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darsynia · 2 years

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Trust Fall | Ch 13b

ARC image by Eury Escodero | image by neverfeltbetter on wordpress

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Summary: Tony/OC, ‘terrorists made us fall in love;’ IM1 timeline. In this chapter, Tony finds out that Emory's been taken someone undisclosed. He won't stand for it.

Length: 3,131

Tags (please don’t hesitate to ask!): @starryeyes2000 @raith-way @arrthurpendragon @starksbf @themaradaniels @chickensarentcheap @tiny-anne

Excerpt:

“Turn the plane around.”

Rhodey closes the file and carefully puts it inside the briefcase beside him before he answers. “Tony--”

“I’m serious. We left someone behind.”

“Sit down and buckle up, will you? Stane and your board will be out for blood if you get more hurt on the return flight than your entire time in captivity.”

“Not until you tell me where Emory Autumn is. I’d also like a detailed report of her physical condition and a clear answer about when I can see her.”

He can’t cross his arms, but Tony knows that his frown carries the weight of his personal fortune and considerable influence, especially with Rhodey’s bosses. In retrospect, his friend’s behavior has been bizarre since the moment they stepped foot off of the helicopters. It’s almost as if Rhodes is being influenced by so many different authorities that he’s disengaged his empathy centers as a self-defense mechanism. He needs the sense smacked back into him.

“You in love with this girl?” Rhodes asks. It’s perceptive, but unfair.

Chapter Thirteen: Big Orange Ball

Emory has got to be the most adorable, infuriating woman Tony’s ever spent time around. Though he has to hand it to her, she’s gotten the last word and done it in a way that means her powers are useful to him even when she’s insensate. The canteen is frozen solid, and after he’s rubbed warmth back into her fingers, Tony rips off one of the gauzy flutters of fabric from her outfit and ties it to the thing so he can drape it around his neck. There’s just enough fabric to stop it from feeling too cold, and the condensation moisture feels fantastic.

After some swearing and repositioning, Tony gets Emory’s unconscious body up onto his shoulders like she’s an overgrown child riding piggyback, and starts walking again.

“When you wake up I’m going to figure out some truly inventive ways you can make this up to me,” he tells her.

He can hear her laugh, in his mind. He needs to hear it again for real.

The water around his neck has warmed to his body temperature by the time he hears helicopters. Tony’s relief saps most of the rest of his strength, and he lands on his knees to watch his best friend run towards him.

“How was the ‘Fun-Vee?’” Rhodey asks.

All Tony can do is smile and hug him.

Emory wakes in a bed so comfortable that she’s initially worried that she’s dead and in heaven. When she goes to open her eyes, though, the bright light actually hurts, which doesn’t quite track with that conclusion. She tries to reach up and cover her eyes so she can ease the transition, but she can’t. There’s some kind of strap holding her arm down. She only has a small amount of movement, maybe just enough to prevent her from waking up from the tightness of the restraint? Her mind races-- Is this the cave again, but with a spotlight shining down on her, just like during Tony’s surgery? What kind of surgery would she need? Who could be performing it?

How much time does she have to figure it out?

A machine starts to beep, and Emory almost groans. Her fear has doubled her heart rate, and that has warned her captors.

“Woah, woah, you’re okay,” a woman’s voice says in unaccented English. “You’re okay.” The light goes out, and a cool hand touches her forehead. “Let’s sit you up, all right?”

Emory shakes her head almost on instinct. She doesn’t want her situation to change, she doesn’t want to see where she is. All she wants--

“Tony? Where’s Tony Stark? Is he--”

“He’s safe, you’re safe,” the same voice assures her. There’s the sound of velcro releasing a few seconds before she feels the restraint around her right arm shake, then come free. That’s important, Emory thinks to herself. Someone who uses a wide, long stretch of velcro does it because they don’t want that velcro to come loose easily. She listens for a second, similar sound to no avail. Carefully, her eyes still closed, Emory lifts her right hand with no resistance. She rubs her face with it and moves her left hand lightly, briefly; the strap holding it down stops her from moving far.

Whoever this friendly-sounding woman is, she wants Emory to remain partially restrained.

It’s with that knowledge that Emory opens her eyes.

She’s not in a cave, which is a plus. The room looks ‘hospital adjacent,’ but there are subtle differences that tell her that it’s either military or private. There’s a nurse standing nearby in scrubs, with a nametag reading K. Harris. Her smile is polite but distant, and something about her body language puts Emory’s guard up. The woman seems like she’s prepared for pushback, though, honestly, she should be, considering that one of Emory’s wrists is still tied down.

“Where am I?” Emory asks. Her throat doesn’t hurt and she’s not thirsty, but what has her really concerned is the fact that when she touches her face, her skin isn’t sore. She definitely got sunburned during their escape and subsequent walk through the desert. That sort of thing doesn’t heal quickly. “How long have I been unconscious?” she gasps, inwardly wincing when she realizes she should have kept that question in reserve. It’s a tell, a hint to whoever this ‘K. Harris’ is that Emory’s aware something’s not right.

Her thoughts are caught in a runaway reaction, each conclusion colliding with various fears in her mind, triggering a physical reaction that builds until her skin is barely holding her together. She’s not a person anymore, she’s a loose collection of fears and worst-case scenarios, and the governing conclusion is that something is wrong.

The blonde nurse steps up to the bed and takes her free hand. “I’m your nurse. My name is Kate. You’ve been through a lot, I hear,” she says gently. “Right now you’re in a medical facility. The US forces involved in your rescue had you moved here due to dehydration and a dangerous electrolyte imbalance.” She rolls her eyes up and makes a little face that looks like it’s supposed to read like she’s glossing over a lot of medical terminology that would be hard to explain. “Let’s just say they saw some signs that were concerning, and decided to keep you out for the flight back, pump you full of the good stuff.”

“What day is it?” Emory asks. Nurse Kate’s expression sharpens into a keen sort of interest.

“What day was it when you escaped?” she asks. The sympathetic camaraderie has completely dropped away, probably because Emory hadn’t seemed to buy it anyway.

“Fair enough,” Emory says without answering. “What’s with the restraints?”

Kate offers her a thin smile, letting go of her hand so she can examine the IV pole. To Emory, this reads as a subtle reminder of their power imbalance. She looks more closely at the woman, notes the way she holds herself. Her build reads more like an athlete than a healthcare worker. Is this because Emory’s trained herself to be frightened and suspicious after months in captivity, or are all these subtle signs of danger she’s picking up real?

Out of habit, Emory tries to brush her hair back with her left hand, and all of her self-doubt melts back away.

“There were some anomalies in your blood tests. It’s just a precaution.”

What would Tony do, in this situation? Emory asks herself. The first thing on the list would probably be to make sure he had two hands with which to do the second thing.

“Is that what this is? A precaution?” she asks, yanking upwards with her left hand before seeking out the velcro and tearing it open with her free hand. “Just like the CIA operative in the room with me, and the lack of windows?”

“The CIA doesn’t deal with domestic threats, Miss Autumn,” Fake Nurse Kate Harris says coolly.

Emory hears Tony’s voice in her head. ‘She’s underestimating you.’ She wishes she could have his confidence, but then again, everyone probably does. ‘So FAKE it,’ she hears next. ‘She’s telling on herself. Drop some hints of your own.’

All of this is just her brain’s coping mechanism, she knows, but it’s working. Too bad her fear about what’s going on is blocking any power generation she might have access to via thoughts of Tony.

That’s something she can practice to overcome, if she has to.

“So I went from terrorist hostage to domestic threat in the space of a day or so?” Emory asks, adjusting her pillows and sitting up as best she can. This covers the way she’s trembling, after saying something so provocative. “That doesn’t sound very realistic. Then again, far be it from me to question the experts.” She lifts her chin and folds her hands in her lap. “I demand to speak to whomever’s in charge, please, and to see Mr. Stark.”

‘Nurse Kate’ smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “‘Demand’ is such a strong word for someone in your condition!”

Emory steels herself inside, mentally donning a version of Tony’s hand-made armor. “I don’t think my condition matters all that much. I think what matters is what you believe your condition might be if I don’t get my way.”

It’s a complete bluff. Emory doesn’t have any idea how long it’ll take for her to prompt the kind of energy generation she’d need to fight someone with actual combat skills. As she’d said the words, though, she’d been thinking about Tony’s attitude when the terrorists had come to kill her. Knowing him as she does now, he never would have let them touch her without doing everything possible to fight back, even if it had been hopeless. Before trying that and possibly failing at it, though, he’d fronted, playing on their assumptions.

Agent-Nurse Kate’s reaction confirms Emory’s suspicions; whoever is holding her here knows she’s got some kind of mutation or abilities, and they’re scared of them.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

If Tony had known that the process of being rescued would separate him from Emory for so long, he would have thrown his influence around more to prevent that from happening. It had happened so gradually, in ways that could be attributed to red tape and miscommunication, that by the time he realized that he didn’t actually know where she was , it had been over a day and a half.

The medics in the first chopper had needed space to revive and care for her, so he and Rhodey had taken the second one. After landing, Tony was seen to by a separate medical team who determined his arm would need minor surgery. That had taken him to the next morning, when he had been told that due to her condition (which was not described clearly, in retrospect), Emory’s flight had left for New York already. Rhodey had then told him that the plan was for her to be treated in NYC and the two of them would meet up with her for the flight back to California.

They are over Pennsylvania when he realizes they’ve overshot that plan. They’re on an empty cargo plane, and though there’s a seat empty beside him, Rhodey is on the other side of the fuselage. Tony’s arm is in a sling and hurts like hell, but he unbuckles and walks over. Rhodes looks up from the file he’s been paging through, a wary expression on his face that pisses Tony off, stripping away any politeness.

“Turn the plane around.”

Rhodey closes the file and carefully puts it inside the briefcase beside him before he answers. “Tony--”

“I’m serious. We left someone behind.”

“Sit down and buckle up, will you? Stane and your board will be out for blood if you get more hurt on the return flight than your entire time in captivity.”

“Not until you tell me where Emory Autumn is. I’d also like a detailed report of her physical condition and a clear answer about when I can see her.”

“You in love with this girl?” Rhodes asks. It’s perceptive, but unfair.

“How long was I gone?” Tony demands, holding Rhodey’s gaze with absolutely no self-consciousness. This interrogation is not going to end the way the other man thinks it will.

“Answer the question!”

“You first!”

“Just under three months. Don’t you think the woman deserves a break from anything and anyone that might remind her of what she went through?”

“Come on, Lieutenant Colonel!” Tony snaps. “Of all the people to lecture me on the wisdom of leaving someone behind, it’s you, in your profession? There were three of us in that cave, and only two of us got out. Now you’re trying to tell me I should be fine with half-assing the rest of the rescue because the only other person left might be tired of my face? Bullshit.”

The plane starts to bank and he almost loses his footing. Rhodes reaches out and drags Tony into the seat beside him, reaching across to grab the buckle and slamming the pieces together. It turns out that he isn’t actually buckled either, and the pieces he’d tried to connect were the same. Tony can’t help himself. He cracks up.

“Goddamnit, Tony, can you be serious for once in your miserable life?” Rhodey complains, but he’s struggling to keep a straight face, too.

“You should know by now that the answer is no,” Tony says, batting his hand away and grabbing the correct belt end. Ostentatiously, he holds the two up with his good hand, loosening them so they’re easily visible, and connects them. “Sometimes, two people just fit. You know that. We fit. Doesn’t have to be romantic,” he says after tightening the belt, nudging his friend with his elbow. “Would you want me to shrug and assume you were fine after the military docs got ahold of you?” Reaching across his friend’s lap, Tony grabs the opposite end of his buckle and connects them despite the pain from his arm, grabbing the slack so he can haul on it. Rhodey snatches it free just in time.

“No. But you can’t deny what it looks like.”

Tony looks him straight in the face. “What does it look like?” It’s not that he doesn’t know, but he wants to hear what Rhodey will say. It’ll help him figure out how to frame the PR fallout from his plans.

“‘Tony Stark Can’t Even Get Kidnapped Without a Side Piece,’” Rhodes says, laying out the words with one hand in the air like he’s pitching the article title. Tony winces.

“It wasn’t like that, it--” Tony starts to protest, but then he stops in horrified realization. After what they’d had to pretend, to trick the terrorists into keeping her alive…

“What?”

“Fuck, it was worse. I can’t-- Look, the truth is, she hated me when we were first in there. I thought she was…” he trails off. He’d thought she was beautiful. He’d wanted her. There’s no way to tell this story that doesn’t sound exactly like the salacious headline Rhodey thinks it is. “We both changed our minds. She’s important to me.”

“How important?”

“Rhodey!” He’d never thought of Rhodes as a gossip.

“Listen to me, Tony,” Rhodey says, turning in the seat and reaching out a hand to grip his shoulder. “You’re asking me to stick my neck out, and I need to know exactly how far.”

He doesn’t hesitate to answer, this time. “All the way.”

“You’re--”

“I need her in my life, James,” Tony says. He’s used Rhodey’s given name precious few times in their lives, only ever at deathly serious moments. This is one of them.

Rhodey squeezes his shoulder and reaches down to unbuckle himself. “All I needed to hear.” He gets up, taking the briefcase with him, and heads for the cockpit.

Tony leans back against the wall of the airplane behind him and tips his head up. Instinct tells him that the injections are behind the strange roadblocks to knowing exactly where Emory is, and maybe even Rhodey’s odd behavior. Until someone comes right out and tells him that they know she’s got unexplainable powers, though, he’s keeping them to himself. That means lying to his best friend, even at a moment when he’s asking that friend to put his career on the line to push back against any possible orders regarding Emory Autumn.

He hopes she’s okay. They haven’t spent any time farther than a hundred feet from each other for 88 days, and her absence makes his heart ache. Tony rubs at the skin beside his ARC reactor, through his shirt. He’d done his best to conceal that, too, but he’d told Rhodey and the medics that it was simply a powerful magnet to protect his heart from shrapnel.

Only three people on the planet knew how powerful an energy source it is, and one of those three is now dead. He’s too worried about Emory to be able to properly mourn Yinsen, but that time will come, Tony knows. He shuts his eyes against the slicing guilt of not having been able to protect either of them from undue influence and unreasonable demands.

The next thing Tony knows, Rhodey’s shaking him awake, and they’re landing.

“The man I spoke to in New York says that her plane should have landed by now, and they’re going to send her to meet your vehicle,” his friend whispers in his ear as they get up and wait for the huge rear door to unfold.

“How credible did he sound?” Tony asks.

“Not very,” Rhodey admits.

He sighs. “Great.” As the doors open, Tony can see that there are two people, a man and a woman, standing next to each other in front of one of his cars. The upper door’s slow swing shows that the two are holding hands, lifting more to reveal that they’re looking at each other with no small amount of emotion before the man steps away, moving around the woman to open the driver’s side door and get in.

Tony’s both stunned and oddly comforted by the unexpected scene, but it shakes him enough that Rhodey feels the need to help him walk down the ramp. It doesn’t sting his ego (though he demurs when some actual paramedics walk up with a stretcher), but he regrets leaning into that as an explanation for his momentary physical weakness when he sees Pepper Potts’s face.

“Your eyes are red,” he says sternly, hoping she doesn’t guess that he’d seen her Moment with Happy. “Tears for your long-lost boss?”

Pepper’s smile lifts his spirits. “Tears of joy,” she teases. “I hate job hunting.”

“Yeah, well. Vacation’s over,” he says, starting for the car. Intellectually he knows that Emory won’t be in there, based on Rhodey’s reaction to his question about credibility. That doesn’t make him less anxious to know for sure, though.

Rhodey opens the door for him, and Tony gets in, miraculously not jostling his arm. “Who’s responsible for the delay, do you think? Military? Someone else? Someone who needs Stark Industries on their side?” he asks his friend.

Rhodes sighs. “Someone else is my guess. And yes.”

“Good. Tell them to switch on their TV in about an hour or so.”

Next chapter, Emory wakes up as a new kind of prisoner, and Tony sets out to piss off everyone around him till he gets what he wants.

#tony stark x oc #tony stark fanfiction #tony stark x original character #tony stark imagine #iron man fanfiction #iron man #iron man x oc #iron man x original character #mcu #mcu fanfiction #mcu fanfic #marvel #marvel fanfic #tony stark #series: autonomy #ocfairygodmother #fyeahsuperverseocs

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labarch · 3 years

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Witch Hats and Prejudice Part II

<-- Part I

Olruggio, my love, my man, I’m sorry your proposal to Qifrey in chapter 40 didn’t go as you hoped, let’s sit down and discuss your workaholism, temper issues and saviour complex, yes? Yes. It’s couple therapy time at last, we’ll have a look at Qifrey and Olruggio’s relationship and at chapter 40 in particular through the following points:

-Panelling in the Orufrey conversation in chapter 40

-Prejudice and power imbalance in Qifrey and Olruggio’s interactions

-Help as a collaboration between equals (spoiler: they haven’t made it to that stage yet)

-What Olruggio wants from Qifrey

Panelling in the Orufrey conversation in chapter 40

The conversation in chapter 40 is never framed as a happy reunion. If we reuse the analysis of the panels from Coco and Qifrey’s conversation I made in my previous post, we find the same markers of unease between Olruggio and Qifrey. Most of the panels are narrow, and get darker and darker as night falls. Qifrey and Olruggio rarely share a panel, and even when they do, they rarely make direct eye contact: Qifrey looks down, or Olruggio walks away from him, or they are curled in on themselves or standing on a slope at different eye level. For a while Qifrey is up in the air and mostly talking to himself. Oh yeah, and there’s a hat that gets in the way at some point.

It gives the sense that they are having two separate conversations, and that they never truly achieve the connection that we saw between Qifrey and Coco. On top of that, while the conversation is supposed to be about comforting Qifrey and earning his trust, Olruggio never manages to get a smile out of him, except for wobbly, miserable little grimaces. So what’s going through both of their heads, and why are they failing to meet halfway?

The chapter has an outward pull to it. The scene takes place on a slope that leads away from the atelier. The chapter opens with a herd of dragons flying away and into the night. Then Qifrey takes flight to look into the distance, while giving a very contradictory speech about how fulfilling yet dull his life is here, how happy yet trapped in an illusion he feels. He has to hold on to his cape as it flaps in the wind. It brings those dragons back to mind, like they are a metaphor for the side of him that wishes to escape. Qifrey’s migration season is just starting folks, it’s a confusing time for him okay.

In contrast to Qifrey looking ahead into a dark wilderness, Olruggio in this chapter is almost always looking back. He walks away from Qifrey to talk to him over his shoulder, or he looks back towards the atelier. In the only scene where he faces Qifrey full-on, the past is so present on his mind that he de-ages them both. It’s interesting, because it adds a caveat to his pledge of listening to everything Qifrey has to say: he is not so much trying to adapt to Qifrey’s new situation as he is trying to bring them back to the childhood stage of their friendship, when they were always together and kept no secret.

This whole looking ahead / looking back dichotomy brings me back to the mentality of the Great Hall, a society obsessed with keeping itself in an insulated bubble, wrapping itself in good intentions and noble ideals, and ignoring its own inner darkness and complexity. Qifrey, because of his inability to be content and stay in place, threatens that delicate balance. That sends the other witches around him into such a state of panic and outrage that even those who genuinely love him end up lashing out at him with uncharacteristic brutality.

Prejudice and power imbalance in Qifrey and Olruggio’s interactions

I have described in my previous post how vicious and oddly personal Beldaruit got in his attacks against Qifrey in chapter 36, but you can make the same case for Olruggio, especially since the two scenes run in parallel. There is something excessive about the violence with which Olruggio confronts his friend. For one, he is choosing a hell of a time to do it: the girls are safe, there is no urgency to press Qifrey for answers right this instant – except if he is hoping to shock Qifrey into honesty while he’s disoriented. Qifrey has just woken up from a three-day coma; he is half-naked in a place Olruggio knows worsens his nightmares; his scar is exposed; he is half-blind because Olruggio has taken his glasses; Olruggio is literally an angry dark blob looming over him. I’ve often heard it say that Qifrey is manipulative towards Olruggio, but in return Olruggio isn’t above using intimidation tactics against him, consciously or not.

There is also the staggering lack of empathy of the approach: what started this whole thing is that Olruggio learnt about Qifrey’s impending blindness. And his knee-jerk reaction was to attack Qifrey about it. Like, um, my dude, your friend almost died, he is going to go blind and lose his job, you wanna try being sensitive about it? (Note that Qifrey running after the Brimhats didn’t trouble Olruggio that much at first: after his interview with the Knights Moralis he is mainly concerned with “getting his story straight with Qifrey”; it’s only later on, when we see him staring at the glasses he’s just repaired, that he starts voicing his doubts about Qifrey’s intentions). He may be right to suspect that Qifrey is hiding things from him, but there’s a pretty big leap between “you are keeping secrets” and “you are wilfully using your own child as bait”.

This whole suspicious climate, that makes Olruggio jump straight to the ugliest conclusion possible, is once again a feature of the Great Hall mentality. The mind of a person who has been in contact with forbidden magic is forever corrupt, and his actions are forever suspect. Had Qifrey been anyone else, he would probably have been given the benefit of the doubt for losing track of his students while he was, you know, extremely concussed and suffering from blood loss. Interestingly, Olruggio’s concern – whether, when faced with a chance to go after the Brimhats, Qifrey would choose his quest over his students’ safety – is addressed as early as chapter 22: after an instinctive movement to rush into danger, Qifrey pulls himself back and takes measures to keep Coco and Tetia safe, and even plans to call Olruggio and the Knights Moralis as reinforcements to help rescue the others. Then he gets hit in the head by a giant snake golem, and the rest is history.

In general, Beldaruit’s and Olruggio’s accusations that Qifrey is using Coco as bait without caring for her wellbeing just don’t hold up. First, all the attacks by the Brimhats so far have occurred in completely mundane, teaching-related settings with other adults present (at the stationary shop, or during an exam), so pushing blame onto Qifrey clearly comes from prejudice rather than evidence. Second, if Qifrey’s sole aim was to get clues on the Brimhats, he would pressure Coco into taking the Librarian test as early as possible, but we keep seeing the opposite: he encourages her to take breaks and to enjoy her training rather than be laser-focused on her goals. Hilariously, out of the two tests Coco passed so far, Qifrey gave his approval for none, thinking it was too early for her (extra-hilariously, Beldaruit is the one who speed-ran Coco through her second test). I’m just saying, if Olruggio hasn’t noticed any of this and can’t take it in consideration before bringing out the accusations and threats, maybe he’s not doing that good a job as a Watchful Eye.

Another thing about this climate of suspicion, added to the power imbalance between Qifrey and Olruggio, is that it prevents them from having a healthy fight. Olruggio invokes his duties as Watchful Eye to berate Qifrey whenever he steps out of line, but when Olruggio lets his temper carry him too far and misuses his own power (when he drags Coco out to the Knights Moralis even though she had already been officially accepted as an apprentice in volume 2, or when he accuses Qifrey of using Coco as bait in volume 7 without proof), Qifrey never criticises him for doing so. It’s not that he is shy about speaking up to power – he is more than happy to yell at Beldaruit and Easthies when they mistreat his students. But when it comes to Olruggio, Qifrey is compelled to shoulder as much blame as he can, and seems almost afraid of saying anything negative to him.

It would have been justified for Qifrey to start chapter 40 by getting mad at Olruggio for his earlier accusations: Olruggio had been insensitive, unhelpful and completely out of line. But instead Qifrey pretty much encourages Olruggio to attack him again: from his “I thought you might be mad at me” to frantically denying that Olruggio might have ever done anything wrong. In return, there is something defensive in Olruggio’s delivery during the “I’m angry that I wasn’t someone you could trust” segment: he walks away from Qifrey as he gives the non-apology, and it comes out sandwiched between criticisms of Qifrey for being reckless and a long speech of Olruggio praising himself, and how everything would be alright if only Qifrey behaved himself and relied on him more. It’s an issue that this old distribution of roles is so well-entrenched between them, with Olruggio as the golden student and Qifrey as the eternal problem child.

Qifrey’s exaggerated gentleness and praise towards Olruggio participates in the feeling of wrongness that weighs on chapter 40. The memory erasure scene is framed like a kiss, and Qifrey keeps complimenting him even after sending him into an unnatural sleep. It would come across as condescending and manipulative, except for how fervently Qifrey seems to want to believe that Olruggio is perfect, and that any dysfunction in their relationship has to come from him.

Qifrey, focused as he is on his own dark secrets, is utterly unwilling to see any darkness in Olruggio. It makes sense when you consider that Qifrey has also been absorbing the prejudices of the Great Hall: he thinks very little of himself, and has probably been looking up to Olruggio as a moral compass ever since Olruggio took him under his wing as a child. He must also comfort himself with the thought that, when/if his quest drags him away from the atelier, Olruggio will be a perfect teacher for the girls. Having to come to terms with Olruggio’s flaws must be terrifying to him. But what about Olruggio’s perspective in all this?

Olruggio is an example of how even those who materially benefit from an elitist, close-minded society are damaged by it in some way. He grew up in the Great Hall as a bright-eyed, idealistic genius, and even as an adult he clings to the principles of that society like a mantra: “bring the blessings of magic to the people”. He is successful and respected by his peers, popular with the nobles and well-liked among the commoners. Yet somewhere along the way he became a ragged, workaholic hermit.

I have mentioned in previous posts that I suspect Olruggio of grappling with his own, deep-seated fear of being unwanted and left behind. He betrays that fear in the way he is attacking Qifrey: his concerns about Qifrey’s treatment of Coco aren’t based on evidence, and underneath that veneer he is mostly complaining that Qifrey is neglecting him. “Be straight with me”, “Don’t lie to me”, “You wouldn’t even tell me about it”, “You took her as a student without a word to me first”. There again, Olruggio is being a bit hazy on how far his influence goes as Watchful Eye: from what we know, Watchful Eyes are meant to ensure that students don’t get mistreated, but they don’t get a say in who teaches whom: it’s the disciples who choose their masters. Olruggio grumbling about Qifrey adopting more and more children behind his back is cute when we treat them as a couple. But from the perspective of their professional relationship, Olruggio is claiming the right to veto Qifrey’s students and take them away from him without any evidence of abuse.

The problem is that Olruggio is very bad at expressing his feelings without using his job, and therefore his authority, as a crutch. It’s endearing when he uses it to explain away his gifts to the girls (“I just want them to test a prototype”) or his marks of affection and care (“Drying your hair so you don’t catch a cold is part of my duties as Watchful Eye!”). However, it adds a layer of threat to his arguments with Qifrey, because he is constantly dangling that authority over his head, even when he is urging Qifrey to trust him. In his more agitated moments, it turns into a one-man good-cop / bad-cop performance (“Step out of line and I’ll report you” / “Why won’t you confide in me? I’m your best friend!”). Sure, he is willing to side with Qifrey against the Knights Moralis when he deems it appropriate, but here’s the catch: Olruggio gets to decide where the line in the sand lies, and that line seems to shift depending on how hot his temper is flaring at any given time.

It’s no wonder their conversation lends them in a dead-end when it is so one-sided. Thourghout the manga, and in volume 8 in particular, the author explores the idea that help should be a collaborative effort between equals, that encourages both parties to grow and learn more about themselves. Trying to unilaterally “save” someone is almost guaranteed to miss the mark and come across as condescending; it might even cause further harm.

Help as a collaboration between equals

Therefore, Qifrey and Olruggio can’t really come to any connection unless they make it clear that they are helping each other, not just endlessly acting out their roles as the golden student who knows all the right answers, and the problem child who must be saved from himself.

Aside from the framing, help as an equivalent exchange is the other key difference between chapter 40 and Qifrey and Coco’s dialogue earlier in the volume. In order to counter Coco’s doubts and growing self-hatred, Qifrey reinforces everything he admires about Coco: from her social skills and capacity for teamwork to her practical skills and her straight lines. He reminds her of all the things that she achieved so far. He also strongly hints that her fight is his fight, too, and that they should hold onto hope for each other’s sake. Finally, he makes a (pretty dramatic, unnecessarily literal and definitely unsafe, but still awesome) leap of faith by letting her decide what direction she wants to take next. His support isn’t conditional on Coco making the “right” choice, but freely offered. In return, Coco makes a display of saving Qifrey as well, saying she wants him right by her side while she figures out her path. The rescue itself is symbolic (it would actually have been safer for Qifrey to go back on his own), but Qifrey’s gratitude is genuine, because Coco made him feel valued, irreplaceable, just as Beldaruit and Olruggio were making him doubt his place as a teacher.

By contrast, Olruggio’s speech of friendship contains a grand total of ONE compliment, served in such a back-handed way that it sounds almost like a warning: “To Coco, you are a good teacher, so don’t betray that trust”. This is weighted against a slurry of criticisms about Qifrey’s recklessness, and heaps of self-praise. Olruggio is making a case for why Qifrey needs help and why Olruggio is best-qualified to deliver that help, like he is making a sales pitch to a client. It’s probably not a coincidence that Olruggio is remembering his successful bout of diplomacy in chapter 39 as he gears himself for his conversation with Qifrey. Olruggio, look, I get that you have more faith in your professional persona than in your regular self, but you can’t talk to your best friend like you are doing customer service, it just doesn’t work that way.

The help that Olruggio offers leaves no room for Qifrey’s input: once Qifrey has confided everything and laid himself bare, Olruggio will pick apart “where he needs the help” and “when he is about to do something stupid”, and either support or stop him as he judges appropriate. It reinforces Qifrey’s inferiority complex and interiorised guilt, by implying that his moral compass can’t be trusted. It also places the blame for Qifrey’s rash actions solely on his lack of judgement, rather than on having to grapple with complex, life-threatening situations and being caught in a pincer between a terrorist group and an oppressive system. There’s no mention that the definition of what’s “lawful” and “responsible” and “just” has gotten a bit messed up lately, and that Olruggio himself has had to compromise with his duties to cover for the kids. Olruggio fakes confidence in his capacity to fix everything, and pretends that things can go back to the way they were, but it would have been more honest of him to ask Qifrey to work with him so they can form a united front to face their new, complex reality.

Instead, by claiming that he is helping Qifrey out of a sense of duty, as Watchful Eye and as a friend, Olruggio reinforces the feeling that Qifrey is a burden to him. This gives Qifrey more incentive to keep his friend away from his investigations, and to see himself as expendable. In that light, since their friendship brings Olruggio so much trouble and so few benefits, betraying him and stealing the memories that relate to Qifrey’s secrets start to look like the lesser evil.

The only way that the conversation in chapter 40 could have gone well is if they both freely admitted to needing each other. However, it is too early in Olruggio’s character arc to be honest about his own feelings and worries. And it is too early in Qifrey’s character arc to see past his own self-loathing and recognize that his “perfect” friend also needs support and guidance. Yet, when they do, it is hinted that Olruggio can draw inspiration from Qifrey, and help Qifrey in a more meaningful way by highlighting how Qifrey matters to him, letting them reach this stage of true collaboration.

What Olruggio wants from Qifrey

I think Olruggio is repressing a sense of disillusionment about his work, the fairness of the system, and his usefulness as a witch. We see glimpses of his anxiety in chapter 39 notably. While he says that his true role is to help the commoners, circumstances keep reminding him that like it or not, his main function is decorative. He gets dragged in on short notice to be yanked around by petty nobles and arrange light shows at weddings; he has to act in secret to help the destitute, and even then can only do so much before the rules of magic society get in his way. So far he manages to keep his head above water, using his talent for diplomacy and showmanship to keep the nobles appeased, and finding small, creative ways to help commoners without breaking any law. But it leaves him with the feeling of being trapped in an increasingly constraining role, and is slowly pushing him towards a burn out.

He seems to feel a kinship with princess Mia, who like him is used as a tool in petty squabbles between nobles. He even metaphorically puts himself in her shoes: after likening her situation to being trapped in the spotlight in a dance she doesn’t want, he applies the same metaphor to himself and his inability to act outside the narrow constraints of witch rules, of being constantly watched and judged. And then, adorably enough, Olruggio actually brings Qifrey into the metaphor. He muses that Qifrey, who has gone against established rules before, might be the key to escaping that dance.

For all that the “problem child” / “star student” dichotomy has been weighing on Olruggio and Qifrey and warping their friendship, there is a flip side to it as well. As a prodigy who always pressures himself to perform perfectly (to the point where he will work himself to a zombie-like state and then hide behind a mask to look perfect and pristine in front of his clients at parties, Olruggio no), Qifrey provides a chance at escapism. For all that he berates him for causing trouble, Olruggio seems to fondly remember their old adventures. It’s possible that he valued the opportunity to do rebellious, forbidden things without having to jeopardise his reputation. His fear of being left behind by Qifrey is then also a fear of losing his hope that, when the pressure of being the perfect witch becomes too much to bear, Qifrey will be there to break him free.

In summary, Olruggio wants Qifrey to be his rebellious prince who breaks him free from the ballroom, and we respect him for it. Qifrey had his reasons for not being able to confide in him, and they both have a lot of character development to do before they can reach a stage of actual collaboration and trust. But I don’t dispute that taking his memories was a dick move. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

#witch hat atelier #witch hat meta #qifrey #orugio #olruggio #orufrey

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ashintheairlikesnow · 3 years

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I’m not the previous Chris anon but I have been thinking about this lately so I hope this is fine to share? To be clear I love all your characters and find you a marvelous author and also if Chris were real I would 100% be his best friend. But sometimes it did get under my skin how coddled he is compared to the other characters? Like, most of the time he does nothing and people are just willing to walk on coal for him. I understand that he was rescued very young and it was only natural for Nat and Jake and the others to take on a more parental role than with the other rescues, but it does feel kind of… unfair at times, how even way later as an adult Chris is still this boy who can do no wrong. I think it’s been on my mind since the therapy piece with Nova. Obviously Nova was in the wrong! but seeing that even their therapist inwardly admits to favoring Chris even when she knows she shouldn’t is… Idk, I feel like if the others sensed that that would be pretty discouraging, especially considering he got, like, adopted by Jake too and everything? But then again they probably wouldn’t mind cuz it’s Chris. Again, Chris is obviously loved by many and I would never try to diminish the significance of his story (I myself have read all his pieces, so, you know)! And I wouldn’t even say it’s unrealistic because there are definitely people who are just like that, who naturally make those instincts kick. Chris isn’t even a “perfect victim” or anything, so for me it’s not really his characterization personally but more to do with how everyone else treats him in-universe? It makes me think if he would’ve gotten the same treatment if he was taken in older or even if he were just more assertive! Or perhaps he gets the most help (or it seems like it) because he knows how to accept it and people can sense that? I can’t really blame that when the other rescues are often understandably bad at receiving help, so it does make sense. I’m so sorry for how all over the place this is! I’m constantly thinking about your characters and Chris has just been at the forefront recently so I had to take the opportunity lol

Also: OH and I also wanted to say that I feel like perhaps the reason that can be frustrating is that it can evoke this feeling of “well, I relate to Chris and nobody would treat ME like that if I were vulnerable” — but I think that’s also the significance of his story, because when you get over that defensiveness what you’re left with is that everyone deserves that, actually, and there are people out there who are genuinely willing to let you rely on them. At least that’s been my experience with Chris!

Ooooh, yes. Actually, let me tell you why that detail in the therapy piece really resonated with me. I do tend to write therapist that largely know what they're doing, and are very good at their jobs. But in this case, that sort of ran head first into my need to write real people who are three-dimensional and imperfect.

Dr. Berger knows she shouldn't let her feelings on Chris change her way of treating Nova - and it doesn't, not outwardly - but she is human, and therefore prone to mistakes.

Nova is low-empathy, while you could say that Chris has hyper-empathy in a lot of ways. On the surface this makes him more immediately endearing to people, although it also makes him more dependent on receiving positive emotional reinforcement and attention than she is. Nova is actually self-contained in a lot of ways, although she very much misses human contact and seeks out affection. Sarita balances that well with her!

But yeah, Dr. Berger inwardly prefers Chris as a patient. And recognizes that fact, and takes care to make sure she still treats Nova with the same dignity and care as Chris.

There's an AU of him where he isn't taken in by anyone until he is in his early twenties, and he is even more dependent and frightened of the world after years of living on the streets. And he struggles a lot more with panic responses and how to moderate behaviors. It would be interesting to think more on that and how it would affect him in the safehouse.

#chris asks

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highladyluck · 3 years

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Same Pattern, different interpretations and focuses

Accidental sequel to "Mat's just as superstitious as Tuon", exploring why they think each other's form of superstition is absurd, but their own is completely logical and incontrovertible. (It's not *just* because it's hilarious, there's solid characterization reasons too!)

Tuon is completely correct that Mat is superstitious and that he's superstitious about being ta'veren; she's just correct for the wrong reasons. She has no idea how much Mat has internalized his sense of the Pattern working on him, and that it appears to him as rolling dice in his head that announce his fate! Mat says "It seems being ta'veren works on me as much as it does anyone else", and she scoffs and calls him superstitious. Since she doesn't believe the Pattern plays favorites, any personal belief that you've been singled out by the Pattern is automatically a kind of hubris and superstition.

Also, Mat's not wrong that Tuon is superstitious and that it comes out in the omen-reading, but it's strongly implied by the text that he's wrong that the omens are total nonsense. The omens have given Tuon the same kind of plot-related nudges his dice have, and furthermore, the fact that Min's Talent exists & that Tuon as well as Min has glosses for some of Min's viewings means that fundamentally the Pattern can be expressed in understandable and potentially universal symbols and images. We also see this with Tel'aran'rhiod, where Perrin sees visions that are similar to Min's viewings, not to mention Egwene's symbolic and prophetic dreams. The Pattern is absolutely expressed in visual symbols (it's a pattern!!! of course it is!!!)

So, I posit that divination is real and valid in WoT, and both Mat and Tuon are correct that their way of doing it is fairly accurate. This means that they're both wrong about the other person's way being total nonsense. But if they're both fundamentally superstitious (and yet also very observant and smart people), why are they so convinced the other person is doing it wrong? In addition to the cultural differences, I think there's some subtle personality differences that play into this, relating to both how they take in information, and the realms where they see themselves as decision-makers vs reactors.

We always see Mat 'reading the room', picking up on spatial orientations as well as people's expressed attitudes towards him. His instinctive reactions are usually correct, since this is his survival skill and to some extent his reactions bypass his brain. When he tries to gloss people's internal motivations, he opens the process to error because he's filtering it through his own opinions, which are much more about him than about others.

For Mat, his external environment is a source of input related to him that he can react to, but his internal landscape (including the dice) is what he privately sees as ultimately guiding his choices. Mat's very good at external detachment- his body is constantly reacting to things before his brain notices- but he clings to his own internal motivations very hard, because that's where his sense of self is located. Mat isn't very empathetic, since he's so caught up in his own head he doesn't have room to mirror other people's feelings, but he is very sympathetic; he picks up on and understands other people's suffering, hence why he’s always rescuing people, based on his own definitions of who needs rescuing.

He's so good at automatically reacting to external stimuli, that I think it seems either laughable, or sort of threatening, to him that someone else could read things in the external environment that he can't also see. And he has such a clear perception of the Pattern influencing him internally and idiosyncratically, that it must seem really unlikely for there to also be universal Pattern-reading symbols that mean the same thing for everyone! That's just overkill!

In contrast, we always see Tuon listening very closely to what people are and aren't saying, to see how they are internally oriented. This is her survival skill, and uses her natural empathy, so she's quite good at getting in other people's heads and feeling their feelings, even if she's extremely parsimonious with sympathy (probably as a defense mechanism and/or side effect of her detachment skills). But you'll see her getting it wrong when her mental model of someone else's internal motivations is incorrect due to cultural differences, or when she's introduced to completely new information that doesn't fit in her internal landscape.

This externally expressed landscape of other people's motivations, and the externally expressed landscape of the Pattern's motivations (aka omens) guide and constrain Tuon's choices, while she privately gets input from and reacts to her own internal landscape. You can see this in how she's very good at internal detachment and setting aside her own feelings when making choices, while being very possessive of and attentive to things in the material world, which is the realm she feels she can control.

She's also so primed to think of divination as external and people's motivations as internal, and so good at automatically reacting to her own internal landscape, that I think to her, the idea of the Pattern acting on someone internally is either horrifying or ridiculous. If the Pattern can influence you internally as well as externally, how do you ever have free will, and also why would there be so many external signs that are right there for anyone to read?

In terms of how they make decisions and place significance upon external and internal data, Mat and Tuon are inverses. Mat reacts unconsciously to externalities and all of his choices are internal and emotionally-motivated; Tuon reacts unconsciously to internal feelings but all of her choices are external and situationally-motivated. This is why they're so mysterious to each other, but also why they have very similar leadership/strategy/manipulation skillsets; their way of processing information and making decisions are opposite but complementary.

#wheel of time #mat cauthon #tuon paendrag #problematic fave tuon #meta #wheel of time meta #superstition #character analysis #the part of my brain that is addicted to pattern-matching goes absolutely feral for these two #in case you haven't noticed

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fantastic-rambles · 3 years

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Fandom: Sk8 the Infinity

Characters: Shindo Ainosuke (Adam), Kikuchi Tadashi (Snake)

Warnings: What are ethics?, Genetically Engineered Humans, Human-Animal Chimeras, Animal Traits, Slavery/Ownership, Implied Abuse/Neglect

Word Count: 1.5k

Summary: Shindo Scientific is at the cutting edge of genetic engineering, and their most popular products are exotic chimeras that the obscenely rich purchase as pets. But when they start to explore the field of human chimeras, the young heir of the corporation finds himself developing a sense of empathy for their latest prototype. [This one is weird to tag, I think. But it's not canon-typical pet play, or sexual pet play in general, but it does involve ownership of "pets," so... yeah.] [TadaAi Week 2021 | Day 6: Sci-fi AU]

Ainosuke stared at the beautiful, white-winged creature in the gilded cage. It seemed to be sleeping, the wings furled around itself to conceal its body. But even though it simply sat there, perched on the couch inside the cage, he couldn't look away.

Of course, he could have asked one of the staff to go in and wake it up, to prod it until it flew around and showed off its plumage that shimmered with an iridescent phosphorescence, but he was content to just watch it like this. There was just something peaceful about the silence, and Ainosuke drew his knees up to his chest as he sat on the cool stone floor, breathing quietly.

Eventually, it began to stir, the gossamer wings stretching open to reveal the humanoid figure inside, looking only a few years older than him. Long, black hair fell down its back in a silky cascade, providing a sharp contrast to the wings while it stood up and stretched pale, delicate limbs. The white robe it wore fell down smoothly from one shoulder, draping in artful folds around its body. And it looked around with bright green eyes, a smile appearing on its face when it spotted the boy sitting outside the bars.

It made some small, unintelligible sounds as it walked over to Ainosuke, its wings folding neatly behind its back. But the noises sounded happy, and Ainosuke smiled back as it crouched down just inside the bars, looking back at him. Nervously, the boy looked around, but the two of them seemed to be alone. So he raised one finger to his lips while he dug around in his pocket, pulling out a chocolate bar. He stretched his arm toward the cage, but in the instant that the treat passed through the bars, a piercing wail made both of them flinch backwards while security ran in, his father in the rear.

"Again, Ainosuke?" Aiichiro snapped, grabbing his arm and roughly pulling him upright. He glanced at the candy bar on the floor before kicking it aside, where it thunked dully against the wall. "What were you thinking? You know that its diet has been precisely developed. If you give it something like that, it might get sick, and then all the investment into its development will go down the drain! And what if it had grabbed you? I thought I raised you to be smarter than this!"

"I'm sorry, Father! I'm sorry!" Ainosuke apologized, cringing. The prototype fluttered just inside the bars, its expression distressed before a wall of men formed between it and Ainosuke. "I just thought it might be lonely. It always just has to stay there--"

"Because it's a creature, Ainosuke! Even if it looks like that, it's not human! It's mindless, heartless, driven only by instinct like a mundane animal. You've seen what it does whenever we need to show it off to investors. You need to get rid of this useless sentimentalism of yours if you're seriously intending to take over this company when you get older. Do you understand?"

Reluctantly, Ainosuke nodded, glancing back toward the cage and catching a flash of soft white feathers past the wall of black. It didn't seem anything at all like his father said, though: even though it couldn't talk, it seemed reasonably intelligent and responded to his words when he talked to it. It wasn't like the other chimeras that Shindo Scientific had developed, but maybe it was just because it was their first successful part-human.

The others were certainly more dangerous pets: the part-lion, part-goat, part-snake chimeras that had become their flagship product had savaged more than one owner who didn't care for them properly. And then there were the pegasi that had provided the breakthrough for this angelic prototype: earlier versions of them had had the unfortunate tendency to buck off their riders when they were in the air before they were able to improve their docility. Of course, all buyers signed lengthy waivers absolving the company of responsibility in case of any such accidents, but there were always more buyers eager to purchase the latest exotic pet to show off to their friends despite the risk.

It was true that this one lashed out at its handlers during the exhibitions, but Ainosuke was convinced that if they just spoke to it, they wouldn't need to resort to violence to make it show off, unlike the others. He glanced back at the cage to see it soar above the barrier of guards, its emerald eyes fixed on him, but then it jerked and plummeted downward with a tranquilizer dart in its neck, pulling a cry out from Ainosuke's chest. He pulled against his father's grip, wanting to go and make sure that it was okay, that it hadn't broken anything, but Aiichiro firmly pulled him away.

"That's enough of that. Now, come on, or you'll be late for your lessons."

"Are you sure about this, sir? Nobody is allowed inside without protective equipment and a prod, usually. Shall I call in the guards, just in case?"

A technician hovered anxiously around Ainosuke as he unlocked the door of the cage. He was still dressed in a black mourning suit, but his scarlet eyes were dark with determination.

"I don't need any of that."

He stepped into the cage, closing the door behind him. The years had taken their toll on the beautiful creature of his memory: the wings were slightly tattered with many of the feathers askew, the black hair was messy and knotted, and its clothes were torn and stained. But the worst were the eyes: wary, like a cornered animal. Even so, Ainosuke had been impossibly relieved to know that it was still alive. Most pets were only kept for a few years, then put down to make space for the next fad. To have been able to buy it back after this long had been close to an impossibility.

It growled at him as he approached cautiously, his bare hands outstretched. He slowed down but continued to press forward, stopping when it bared its teeth and bated, its wings stretching out to their full length and sending gusts toward him.

"It's okay. It's me, remember?" Ainosuke called out softly, waiting for it to settle down again. He took another step forward, only to be greeted by the same reaction. Slowly, he reached into his pocket, and sharp green eyes followed his movements before he withdrew his hand to show it the chocolate bar.

"Remember?" he asked again, taking one more step forward. It was still clearly wary of him, but it didn't try to intimidate him this time. So Ainosuke continued to advance, freezing again when it bared its teeth at him again when he'd gotten within wing's length. Carefully, he extended the candy toward it, staying very still as it leaned forward, eyes fixed on his face. The silence stretched between them for over a minute before the candy was snatched out of his hand and raised to the creature's mouth. When it bit down on the wrapper, Ainosuke chuckled, stepping forward.

"Wait, you need to--"

An enormous white wing smacked into him, knocking him to the ground while a voice called out, "Ainosuke-sama!"

He raised a hand before slowly getting back to his feet.

"I'm fine. Don't yell. You'll startle it."

It had curled up defensively on its couch, shining eyes staring at him, and Ainosuke smiled gently, spreading his open hands again.

"It's okay. I scared you, right? I'm sorry. But the wrapper won't taste good. Let me show you?"

He took a cautious step forward, bracing himself for another buffet, but nothing came. It still shrank away from him as he moved closer, the wings twitching and sending small bursts of air toward him, but he was eventually close enough to reach out and take the candy bar back, though it flinched when he did.

With deliberate slowness, Ainosuke unwrapped the candy before holding it back out again, and it reached out just as slowly to take it, leaving a smear of melted chocolate on his fingers when it finally pulled it away and tasted it. And it hummed as it chewed, making Ainosuke smile more broadly as he raised his hand to his mouth, licking off the chocolate.

"Can I touch you?" he asked, extending his hand slowly. It watched the hand approach, but it didn't do anything to stop him, so he rested his hand on its head, waiting to see its reaction. Nothing happened, and feeling encouraged, Ainosuke gently stroked its hair, repeating the gesture a few times until it seemed to relax slightly.

Raising his other hand, he brushed it gently against one of the wings. It growled again when he caught against a loose feather, but the noise didn't sound like a threat, so he continued to carefully caress the dull, white feathers. For a while, there was no other sound besides that of chewing, but when it had finished eating, it leaned forward, resting its head on his chest. And Ainosuke sighed, bending down slightly so he could look it in the eye, so close that there would be nothing he could do if it suddenly decided to try to savage him.

"Welcome home."

#sk8 #SK8 the Infinity #skate the infinity #tadaaiweek2021 #fanfic #fan fic #sk8 adam #shindo ainosuke #ainosuke shindo #sk8 snake #kikuchi tadashi #Tadashi Kikuchi #shindo aiichiro #aiichiro shindo #mine

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percywinchester27 · 4 years

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About a boy (Part-13)

Word count: 3.7K

Warning: Suspense, feels, physical abuse, child-trafficking, kidnapping, child-violence, bullying, angst, this gets really really dark, rest of the warnings in the tags.

Characters: Dean, Cas, Gabriel, Benny, Michael, OCs and… Sam?

Summary: Dean Winchester has a secret. A secret that could really land him in trouble. He never expected to connect with anyone when he walked into the ‘Blue Stone Orphanage for Boys,’ but even then, the walls he has put up are slowly coming down. Now, a series of strange events are threatening to expose him. When everything starts falling apart around him, will he still be able to save the one person that matters the most?

A/N: Please pay attention to the tags if you have triggers. Also, things get better after this!

Kudos to the lovliest @deanssweetheart23 for beta reading this story <3

About a boy masterlist

The adrenaline had taken over his body. That was the only explanation for how Dean could even remotely function with this sort of efficiency, let alone calmth. The first part of the plan had played out without a hitch. It had been easy to walk out of the Orphanage with Andy gone. They had walked too fast- almost sprinted- all the way till the edge of the town and it had taken Dean all of five minutes to fuse the wires and have the first car they saw running. It was an old Toyota XUV, stick shift, but nothing Dean hadn’t handled before.

So they had set out into the night. Dean in the driver's seat and Cas in the shotgun. Behind, Gabriel and Benny were sitting on either sides with Michael wedged between them. Gabriel had insisted on tying Michael’s hands behind his back. Dean couldn’t care less. It wasn’t like Michael was going to try anything funny. All he could do was point out directions when Dean was about to make turns and furtively steal looks at Cas who was sitting as passively as a stone besides Dean.

Dean knew Cas was distraught. Everything that Cas had believed in had been shattered in front of his eyes. Moreover, somewhere deep down he was wallowing in guilt that countless others had been sacrificed while he enjoyed his privileged safety. Both he and Gabriel must be feeling it. Dean should have been feeling something, too. Sadness, empathy… something for his friend. But in reality, he was feeling nothing except a haunting and all encompassing numbness.

His brain was processing Michael’s instructions, and his muscles were responding accordingly, steering the wheel in the right direction, but that’s all. Somewhere he knew that this odd disembodiment wouldn’t last, that it was his body’s defense mechanism to save him from the overloading of emotions and crippling fear each time he thought of Will. So he just didn’t. He didn’t think about anything except getting to the damned warehouse. Because, he knew if he waited long enough, allowed himself to feel, he’d be folded on the floor, paralysed in terror at the prospect of what might be.

If the numbness was the only thing keeping him upright and functioning, then so be it. Dean welcomed it.

“Take the second left and drive until the end of the road,” Michael said quietly. “That’s where the barn-house is. Turn off the headlights when you hit the country road. They have guards watching.”

There was a rough grunt from behind and Benny made a disapproving sound. “Stop hitting him,” Benny said.

“This is not about you, Lafitte,” Gabriel hissed. “This son of a bitch rode his high horse all these years and ruled the fucking place like he was some sort of king. All the while he was letting all those boys get bloodied and cut open and sold.”

Despite himself, a shudder overcame Dean, and he could feel a tiny crack in his numbness.

There was another hit.

“Stop hitting him, Gabe.” It was the first time Cas had spoken since they had left the orphanage.

Gabriel made an incredulous sound. “You of all people are saying this, Cas? You? Don’t tell me this bastard doesn’t deserve it!”

Cas shook his head. He looked haunted and his voice was dry, parched even. “You aren’t really angry at him. You’re angry at yourself. You’re angry because you always suspected that something wasn’t right with this place, that Andy was abusing his power. You always doubted that the privilege that came with being from Michael’s orphanage came at the cost of something horrible that he knew about, that he was a part of. You knew it in your gut and you ignored it. Overlooked it. Because confronting Michael would have meant giving up your freedom and comforts which you were so used to, which you loved. Don’t kid yourself by thinking that you’re angry with Michael. You’re angry with yourself. Angry and feeling guilty because you could have easily been one of those kids but you aren’t. You are safe and sound while some poor kid died instead of you.”

His words were followed by silence. An uncomfortable, too deep silence.

Dean looked over at Cas who was still glaring straight ahead into the night, eyes completely dry now. When he spoke next, his voice was softer, more like the Cas Dean knew and cared for.

“Gabe,” Cas said, “I know how you’re feeling. But now is not the time for it. You can’t let it get to you, can’t let the anger overpower you when you need to think straight. You have to get a grip on yourself because we need to save those boys.”

“You’re right,” Gabriel sighed. “I’m sorry.” And Dean could hear the crushing guilt there along with severe self-loathing.

How had he never seen this? All those weeks and months spent in the same room, he had never suspected that Gabriel’s outlandish, extravagant behaviour could be a direct sign of him acting out… because he felt miserable inside.

“It’s okay, man!” Benny said quietly. “Nobody is holding anything against you. Ain’t that right, Dean?”

“Yeah.”

“Besides,” Benny continued, “We’re here.”

The grey outline of the building was visible even from a couple hundred yards away. Yellow lights pouring out of the windows lent a sinister glow to the structure.

Dean cut the engine and climbed out of the car, everyone followed suit.

“Okay, here’s what we do,” he said. “Cas and I will try to get in from the front door. Gabriel, is there anyway that you can cause a distraction?”

“Distraction is my middle name,” Gabriel said with a small tilt to his mouth. He reached out into his pockets and casually removed what looked like detonators. “You say it, I got it!”

“Benny, I need you to go out back and see if there’s another entrance there. It seems likely.”

“Alright,” Benny said, bending to buckle his shoes.

“What about me?” Michael who was staring defiantly at him. At least as defiantly as one could, with their bound hands trussing up the shoulders awkwardly.

“Oh, you’re staying in the car,” Gabriel said, jerking him back in.

“You can’t do this to me!” he protested

Gabriel smirked bitterly as he pushed Michael inside and shut the car door to his face. “We can and we will.”

There was no point in discussing the nuances of the plan. Each minute spent standing was a minute wasted, a minute more of Will’s life in danger.

Dean signaled and all of them made a move, hurrying as stealthily as they could along the tall outgrowth that ruled most of the property. At the very edge of it, with a single nod, Benny split from them and sprinted towards the south. Gabriel too gave a sly grin, eyes full of his usual mischief. He saluted once and headed in the opposite direction from Benny.

With bated breath, Dean listened carefully for anything that was unusual. He wasn’t sure what Gabriel’s detonator was supposed to do, but it had to be something noticeable.

Cas was squinting into the darkness, trying to make sense of what lay ahead of them. It was hard to tell, but from the light that filtered out of the ghastly grey windows, they could make out the shapes of about five men. Two of them were guarding the entrance and three were making patrol rounds. All of them wielded guns.

Dean felt a shooting fear for Benny who was out there by himself and even Gabriel. They were both unarmed and alone. If anything happened to them… on Dean’s watch…

A sudden, brilliant light lit up the night followed by a loud blast far along the western edge. All of the five men abandoned their post and hurried towards the commotion.

“Where the hell does he even get those things?” Cas muttered next to Dean.

They waited for a few more minutes then crept further ahead. They were right in front of the warehouse now with just a few thinly spaced trees in between and a line of cars. There would be no hiding now.

“C’mon,” Dean said and they made a beeline for the car closest to the building and ducked behind it. The guards at the door had been replaced by two more and from inside the warehouse, a couple more were hurrying to join the others who had rushed to find the source of the blast.

When enough time had passed for Dean to be sure that no one else was coming out from inside, he gestured to Cas and they dived at the two guards. It was crucial for it to be a surprise attack or else they were going to start firing guns and alert everyone. It started out well when Dean jumped on top of the sturdier looking man, knocking the gun right out of his hand; but the other guard was quicker. He grabbed Cas’s hand and twisted it around till there was an audible crack and Cas went down with a yelp. The man standing over him hit Cas with the blunt end of his gun and then turned it around to aim the barrel at Cas’s face.

Before Dean could even register what was happening, there was a guttural cry and a fist landed on the guards neck, who immediately crumpled next to Cas. Dean noted Michael’s face in the flurry of movement but his instincts led him to kick the guy he was holding down and then land a blow to his neck. He slumped down as well.

“You were in the car!” Dean scowled. “How did you get out?”

Michael bent down to check on Cas. “No thanks to you, asshole,” he said. “I’ve spent my whole life being kicked out and pushed into sinkholes. You think a leather cord around my wrists and a locked car was going to stop me?”

Dean did not retort. He was worried for his friend. Cas looked faint and in a lot of pain. He had sustained not one but two blows to his head tonight, and from the looks of it, his wrist was broken. Even then, he shrugged out of Michael’s grasp.

“You should hurry, Dean,” Cas said through gritted teeth. His face was beaded with sweat and he looked ready to pass out.

Ordinarily, Dean would have never trusted Michael with anything, but when it came to Cas, there wasn’t much Michael wouldn’t do. Hadn’t that already been proven in the most horrible way possible already?

“Michael,” Dean barked. “You stay with Cas. He’s in no shape to go anywhere. Help him over to the edge of the outgrowth. He should be well hidden from view. I don’t care about what happens to you, but we both care about Cas. Protect him!”

Cas protested vaguely and Dean knew he would be mad about this later, but right now it was the right thing to do.

Fortunately, Michael didn’t waste any time in coming up with a comeback. He hauled Cas’s good arm over his shoulder, and led them both out the clearing.

This was it. Dean bent down and grabbed the weapons lying around. He tucked the smaller gun into the waistline of his jeans and held the rifle in his hands, then, he dove into the warehouse.

The inside reminded him of the west wing. It was just as dirty and stank of old blood. He shuddered as he made his way into the interiors. There were noises to follow and an obviously well used corridor leading towards them. Dean followed it as carefully as he could, keeping his eyes and ears open should there be any more of the henchmen around. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out that the noise was a decoy and then head straight inside.

His ears picked up the distinct sound of careful footsteps around the corner and Dean raised the rifle as he made the bend, poking it into the person who emerged from the other side.

“What the hell, Winchester!” Gabriel hissed. “Why’re you trying to kill me?”

He wasn’t alone. Next to him Benny was trying to keep a straight face at Gabriel’s panicked expression. Even being in a murder building with weapon wielding mercenaries couldn’t faze Benny all that much.

“Here!” Dean handed Gabriel the other gun. “Hold on to this. Nice work with the fireworks out there.”

“It’s like the 4th of July, baby,” Gabriel said. “Ran into Lafitte out back. The dumb guards there abandoned their post without waiting for backups. Where’s Cas?”

Dean quickly explained what had happened in a low voice. He could tell that neither of them were happy about Michael being with him, though nothing could be done about it.

“We figured out the surgery rooms from the backside,” Benny said. “They’re this way. C’mon!”

Dean followed their lead, watching the rear end. Benny wasn’t wrong, the operation rooms were right there. But they weren’t anything like the ones in hospitals. They were dirty and grimy; disgustingly so. The walls were bathed in old, brown blood and the floor was caked in it. It looked more like the underground torture chambers in gore movies than anything else. Dean felt a chill run down his spine. The stench made him want to barf.

Benny came to a halt ahead of them. “Dean,” he said in a muted voice.

It felt like a deja vu from when he had found the holding cells in the left wing as Dean walked by him and looked into the room. Inside, in the middle of the room, next to a trolley of bloody and rusted instruments was a stretcher. Resting on the stretcher with his brown hair drenched in blood was Barry. With each step that Dean took, he could see more of it. The blunt incision at the side of his stomach, roughly sutured, and the bloody cloth draping his body from his stomach down. There was blood everywhere on the floor. Bright and fresh.

Dean reached out to touch his face.

“Barry?” he whispered. The voice didn’t sound anything like his own. It was empty and echoed around the room.

Barry’s half open eyes stared at nothing. Dean reached out with shivering fingers and closed them shut. Then, he collapsed to the floor, face in his hands.

“Dean, Dean!”

The voices over him were coming from a distance. It seemed unreal. All of it.

A hand gripped his shoulders.

“I had assured him that I would come back for him. And now he’s… he’s… “

Another pair of hands seized him by his arms and shook him violently. “Snap out of it, damn it!”

“But he’s dead!” Dean pointed out, unable to move more than a finger. “Look at him. He’s dead.”

“I know,” Benny whispered urgently. “And he won’t be the only one if you don’t move.”

“Think about Will,” Gabriel said, his voice subdued. Dean looked up to see that he was crying. “Will needs you.”

Dean got up on his knees; his whole body was shaking. He didn’t want to think about it, but if Barry was dead…

“No!” he said out loud. “Will is alright. We’re going to find him.”

“Yeah, that’s my boy,” Benny huffed, hoisting Dean off of the floor, and edging him out of the door. They reached the end of the hall and to the last door. The scene that met his eyes was beyond horrifying. Someone small lay on a raised platform and a man in a white apron was bent over it. Two others were standing around assisting him. Andy and a dark haired man in an expensive looking suit were standing at the edge of the room. The man’s face betrayed no expression. He was simply overlooking what was happening with a passive look. Andy on the other hand looked revolted.

Dean leaned over just a little further to get a clearer view. Just enough to see the face of the figure laying on the platform. It was Will.

He didn’t know what came over him, but one minute Dean was standing at the edge of the door, the next he was bounding into the room, thrashing left and right at any obstruction he could see to get to Will. Again, the shock of it all was on his side. Before any of them could react, the two assistants were down on the floor.

Andy started into action. “What the-” Before he could finish his sentence, Benny had jumped on him, hand to the throat. All of a sudden the room burst into a flurry of action as the dark haired man whipped out a pistol and took shots in the air.

Out of pure impulse, Dean threw himself in between the man and the platform, shielding Will with his own body. But there was more shooting, and more men poured into the room. At first Dean felt a surge of defeat, assuming them to be the henchmen, but as more and more of them came in, he realised they were uniformed police officers. He turned to face Will, completely blocking out the chaos behind him.

Will lay on his stomach, his face turned to the side and his eyes closed. He could have been only sleeping if it wasn’t for the long cut at his side. The dirty cloth under him was soaked in his blood. His hair was falling over his eyes and the tiny mole on the left side of his nose. It was really small, and Will had a habit of scratching it when he was nervous. Dean reached out to brush away the hair, leaving a bloody trail on his skin. He looked at his own hands to find they were blood smeared. In fact most of him was, after he had slid into Barry’s blood.

A logical part of him knew what he should do; check for the pulse, but he simply stood there, not taking his eyes off Will’s face.

“Dean.”

The voice came from behind him and it was unexpectedly soft. He felt warm arms envelop him, felt a brush of lips against his temple.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Jody said, sounding heady with relief.

“Jody,” Dean sniffled, and he realised he was crying. “Will.... Will!”

“He’s alive,” she said. “Look, he is breathing.”

Even as Dean turned, to ascertain for himself, a group of EMTs blocked most of his view. He watched one of them tape the wound close and the others gently lifting him on to a gurney. Then they were taking him away.

Dean struggled against Jody, yanking free of her hold to follow them, but she held on tight.

“I need to go with him,” he shouted. “Let go!”

“Only family can ride with the ambulance, Dean,” she said sympathetically.

“But I need to be with him!”

“And you will be.” Jody let go of him then. “C’mon. You’ll ride with me.”

Most of the drive to the hospital was a blur. Jody told him about how the Orphanage was a middle house for the kids. And at the very minute that they were driving, it was being raided by the police for evidence. The suited man was Jacob Styne, and the warehouse had enough paper evidence to convict the whole Styne brood. They had taken into custody everyone present including Andy.

He barely paid attention to any of it, except what was happening to his friends. Cas was being driven to the hospital as well, so were Benny and Gabriel, where after ascertaining their well-being the police would record their statements.

By the time they reached the ER, Will had already been taken into the Operation Theater. There was nothing to be done except wait. At some point Dean felt the seat next to him dip and looked up to see Bobby beside him. He flung an arm over Dean’s shoulder, holding close, grounding him to reality. No words were spoken, but Dean was comforted in a way that only a father could.

When Jody came back, she looked worried. Dean got to his feet immediately.

“How’s he?”

She bit her lip. “They didn’t take out his kidney. You got there just in time… But, I don’t want to lie to you, Dean. He’s lost a lot of blood and the doctor is worried.”

“So get them to pump him up with more blood,” Bobby said, speaking for the first time.

Jody’s brow furrowed. “It’s not that easy, he has a rare blood group-”

“Let me help!” Dean said suddenly. “I can give him my blood. We have the same blood group!”

“What?”

“Jody,” Dean said, hurriedly. “Michael said that they were saving Will because he has a rare blood group, AB negative. That’s the same as mine. Ask them to take mine. As much as they need.”

Jody’s eyes rounded in worry, but she didn’t question Dean over it, and went to speak with the doctor.

Soon, Dean was put onto a bed. They first tested him, and then when it was confirmed that it was indeed, miraculously the same blood group, they hooked him up to a tube. It was killing Dean to just lie there watching the blood drain. Everyone should be hurrying, they all should be concentrating on saving Will. But it was a hospital. Every patient was just the same to them. And Will was an orphan at that.

The seconds bled into minutes and then excruciating hours as Dean waited. He was aware when Benny and Gabriel came in, quietly sitting besides him and Bobby, just waiting for the doctor to come out. When she did, all of them stood up at once.

The doctor lowered her mask and gave them a tentative smile. Then she said the words that actually let Dean breathe again.

“He’ll be alright,” the doctor said. “He just needs to rest.”

Dean sat down on the chair again. The relief had knocked out any and all strength that had been holding him up. There were hoots of exultation all around him, but Dean simply let the words seep into his heart.

Will was alright. He was going to be alright.

*******************************

A/N 2: Things will get better after this, trust me! two more chapters to go! (Plus and epilogue)

Please do tell me what you thought of the chapter? I live for comments!

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carnistcervine · 5 years

Note

(Also, this makes me wonder how Sokka and Jet's respective loved ones and enemies react to their infections. May I get some headcanons? :O)

Okay, first, thank you so much for these lovely asks.

-When Sokka gets burned, he doesn't notice it at first. The adrenaline of the moment temporarily numbs him from the pain of the initial injury. However, as he comes down from the high of battle, he notices an increasingly painful burning in his arm.

-This is when Sokka realizes that he's been burned.

-He tries to hide the burn from Aang and Katara, and keeps them in the dark about his growing inner turmoil.

-Katara notices the change in her brother, but doesn't know about his burn. She notices how depressed and withdrawn he's becoming and tries to help or cheer him up in some way. She feels helpless when nothing she tries works.

-She feels horrible and does her best to hold it together and gently tries to get him to open up to no avail. But for the sake of her brother, she refuses to give up on him.

-Aang hasn't known Sokka long enough to know that something is very wrong with him, but as the Avatar he does sense a gradually shifting change in his energies. He has his own concerns, but leaves them unspoken for now.

-As Sokka's fire curse symptoms begin to become more pronounced, Katara takes notice. Sokka is able to still hide most of them, but can't hide his steadily increasing temperature.

-Katara suspects that Sokka is ill and tries to maybe slow or settle down until he feels better.

-But Sokka insists that he's fine and pushes them to keep going. They aren't safe staying in one place for too long.

-Not too long after this, the curse gets the better of Sokka and he passes out as he is officially converted into a firebender.

-Now Aang's fears have been confirmed, and Katara finally sees the true source of turmoil for her brother.

-When Sokka comes to, he's mortified to know that his friends have realized he's been infected.

-However, Katara and Aang refuse to leave his side. Despite Katara's grievances with the Fire Nation, she could never abandon her brother. As someone who lived before the war, Aang understands that being a firebender does not make you evil or bad in any way.

-Now knowing that he brother is a firebender, Katara refuses to let Sokka suppress his bending. She won't let her brother drive himself into madness.

-It's a hard battle, Sokka knows, and has personally seen his own mother succumb to the madness. Only able to helplessly watch as she clawed her own burning throat out and collapse dead in the melting snow.

-Of course, Katara also remembers this, and is her main motivation for trying to save Sokka. She desperately doesn't want to lose anyone else to such a terrible fate.

-She and Aang manage to get Sokka to use his bending a little, just enough to stave off the madness.

-Well, almost. Sokka does show some symptoms due to his refusal to get enough sun and his suppression of his bending.

-Sometimes he'll space out a little or say something that doesn't make any logical sense.

-And then Aang and Katara would make him stand in the sun and heat some water for tea.

-The group keep Sokka's firebending under wraps as best they can. Partly because of the fear that the Fire Nation will take Sokka away, and partly due to the paranoia surrounding firebenders.

-Eventually they do run into Jet and his group.

-The other Freedom Fighters don't realize this, but Jet knows right away that Sokka is a firebender. He confronts Katara in private about it. He agrees to help her and keep her brother safe as a way to further entangle her into his manipulation.

-But deep down, he already loathes Sokka, not for anything he's said or done. But simply for the fact that he's a firebender.

-While Aang and Katara are completely oblivious and naively falling right into Jet's hands, Sokka instincts are setting off alarm bells about Jet.

-Jet plots on how to get rid of Sokka, but can't seem to get him alone.

-Jet goes on his patrol mission without Sokka. However, Sokka has a nagging voice somewhere in the back of his head. It tells them to follow them, but in secret.

-Jet attacks an innocent old firebender who is minding his own business, going for a walk. He's about to strike the old man when Sokka finally lets out some proper fire in the form of a fireball. Jet leaps back and Sokka jumps down and takes a defensive stance in front of the old man, proclaiming that he's not going to let him kill an innocent person. Jet tells Sokka that no firebenders are innocent, pointing his blade at Sokka's throat.

-The two are about to go at it when Katara calls Jet from not too far away. He sneers at Sokka and he and his cronies leave him with the old man to distract Katara.

-Later that night, Sokka tries to get the group to leave, but Katara wants to hear Jet's side of the story. Jet of course claims that nothing happened, his patrol was completely uneventful and he hadn't even run into Sokka. Katara worries that Sokka's madness is worsening. Jet latches onto that, but Sokka tries his best to argue that he was completely lucid when it happened and Jet's a thug. In trying to argue his case, Sokka ends up letting it slip that he's been hearing a voice. Katara is deeply worried, but Sokka just storms off, unable to get through to her.

-Jet consoles Katara as she opens up about what fire madness did to her mother.

-Of course, now that his suspicions are confirmed, Sokka spies on Jet once again and finds out that he's going to flood a village. Sokka wants to warn Aang and Katara, but he already knows they won't believe a thing he says. So he tries to stop Jet himself.

-Being weakened from his deliberate avoidance of the sun and his suppression of his own bending, he fails and Jet has his cronies march Sokka off to be discretely taken care of.

-Of course, they can't match Sokka's Water Tribe superior knot knowledge, so he gives them the slip and runs straight for the village.

-The firebender soldiers are pretty shocked to see a beaten and out of breath fellow firebender approach them. He's shouting a rambling something about some thug trying to flood the place? It's clear to them that this poor firebender hasn't been properly cared for and is suffering from some terrible bout of madness. Judging by his clothes, he's likely been beaten and abandoned by his family, poor thing. So they try to get him to calm down and come along with them so they can help him.

-But the old man that Sokka rescued earlier, says that he ran afoul of the same thug Sokka speaks of. While, he admits that the youth seems to be suffering from a mild case of fire rabies, it may be in their best interest to evacuate. After all, if he's wrong, then all they did was waste a few hours or so.

-Thankfully, this gets the whole place evacuated just in time. The soldiers are absolutely mortified to see that the boy's predictions were true. They leave Sokka in the care of a healer. They intend to help him recover from his madness and then they'd have him sent off to the Fire Nation to be properly trained. But first, there was some retaliation due for this "Jet" character.

-Obviously Sokka isn't just going to stand by and be taken in by the Fire Nation, so he breaks out and finds his friends. Unknowingly helping the firebending soldiers find the Freedom Fighters.

-Katara is just coming to her horrifying realization, when suddenly, the forest starts going up in flames. Sokka bursts out from the trees and embraces Katara, gently teasing that he told her so.

-Jet is hit by a stray fire blast and is burned. He begs Katara for help, but Katara refuses. Maybe a little taste of the infection will teach Jet some empathy.

-At the moment, the Gaang manage to get away, as the soldiers are more concerned with dealing with the guerrilla terrorists that tried to wipe them out. However, it does not escape them that the young, maddened firebender is traveling with the Avatar and a waterbender. Word quickly spreads of another freshly infected firebender that needs to be trained into a proper firebender.

-For the Fire Nation, Sokka isn't just another nobody to be knocked out of the way. He's a potential asset. A mind to be molded to the ways of fire. A sign that they are edging ever closer to their goal of world domination.

-During their next encounter with Zuko, the Fire Prince only has to take one look at Sokka to know that he's been infected. Zuko promptly makes it his mission to not only capture the Avatar, but to see to it that Sokka is trained. Of course, Zuko and Iroh can actually agree on that second goal. Neither are interested in brainwashing Sokka into aligning with the Fire Nation though, they just both understand the importance being able to control elemental powers. And also, Zuko sees Sokka as being one of his own and refuses to let another firebender suffer.

-Zhao attempts to capture Sokka as well, seeing as corralling stray firebenders gets him points with his (increasingly fewer) superiors, and more promotions.

-When Azula comes into the mix, she also tries to capture Sokka. She sees him as a potential pawn. And also, a good future Fire Lord should know how control her subjects.

-The less said about what the Dai Lee want to do to Sokka, the better.

-The Northerners don't trust the firebender in their midst, and the only thing keeping them from dousing Sokka is the fact that he's the Avatar's companion. They do their best to keep a wedge between him and Yue.

-It doesn't work because Yue finds that she really likes this goofy firebender. Sokka has a heart to heart with her about his bending and she suggests to him that he ask the spirits to free him from his curse.

-When Zhao goes after the moon spirit, Sokka tackles him and scuffles with him while the Gaang and Iroh fight off his forces. Sokka is badly hurt by Zhao's superior firebending, but in an equally desperate and ingenious move he knocks both of the into the pool.

-The oasis pool is much, much deeper than it looks from the outside(seriously how is this physically possible?). Ominous shadows lurk in the dark and Zhao is dragged into the abyss. Sokka tries to swim to the surface, but he's weakened from his injuries and his inner fire has already used up all of his breath. However something does pull him back up.

-When Sokka awakens after being pulled from the water, he finds that the spirits have healed his wounds, but the curse remains.

-Sokka is initially very nervous to meet up again with his father. He's terrified that he won't accept a firebender son. However, firebender or not, Hakoda loves his son. He'd never abandon or forsake him.

-Suki is nice to Sokka's face but has her own reservations after seeing what the infection does to people. However, she does slowly grow to trust that Sokka has not been taken by the fire.

-In concerns with Jet, the Freedom Fighters disband after Jet is burned. Only Smellerbee and Long Shot stay by Jet's side, his two ride or dies.

-As much as they want to help Jet, and not have him become a firebender, the only water healers left are in the North Pole or Ba Sing Se. Both are too far to walk to before the infection would set in. Smellerbee convinces Jet to give up on this lifestyle and just live a quiet life as a refugee in Ba Sing Se.

-Reluctantly, he agrees.

-Smellerbee and Long Shot carefully watch Jet for signs of madness, as they know he's suppressing his bending.

-However Jet is an old hand at hiding the dark truths about himself.

-He starts to slip when he sees Iroh heat his tea.

-Jet is inevitably arrested by the Dai Lee.

-There are rumors that Ba Sing Se kills any and all infected with the fire curse. This is not true. Long Feng and his Dai Lee actually have much use for them.

-That being said, the less said about what the Dai Lee did to Jet, the better.

Lmao I think I went a little overboard. :'D

My inbox is always open to anyone that wants to talk or inquire about my AUs or ideas and such~

#ATLA #avatar #Bending Curse AU #Sokka #Jet #Yes I love this #Pls send me asks and stuff peeps #I love stuff like this

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thedistantstorm · 4 years

Text

Project Compass 06

Read Along on AO3 Here

<< Previous Chapter << >> Next Chapter >>

This time: Ezra encounters the Grysks. Thrawn has a confrontation. Vah’nya does something that could jeopardize everything.

Next time: A reunion between Thrawn and an old colleague. Ivant and Ar’alani discuss dangerous complications.

Admiral Ar’alani kept him to a brisk pace. Like most of the adult Chiss, she was both taller and more slender than Ezra. They moved through the ship to the upper levels, and then, instead of turning toward the Captain’s office like Ezra had expected, they made an about face out of the lift and went to the upper hangar of the ship.

“Someone will tell Mitth’raw’nuruodo that you are occupied today. Do you fear that he will worry about you?” Something about the curl of Ar’alani’s voice didn’t sit comfortably with the young Jedi. “Or are you worried that something will happen to him while you’re away?”

“Respectfully,” Ezra grit out, his Cheunh heavily accentuated, “It’s a little of both.”

“A wise answer,” She concurred. “Nothing will happen to Mitth’raw’nuruodo. As far as he will know, it is any other day, except that Captain Ivant wished to meet with you regarding your progress.” She steered him into the hangar, gesturing with a stiff arm to a sleek shuttle. She looked down to him with a peaked eyebrow as if asking him to question her obvious lie. Captain Ivant was not on that ship, and Ezra could sense it. “If you have reservations, speak.”

Ezra met her gaze with hard eyes of his own. “I do not, Admiral.”

“You are brave,” She said. “May warrior’s fortune be in our favor today.”

That gave Ezra pause. “Admiral?”

The Chiss tutted. “Thrawn has imparted the meaning of this phrase, yes?”

“He has,” Ezra answered immediately. “Are we going into battle?”

“We are,” She confirmed. “Tell me,” Ar’alani held his eyes with a piercing gaze that reminded Ezra of facing Thrawn over Lothal. It was a grim expression for such an elegant face. “Have you ever seen a Grysk?”

It had been forty-eight hours since Ezra had been last seen aboard the Compass. Thrawn was not expecting to worry as much as he did. None of the Navigators seemed to know anything, not that he went out of his way to glean information. In the time since Ezra disappeared, he had been given all sorts of tasks, the Captain’s underlings - most of whom were far younger and more inexperienced - pumping him for information and expertise. There was concern for civil war within the Ascendency. The ruling families were at odds, restricting their strengths and using them as bargaining chips to the detriment of their people.

Thrawn did not pretend to be remotely knowledgeable in politics. The subtle nuances of that theatre of battle were often lost on him. He was military. His brother, on the other hand, was charismatic, witty and the owner of an equally impressive facade. It was why they brought their family honor, not that that really meant anything to Thrawn. He walked a warrior’s path. Honor was important for that reason. Glory was something that Mitth’ras’safis rellished, it made his job easier, helped his word carry more clout amongst his peers.

But, worse than that, it was the Second ruling family pulling back. The ruling family that, opposite Thrawn’s own, helped oversee military affairs. The fallout would rip their defenses in two. It would lead to military sabotage, and games of espionage that would take away from the Grysks, who were more active and out in the open in the last five years than they had been in all of Thrawn’s years before that.

Vah’nya had pulled him into a briefing room after his mid-shift break, her posture tense and the glow of her eyes so dim he could see the deep garnet-red ring around her irises. “The missing Navigators from the most recent Grysk incident have been recovered,” She informed him. Her posture and tone reminded him subtly of Ar’alani. No doubt, once her sight faded, she would continue her military career in a field of her choosing. She had good instincts and could be soft without yielding. She had the right sort of empathy that many, himself included, lacked at times.

“You will accompany me to meet the crew that recovered them,” She said. “I need your eyes.”

“Mine?”

“Ivant is occupied,” She commented dryly. “It is a sensitive situation and they will be arriving soon.”

Thrawn frowned at that but followed her through the ship and to the lift that descended to the lower hangar. “Have you heard word of Ezra’Bridger?” He dared to ask, when the doors had closed behind them.

She shook her head once, remaining silent for a moment. “And if I had, I am under strict orders not to update you.”

“I care little about mission status, Navigator. My concern is that Bridger is not sent into a situation he does not understand for sake of a people who have kept him in the dark about their motives, like a caged animal.”

“I cannot tell if you are speaking of yourself or if you are speaking out of concern for your ward.”

“What happens to me is of little consequence,” Thrawn assured her. “There is a price to pay for my actions, and I will pay it.” The Navigator edged away from him slowly, her shoulder touching the far side of the lift. “He joined us because I convinced him he would be of help.”

“And that is what he is doing,” Vah’nya turned to him, her eyes a little wild, but her stance confident. “Both of you are where you are because that is the place in which you can be of the most use.”

“That isn’t true.”

“It is,” She asserted. Her eyes narrowed. “You do not see what I see,” She insisted hotly.

“Or what you’ve seen,” The ex-Admiral said bluntly, outmaneuvering her. “Eight months in the presence of the Grysks is a substantial time. It was nothing like Un’hee’s previous experience. You knew things. Things they wanted to know.”

Vah’nya did not back down from him. If he had not been so single-mindedly focused on his objective, he might have catalogued such a feat away. “That is not common knowledge,” She said. “How did you come to know?”

“Un’hee spent an evening in our company when these particular Navigators were taken,” Thrawn informed her. "I was able to extrapolate the information from her statements."

The Navigator slammed her palm on the brake and the lift powered down in transit, jerking before coming to a rest. “You utilized her distress for information?”

“She told us without my prompting.”

“So she felt your anguish and regret,” Vah’nya spat as though he was guilty of it all the same. “Like an aura that clings to your skin.” Her livid eyes lifted to meet his before she seemed to sink into an otherworldly calm. “Choose your next words very carefully. You do not have many allies left to lose.”

“I wish to know what is happening with the Jedi,” He said. “That is all.”

“And Eli?”

“I will not ask you any further questions about what transpired.”

She hit the toggle to resume power to the lift, shifting to a rest position. “He is with the Admiral. She wished to get to know him better. I was not made aware of the details, but I suspect he will be back in another rotation.”

Thrawn nodded. “Thank you, Navigator.”

Dipping her head ever-so-slightly, Vah’ya looked at her own reflection in the mirror-like durasteel. Then, she let her eyes meet Thrawn’s through the metal as well. Her anger was reined in, her features smoothing. “Even if I wanted to tell you, I would not,” She whispered fervently, scratching at her arm. The light material of her black uniform slevr pulled up ever so slightly, revealing a tangle edge of scars upon her arm. Thrawn did not ask about it, and she pulled her sleeve down without looking at them. The doors whooshed open seconds later and Thrawn stepped forward. Vah’nya grabbed his wrist and held fast. “He is a good man, Mitth’raw’nuruodo. He protected me from the worst of it.”

“I believe you," Thrawn said. "He has a warrior's heart.”

Vah’nya released him. She could hear the rare overt sincerity in Thrawn’s words. And it was true. Eli’van’to was kind and he was good, and Mitth’raw’nuruodo, for all the things she’d heard and felt and seen, had been enough to convince Eli to come to the Ascendancy all on his own. Despite what others might think, Vah’nya believed that had to count for something.

Ezra had been assigned to the primary boarding party after nearly an entire rotation of sitting at an empty station in the bridge with Admiral Ar’alani while she asked him about his abilities within the Force. He’d slipped into and out of meditation on the bridge - she hadn’t allowed him to go anywhere else aboard without her personally accompanying him - with her eyes trained on the back of his neck while he looked out at the expanse of space.

Apparently, it took time to make sure the Grysk ship was not only disabled, but that it was safe. He’d learned about Grysk tactics, how they’d prefer to expire rather than be taken alive, how they’d rig whatever they’d left to explode, how they’re merciless and twisted and whatever beings they held captive would be manipulated into doing their bidding like willing (or unwilling) slaves.

The Admiral had stood shoulder to shoulder with him, soldiers both in front and behind. “Do you sense anything?” She asked him. The tone of her voice was serious but different. She intended to teach him something.

The Jedi closed his eyes and concentrated. His body jerked when he felt it, and Ar’alani reached out with a firm grip, grabbing his shoulder.

“That,” She said, with a curt nod, “Is a Grysk.”

“Can you-”

“Not anymore,” She interrupted, looking straight ahead. “But I will never forget it. We do not perceive what you call the Force the same as you do. We do not war like your Jedi and Sith. Our Sight is not like that.” They continue, Ar’alani’s hand remaining firm on his shoulder. “But what we feel,” She said, “That is something I think runs similarly enough for us to relate to one another. You must trust me.”

“Yes, Admiral,” Ezra said dutifully.

“No,” Ar’alani snapped, spinning him with her grip. “Look at me.”

Ezra did. The Admiral waited until his posture relaxed marginally.

“I will guide you, but I cannot feel what you feel as sharply anymore. You will keep us safe. There are enemies aboard this vessel. Your abilities will give us an edge. Do you understand?”

“I do,” Ezra said, sure to meet her eyes.

“Good.” She turned him back to face the men in front of them and gave the order. “Proceed with caution.”

The lower hangar was alarmingly empty when they came to the doors. Only a small group of armed guardsmen and medics, as well as one of the normal four overseers on the control deck set above the hangar were present. The hangar itself was moderately large for a vessel of this size. Of the ten docking bays, four housed smaller Chiss craft that were rarely used but well maintained. The remaining six were typically empty, saved for arriving shuttles from larger craft.

There was an unknown ship in the hangar. It was not Imperial. It was a well-armed transport vessel dating before the Empire, but had come from the same shipyards that had since made imperial craft. By comparison, it dwarfed the Chiss shuttles.

Vah'nya spoke briskly, standing in the doorway with Thrawn to her left. "All non-medical personnel are dismissed," She commanded. "You will be contacted by control when you are required to return."

Thrawn cast her an inquisitive glance. The Navigator ignored him.

The ramp of the non-Chiss ship had been lowered, and two of the armed Chiss that had been monitoring it stepped back and left as they approached.

"You may disembark," Vah'nya called out.

Two humans descended the ramp. One stood beside a very unhappy Navigator who appeared roughly a year or two older than Un'hee. The girl's hair hung limp and tangled over her shoulders, like a curtain to help distract from the way her lip trembled and the gouge on her cheek. Vah'nya reached for her instead of the other child, a younger Navigator with dressings wrapped around her arms and peeking out beneath her torn pant leg. This girl was carried, and did not seem to be in any distress.

"The eldest was killed," Vah'nya said in Basic. It wasn't a question.

Thrawn stayed silent beside her, watching and waiting. Vah'nya was trying to show him something, and he was as of yet unsure what. Behind the two humans, further up the ramp that led into the ship, there were more footsteps. Another person, perhaps.

"Trying to keep them from us, Senior Navigator," Said the older of the two girls in very broken Basic. "I tried-" The girl coughed, and Thrawn saw the blood - it was hot, contrasting in the infrared spectrum against her skin - dot her hand.

"You did well to protect your sister," Vah'nya said soothingly, crouching down to eye-level. She laid a hand over the girl's more superficial injury, wiping away some of the excess blood to see the wound, then wiped it on her tunic as if it were a bit of dust. "The medics will tend to you," She smiled, a small, reassuring thing, and cupped the younger Navigator's cheek again. The child flinched at the touch, then seemed to relax instantly.

Quickly, they sprung into action, taking the little one from the one man's arms and carefully easing the older of the two onto a stretcher that hovered at waist level. Thrawn noted that when the girl swiveled her head so she could keep her eyes on Vah'nya for as long as she could, both of her cheeks were dirty, but unblemished.

That was strange, he thought. Neither of the medics had administered any bacta.

Above them, and unseen in the control tower that overlooked the hangar, Captain Ivant clenched his fists and swore in Sy Bisti. The lone tech who remained on duty took a microscopic step away from his furious superior. "What the kriff do you think you're doing, Vah'nya?" He growled to no one in particular, keying the console to focus in on Thrawn.

As luck would have it, a woman's voice - also in Sy Bisti - rang out loud and clear, demanding Thrawn's attention without so much as an order.

Thrawn's voice was pinched with surprise as it carried through the tiny speaker in front of the console."Commodore Faro?"

Though, when it came to outsmarting Thrawn, nobody ever got lucky. If he saw what had happened, if it looked even one atom out of line, Thrawn would analyze the details with that ridiculous recall of his. It wouldn't be right away, Vanto knew, but if Thrawn was already trying to figure out what was going on aboard the Compass, which he was, this moment could - and more likely, would - be a catalyst.

"Damn fool," He said aloud. He turned on his heel. Now he'd have to do pre-emptive damage control, in addition to the rest of it.

#Thranto #Eli Vanto #Mitth'raw'nuruodo #Ezra Bridger #Admiral Ar'alani #Vah'nya #Eli Vanto/Thrawn #Star Wars Fanfiction #SW Fanfic #My Writing

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eternalstrigoii · 4 years

Text

Your Own - III

I, II (Reader)Maleficent x Diaval; (budding)Maleficent x Conall; Borra x Desert Warrior Dark Fey; implied healthy polyamory

Yet another desert-warmed thanks to @vespertineoracle for allowing Snowy Owl (Nyvi) to join the MurderBirds.

Conall was patient with you. Gentle. He was slow to encourage you to wrap your arm around his neck as you assumed you must have already, once, and you tucked your wings as close to you as they would allow.

You were a different version of yourself when you were wounded. Particularly when the circumstances involved someone you loved.

You were hurt, and you were frightened, and you admitted neither fully to yourself; you were afraid of them, afraid of Aurora, afraid for Aurora, and, with the most certainty of them all, you were afraid that Aurora had been manipulated. You were afraid that she was being fed lies, made a pawn of as she was in Perceforest.

You were afraid that she was complicit in your downfall, but you were even more afraid that she knew nothing of it at all. You were afraid, to the point that you had to swallow back your emotions lest they overtake you, that she was going to be harmed as you were.

She should’ve never said yes. She should’ve never trusted him. What if he was using her? What if he would only have her hand to take the moors? Would she know? Did she know now? Would she trust him until it was too late, just as her mother had?

You were surprised when you felt Conall shift you. Press you closer. His arms were strong, and there was sorrow in his eyes when he looked at you. You wanted, desperately, to recoil from it.

“It’s alright,” he soothed. His feet touched the downy flight-path when you were close to the place from which you’d come. He walked the rest of the way with you still in his arms, and the proximity to his warmth made you bristle. You thought. The proximity to his warmth was not unpleasant – comforting, even – but you felt so lost.

You felt like a child again, after King Henry murdered your parents.

You felt like you were cradled in the crook of Balthazar’s arm, screaming into the clouds. You were a child, and they were stolen from you – both, at the same time. The moor-folk had not let you see them, and you hated them for it at first. You hated that they deprived you of anything resembling a goodbye, until the tree-man dabbed your cheeks with moss and rumbled gently, do you not wish to be my child, Maleficent? We are your family. We love you as they do. You have always had us, and you always will.

Did you, now? Or had Ulstead already taken the moors?

“Will you tell me something?” you asked before he reached the chamber.

He slowed, as though he knew you hoped to minimize the number of people who saw you weakened.

“I was flying with a bird.” Diaval. You left out so much in the name of protecting them, in the event they needed your protection. “What became of him?”

“I know nothing of a bird,” he admitted. “I saw only you, the brightness of your magic against the darkness.”

Brightness and darkness, darkness and brightness, power and destruction and transformation and saving them.

Your heart was heavy.

“I will find out.” You pretended not to notice the careful, gentle way he pressed you closer – giving you comfort whether or not you were receptive to it. Giving you kindness, and patience, as though nothing was expected in return, as though you didn’t possess powers beyond the rest of theirs.

“Why?” Why would you bother? Why would you do this? “Why did you save me?”

You disliked how deeply it hurt you to see the sadness in his eyes grow. You disliked that you trusted him – because you did, whether or not you would admit it to yourself; you were hurt, you were afraid, and this man had shown you nothing but patience and kindness and it endeared him to you immensely.

“You were drowning,” he replied, like it was the simplest conclusion in the world.

Yes, but…that explained nothing. People don’t do things out of the kindness of their hearts.

Conall sighed deeply, and you realized that you were lingering not far from where you were intended to be. That he was holding you, and you did not find it unpleasant. How long had it been since someone who was not Diaval offered you comfort?

“I disagree with Borra’s methods,” he said, and your defenses rose like a wall of thorns around your heart, “but not his purpose. He wishes to protect those who cannot protect themselves. It is what we must do, if we are able. Protect one another. Preserve life.”

“Is that what you want of me?” your voice was stronger than you were.

He met your eyes again, and you had to push it all back again. He had no reason to look at you that way – like he had when you were in the air watching his people’s children. Like it didn’t matter what you were, or who you were, or what you would do.

Like you were already valued. Already cared for. Without question.

“I want,” and he moved again, carrying you into the soft whiteness of the candle-lit chamber you’d left, “you to rest. Tell me when you’re hungry, I will bring dinner to you.”

He laid you in the downy softness, and you folded in on yourself instinctively, your wings coiling around the nakedness of your bandages. You supposed, with the way some of them dressed, being bare was not a foreign concept. You supposed, if only to soothe yourself, that there was no intimacy within it for them.

You also failed to notice someone else was there until they shifted, and you startled. Their thick, white plumage blended in so well that your eyes failed to pinpoint them, just as camouflage intended.

“I told you not to let her exert herself too much.” They were of the tundra, like the man who cared for their children. The whites of his robes were accented with grey and blue, and you presumed he was male, though his features were as delicate as a landscape after new-fallen snow. He was beautiful, just like the rest of them, his voice melodic and kind.

“You told me,” Conall replied, with a fondness that bordered on teasing.

“Oh, skies,” the tundra fey muttered. “You can only blame him for so much. He didn’t ask you to take her on a tour.”

You were confused. You presumed, by exertion, that Conall spoke of Borra’s provocation, though the tundra fey regarded your flight as just as difficult.

“This is Nyvi, one of our youngest healers.” The fondness returned to Conall’s tone, and you failed to understand again – not even the moor-folk regarded one another as they did. There were petty squabbles, disunity.

Nyvi smiled at you, and sat back on his heels. “Hello, Maleficent.”

Your wings folded more securely around you. You quirked your head; you couldn’t recall having offered your name. You couldn’t recall how any of them would’ve known about you, unless they had been watching you from afar.

He sighed, gently, his wings rising and falling with it. “You are tired. Let me check your bandages and we will both let you rest.”

“Tell me,” you replied instead, refusing to remove your wings.

“The trees have eyes,” Nyvi was just as patient, though more playful with you than Conall had been, “and you’ve stared into them.”

Borra, then. You truly disliked the idea that he may have been watching you.

“They returned to the moors after you arrived.” He carded his talons through your pinfeathers gently, and you bristled at the action – not because it was unpleasant, because it was. It felt good. Not the way Diaval preened you with his beak when he thought you wouldn’t feel him, but…as you did yourself, only unprompted. “They saw your daughter.”

Aurora.

You wished the thought brought you comfort. How deeply he hated humans – and who else was with him? Conall?

“She looked for you.”

You searched his face. He waited, patiently, for you to move your wing, and so you did. You supposed you had to offer what it was he sought in order to get what you desired in return – and you were right about that. Nyvi was much too used to dealing with the desert-dwellers to be unfamiliar with stubbornness.

“Apparently, she went all the way to your nest and had the entirety of the moors searching for you.”

He changed the dressings on your wound, and you realized why he had been so quick to chide Conall about your exertion – you had bled again, and quite a bit. The stabs of pain in your side were not without reason. (You’d almost forgotten that Conall was with you until he touched you lightly in apology, and your eyes lifted.)

“You’re very well-loved, from what I hear. Will you press here?” Nyvi guided your hand to your wound and had you apply a gentle pressure so he could slip the bandages beneath you to re-wrap the padding.

I don’t understand. She went to the moors to search for you. She had the whole of the kingdom involved. And she declared that her wedding would take place in three days?

“Is he truthful?” you asked. You asked because you did not want to consider the alternative (not only was he truthful, but he was correct in his distrust).

Nyvi’s brows furrowed. “Borra?” He glanced to Conall openly; he had no concern for concealing from you what a strange question he thought that was. “Of course. He has no reason to lie to us.”

“He seeks war.”

“And you do not?”

You felt that question was as much bait as you’d been given in the meeting-chamber, and you did not allow yourself to respond.

Nyvi sighed; you’d ruffled his feathers, so to speak. Though Conall offered you empathy without condition, the others were more familiar in their expressions – in their explicit loyalty. “I know you do not know him, and for that I should be more patient with you, but it upsets me that you feel you can make that judgment based on one night alone.”

“He’s given me no reason to believe differently.” Even though you’d flown over his territory, you’d seen him with the gathered others. You’d only seen a few of them, up where the light touched, and you hadn’t been looking his way.

“Then give it time.” Your bandages were wound, snug but gentle, against your stomach. Nyvi’s touch was chilly, but not unpleasant as his knuckles brushed your skin. (None of it was unpleasant, so far. None of it but the idea of what was to follow – what went on beyond the walls of this strange and beautiful place.)

You barely caught their silent exchange (Conall held Nyvi’s gaze for a fraction of a moment too long, and his breath became a sigh; Nyvi’s partly-bristled wings shifted, and you noticed that they were uneven, and the sight of it – the thought itself – concerned you, though you did not dare ask).

“I do not know what your life was like out there,” the young healer replied, lifting his chin so that his snowy hair framed his face with a pair of whip-thin braids. “It pains us all to think you were alone, but still so near to us.”

You waited. You did not imagine empathy would be universally unconditional.

“Distrust us if you must, but please, be open to us. We mean you no harm.”

You mean to use me as a pawn, you thought, and you supposed your face betrayed you.

“Borra can be rough,” he said, so quick to defend him that you had to consider how frequently he must’ve needed tending to warrant such a close relationship, “but he is not cruel. He is not unjustified, and I apologize for saying so. I wish there was a better way.”

“Do you support him?” you asked. In front of Conall.

“I do not want more bloodshed.” Nyvi’s eyes grew sad, also.

You looked back at his skewed wing, pointedly, this time.

A slow, sad smile crossed his lips. He touched your side gently, and the cold that radiated from his skin temporarily soothed the ache from your wound.

“Rest, Maleficent. You’re safe now.”

When he took his leave, it was on foot. You did not ask if he could fly, though, when you looked to Conall, you also did not keep an apology from your eyes.

The familiarity of his touch was not unpleasant, that time in particular. He skimmed his knuckles over your cheek before he stood and gathered one of the soft furs to drape over you, as though he’d noticed how you felt about your bareness. Of course he would.

“Rest,” he repeated, and his final, gentle touch was to your hand. “None of us will be far.”

You thought of Diaval, again. You thought of the blistering pain in your side and you sought to remember if he had been near you. You tried to force your recollection as he left, the softness of bright light filtered through the woven branches making the candle light unnecessary.

But its warmth, and the warmth of the fur, soothed you, and your memories of a dark and frigid sea warmed with the proximity of another – his arm along your back, your body cradled easily regardless of your horns. Your wings, limp beneath you, still tucked close. The scent of sea-brine, of wood and clover and home, carried you back into a dark and dreamless slumber.

“It’s a stupid name,” a voice beside you said with a bit too much vehemence. “Raise-ins. Raise-in what?”

You heard a fond, gentle, familiar sigh, and Nyvi’s soft, melodic voice drifted over from your other side. “That’s not how you’re supposed to say it. Raisins.”

“It’s still a stupid name for a half-dried berry!”

The voice beside you was right, though the absurdity of the conversation didn’t escape you. You opened your eyes partially, and your confusion only doubled when you realized that you knew the person beside you – you had seen her before – but you could not recall from where.

Not until you saw the leather in her hands, the way she poked new holes with her talons and wove new leather cord through the down-laden reinforcement.

She was from the desert. She had been with Borra when you flew overhead.

She was not all that dissimilar, you thought; her horns were taller than yours were curved. Her wings were, also, tri-colored – white and brown and blackish-brown with a strange sheen that made determining what manner of bird they once resembled difficult. There were cracks in her skin, and her eyes were the color of the shifting sands. She was tawnier than him, though, as though she spent longer basking in the sun.

Perhaps she did; there was also a comb made of bone in her hair, pulling it up off the back of her neck. Where she wore ample kiss-bruises.

Lovely.

“You shouldn’t even be going that far,” Nyvi pressed. “What if they see you?”

She scoffed. “What if they see me?”

There was a pause. You thought they must’ve known you were already awake, but when her eyes shifted to you, she startled, and her wings flared instinctively. “Great skies, Nyvi.”

“Good morning,” Nyvi said, much too jovially. It was entirely at the desert fey’s expense, and you were aware of it. “Though it’s certainly not morning anymore.”

You were silent for a moment, staring at one another. She was wary of you, and you were glad; someone had a reasonable response to your unannounced arrival. “If they see you,” you replied, though you hadn’t been included, “they are able to shoot a moving target at night.”

“A dark-clothed moving target,” Nyvi pressed.

She scowled, and pulled the leather cord through the under-layer of Borra’s armor all the same.

“Maleficent, this is Suren. Suren, Maleficent.”

“We’ve met,” she said, trying to kill the pleasantries. For that, you were also grateful. “Here.” She plucked a small basket from one of the rocky ledges and placed it on the edge of your sleeping-nest. It was half-filled with blackberries, and you were pleasantly surprised.

“Are they from the moors?” you asked as you shifted, pulling the fur up with you.

“No, they grow wild in the forest. We need some of our own food.”

You ate them. You were hungry, and you did not realize how much so. You wished there was more, and you wished you did not catch the fleeting glimpse of sympathy in her eyes, but she looked away from you to Nyvi and you thought you would miss yet another silent exchange, but Suren, you’d be quick to realize, was not the type.

“Is she well enough to fly?”

“Apparently,” Nyvi replied, though he didn’t sound pleased about it. “Conall took her on a tour while you were out this morning.”

While you were out.

You paused. “You went with him?”

She glanced back to you. “With Borra, yes. To the moors.”

Finally, someone spoke to you directly. Your relief was palpable. “You learned of the wedding.”

She shifted toward you, and you got the sense that Nyvi hadn’t given her the response she sought when she’d told him of what they learned. “Their voices came from the sky,” she said, and the gravity of her tone astounded you. “We were miles away from Ulstead, and yet we heard them as though they were just below.”

That…did not surprise you, though it should’ve. You thought about it, about how that could’ve been possible, and you shook your head. “There is much about them we don’t know.”

“How well armed they are,” she agreed, “what their infantry is like. Yes, we know. We’ve thought of it. We plan to find out more tonight.”

Your hesitations mingled with your thoughts, and you found yourself asking her, freely, “Will you find out what’s become of my daughter?”

She looked surprised. Even Nyvi, who had been so clearly in disapproval of their decision, softened at your response.

“If we can,” she said, cautiously. “We’ll not fly over Ulstead directly. We’ll see what we can from the trees and the sea.”

“If you can,” you repeated, “I would be grateful.”

She studied you for a long moment, and you hoped she could not see the way it made your stomach sink. “And if she’s betrayed you, what then? Borra leaves her out of our plans because she is your child, but if she is a danger to us, I need to know that our family will be protected.”

Our family. It was so strange to hear out loud, and yet it filled in the spaces where you lacked understanding. They were not a people as you were on the moors, many different types brought together by a shared living space – their bonds to one another ran deeper. They loved one another.

And Conall, at least, accepted you.

If she betrayed you, what then? You very well could’ve believed that you could stay there, with them. Learn to trust them. Learn to love them as they loved one another, but you would not abandon your people, and something told you that neither of the desert-dwellers you knew by name would do the same.

“I will address that if it comes to it.”

“We,” she reminded you. “You are among your own. Whether or not she is your child alone, what you do affects us all. We will not be excluded from your decision.”

You wondered, faintly, if that was why you’d found them in the meeting-cove. If that was just how they were, and who they’d proposed their reconnaissance to for approval; you doubted it was Conall.

Much too long of a pause passed between you. She looked, pointedly, to Nyvi, who smiled at you both with exasperated fondness. “Her wound no longer bleeds. Just try not to change that.”

“Come.” She pushed herself up, rocked up on her toes and twisted so the joints in her neck and back crackled like long-dried bone crushed underfoot. “You’re still hungry, and I agree.”

“Be careful,” Nyvi said, and you thought it might’ve been to you both until she crossed the room and bunted heads with him – gently, fondly, more of both than you thought she would.

“We always come back to you.”

“Intact, this time?” He nudged her chin gently, and you didn’t rise until she was waiting for you at the door. You almost brought the fur with you.

“Are you cold?” she regarded you strangely, as though she had the idea of why you covered yourself and yet did not understand why you did.

The feeling was mutual, then; you didn’t understand why she wore armor even then. You imagined they all must’ve had some other clothes, just as the Nyvi and Conall did. (Perhaps they were always ready for battle, and the idea made your stomach twist.)

Nyvi’s frost-pale hand offered you a wrap, and its blue-green hues were familiar to you. You frowned at it, tried to place where it was you’d last seen it while you fashioned a shirt of it to overlap the dark skirt you’d been given. (It was soft, vibrant, not something you would’ve normally worn, but you couldn’t deny that it looked lovely in contrast to your wings.)

You pretended not to notice the expression on Suren’s face, the wry twist of her lips that reminded you so much of the provocative smile that crossed Borra’s face when he had been so close to you, like there were leaves in your hair after a particularly bad fall and she had no intention of pointing them out to you.

“Tell me if you want food brought to you,” she said to Nyvi before leaving, still fussing with the bit of armor in her grasp. You brought the basket with you, and glanced to him as he turned to smile at the little workstation he’d replenished in your room – piled high with cloth bandages and padding-down, even colored cloths and a woven carrying-jug.

“Thank you,” you said before you followed her.

Nyvi smiled, but all he said to you in return as he organized his piles was, “Try not to agitate your wound too much. You’ve done enough bleeding for a lifetime.”

You nearly walked right into her when you stepped out into the hall. You stopped short, nearly recoiled, but she raised a brow at you and silently offered an arm.

No. You were not going to be carried.

She quirked a shoulder at you as if to remind you that you only had yourself to blame, and, as you had done once before, she dropped soundlessly through the flight-path entrance in the floor and fanned out her massive wings.

This time, more easily, you followed.

It was still day, though it wouldn’t stay that way for long. The light in the forest was dim, and the tundra had begun to glow with their own soft hues of borealis. It was still light in the jungle, though, and, particularly, in the desert where you came to land.

She had finished her mending by the time you both did, and you were surprised when she turned and motioned for you to be silent.

You bristled, but did.

Almost no one was there, you thought, though there was a figure in the darkness of the cavern beneath the sun. The warmed rock radiated heat that did not match the cool of the darkness, and it took you a moment to realize that someone was asleep in their bed. You thought, at first, that it must’ve been the desert’s fledglings seeking refuge from the heat.

But, no. It was Borra, resting in the fold of his own wings. He did not wear armor, and there was a thick pillow of down along the apex of their nest-bed for him to rest his head on.

He looked different, asleep. With the anger out of his features, you realized that he was actually quite handsome, too. His hair was a mess, caught in between several earth-packed sticks, and when Suren moved, she was so light-footed that it didn’t disturb him. She placed his mended armor back down among the rest and moved further into the darkness.

You watched him sleep, for a moment. Saw how thoroughly the cracks in his skin descended from his horns, followed his jaw and infringed upon his cheek. There weren’t as many on the plains of his face, but they descended down his neck.

His sides were patterned. You’d never seen anything like it before. His trousers were tawny, and the skin above them was dark, wrapping up his side beneath his long pin-feathers, but it didn’t stay that color on his exposed back. It lightened.

When Suren returned with several rabbits, none of them yet skinned, you looked to her much too quickly.

There were questions in your eyes and she did not yet let you ask them. She pressed a finger to her lips, motioned for you to join her in front of where the bonfire had been made earlier in the morning and been left to die out, and brought a wooden vessel up beside it for the hide, and a ceramic one for the insides.

You’d done this before, many times. Diaval sometimes ate things raw, but you were rarely so inclined.

She sat much too close to you, and her voice was so low you had to incline your head to hear. “He sleeps lightly.”

It made sense. He was a warrior; he donned armor always. It was only natural that he also be prepared for battle even when he slept.

“He spends much of the night on the moors only to regroup with us for strategy.”

And she loved him, you realized, belatedly. Of all the people you met so far, of course it would be the one you found the most abrasive who was half of a bonded pair.

You nodded without responding. If they were to leave at night, somewhere in the map of the day mandated a period of rest. Why she didn’t join him, you didn’t know.

(Or, perhaps, you did well, and you pretended that it was not the same reason you’d welcomed Aurora into the curl of your wing so she might sleep when she was still afraid that sleep would take her away forever. When the people you loved feared to sleep, it was only natural you sat vigil with them. To protect them. To comfort them.)

You were quite fed up with the amount of emotional whiplash you’d been enduring. Yesterday morning (had it been so soon?) seemed like an age ago.

You accepted a rabbit, though you paused as though you might be able to rub the exhaustion you felt in the very fabric of your being from your eyes. As though, if you just did that one simple thing, the rest of your life would magically smooth.

She slit her creature open easily. She was all business, unfazed by the blood.

“How recently did you kill them?” you asked in a murmur, on instinct.

“I didn’t. One of our fledglings was practicing in the tallgrass before I went to visit you. I told her to leave me whatever it was she caught.”

They worked together as a collective, hunting, gathering, protecting one another. It bruised your heart to think of him – so angry, and rightfully so – with his arm and his wing around his partner. With a family of others gathered close. They all had so much to fight for. Themselves, their kinsmen, their home.

You had no intentions of admitting to Nyvi your change of heart, but you worked with her in silence all the same. You could no more deny that her people were yours than you could deny that nothing but your suspicions made sense.

“There was a bird,” you began again.

“A bird who is sometimes a man?”

Your head snapped up, talons paused in the thick of the muscle around the dead creature’s heart.

Her eyes lifted. She quirked her head a little, curious, and surprisingly understanding. “A man with dark hair and eyes and dark, feathered clothes?”

You nodded. Diaval. She had seen Diaval.

“He lives, yes. He returned to the moors ahead of your daughter. I don’t believe he followed her back to the human realm.”

He lives and he is safe and your breath left you in a flurry. There was still some goodness in the world, then – and you were so, extremely glad.

“Will you tell him?” you whispered, and your voice might’ve been a bit too loud, but despite the momentary flash in her eyes, her mouth did quirk. You lowered your voice, moved closer to her. “Will you tell him that I am alright?”

“I’m not running your errands, Maleficent.”

You nearly sagged, but there was a glint in her eyes – just like her husband’s. Her mate’s. Whatever they called each other. “I will, if I can find him. Try not to be upset if I cannot.”

You nodded again, and you were less surprised (though not necessarily unsurprised) when she leaned forward and gently bumped her horns against yours. You were beginning to understand that it was a gesture of camaraderie, and you were also beginning to think that even they trusted you a bit too much.

Certainly more than you trusted them, or so you told yourself.

You reciprocated, after a delay, and the wild smile that crossed her face came with a vehement shake of her head. No, that is not how you do it. She paused, steadying your head with her un-bloodied arm, and bunted you, less gently, forehead to forehead.

You were a bit more openly surprised. It gave you pause, but…you did it back, the more forceful one. Your horns clacked against hers softly.

She almost laughed, but you supposed she decided it would do.

You worked like that, together, in silence, shoulder to shoulder, until they were cleaned and skinned and ready to go over the fire. It struck you as terribly convenient that it was only then that Borra started to stir, shifting his great wings and then his lean body and making a low, half-animal sound that you weren’t sure was pain or pleasure or acknowledgement or something else entirely.

Terribly convenient, like his timing on the Phoenix-grounds. Peace could be the dark fey’s final transformation, Conall said, and then he had come with his war plans and his news and taken what little wind you had beneath your wings.

Dare you make the argument that Aurora should be trusted?

It took him a moment to regain himself. You hadn’t thought of how physically demanding that manner of leadership could be until you saw how slowly he rose at first, how immediately he looked for her.

And how sharply he straightened when he saw you with her.

“She’s staying with us for dinner,” Suren said, and it wasn’t a proposition.

He quirked his head at you. “Is she?”

“She helped put it together, and she is as hungry as we are.” There was an undercurrent to their conversation that you could not tell if it was between the both of them or him and you – was she lobbying for you, or was he asking if it had been your choice or her coercion?

You supposed sitting there like you were wide-eyed and innocent didn’t help you any. You supposed, but before you had the chance to account for yourself (or defend yourself, if need be), he pushed himself up from the nest-bed and joined you.

Or, rather, joined Suren where she skewered slabs of meat beside you.

He let down her messy hair, stealing the comb right from it, and pressed his lips to the pulse point beneath her jaw. She smiled, and it reminded you of the wide-eyed children playing in the forest – how they, of all, hadn’t tread carefully around you.

Borra knew you were afraid of him, in the meeting chamber. He was the only one of them who hadn’t tread carefully around you because of it; he hadn’t spared your feelings once since you’d come, and, for that, you were grateful.

He spoke against her skin, and her smile grew. She turned to him, all sharp teeth in a wide, unfettered smile, and she kissed him like you weren’t even there.

The low sound he made was all pleasure, and he leaned his horns against hers for a moment before they parted. If watching them was meant to be too intimate, neither regarded it as such. He nodded to you, and you were surprised by it.

And yet, you were even more surprised when he just took off without preface.

“…you’re not-?” Leaving already?

“He’ll get us water,” Suren replied. She sounded more patient with you as time went on, and you didn’t understand it – why they all ended up responding to you like…

Like you were no different from one of their fledglings.

You pointedly did not ask if they had any there – not to save face, by any means. You wanted to know their true intentions, not be coddled like a child. Spoken to like you didn’t understand. (You didn’t; it was all so familiar to you and yet so different. Some lingering part of you still hoped you would awaken abruptly and all of it would be little more than a fantastical dream (though you also, stubbornly, refused to acknowledge the subset of that part that felt genuine sorrow at the thought.))

She rose abruptly, and you thought, for a moment, that she caught on to your foul mood and intended to reciprocate, but she returned to the cool of the cave-nest and started picking through woven baskets. “What is familiar to you?” she asked over her shoulder after a moment.

“Excuse me?”

She paused, and you thought she must’ve been exasperated, but she phrased it differently the next time, “What food do you enjoy?”

“I am your guest,” you replied, and, for once, you let some of the same slip into your tone. “Is it not customary to eat whatever you’re served?”

“Oh for stars’ sake.” There it was. She stood, and the size of her horns and her wings nearly made it impossible to be fully upright in the little cavern, but she tried. “Are you retaliating now, is that it? You did plenty in the meeting-cove.”

“He shouldn’t have provoked me.” Again, your voice was stronger than you were, and you hoped she would not expect you to test that.

“He shouldn’t have, but he did, and you bled for it. Don’t act as though I can’t smell you.”

She did, then. But it didn’t erase the fear in her eyes.

She was trying, you thought. Trying to see in you what Conall and Borra did. Trying to understand, at the very least, why they trusted you for your power when she felt they should fear you.

You were beginning to like her. She had sense.

“You were afraid of him. Little, wounded thing cowering in the corner while he spoke of war. Hiding yourself as though you’re ashamed. It’s no wonder Conall coddles you. Dresses you.” There was a sharpness in her voice that pleased you, but you still fixated on what she said. Dresses you?

Your hand went to the wrap. You felt as though you’d frozen; that was where you knew it. He wore it earlier in the day. He left it behind for you, knowing you had felt exposed.

Her anger died as quickly as it came, and she pulled a basket of root vegetables along for you to choose from. Pushed it toward you and left it there with a wide berth between you. You thought, at first, that it must be because she was also afraid – but that was not what was in her eyes.

She paused on the other side of the fire, across from you. Her wings were perked defensively, and her arms folded over the leather chest plate that fit her like a bodice. It was so well loved, you thought – mended in so many places, made from one singular slain beast that it folded around her as though it was a second skin.

“Forgive me. It’s not your fault you were on your own.”

You did not know how to respond to that. You hardly knew how to respond to any of it, so you supposed it was in your best interest just to let her speak again, if she would.

“They are right to take you in.” You were glad that you chose not to speak, because you could see how sharply her defenses rose only to begin to lower. “Little, wounded thing cowering in the corner, afraid of your own. All on your own out there.”

“I am not little,” is how you broke the silence that followed. It lingered much too long, and you were starting to fear Borra would never come back if you didn’t, the situational opportunist that he seemed to be.

Her mouth quirked, but she didn’t smile. Not the way she had at him.

“And you’re not defenseless. So, forgive me. I distrust you for his sake.”

You nodded. You weren’t going to tell her not to.

“Just as you distrust us for your own.”

You paused. But there was no use in denying it. You breathed again, and the action came with strong relief – and, also, a mild stinging in your side.

Suren hadn’t moved, and yet, there was a touch. You jumped, flared your wings, recoiled all in the same motion, and nearly smacked Borra fully away from you.

A sharp smile flashed across his face – he thought frightening you was funny, even for only a moment – before he caught himself. “Come here.”

“No.” You folded your wings around yourself.

“You’re bleeding. Again.” He started to move toward you, but something in your expression stopped him. He sat back on his haunches, gave you space. “If I bring you elm powder, will you dress it yourself?”

Elm powder?

“If Nyvi hasn’t staunched it, it’s for a reason,” Suren replied. “Do iron wounds need to freely bleed?”

“None of us have been shot before.” His eyes lifted to her, and you strongly disliked the look they exchanged – their mutual concern for you despite Suren’s distrust.

“May I?” he was deliberate with the phrase, extending a taloned hand toward you and waiting for permission. Nearly the way he had in the meeting-cove, though you could better see his face, there. The openness of his expression.

Borra was rough, but he did not lie. He hid nothing from you with his face or his words, or his posture or his eyes.

And, for that, you shifted back your wing.

You were tense, and hesitant, and painfully aware of his partner’s eyes upon you both. And yet, he moved Conall’s wrap over your bandages to see if the stain appeared through your padding. When you both determined it had not (yet?), he took your hand and pressed it firmly against the newly re-covered spot. “Keep pressure for a moment. And stay still.”

“Tension will make the blood worse,” Suren added, and you couldn’t stop yourself from speaking the moment your thought formed.

“How many times have you been wounded?”

They both smiled, and it was like the ones you’d seen in the meeting-cove – not cold, not cruel, but sharp. Angry.

“More times than we can keep track of,” Suren responded, though the sharpness of her smile came with a different glint in her eyes – something like pride, if pride married sorrow.

Borra put their woven water-basket away from the fire and brought the one with the root vegetables toward Suren, as though he intended to join her in preparing their dinner. No one else had come, and you thought it strange; did they all leave for different climates during the afternoon? Or were they all observing from afar, waiting to determine if it was safe to join their leadership?

“Scars are proof of a life well-lived.” She sunk down beside him in the dust, not sitting on the wood as you did, and bumped her head against the side of his.

He gave a little, fond shake of his head before reciprocating. He said something against her ear that made her grin and drop her hand to his, their fingers interlacing for a moment.

“Later,” she promised, and you felt yourself bristle again. Lovely.

You were silent for too long, staring into the fire. Into the crags and crevices of their bright, natural world. You felt their attention return to you while you sat there, quietly basking in the filtered sun. It was so warm that the thin skirt and wrap weren’t too little clothing – you never could’ve dressed that way on the moors.

You pretended you did not see the way she laid her head upon his shoulder, or the way he shifted to bring his side against hers, as though their close proximity was as much for mutual defense as it was for comfort.

Their kinsmen joined you, sometimes singly, often in pairs. There were not many of them, not the way there were tundra fey or forest fey or, especially, those of the jungle, but you realized differently, before long. As the darkness set, you saw several bonfires grow within the cavernous dark – below you, in the trenches; above you, in the peaks. You watched them, and those around them, with newly opened eyes.

There were, perhaps, six others around your particular fire; an older woman, another bonded pair and their fledgling, and two more individuals. The fledgling was a little girl, and she was ferocious with her energy; while you ate, she moved from individual to individual in demand of attention until Borra scooped her up in his wing and pulled her into his lap with a loud, playful growl. “Did you provide for us tonight, fair warrior?”

“Yeah!” she exclaimed.

“Have you driven fear into the heart of every mortal beast?” he raised his voice as he had in the meeting-cove, but differently – you imagined it must be false celebration, though no one treated it as such.

The fledgling’s sandstorm eyes glinted.

“A fierce and mighty warrior has been born to us!”

They were all smiling as they exclaimed and beat their chests. Even her parents, who had watched her carefully until she ended up in the crook of his wing.

She looked to you, then, as though chastised that you had not.

“Ah,” Borra’s head lifted, the showman once again. “Our new friend doesn’t yet know our customs. You’ll have to teach her, warrior. Teach her how to sing your praises.”

Firelight glinted in the child’s eyes, and she rose, proudly, from her place with them. She padded across the sandy stone to you, tipped her head back and looked you in the eyes.

“Take your hand,” she put her hand over yours, as though you were not both rather greasy from the rabbit-flesh. “Make a fist.”

You did, allowing her to guide you, wrapping her fingers around yours.

“Like this.” She showed you with her own, balling her right hand.

You kept your hand in the same, and when she struck her chest and exclaimed, you let a smile cross your face. “That doesn’t hurt?”

“No!” She was so offended, you couldn’t stop yourself from laughing quietly – nor could the others in your circle. “You don’t hit yourself hard, like this!” She did it again, and then once more.

You felt silly, like their eyes might be on you, until he joined in.

And Suren, with the firelight glinting off her predator teeth when she smiled.

The girl’s parents. The others. They joined her in their rhythmic exclamation, until you could do nothing but try your hand.

You beat your chest, and it was too hard and your voice was too guttural, and they laughed at you. All of them, together.

And you laughed also, with embarrassment flaming in your cheeks and warmth wholly separate from the fire and the climate filling you from within.

“That’s okay,” the young warrior replied, much too grave, “you’ll learn.”

“Thank you for showing me.” You brushed back a lock of her wild hair. “And thank you for dinner.”

She raised her chin, and there was nothing but a child’s pride and joy in her when she exclaimed her name and the title she’d given herself, defender of the deserts and warrior of the plains.

Borra beat his chest for her again, and, somehow, you met his eyes over the firelight.

You did not dislike him, after all. Not even a little.

#Dark Fey #Maleficent Conall #Conall Maleficent #Maleficent Borra #Borra Maleficent #Conall #Borra #Maleficent: Mistress of Evil #Nyvi of the Glacial Peaks #Suren of the Cavernous Dark #Maleficent x Diaval #Maleficent x Conall #No Beta We Die Like Men

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ryder616 · 5 years

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Rewatching Closure

I have many conflicting feelings about this episode. On the one hand, it has the fridging of Rosalind and I loathe, loathe, loathe that.

On the other hand, it has one of those great scenes where the characters are being interviewed/interrogated about the same subject, revealing different facets of themselves and I love, love, love those.

On the other, other hand (hey, it’s the Internet, I could be a six tentacles alien pretending to be a nerdy human, you don’t know😁), the interrogation is about Ward, who had already exhausted my empathy reserves by the end of S1, and contains the revelation that Jemma used to flirt with him. Which never happened on screen. Unless I’ve forgotten some awkward compliment about the shape of his head or something. 🤣

Anyway. Closure. Ward’s primary motivation, if we believe him, since mid season 2, that compelled him to kill his elder brother and parents, manipulate and then accidentally kill Kara, torture Bobbi, build Hydra: Hooligan Edition, and now kill Rosalind. And Malick still manages to convince him to abandon his goal when he thinks he’s finally getting everything he wanted, by promising him greatness and purpose: “You will finally see that your faith in Hydra was never misplaced”.

Daisy, in her infinite empathy, says that Ward “feels too much” and May describes him as “desperate for others to think of him as some kind of hero”. Maybe that’s what overrides his survival instinct so completely, despite seeing through Malick’s manipulation. “Standing over Coulson’s dead body” won’t make him feel like the hero of the piece, finding out he hasn’t wasted his life, that there’s some kind of special destiny waiting for him, might.

Of course Malick’s equally deluded about the whole thing, he just doesn’t know it yet.

Wall of Valor:

Goodbye, Ms Price, you absolutely deserved better.

An Intelligence professional with an eclectic and quite formidable resume - the CIA people (😉), Department of Defense, CDC, NASA and even MI6 (3x01) - she was tasked to lead the ATCU, the (less than impressive, if we’re honest) agency founded by the U.S. Government to tackle the Inhuman “Outbreak” and she had so much influence in this position to shape presidential speeches (3x01).

Her experience and competency didn’t help her realize Malick’s machinations but, in her defense, he had been fooling pretty much everyone for decades, including S.H.I.E.L.D.

Her views about Inhumans never felt motivated by blanket prejudice, unlike a certain ship commander and, when the show wasn’t trying to make us think she was evil, she came across as someone genuinely trying to do her best while navigating uncharted and complicated waters.

Unlike Andrew, Lincoln and Will, she doesn’t even get the courtesy to die performing an heroic, selfless act.

Stuff that crossed my mind:

The first time I watched the opening scene, I totally thought they were going to kill Rosalind. Eventually. And then they killed her right there! 😱 😱 😱 😱

Ward’s proficiency with the sniper rifle was established in the pilot and highlighted in 1x21.

Come and get me. We’ll settle this right now. -- I have people who take care of that sort of thing for me now. Ward’s living it up, isn’t he? Getting revenge on May via Andrew, getting revenge on Coulson via Rosalind, plenty of lackeys doing his bidding... 😡

Mack has a shotgun.

Not the best time for a hug attack, Daisy. Actually, I don’t know, I’m just trusting May’s judgement.

I want each of the original team members to tell me everything they remember about Ward, down to the smallest detail, no matter how uncomfortable. [...] When you two were sleeping together -- He wasn’t kidding about uncomfortable, huh?

I was such a pathetic flirt, always laughing at his jokes and those ridiculous puns. Wait. What? When did this happen? Ward made puns? 😮 (and also, the other thing, huh? 😮).

We both had these messed-up childhoods. [...] When you grew up like we did, it impacts how you see the world. [...] After years of moving from place to place, I totally get how easy it was for [Ward] to be taken in by a powerful father figure. I even understand how Garrett was able to draw him into Hydra. It’s not like I wasn’t fooled by mom. Except, when Garrett started killing people, Ward went along with it, gleefully. When your mom started killing people, you fought her. It’s a substantial and quite obvious difference but I still feel it’s my stanning duty to point it out. 😉

These five stones were extracted from the monolith centuries ago. Hey. You said 100 generations last episode. Don’t go and shorten the timeline on me now.

I'm the one who picked Ward for this team. Everything that happened since, it's on me. How tiresome you all are. I’m perfectly comfortable blaming it all on Ward.

To take Ward out, I need to cross some lines the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. shouldn't cross. -- Well, maybe those lines aren't meant to be crossed. -- Maybe not, but this is happening. [...] You’re the only one I trust who doesn’t have an axe to grind with Ward. Cheer up, Mack, you just got promoted at the job you wanted to quit a few months ago!

It's irresponsible of us to open another portal.[...] You don't think I want to save him? That it's not tearing me up inside? He saved my life, and you know how I feel about him. But to put so many other lives in jeopardy would be selfish. -- It’s not selfish. I sense a difference of opinions that will become relevant later on...

Poor Banks. I’m sorry I said you have a face of someone who murders people in their sleep. Giyera is not supposed to be able to control things he can’t see but the room he comes out from has a window. What was keeping Banks rooted in place, though, I can’t imagine, as they’ll make a point later in the season that Giyera can only control non biological objects. 🤦‍♀️

We got to get on Zephyr One and get there. -- I don’t think that’s the right move. -- They took Fitz and Simmons! -- I know that, but Hydra’s long gone by now, and we can’t waste every resource we have chasing our own damn tail. -- It’s better than doing nothing! Daisy’s charging half-cocked instincts never fail to kick in whenever her friends are in danger. 🤗

I need to call Coulson. Dad? I lost the kids.🤣

Please just shut up. The absolute Mood(tm).

If you'd really gotten to know me, you'd know that I would never do anything to hurt you, Jemma. Please just shut up.

I'm curious which is worse for you, those moments when Simmons screams or is it the long pauses when she doesn't? No, seriously, shut up. 😠

Please don’t kill me. -- Nobody wants that. That...is not a denial. 😬

It's what Grant's always done, hurt people and lie to himself about it. Yeah, we know.

Just 'cause you grow up in a family of abusive monsters, doesn't mean you have to become one. Thomas serving everyone the Tea(tm).

I know this is tough to hear, but sometimes, you got to do a bad thing for the right reasons. Oh. Thank you, Ward. I’m going to remember that you said this.

Is that all an act? Or was he really gonna hurt me? -- We'll be in touch. And this is not an answer. You’re killing it with the doublespeak this ep, Bobbi.

The bigger problem is the heavy artillery, the surface-to-air missiles. And that's not even the worst of it. Coulson told him he was coming. Why? You don’t inform your enemy of your immediate plans against them? Doesn’t Sun Tzu cover it? 🤣

I'll never help you bring that thing back, no matter how much you hurt me. -- Which is why we've agreed to stop hurting you so that he would go instead. -- Oh, Fitz. I mean, you had to know this would happen.

I always thought Fitz would give up the world for you. Looks like now he finally has his chance. I don’t think *this* Fitz would have been able to hold on, no matter the identity of who was being tortured, to be honest. I also can’t imagine any of the OG team not breaking for each other either. Post-Framework Fitz is another matter but obviously not where Jemma is concerned.

Are you sure about this? They haven't even been cleared for field duty. Shush! You’re finally getting your team. More importantly, *I* am finally getting your team. Secret Warriors, baby! 😁😎

Lincoln’s smirk during Mack’s speech amuses me to no end. He’s not buying it in the slightest. 🤣

It's dangerous going into a mission that emotional. You need to be able to separate the job from your own feelings. -- You're wrong. I've been keeping my feelings in check, and look what it got us. Rosalind's dead, Ward has Fitz and Simmons. My only regret is that I didn't kill that son of a bitch when I had the chance. Well. Plenty of that particular regret going around, I suspect.

I thought you had vision. -- Vision enough to know when I'm being manipulated into risking my life for someone else's pipe dream. And yet...

We can't let them bring that thing back to this planet! Fitz, please, just let them kill me. -- I can't do that. I won't. I lost you once. I can't lose you again. I'm just...I'm not strong enough to live in a world that doesn't have you in it. I will forever be in awe of Jemma’s dedication here, even more so because she knows they would not have killed her quickly. But she’s asking the impossible.

What are you doing? -- Leading. What’s worse than your boyfriend going on a deadly mission that could bring forth the end of the world? Going on a deadly mission that could bring forth the end of the world with Ward.

That's Ward. -- You can't seriously know that from a bloody heat signature. -- It's him. Never argue with dangerously driven, revenge-thristy, extremely manpained directors on hiatus, Hunter.

Cheer up. New beginning for both of us. What did Jemma call you? The king idiot?

Only a complete lunatic would go down there without a plan. Well, at least he knows there’s breathable air, gravity isn’t going to crush him and he won’t be shouting in the dark for Ward to find him, so he has already a leg up on the previous lunatic who went there without a plan.😁

#agents of s.h.i.e.l.d.#aosrewatch #aosrewatchs3 #aos 3x09 #phil coulson #melinda may #daisy johnson #jemma simmons #leopold fitz #alphonso mackenzie #bobbi morse #lance hunter #rosalind price #grant ward #gideon malick #text posf #rewatchingaos #rewatchingaos3

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xmxisxforxmaybe · 5 years

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Remnants, Part III

This is going to be a slow burn. Much more to come.

Summary: You are in the midst of formulating your dissertation, but you’ve hit a wall. Your doting aunt, Rebecca, has a solution that brings you face to face with Ahkmenrah, Fourth King of the Fourth King. As the connection between you and Ahkmenrah grows, and as the secrets of his ancient tablet unlock, the once-king will find himself faced with a difficult choice.

Thanks so much to @kitkatcronch @kpopperotp12 and @seafrost-fangirl for reading : ) If anyone else wants added to the taglist, let me know. I’ve greatly appreciated all of the feedback!

Warnings: A wee, mild reference to sex. Ahk is a solid 20 years of age to be certain to avoid any squick factor.

Déjà vu washed over you as you walked into Ahkmenrah’s exhibit, your sandals barely making a noise because of your cautious steps. That same sadness from the night you first met emanated from him. Or maybe it was loneliness? You scolded yourself for not even caring enough to ask, for allowing yourself to see only the papyruses, not the person who was kind enough to share them with you.

You knew he sensed your presence and you took it as a good sign that he didn’t turn away or tell you to go. As you approached, you waged a mental war— ancient king or just a young man? Should you kneel in front of him or should you sit beside him like a friend? Would he even want you as a friend after your callousness?

“I can hear you thinking from here. Speak your piece or leave,” Ahkmenrah said, his tone distant.

“I came to apologize.”

“Apology accepted. You may leave now.”

You huffed and plopped onto the cold, ornamental bench next to him, his petulance swinging your mental battle toward seeing him more as a man than a king. You turned your body toward him, but he remained facing forward, eyes still trained on the hieroglyphs.

“You don’t even know what my apology is for.”

He remained statuesque, so you continued, eyes searching his profile for any hint of reaction.

“I’m sorry I took advantage of your kindness. For someone who thinks so much, I can sometimes forget to think about the things that actually matter. You—not just your papyruses—matter.”

Ahkmenrah’s mouth twitched downward and his fingers tightened on the bench.

“I understand if you want to stop working with me, but before I go, can I ask you one last question?”

Ahkmenrah turned to face you, the intensity of his eyes nearly taking your breath away.

“Are you sad, or are you lonely?”

Whatever Ahkmenrah was expecting you to ask, it certainly wasn’t this. His eyes widened in surprise, and he opened his mouth to speak, then promptly shut it. His gaze fell to the floor and after what felt like a small eternity, he stated, “Both.”

Your heart swelled with empathy, with an understanding that you had it all wrong. Fate didn’t bring you to a reanimated mummy to answer your doctoral prayers; fate brought you to someone who needed you, who craved your companionship, and that someone also happened to be royalty, to once have been the most important person in an entire nation. Now, he was practically a prisoner.

“Your majesty,” you whispered.

Ahkmenrah lifted his head and looked into your eyes again; whatever he saw there must have convinced him that you understood how you hurt him and that you would never, ever do it again.

Your natural instinct was to reach up to cup his face, to comfort him.

“Your majesty,” you spoke, stronger and more sure this time. “Can I touch you?”

Ahkmenrah nodded.

You exhaled a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding as you reached up to cup his face. You gently slid your palm along his cheek, your thumb slowly stroking the soft skin of his high cheekbone. Ahk turned his body toward you and leaned his face into your touch and closed his eyes. You shifted closer to him on the bench and slid your hand from his cheek to the back of his neck and into his hair. You wrapped your other arm around his shoulders and pulled him as close as your position would allow. Your chests pressed tightly against one another’s and Ahkmenrah brought his hands to your waist, wrapping his arms around your lower back.

You buried your fingers in the soft curls that adorned his head and clung to him, inhaling his scent, which ironically, reminded you of the papyrus.

The bugle of Teddy’s voice as he called out the warning of the approaching dawn startled you both. You pulled apart and laughed together, shyly.

“Do you really accept my apology?” you asked with concern.

“Of course. To err is human, right?” Ahk replied with a small smile.

You smiled and gestured toward yourself as you said, “There’s a whole lotta err wrapped up in this.”

Ahkmenrah’s smile quickly faded to a frown as he said, “I must return to my sarcophagus, but I hope to see you again soon.”

“I’ll be here when you wake up,” you stated, eyes searching his face.

“I scarcely dare to hope that’s true.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” you said with a playful roll of your eyes. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Ahk turned to his guards and spoke. They lifted the lid of the sarcophagus, and you noticed the lines of faint scratches that adorned the inside; it made your stomach fill with a grotesque horror at the thought of him being trapped inside that box, of being alone in the darkness, never knowing if he would escape, unable to even succumb to death.

You watched as Ahkmenrah laid down into his ornate box with a practiced ease. He crossed his arms over his chest, his ancient mummy wrappings pushed to either side.

With another order, the twin jackals moved to shut the lid. Ahkmenrah closed his eyes, his jaw tensing as the lid locked him inside. You slid your hand along the sarcophagus, stopping to place it over Ahkmenrah’s golden one.

And then you felt it.

It was as if Anubis himself had reached out to steal everything that dared to defy him by living. It took your own breath away, and for a moment, you thought, This is what it feels like to die. In an instant, you knew that Ahkmenrah was gone, nothing but a pile of ancient bones laid just beneath the lid.

Larry spoke from the doorway, “It’s unnerving, isn’t it?”

“You feel this every night?” you asked, your voice reflecting your discomfort.

Larry only nodded before stating, “Come on. I’ll drop you at your place.”

* * * * *

The drive to your apartment was quiet. Larry did ask if you fixed things with Ahkmenrah, and you said that yes, you thought so. You also thanked him for his advice.

“Night, kiddo.”

You practically crawled up the stairs, exhaustion taking a firm root in your limbs. You had exactly three hours to sleep before you needed to head into the university to meet with your supervising professor.

As you kicked off your sandals, you realized that you left your notebook on the table in the kitchen display. You sent a quick text to Aunt Rebecca to make sure she found it before anyone else did. Your body refused to function any further and you fell asleep, facedown, still fully clothed, and cellphone in hand.

* * * * *

Your fingers whirred, seemingly of their own accord, across your laptop as you typed up another source summary. You worked a decent number of hours per week to help offset the cost of your PhD, but you didn’t mind. You were selected by your favorite professor for the RA position, so it rarely even felt like work.

“Hey, Y/N,” said a deep voice with a light accent from the doorway of the small lounge you were working in. It wasn’t a surprise to see Ryan; he knew you well enough to know every nook you’d hide away in to get your work done.

“I heard you submitted the first draft of your proposal.”

You looked up and smiled, “I did.”

Ryan’s handsome face smirked as he replied, “I knew you’d finish before me. What happened to our pact?”

You chuckled, remembering the night the two of you swore to be each other’s motivation. You were undergrads, both drunk on mid-shelf tequila and had ducked into Ryan’s dorm to escape the boisterous post-finals party hosted on your floor. The sealing of your pact began with a handshake and ended with the two of you in bed. Ryan left the next day to return to Australia for the summer. For the rest of your undergrad studies, this was the nature of your relationship with Ryan. Neither of you wanted a commitment; sometimes, friends with benefits could work if it happened at the right time with the right person.

Ry had been given a grant through the Australian Anthropological Society to pursue his thesis on the effects of colonialization. Being an Australian and having observed the effects on the indigenous peoples of his home country, he wanted to focus on the “what if” side of indigenous cultures—what if people hadn’t conquered and taken not only the wealth of a land, but the dignity of its people? Ryan was an ideator, and you found that deeply attractive. He was content with asking questions and searching for answers that may never be found, whereas you needed to find an answer, no matter the labor or the cost. It was nice to spend time with someone who thought differently than you.

“Wanna celebrate tonight?”

You took in his muscular arms, not at all hidden beneath his thin green shirt. You remembered the way they flexed under your touch, how solid and warm he felt when he was naked and pressing into you. You shifted in your seat; Ryan had excited you from the first time he opened his mouth during class to answer a question, and he could still excite you, even more easily now since you knew the pleasure he could give you.

But Ahkmenrah’s face flashed into your mind, interrupting you, reminding you that you had made a promise.

You gave Ryan a soft smile and said, “I’ve got plans. But maybe you should take that as a push to submit your draft?”

Ryan chuckled and shook his head, “You’re a work-a-holic, babe.”

“Do not even act like you aren’t cut from the same cloth.”

Ryan raised his hands in a gesture of mock-defense.

“You got me. Will you look over it before I submit?”

You grinned, “I knew you weren’t far behind. Of course. Just text me, or well, you know where to find me.”

“Catch ya later, babe.”

You shook away the remnants of Ryan and re-centered your mind. Borrowing the words of the iconic Scarlett O’Hara, you told yourself that you’d think about it tomorrow, well, Ryan anyway. Egypt was always on your mind, even more so than usual with a certain promise you intended to honor.

* * * * *

Armed with a cat nap, a fresh pair of leggings and a breezy, bright, summer top, you slung your backpack on and made your way to Ahk’s exhibit. Your earlier interaction with Ryan felt like a dream as you entered the museum; the museum was starting to feel more like your reality than an escape.

“Hi, Lar, bye, Lar!” you called as you zipped past the front desk.

As promised, you arrived in time to be there when Ahkmenrah awoke. As you waited for the sun to set, you carefully watched the room, wondering if you’d feel the opposite of what you felt last night. Suddenly, a flash of light emitted from the tablet, but to your chagrin, you felt nothing. It was as if life were more natural than death—now that was truly a concept worth some thought, but the jiggling of Ahkmenrah’s sarcophagus drew your attention.

You rushed to pull the golden pins out that sealed the lid, wondering why Larry even bothered to put them back in every night. The rock slab that once held the coffin lid in place was destroyed the night Larry saved the museum, so it would be easy for Ahk to open the lid himself now.

You’d barely pulled the last pin out before the lid flew off and clanged to the ground. Ahkmenrah sat bolt upright, looking wildly about, his crown jostling just the slightest. When his eyes found yours, he smiled as his breathing steadied. You imagined that if you listened hard enough, you’d be able to hear his heart hammering in his chest.

“Hi,” you said, holding the coffin steady as he climbed out eagerly.

“Hi,” Ahkmenrah replied, his smile exploding into a grin that made your heart skip a beat.

“Is it terrible? Waking up like that every night?”

“It is. I sometimes forget that I’m not going to remain trapped.”

“Why doesn’t Larry leave the pins out so you’re not?”

“We discussed that, but it is too risky. Everything must return to exactly as it was to avoid suspicion. Even the tiniest detail will not go unnoticed by a professional docent.”

You sighed, “I’m sorry, Ahk.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for—you’re here! Allow me a moment to fetch the papyruses.”

The happiness in his voice spread to your very soul. How could you have been so stupid to ignore this sweet person for a pile of scrolls?

“Wait—I thought we could do something different tonight.”

“Oh?” he said as he stopped and turn back to face you.

“Yeah. I thought we could just, hang out. Talk. Get to know each other.”

Ahkmenrah smiled again. Damn. If he didn’t stop that, he would own your heart by midnight.

“Shall we head to the kitchens?” Ahk asked, turning in that direction.

“Let’s leave the kitchens as our designated research area. It’s important to separate work from play,” you explained.

Ahk tilted his head and thought about what you said.

“That’s the most Egyptian thing I think I’ve ever heard you say. Americans, well, the English, too, are so . . .”

“Boring?”

Ahkmenrah laughed. “No! Of course not. It’s just that we understood life to be a gift. We worked hard, but we knew how to relax and to enjoy being with those we cared for.”

You thought for a minute before saying, “The Cult of Hathor was in full prominence during your time, right?”

“Hathor, yes! As king, I had a temple erected in her honor and declared five days of celebration for the, um. . .” Ahkmenrah struggled to translate what he would have called the celebration.

“Well, we refer to it as The Five Gifts of Hathor—I wrote a paper on the rituals of the field workers and how they celebrated gratitude by listing the five things they were most grateful for in their lives. I remember finding it fascinating that ingratitude was considered to be the sin that led to other sins. But I’ll be damned if that doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially in today’s society.”

Ahkmenrah nodded as you spoke, excitement glittering in his eyes.

“Yes, that is an apt translation. I lived a good life, Y/N, and I tried to be a good king by making sure my people had time to appreciate their gift of life, too. I was lucky to rule during a time of great prosperity and peace. If I had lived longer, perhaps things would have been different.”

There was that sadness again. You couldn’t imagine what it was like to be stuck in a world that was so, so far from your own.

“Don’t do that to yourself. You were a good king, and it wasn’t your fault that your time was cut short.”

Life meant so much more to the ancient Egyptians; they had a zest for it, a true passion. Today, you were lucky to make it through half an episode of a tv show before turning it off, tired of being surrounded by dark cynicism. When did it become the trend to hate everything?

And that love for life was the point of mummification—Ahkmenrah’s people worked tirelessly to extend life, to bridge that gap between life and death so they could carry on with their earthly joys.

“Come on,” you said as you linked your arm with his. “Let’s go talk some more.”

Ahkmenrah tilted his chin down slightly to look into your eyes; the two of you were close in height, but even in his thin sandals, he was still a few inches taller than you, which sparked a question you had been burning to ask.

“What do you think of pants?”

Ahkmenrah’s eyebrows shot up and he questioned, “Pants? Like what Larry wears? Gods, no. The idea of them seems so . . . constraining.”

You laughed and leaned in closer to him as you directed him toward the large screen theater on the first floor. The museum was showing a movie on ocean life, so you told Ahkmenrah to head in and pick a seat while you sorted out how to start the movie in the projection room. You had worked part-time in high school at a movie theater, and it was nice you could put that knowledge to good use.

After starting the film, lowering the lights, and setting the volume at a reasonable level, you exited the booth into the theater and looked for Ahk’s silhouette. He was sitting in what appeared to be the exact middle of the room in the exact middle of the row.

“Good choice,” you said taking a seat next to him and putting your feet up on the seat in front of you.

Ahk smiled in acknowledgement of your comment as his eyes flicked to your face before returning to the screen.

The movie was bright enough that you were able to clearly see each other, but it was still a large theater. It was dark around you and created an inviting, relaxed atmosphere. The soothing voice of the narrator added to your sense of restfulness, as did the closeness of the person sitting next to you, rigidly proper, hands clasped in his lap.

His eyes were trained on the fish as they moved in a perfect school through the water, but as soon as you spoke again, he turned his head to listen.

“So, fifteen minutes ago we were talking about enjoying life, relaxing. Are you relaxed?”

Ahkmenrah furrowed his brows, “Do I not look to be relaxed?”

“Take off the crown? Maybe your collar? That thing has to be heavy . . . and itchy.”

“Would you like to try them on?”

You huffed out a tiny laugh, “That wasn’t my point, but I’m not going to pass up an opportunity to wear the crown of Lower Egypt.”

Luckily, you had worn your hair in a braid, so when Ahkmenrah sat up and removed his crown to place it on your head, it fit. It was actually much snugger than you thought it would be.

“Is my head that big?” you asked with a little bit of horror.

Ahkmenrah laughed and said, “It’s supposed to be quite tight. You can’t have it just falling off while going about your day. That would be a bad omen.”

He reached behind his neck and untied his Wesekh. You quickly took in the newly exposed expanse of his toned chest, his skin looking even more dark and flawless because of the flickering lights from the film.

If Ahkmenrah noticed your staring, he was too polite to say anything. He held out the Wesekh to catch your attention and you turned around so he could place it over your crowned head and fasten it.

“Oh—” Ahkmenrah said as the Wesekh slipped and he nearly grabbed a handful of your chest as he reached to catch it.

Your shoulders shook with laughter as he apologized, but your laughter died quickly as you felt his fingers graze the back of your neck as he tied the collar. You wanted to lean into his touch; you wanted more.

“There,” Ahkmenrah stated.

You turned to face him, feeling utterly ridiculous.

“Judging from your wicked grin, I look as ridiculous as I feel.”

“You could never look ridiculous, Y/N. You’re beautiful.”

Ahkmenrah stated his declaration of your beauty as easily as if he were reading the weather for the day. You, however, nearly swallowed your tongue. No compliment had ever sounded sweeter.

You laughed, nervously, and thanked him for the ego boost.

“This is itchy. And very heavy.”

Ahkmenrah smiled and reached out to remove his crown, pulling a little to get it to come off. You knew your hair was now scattering to the four corners of the earth and reached up to smooth it out. Ahkmenrah reached out and tucked one stray strand behind your ear, his fingers lingering lightly just behind your ear.

You turned again for him to remove his collar. You took both things from him and tucked them into the folded seat next to you.

You turned back and asked Ahk what he would like to wear again if he could.

“Well, it’s terribly cold here. Our most comfortable clothes were so light. But I do recall that for the summer months, I had the most exquisite, I think you’d call it a shift? maybe a dress? that was so soft it always felt cool, like the air itself, and it was dyed a dark blue and woven with a gold thread so that it shimmered when you moved.”

The clenching of your thighs was almost involuntary as the image of Ahkmenrah in a probably sheer, certainly gorgeous nightgown filled your mind. No wonder people believed the pharaohs were descended from the gods if even half of them looked like Ahk.

“Before I was king, I usually didn’t wear anything to bed, though. When it was cold, we had thick blankets to keep us warm, and the palace always had a fire burning on those nights.”

Jesus. He was clearly trying to kill you.

However, as a professional researcher, you asked, “Why did you start wearing clothes to bed once you were king?”

“In the event of an emergency, it would be faster to dress and to look regal if you didn’t start from nothing.”

“Oh, the wretched price one pays for royalty,” you said through a smile.

Ahkmenrah chuckled, “You asked, and I swear to only ever speak the truth to you.”

The rest of the night progressed in a similar manner. You and Ahkmenrah talked for hours about things old and new, and every time the movie ended, you went upstairs to start it again; it felt necessary, like if you could keep the atmosphere the same, then maybe the night would never end.

By the time you looped the movie around for the fifth time, you were both talked out. When you returned to your seat, Ahk greeted you with another smile that made you school-girl weak. This time, instead of starting another conversation, you slid your arm under Ahk’s and tucked into his side. You rested your head on his shoulder and reached out along his arm to take his hand in yours, lacing your fingers together.

Ahkmenrah held very still until you were settled, then he relaxed into you, resting his head against yours. It felt good; it felt natural, and it occurred to you that you were entering a very dangerous territory. You couldn’t fall for him because you couldn’t have a relationship. You lived in a daylight driven world; there would only be so many times when you could miss going to school without risking the loss of your doctoral candidacy, and your work was your life. It was your dream, your passion.

But maybe you could let yourself have this moment? Soon after snuggling into Ahkmenrah and imagining that he was just a normal guy with a normal life, you drifted off to sleep. When Ahkmenrah felt the shift of your mind and body closing itself off from consciousness, he tightened his grip on your hand and placed the softest kiss on the top of your head.

He knew he couldn’t have you; it wasn’t right. But, gods, how he wanted you.

#Ahkmenrah #ahkmenrah fanfiction #ahkmenrah imagine #ahkmenrah x reader #female reader #natm ahkmenrah #NATM #rami malek #rami malek imagine

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imagitory · 5 years

Text

Zut alors! Carewyn found a Black Quill in her brother’s room, which turned out to be...

...a notebook! And what very interesting things it said too...

Oh snap! So it seems Rakepick not only was working with Jacob before he disappeared, but has also saved MC’s life before! And yet even Jacob felt like Rakepick was only keeping him alive for her own reasons, which is exactly the vibe Carewyn got from her too. Was it that Rakepick suspected she could use Carewyn for her own purposes like she did with Jacob, or did she do it so that Jacob would trust her, or could it really have been out of sincere caring? Could it even be all three? Either way, Carewyn’s conflicted. Part of her is grateful that Rakepick saved her life, especially before she even knew who she was or had any reason to worry about her safety, but at the same time, she wants to know what she was being protected from -- namely, the “Cabal” Jacob mentions.

‘What is this Cabal?’ Carewyn is wondering. ‘What do they want? What is their link to R? Is R its leader?’ My girl is growing even more concerned that Jacob got into something way over his head and needs help, and at this point, it seems like Rakepick has some inkling of what that “something” is.

Ah, so Rakepick is an Occlumens. Guess we’re going to have to learn Leglimency!

No contest. Though I could see Carewyn doing all three, if she can only choose one, she’s choosing Rakepick.

Exactly the reason Carewyn wants to talk to her, Tulip! Carewyn is baffled about why Rakepick never said she’d been working with Jacob or that she knew Carewyn beforehand, as well as why Rakepick would’ve needed to protect her in the first place! Carewyn can understand why Rakepick wouldn’t feel the need to boast about saving her life, as Carewyn certainly wouldn’t ever feel the need to do that if she were in Rakepick’s shoes, but she also wouldn’t have kept valuable information about someone else’s sibling from them if she knew they were searching for them!

But yeah, this seems...odd. *scribbles some more semi-spoiler thoughts under a cut to save your timelines* When I next post, it’ll likely be about this “All-Wizard” Tournament event going on!

Overall, Rakepick has sort of become the Snape of this game, and of course she’s the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, so she can’t last at Hogwarts longer than the end of this school year. I have been spoiled on the major twists in Rakepick’s storyline (most notably what happens in the Vault in fifth year and what happens to [Redacted]) already, but even if I have, the question of Rakepick’s true loyalties still seems somewhat in the air. The perception I get is that Rakepick is considered a wholly terrible, selfish person at this point, but we’ve seen the Harry Potter universe throw out the twist of a good guy who’s really a bad guy actually turning out to be a good guy all along -- one trusted by Dumbledore and no one else too, for that matter. I kind of hope that Rakepick doesn’t follow the same trajectory as Snape, if nothing else than because it wouldn’t be very original...but there are a few alternate paths I could see Rakepick possibly taking in seventh year --

1) Rakepick is a selfish person, but not inherently evil, and she loves her apprentices in a selfish way. On the one hand, she tries to mold them to become more like her because she thinks it’s the only way they’ll survive in the world -- on the other, she’s extremely protective and territorial of them and will even stand against the Cabal in order to protect her “kids.” (In this situation, just the ones she’s actively expressed fondness for, like Merula and MC.)

2) Rakepick was corrupted by her own obsession for the Cursed Vaults, one she was coaxed to bring Jacob in on while working with the Cabal, but she grew fond of him and later of the other kids she took under her wing, including MC. This budding maternal instinct ended up coming into conflict with her loyalty to the Cabal, and so now she’s struggling to try to dislodge herself from them without getting herself killed and protect her “kids.” (This scenario would probably give us the most sympathetic interpretation of Rakepick.)

3) Rakepick, as a kid, was roped into the Cabal’s dealings, enticed by the ideas of immortality and glory that Jacob mentioned in another one of his writings. Only when she became an adult did she see the error of her ways, and when Jacob and MC ended up in the Cabal’s cross hairs, Rakepick tried carefully to keep the two out of the Cabal’s hands out of a noble desire to keep any other kids from getting manipulated like she did. Only problem is that Rakepick is absolutely terrible at empathy and communicating her true intentions, and so she kind of just stonewalled Jacob the way she’s now doing with Carewyn and is the sort to do terrible things in a misguided attempt to protect them, because “she knows best” and she can’t trust anyone else to do what needs to be done. (This could result in a morally gray character in the vein of Snape that would likely be interpreted many different ways by fans, but with a very different plot trajectory.)

4) Rakepick is a terrible, selfish person obsessed with the Vaults and their secrets, but when the time comes for MC and her to face off again, she will be overpowered and suddenly find herself facing down death at the hands of her own favored apprentice. For whatever reason, MC decides not to kill Rakepick, whether out of a desire to take down R or a desire to make Rakepick suffer a worse punishment than death (like, say, the Dementor’s Kiss). Rakepick would acknowledge the life debt she now owes to MC and end up sacrificing her life saving MC’s life later. (This could also result in a rather morally gray character, given that it almost solely relies on the “Redemption Equals Death” trope, which can spark a wide array of reactions.)

5) Rakepick is a terrible, selfish person who deludes herself into thinking that breaking the curses on the Vaults is the right course of action and is willing to use anyone and anything to achieve that goal, even work alongside R. She had hoped to groom others so they could join R in the future, maybe even help her supplant the current tyrannical leadership so she can lead it instead. Complications arise, however, when her favorite students confront her again. Depending on whether or not MC actively wants to kill Rakepick, the confrontation could either end in Rakepick’s death or imprisonment. (This one would probably be the most overtly evil scenario, and although it would be satisfying for her to receive justice, it could still make for a well-developed anti-villain, if written well enough.)

6) Rakepick is on a mission from Dumbledore to infiltrate the Cabal, which at one point had both Rakepick and Jacob wrapped up in its ranks. Jacob tried to fight back and get out of the Cabal’s reach, only to disappear while dealing with the Cursed Vaults. Rakepick, similar to Snape with the Death Eaters, tries to play up her past allegiance to the Cabal so she can protect everyone, MC included. (I like this one the least, again, because of its similarity to Snape’s storyline.)

There’s suddenly a lot to think about...what in the world are you up to, Patty dear?

#hphm #hogwarts mystery #carewyn cromwell #patricia rakepick #jacob's sibling #jacob #jacob hphm #opinion #analysis #fan theory #severus snape #tulip karasu #hphm spoilers

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planetsam · 5 years

Note

Malex Prompt: Isobel tries to get into Alex’s head to make him leave but she can’t do it because he loves Michael too much (basically Isobel and Liz in episode 3.) and Michael finding out about it. Btw... Loooooooooove your writing 😍😍😍

Alex Manes needs to go.

Isobel arrives at the decision when she stumbles upon a date her brother is on. It’s nice and all. Cute, kind of. Hey if it makes Michael happy, who is she to judge? She married and loved someone who was an alien and didn’t even know about it. Anyways she watches as Michael glances out the window with that puppy dog expression. Until it falls away, replaced by a look she’s seen far too often the past decade. She thought it was guilt but knows that it’s not. Not entirely. Everything is supposed to be better now or as good as it can be with Max still out of commission. But Michael’s pain makes something in her chest twist. She follows his line of sight and sees Alex getting out of his car. Isobel would say that Michael is pining but there’s nothing longing about the look. There’s just pain. Isobel is a card carrying member of #TeamMichael and anyone who puts that look on her brother’s face needs to get out of town.

So Alex needs to go.

Isobel tracks him to the UFO emporium. She likes the idea of testing out her new control in that place. And hey if Alex is feeling all nostalgic, she can turn that on him. Michael said Alex was tied to pain. All she needs to do is bring up that natural human instinct to want to escape it. Easy. She buys a ticket and goes inside. The place has never been her favorite. It’s every alien cliche the town thrives on. She’s always mocked it as ridiculous, never allowed herself to feel any of the hurt of seeing this terrible thing put on display. She doesn’t give into that now, it doesn’t matter anyway. This happened years and years ago. She needs to save Michael. Now.

She follows Alex into a room that’s been converted into an autopsy room. The change affects Alex instantaneously. She doesn’t need to be in his head to see how his entire posture changes. He walks around the room in careful steps, but she knows that it’s not this room he’s seeing. He stops at a corner of it and hangs his head, not even bothering to look like he’s unaffected. This is the perfect opportunity. His defenses are down. So she focuses on him and slips silently into his thoughts. It’s embarrassingly easy, but then again the people who think they’re well guarded are usually the weakest. Through the bond she establishes, she first sorts through what he’s feeling and what she can use.

It hurts.

It hurts and it’s his fault. Good, they agree on that.

It hurts, it’s his fault and Michael deserves to be happy. Again, she agrees and is pleased.

It hurts and it’s his fault and Michael deserves to be happy and if he wasn’t such a coward it wouldn’t have to be like this. Okay she doesn’t agree with that. There’s nothing cowardly about Alex. Not that she can see anyway.

He’s a coward and he’s weak. He could have stayed here and been happy instead of running off to be strong and losing everything. He deserves this. What kind of warrior fights for something as selfish as his own happiness. Well now she really really doesn’t agree with him.

It’s good they changed the room. The fewer memories for Michael the better. He can move on and be happy.

Isobel pushes aside the empathy and reaches for the thought of wanting to be happy. But the thought of wanting to be happy is focused on literally everyone but himself. Everyone deserves to be happy but him. He derails her plans because she can manipulate but there is absolutely no desire in him for his own happiness. She seeks out any train of thought that maybe it would be better for them if he left, but there’s none of that. No desire to run from the pain, no desire to heal. Alex just wants to protect people and make sure they’re happy. In the deepest, most unchanging part of himself, his life is an acceptable trade.

Isobel’s breath catches at the acceptance of his low self worth.

That’s not gonna fly.

It bugged her how quietly Alex slipped away. But then again anyone with eyes or ears was constantly subjected to Michael being with Maria. Everyone knew. Michael was like a puppy and Maria, well, everyone saw her smiling. They weren’t subtle. But it seems like Alex feeling like he deserved this played an equal part. His mind might be unguarded but the man has a good poker face. She’ll give him that. As she’s sorting through the things she could use to get him to want to leave, she decides to just double check before she pushes him to it.

Michael beats through him like a pulse.

Isobel immediately retreats. Sorting through his emotions is one thing but this, this is something she refuses to spy on. Alex doesn’t have a right to privacy but she promised Michael he did. She won’t break that promise. Amidst all the self loathing and pain and the strength and protectiveness, Alex loves Michael. It’s the fuel powering the engine. It wouldn’t been enough to stop her, except she only promised Michael she wouldn’t go in his head after she had done so. She recognizes the way his mind is arranged. She knows it. Because she’s seen it before. Alex is done running and Michael is done waiting and maybe if they say it enough they’ll both convince themselves of the fact.

She doesn’t bother with the suggestion of leaving. She toys with the idea of implanting the suggestion that maybe he shouldn’t be so hard on himself but decides against that too. She slips out of his head and moves into the room. He snaps back to himself with that expression people always have after she’s in their heads, but if Alex has realized what’s going on he says nothing. He looks at her carefully and she smiles.

“Is this your first time back?” She inquires.

“I figured it was time to see what they did with the place,” Alex says.

“You must remember what it was like before,” she says.

“Barely,” he replies, “they moved some walls around.”

“No they didn’t,” she says, “I put on the re-opening,” she reminds him, “I know what they changed.”

If he’s embarrassed at being caught in the lie he doesn’t show it. He gives her a smile that’s just predator enough she can respect it. Isobel decides to go with it.

“What was this?” She asks.

“I thought you knew what they changed,” he shoots back.

“On the surface,” she says, “I hate this place, obviously,” she adds, “I was never a masochist like Michael, trying to find home in this place.”

Alex looks away. Michael always said that and she had always assumed he was talking about the junk. Not about a person. She might be on #Team Michael, but a part of her wonders what the hell he’s doing on the detour he seems to be on. If he realizes how much of an idiot he’s being.

“I guess it was a bust,” Alex says.

“I guess,” Isobel says.

“They had the flying saucers here,” Alex says, “and the wall of lights, it was supposed to be stars,” he tells her, shaking his head, “and the alien bodypart,” he looks at the autopsy table.

“Ew to the alien body parts,” Isobel says, “and all those cheesy green men,” Alex shrugs, “but the stars,” she says, “are still back there.”

“Huh?” Alex looks surprised and maybe his poker face isn’t that great.

“Probably the only thing about this place I liked,” she says, “and someone pitched a fit at the prospect of them being thrown out,” she adds. Alex shuts down but Isobel ignores it, “the flying saucers are in the theater. Along with more of the stars.”

She definitely has gone over a line and almost feels bad at the wild hope in Alex’s eyes. Which, again, is familiar considering Michael had the same damn expression and demanded to know that the stars in this room were going to be the same. No matter what they did with the rest of it. Alex attempts to look nonchalant as he makes his way to the fake wall and peers around it, but even with just the slightest brush in his head Isobel feels more calm from him than she has their entire conversation. His entire body relaxes. Relief, he’s relieved.

It’s still here.

Isobel fights the urge to smile and glances at her watch.

“Well I’ve reached my limit of little green man stuff for the day,” she says, “I’ll see you around.”

Alex nods and doesn’t take his eyes off the stars.

Isobel leaves him to his nostalgia and pushes the bright taste of hope out of her head. Obviously she doesn’t mean to bang her funny bone into the sign and send out the distress call, things are just so different. Really its proximity. But it’s a distress call and not five minutes later, who should come running in but Michael, looking panicked. She rolls her eyes at her own clumsiness.

“Sorry, I hit my funny bone,” she says.

“Iz—“ he starts.

“But while you’re here, I think they’re having some trouble with the star wall in the autopsy room,” she tells him, “maybe you could go check it out?”

#malex fic #michael guerin #alex manes #malex #roswell new mexico #isobel evans #roswell nm fanfic #michael x alex #prompts #leave the ufo emporium out of your romantic parallels #i s2g

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