiery spark. I know he felt it too, as the kiss was swiftly disturbed by his wide grin.

“Don’t go back home tonight,” I gasped out, looking up at him, wide-eyed and breathless.

His gaze melted as he took me in, he head bobbing in agreement without even needing to consider my request.

“Okay,” he’d whispered with a dazed smile, his blue eyes impossibly wild and sleepy at the same time.

His expression, his spirit somehow, was contagious, and I found myself somewhere stuck between a laugh and a blush when I replied.

“Okay.”

After that night, Peeta rarely went back home. I had called my mother and let her know I was staying at the cabin, but intentionally eluded telling her that the baker’s son was joining me. We’d spent the entire night talking in front of the fire, making each other laugh. The bashfulness I felt from my unexpected kiss stayed in my gut, causing me to bubble up with embarrassed laughter every so often.

But instead of that making things awkward, it cut the tension pretty smoothly. It was only months later did Peeta confess he’d felt just as nervous and just as shy about spending time with me. He was charismatic, I realize even that first night. Ironically funny. He was nice, in a way I rarely have found anyone to be. And, the more time went on, the more my desire grew to stay close to him. The more often I was around him, the more painfully I missed him when we were apart.

It was only a matter of time until my mother found out—not least of all, because my siblings accidentally caught us kissing in back of the school, a month to the day we first spoke.

I always imagined she’d be strict on me, the firstborn, when it came to dating. Especially in the world we lived in. Especially with my father’s position. I truly thought she’d forbid a relationship until I was of age. Maybe I was wrong about her. Or maybe she just saw how I looked at Peeta and understood that I wasn’t just being careless or rebellious. That whatever magnetic connection I felt towards Peeta wasn’t just an ordinary school-aged fling.

To my surprise as well, my mother seemed to take on a very similar stance to me when it came to Peeta and my father. Keeping the news of this entanglement from her husband’s ears was almost her idea.

“What are you thinking about?” Peeta asks me now, bringing me back to the present moment. His fingers tickle my neck as they brush my hair back behind my ear, touching one of the satin green ribbons weaved throughout my loose braids.

“You,” I reply coyly, shooting him a sly glance as I slip past him to head back towards the kitchen.

“Me?” He calls in mock disbelief. He trails up behind me, catching me by the waist and swinging me into his arms without warning.

“Peeta!” I exclaim, automatically wrapping myself around him as I try to steady my balance midair.

“What, baby?”

“Put me down, baby,” I mock, pressing my nose to his now, rubbing them together.

“I like holding you though,” he whispers, like he’s confessing some huge secret.

“Until your arms gets tired-”

“That was one time, Katniss.”

“I’m just reminding you,” I say with an air of superiority. “You don’t always appreciate holding me.”

At that, his demeanor falls a little. “I do when I realize I won’t be seeing you much in a few days.”

I feel my heart sink now too. As excited as I am at the prospect of my father coming home, after weeks apart, I always have to be a little more careful upon his first days back.

He always likes to spend time at the cabin and go for long walks in the woods upon his return. Spend more time in nature than the indoors, stay far away from people outside our family, sleep under the stars by the lake. The Capitol is apparently luxurious, but in my father’s own words, it is void of any true or natural beauty. Everything is artificial, man-made, concocted and orchestrated. There’s nothing that compares in his mind—or mine either—to a cool breeze on a sunny day spent in the meadow where the dandelions grow tall.

“But I’ll still see you in school?” I say, though my voice comes out as more of a plea. Peeta doesn’t always like to attend school these days, not when he knows his parents can easily track him down there.

His father, the baker himself, took the ambiguous loss of his youngest—his favorite—son particularly hard. It was only a matter of weeks after I intercepted his mother beating him that Peeta definitively decided to sever ties with majority of his family.

I’d like to say he made the choice all on his own but that’d be a lie. I watched as the physical bruises on his skin healed, as he began to peel back emotional layer upon layer to me, as he slowly told me what really had been going on in the Mellark’s family home. And I can’t say that I was impartial to his decision to cut the connection to a mother with a bruising fist and a father who closed his eyes and let it happen.

“Delly’s parents usually make me go to school so…” He shrugs it off, like it’s of no consequence, his arms hoisting me higher against his chest.

But I feel a sudden wave of gratitude towards the Cartwrights. They may be a little too jolly for my liking and their daughter, Delly, maybe can’t take a hint to save her life, but at least they always watch out for Peeta’s well-being. At least they cover for him when his mother come sniffing around and they feed him what they can afford and force him to attend class, where I’ll be able to see him.

“Good,” I murmur, at peace now. My father will be home soon and Peeta will be safely tucked away with his best friend.

I lean down and kiss his nose sweetly, reveling in the tender moment. His lips follow my lead and begin to plant themselves across my chin, underneath my jaw, causing me to squirm and squeal at the sensation.

“So,” he murmurs against my throat. “We have the entire place to ourselves, for the whole night, huh?”

His audacious smile elicits my own. “At least.” My father’s delays usually mean a minimum of two days.

Within a minute, Peeta has me on my back, against the softly quilted bed of my upstairs room. He takes his time helping me out of my clothes before I hurriedly shove his off, impatient and hungry.

He, of course, finds time to crack a joke. “Good thing Archie is too young to come here unchaperoned. Or else we’d never get the chance to do this.”

I roll my eyes and shove his mouth off my collarbone, utterly disgusted now. “Talking about my baby brother is one sure way to turn me off, Peeta.”

Archer, my three-old-brother, was an unexpected surprise, to put it lightly. My parents were done with two girls. My father joked him and my mother were both already set with one clone each, but alas, the year of the Seventieth Hunger Games was a year full of shocks.

A few months before the games that year, the coal mines—the industry Twelve is known for—exploded. Right in the middle of the afternoon, as everyone was obliviously going about their day.

It was a close call for many and one more reason my father is beloved around these parts. If he hadn’t been at the right place, at the right time, if he hadn’t volunteered to go with Prim and her class on a field trip down to the mines that day, there was a chance that no one would have noticed the gas leak.

It was too late to do anything by the time my father pointed it out, but his warning and the fact that people in Twelve take his word very seriously, managed to save the lives the inevitable explosion would have otherwise cost.

Through the outpouring of gratitude, and the overwhelming media coverage my whole family was abruptly bombarded with, my parents made the decision to pull me and Prim from school for a while, to hole up in the remodeled cabin, where no one could find us because of its illegal location.

I’ve never ask and I don't ever want to know when my parents conceived Archer. But about nine months after the vacation from the world, my mother gave birth to a little boy who looked identical to me and my father.

“Sorry,” Peeta whispers with a chuckle, collapsing beside me. “I’ll make it up to you.”

He moves to kiss my stomach, to trace circles on my hips like he always does. But I shake my head, a different request—or more like it, demand—on my mind.

“Tell me the story of how you first fell in love with me?”

Peeta rolls his eyes. Very dramatically. “You mean a year ago?”

“I mean in kindergarten,” I say with a smirk and then let out a shriek of surprise when he pounces on me, his lips attacking my neck.

“Aren’t you tired of that story yet?” He asks, his voice edging on exasperated.

“You never tire of a classic.” I give him a pout, knowing he never refuses me anything when I pull that trick.

I’m right, as per usual. “Fine,” he relents, but his eyes tell me that he enjoys telling this tale more than he leads on. “Come here.” He holds open his arms and waits for me to crawl into them, to settle against his chest.

I lay there for a long moment, my pointer finger running up and down the center of his bicep, as my ear rests against his heartbeat, patiently waiting for him to begin.

“It was the very first day of school. You were wearing a red, velvet dress…”

Read the rest on AO3

#katnissmellarkkkk #prompt 59 #Springtime edition 2021 #submission

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transmascdeanwinchester · 4 years

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You got any trans man dean headcanons? 👀

I don’t know when u sent this so sorry if I’m answering late!!!

Also I just have the basic bitch set of trans dean headcanons tbh but they make me go feral so I will repeat them!!

- lazurus rising when cas brought dean back he put him in the body he’s always deserved (the mirror scene lives in my head rent free baby!)

- teenage dean stealing testosterone from hospitals and pharmacies when he had the chance bc they moved around too much for him to have a stable prescription pickup plan

- John being pissed for awhile that dean’s not his “perfect little girl” like he thought but getting over it bc dean is so determined to emulate him to prove his masculinity that it just makes him a better more fierce hunter and protector so John gets over it in like a year (Dean’s always been Like That anyway,,, in the grand scheme of things it’s less Distracting to have this small ongoing conflict that John just calls him Dean and does the passive aggressive “you wanna be a man? Act like it.” bullshit you know how it goes)

- Dean knowing he’s not a girl from a young age (like probably about 6) and teaches Sam to call him Dean and that he’s his brother from the time sammy can talk (Sam doesn’t learn Dean’s name is legally Deanna until he’s starting middle school)

- Dean binding in his teens by wearing those tank tops that are like skin tight but also stretchy material? With the built in bra part? he wears two of those under all the Normal Winchester layers and it gives him the flat chest (what isn’t flattened completely gets lost under his dad’s leather jacket he wears to school every day)

- it goes without saying but Dean, age 7, cut his hair for the first time in a shitty hotel bathroom mirror by trying to copy a dude in a shaving ad in a magazine (John didn’t even notice for three days)

- Dean gets top surgery after sam goes to Stanford when he’s supposed to be on a solo hunt (he tells John he’s hunting something but really he’s recovering at Bobby’s)

- Bobby, we are not surprised, is a good father figure and shut that shit down when dean explains that he’s just gonna hole up in a motel once he gets his surgery (“Boy, do you know how fucking dirty motel linens are? I am NOT letting you die from an infection and most certainly not leaving you Alone for months defenseless”)

- Dean using makeup to make his jawline a little sharper and more square even tho the iffy food situation growing up made sure he barely has any roundness to his face to begin with

- on the flip side dean playing up his fem features to use as a distraction when he hustles pool

- dean training his voice by trying to copy the sound of his favorite singers voices (and John since he hears his voice most consistently)

- dean knocking the shit out of transphobes (the comments don’t even have to be directed at him, he hears them and it’s ON SIGHT no question)

- dean acting like a womanizer bc that’s what Men Do and it’s all just literally part of his carefully constructed hyper masculine image bc it’s so so difficult to pick up anyone when what’s under theclothes don’t match what can be seen on the surface (Cassie is the first person he sleeps with and he’s so terrified but she doesn’t care holy shit she doesn’t care?)

- Dean chooses to keep his name close to his birth name bc that’s the name his mother gave him and he doesn’t want to disrespect her by completely changing it

- On the topic of dean’s hyper masculine image he constructs it from a mix of John and from the action movies he studies religiously when he has the chance (this is what boys like this is what every man dreams of being I have to like this too-) even tho he has enough action and violence in his actual life thanks,

- Dean not being big on faith because he can’t imagine some higher power choosing to make him be born in the wrong body and make him work so hard to fix it himself like life wasn’t hard Enough

- Dean being so immensely pleased when word gets around the monster worlds about the Winchester Brothers,,, the validity of your reputation being cemented in the way you’ve carefully crafted it to be

- Dean rationalizing that it’s okay for him to spend time and energy on making sure he’s presenting masc and getting the body language and mannerisms down because it helps him be better at his jobs as protector of his family and as a hunter (men are thought of as stronger/scarier, men are taken more seriously when interviewing locals/victim’s families, more authority is afforded to men)

- dean almost shooting a man in a bar bathroom when he’s fourteen and just needed to deal with shark week stuff real quickly but this drunk decided a “teenage girlie only has one use in a men’s bathroom” but dean just knocks him out and sprints back to the motel (dean doesn’t use public bathrooms after that if he can help it)

- dean not knowing the word transgender until he finds it in a library book while he’s supposed to be researching but really he’d heard the slur and needed to be clear on why it made him feel so icky so he was looking it up in the dictionary and he’s like Oh that’s Me

- Bobby doesn’t actually meet Sam and Dean until after Dean’s cut his hair for the first time and Sammy can only say half words (most Dee, which is good enough for Dean) so one of Dean’s first impressions of Bobby is him asking John “didn’t you have a daughter?” and John just giving a tired sigh because he’s too busy with the hunt he’s here for to try and get into it but Dean butts in with “No, he’s always had two boys, I’m Dean and this is Sammy” and Bobby doesn’t comment on this little high pitched voice or question it much because he’s babysitting this kid for the next two weeks and he doesn’t want it to be a hostile two weeks (and it never becomes a problem because by the end of week one Bobby never even entertains the idea that Dean isn’t a little boy)

- After Dean gets back from Hell literally the only thing that trips Sam and Bobby up (aside from that he just resurrected lmao) is that his shoulders are more squared and he’s just built more like he should be (see previous point about cas rebuilding him as he should’ve been!)

- Dean never having much money but he still donates to queer charities when he can (makes a point of it in June especially)

- Dean hangs a trans flag in his room at the bunker (and one in the dean cave too)

- The insane validation Dean feels at being called The Rifhteous Man (also the fact that Heaven Knew he was a man all along but didn’t lift a finger to make that any easier to show the rest of the world adds to dean’s general hatred towards them tho)

That’s all I can think of right now but just!! Trans Dean!!!!

Thank u for asking friend!!!

(@bowie-boy I am tagging u bc idk if u will see this post so hope that’s okay!!!)

#shut up sammy

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fallout-fallen-knight · 4 years

Text

Meet My OCs masterpost!

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these and I’ve gotten a lot of new followers and several new OCs in that time. Enough now that I should probably put them under a read more. OCs are divided up by main setting that they fall under - even though all my Fallout content takes place in its own ‘verse (distinct from the canon Fallout verse in that there are horses, among other differences), the various coasts tend to be pretty separate. Without further ado:

Fallen Knight

Fallen Knight is a longform fic that is currently and irregularly updating. It takes place in the Commonwealth in 2287-2289, featuring a mix of canon characters (often modified to my own convenience) and OCs. It can be found here.

Christopher Farris, aka the Fallen Knight (Lone Wanderer)

[image ID: a drawing of Christopher Farris by @scarecrow-forest. He is a white, blond man wearing a baseball cap, a green shirt, and a long tan vest. He is holding a baseball bat and has a pip-boy on his arm. End ID]

Christopher is my lone wanderer that I ported to Fallout 4. He is (currently) a Brotherhood of Steel Knight alongside Paladin Danse. He is the main character of Fallout: Fallen Knight. He has a strong moral compass and idolizes the knightly ideas of protecting the weak and confronting the strong. Content for him on my blog can be found at #fallen knight.

Kristine Finch, Minuteman General

[image ID: a screenshot from Fallout 4 of Kristine Finch. She is a light-skinned woman in a blue shirt and tan jacket, with a cowboy-like hat. She is standing in front of a ramshackle wooden building with a neon sign that says “Minuteman HQ”. End ID]

Kristine is my Minuteman OC and the General of the Minutemen. Under her leadership, they have worked to make the commonwealth safer by uniting various settlements to exchange resources and provide mutual defense. She has also published the Minuteman Guide To Commonwealth Travel, also known as the Blue Book, a handy pamphlet for settlers and traders making their way across the Commonwealth. Content for her can be found at #one if by land.

Thomas “The Trigger” Calvani

[image ID: a screenshot from Fallout 4 of Thomas Calvani. He is a white, brown-haired man in road leathers with various leather armor layered over it. He wears a pair of reflective aviator sunglasses and a green bandana covering his face. He is standing in front of power armor with flames painted on it. End ID]

Thomas Calvani is a ne’er-do-well from the Atom Cats who has somehow managed to continuously fall upwards, somehow culminating with him as the Overboss of the Nuka World raiders after trying to go to Nuka World with MacCready and Cait. Content for him can be found at #tales from the commonwealth.

Greetings from Appalachia

Hector Sanchez (Reclaimer)

[image ID: a Vault Tec ID card from Fallout 76. It belongs to Hector Sanchez, a latine man with brown hair, a Vault 76 jumpsuit, and a van dyke beard. He is smiling and giving a thumbs up to the camera. End ID]

Hector Sanchez is an amateur cryptid hunter from Vault 76. Raised in the vault on his mother’s stories of cryptids before the war, he left the vault with his best friend Hazel in search of cryptids to find. Content for him can be found at #greetings from appalachia.

Fallout: Brave New World

Brave New World is a collection of various OCs who end up in the Mojave wasteland at the same time, in around 2289 or so. While no unifying narrative yet exists, I am planning some ficlets/short form fic around these OCs.

Ace (Courier 6)

[image ID: a screenshot from Fallout: New Vegas of Ace. He is a latine man with an eyepatch, a black cowboy hat, and a black leather coat over blue jeans, with several belts and bandoliers. He is standing in front of Dinky the Dinosaur and pointing a gun off screen. End ID]

Ace is my courier, and a member of the Great Khans. Still a teenager when Bitter Springs happened, he was separated from the rest of the Khans and spent his remaining teenage years doing odd jobs around the Mojave and avoiding the encroaching NCR, culminating in a fateful job for the Mojave Express. He now finds himself down one eye, hunting the Mojave for Benny and the platinum chip. Content for him can be found at #ace in the hole.

Sophia Mobius

[image ID: a screenshot of Fallout: New Vegas of Sophia Mobius. She is a white woman with white hair and round, cat-eye glasses. She is wearing a red labcoat and has the holorifle strapped to her back. End ID]

Sophia is a Followers medic turned disciple of Doctor Mobius after a chance encounter with a crashed satellite sent her to the Big MT. She later traveled to the Sierra Madre casino with Arcade and Veronica to hunt down and stop Father Elijah. She is now working with the Veronica and Christine to convince Brotherhood members to leave, smuggling out technology if possible, to assist the Followers of the Apocalypse. Content for her can be found at #followers of mobius

Martin Goldberg aka the Silver Canary (Reclaimer)

[image ID: a drawing of Martin Goldberg and Emmerane Black, aka the Silver Canary and Coal Black, by @rotarydials. Martin is a dark skinned man with silver hair and a beard. He is dressed in the Silver Shroud’s outfit - a black and gray trenchcoat and fedora with a silver scarf. He carries a submachine gun, which he is pointing off camera. Emmerane is a white woman with short black hair. She has black goggles and a black cloak over a white shirt and red vest. She is doing air-guitar motions. They both have pip-boys. End ID]

Martin Goldberg, known better as the Silver Canary, was a pre-war vigilante and the inspiration for the Silver Shroud. As a staunch anti-fascist and anti-capitalist, he had several encounters with the movers and shakers of American industry, notably Robert House, whose suite Martin broke into while he was visiting a West Virginia plant. Upon learning about Vault-Tec’s plans for Vault 76, he broke into Vault Tec University, changing the list of vault residents to a list of random West Virginia citizens, as well as himself.

While in the Vault, Emmerane Black, a moody young woman born in the vault, declared herself his nemesis. When they left the vault in 2102, he learned of this, and instead decided to take her under his wing, forcibly adopting the young supervillain. Though they clashed often at first, they quickly found they had more in common than they realized, and soon teamed up to take on certain targets - most notably the Brotherhood of Steel.

At some point in the following years, both Martin and Emmerane ghoulified, and in the late 2200s, Martin traveled west, to find his old nemesis, Robert House. He now haunts the areas around Vegas, a mysterious spectre doling out justice to the wicked. Content for Martin and Emmerane can be found at #the silver canary and coal black. Emmerane belongs to @corsairesix

Caroline Keene, Ranger of the Wastes

[image ID: a screenshot from HeroForge of a black ghoul woman with short braids. She is wearing a cowboy hat, long duster, cowboy boots, and a shirt and pants that are all brown with tan accents. She has a revolver and a knife strapped to her hip and a repeater on her back. She is offering a hammered tin cup to the “camera”. End ID]

Caroline Keene was a park ranger in a firewatch tower in Monongahela National Forest when the bombs fell. After a few days of quiet introspection, her and some of her fellow rangers agreed to make their way to the nearest town to find survivors, slowly making their way to Flatwoods and then Morgantown to join the Responders.

After helping the Responders stabilize Appalachia in the wake of the Great War and faction infighting that followed, Caroline traveled west, continuing to help out those in need as he crossed the country that had once been America. During this time, she began to ghoulify; though initially and understandably distraught, a community of ghouls in what was once Texas helped her to accept her condition. Upon arriving in the Mojave, she found that her reputation as the “Ranger of the Wastes” preceded her, and she was recruited by the desert rangers, though she left again when they were incorporated with the NCR. Now, she has settled in the Mojave, starting a brahmin and bighorner ranch with her partners, and helping shelter, teach, and raise lost and disaffected youth in the Mojave. Content for her can be found at #ranger of the wastes

The King of the Road (Chosen One)

[image ID: a screenshot of Heroforge of a dark skinned ghoul in a black suit. He has a red tie and a red cape, and is wearing round glasses and an opulent crown. He carries a spear and has a holstered revolver on his hip. Near his feet is a pile of coins and a gray cat, ready to pounce. End ID]

The King of the Road was once the Chosen One of Arroyo, but became disatisfied with the duties of ruling and the pressures of being the tribe’s chosen one. In 2244, he left Arroyo, wandering New California as a drifter. He abanoned his name and title, choosing instead to take the name of the King of the Road as his renown as a drifter grew. He ghoulified due to his exposure to radiation over the years, but took to the change rather well. He continued to travel the roads of New California, eventually finding his way to the Mojave wasteland as the NCR did. Content for him can be found at #king of the road (when I make it).

Angelia King

[image ID: a Heroforge mini of a white woman seated on a white horse. She is wearing a tan jacket over a brown chest piece, chaps, and tan cowboy boots. She has a red bandana around her neck and several belts around her waist, one of which holds a holstered pistol. Her left eye is covered by an eyepatch and there is dark makeup around both of her eyes. She has short dyed blonde and red hair that is shaved on one side. She is brandishing a rifle towards the camera and there is a sawed-off shotgun on her back. End ID]

Angelina King, the leader of the Nightstalkers, a gang in the Mojave in 2289. When Ace drives the NCR out of the Mojave, she at first believes that she will be allowed to operate with relative impunity; however, when the NCR supply trains stop coming from the west (no longer needing to fight a war that has been lost), she starts hitting caravans first and then larger settlements, carving her way across the Mojave towards New Vegas. Content for her can be found at #the nightstalkers strike again.

Other OCs

Hannah Alton

[image ID: a screenshot from Heroforge of a white woman wearing a forest green cloak. She has a brown cloth wrapped around her chest and blue jeans on. She has a quiver of crossbow bolts on her hip and is holding a crossbow. She has red hair and several piercings. End ID]

Hannah Alton is my PC for our Fallout: New Orleans campaign run by and using the PBTA hack Powered by the Nuclear Apocalypse made by @corsairesix. Hannah is a “raider” from a gang called the Robbin’ Hoods, a gang dedicated to stealing from New Orleans’ ghoul aristocrats and redistributing their wealth to the town they’re based in. Content for her can e found on #fallout New Orleans and #powered by the nuclear apocalypse

#queue #fallen knight #one if by land #tales from the commonwealth #greetings from appalachia #ace in the hole #followers of mobius #the silver canary and coal black #ranger of the wastes #king of the road #fallout new orleans #powered by the nuclear apocalypse #the nightstalkers strike again

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baegarrick · 4 years

Note

hi hello so i’m coming to you because you’re the only person in the zukka fandom that i’ve seen blogging about the old guard and i love that movie SO MUCH and i can’t stop thinking about immortal zukka..... aang as either nile or andy bc i can’t choose, andy wouldn’t lose her immortality, and no one would betray anyone bc i say so 😌 how do you think an atla/the old guard au would work?? (zukkababey)

ok i rly love the idea of immortal everyone but tbh!!! i really dont know enough about asian history to like... go into detail about this honestly and I really didn’t want to come off as racist by fudging some stuff, but here r some bulletpoints about Things

(also u can slide into my dms 2 talk about this if u want, or if u have a discord, sorry it too so long I literally cant stop writing when I get on Topics. I'm so sorry if this gets off topic)

Sokka & Katara

In this au they’re not biologically related, but are both Inuit

Sokka dies first in a skirmish with another group of indigenous people in northern Canada (Inuit Nunangat) sometime prior to 1800

He knows he died, his people saw him die, and he doesn’t understand what’s happening (I really don’t know enough about the Inuit people to say whether they would have rejected him or tried to help him understand what happened to him)

however, I’d like to think they’d at least tell him to talk to the angakkuq, the shaman, and would probably see this as a positive thing

Eventually his band of people would whittle down to just a dozen or so, after long winters and harsh climates, and they were forced to assimilate with other bands who didn’t have ancestors who were there when Sokka died in the first place, so he has to move on.

He travels around for a while, trading and learning and staying in bands for a few years before moving on to another group, until it’s the 1800s

Around this time, Katara is born (and dies)

She refuses to stand down against a white French hunter who wanted to take one of the young women in her village as a wife, and she’s killed, and the woman is taken anyway.

When she wakes up, she’s furious, and before she can understand what happened to her, she finds the man and kills him. She’s arrested and set to be killed when Sokka finds her.

They aren’t biological siblings, but they come from the same people, and the world is changing rapidly and they’re the only people they know who are like this. The idea of marrying Katara is the worst thing that Sokka can think of-- look at her, she’s just a baby!!-- so they call each other siblings and travel together.

Zuko

ok again i know literally 0 things about chinese history like i googled “female chinese warriors” for suki and got like 100 things for mulan

Zuko is old, probably one of the oldest of the (living) group, but younger than Aang

he was the first son of the second son of the emperor in a time of political conflict in China. His father, the prince, was at war with his own brother who Zuko considered a father figure.

zuko speaks out against his father and is killed for being a traitor, but, guess what, he doesn’t die!!! his father does it again for posterity and uhhhhhh still doesn’t die. (or rather, dies, and comes back)

here’s where my uhhhhhh lack of knowledge is Bad

would his father banish him for being cursed? for somehow being against the gods?

or would he force him to fight in his armies, against his uncle, because he can’t die?

I was going to go with “banished” but fighting for decades in a fight he doesn’t want to be in is so! much! worse!

his father wants to know the secrets of his immortality and when he can’t share it he’s tortured and tested for years, and eventually sent out to fight as an immortal soldier who can’t die.

eventually he escapes, and leaves china for a long time (he doesn’t return for centuries)

he is highly distrustful of anyone for years bc of his father!! he wanders around for years like he does in Zuko Alone (or like Quynh before Andy finds her) and while he sees small bits of humanity, he has little faith in it and their wars, because he is Not One Of Them

For money he joins bandit groups or warlords or mercenaries, because why does any of that matter to him? Everyone dies.

Eventually he meets Aang, who is Humanity Personified, and Aang asks him if he thinks they can be friends-- but they’re on opposite sides of this conflict and Zuko is too disillusioned to want that. (they part ways)

He meets a man, Iroh, who reminds him of his uncle. They travel together for far longer than Zuko normally would, because he likes having a father figure, and because Iroh lost a son about Zuko’s age. They travel for years and Zuko never ages, so eventually he has to leave. Iroh finds him a few years later, greyer and slower, but tells Zuko that he knows about Zuko.

Zuko reacts poorly to this, lashing out, but Iroh is calm. Zuko breaks down and tells him he can’t give Iroh what he wants. (what Zuko assumes he wants-- what they all want, immortality)

But Iroh’s like, why would I want that? it sounds like a curse, son. Why would I want to never see my son again?

He tells Zuko: we’re not meant to be alone

After Iroh passes a few years later, he tries to track down Aang but can’t find him. He, however, has dreams about the others.

alternatively///////// japanese zuko?????? RONIN ZUKO???? love it but im too tired to think of More Than That after typing all the chinese zuko stuff up, although im Sure a ton of it would cross over bc im vague as Hell

Aang

he’s the oldest of the group but you wouldn’t know it!!!!

Roku was his mentor, the first immortal that any of them know of. He’s thousands of years old when Aang meets him. (He’s also the first to die. He shows Aang that All Things Must Die)

Aang is Tibetan, a Buddhist monk, one of the earliest, maybe the 7th century?

He dies in a temple fire

here again my complete and utter lack of knowledge is Bad

according to Dzogchen, individuals can transform their body into an immortal rainbow light, so there’s some mention of immortality in certain parts of Tibetan Buddhist culture, but idk how widespread that is since wikipedia didnt even have a source for it

he becomes a missionary and travels around asia for decades before Roku finds him

Roku!!! he’s an Old Immortal, and probably wants to die a little bit at this point, and he eventually does!! but for awhile he and Aang travel around together, and butt heads a bit bc Aang’s pacifist nature, and Roku thinks Aang Will Change as he gets older

aang is absolutely devastated by the Mongol invasion of Tibet in the 13th century

roku dies about a hundred years after he meets aang, and aang travels around a little aimlessly for awhile, learning all kinds of things and befriending people he’ll outlive. it dampens his spirits a bit.

eventually he meets Zuko, who’s far more jaded than Roku was, even, and wants to be friends, but respects Zuko’s decision otherwise.

Eventually, aang travels with the Norse to Canada in the 15th century, but when they leave they don’t take him with them. Instead, he ends up frozen ala steve rogers. Katara and Sokka find him a few hundred years later.

alternatively////// Aang IS the newest kid. he’s the Nile of the group. He’s still a Tibetan monk, and views this as a teaching/learning opportunity. He would also probably like everyone to stop killing each other. Sokka rolls his eyes at him constantly.

Toph

toph is a struggle bc how do you deal with an IMMORTAL BLIND GIRL

I’m gonna stick w her show backstory: rich, blind daughter of a wealthy Chinese family

Is kidnapped and her throat is slit when she’s young (maybe an older teenager) and the kidnappers panic, leaving her body. She’s found, namely unharmed, and resumes life despite the fact she knows she died.

However, being a privileged young girl, she’s kept under watch and it quickly becomes known that she’s immortal.

She’s regarded as a living deity for centuries until she meets Suki, who rescues her from the place and teaches her to fight. (she becomes a myth, later, rather than a historical fact)

alternatively//////// she could have been first generation chinese-american, and therefore the youngest

Suki

Suki was a third generation female warrior of her family who guarded the boarder during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), and trained from a young age in martial arts. (insp by the story of Mu Guiying)

She’s a war orphan, and leads an army of war widows and orphan women, but meets her untimely end with some of her sisters in a reign of arrows. She’s buried by some of her sisters before she wakes up again, and has to claw her way to the surface.

Her sisters don’t know how to react to her (a lot like Nile’s soldiers) so she eventually leaves them.

After her death, she hears rumors of a living goddess (Toph) and goes to see if there really is another person like her, and finds one of the people from her dreams (Toph)

She trains Toph to fight despite her being blind, and the pair become an unusual duo for a couple hundred years.

eventually, they start dreaming about a pair of siblings in the New World (not that new!! people live there!!) and book passage there in the 1800s with the first major wave of Chinese immigration

They dream about each other. it happens a lot at first, but it tapers out over the years. it grows stronger whenever a new one (katara) is born, but Katara and Sokka have NO desire to leave their homeland to go look for these strange people until they find Aang. (what languages might they have in common? russian??? the russians came to settle alaska, I know bc my stepmom is native alaskan and russian--- the Mongols invaded TIbet and Mongolia is right next to Russia, so Aang might know it??)

When they find Aang, Suki and Toph start dreaming of them again, and so does Zuko and they all start making their way to San Francisco. The Chinese wouldn’t arrive in Canada until around the 1850s (according to google) so Sokka probably wouldn’t speak any Chinese (mandarin???? i dont know things), but Zuko might speak some English or Russian. [really just gonna be a bunch of chinese, inuit, and tibetan people speaking russian to each other, isn’t it??]

Aang greets Zuko like an old friend, and Zuko Does Not know what to do with that. he’s skirtish and shy and hasn’t really been around a lot of friendly people. Sokka does NOT trust him. At all!! (he wants Katara to stay FAR AWAY from him. stick with the harmless monk we found at the bottom of a lake, katara.)

They find Suki and Toph in a bar. Toph hustling people for money, and Suki drinking at the bar. It’s very strange to have all of them around, and it’s like, 1830. they all decide they like each other, after they get some good old fashioned stabbing in-- Katara is the only woman Sokka has been around whos like him, and she’s like his little sister, and all he wants to do is Protect Her, so he doesn’t know what to do with women who known knives. (get his ass handed to him, thats what)

I want Zuko to be a broody mess but honestly he’d probably revert back to yelling at people/things in ancient Chinese (mandarin? I’m not really sure what period he’s from exactly). He’s still got that Good streak in him, esp since he’s like, a hundred years off his adopted uncle Iroh.

and you know what? 1830 america is NOT a cool place for anyone!! least of all asian immigrants, native americans, or women of either group

So the Gaang take to helping those people out any way they can. (Aang wants Peace, but you know white people, we don’t listen). They actively get involved in the underground railroad, eventually the civil war, and also helping out native americans, as well as chinese immigrants working on the railroads.

also so sorry I know the ask was about Zukka but I had to write a million words about their backstories first

Zuko + Sokka eventually come to a truce as the only dudes in this entire group who are willing to fight. Sokka is interested in both men and women, but he’s never really shared his life with anyone, and it’s the same for Zuko. Sokka, because he was regarded as an elder with his people, and after that he could only stay a few years. He had lovers, like Yue, but they all eventually died and Sokka couldn’t do anything about it!! Zuko, because while he also had lovers, he couldn’t really bear to be around humanity for a long time after what happened to him. (he’s vehemently opposed to slavery)

I think they get together at first just kind of because there isn’t really anyone else. Suki + Toph are kinda their own thing (are they lovers? sisters in arms? who knows), Katara is like Sokka’s sister (and if Zuko touches her Sokka will end his destiny permanently), and Aang is... aang.

It’s sorta a friends-with-benefits thing, except its an immortal warrior reluctant companions-with-benefits thing because can you really call this a friendship?? (its a family, eventually). Eventually it’s just kind of always been a thing. Sokka checking Zuko first when he comes back to life, counting down the second to make sure Zuko comes back at all. Zuko tells people he’s the only one allowed to kill Sokka, because lets be honest, the first couple of months with rowdy immortals meant killing each other a lot. When Sokka is killed violently in the Civil War, he wakes up half an hour later (slow, slow), to find a field of bodies and Zuko sitting next to him with his dao blades in the dirt, waiting for him. Sokka tries to make a joke, but it just makes Zuko mad, because what if that was the last time. (sokka jokes that he’s young, yet, not like Zuko)

They don’t really talk about it, partially because they don’t live in a world where it’s acceptable. What kind of title fits when you can only use it with 5 other people? But this time, when Zuko was afraid Sokka might not wake up, thirty years after they met, after lifetimes of being alone for both of them?? Sokka has to let Zuko know he loves him. Loves him!!! He’s not just here for the meantime.

thats all I have rn bc its 9pm and I’ve been writing this for like 3 hours. again if u wanna slide into my dms or if u have a discord and wanna talk about this/other stuff hmu. so sorry this got off topic.

also, the order I had them born in is:

roku --> aang --> Zuko --> suki --> toph --> sokka --> Katara

which may or may not be accurate to my timeline lol

Sokka probably speaks all of the Inuit languages, as well as French, English, and Russian, being alive for long enough to learn it all.

Katara refuses to learn French. Hates it. Never wants to learn.

She and Sokka personally keep Inuit traditions and languages alive as elders of their community, though it’s so much harder in modern times to stay connected to their culture bc they don’t age!!

disclaimer: bc the show was written as a complete mashup of several cultures I had to like..... pick where ppl were from. I picked china for Zuko/Suki/Toph bc they have a beautiful culture and a lot of dynasties I have heard a lot about recently while half watching the history channel. I really, really don’t know a lot about non-white culture as a white american from FLORIDA (so like, literally the farthest place you can get from the Inuit people and still be on the same continent). if you know more about these cultures than I do and I said something blatantly wrong pls let me know and I will change it.

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loveyourselfcreatively · 4 years

Text

Supernatural Finale Rewrite

(Author’s Notes: Regarding the finale, that was a lot and there was a lot I would have done differently. Although this isn’t perfect by any means, it’s what I would have liked and most expected from the finale. Hope you all enjoy and are feeling alright!)

Dean’s eyes opened when the sound of his alarm clock stabbed through the veil of sleep he was enjoying. Mechanically, he turned it off and sat up against the headboard, taking a deep breath and stewing on the events of the day prior. For once, he didn’t feel a weight over his shoulders. He didn’t feel like he was playing to someone else’s narrative. This was his first day of free will in his entire life and he felt faintly content about that fact, smiling to himself before his attention was trained upon Miracle. He lifted her up onto the bed and wrapped his arms around the fluffy and recently groomed canine, calmly rocking with her clasped in his arms. Sam was surprised by his affection for the dog but she was important to Dean and he was happy to have her in his corner when he began life without God’s dictation.

After doing his morning routine smoothly, with Miracle by his side, he got to the kitchen, following the tell-tale smell of Sam’s breakfast. He watched his brother use the spatula to unstick the turkey bacon from the skillet, Eileen directly behind him with her arms wrapped around his waist affectionately. She stood on her toes and was able to kiss Sam’s cheek as he smiled similar to how he used to when Dean would tease him about having crushes on girls. They were lucky to have Eileen again. Dean remembered Sam’s attempts to be strong throughout their days of being alone on Earth, eyes on getting people back and having Eileen again. When everyone came back and Eileen showed up at the bunker door, Sam very nearly cried and Dean was just as happy as Sam was relieved.

Although it wasn’t explicitly stated as they drove to investigate the case in Ohio, it felt like one of the last rides. This scared Dean but he also forced himself to accept it. Sam was holding Eileen’s hand even though she was in the back seat and stared out the window at passing trees, fantasizing with a hopeful demeanor. It wasn’t dissimilar to when Sam was getting to be a teenager and looked out the window, secretly fantasizing about going to college but keeping that fact to himself given Dean and John at the time were not very supportive of that idea. Dean was ready to hear this time and with that thought in mind, he stopped looking towards him and focused back on the road, sharing a knowing glance with Eileen, who understood Sam now had his mind on bigger things, in the rearview.

After fighting the vampires and saving those boys, that air of finality was nearly impossible to shake. Dean would have died if Eileen wasn’t there to tag-team the larger vampire with him and he was grateful for her presence. Still, a close-call was a close-call and Sam and Dean realized in that moment that recklessness was a bad practice to have now that God wasn’t protecting them for the sake of a good narrative. Not long after, only weeks following actually, Sam stood in the doorway of Dean’s room following a nice dinner of his own making. He spent hours on it and stewed over it like the day was some kind of occasion, and it was.

Dean was laying on his stomach on the bed, flicking through news stories on his tablet with Miracle curled up by his side unbothered. He glanced up from the tablet and placed it down when he saw the look on Sam’s face. He was struggling with something, brows furrowed but also tilted up with his lips pressed in a thin straight line. Dean wouldn’t prompt him, the words that would soon leave Sam’s lips were his to share. With a shuddering breath, Sam finally said what he wanted.

“Eileen and I, we uh,” he clears his throat and looks away from Dean to the corner of the room. Dean smiled knowingly to himself but remained silent, looking down at the bed spread and scratching at Miracle’s ear as he waited. “We were wanting to go on our own trip, for a while.”

Sam expected a response from Dean, eyes softened with fearful expectation, but he got nothing. The silence wasn’t bad or uncomfortable so he clarified.

“You knew I couldn’t do this so seriously forever,” he chuckles weakly, “she and I will continue of course, can’t forget hunting, but we want to try to move on. Even though she and I… you and I, will never be normal, it’s always been something I’ve wanted to try and I couldn’t comfortably do that the last few times, when you were gone. So, I think now’s the time to…” he scoffs in realization of what he was about to say, squinting his eyes and looking down, “move on I guess?” he laughs out abortively.

Dean finally nods and looks up to his brother, waiting until Sam looked him in the eyes to speak. “I think that’s a good idea, Sammy.”

Sam stood dumbfounded for a moment, not wholly surprised by Dean’s reaction but expecting more.

“It’s what you’ve always wanted and there’s no one here that has as much power to convince you otherwise but yourself.”

A weak but heartfelt smile crossed Sam’s face. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll take up that question on the daily,” he mumbles thoughtfully, “and eventually I’ll figure it out.” Looking up at Sam, he was happy to see he accepted the answer with a nod.

Sam and Dean didn’t talk as much as either would have wanted in the months following Sam and Eileen taking their leave from the bunker. Eileen, as they were planning on passing through Kansas on a casual hunt that interrupted the domesticity they enjoyed prior, suggested they drop by briefly to see how Dean was doing. Sam was happy she suggested it as he wouldn’t have attempted to otherwise, even though he secretly wanted to. When they got there, Baby was nowhere to be seen but Sam disregarded that. He asked if Eileen wanted to join him but she insisted their reunion was to be had between one another and that she’d join him soon enough prompting Sam to enter the dark bunker.

His brows furrowed as he turned on the lights and looked around, finding his own barren room and eventually finding Dean’s, although, it didn’t look like Deans. None of his stuff was there any longer and it seemed as though the only remnants of anyone being there in the first place was the scratching on the table in the main room and the very faint, concerning smell of smoke that permeated throughout the bunker. Not long after scoping out the place, he called Dean’s main phone, making his way out as he did so. Eileen was confused and waited for Sam to fill her in on why Dean didn’t join him but relaxed when Sam’s demeanor relaxed as well; the call was picked up.

“Hiya, Sammy, how are you and Eileen?” he said with a smile in his tone.

“Are you on a hunt?” Sam asked even though he was aware Dean’s lack of belongings at

the bunker implied more than a simple hunt.

Dean picked at his fries and ate another, waving off a waitress politely before she could ask if he was enjoying his meal. He was sitting on the outside patio of a diner with Miracle by his side. “I’m not actually.”

Bated silence was all that could be heard on Sam’s end.

“I thought about what you said, about moving on, and I thought I’d give it a try. Still hunting but I’m doing what I want, I guess,” he chuckles, coming off as genuinely happy, “that’s all we can really do, huh? So I’m giving it a try.”

“You’re not hunting anymore?”

“Woah woah woah, of course I’m still hunting, I’m just not… well… it’s whatever comes to me.” Dean thought of his words and frowned, the part of his father in him reminding him he was selfish for not spending every waking hour hunting. “Does that make me selfish, Sam?” he asked in a moment of clarity.

Eileen watched Sam intently, garnering an understanding from their interactions based on Sam’s facial expressions and words. His eyes were wide but sparkly in happiness, mouth opened and twitching as though he wanted to say something. His brows raised up suddenly and she instantly recognized a powerful “no” leaving his lips. He was happy despite his admonishment, and so was she. Dean, likely, had left for good, and she was happy for what that meant for the both of them.

Sam had an air about him following that interaction. He was happy and spoke to Dean often. In his childhood and adulthood he always feared one of them would die too young to see the other grow old. If that didn’t happen, he was sure they would have a large fight and never make up, but they remained close despite those predictions. Dean was there for nearly every Christmas and Thanksgiving that followed the phone call, even though he said it was only for the food. Dean hadn’t been the only one to join Sam and Eileen during the holidays at their home, of course.

Jody, with Donna and the girls, joined often and teased the boys for their old age every year and Dean remained close with Claire following his absence from the bunker. Sam didn’t think to think too much about it but, more times than not, when Dean visited Sam casually, Claire was in tow, always eager to join him on hunts and growing into a capable young woman with a penchant for medicine. That fact reassured Sam that Dean was not likely to be lost with her beside him during hunts.

Miracle’s passing was followed up by Sam and Eileen having a baby girl. Sam and Dean’s makeshift family followed the latter journey every step of the way. Charlie had been excited to have her own as well so it wasn’t abnormal to see her drop by and ask Eileen how she's feeling and if she had any advice to give if Charlie wanted to have one of her own with her girlfriend by her side. Eileen was more than happy to oblige and answer those questions for her.

When she was born, the waiting room was flooded with over forty hunters from their universe and the apocalypse universe that no longer existed. Mary was calm and mild mannered like both of her parents. She would likely be just as smart as her parents and Dean never hesitated to let her know that when he visited them for the holidays following.

By the time Mary was seven, Charlie had a baby of her own and proudly showed him off to the group of hunters and friends that joined the Thanksgiving celebration that year. Mary, eager, asked her dad when Uncle Dean would be coming and Sam insisted she had to be patient, which she desperately attempted to do. All her suppression of excitement during the hours of waiting for her uncle resulted in an explosion of squeals when Dean entered and scooped her up playfully. Funnily enough, everyone predicting she would be calm and mild-mannered was negated by her favorite uncle’s brash nature.

“There’s my girl!” he spoke excitedly and groans as he tries to lift her up as high as he would have normally but he got about halfway before placing her down on the ground and smirking at her. “You’re getting to be just as tall as your daddy, huh?”

Sam scoffed and rolled his eyes before they focused in on a larger box Dean had stuck into his bag with a pink bow. “What’s that, Dean?”

“Huh? Oh, this?” he whips out the box and smirks down at Mary, “I don’t know, Mary, what do YOU think this is?”

“It’s a Christmas present!”

“Yep, needed to get this to your daddy early, you still need to wait a month though.”

She groaned but accepted the situation before smiling and running off to dote over Aunt Charlie’s baby.

Dean walked up to Sam and handed him the gift, eyes bright as he looked over the individuals in the room. Sam spoke, still looking down at the box in his hands.

“This mean you won't be coming over for Christmas?”

Dean glanced back towards the gift thoughtfully before looking towards Sam. “You know I hate to miss Christmas, giving it to you early just in case. Have a few cases on the roster that I’m considering and if any of them bleed into Christmas, I wanted Mary to at least get a gift from me, you know?”

“Not working yourself silly?”

“Nah, just doing all the good I can manage. I’m human, after all,” Dean says with a smile.

Sam was happy for the words but frowned as he figured Dean would have had a wife by that point if he wasn’t actually working himself silly. Was Dean lying to him? It was something Sam had been concerned about since Mary turned three but opted to be more patient with Dean than anything. Patience was what he deserved.

Sam, sitting at the table with everyone in tow, happily reflected on the memory of his Dean witnessed years ago: sitting with another family during the holidays enjoying their food and the family life he couldn’t relate to at the time. This Thanksgiving wasn’t unlike any of the others and Sam reflected on that memory and the life he made for himself often. Dean and Sam met stares like they did every other Thanksgiving when they truly realized how lucky they were until it got to the end of the night when the kids were tired and the adults were respectfully tipsy.

As everyone chatted following dinner, Sam couldn’t help but notice his brother was missing from the festivities. Mary had been settled so it wouldn’t have been unsurprising for Dean to lose interest and find a chair to sleep on but Sam still couldn’t find him. Finally, he caught the image of his brother leaning over the fencing on the back porch, beer bottle in hand as he looked over the dark field ahead. The view provided nothing crazy aside from the decent sight of the stars up above.

Sam joined him and stared ahead, words, unspoken, behind his closed lips as he stewed in the silence. He glanced behind him towards the group of friends, partially obscured, and his gorgeous wife, and used that for fuel for the statement he’d been keeping to himself for a few years at that point. “You ever plan on settling down like this? Have a wife and kids? Is that on your mind at all?” Sam’s eyes were softened with concern towards his brother. He noted that Jody had been right about the years never ceasing to pass. While he himself had greying hairs on his temples, Dean’s hair now took on a dull brown look, fading rather than greying. His wrinkles were deepening as well but not in a way Sam disliked. His frown lines remained how they always were but his crows feet were extra defined. Despite Sam’s worries, Dean was a happy man.

Those crows feet only deepened when his question prompted a smile from Dean. He had been still during the silence but his hand flexed around the neck of the beer bottle as he looked down and thought up a viable answer for his worried brother. “May not be what you wanted for yourself but I like how things are for me right now. It’s not normal but it's humble and unpredictable without being dangerous. Best of what you and I wanted for me if I ever got this far,” he laughs out.

Sam let out his own abortive laugh with softened eyes. Dean was privy to visits and was with Claire a lot but surely he couldn’t be happy without a partner and children of his own, right? Almost as though Dean read his mind, he continued.

“I wouldn’t mind having a kid though, if I ever feel I’m ready for it but…” he sighs softly, eyes bright, “Claire is good.”

“You see Claire as your kid?” Sam spoke softly and acceptingly.

Dean nods, “yeah, I think I do,” he chuckles almost in disbelief, “she, uh…” he tried and failed to stifle a smile, “she called me dad on a phone a few months ago and uh… I don’t know, man, it just felt right.”

Sam noticed Dean’s eyes were wet with sentimentality and nodded, eyes growing calm as he remembered watching her grow following Cass taking her father’s vessel. Sam’s eyes softened as he thought about the angel but didn’t speak of him.

Dean swallowed down his emotions and continued despite his better judgement. Sam gave off an air of openness that Dean finally decided he was willing to adhere to.

“I never told you what happened before Cass died, did I?”

Sam’s eyes widened and looked towards Dean eagerly.

Dean recognized his eagerness and faintly felt bad that he kept Sam in the dark in all the years he spent coping. Some part of him had hoped he could have Cass himself explain. Clearing his throat and nodding to himself for hype, he explained.

“Cass sacrificed himself so the Empty could come take Death away, you know that but… Well.” Dean warily looked towards Sam.

Sam responded with a patient look and Dean regained his confidence.

“Cas made some kind of deal with the Empty at some point, don’t know when. He told me the deal was when he became happy, he’d be taken away.”

Sam’s brows furrowed, not understanding where this was going.

Dean cleared his throat again, now gripping the neck of his beer bottle and staring as deeply into the dark as he could, attempting to place himself as far away from the house as he could manage subconsciously. “He told me he loved me, Sammy.”

Sam’s mouth gaped.

“He,” Dean took a deep shuddering breath, unable to stand still as he dropped his thousand yard stare and hung his head, momentarily overwhelmed with the confession, “he told me loved me and that that was good enough. That he was happiest being honest with me about it, and then he…”

Sam now understood and placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder as if he was telling him he didn’t have to explain what happened after.

“Sammy?” his voice was hoarse and surprisingly fearful but overwhelmingly vulnerable. Sam felt like Dean was a kid again but this was different because Dean never allowed Sam to console him, that was always Dean’s job.

“Yeah, Dean?”

Dean was now white knuckling the bottle as he shuddered. “Sammy, I think I loved him too,” he choked out painfully and raised his head, eyes wet as he looked up at the stars in hopes that the tears would cease. He placed the bottle on the raising so he could use his free hand to cover his eyes and rub the evidence of hurt from his face

Sam didn’t see much but he saw Dean’s face flush and mouth tense as he tried to stifle the sobs that threatened to spill from his mouth and gave in, using the hand on his shoulder to drag him into a powerful hug, silent because all Dean needed in that moment was comfort. Eventually, Dean gained the ability to speak in a way that was understandable, breaths evening.

“I tried so hard to get him back.”

Sam pulled away slightly to scrutinize him, willing to serve disappointment if Dean’s words meant he would have been willing to sacrifice himself again. Dean responded by nodding his head no.

“After you left, I spent those months looking for anything. I wouldn’t summon the Empty but I just wanted to know if he was there. I wanted to talk to him but nothing worked, Sam.”

Sam recalled the smell of smoke in the bunker when he got there to look for Dean after he left and he realized.

“I just wanted to know if he was there but it was like,” Dean froze in the middle of his sentence, remembering sitting on the dock with a line in front of him and Cass by his side. He squeezed his eyes shut to compose himself before going on, “it was like I was casting a line with bait that could only get the attention of one fish but hours would pass and days would pass and nothing ever bit. It was like Cass wasn’t there at all, Sam. And I was so…” he stops himself briefly but continues, “I wasn’t really okay with it until I thought that, even though Cas was gone for good, he would want me to use that free will I worked so hard for and he would want me to live for myself and do what I wanted.”

Sam was crying calmly, a tear streaking down his slightly aged face occasionally as Dean spoke.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to feel the way I realized I felt about Cass for someone else but I’m okay with that, Sam,” he speaks, looking into Sam’s eyes and cupping his cheek, “I’ll be okay.”

Sam scoffed out a laugh through his tears as he nodded and accepted the comfort.

“I’ll be okay because,” he looked down, gathering the words in his mind before speaking them out to the world, “happiness isn’t just in the having, it’s in the being and feeling.”

Sam couldn’t stop himself from thinking back to all the times he admonished Dean for his loyalty to Cass, for his anger directed at Cass that was mostly fueled by disappointment rooted in love, all the arguments they had that he involved himself in, and suddenly his jokes back then weren’t all jokes.

Dean begins genuinely crying and glances back towards the window and into the warm house. Eileen was peeking around the corner curiously but Dean feigned a smile for her before looking back at his brother. “You have something so good.”

Sam smiled and nodded, squeezing his eyes shut as he did so before once again meeting his big brother’s eyes.

“It’s something you built for yourself and I’m so damned proud of you, Sam,” he lovingly used the hand against his cheek to shake his head about playfully, “my baby brother.”

Sam lets out a wet laugh as he allows Dean to lead them into pressing their foreheads together. Both brother’s realized that was likely the last time Dean would tell Sam he was proud of him, not because he would be disappointed later, but because he achieved his ultimate happiness with Eileen and the family he and Dean built together.

“Are you expecting anyone?”

Bobby was shaken from his trance as he stared ahead at the world Jack built for them. He enjoyed having John, Mary, and his other friends nearby nearly as much as he enjoyed stewing in the calmness. Sitting on the porch and enjoying stillness was something he did on Earth and would continue to do throughout the afterlife.

“Hopefully not anytime soon.”

An awkward silence was the response and Bobby realized the man misinterpreted his words, “I meant anyone that’s not here already, you jackass,” he chuckles out affectionately, patting the chair and handing the man a beer when he joins him.

Cass scrutinized the bottle before tipping the liquid into his mouth and joining Bobby in the bliss of commonality despite not being fond of the taste. “Do you think they’ll like it here?”

“They’ll love it but they better not get here too soon.”

Cass looked towards Bobby with a warm, calm smile and nodded in agreement, looking back ahead at the gorgeous expanse before them.

#supernatural #supernatural finale #spn 15x21 #supernatural 15x21 #supernatural fix-it #supernatural fanfiction #destiel #saileen #dean x castiel #sam x eileen

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secret-engima · 5 years

Note

Can we get Nyx’s POV of the Axis’ meeting? Someone outside the immediate emotional clash, anyway.

Hmmmm I’ll try?

Nyx is just as shocked as everyone else when a younger, Hunter-garbed Axis appears in a flash of light after their Axis cut himself on an old ruin, because seriously, that’s the kind of thing that happens in the Old Stories, not modern times.

He’s not the only one paranoid that the younger Axis might be some kind of shapeshifter, a creature of the Old Days hoping to steal their souls, but a few cautious questions puts that fear to rest. The kid (because this Axis IS a kid compared to them and Astrals were they really that small after the Burning, that skinny and wary? It looks way worse from the outside than it did back then) immediately starts looking around in agitation, no doubt looking for his Tredd and Luche since the three area almost always glued to the hip, and the glaives help look. No one appears, probably because only C!Axis got cut up on that stone, and after some grumbling from the younger Axis, the kid comes with them to the glaive outpost. They’ll sort out what to do with him in the morning.

Nyx doesn’t notice at first the way N!Axis looks at his counterparts, the worry and tight line in his shoulders, the kid is jus nervous and yea it’s weird seeing yourself and your friends older and decked out in military gear. N!Axis also gives Nyx a long, baffled stare that he refuses to explain, but Nyx doesn’t mind. Maybe the other Nyx has long hair or something and it’s weird seeing it short.

Things don’t start going wrong until they’re at the glaive outpost, passing out the (illegal) drinks Captain pretended not to notice them smuggling (the man might be hard and rigid on all the other regulations, but at least he let them have their small vices so long as they didn’t let it impede their work). Tredd drinks more than he should have, and sure enough, he starts badmouthing. It’s his venting mechanic, and at first they all ignore him as he complains about the outpost, about the Nifs (which they can all agree on at least). Then ... then he starts tearing up the nobles and they get uncomfortable. Tredd doesn’t mean anything by it, Nyx knows that, but Tredd is edging dangerously close to badmouthing the royal family and that could get him in serious trouble. Not to mention the king, for all his faults, HAD taken them in, had given them magic and always made sure that at least their families had enough to live on.

Crowe, who has little patience for Tredd’s mouthing off on a good day, tells him to knock it off but he doesn’t, because Tredd. and Nyx is just thinking of baiting Luche into reining in his Furia (Nyx is a little surprised Luche hasn’t done it already, but Luche’s in a bad mood too) when someone shoves him roughly aside and strides right into their group.

By the time Nyx identifies the newcomer as the young N!Axis, who had been brooding in a corner rather than drink with them, Tredd is already on the floor with a broken, bleeding nose. N!Axis’s fist is cocked back, dripping Tredd’s blood and already prepped to strike again and Nyx feels himself take an inner step back when the boy growls, low and dangerous, “You take that back.” The glaives freeze, because the Arra temper is legendary and Axis is scary when he loses his last restraint sure, but they have never, EVER seen him lash out at Tredd like this. Couldn’t conceive any Axis breaking Tredd’s nose like this. Nyx can see N!Axis’s face as he breathes in and sees the teenager struggling to rein himself in.

“You. Take. That. Back.” He repeats and Nyx’s skin prickles at the feral snarl coating the words, the bared teeth that flash as he speaks. N!Axis is furious, for reasons frankly lost on Nyx, and one wrong move will result in them having to try to pin down an Arra set on a bloodbath and that will not be a good time. The kid takes another deep breath and growls “How dare you. How dare you pretend to know what it’s like. How dare you wish our fate on anyone, let alone the Chief who took you in. Maybe our conditions could be better, and maybe he doesn’t do enough but at least he tries. You hold his magic in your skin and you think that gives you the right to curse his entire Clan and say none of them ever suffered?”

Tredd bristles on the floor but doesn’t move, and Nyx is grateful when C!Axis steps up and rests a hand on his younger self’s shoulder, “All he means is-”

N!Axis swats aside the hand and shifts to stare at his older self. Nyx sees his expression flicker, something like grief and anger in his eyes, some kind of ... realization that seems to break a tiny piece of the younger Arra before he bares his teeth again in renewed anger, “I know what he means,” snarls N!Axis, “and I know he’s full of pyre-ash. If you had any idea what it’s like to have been born with their full weight of magic, the full touch of the Draconian’s Blessing rather than the pittance you think makes you impressive-.”

Tredd opens his big mouth again, “What, and you do?” and the growl N!Axis gives hits a pitch that makes all of Nyx’s hair stand on end and he steps in with Lib at his side to try and keep a genuine fight from breaking out.

Nyx is mildly surprised when N!Axis grudgingly allows him to nudge the young Arra back, Nyx talking soothingly the entire time about how Tredd is just drunk and they all need to cool their heads.

It might, MIGHT have worked if Tredd hadn’t opened his big, dumb mouth again. Taunted N!Axis and told him that he might think the king is kind now, but that was naive, give it a few years and he’d think just like Tredd, and now the Furia is DEFINITELY in court martial territory. Several glaives hiss at him because too far is too far even for Tredd.

Nyx feels the vibrating tension of N!Axis against his arm suddenly relax and something in his head, the little primal instincts that have kept him alive for years, starts screaming.

N!Axis gently nudges Nyx’s arm down (he lets him only because he’s genuinely starting to fear if he doesn’t his arm will get broken), looks his counterpart and the counterpart of his two friends dead in the eyes with an eerie calm that belies the burning HATE in his eyes-.

Spits on the ground at their feet, “Storm-Father as my witness,” he intones in a too-calm, utterly serious voice, “I’ll gut myself with my mother’s blades and feed my entrails to the Voretooths before I become a filthy little Pink-Tongue like you.”

Nyx can no more stop the fight that breaks out than he could stop the tides. He’s too stunned, frozen in place in HORROR at hearing Axis (any Axis, any version of him) call Tredd a slur like that. It isn’t until Tredd has gotten his head pounded against the floor several times and Tredd has kicked N!Axis away from him and sent him crashing through a table that Nyx and the others snap out of their horror and lunge to break it up. N!Axis has gone feral, he bucks in Nyx’s arms, fighting to get free despite his bloody cheek and split lip and probably bruised ribs, screaming more and more slurs and hate at his counterpart and the counterparts of what should be his two best friends and Nyx’s mind almost blanks from the horror of it (this younger Axis is declaring a blood feud in all but name, he’s using all the words that NO Galahdian is supposed to use at another unless they mean to spill entrails onto the sand and he doesn’t UNDERSTAND why N!Axis is doing this, saying this. Tredd shouldn’t have said that stuff about the king but this is too far-)

They drag him to the far side of the Outpost and Nyx and Lib keep guard on the kid all night, both to ensure he doesn’t pick anymore fights and also to ensure no one tries to slit his throat in the night.

The moment Tredd, Axis, and Luche are out of sight, N!Axis stops fighting their grip, just goes limp and then curls in the corner and broods with fury-darkened eyes. He refuses the potion Libertus offers past his own righteous indignation (because a war declared on one glaive is war declared on all the glaive, surely, but this is a hurting teenager from another world and Lib won’t raise a hand against him) and the night is long and cold and uneasy.

The next morning, a shout goes up, a stranger approaching the base. Nyx leaves Lib in charge of guarding their guest while he goes to see.

Astrals above it’s a kid. He can’t be older than fourteen, thin and scraggly and unmistakably a refugee, with black hair in a ponytail and blue-blue eyes that watch them calmly as he explains he’s here to find a friend. They were exploring the nearby Solheim ruins together when they got separated and he followed the trail to the outpost.

No way. No WAY.

Except when they let the kid in, he makes a beeline right for N!Axis, like he has a beacon leading him right to the young adult despite N!Axis being on the other side of the outpost.“Hey, Axis,” the kid says easily, as if he’s out for a walk and not apparently FROM ANOTHER WORLD.

Nyx watches N!Axis stare, then sigh, and wonders at the way all the tension bleeds out of the Arra’s frame at the sight of the younger boy, “What are you doing here, idiot,” he asks, but there is no bite or venom to the words, only relief.

The kid has gone stiff at the sight of N!Axis’s injuries and pushes a potion on his friend as he says something about calling in a favor and how they need to get going.

Something about the way the kid watches N!Axis niggles at Nyx. Something about the way the kid moves, the way he looks in the light of rising sun as they begin marching out of the outpost, glaives whispering on their heels. Something … something Nyx can’t … can’t place.

Until Tredd comes out of the barracks, Luche and Axis on his heels and yells out a vile curse, fist already cocked back to punch N!Axis one more time, and Nyx starts to step forward to try to keep the bloodshed at bay-.

Freezes with all the others when the scrawny teen is suddenly there, between N!Axis and Tredd, a lethal, furious pressure rippling through the air as a host of ghostly weapons point right at Tredd’s heart, “Are we going to have a problem?” The teen asks and there is something eerie underlying his voice, some kind of echo of voices, old and cold and cruel that makes him seem suddenly not a teen at all but something entirely ancient and inhuman.

Lucis Caelum, wheezes something in Nyx’s mind as he struggles to breathe, angry, ANGRY Lucis Caelum.

N!Axis calls him off, which surprises Nyx until he sees the look in the younger Arra’s eyes. Loyalty. Fervent, utter loyalty. A devotion given only to the best of Chief’s and closest of family.

And oh. OH. That … that explains the rage, the fury, the slurs and the screaming. N!Axis wasn’t defending a foreign king who distantly aided refugee’s.

He’d been defending the father of his Chief. The father of family, for all the boy doesn’t wear an Arra braid (yet. If N!Axis doesn’t put a braid in that boy’s hair by the end of the month Nyx will eat his shoes).

No one moves to stop them as they leave, hands linked together, straight backed and thin, worn down but proud.

Nyx eyes the expressions on he faces of Tredd, Luche, and Axis and feels uneasy for reasons he can’t name.

#SE asks #anon asks #Secret Engima Rambles #Nox verse #Nox verse Main

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synoxshots · 4 years

Text

OC list

Yo! I’ve finished the Big Update to my oc page, filling in nearly all the characters in my legacy and including my two new Sith babies. I’m also cross-posting here under the cut in case it’s easier/because I’m extra.

Edited and up to date as of September 2020.

Universe notes:

Main universe has Yalla’ra as the Outlander/Alliance Commander, all fit into that barring Iphedarius

Iphedarius is my dark side Outlander/Commander AU - as I couldn’t see her playing nicely enough to fit in to an Alliance that wasn’t her own.

Qiren also has an AU where she is the Outlander and the Alliance doesn’t side with either the Republic or Empire. In Yalla’ra’s universe Ticcer is the story-canon smuggler, Qiren funds the Star Fortress resistances before formally joining the Alliance.

Yalla’ra

Class: Jedi Knight

Type: Guardian

Species: Miraluka

Born: 12 BTC

Born on the Miraluka homeworld of Alpheridies, Yalla'ra's force talents were clear from a young age and led her to join the Jedi Order. She quickly rose to prominence whilst learning under Master Orgus Dinn, but despite her triumphs she was far from the ideal Jedi – struggling to control her emotions, being too ambitious, and being prone to acting rashly. After joining the Tol Braga's strike team to face the Emperor, she was haunted by her failure and determined to destroy the Emperor no matter what the cost. Despite her success, the dark path she led strained her relationship with the Jedi Council, who denied her the rank of master despite her achievements.

Her path changes after meeting the ghost of Orgus Dinn on Rishi, who helps her realise she's lost perspective of what a Jedi should really be. She regains her memories of her time being possessed by the Emperor and is overwhelmed with guilt – for her actions then, but also before and since. As Alliance Commander she follows the path of the light, being determined to have a positive impact on the galaxy by first and foremost helping its citizens.

Ticcer

Class: Smuggler

Type: Scoundrel

Species: Mirialan

Born: 14 BTC

Ticcer was just a teenager when the Sacking of Coruscant happened, orphaning him and his sister and destroying their home. He has to start doing all he can to get by – running small cons, pickpocketing, stealing speeders – all sorts of petty crime that is part of daily life in Coruscant's underworld. He has a natural charm which he uses to swindle as many people as he can, and he also learns to fight dirty to get by.

He hates the Empire for destroying what his life might have been, but is apathetic towards the Republic because they were never there for him and his sister in their time of need. When his sister dies in the crossfire of a fight, he ends up becoming more ruthless and selfish, taking on an attitude of him against the world.

His life as a smuggler starts when a con gets a bit too big on him, leading to him killing the guy in self defence and running off with his ship filled with guns to be delivered offworld. Ticcer happily obliges and falls in love with the life he finds, first falling in with a smuggling crew and later deciding to go out on his own.

Ruka’ii

Class: Jedi Consular

Type: Sage

Species: Human

Born: 10 BTC

Ruka'ii is devoted to the force, always believing she is following in the path it has laid out for her and trusting in it to guide her actions. She believes her role as a Jedi is to serve others and the Republic, and as such completes her missions without complaint to the burdens placed upon her.

She always seeks to understand the people she meets and their motivations, and would much rather use her words than resort to combat. She believes in justice and redemption, willing to give her enemies a second chance wherever possible. She is also unafraid to stand up to her allies when she believes their choices are leading to a dark path, even when this may be a hindrance to their objectives. She has a talent for diplomacy and negotiating, which leads to her being chosen to work with the Rift Alliance and gaining the title of master despite her young age.

She is a scholar with interests in history and archaeology, the complexities of the force, and other cultures throughout the galaxy. When she is not away on a mission, she is often to be found studying in the archives on Tython and maintaining contact with her allies from her travels.

Qiren Alto

Class: Smuggler

Type: Gunslinger

Species: Human

Born: 15 BTC

When Qiren Alto started smuggling she thought she'd be all about the money, but somewhere along the line she became the person that stands up from the little guy. Her and her crew still get a good share, but she likes to steal from the rich and give it to the poor – a bit of direct action against the political machines of the galaxy. She believes in loyalty and is happy to help a friend out, but still won't hesitate to take revenge when she's betrayed or someone takes a shot at her reputation. Overall she sees herself as one of the good guys, even if sometimes she's doing the right thing for the wrong reasons or vice versa.

She's a massive flirt, not caring if they're Empress of the Sith or Grandmaster of the Jedi Order, she'll still give them the eye. She's snarky and cocky and aware of her skills, charms, and good looks – and she likes to bring that up as well. She'll find the funny side in even the most serious of situations and make everyone – companions and enemies – roll their eyes. She likes to look the part as well, and believes a good hat and a good jacket are two of the most important things a smuggler should have.

Jayma Oli

Class: Bounty Hunter

Type: Powertech

Species: Human Cyborg

Born: 16 BTC

Growing up on Nar Shaddaa, the underworld was just a way of life for Jayma Oli from a young age. Her parents owned a popular cantina on the city planet, but it was more of a front for the shadier business dealings that went on behind the scenes. Jayma followed in the family profession as soon as she was old enough to hold a blaster, gaining a reputation as an enforcer despite her youth and small stature.

Growing up around spacers gave Jayma an unshakeable wish to travel the galaxy however, and to see the sights she'd heard about in all their stories. When she turned 18 she left her home to live that dream, making a living as a hired gun and soon finding a place for her talents with a smuggling crew. She is professional in her role, following her orders to the letter, and though she doesn't kill for the sake of it she is always determined to defend her honour. Money is her prime motivator over any political beliefs: she has no great love for either the Republic or the Empire, but often finds herself working with the Empire as they offer her the best deals.

Iphedarius

Class: Sith Warrior

Type: Marauder

Species: Sith Pureblood

Born: 14 BTC

Iphedarius was born to an ancient Sith bloodline, and taught from an early age to value and pursue power above all else. As the fifth of six children she faced less pressure from her parents to provide further heirs, and was able to focus fully on her Sith training. She proved powerful in the force, fully giving in to the dark side and encouraging Sith values amongst her companions, and rose to become one of the most powerful Sith in the galaxy in her role as Emperor's Wrath.

She tried to remain faithful to the Emperor for as long as possible, though eventually his atrocities could no longer be ignored and she sided with Darth Marr for his expedition into Wild Space. When Valkorion took up residence in her head, she was at first willing to use his power but realised by doing so she would never have true control. After his defeat she seized the opportunity to become Empress, later returning to become Empire's Wrath after the destruction of the Eternal Fleet.

Xianen

Class: Sith Inquisitor

Type: Assassin

Species: Twi’lek

Born: 12 BTC

Xianen was part of a group of Jedi younglings travelling to an enclave when their ship was attacked by the Sith and all non-humans shunted into slavery, though watched carefully for evidence of their force abilities. Initially she resolves to stay true to the Jedi way and attempts to escape from slavery numerous times with varying levels of success, but over time the punishment she is given breaks her resolve and she gives herself fully to the dark side of the force. She is bitter and angry, vowing revenge against the weak Jedi Order and wishing to show them the full force of the dark side. This delights the Sith, and she is duly sent to Korriban to receive full training.

Emyr Devand

Class: Sith Warrior

Type: Juggernaut

Species: Human

Born: 13 BTC

Emyr Devand was born on Ziost, his parents being active members of the Ziost Liberation Front. His parents did their best to keep their terrorist activities a secret, though drip-fed him some of their ideas and also encouraged him to hide his force-sensitivity, not wanting him to become a Sith. However, when Emyr was nine his parents were uncovered as traitors and sent to prison, leaving him to be raised by his staunchly pro-Empire grandparents.

His grandparents were delighted to discover his force-sensitivity, seeing it as a matter of pride when they sent him off to the Sith academy and a chance to dispel the family shame caused by his parents. He arrives at the academy with much to prove and relishes the chance to finally learn to use his force powers, but his parents have had enough of an influence that he finds himself struggling to give himself truly to the full ideals of the Sith.

Onyxus Vai

Class: Bounty Hunter

Type: Mercenary

Species: Rattataki

Born: 20 BTC

Born on Rattatak but fed up with the planet's warring ways, Onyxus always wished to leave his homeworld behind and seek his fame and fortune in the wider galaxy. His size, physicality, and fighting skills honed on his planet soon helped him to find freelance work for many gangs and spacers in the years that followed. However, despite appearances and his obvious ability, away from the job he is a relaxed, quiet character and known by his friends to be a gentle giant.

Over time as a freelancer, he finds himself repeatedly bumping into the pirate crew of Paxton Rall, the two saving each other several times on their travels before deciding it will save them a lot of time if Onyxus simply joins his crew. The two form a close friendship and later romance, travelling the galaxy and living the pirate lifestyle. Onyxus joins the Great Hunt as part of a harebrained scheme cooked up by the crew after his birthday celebrations, another of their wild plans for fame and adventure. It comes as something of a surprise when he gets accepted, but he soon makes a name for himself as a successful bounty hunter.

Leire Santo

Class: Trooper

Type: Commando

Species: Human

Born: 15 BTC

The child of two Republic military heroes, Leire Santo was always destined to follow in her parents' footsteps. After excelling during her time in a military academy and impressing in early postings, she was scouted to join the elite Havoc Squad. Despite a self-confidence that could at times border on arrogance, the shock of having to suddenly take upon a position of leadership proved to be the making of her. She believes in doing the right thing and never wants to stoop to the Empire's level, even when at times it contradicts the strict letter of the orders given.

Though her injuries cause her to step back from active duty during the war against Zakuul, her leadership skills and tactical insight make her a key member of the Eternal Alliance. As the Alliance formally becomes part of the Republic following the destruction of the Eternal Fleet, Leire is elected as the senator for Odessen.

Ank’aeto’sonu

Class: Jedi Knight

Type: Sentinel

Species: Chiss

Born: 18 BTC

Ank'aeto'sonu - more often known as Kaetos or Kaet - was born on Csilla, a force-sensitive child in a society that shunned force users. Loving their child dearly and wanting a future where they wouldn't be forced into hiding, when Kaetos reached adulthood their parents paid for a series of transports to a Republic core world where they could seek out the Jedi.

Kaetos arrived on Corellia in the days following the Treaty of Coruscant when tensions were still high, and so was initially treated with high suspicion on their meeting with Republic forces. However, their persistence paid off when meeting Jedi Master Tol Braga, and they soon found themself joining the Order as a padawan learner. With a lot of catching up to do, they find their force training both frustrating and hugely rewarding, and in the Jedi Order finally feeling like they have a place where they belong.

#it is done #turns out i couldn't shake the urge to do it #oc list

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fan-clan-fun · 4 years

Text

Clans of the Wood Ranks

On second thought, I just want the rank system looked over. Also because I’m frustrated at having to write the same thing over and over again (this is attempt four).

Yay! Good news is I figured out a workaround to finally access submissions and comment on them appropriately! Im so excited to read all about this!

Just know a lot of realistic cat behavior is taken into account, such as toms killing foreign kits and cats relying on their ears and nose for perception over their eyes.

When a cat of the Woodland Clans is born, they’re called kits or kittens. For the first month of life, they have minimal interaction outside of the nursery. The second and third months of life are generally spent playing and learning about clan culture through stories. Kittens four months old begin assisting other ranks that largely stay within camp. Upon five or six months old (depends on the maturity and size of the kittens), they can begin to help ranks that may be considered more dangerous. Cats are considered kittens until they are fully accepted within a rank, which usually happens between a year and a year and six months.

Interesting, I see you have done away with the apprentice rank. I feel like there are pros and cons with this. For one there isnt any illusions that kits are minors in every sense of the word, and it would be entirely inappropriate for them to hold certain responsibilities or expectations with relationships. But I can also see older kits being extra hurried to become warriors or the equivalent since being so much older than the younger kits but still being considered kits would be frustrating. I can certainly remember as a teenager being annoyed when I was considered a child (even if I was still a minor and therefore technically a child).

A handful of cats take up the role of healers. They are to look after the health of cats within the clan and maintain a good supply of medicine in storage. While every cat in the clan gets basic medical training, these cats specialize in it and memorize remedies to every known injury and illness. Mollies also tend to double as midwives.

I like how this is worded, because it is important for the entire clan to have at least basic first aid, but also of course to have cats to specialize in it. I had always seen medicine cats to share like the medical side of birth, while older more experienced queens provided the emotional support, but I suppose these healers could do both.

A handful of cats stay within camp as guardians. They are to protect camp, fight off predators and aggressors, and escort weaker members to other camps. Every cat does receive battle training, these cats also study strategy and the weak points of predators like wolverines, birds of prey, foxes, dogs, and coyotes. Tom guardians sleep with the rest of the clan and molly guardians sleep in the nursery.

I find it interesting you split up warriors into two groups. I have an image of some gorgeous big buff cats. And also female guardians protecting the nursery! Super cute.

Two or three cats within each clan are messengers. They stay within camp and are sent to camps of other clans when urgent matters need to be relayed. Only swift cats become messengers and must be disciplined in the art of remembering messages.

As nice as this is, I feel like the messengers wouldnt be able to be only messengers, as there isnt a constant need for messages to be carried (unless there is, Im just going off what I have been given). Maybe they are just some of the fastest hunters?

Seers are the one or two cats who are highly attuned to the earth, listening to her whispers and echoes. They can assist with daily life and have mates and bear kits, but must remain open to the earth’s voice. Many cats are born with an innate attunement to the voice and it’s partially hereditary. Commonly, a current seer’s kit, grandkit, or nibling will have this affinity.

I do like me some spiritual cats, I would love to hear more what they see about the earth!

Hunters is everyone else in the clan. They hunt for most of the food and patrol the borders, bringing friendly tidings from other clans. They take up the bulk of the population and have a wide array of personalities and skills.

Ah I see, so the Hunters are basically the warriors of the clan, with the guardians being like the equivalent of -claw cats being extra skilled in fighting

When a cat decides to bear kits, she can decide to move to the nursery at any time and become a mother. Because of the often stressful situations cats can get into, it’s imperative a pregnant mother remain calm lest complications will arise endangering her and her kits. Once they’re born, she will be with them at almost all times during their first month of life. After that, she can leave them for longer periods of time until they’re fully weaned. Once weaned, she can decide to stay with them until they’re all around six months old (when they’re kicked out of the nursery), or can return to her duties, checking up on them periodically.

Elders are the clan’s history and are just as protected as its future. They’re cats normally over a hundred months (eight or nine years) old, spending their days sleeping, bestowing wisdoms to all who ask of them, and gossiping on inter-clan politics and relationships.

The matriarch is the overseer of mothers and kittens. She will usually try to get restless pregnant mothers to calm down for a safer labor and look after the young kittens of nursing mothers when she needs me time. If any orphaned kittens are taken in, she will be their mother. In a way, all kittens born under her care are her kittens, and many young cats call her “Mother” alongside their own mother. She doesn’t even have to be fertile or have her own kits to be the matriarch; if she has a strong maternal instinct and knows a lot on mothers and kits and has the skill to back it up, she can be the matriarch.

I have had a similar role in one of my clans before, and I do really like it. Its something of the idea of a permanent queen, but only one and with a serious amount of authority in the clan.

The keeper is the diplomatic leader, not only in charge of maintaining friendly relations with other clans, but also other feline societies outside of the clans. Their job also includes relaying their diplomatic information to the leader and let members of the clan know when they should probably stop fraternizing with that sexy otherclan cat because tensions are high, so it’d be better if one of them moves to the other’s clan instead. A keeper is likely to have formerly been a hunter.

This is quite clever and makes me wonder about the existence of informants and primitive spy networks.

The captain is the military leader, in charge of organizing a quick response when the lives of their cats are endangered. They are almost always a former guardian and normally a brilliant strategist. They are also in charge of overseeing the kittens’ battle training.

I appreciate that you have sort of deputies for the two major ranks in the clan, which is nice because Im getting the vibe that these are fairly large clans, so the extra organization is helpful.

Lastly is the leader, the head of the clan. They are to make decisions for their clan as a whole based on the information gathered from their council of elders, senior clan members, seers, matriarch, keeper, and captain. Should the keeper or captain die, retire, or be exiled, the leader is to choose their replacement, knowing which cats are skilled for the role and who the clan would find a good decision. A leader is the final authority on all decisions, but the seers can authorize their overthrow if the clan is overall displeased with their rule and the seers receive an omen confirming this. A new leader is chosen upon their death, retirement, or exile through a vote of all adult cats between the matriarch, captain, and keeper. Everyone votes for who they are okay with being leader, not for who they prefer, so you can vote for everyone if you like everyone. The one with the highest votes wins. Ties should be non-violently resolved between the tied parties.

I like this because it doesnt necessarily require votes for every decision, but there is a vote for a leader, which would then lead based on those votes and the advice of their council and others who are most familiar with different aspects of the clan. That said I can just imagine the shenanigans involved when it comes to an election, like do they campaign? What does a campaign look like? Are there any restrictions as to who can be voted for or is it just anyone? Has there been a time where a young and maybe inexperienced leader was voted for? Its an intriguing possibility.

So yeah, I’d like to know what you think of this unusual setup for my clans. Thanks for taking the time to look it over!

This was lovely to look over! Sorry it took so long! Thanks for sending it in.

#warrior cats #clan culture #warriorsworldbuilding #submission

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37-children-of-the-dreams · 3 years

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Day #33: Mine

The WiFi issue strikes again! I swear if the WiFi is the reason my Chem finals tanked, I will into a Sith Lord! Kylo Ren who? I will take his lightsaber and destroy my dorm in a fit of anger.

(P.S. If Korkie could have been Rey’s grandfather while being Obi-Wan’s son, then the Kenobi linage once again got caught in Skywalker drama. This bloodline can not get any peace.)

———————

Korkie snorted as he slowly woke up. He had a vision of a young girl with dark hair and strong connection to the Force. She held her hand up to Korkie and called him “Grandfather” to which he laughed to the point of waking up. There was no zero chances of him having children. He was in a committed relationship with Crosshair, who was male, and he’s pretty sure any child of his would have a nasty childhood.

That is unless Bo-Katan doesn’t change her mind and leave him alone. Then, his child would just have a life filled with bounty hunting. Which is still a harsh life for a child.

Also, he's not yet comfortable with asking Crosshair if he wanted children. He knows Crosshair's personality is not exactly child-friendly, but considering how patient he is with Fennec and how cordial he was with Nanny Rana and the Shands, Crosshair might just be a great father. That is until the kid starts using toothpicks to look cool, then it's over for Korkie's sanity. He's not willing to spend money on a kid's toothpick addiction. That was what Crosshair is for.

Speaking of Crosshair, Korkie looked up and smiled. He wasn't dreaming that Crosshair was with him on their king-sized bed.

"Our bed," Korkie thought.

He giggled, but quickly stopped. He didn't want to wake Crosshair up. He knows how much his man has worked himself making sure they all have enough money to live a life full of bounty hunting. Yet, Korkie was a little late. Crosshair woke up and smirked at Korkie's blushing face. He poked Korkie's forehead to let him know they're both awake.

"Nice visions?" Crosshair asked.

"Well," Korkie said. "Not much. The vision this time was rather confusing."

"How?"

"I'll tell when I'm confident about something."

Korkie got up and stretched his limbs. Crosshair got up and stretched with him. Stretching helped Crosshair balance some movement. He might be the best sniper from the GAR, but somethings due to his mutation had made him time his movements and how to make his aim straight.

"What's eating you up this time?" Crosshair asked.

"Let's just say it involves something that happens after marriage," Korkie replied.

"Oh, I didn't know you can have dirty visions."

"It wasn't that. It's something else and I really don't know if we're there yet."

"Few more months left. Just say it."

"Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yes."

"Like if I was shot, you're still calm afterward absolutely sure?"

"Maybe, but I haven't got you shot to death yet."

"Fine. You ever thought about children?"

Crosshair stopped stretching and looked at Korkie. He wanted to be sure this wasn't a fake question. He needed to be sure Korkie could not be lying. And Korkie's face told him he wasn't.

Crosshair blinked and pondered the idea. He was always wondering about what would been his life once the Clone Wars ended. True, this life with Korkie now was certainly not what he was exactly expecting on life choices, but he did say he wanted to be a bounty hunter since this was what his skills can do best. Yet, having a family was another idea he never thought about. He's not the best person to be next to because of his personality and he's not willing to make a child feel isolated because no likes their father.

"Never," Crosshair admitted. "You of all people should remember that the entire galaxy hates clones. Up until I met you, I never thought of having a family I made myself."

"Oh," Korkie said. "Sorry for forgetting that. I just thought that since the War might one day be over, you could have a chance to settle down with someone."

"Korkie. Even if the War had ended and I could have a family, I'm not a good man and I might make my children's lives unfair."

"If you're such a bad person, then why am I still here and not a bounty?"

Crosshair smiled. "Was having a family in your visions?"

"Not exactly. I just saw this girl. She looked at me and wanted my hand. She said 'Grandfather' and I just woke up. I thought it was insane. I mean, we're both men, and the entire Mandalore system is against us! How in the Maker's name are we able to raise a child and have a granddaughter from them if there is so much chaos in your lives?"

Crosshair pat his back and lead Korkie out of their room. Crosshair didn't know what to think about the vision. Korkie was right when it comes to his points. He knows Mandalorians can just adopt, but raising one to adulthood and ending up with a granddaughter? That's going be a miracle with every enemy being created if they keep their bounty hunting lives for a long time.

"Crosshair?" Korkie whispered.

"Let's not think about that now," Crosshair said. "We're way too young to have a granddaughter."

"What granddaughter?" Fennec asked.

Fennec left the ship in autopilot and went to the bunks to check on Korkie and Crosshair from time to time. She knows they finally shared the 'secret room' and was not really wanting to heard anything raunchy for now. Yet, why did Crosshair say 'granddaughter'? Were they thinking of expanding the family? Like right now when they're just a new couple? How fast were they willing to take their relationship?

"No," Crosshair said. "I know that face. And no, we do not have a granddaughter on the way."

"I just had this weird vision," Korkie clarified. "Saw a girl saying that I was her grandfather, but visions are not always reliable."

"Okay, but you know you can adopt right?" Fennec pointed out.

"Way too early," Crosshair said. "Also, not married yet?"

Crosshair pulled up his hand and then grabbed Korkie's hand to show that they do not have any rings to signify a wedded life. Fennec put her hands on her hips.

"Then, get a ring."

Fennec left the men speechless as she piloted the ship again. Crosshair got out of the bunks leaving Korkie behind, went to his pilot's seat and glared at Fennec. Fennec raised her hand in what Crosshair knows as the 'You Started It First' gesture. It's basically ingrained in his mind what it meant but it still angers him.

"I never was raised to be a family man," Crosshair admitted. "The Kaminoans were not the best people to talk about sex and marriage. Many clones have never seen a woman with huge breast until they turn ten and were off to war. You really think I know anything about being married?"

"No," Fennec laughed. "But you're not ten anymore. You're whatever age you are now."

"Fourteen and a half," Crosshair counted.

Fennec gasped at Crosshair with her mouth open. Korkie was five years older than Crosshair through technically? Crosshair was actually younger than Fennec by four years? Crosshair was just a minor?

"This is why I never like telling people my age," Crosshair added. "Yes, I'm a teenager, but do not ever think I can't have a drink because I'm a clone."

"So wait," Fennec said. "If you and Korkie were to just adopt a teenager right now, wouldn't you be a teenage father?"

"Unfortunately yes."

"Then never mind about your future granddaughter. You'd be the youngest grandfather she'd have."

"Isn't that already a given?"

Fennec laughed at the though as Korkie finally got out of the bunks.

"Why is Fennec laughing?" Korkie asked Crosshair.

"You're fiancé," Fennec giggled. "Is five years younger than you by technically."

"Yeah, I know. He told me. Yet, why is that funny?"

"Because if you have a granddaughter one day, then Crosshair might still be in his thirties when she's born."

"Maybe, but if we have a kid, you're babysitting them."

Fennec stopped laughing and Crosshair snorted.

"Oh, and I'm just thinking about this, but if we're having a girl one day, her name might be Sarad."

Crosshair burst out laughing. He's not going to disagree. He'd love a little flower that would call him buir.

#korkie kryze #korkie kenobi #clone trooper crosshair #crosshair #fennec shand #the bad batch #star wars

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mccncrane · 4 years

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INTRODUCING — KALANI "MERCY" AHUNA

“ I WAS EVERY WORD IN EVERY LANGUAGE, AS LONG AS IT TRANSLATED TO BLOODSHOT. ” is that JASON MOMOA? oh no, that’s KALANI “MERCY” AHUNA, born on the 15th of APRIL, 2004. i heard HE/HIM (CIS MALE) is a MOST TRUSTED of the IDAHO HUNTERS. apparently, they can be WARM and HUMOROUS but also known to be SELFISH and UNPREDICTABLE. spends most of their free time (TERRORIZING) PRANKING THE PRISONERS FOR ENTERTAINMENT, probably smells like STRAWBERRIES AND SMOKE. is that a bite mark i see?

HISTORY: (tw for death, the usual) (me starting this: i barely have anything to say! / this in the end: probably the longest intro i have so far)

Kalani Ahuna was born under difficult circumstances. He lost his father very young, and his mother even younger, which left him to be raised by his fraternal grandparents. He never felt like he was missing out on any parental figures growing up, but there was the undeniable fact that they were much older than most parents -- Kalani always knew he wouldn't have much time with his tūpuna.

They lived in a small town in Nevada, and when the apocalypse started, they were moved into a qz on the northern area of the state. Fedra wasn't doing a great job. Kalani's grandparents were already much too old to be living in these conditions; while the quarantine zone kept them safe from the monsters roaming outside, they couldn't afford the lack of resources. Kalani was a big guy, even as a teenager, he could handle sharing his own rations with them for as long as he could, but eventually, it was too much.

By the end of 2025, their qz was a warzone in itself. Fedra was losing control and starting to abandon the area, food was almost inexistent, clean water and medicine were also hard to come by. Kalani's grandparents, now too old and fragile to continue, passed away. One after the other, barely hours apart on the same day. Kalani believes it was simply their time to go, and they went together.

He was sad, but he knew they went as peacefully as they could. And all things considered, maybe this was a better death than being torn apart by an infected. He greeted their death with grace, and decided to leave the qz. He took their bodies out with him, buried them somewhere pretty and covered them with flowers in the woods.

He roamed alone for about a year, freshly twenty-something, until he found the Idaho Hunters. They were just planning their final takeover of the city, and he proved himself a worthy ally when he helped them.

He got his nickname by talking a big talk about forgiveness and the belief of not holding onto any grudges or bad feelings, as he'd always been close to his Hawaiian culture. Someone probably jokingly said "yeah okay, Mr. Mercy" in a teasing tone, and he laughed so hard at it that it stuck. He likes it.

About ten years later, one day when he was roaming the outskirts of their town, Mercy stumbled upon a woman in danger. He felt compelled to save her, and once he did, things made sense. It was like there was a gravitational shift on the Earth itself, it felt like all of the energies in his body realigned. Meeting her changed him, immediately, even if he couldn't quite put a finger on how. They talked as if they'd known each other since forever, and he became easily convinced that their souls had been each other's companions for many centuries. It didn't feel like meeting someone knew, it felt like finding an old friend again; a reunion.

He managed to convince the Hunters to take Aylin in -- by being dramatic about it and saying they could either take her in or he'd be leaving with her, which he definitely meant. She is the absolute love of his life, they got married at some point, and he will kill and die for her, thank you.

At some point in the last couple of years, while he was outside with Aylin, they got themselves into a troubling situation with a couple of infected. Mercy is good at combat and has brute force, but he'd gotten distracted and one of the things sunk its teeth into his side. It was a gnarly bite, and the only reason he didn't lose a chunk of meat around his ribs was because Aylin managed to shove the infected off.

They sat there for a while that day, with Mercy trying to convince her to kill him before he turned, which she refused to do. It was for the best, in the end, since hours passed and he felt none of the symptoms. Hours and more hours, and he didn't even feel tired. He patched up, eventually, they went back to camp, and they kept quiet about it. After the initial shock had passed, Mercy started to believe this was not a normal bite. He wouldn't turn.

Surely enough, he's immune. He still hasn't told anyone else besides Aylin, and if anyone notices that he doesn't take his shirt off in the summer anymore, no one has said anything, either. He keeps the obnoxious scar on his side a secret -- the only thing he hides from his beloved group of Hunters.

TL;DR:

raised by his grandparents, they died of old age. he roamed around for a bit, found the idaho hunters, joined them. then he found aylin, his soulmate, his wifey, his boo. they live a chill life with the idaho hunters. he gets bit, finds out he's immune, hides it from everyone but aylin. nowadays he's out here chilling, being a most trusted and protecting his fellow hunters. as well as terrorizing some prisoners for Funsies.

PERSONALITY:

an absolute goofball idiot. he has a childish sense of humor, he likes to mess with people and he doesn't have a solid understanding of boundaries when it comes to pranks. he's your older cousin who made you cry when you were 5 because he showed you some traumatizing horror film while he laughed his ass off. probably slaps his bros' asses lovingly.

despite being painfully between chaotic neutral and chaotic evil, he is not all chaos, he's pretty emotional. he's open and honest, he's a romantic, he loves love, he wears his heart on his sleeve. he thinks there's beauty in pain and sadness, he's just very peaceful in that sense, and very in tune with his feelings. we love an emotionally stable man.

that being said he is not above slaughtering an entire village if someone hurts his loved ones 😌bc he's protective of all of his hunter family and aylin (of course), and he doesn't see anything wrong with killing people sometimes. broken moral compass energy, but like, it is the end of the world. mr mercy will still kill u if u deserve it. he will forgive your soul and then still chop your head off bby.

EXTRAS:

im not gonna make y'all read any more, i'll think of connections some other time !! if you got any ideas, yes, come give me anything !!

#the gif doesnt convey the true dumbass mercy energy but he just looks so handsome in it #MERCY | INTRO #MERCY | MUSINGS

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big-bad-ulf · 4 years

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The Prodigal Wolf Returns || Ulfric & Winn

Timing: Midday, Thursday 4th of June Parties: @packsbeforesnacks, @big-bad-ulf Summary: Ulfric meets with Winn to discuss what drove him out of town, and consider their next moves. Warnings: Mentions of assisted suicide, depression, and grief.

The clearing in the woods was quiet, remote, and neutral. Somewhere they could both feel at home, but that neither could claim ownership of. Hearing footsteps approaching, Ulfric dropped the cigarette stub between his fingers, stamping it out into the leaf litter below to conceal most of the evidence of the bad habit he’d picked up again after Celeste’s passing, though the smoke still lingered accusingly. “I suppose thanks are in order, for coming all the way out here,” he greeted Winn stoically, before finally turning to face the returned wolf. “As you’re aware, I’m not the one who you need to explain your actions to.” He hoped it was apparent he meant Layla and Ariana, but the young man didn’t have the best track record thinking things through to their logical conclusion. “But I’d like one, because as it stands I can’t imagine a scenario in which ‘sparring’ with a tiny human girl while in wolf form was necessary? Nor was fleeing town when you knew others of your kind were in danger.” The older werewolf’s tone was tired, weighed down by the collective suffering of White Crest’s pack over the last few weeks, but an anger borne of disappointment simmered beneath the weariness.

Winn had been dreadin’ this conversation since he’d figured out everyone thought he’d skipped town. Ulfric was… intimidating, to say the absolute least. Winn could handle teenagers. He could handle folks in his own (relative) age group. And Simon was, well, kind, in a way that he wasn’t sure Ulfric was. But part of the problem was that he didn’t know Ulfric. Didn’t know most of the wolves, really, all friendliness aside. So, worst-case scenario, Ulfirc hated him. Best case scenario, Ulfric thought he was an idiot. As he entered the clearing, smoke tickled his nose. The Full Moon was on them and Winn was pretty sure he’d have smelled it even if Ulfric hadn’t just been smoking, but he stowed the frown. It wasn’t his place to judge someone’s habits; he’d had bad habits of his own. Still had some. “I appreciate it,” Winn said, “but it’s unnecessary. I should thank you, for bein’ willing to hear me out.” He leaned against a tree, scrubbing at his eyes. Reconciling with his father and (part of) his former pack hadn’t helped his sleep, much as he wanted it to and, with Natalia out of town, he was running low on aram. “Talked to both of them. Only one left that knew, I think, is you.”

He weighed what he knew about Blanche in his mind, what he knew about Ulfric, and his newfound fondness for the truth. “Blanche is… like a sister, to me. She’s a trouble magnet. If there’s supernatural nonsense goin’ on in White Crest, I head her way. ‘Cause chances are, if she isn’t already involved, she will be in, like, an hour. I know it was stupid, thought I had better control than I did. After I got a hold of myself, I dipped, for just a few minutes. Came back, told Blanche that I was leavin’ to take care of some things, left a note somewhere I thought she’d find it. Phone had been dead before that, and I figured if she told folks I was gone, they’d know that I’d be back soon and couldn’t really make a twelve-hour drive shorter.” Winn sighed. “That’s usually the part of the story where folks have questions, so hit me. Oh, right. Social media. A shirtless photo of mine got flagged and, since I didn’t have my phone, I couldn’t contest the deactivation. That one was just coincidence. Lady Luck wasn’t in my favor.”

“It was stupid,” Ulfric confirmed when Winn was through with his explanation. He crossed his arms and paced in a tight, restless pattern as he weighed the other wolf’s actions, to decide what needed asking. It wasn’t like he could pass any judgment in an official sense, it would be up to Layla and Ariana and any of the other wolves who felt slighted to decide for themselves how they felt and how they wanted to interact with him on a personal level. But as a more experienced wolf, he felt obligated to address the aspects of Winn’s behavior that had the potential to harm the entire pack, or even their entire species. “I understand this girl means something to you, but we don’t need to be teaching more humans how to fight us.” Not that it was likely a human of average strength would stand much of a chance, even with whatever ‘mind powers’ Blanche supposedly possessed, but that was beside the point, their weaknesses were meant to stay between them. “Learning that would only help her against our kind, and if you’re worried any one of us is a threat to her that’s something that can be dealt with internally… It’s the fact you don’t seem to know your limits that troubles me most, though.”

Ulfric stopped and stood his ground as he came to that conclusion, looking over Winn appraisingly as he remembered the young wolf bragging about having killed a hunter. He’d chalked it up to mostly harmless arrogance at the time, but when he later explained he hadn’t done it on purpose that should’ve raised more red flags than it had. “You don’t seem like you’re that new to this. You should have a better grasp of how much control you do or don’t have. So, I suppose my questions are, do you know what pushed you over the edge? What do you plan to do to ensure this doesn’t happen again?”

Winn tried not to bristle at the half-accusation, pushing himself off the tree and walking towards Ulfric as, hopefully, non-threateningly as possible. “With all due respect, I never said that I was trainin’ her to take out wolves,” he said. And he hadn’t been! Werewolves were just big and so were, what, half of the things B would run into? “She only knows the bare minimum, assumin’ she hasn’t talked to Kaden ‘bout his other job. Ain’t hard for a human to try silver, given only every story about us tends to revolve ‘round that fact.” He took a deep breath, exhaling through his nose. “But we can argue ‘bout Blanche later, it’s not like I’ll be sparrin’ with her in wolf form again.”

“It worries me, too. ‘Cause I’ve…” he paused, looking up into the canopy to choose his words carefully. “Let me backtrack. You don’t know much about me, and it might be… helpful. Since you’re the wolf ‘round here with the most experience…” Now, Winn was pacing. “I was turned almost eight years ago. The only turned wolf in a pack of, uh, werewolf fraternity brothers, down south. They guided me through my first dozen shifts, taught me how to be calm. So, believe me when I say: I have plenty of control, ‘specially for not havin’ been a wolf all my life. And don’t get your britches in a bunch, I know that sounds like bullshit, right now.” Winn ran a hand through his hair, uncomfortable with the conclusions he was beginning to draw about his time ‘changed.’ “I said I accidentally killed a Hunter… well, that was half-true. The accident was my own — I was sleepin’ with a Hunter, didn’t know he was a Hunter. The killing was on purpose. Self-defense, when he abused my trust, tried to go after my pack.

“After that, I was in… a dark place. That would’a been late 2015. Next thing I remember, I was in Europe, staggering in my human form out of the woods in early 2018. Thought, until recently, I’d spent a year or two in and out of my wolf form… but, I’m startin’ to question that. Couple theories’ve been tossed around, maybe it isn’t true. But when I… attacked B, it felt different. On a Moon, when I let the wolf come to the forefront… even when I was tryin’ to keep us separate, I still knew what was goin’ on. But with B, I don’t remember anything between getting thrown into a tree and pullin’ myself back from the brink. It was, well, dissociative is maybe the closest way to say it. I was there, and then I wasn’t. I’ve never lost control like that. Not even, y’know, when I was still new at this. It’s… it’s like hittin’ that tree pulled something out of me, something from under my conscious. I— Have you ever heard of anything like that? Where a wolf just… wasn’t himself, or even his wolf self? Even if it had been, say, Ariana, I don’t think it would’ve changed it. I still think that… part of me would want to attack everything.”

“There’s no need for that if you’re not going to do it again.” Ulfric agreed with Winn’s statement about Blanche. Truthfully, he did not want to be having this argument in the first place. A good old-fashioned brawl could be cathartic but having to play the role of stern lecturer just made feel weary, worn-out, and old. Running wild together, celebrating a successful hunt, sharing tales of old legends and recent exploits, those were the things he’d looked forward to about being a part of a pack again. Having to step up and confront things that put them in jeopardy was a responsibility that came with that privilege, but not one he enjoyed or hoped to have to take up often.

The older werewolf couldn’t contain a small grimace of disgust upon hearing Winn’s story. The chance that they might be a hunter was one of the many reasons it was a bad idea to get involved that way with humans, but he didn’t bother to voice his opinion on that. The man was an adult capable of making his own choices and he’d also spent a lot of his life as a human, so it was easy to see where that mistake had come from. Besides, it seemed he’d more than learned his lesson on that front.

“I’m sorry that you had to go through that. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to come back from a betrayal like that.” Ulfric replied at last, because the tale was tragic, if difficult for him to relate to on a personal level. “I haven’t heard of wolves entering an abnormal state like that,” Of course, his own ‘wolf self’ was similar in some ways to what Winn had described, an entirely animalistic being, but even then it retained the animal instinct not to attack its own kind without severe provocation and the risk of that side of himself emerging outside of a full moon was very low. “It seems the answers may lie in what happened in those lost years. What are the theories?” Staying transformed for the better part of years… Was such a thing truly possible? Ulfric could’ve almost been jealous of Winn for having that freedom from morals and responsibilities of the human world for so long, if the suffering it was causing him now wasn’t so apparent.

“Have you tried… it could be possible, or so I’ve heard, to bring some memories back through mystical means.” He suggested hesitantly. “I don’t like getting involved with such things, but you can’t just… go on the way you are, not without having to isolate yourself.” And that was the last thing he wanted for any of his kind, regardless of whether he held them in high regard or not. “If something were to bring on this feral state in front of a crowd that would mean disaster for all of us. And I’m sure you know that,” He leveled the younger wolf with a hard-nosed look. “Even if some of your actions suggest a distinct lack of judgment of the more mundane variety.”

“I— Thanks.” Winn frowned, stopping his pacing as Ulfric spoke. “I have a… friend, who looked into some, uh, wolf causes. Didn’t find much, some reports of wolves stayin’ transformed who went… feral, who couldn’t change back into their human form.” What Rio had told him had scared him, but it hadn’t felt, well… correct. It seemed like even those wolves had the sense to not attack other wolves, that they retained some of their humanity, even if they became more animal than human. ‘Course, many of them didn’t live to tell their tale, and the records that Rio had found could only tell them so much. Some had been written by Hunters, others written by a wolf who had to put one of his own down. But Winn had come back, which seemed to be the wrinkle. No Hunter had ever tried to bring a wolf back to themselves, but not even a packmate could. So, if Winn had been transformed, how could he have come back?

“Given I’m back, though, my friend and I ruled that out. ‘Specially for a bitten wolf to come back from bein’ feral? Seemed unlikely. Not when there was another explanation. Which is, um…” Alright, okay. He could admit this aloud. “My dad is a huxian. He thinks it might be mystical, yeah. Somethin’ taken from me, or somethin’ I gave up.”

He swallowed, mouth dry. “I’m still tryin’ other avenues. R— My friend is lookin’ into… side-effects of wolfsbane. What shit street wolfsbane might get spiked with. I—” Winn scratched at his arms, almost wishin’ that he was wearin’ a shirt. “I took wolfsbane for months, after I killed that Hunter. Blamed myself for what happened to the pack. And I guess I… stopped.” He looked up into the canopy. “But you’re right. I need to figure out my shit, so I don’t put us all at risk. And, short of goin’ back on the wolfsbane — which I’m not gonna do — we really don’t have any leads. If there’s… a part of me, that’s missin’, then I don’t want to go on like this. I can’t. Even if…” Well, there was always this part. Winn looked back down at Ulfric, mouth set in a hard line. “Don’t… I don’t want your pity. This isn’t y’all’s problem, but there’s… well, if I’m missin’ two years, there’s a chance that…” He coughed.

“There’s this Hunter I know. Luke mentioned him at the meeting. He… If I did somethin’ bad, hurt an innocent life, he’s the one I trust to… put an end to me. But I don’t want him knowin’ about what happened with B, and— I don’t know what could happen, if I get those memories back. No one I’ve talked to so far does. But if he’s… if I’m different, if I try to hurt someone, I need y’all to be willin’ to stop me. If that happens… As the person I am now, I want you… to take me down. If you can’t kill me, let me rot. If I can’t control myself, I am… I am not more important than all of you.” His voice was hoarse, tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. He couldn’t remember crying this much in a very long time, but he needed to be firm. “Promise me. Please. I’m sorry, so sorry, to put that burden on you.” He held out his hand, for the other wolf to take, to seal the pact. “But it has to be done.”

As Winn’s explanation continued, it became more and more clear to Ulfric that his actions couldn’t be explained away by stupidity or cowardice. That was a shame really, both of those causes would’ve been much easier to deal with than this mystery of missing memory. Everything Winn said seemed to introduce a new piece to the puzzle (Huxians, wolfsbane, and of course, the seemingly inescapable interference of hunters), but it was unclear how they whole fit together or how much of a threat would be revealed when the big picture came together. When the young wolf came to the end of his speech and what he was asking him to do sunk in, Ulfric’s blood ran cold. Protecting the pack was paramount, but the thought of killing another wolf was profane, it would be the ultimate sacrilege towards the gift his ancestors had bestowed upon him.

“I’m not going to sit idly by and let you harm other members of the pack, of that you can be certain,” he answered carefully, considering his options. If Winn were to slip into a permanent state of mindless, unbridled aggression, the usual ‘last resort’ of exile would do little to keep him from returning and causing havoc in their territory. Caging was another possibility, but he knew if their circumstances were reversed, he’d prefer a quick death over a life spent in chains, and it seemed the young man would as well. And finally, allowing hunters to deal with him in that state would only further inflame their hatred towards his kind, along with being plain undignified. “If your continued existence poses a threat to their survival, I promise you, I’ll do what needs to be done.” Ulfric accepted after a long moment’s deliberation, giving Winn’s hand a firm, resolute shake, though the clamminess of his palm betrayed his instinctual, visceral reaction against the plan. “Let’s not let it come to that though,” He added, more of an instruction than a hope. “I’ve had my fill of death for the time being.”

““Thank you,” Winn said, quietly. “But… Agreed. Don’t want it to come to that.” It wasn’t that Winn hadn’t considered his death before. Hell, after what had happened with his old pack, there had been times where he’d… well, where he’d really considered dying. Winn liked to think he was better, now. If not totally well-adjusted, at least pretty solid on the ‘me dying wouldn’t fix the issue’ mantra. Counseling helped that, and learning about counseling only reinforced it. Which is part of why he knew: “I need those memories back, though. Even if it hurts, or if there’s… a reason I buried them. Now that I know they might not be there, it’s like… it’s like I can feel the space where they used to be. They’re a blindspot, sure, but more than that they’re… part of me. I can’t…” He sighed, sitting down on the forest floor and breathing in the woods for a moment before continuing. “As I am now, I can’t imagine what reason I could have had to bury them or… take them? I don’t know anybody who’d have the answers. Plus, there’s all the shit with Luke, and what happened with Ari, and… Fuck, man, I haven’t even asked you how you’re doing. I… I mean, I didn’t know Celeste, but I talked to Ari some, and… I know it’s a cheap question, but are you okay, Ulfric?”

“I think I can understand that. Why you’d want them back.” Ulfric assured him. He was familiar with having gaps in his memory, though he’d never had much choice in the matter. Berserkers had lost the ability to remember most of their actions while transformed centuries ago, and their intentions behind that, if there were any, were shrouded in mystery and myth. He did have a choice, though, between taking the easy way out and walking away from the carnage he’d caused while in wolf form and reconstructing what happened during that time as best he could. Ever since his ill-thought-out vengeance against the hunters who took his younger siblings, he’d chosen to do the latter. Chosen to look at the carnage and accept why it had happened, and that it was a part of him.

“What we do is what we are,” he pondered aloud, before directing his attention back on Winn more fully. “I respect your choice and wish you luck. You can count on me for… whatever it is you think I can provide.” Which wasn’t much, given his lack of expertise in the realm of the magical. He couldn’t even truthfully say he’d provide friendly support, because he was still too wary of the young wolf and the potential danger he posed to the pack as a whole to consider him a friend. An alliance was clearly in both their best interests though, so Ulfric refrained from repeating his earlier comments about not wanting any help from him when he asked how he was. “I’ll survive, so will you,” he stated simply and firmly instead, almost ordering the fates to make it so. “Any other option doesn’t bear thinking about.” The older wolf turned briskly and took off into the trees. Action was required of both of them, if the White Crest pack was ever going to be able to consider itself safe. They could spare no more time for conjecture and contemplation.

#chatzy #winn #the prodigal wolf returns #wickedswriting #suicide tw

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