#and it’s because she single-handedly decided to go off her meds | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lyrishadow · 4 years

Note

1. “Don’t you dare stop breathing!” (lol let's go straight for the Angst)

Here we go: For the Angst prompts... “Don't you dare stop breathing” Lyriwen/ Koth Vortena. I apologize because these two turn angst to fluff very quickly and I have no control over them. Enjoy. “Don’t you dare stop breathing!” He cradled her against him as he ran to the med bay, ignoring looks from the others. Koth had hefted Lyriwen from where she had fallen on the command deck.

If only it had been in character and less obvious that he had developed feelings fort he woman. Lana found that odd, she had known Koth for years at this point, and he had never gotten attached to someone so fast as to the Captain now known as the Outlander.

“Koth, wait!” she ran after him, waving for some of the others to join her. To hold the girl down for treatment if necessary.

The med bay on their newly acquired warship was a small affair, but surprisingly well equipped after Asylum, Koth had managed to get the girl to a bed and now was pacing and hand wringing behind her.

“Koth, if you aren’t going to help, please wait outside.”

“Lana…” she could hear the desperate plea in his voice. Swearing under her breath Lana turned back to her patient. A lightsabre had pierced her entire body, straight through. The prognosis was that she should be dead. Instead, Lana was treating a hastily healing wound with Kolto, and praying it worked. Either way, the girl was going to be out for some time.

Lyriwen really was starting to mend. Kolto had been part of that but something, someone was helping. That was either good or bad, and Lana didn’t really understand the situation enough to say which it was. “Lana…” Koth asked again, still pacing, wringing his hands, she had never seen him look so shell shocked, even after he went rogue from the army.

“Koth, for the love of all things, stop pacing.” She shot back to him.

“Will she live?” His fear was after all quite accurate, as normally a lightsaber shoved through your insides would kill you pretty quickly, Lyriwen had been lucky. The luck had been making it back to the ship at all, and then there was the fact that the weapon had missed most of her vital organs and that even without help she might have pulled through. Lyriwen was, from what Lana remembered, incredibly stubborn, exceedingly good in a fight, and what the galaxy needed the most right now.

“She will.” Lana ran a scan “She was lucky, the weapon missed the major organs... And..”

“It should have killed her?” Koth was as confused as Lana.

“Yes.”

“How…..and you know better than to give me the force crap, tell me in a way I would understand.” Koth had mercilessly stopped pacing and moved over to the other side of the medical bed.

“Valokoirian,” Lana said, with much distaste in her mouth.”Seems to have decided to keep her alive.”

“I’m glad.” Koth was now sitting on a stool, watching the Outlander.

“You and she seem to be getting along…” Lana probed a little, trying to push down the jealousy, she wasn’t interested in Koth that way, but he was her friend.

“Yeah… I mean…” Koth blushed, something Lana had not seen from the man ever.

“What happened in the tower?”

“The tower…” Koth repeated still staring at the Outlander, Lana could have sworn he looked at her lips more than any part of her face.

“Yeah, with Arcann? Did you see it?” The fight with the son of the entity currently residing in their Outlander’s head was a tyrant hell-bent on revenge on his father - for him that meant killing the Outlander.

“I stopped him…” Koth said not removing his attention form the Outlander.

“Stopped it? Koth he could have killed both of you!” Lana gaped at him.

“He was killing her…” Koth replied stiffly “I couldn’t let.. I wanted to... Lana…”

“You wanted to play the hero? “ Lana responded pressing her hands against her temple; she was sure between the two of them she was going to get a very big headache.

“She already sacrificed everything for us… “ Koth responded, “It was time someone looked after her too… it is time.”

“I.. oh.” Lana sat back to think about it. It was true she had sought out this particular Captain because she had seen the woman single-handedly take on the Emperor on Ziost, seen her save lives, seen her fight off the Revanites, rescue Theron and then fight through their lines to take down Revan. She could definitely do the job, lead the Alliance. “I found her because she can save us…” Lana said quietly, her attention now turned onto the girl. “I guess I didn’t think of asking if she wanted to, or how she felt about it. I certainly didn’t ask if she wanted to die for us.”

“Lana I didn’t mean to upset you.” Koth shook his head.”I have never met anyone like her before.”

“I bet. There really isn’t a lot of people like her.” Lana nodded a half-smile on her face.

“I think when we kissed…” Koth started to say but Lana interrupted him.

“You did what?!” She managed to gasp out, her friend, her reliable, trustworthy, resourceful friend, did not go around the galaxy kissing people.

“In the tower, after I managed to get rid of Arcann, we had a moment.” Koth blushed, running his hand up past his hair. “She is so strong, so amazing, and she chose to flirt with me and kiss me.”

“So you fell head over heels in love huh?” Lana shook her head. Aside from Theron Shan, a man on the wrong side of the war between the Republic and Imperial wars, she had little interest in anyone or cared much either way. To be fair she also cared about the woman lying on the medbay bed between them.

“What is our next move, Lana?”Koth still hadn’t taken his eyes off his Outlander.

“Odessan.” she said nodding to herself “It is time we built this Alliance.”

“Will she be awake in time?”Koth asked his concern on the Outlander again.

“I hope so.” Lana did not want to add that there was a slim chance that whatever Valkorian is or was doing to heal her might fail. She swallowed and sighed.

“Ok, I can keep an eye on her,” Koth said, taking the Outlander’s hand.

Lana nearly choked on the look on his face. She had never seen Koth in love with someone, a ship maybe but not a person.

They sat a moment longer in silence just watching the girl sleep.

It took two more days for the Outlander to wake up. As it was Koth and Lana were there to greet her.

“Ugh” Lyriwen groggily sat up.

“Careful…” Lana said, “You took quite a hit.”

“Never seen someone take a lightsaber to the gut and live,” Koth said his eyes suggesting Lana find other things to do.

“Were you two watching me sleep?”Lyriwen asked eyeing them both, her eyes lingering longer on Koth. At least Lana could tell it was reciprocated affection.

“How did I survive?”Lyriwen asked looking from one to the other.

“Valkorian.”Lana said. “Seems to want you alive for something I take it.”

“Yeah, at what cost.” Lyriwen shook her head.

“Lana, we can meet you in the hangar ready to move out in half an hour.”

“Where we going?” Lyriwen asked, trying to sort out her point tale but still weak as a kitten.

“Odessan. It is a planet which is both light and dark.” Lana replied “It should make a good base of operations. We will meet people there too.”

“Okay.” Lyriwen swung around as if to get up and wobbled. Koth caught her as she nearly fell.and did not let go of her.

“Alright, I will go. Koth, make sure she is okay to walk to the hangar.” Lana retrieved her datapad from, the table and muttering she went about checking things off her list.

“Are you really okay?” Koth said turning to her “You were dead… almost.. In my arms... And..”

“Koth.” Lyriwen replied, leaning on his arm that was still supporting her, “I am okay.”

“Don’t do that to me again?” he pushed the hair back away from her face so he could see her.

“I feel like I only just found you,” he sighed blushing as Lyriwen looked up at him in awe.

“I…” she frowned “There is a lot to get to know about me and no time.”

“I guess i was so worried I didn’t think that you wouldn’t feel the same and…” Koth’s attempt to back off was interrupted by a kiss.

“I didn’t say that.” She pointed out “I.. really genuinely feel for you. I just don’t want you getting hurt by hearing stories… and..”

“Don’t care.” Koth replied, “We are just starting out Ly, let’s just take it a bit at a time.”

She nodded and moved to the edge of the bed.

“How long was I out?”

“A few days.”

“Ok. I will need your help.” He steadied her as she went to stand, helping her with her jacket.

“And I mean more than just walking to the hangar if you don’t mind.”

“Anything.” Koth replied genuinely “that I can do, I will.”

5 notes · View notes

doyouneedtorant · 4 years

Text

april 29, 2019 (time unknown)

This is an old piece that I wrote for an English assignment. It is entitled “The Missing Fairy Princess”.

It’s backpacking season at the University of Michigan. For those of you who are unaware of what that means, “backpacking” is the process of choosing classes to put in your “backpack” before registering for them at a later date. It involves many hours of obsessing over the course guide and worrying about what the future will look like if you do not get the classes that you need for your major. With that in mind, it’s an extremely stressful experience for someone as manic and worried as me. At this point in my college career, I am bombarded with adults telling me “Oh, you’re just a freshman! You don’t need to know what you’re doing with your life quite yet!” when in reality, this question of “what do you want to be” is single-handedly eating away at my heart. I am a person of many ambitions and yet in a school full of aerospace engineers, aspiring business men and women, medical students, and overachieving triple-majors, I feel as if my creativity has been pushed to the side for a more practical pursuit. In these times, I cannot help but look back at the young girl I used to be who wanted to be everything.

At my preschool culmination, the teachers all asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. All the boys and girls said they wanted to be firefighters and police officers or dentists and doctors. Yet when it got to me, I said I wanted to be a fairy princess. One of the parents laughed at me and my dad essentially told them “Hey, if my daughter wants to be a fairy princess, she can. It’s more original and creative than being a police officer, like your kid.” Now, this is just something my father has told me over and over; I can only really trust him and his memory skills to assume that this retelling of the story is actually an accurate depiction of what happened. Same goes to the time that he told me that the mothers that led our Girl Scout group had to pull him aside, because during arts and crafts, I tried to make a mind-control device to brainwash the other girls. Although I can’t remember a single thing about these events, I’ve heard these stories so many times that I can seriously see them - well, at least in my own imaginative way. I see me shrieking “I want to be a fairy princess!” at the culmination and suddenly I’m in this cute, little purple fairy costume laughing as my dad has his altercation with the other parent. I can vividly see this “mind-control device,” a black-and-white pinwheel that spins as if I was some engineer who could have actually made that at the age of eight. Over the years, these tales have deeply embedded into me that I could be whatever I wanted to be and I had the drive and ability to be or create something inspiring. And at that young age, I could have been a fairy princess. I could have made a mind-control device. And as I got older, I found myself in love with so many things - writing, singing, teaching, learning, math, English, science, animals. I wanted to be everything and when you’re eight, the idea of being everything seems achievable.

Whether or not those stories were true, there’s clearly a path of imaginative behavior that trailed off from then. Starting in elementary school, I was starting to write my own books. Yes, crappy by default, but true pieces of art in the eyes of my younger self. (My debut story was Pretty and Paris, a book about two poodles that discovered they were sisters and then one was kidnapped by a jealous ex-best friend who planned to sell her on the black market. Iconic.) I was making short films about pineapples with jobs and reality shows about my stuffed animals. I started writing music about the food in my fridge and the boys I thought were cute in my second grade class. I learned how to play the guitar and piano by my own hand and I realized I loved to write poetry. In high school, I was in theatre and started writing plays and when adults told me they were good, it encouraged that childlike creativity that had always followed me throughout the years. I was bound for amazing things and that eight-year-old girl could look in the bathroom mirror and recognize it.

But now I am 19. And, yes, that’s ridiculously young and I am fully aware how bizarre it is for me to be saying I can no longer be creative or that I cannot be whatever I want to be. But at this point in my life, there definitely is a limit on the possibilities. I came into college thinking that I would take all the classes I was interested in, that I would be in multiple clubs, that I would have internships lined up for me. But that’s not actually how reality works. There are GEs (the “general education” credits that the school swears you must take to be educated) and prerequisites that you are forced to take as stepping stones. You have a job because the cost of living in a college town is extremely exaggerated, so now the time you have for clubs is cut short. There are internship opportunities over summer but you are so tired from a demanding semester that you cannot even imagine putting in a minimal level of effort until you have to next semester. I think most importantly that the biggest shock was that if you do not do certain tasks, you absolutely cannot be whatever you want. If you do not take Biology 172, you cannot be a doctor; and if you decide halfway through your college career that you want to pursue medical school, the amount of time and effort that you would need to just catch up with the intense checklist of classes for the MCAT would probably kill you. Not to mention if you want to attend graduate school at all, the competitive nature of students today requires you to get an extremely high GPA, despite the fact that classes are gradually becoming more difficult and teachers praise themselves when they fail a whole class with an unreasonably unfair exam.

Not to mention, the stigma around being a humanities major is hard to avoid. My friends joke about me being homeless after college when my useless degree creates a jobless and unsuccessful life. Growing up in Los Angeles and attending a performing arts school warped my view on how people saw art, especially in a school that worships STEM. Where I came from everyone was going to be some sort of creative when they grew up: a performer, a dancer, an actor, a photographer, a playwright. And to be honest, I believed that. I saw my peers achieving great things while they were still seniors in high school and it made that dream seem much more realistic. With that in mind, that creative eight-year-old flew two thousand miles away from her home, destined to achieve these amazing feats, just to be told creativity is only allowed when it is flirting with practicality. Maybe I could have gone to a liberal arts school instead or somewhere more understanding of arts-oriented students, but how can one do that when the University of Michigan has so much to offer? An amazing reputation, a sense of pride that no other school could match, an incredibly talented and intelligent body of students that collaborate to increase the chance of success, a campus that looks like it was plucked from a catalog. I mean, it was a no-brainer. I knew any program I decided to go into would be academically rigorous and extremely insightful. Now, do not get me wrong, the humanities classes I have attended were exactly that, but the fear of not doing enough has become a very heavy weight on my shoulders. Everyone I meet is a future doctor, engineer, material scientist, epidemiologist, dentist, or nurse. Where were all the fairy princesses?

I decided that I needed to do more and went into what I like to call: “Phase I: I am going to be a doctor!” The idea of becoming a pediatrician was attractive; I always adored children, I wanted to find a career where I helped people, medicine and health continuously peaked my interest. So, with this in mind, I launched my pre-med phase and started to plan out the next three years of my life, the classes I would take, the medical schools I liked, what internships I would do over summer. (It’s sufficient to say I am an overthinker.) I registered for, you guessed it, Biology 172 and a statistics class, making my way through the advised pre-med checklist. Things were going pretty smoothly and then I failed two exams, started missing lectures, and had to explain to my father that for the first time in five years, my grades were not amazing. I came to the conclusion that the root of my stresses was Biology 172 and I withdrew from the class two- thirds through the semester.

No more doctor.

Right now, I am looking at pre-health or pre-social work, trying to find something realistic to pursue and the question “Where are all the fairy princesses?” haunts me. I like to ask people what they wanted to be when they were a kid and what they would want to be now, but often the answer makes me sad. My friend who just graduated with a degree in sociology told me he wanted to be a teacher when he was younger. Teachers, unfortunately, are not paid well and so many kids turn their cheek to education, unless it means becoming a professor at a high- paying university. My friend instead got his degree in sociology, but has no idea what he would ever do with it, so he is applying for reception jobs at local hospitals and clinics instead. Another friend told me he wanted to grow up to be a basketball player, but the skill required and the sheer realistic nature of the dream steered him in a different direction. If money or impracticality remained out of the picture, my dream would be performing on Broadway, or being a cast member on Saturday Night Live, or winning a Tony for Best Play, or singing my own songs in front of a giant crowd. However, the fear of failure or not having something to fall back on is honey for my anxiety.

Once again, I want to make it extremely well known that I understand how young I am. I am going to live a long, luxurious life and the worries I have now will all fit into place, and in my fifties I will be laughing with my husband and children about how silly my troubles actually were. But for now, they are real and they are daunting. It feels like everyone knows what they are doing or they are committed to suffering through the difficult classes they need to succeed. And frankly, I’m not. Every time I look in the mirror, I still see my younger self in the reflection - a purple fairy dress on, stuffed animal in hand, smile plastered to my face - and it is hard to not feel disappointed. I want to look back at that little girl and tell her that we did it. I want to tell her we became everything we dreamed of - a writer, a performer, a doctor, a veterinarian, a teacher, a psychologist, an artist, a chef. And although I cannot predict the future, I understand some of these options have been eliminated just by major choice.

To tell sixteen-year-olds that they need to have some basic understanding of what they want to do with their lives by the time they apply to college is utterly ridiculous. The way we have been taught to push ourselves to absurd heights has left no time to breathe in between class breaks. My fellow classmates are either not participating in any social scene so they can study, or they are engaging way too much and developing some form of alcoholism or drug problem before they hit twenty. Those of us who plan to go to graduate school have stopped learning in order to save space for short-term memorization, when in reality, we all went to college in hopes of learning more than we did in high school. No one seems to be super happy about what they are doing in college because despite the fact that adults have raved on about how in college you get to study exactly what you want to study, the opposite has proven itself true. I may be a speck of dust on Michigan’s campus but the alarming rate of students that feel the same way tells me that something is wrong with the whole process. During these next three years, I hope to catch a glimpse of my younger self by diving into activities and classes that excite me, but I worry that one day, she’ll fade away and I’ll just have to wait for my dad to tell me more stories about her.

#writer #blogger #writing #blog #school #dreams #jobs #creatitivity #kids #college #majors #myrants

2 notes · View notes

mollymarymarie · 5 years

Text

Come On Back To Me

I know, I know. This isn’t Wolfstar (which is, like 99% of what my life is made of), but my PSM (@sparrowof-thedawn) commissioned me to write some smut about Sam Kiszka (bass player from Greta Van Fleet), and I WENT OFF on it. I have a soft spot for boys in bands.

Obviously the smut means NSFW, so use caution, friends. Also, I go through a bit of set-up, so give it a minute.

“I don’t have time to think about it, that’s all there is to it,” you say with the smile that you were accustomed to plastering on, a smile that was becoming increasingly more common. A smile that covered the tired ache constantly hiding behind your lips.

“No,” your best friend, Casey replies with that sarcastic drip to her voice that assures you know she is about to side-step all your bullshit. “You’re not willing to make the time.”

You take a long sip of the Americano in your hand, rolling your eyes dramatically from across the table at Starbucks. The smile on your lips became a little more genuine. It had been weeks since the two of you had been able to spend any time together at all, both of you doing medical residencies in completely different cities. It was a stark and unwelcome contrast from your school days, when you spent nearly every waking hour together.

“Easy for you to say, you live with yours. He’s literally at arm’s length every time you turn around,” you say with a scoff in your tone. You would never undermine the struggle that Casey and her husband had gone through to be together, but she still couldn’t argue that point. She could sit there and tell you that you would find someone eventually, that you would settle down, that you would find happiness, but she had found hers relatively early. They had been together for so long, Casey didn’t even know what dating meant right now.

“I know,” she says, an irritated growl forming in the back of her throat. She knows she’s losing this argument, so she turns to sentiment to win. “You just can’t see what you have. You’re too focused on what you think other people think you lack.”

“Oh?” you laugh bitterly, throwing up a dark, high-arching brow in disbelief. Again, an easy point for her to make in defense. She wasn’t the one whose last relationship ended in flames because her boyfriend of two years decided the distance was too much and their history wasn’t enough. Granted, it had been over a year since they broke up, but the point remained.

“Yes,” she insists with an exaggerating hiss. “First of all, let’s ignore looks, shall we?”

“We’d have to,” you mutter into your paper cup.

“I heard that, shut the fuck up,” she quips immediately with a snap of her fingers, in some dangerous border between playful and murderous. “There is so much magic in you, fam. You graduated with a doctorate, so you’re hella smart. You give your best friend pep talks when she goes through her third nervous breakdown of the month. You continue to love with your whole life despite all the shit that people have given you,” she clears her throat and you hear the name of your ex not-so-subtly buried in the cough that followed. You roll your eyes again.

“Which doesn’t matter because all people see is this,” you say, gesturing down your torso with both hands. Across the table, Casey’s mouth snaps shut and her eyes narrow.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Everybody wants a skinny super model. And I am not.”

“Neither the fuck am I!” she shouts, gathering the attention of damn near everyone in the coffee shop with you. For an introvert, she tends to be rather vocal. “If you’re an eclectic taste, then so am I. Still a lot of people that have the tattoo stigma, you know.” Off-handedly, she brushes over the bursts of color inked across her shoulders.

“But that’s a choice you made. I didn’t make the choice to be my size.”

“Same, though?” she said, her features softening a bit. “Literally the only reason I’m sort of thin is because of the celiac with my total shit diet,” she says with a smirk. “But it also gives me really bad skin and this stupid belly pooch that I’ll never get rid of and super thin hair.”

“Which you can –”she interrupts your argument.

“You, on the other hand,” she leans in, placing her face into her hands, propped up on the tabletop. “Look at you. Curls for miles, dark and silky and defined. Hair that a guy could lose a hand in and would be grateful to.” With one hand, you subconsciously twirl your hair around it in a whirl before tossing it over your shoulder. “You skin is nearly flawless, dotted with freckles like the damn stars in the sky but twice as beautiful.” You could feel a blush creeping up from the base of your throat. Your platonic soulmate had always had a way with words. There’s a reason people mistake you for a couple, more often than not.

She continues. “Your lips are so much fuller than mine and when you put on that deep red color, Jesus H. Christ, if I was into girls.”

“You are into girls.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“You literally could’ve just said ‘if I was single’.” An expression crosses over her face, all pursed lips and puffed cheeks, like being single was so unrealistic of an option (she’s sickeningly in love with her spouse, it’s disgusting) that she hadn’t even considered that. In her defense, she had figured out the bisexual thing pretty late in the game, long after she was married.

“Shut up,” she laughs, high and bright. “The point is you are young and beautiful and you have time.” You open your mouth to argue, but she speaks first. “You will have time, after this residency. Literally the only time I see James right now is for dinner and sex.”

“Separately, I hope,” you laugh against the lip of your coffee cup.

“You’d be surprised and disgusted by how often they overlap,” she says, raising her left brow. It’s like a bizarre innuendo trademark. If she’s making a sex joke, that eyebrow goes up and it’s so sharply pointed that it just makes her expression look so much more scandalous.

“I don’t even want that. I’m not even interested in the sex. Just the company.”

“Bless your little grace soul. The company is the best part, anyway,” she says with a shrug, taking the last sip of her chai latte. “Speaking of company, you still talking to Sammy?”

You roll your eyes again, wondering if you could do permanent damage with how often you’ve used those muscles in the last ten minutes. “No, I don’t talk to Sam anymore.”

“Wait, wait, hold on. Since, uh, when?” she asks with a twirl of her finger.

“Do you know who Sam is now?” you say with a sarcastic huff. “He’s not Sammy Boy from undergrad anymore. He’s Sam Fucking Kiszka and he’s been on SNL and he’s touring with Greta and he’s probably with a different girl every night and those girls don’t look like me.”

“I swear to God, I’ll murder you in your sleep tonight if you keep this up.”

“You know what I mean.” Irritation seeps into your voice. You love your PSM, but she doesn’t get this. If anything, she was probably Sam’s type when you were all hanging out together in your little college town. Sure, there was that one night, but you were drunk, and Sam was drunk, and nothing happened. It certainly seemed that way the next morning, anyway, considering it was something that neither of you ever brought up again.

-----------------

“I’m gonna give you my love!” Sam was yelling-slash-singing Led Zeppelin at the top of his lungs again and if it wasn’t so damn adorable, it would be annoying. Hell, if it was anyone else, it would be annoying, but it’s Sam and, unfortunately for you, you’re rather smitten with Sam.

“I’m taking this away from you,” Casey whispers with a syrupy smile as she slipped the square bottle out from Sam’s fingers. He barely even noticed.

“Oh, let him sing. It’s our last night together,” you say with a sigh, trying not to focus too much on that part. Tomorrow, you’d be moving to a new town, a bigger town, to start med school and Sam and his brothers (including Danny) would be setting out on their first tour.

It was a pretty fucking big deal, actually. GVF had been getting a lot of attention lately, so this first tour was sort of a long-play audition for some big-shot record executive and, if they did well, they were golden. And you knew they would do well because that’s what they always do.

“Hang on, stop right there,” Sam calls out, buried somewhere in a laugh, “You hate my singing.” With that look on his face that often showed up in your dreams, Sam saunters over to you, one of his dark eyebrows raised to its full capacity, his ever-lengthening brown hair, streaked with highlights given to him by the sun, falling down over the sharp edges of his cheeks.

“I don’t hate it,” you say under your breath as you take another sip from the tumbler in your hand. It was more like a gulp. This close, Sammy tends to make you nervous.

“You really are going to miss me, aren’t you?” From where you’re leaning against the kitchen counter, Sam encircles you with his arms, holding himself just far enough away that you could still smell the whiskey on his breath, the floral notes from the product in his hair.

“I’ll hardly notice you’re missing,” you lie, blatantly.

“That’s not what Casey tells me,” he says under a knowing smirk and you shoot a glare at your best friend, who gives you a brazen wink in return, lip curled up and everything, just before she vanishes into the living room to find her significant other.

“Casey is a damn liar,” you reply with a laugh and try to ignore what looks like adoration in Sammy’s expression at the sound of happiness in your voice. You read too far into him.

“Who else is going to give you shit for getting the only A on a test that everyone else failed? And don’t say Casey because she wasn’t in that class or she would’ve had an A, too.” As he speaks, his arms curl in until he’s nearly pressed against you. God, you wish he would let go.

“What about you?” you strike back, poking him in the chest and wishing you could spread your fingers out over his sharply defined collarbones pushing back from beneath his shirt. “Who will be there to make fun of you for dancing to Whitney Houston when no one is watching?”

He wrinkles his nose at you, and you melt a little inside. “Whitney is an icon, alright?”

“So I’ll miss you. A little.” You roll your eyes. You do that a lot in Sam’s direction. “Not like you. You won’t even remember my name a month from now.” The playful spark in Sam’s eyes goes out like a doused flame. In fact, he physically startles a little, pushing back from you.

“Won’t even remember your name?” he repeats with what sounds like hurt in his voice, but you know better than that. You feel like you’re always giving Sam feelings that he doesn’t have for you, hearing intonations in his voice that aren’t there, reading into little things he does that probably don’t have meaning to him. “Is that what you really think of me?”

You backtrack a little, concerned with this change in mood. “You’ll be too busy to miss me, Sam. A different city every night, a different party every night, a different girl.” That last part, you add under your breath, certain he’s too drunk to catch it, anyway.

“You realize that outside of the band, you and Casey and James are my best friends, right? We’ve been friends for the last four years. But you think I won’t even remember your name.” He pushes away from you, storming around the kitchen as he drags his hands through his thick, wavy hair, and you’re left to stand in stunned silence. Sam doesn’t get angry. Not like this.

“It was a joke, Sammy,” you say, even though it certainly hadn’t been a joke when you said it. It was actually the worst of your fears and it had been consuming you for weeks.

“No, I think you mean that,” Sam says, his voice escalating a bit as he circles the island of your kitchen, hands still buried in his hand, coming back to where you’re still standing.

“Alright, maybe a little bit, but I mean,” a blush bubbles up to encompass your face, knowing what you’re about to say to this boy you’ve had a crush on for four years, “Look at you.”

Sam stops in front of you. Stares at you. You squirm a bit under it. “I’m too busy looking at you,” he retorts, his eyes traveling across the features of your face. You see them settling over a patch of freckles underneath your eye, following them over the bridge of your nose to the mirrored opposite side. His eyelashes are so long, so dark that when he lowers his head to look at you through them, it darkens his gaze, hollowing his warm brown eyes until his pupils look blown wide. This is the way you always imagined him looking at you, but never thought possible.

“Not much to see,” you reply, a defense mechanism. With a snarl, his lip twitches up over his canines, they glint in the low light of the kitchen, the moonlight coming in from outside.

“How are you so goddamn stubborn?” he huffs out, slipping his hand along your neck, underneath the curtain of your dark curls, his thumb settling over your windpipe. He leans forward, unsettling your lips with his own, just slightly. The bittersweet of the whiskey is still on his lips and, you find out, on his tongue, as he deepens the kiss and pulls you close.

But he’s right. You’re stubborn. You’re so stubborn, he’s too drunk, and you’re both leaving. Doing this now doesn’t mean a fucking thing. You pull away, cursing yourself. Cursing him for waiting this long. Cursing the universe for making him who he is and you who you are.

“Wow, you’ve had way too much to drink, Sammy,” you laugh off, playfully pushing him toward the living room, where you knew, by now, Casey and James had crashed on the couch. “I think you’d better sleep it off. I’ll see you in the morning.” Quickly, you escape to your bedroom, where you fully convince yourself that it could’ve been anyone. He would’ve kissed anyone.

You don’t cry, you don’t often give yourself that luxury, but you do let yourself take a mental catalogue of this taste in your mouth. Warm, sharp, aching. And so, so bitter.

----------------

The coffee date and the dinner and the shopping were over far too soon. Work started again the next morning, Casey was back in a town that was too fucking far away, and you were left in your one-bedroom apartment that felt too small and too big all at the same time.

Until your phone vibrated on the bedside table. In the dark, it lit up the whole room. Your cat scurried away from it in a panic from the unexpected noise it brought to the silence. For a moment, you considered just leaving it until morning. It most likely wasn’t work – this wasn’t your on-call weekend anyway. It could’ve been Casey, but she’d gotten home several hours before (which you knew because you always forced her to text when she made it).

Whoever it was could wait. For now, you just wanted to be alone. No, that wasn’t quite right. You wanted to be alone with someone, but there was nobody to be alone with. It was just you and you cat, Mickie, like it was every night, like it had been every night for almost a year.

Despite yourself, you glanced over. It was a Snap. That alone was enough to pique your interest. Casey hardly ever sent an unsolicited Snap (she only kept it because of you, and she only replied to keep up the streak), and there weren’t a lot of people who would send you a Snap at this hour (it was almost two in the morning) on a Sunday night.

Curiosity got the better of you. You unlock your phone and pull down the notifications bar. The Snap is from Sammy. Your thumb hovers over the notification for an embarrassingly long time. By then, it had been weeks since you last talked to Sam.

Against your better judgement, you open the Snap. Immediately, a soft smile rushes over your face, a blush trailing closely behind it. It’s Sam – a selfie of Sam on stage with the neck of his bass in one hand, the phone in the other, and a screaming crowd behind him.

The tagline reads, “Missing you more than you think.”

Goddammit. God fucking dammit. What the shit was he trying to do? You had already convinced yourself to forget about the kiss, to forget about your feelings, to forget about Sammy. He’d made it difficult – he kept in near constant contact with you since undergrad. It was going on five years later, and you still talked to him daily. Sometimes, it was only a text, sometimes it was only a picture, rarely there was a phone call (which were always very awkward because you’re good with words on a screen, but in person, not so much).

Every now and then, only a handful of times over the last five years, you and Sam got to see each other in person. Sometimes it was at a GVF show, sometimes it was with a group of friends. Once, he showed up at your apartment with no warning. That one was rough, but ultimately, nothing happened. Nothing ever happened. It had always never happened.

Finally, you had decided. It was enough. Nothing would ever happen with Sam. Maybe it would make you a bad friend for cutting off contact with him completely, but it was so fucking hard to talk to him every single day and not imagine what things could’ve been like if you hadn’t pushed him away that night. If he hadn’t left, if you hadn’t left. If you started something sooner.

The texts from Sam slowed to a stop, eventually. Until now. It was so frustrating, because you knew, absolutely, without a doubt, even if he remembered the kiss, it was just a kiss. No meaning, no feelings. Just a drunken kiss between two friends. That’s what it was to him.

You consider not replying. You consider removing him from your Snapchat. You even went so far as to consider blocking him. But you couldn’t do that. As hard as it was, you could never stop being in love with Sam. Oh, fuck. That’s what this is. You’re in love with him.

With a deep breath, you hold your phone out, the front-facing camera on, and you flick on the lamp next to your bed. In the low, yellow lamplight, you place your curls just right, tilt your head just right, open your mouth just enough, and snap. No filters, no fillers. Just you.

In the caption, you write: “Sorry for the radio silence. I miss you, too.” Send.

Even though his picture was from stage, you knew the show had long been over. You had an internal clock for what time of night he was usually on stage (most often so you would know when to expect a text or a call), and you faithfully followed the cities in the tour. Well, you used to. The tour he was on now was mostly a mystery ever since you’d cut him out of your life.

It’s mere seconds before you get a Snap back. This one is in real time. No stage, no lights, no fans. Just Sammy. His chocolate brown eyes look up, right into the lens of the camera, leaving you to draw in a sharp, unsteady breath. His hair is longer now, still kissed with sunlight, tossed in front of both broad shoulders. He’s wearing that same denim shirt from the night you kissed five years ago, but the top four buttons are open, showcasing the strong, sharp cords of muscle that run along his throat and meet in the center, just between his collarbones.

It reads: “God, it’s good to see your face.”

Fuck. This Snap was calculated. He sent this with purpose. He had to know what this would incite. Sure, that kiss hadn’t ended to anyone’s satisfaction five years ago, but he had to know, right? He had to know that you didn’t want to stop him that night, right?

Fuck it. Two could play at his game. With your heart beating in your throat, you crane your neck down into your pillow, arranging your curls to look artfully splayed around your temples, and you turn your head away from the camera, the collar of the T-shirt that you had fallen asleep in stretched out to give him a good view of the nape of your neck.

“Yours is still as cute as ever.”

This was a huge risk. In all the time that you’d known Sammy, you had never once admitted to anything. Never admitted that he was cute, never admitted to that kiss, never admitted to your crush. And you just had, accompanied by a slightly uninhibited photo.

His reply is immediate. The photo of him is hardly different, his eyes are a little wider, his brows are raised a little higher, his mouth is hanging slightly ajar. But it’s not the photo that catches your attention. It’s the message attached to it.

“I’m in town. Are you home?”

Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. You should have followed their touring schedule more closely, you would’ve been more prepared for this. Fuck. Your mind races through a thousand different scenarios. Is he reading into these Snaps the same way you are? Does he realize what a 2AM visit to a girl at her apartment alone implies? Sammy was always oblivious, but not that oblivious.

You Snap back a blank picture, a black screen of the inside of your palm. You’re losing your nerve a bit, but you still have the guts to reply, making every implication crystal clear.

“Home alone. Want to come over?”

Initially, your realization that you were gray-asexual was kind of a strange awakening, but it made absolute sense to you, once it was explained fully. And it fit. You don’t often experience a need for physical intimacy, not the way most people do. It comes and goes (sometimes at random), and you can usually take care of that rare need yourself and then get on with your life.

Except when it came to Sam. He was always the exception. Random men could express interest in you, in your body, and you remined neutral. There wasn’t that spark with them, with strangers. But that spark grew into a wildfire with Sammy. The more you knew about him, the more you fell in love with him, and the more you wanted from him. With him.

Your phone lights up the room again. You expected another Snap, but it’s a call. From Sammy. You answer without hesitating, anxious to hear what his voice sounds like, whether there’s an ache hiding in his throat, whether he sounds like he wants you like you want him.

“Hi, Sammy,” you say into the receiver. He breaths out.

“Hi,” he replies, all breath. “I’m three minutes away. I was going to wait until I got there, but I felt like I’d forget everything I wanted to say when I got there.”

“Everything you wanted to say?” you repeat carefully, hoping the things that he wanted to say aligned with the things you wanted to hear.

“I don’t know what I did, but I know I must’ve done something to make you stop talking to me. It’s a typical male cliché, I know, but I want you to tell me. I want to fix it.” There’s a whine in his voice that you’ve never heard before and, while you want to make it go away, you also really like the sound that it makes coming up from his throat.

“You didn’t do anything, Sammy,” you sigh into the phone, propping your head up in your head, your elbow buried deep in the pillow. “It was me. I had to stop.”

“If it was because of that kiss, I …” he trails off, as if unsure if he’s supposed to apologize for that night. “No, fuck that, I’m not sorry for that. I will say I’m sorry if it made you uncomfortable, but I –” You try to interject, unsuccessfully.

“It wasn’t that, I just –”

“I won’t apologize for thinking about that kiss every night for the last 5 years.” You go quiet, listening to Sammy breathe raggedly on the other end. “But I need to know.” He pauses for such a long time that you would’ve thought the call disconnected, if not for the static in the silence and the breaths that filled the dead air. “Did I go too far that night?”

After barely a pause, you answer. “No.” But you can’t convince yourself to say more.

“Then why did you push me away?” That whine resurfaces in his voice and you want to say anything to make it go away, because right now, it sounds a lot like hurt.

“Because I didn’t think I could have you.” A deep breath passes through your lips as you close your eyes. This isn’t really the conversation you wanted to have with him just now.

“Was it because I was leaving? Because we were both leaving,” he tries to explain the frailty in that argument, and he was right. It hadn’t just been him that was leaving you back then.

“Yes, that, but …” Your voice trails off, not wanting to finish that thought. This is the part where everything gets awkward, because these aren’t things you ever wanted to admit to Sammy. You didn’t want to tell him that he was way out of your league, or that he deserved someone better than you, or that you weren’t sure you could always give him what he needed. Because, yes, Sam was your exception, and you wanted him in ways that you wanted nobody else, but it might not always be that way. Sammy deserved someone who wanted to give him everything, always, all of the time. No strings, no exceptions, no restrictions.

“But what?” he insists gently, and you realize you’re going to have to spell it out for him.

“Sammy,” you say, your voice quivering. “I’m not pretty enough for you.” An angry breath comes from Sammy’s end just before the line goes dead. You hold the phone out. Call ended.

An impatient knock at your front door sends panic into your chest and you try to ease your shaking hands, but it’s unsuccessful. As you make your way to the front door, you try to smooth out the curls of your hair, you tug at your T-shirt to cover more of your legs, even though you have a pair of shorts on underneath. Sammy hasn’t ever seen you like this and it’s terrifying.

The moment you unlock the door, Sam doesn’t hesitate. His hands are against your face and he’s pulling you against him, and you let him. God, you let him. His lips eagerly find their way to yours and his tongue follows quickly after, exploring and tasting and moaning.

Jesus, the sounds from his throat are indecent. Obscene. The sounds your mouths make together are explicit. As he crosses the threshold to your apartment, he kicks the door closed behind him and pulls you back with him, letting you press him against the door. At first, you stop yourself from putting all of your weight against him, you ease back, but he’s ten steps ahead of you, and he’s already considered everything that might hold you back.

His fingers bury themselves underneath the hem of your shirt, sliding up around your ribcage and he tightens his grip. Your feet unsteady underneath you and you fall into him. He doesn’t make a sound other than the satisfied hum escaping through your joined lips.

“God, your skin is so fucking soft,” he breaths into your mouth just before he violently pulls the shirt over your head, only to let his lips travel down the expanse of your neck. You tilt your head to let him at whatever skin he wants to put his mouth on.

It turns out, Sammy is keen to put his mouth on every possible inch of your skin. Without letting his mouth part from yours, he walks you back toward your bedroom, and the two of you trip on everything in the path there. With every stumble, Sammy laughs against your lips, both of you working on unfastening the buttons of his denim shirt. Eventually, he sheds it on your bedroom floor, and you let your hands explore the uncharted areas of his bare chest.

His eyes stay locked onto yours as he coaxes you onto the bed, where he kneels with one of your legs in between his. As he leans down to slip his tongue into your mouth again, you feel him pressed hard to your thigh, and he curves his hips up to get more friction.

When his lips move down, kissing along the edges of your black bra, he slips his hands underneath you, unclasping the hooks of that bra. As he starts to pull it away, you hold it to your chest, a bright pink blush blooming in your cheeks. His expression softens as he places his hand over yours, leaning down to place a delicate kiss to your nose.

“I don’t get it,” he says with a soft laugh. His hands, with yours inside it, move up, until he has them pinned above your head. “How do you not see what I see?”

“What do you see?” you ask, a hushed tone that doesn’t sound like your voice floats out.

A smile crosses Sammy’s lips as he pulls away the fabric concealing you, letting his eyes flutter down your bare chest. At the sight of your uncovered skin, he darts his tongue out to wet his lips before pulling his bottom lip into his teeth, his pupils dark and wide. His fingers follow the path that his eyes forge for them and you arch into his touch at your breast.

His eyes glance up to meet yours again. “I see skin that deserves to be kissed until it trembles underneath my lips. Skin that forms a beautiful shape with hills and valleys and stories and songs. Skin that holds the soul of the woman I have been in love with for longer than she would ever believe because she is so stubborn,” he smiles, peppering soft, tender kisses to the skin he so poetically described. “Christ, is she stubborn,” he laughs.

“No more than you,” you pout playfully as he works to remove the rest of your clothes and you’re much less reluctant to let him. When you are laid bare, he sheds his own clothes and you marvel at the sight of him, sun-kissed and naked and absolutely fucking magnificent.

“I meant what I said,” he croons, his voice dropping deep as he circles around to the foot of your bed, his eyes lit with a new fire. “That thing about trembling, you know.” As he climbs onto the bed, he pushes your legs apart, wider and wider, kissing up your inner thigh.

“Sammy,” you caution. In your last relationship, this had never been very successful for you. You were afraid that trend would continue, and Sammy would get frustrated over it.

“Please,” he breathed out, warm and wet against your skin, and just his breath against you made you shiver in anticipation. You nod in agreement, and he spreads you open even further. Almost timidly, he pushes the very tip of his tongue into the open space between your legs, soft and slow and careful, dragging the full breadth and width of his tongue behind.

“Oh,” you breath out indecently, a rattled breath from your lungs, as Sammy’s tongue reached the crux of his ascent. Just like he promised, you tremble underneath him.

“Oh, fuck,” he moans, gripping your calf and you can feel him arching his hips into the mattress for a little extra friction. “God, make that sound for me again.” With his tongue widened, he drags it along the entire width of you, dipping inside, curling and uncurling within, fucking you with his tongue. He moves out, circling your entire entrance with his tongue, dripping and scorching, before lazily running over your crux, slowly, slowly, slowly.

You make the sound for him again. And again. And again. Those sounds get louder as his tongue increases in speed, feverishly, furiously lapping at your skin, back and forth, up and down, making tight, wet patterns with his tongue until you’re ready to come apart.

“Fuck,” he mumbles again, into your skin, sending the vibrations of his speech into your very core, and he pushes his tongue in with them, deep down until you can feel his lips pressed to yours. He purses his lips there, kissing you, his tongue still driving inside, and when he moans, it’s like an electric shock to your body.

“Don’t stop,” you call out, your voice feeling thin as your body finds the edge. Agonizingly slowly, he pulls his tongue up again, to the same throbbing, swollen skin, and he sucks at it, swirling his tongue within his lips. As you bury your first into his dark, wavy hair, he lays into a rhythm, daring to press two wet fingers into the depths of you. He pushes in and pulls out, matching the pace of his fingers to the rhythm of his tongue, fucking you hard and fast until your vision goes white, and every muscle tenses, and you call out Sammy’s name into the dark, waves of pleasure coursing through you until you’re throbbing around his fingers.

“Oh my God,” he moans, his breath still hot and sticky against you before he moves up, kissing every inch of skin in his path. “You come so fucking well. You look so good right now.”

When he gets to your mouth, you turn his head, pulling his earlobe into your teeth. “Fuck me, Sammy,” you whisper into his ear and every part of him goes limp against you, save one.

“Fuck. Oh, fuck, yes,” he mutters and moans, and you can feel him hard between your legs. He reaches down, swirling the head of his cock at your entrance for only a moment before pressing in, gently at first until his hips are flush to yours. His hips swell and break viciously, pressing into you with a zealous need over and over, his fingers kneading at the skin at your hip that you used to hate, but you can no longer hate it, for the way that Sammy caresses it.

He whispers into your ear, all the things you ever wanted to hear him say. You’re so beautiful. I’ve wanted you for so long. God, I love you. I love you. I love you. And it’s been five years, but it feels like five days, and you’ve never felt this good about anything in your life.

When Sammy comes, his dark brown eyes roll back with his head, his neck craned so tight that you can finger that cord of muscle that meets in the center of his collarbone. The moan pulling up from his throat is like the thrum of a bass string, deep and harmonious and reverberating, and it echoes in your chest until you feel filled up by it, too.

When he comes down, he drags his hand through his hair, hair that is longer than it’s ever been, and it looks so much darker under moonlight. His fingers pull through the tangled mess of his hair and he lets them trail down his chest, down his waist, along his hips. Those fingers find your skin again as he pulls out with an indelicate, satiated moan, and he wraps you up in his arms, kissing the back of your neck. You feel sleep pulling, but you fight vehemently.

His words continue, the words that he had been whispering in your ear when he’d been buried within you, and you try so hard to listen, but your eyelids are so heavy now.

His speech turns to song, singing sweetly and softly, his lips brushing along the shell of your ear until you’re sure you could fall asleep at any moment. “You’re the one I want. You’re the one I need. You’re the one I had. So come on back to me.”

You dream about holding his hand and staying a while.

#greta van fleet #sam kiskza #smut #fluff #a little angsty #fic #request #Come On Back To Me

103 notes · View notes

beyondthetemples-ooc · 4 years

Text

It’s so fucking weird to me.

For context? My psychologist usually goes very in-depth with me about coping mechanisms and self-talk. (Because self-talk is something I’ve been working on for the past three years. I’m unlearning lifelong habits, it’s a huge project...)

But usually, whenever she makes a suggestion, like “We have to challenge those thoughts”, because that wasn’t a strategy I was ever taught, I’m very good at asking Deeper Questions. “How do you do that?” “You ask yourself, well is there another way of looking at it?” And if I ask her how to follow that up when the automatic negative thoughts come out, she tells me about weighing negative, positive, and realistic. And so on, and so on.

I’ve mentioned now and again to her that I have emet*phobia. And when we had our phone conversation “appointment” this week, I told her I’d really been struggling with it this week. (Because I had Two Episodes. They didn’t impact me as badly as usual because the medication.... helps, let’s just say that;; Even if it doesn’t stop it, it makes it so that when it does happen, my body still gets to use a good deal of the meal Before the Doomsday Clock Strikes Midnight. Or, well... I should say they didn’t impact me physically as badly. Emotionally? I was shaking just talking about the phobia.)

For the record: Yes, I am going to doctors and taking medication that keeps it to a level where I am... not exactly “comfortable” all the time, but able to do things like go grocery shopping, go to work even if some days i have to Not Eat while at work, and attend meetings, talk to friends, etc. It’s at the point where it doesn’t prevent me from.... surviving. Even if it robs my energy and makes me nervous to do something I need to do to survive (i.e. eat food), I’m (usually) capable of doing it regardless. And the reason I’m not on Bad Days is the phobia more than the actual physical adversity itself.

So talking about this phobia, she says that usually with a phobia, you treat it with exposure therapy. And I have to go into detail about why If Exposure Therapy Was The Answer, This Phobia Would Be So Far Gone By Now. (Because I’m faced with It Happening at least once a month! Even with the meds! Even with how extremely RESTRICTED my diet is! I was faced with discomfort every single time I ate! I was faced with The Big Trigger every single day for THREE MONTHS in 2017.)

So I’m sitting there, shaking, hoping she has a strategy. But she was just... very “I don’t know what to tell you”. She has struggled with IBS, and always tells me about how stress affects it, but my episodes aren’t triggered by stress, because if they were then right now, having been nothing but relaxed for Most of the past Month, not having to work, being able to eat and sleep as much or as little as my body needs, having plenty (PLENTY!) of money? If stress was the problem, I’d be the healthiest I’ve ever been in my LIFE.

She has recommended I use deep diaphragmatic breathing to settle my stomach. But I found that technique YEARS ago, I’ve been practicing diaphragmatic breathing for yoga and meditation for YEARS (not to mention choir class and training my breathing muscles to support hitting a C# above the scale). And breathing has never done anything to soothe my stomach when it decides it’s upset.

It’s really not a physiological response to stress and anxiety. I know my mind extremely intimately. I’m very introspective and aware of what’s going on. I know when I’m stressed or anxious. Which takes a lot, honestly. A big, wide slice of my spirituality is focused on finding peace within myself. It’s been a practice since I was 12 freaking years old. More than half my life! I’ve been practicing stress management techniques for fifteen years. For the most part, I know how to handle “stress” without getting all torn up about it. Most things just aren’t important enough to bother me.

It used to be triggered by empathic overwhelming, but now I know that’s definitely Not what’s setting it off, because I’ve been at home with no more than 5 people for an entire MONTH.

I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t stress, and breathing isn’t making it stop.

She briefly, off-handedly mentioned something about “In those situations, we just have to accept it.” And I was like, “Well of course I accept it, because it’s a violently involuntary mechanism. Nothing in the world can make it stop. And if I didn’t accept it was happening, there’d be an awful mess to clean up.” But she literally just went “hmm”.

I’m considering getting another therapist, someone who specializes in phobias and anxiety disorder coping mechanisms, but this one has also helped me so much that I don’t want to leave her. But I don’t think my insurance will let me see more than one....

But at the same time, the phobia is definitely the worse, more omnipresent, more painful, and least-coped-with struggle in my life. mmmmmmhhhhh....

#rhs emlog #rhs personal posts

1 note · View note

canyouhearthelight · 6 years

Text

The Miys, Ch. 24

The following morning, I slid Arantxa a mug of coffee as she sat next to me with a groan. “How do I feel even more tired than I did when I went to bed last night?” she grumbled before making a valiant attempt to drown herself in the hot beverage.

I raised my matching mug in a silent toast. “I know, right? I couldn’t sleep for anything. I have the big sister of the migraine I went to bed with last night, to boot. I had to ask Miys to get a batch of analgesic patches from medical, which turned out to be a good idea because I am apparently not the only one. Xiomara looked at me like I single-handedly ended world hunger when I told her.”

She grunted before coming up from her coffee for air and a refill. “We are all under a significant amount of stress. Everyone seems a little dazed today, even Councillor Hodenson, if that helps.”

“No way,” I murmured in disbelief, looking around. Sure enough, Grey was standing with their data screen up, but staring off into the distance over it. “I didn’t think anything could get to them. At least I don’t feel as bad knowing they’re rattled, too,” I shook my head, groaning slightly as the pain in it intensified.

I didn’t even realize I had closed my eyes until they flew open at the sound of something being set in front of me. “I swear, for someone who likes to cook so much, you sure forget to eat an awful lot,” the familiar voice of Zach Khan trickled in my ear as I stared at a plate of scrambled eggs piled high and topped with salsa and cheese. “Your sister said your favorite breakfast is huevos rancheros, but this is the best I could do with what they brought in.”

Pushing down the rolling nausea in my stomach, I took a tentative bite. As much as I knew he was right, migraines always made me sick. I just reminded myself that dry-heaving was worse than throwing up and forced myself to swallow. “And everyone calls me a mother hen,” I tried to joke. “Thanks, Zach.”

“No prob,” he waved off. “I already took something to Derek and Tyche. She said she thinks she’s coming down with something at the worst possible time, so she asked me bring you something to eat while she tries to cool off in the shower. I would have grabbed you something, too, but I didn’t know what,” the last part was directed at my friend, who was showing heretofore unknown talent in chugging scalding beverages at this point.

She paused long enough to shake her head. “I don’t eat breakfast, but thank you. Once I am more awake, I will find something, I promise.”

After throwing a scowl at her for not eating something, I turned back to Zach. “What are you even doing up already?”

He shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Plus, someone had to be on hand to set up the headsets for the drone pilots. They’re pretty bootstrap since our host had nothing like them on hand, but we’ve got them working. The pilots report some nausea and dizziness from prolonged use, but that’s pretty standard with prolonged VR use, which is essentially what we’ve got them doing. Pranav was going to ask Derek to take a look at them, but Maverick and I pretty much put the kibosh on that until he’s recovered from yesterday.”

“How’s he doing?” I asked, worried.

“Eh, he ate, so that’s good. I took him as much water as I could carry, and he’s holed up in the farthest corner of one of the sleeping areas, spoiling your cat. Conor brought up some of his modelling clay, so he’s got that, Mac, and a few ice packs.” A huge wait I wasn’t previously aware of fell off my chest at the information.

Arantxa’s face made a sudden appearance from her fourth – fifth? – cup of coffee. “Conor was here?” she asked excitedly.

As I smothered a grin, Zach shook his head. “Negative. He was on Level Three, where Miys met him to pick up the clay. Security is still super tight until we find out who or what caused the sensor damage.”

My poor, lovesick friend deflated at the news, and I was torn between laughing and crying to see how much she missed our friendly giant. “We were supposed to have a date, today,” she grumbled.

“Nuh uh!” I cried, echoed by Zach’s “No way!”

She nodded. “We were going to visit BioLab 2, and he was going to teach me to swim.”

“Uh, Rants, you already know how to swim,” I pointed out.

“He doesn’t know that,” she declared imperiously. “It was the best I could do, since I have absolutely no help.” The last was accompanied by a playful glare.

“Wait wait wait,” Zach held up his hands. “Did Conor know this was supposed to be a date? Deets! I need deets!”

“Are you going to give me dating advice?” she asked eagerly.

“Who? ME!?” he pointed at himself. “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m pining over the Ace Ace over there, which is the dumbest thing ever for a bisexual horndog, so I’m the worst person to ask for advice.”

“Are all bisexuals disasters?” she asked skeptically.

“Yes,” Zach and I replied in unison before glancing at each other and laughing.

I had to stop when the small man in my head found a bigger hammer to pound my skull with. “Ugh, I need to wait until my pain meds kick in before I have the rest of this conversation. Y’all have fun, though,” I waved at them as I stood.

“No, no, nope,” the programmer gently pushed me back in my chair. “Tyche and Derek both insisted you eat all that before I let you out of my sight. We’ll change the subject, but you have to eat.”

“All of it?” I asked with horror before looking down at my plate. A mountain of eggs stared back at me.

“Four ounces of eggs, one ounce of cheese, an ounce of salsa. Roughly two hundred calories, Tyche’s orders. And she scares me more than you do – I’m pretty sure she actually could kill me with one eyebrow – so you gotta eat that.”

I grumbled and started forcing down the eggs as Arantxa continued her impressive performance at breathing coffee and Zach filled us in on everything that happened while we were asleep. I only understood about a quarter of what he said, just enough to understand that we were in orbit around one of Eenie’s moons, and in ten hours would be moving to the next for additional materials. Also, lunch would apparently be vegetarian. Finally, I finished my eggs (much to Zach’s relief) and was free to hunt down Xiomara and another analgesic patch while I waited for my food to settle and coffee to kick in.

When I found her, in the same place I left her the night before, she didn’t seem to be in any better shape than I was. She sighed gratefully at the sight of the coffee I brought her – a near repeat of the night before – before taking in the pinched look I knew sat around my eyes and just asking “Stress?”

“Yup,” I confirmed. “But life carries on, I’ll be okay once everything calms down.”

“I know the feeling,” she sighed after a sip of coffee. “Unfortunately, it’s ‘hurry up and wait’ right now. All the pilots other than Maverick and Evan are taking turns piloting drones while those two crash until further notice.”

“Short notice,” I observed as I gestured to where Maverick was hovering around the jury-rigged controls to the Ark.

Xiomara groaned. “He has decided the Ark is his ‘baby’ and doesn’t want anyone to even come close to the controls until the sensors are fixed and the Miys take back over.” A brief scowl was shot in his direction before she took another swig of steaming caffeine. She made a remarkably good impression of Mac’s look of satisfaction as she enjoyed her coffee.

“Have you had a chance to talk to Pranav about the sensors?” I asked, hoping she would understand what I meant.

“Mmm,” she hummed enthusiastically. “Yes, I have. Two of the pilots on file are currently in genetic surgery bays, about halfway through treatment. The other ten, we’re looking into alibis. There’s an incredible amount of metadata collected by the systems, so Pranav is personally going through that. It’ll take a few days, but we want to be completely clear rather than chasing rabbits.”

“If there’s so much data, how do we not know who destroyed the back up sensors,” I asked quietly, mostly thinking out loud.

“Temporary systemic blackouts from all common areas to the location of the sensors,” she muttered unhappily. “Tracing that is Zach’s next job, and once Mr. Okafor is recovered and has checked the VR rigs, we’re hoping he can take over as primary.”

“Normally, I would be incredibly defensive at the idea of Derek being expected to do so much, but honestly I don’t know how anyone will be able to stop him once he finds out that someone played jiggery-pokery in his playground. He’ll do it anyway, so I’m glad he’s at least allowed to this time.” When she raised an eyebrow at me in question, I waved her off. “Nothing major. He may have hacked the medical database to make sure the evergreens that Conor Mac Maoilir decided to spread all over the ship for winter holidays wouldn’t mess with people’s allergies? He was grounded from my cat for a week, and I made him fix the security weakness, I swear!” I explained hastily when she gaped in horror.

“You are telling me a seventeen-year-old hacked an alien data system for a medical bay that we have no training for, just to make sure a bunch over oversized shrubs wouldn’t make anyone sneeze!?” She demanded.

“Like I said, he fixed it?” I responded sheepishly. “To be fair, that’s part of the reason Pranav trusts his skills so much. Every programmer and network security specialist on this ship, including Noah, can’t figure out how to keep him out of literally anything. Fortunately, he generally does it just to see if he can, or because he’s looking for something very specific. Since he isn’t hurting anyone, and actually usually does it to avoid hurting people, it’s really difficult to convince him not to do it.”

She just shook her head. “Good thing he’s a good kid. That’s… it would be horrifying if it wasn’t just incredible.”

“Right?” I asked in agreement. “On another topic, how’s Grey holding up? I saw them just staring into space earlier, which is unusual.”

“Grey is unusual in general,” she shrugged. “People are more your thing than mine. Why don’t you go check on our fellow Councillor, and I’ll ride herd on the pilots?”

I smirked before I could stop myself. “Coward,” I accused in a teasing tone.

“People shooting at me, piloting in wild new frontiers, I’m good. People? Not so much,” she shrugged. “That’s why I’m Safety and Security, and you’re People.”

“Human Resources and Social Engagement,” I scowled.

“Right. People. Go people at Grey, see if they’re okay,” she shooed. Softer, she tilted her head. “Seriously. This is pretty much their show right now, so we really need them to be okay.”

I took a deep breath before nodding. The second painkiller patch had made a significant dent in my migraine, downgrading it all the way to a screaming headache. I could work with that. I’d worked with worse. “If I’m not back in two hours, send Noah. Or my sister, if she’s feeling better.”

Grey startled as I gently touched their elbow. “Grey. I’m sorry for touching you – I know you don’t like it – but I’ve called your name ten times. I even tried waving my hands in front of you. Are you okay?”

They shook their head like they were waking up before pushing their glasses up. “My apologies, Councillor Reid. I have had difficulty focusing today. My assurances that I will endeavor to correct this.”

“Whoa,” I stood back, alarmed. “Grey. Since when do you call me ‘Councillor’? And you never have difficulty focusing. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I am only distracted, I promise. I admit I am distressed by the lack of materials for repairing the sensors. The drones are bringing in a satisfying amount of elements to replenish what we have used by being on board, but less than a tenth of what we need for the sensors. It is frustrating that we have no data we can use to narrow our search to only locations that would yield what we need.”

“So, what do we need?” I asked, happy to play rubber duck if it would assist my friend.

“Silica, mostly, for the necessary optical fibers. Iron, aluminum, gold or at least silver for plating and wires,” they rubbed their eyes tiredly before replacing their ever-present glasses.

“Okay, that makes sense,” I nodded. I was mildly concerned that I actually understood the majority of what they were saying. “So what are we not locating?”

“Iron,” Grey replied. “This particular moon is very iron poor, it turns out.”

“Iron,” I repeated. “Wasn’t Mars iron rich? That’s why it was red, right?”

“Correct, but atmospheric neon would also cause a planet or moon to be red if the atmosphere was charged.”

“Still, it narrows down the search, so that may help,” I pointed out. “What else?”

“Aluminum, and before you ask, aluminum does not have a distinct color that is observable from atmosphere,” they glanced at me knowingly. “It is white or grey, and in cases where it is found in the form of bauxite, it is blue or green. Several minerals and atmospheric gases create the same color. Additionally, it would take significant concentrations to cause it to be visible from orbit.”

I shrugged. “Worth a try. So, next question: What can you do, right now, to improve any of this?”

They let out the most defeated sigh I think I ever heard. “Honestly, nothing. All I am doing is worrying. I feel there is something that I am missing.”

“Honestly, it doesn’t sound like it to me,” I assured them. “Have any of your researchers come up with any other ideas?”

“They have not,” Grey conceded.

I smiled. “In that case, ask Miys for something to help you sleep – I know you don’t like medication, but you’re exhausted,” I cut off their rebuttal. “Even the finest computer needs to turn off sometimes. And you are decidedly not a computer, so you need rest even more.”

They blinked at me owlishly. “Is this what Councillor Kalloe refers to as you being a ‘mother hen’?”

“Bingo,” I winked. “You get used to it, I promise. Now go. Sleep.”

<< Prev Masterlist Next >>

#the miys #original fiction #original scifi #humans are weird #humans are space orcs #earth is space australia #science fiction #aliens #apocalypse

122 notes · View notes

cursed-to-be-a-sidekick · 6 years

Text

DC Ladies and Why They're so Awesome

Barbara Gordan: So of course Im going to start of with a good part. Babs is probably one of the smartest people in the entire DC universe. She graduated high school early (at like sixteen) and went to college. She got her masters degree so she could be a librarian. In her 20's she became a congresswoman but apparently was too liberal to get re-elected. On top of this all she was batgirl. When the Killing Joke happened the DC universe thought they lost Babs. Not only did Babs stick around she became stronger. Babs used everything she had and built up the Birds of Prey using her quick thinking and computer knowledge to keep her team safe. Not only that but as Oracle Babs was the information keeper for the Justice League. She had every single superheroes number easily accessible and knows them all personally. Also Babs became a Green Lantern! Like thats awesome. Babs has been at war with the Calculator for forever and has won every time. You can not tell me Babs isnt one of the best DC characters hands down.

Diana Prince: Okay I bet you're all surprised I didn't start off with Diana. I love Wonder Woman so much and there's so many reasons why. First off Wonder Woman defied her Amazonian sisters and went out to the real world. She didn't know what was out there and didn't really care. She wanted to promote peace and be a diplomat and that's what she was at least for a while. When Diana killed Maxwell Lord she regretted it so much that she decided not to be Wonder Woman anymore. Even though everyone told her that her reasoning was just (cause like yeah it was). Wonder Woman has this huge sense of responsibility and like how can you not love her for it. Also the fact she's more powerful than most of the Justice League and the Justice League knows and admires it. Yeah that's definitely a plus.

Mary Batson: Okay I love Mary and honestly I don't know much about her but I'm going to take a stab. Mary carries this sense of responsibility, she wants to be a hero and she's damn good at it too. When she lost her powers around Countdown she was devastated. When she got them back and become "Black Mary" that absolutely sucked. But she came back became Mary Marvel again and built herself back up. Mary is a key part of the Marvel family and I don't know what Billy would do without her. She's also still a kid. Like an actual kid. A teenager and she's out helping save the world. Yeah I have respect for that.

Kara Zor-El: Of course Supergirls on this list. Why would she not be? Okay supergirl has an interesting story. She's the sole survivor of not one but to planets. When she arrived on earth she knew nothing about the planet at all. She had to trust her cousin knew what he was doing to help her. She wanted to build a whole life away from being a superhero too. She just wanted to be a normal kid. She has her ups and downs but ultimately Kara is probably one of the best characters because she's realistic. She's written to be an angsty teenage girl who is still trying to figure herself out. Sure she's chronologically 30 years older than Superman (depends on what story you read) but that doesn't make her any less of a kid. Also she fought Darkseid and Lex Luthor while still figuring out her powers, she single handedly took down the entire Justice League and she's more powerful than Superman. I think that's pretty cool.

Dinah Lance: The Black Canary's name has belonged to like three different Dinah's at this point. But that doesn't make her any less awesome. Dinah is trained in all forms of martial arts and is thought to be the second best martial artist in the world. Yeah the entire world. Dinah is hot heated and can be moody at times but she knows what she's doing. Even after losing her Sonic Scream she continued to kick ass with the Birds of Prey. She did get her Sonic Scream back later while in the birds but she never seemed to rely on her powers, she always just used her gut instincts and quick thinking. At one point Dinah adopts a child who was being trained to be an assassin. She kept this child and even stopped being with the birds to settle down with Oliver Queen and have a family. Dinah is undoubtedly one of the best ladies in the whole DC universe.

Helena Bertinelli: Okay not only is Helena a superhero known as the Huntress shes also a school teacher. Helena originally was the daughter of Batman and Catwoman but at some point during Crisis she became a vigilante who was the daughter of a mob boss. After her whole family is murdered in front of her she vows to end the underground crime ring in Gotham. Shes pretty good at it and almost succeeds. Sure her methods arent well liked by Batman but she gets her job done. She joins the Birds at one point and actually gets a family. Babs gets her a job as a school teacher and Helena is happy again. Towards the end of the original Birds run Helena manages to take over the underworld and Gotham and manages to (almost) take it down.

Stephanie Brown: Okay Steph is the daughter of some low class supervillain called the Cluemaster. She becomes Spoiler as a way to make up for all the things that her dad did. She literally built herself up from nothing and became an amazing superhero. Steph might have never had a major standing in the comics but she was there in the background spoiling everyones plans. Also Steph got pregnant as a teenager. Like thats really hard to deal with. And she did it mostly while continuing to be a vigilante. Steph maintained a good friendship with Cass and when Cass ditched the title of Batgirl Steph took it up. While Batman never approved of her actions Steph did everything she could to be an accepted member or the batfamily. Plus she was briefly Robin which is really cool.

Cassandra Cain: Okay daughter of assassins is already cool but the fact she can speak solely with body language is amazing. Cass never learned how to speak and was trained to be the worlds best assassin. When she did learn how to speak she spoke few words. Despite that she maintained a great friendship with Babs and Steph. Babs trained her to be the new Batgirl and Steph ended up being her best friend. Cass is even better at fighting than Batman and she took down the Joker her first time fighting him. Not only did she break the Joker out of Arkham she beat him and sent him back just as easily. Cass had a great character arc and I just love her character. She really brought the name Batgirl to mean something entirely new and when she dropped it and gave the name to Steph she did it with honor. Cass did at one point leave to go run the league of assassins but she eventually came back to Gotham.

Talia Al Ghul: I dont know much about Talia but I think I know enough to write a paragraph about her. Talia is the heir to the demon. She trained as a child to be an assassin alongside her father Ra's Al Ghul. She also fell in love with Batman. But thats probably the least cool thing about her. I mean she is an assassin who will potentially inherit a whole army of assassins and be immortal. Like I dont know about you but I think thats pretty friggin awesome.

Selina Kyle: Okay Catwoman is amazing. She trained to fight under Catman which is pretty cool. Also like she controls part of the Gotham underworld. Selina is an amazing woman who is a great thief and she also has morals. She doesnt do killing (most of the time) and shes even been a hero for a while. Catwoman became a hero alongside Batman but at some point she decided to return back to crime. She's worked alongside the Birds of Prey a few times and at one point was even a member. Selina also decided not to marry Bruce because she knew marrying Batman might give him a reason not to be Batman anymore and she knew people needed Batman more than she needs Bruce. Also Selina helps girls on the street. Like thats a major thing. Helping kids who dont have much. Like thats great. Lastly she feeds and takes in stray cats and thats just wonderful.

Harley Quinn: Okay while I wouldnt consider Harls a hero persay (shut up new 52 and rebirth) she is still an amazing character. Harley is a genius, she blew through med school and became a psychologist. She built herself up from working at Arkham from the bottom all the way to working with the highest class psychos. Harls was also an amazing gymnast and she had tons of medals. After falling in love with the Joker she did some regrettable things but the fact she managed to get herself and she started to redeem herself shows a lot about. Harley now just wants to help people she wants to fix what she did wrong. Harley has a big heart and wants to do right and while she knows her methods arent that great shes trying hard. She just wants to please the people she loves and cares about.

Pamela Isley: Okay Ivy is a tricky character. She doesnt really have a set backstory or anything that I really know of. Ivy was a scientist and something happened that changed her physically. She became connected to the green. Now Ivy isnt really sure who she is. She became the Batman villain known as Poison Ivy and became an ecological terrorist (at least thats what I think they call her). Ivy really just doesnt know her place in the world. Ivy is wicked smart and she has patented a lot of biotech stuff and she made Harley the antidote that made her immune to toxins. She does end up re-entering the field of science a few times and is genuinely trying to turn a new leaf and become a better person. At first she didnt really understand that what she did was wrong she just wanted to help out the plants because she saw all these terrible things happening to them. For the most part Ivy is a misunderstood person who is trying to find her humanity.

Kara Zor-El (Earth Two): Okay Power Girl is a tricky character to figure out because she has so many different backstories due to the destruction and then reformation of the multiverse. Anyways Karen Starr is from another Earth specifically Earth 2. When she arrived on Earth 1 she learned there was already a Supergirl. She took on the name Power Girl and founded a company that focused on software (I think.) Shes older than Earth 1s supergirl and is kind of like a big sister figure at times even though her and Kara are the same person. The two also didnt start off on the right foot with eachother. Karen for a while led the Justice Society of America which is really flipping cool. Karen knows whats right in her heart which is what makes her like Superman in a way. Because like her cousin (even if the two arent really cousins on earth 1) she wants to help people.

Donna Troy: The original Wonder Girl will always hold a special place in my heart but I kid of want to focus on her time as Wonder Woman and also as simply just Donna Troy. When Wonder Woman quit being Wonder Woman Donna took her spot and she made a pretty great Wonder Woman. She doubted herself a lot and didnt think shed ever be as good as Diana she pushed herself up to the top and did it. As Donna Troy she was an amazing Teen Titan and she even cheated death. Her spot in the multiverse has been looked over a few times but her Roy and Jason last I heard were all kicking ass together.

Rachel Roth: Ravens a weird character Im not going to lie. Shes kind of mysterious. Rachel was a key addition to the Teen Titans, her powers are unmatchable in battle a lot of the time. Also shes the child of the demon Trigon. Rachel herself never really knew what to do with herself but while growing up she knew she had to do something and that she has to save people. She spent her teenage years with the Titans and continues to be with the Titans even if shes technically supposed to have aged out by now.

Kate Kane: Kate is one of my favorite characters of all time. Batwoman adds so much to the story and it covers a lot of things Ive never even thought of. Kate was kicked out of Westpoint under Dont Ask Dont Tell. The story talks a lot about her experience with PTSD, being gay and also being in the army. Kate runs a major business and is Batmans cousin. Kate literally gives zero craps about what Batman says and she does what she wants even if he doesnt approve. Kate has a big heart and ultimately she just wants to save her sister. After being kicked out of Westpoint Kate became a party girl and an alcoholic becoming Batwoman changed all of that for her. She became the woman she was meant to be.

Maggie Sawyer: Maggie Sawyer is a badass cop. Shes also Kates girlfriend and shes a mom. Being a cop in Metropolis is one thing but since moving from Metropolis Maggie has joined the GCPD. Being a cop in Gotham versus being a cop in Metropolis are to completely different things. Maggie can do it all and she works well under pressure. Shes an amazing cop and deserves so much more credit that what she gets in the comics.

Renee Montoya: Renee Montoya started out as another Gotham City Cop well until she became The Question. Also one of Kates ex girlfriends Renee has taken up Vic Sage's mantel and become the Question. She's a cop turned vigilante who is trying to do everything she can to keep Gotham safe.

Zatanna Zatara: So Zatanna is a magician. An actually magician with real magic and also a performing magician for kids. She does a lot of volunteering and loves showing her magic to the kids. Shes part of Justice League Dark and her powers are probably some of the most powerful in the whole DC universe. Zatanna can literally do anything just by saying it backwards. She doesnt get as much credit as she deserves but Zatanna is a kid with a big heart and deserves a lot more than she gets. Also did I mention she once climbed Mount Everest?

Courtney Whitmore: Not many people know much about Stargirl but this teenage girl is a key part of the Justice Society. Stargirl is a nobody without her Cosmic Staff but with it she is one of the greatest members of the JSA. Courtney has befriended Supergirl and has run around on all sorts of adventures before she could even vote. Her friendship with Supergirl is strong even if it isnt seen too often in the comics. Stargirl is just another kid who wants to change the world and who does manage to do it.

Lois Lane: Supermans girlfriend has ring to it enough but pulitzer prize winner Lois Lane is so much more than that. Shes an investigative reporter who strives to find the truth no matter the cost. Time and time again she goes undercover and risks her life for her job. She has no powers and no fighting skills just faith and a keen eye for a story. So sure while she's Supermans girlfriend she so much more than that. She's a woman who's going places and will always be independent. (Bonus: the first time Clark meets Lois she's yelling at some guy at the phone for being sexist)

Lana Lang: Supermans other girlfriend. Lana kind of got abandoned for a while but trust me she's still great. Lana takes in Kara while Kara is still struggling to figure her life out. Lana is the most supportive and loving person there is. She really cares about Kara and treats her like a daughter and as a best friend. Her friend ship with Lois Lane is amazing and Lana had an amazing story arc when she became possessed. Moral of the story never mess with any of Supermans girlfriends because they will fight back and theyll fight back hard.

Lady Shiva: If it wasnt for Lady Shiva Black Canary would be the best martial artist in the world. Lady Shiva is a long time Batman villain and not even Batman himself can beat her. Shes said multiple times that the only time he did she let him. She just wanted to know how worthy of an opponent he was. Shiva and Dinah trained under the same sensei together and have a mutual respect for eachother. For a short period of time Shiva even took Dinah under her wing to teach her new techniques no one else in the world even knew.

Mia Dearden: Speedy is hands down the best Green Arrow sidekick. And no Im not talking about Roy I really do mean Mia. Mia was living on the streets for the longest time and as a teenager. Constantly in the comics she talks about what it was like as a teenager being homeless on the streets, doing drugs and even selling her body just to stay alive. She became a great fighter while training with Ollie and Dinah and becomes the second Speedy. Mia is quick thinking and knows how and when to act. Later in the comics before she joins the Teen Titans she gets diagnosed as HIV +. That was the first time the DC universe made a character be HIV + and it hit hard for a lot people. Her backstory is really sad but its meaningful and really tells a lot about things that nobody knows anything about. Mia is a spunky kid with a lot of personality and she wants to help people.

Emiko Queen: Emi wasnt really around until she become the Red Arrow in Rebirth. She had her ups and downs but she stay devoted to Ollie throughout all of it. Emi is a tough character who really wants to be just like her big brother. She does at one point join a cult but then she breaks away from the cult to save her brother. Emi really admires Dinah and their friendship is great. Her story is still just starting to develop and its really cool to see where its going.

Zinda Blake: Lady Blackhawk has been no where in sight since New 52 hit. Im not really sure if theyll bring her back but I hope they do. Zinda is a hotheaded pilot who thinks more with her fists than she does with her brain. Shes a key member to the Birds of Prey and a true hero. After somehow re entering the continuity despite having to have originally been in WW2 Zinda has begun to fit right in with her weird accent and odd slang. I really hope she gets put back in soon.

Charlie Gage-Radcliffe: Misfits not really a well known character but shes a good one. Shes a spunky kid with an obsession with Batgirl. She takes on the mantel of Batgirl briefly before the real Batgirl, Barbara Gordan, stops her. Babs takes her in as one of her Birds and trains her. Charlie is just a kid and Babs knows it. Charlie doesnt get to see much action throughout the series but her character really grows a lot and she molds into this amazing character. Misfit is pretty impulsive and her mind (and body) tend to bounce all over the place. Charlie is just like any other teenager and she does everything she can to look on the bright side of every situation

Cassandra Sandsmark: Cassies Wonder Girl is what got me into Teen Titans. Cassie knows what she wants and knows how to get it. She can be short tempered but she had a really good heart. Her friendship with Supergirl is one of the best friendships in the whole DC universe. Cassie ultimately just wants to impress Wonder Woman. When she's not roaming around with the Teen Titans or on Paradise Island she's like literally every other teenage girl. Sitting at home argueing with her mom. Her power for her lasso comes fron her anger which she seems to carry a lot of. Shes still figuring out how to be Wonder Girl but shes become a valuable asset to the team. Cassie is a really relatable character and I love her for that. Her and Diana are a great pair and seeing them together is amazing. (Bonus: In New 52 Teen Titans she can put up a fight against basically anybody including Tim Drake and she hates the name Wonder girl)

There are more characters but this took me about two hours to write so Im going to cut it here. If anyone wants me to add any more characters let me know in the notes and I'll edit this. Also special shout outs to characters who I didnt have enough info on to put on here but are still equally as awesome: Martha Kent, Director Cameron Chase and Linda Park.

71 notes · View notes

words-writ-in-starlight · 6 years

Note

Oh my gosh you just discovered mash? It's such a good show. It has some really serious episodes, end of season 3 comes to mind. I always imagined the animorphs watching mash or like somehow finding solace in it.

OH BOY BUT HAVE I MENTIONED THE MASH AU OF ANIMORPHS THAT I LITERALLY JUST THOUGHT OF TONIGHT THOUGH?

No, obviously not, I literally just thought of it tonight, but buckle in for it anyway because I’m SUPER in love with this show!!!!!

Now, keeping in mind that I am NOT EVEN three seasons in, here are my current castings, ft. the 4077th being known as The One Full Of Babies Fresh Out Of Med School (these kids are like 27 tops, they’re practically infants in terms of the medical field).

Colonel Elfangor Shamtul, The Local Adult, who’s actually in his late 40′s and is a real actual grown up surgeon with a practice and everything, now the boss of a MASH unit in Korea and discovering that his talent for commanding a surgical theater actually translates really well into commanding a military unit. Most everyone under his command thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread. All his superiors are basically looking for an opportunity to get his ass court martialed when they’re not handing down commendations for his weirdly effective slant-wise thinking. His old buddy Arbron keeps them stocked then the supply lines are cut and if anyone asks Arbron and the Mountaineers are running a completely legitimate shipping enterprise. Elfangor goes by first names with the entire populace unless a general’s there and has never enforced a dress code in his entire life because it would require him to give up his blue jacket. He was transferred to command of the babiest MASH unit as a punishment after the first time his buddy’s legitimate shipping enterprise got tapped for being probably black market.

Corporal Aximili Isthill, the babiest baby, who is 25 and oh my God Elfangor is adopting this boy he loves him so much. They’re not blood relatives but Elfangor got handed a gangly excitable kid as an aide and was basically like “that one’s mine thanks” and never looked back. Ax is actually seven kinds of genius but none of them are medical--he has a stellar memory for medications but no head for anatomy--so he’s more or less single-handedly keeping the base running. He’s apparently some kind of psychic, if his gift for knowing exactly what’s going on where and when at any given time is any indication, and he's discovered a frankly inhuman talent for electrical engineering since he got drafted out of his blossoming career as a perpetual student. Elfangor is making this child get a doctorate if it kills them both, and since it turns out they actually live within an hour of each other in the States, there’s a non-zero chance that Ax will be moving in with him afterward.

Captain Jake Berenson, who is chief surgeon but not second in command and who just wants everyone to cooperate for five fucking minutes please. He is begging. And everyone knows that even though Big Jake (his army nickname within 0.3 seconds because he’s the tallest guy in the unit and built like a Mack truck) isn’t legitimately second in command, he’s the guy you go to if you want to get anything done. He specialized in cranial trauma, which isn’t as useful as you’d think when half the head wound cases die before they reach the hospital, but Jake thought the brain was interesting and made his specialty decision while kinda drunk, so. Leave him alone. The reason he’s chief surgeon isn’t because of any particular medical brilliance--Jake is a good surgeon mostly through sheer pigheadedness, not because he’s a sparkling medical mind--but rather because when Jake starts barking orders, people listen.

Captain Rachel Berenson, who is a surgeon because I don’t care about historical accuracy and because she fought tooth and nail to go to medical school and then signed up for the war when they wouldn’t draft her. She’s at least 60% of the reason Jake is begging people to cooperate, because Rachel has made nine doctors, four nurses, and six patients cry since getting her white coat. He’s not saying she didn’t have her reasons, okay, she has the right to defend her position as a doctor, but also please stop. She knows more about chest injuries than probably anyone else in Korea and she likes to remind people that it means she’d be just as good at inflicting them as patching them up. Marco labels her the Warrior Princess after two days of knowing her and it sticks hard even though she threatened to open him up with a rusty scalpel when she first heard it.

Major Cassie Day, head nurse, who everyone knows is the best at making sure that, once the surgeons have yanked someone back, they stay back. Cassie is an angel, probably, or at least so goes common theory based on the sheer miracles she’s pulled off in her time. As long as someone’s done bleeding to death when they get to her, she’ll probably drag them through--whether they like it or not. She and Rachel are bunkmates because no one knew what to do with a lady surgeon and Cassie offered, and they’ve been best friends ever since, complete with Cassie occasionally helping Rachel’s more hare-brained schemes come together. Everyone and their cousin, including Elfangor, knows that Cassie and the chief surgeon make out in the supply tent, but also the one time Cassie left for a week leave the entire unit broke down so no, they will not be reporting them for breaking frat regs. No matter how much Elfangor’s second-in-command wants to. One time someone talked shit about her skin color and was drummed out of the unit on mysteriously appearing court martial charges two days later. Contrary to popular opinion, it was not Rachel who started the brawl that got him brought up on charges, nor was the guy actually murdered straight up. Arm broken, yes. Murdered, no. Turns out Big Jake hits as hard as he looks like he does.

Captain Marco Reilly, who is the unit psychologist and also Rachel’s top enabler. She spends 80% of her time defending herself as a woman and a surgeon, he spends 80% of his time defending himself either based on his race or based on his career, and they are responsible for 80% of Jake’s ulcer because they get in a huge amount of trouble together. Psychology hasn’t really entered the generally accepted medical field, but Marco specializes in treating trauma and combat fatigue and he gets soldiers back on their feet better than anyone else. He decided on his career when he was a kid and his mom was a nurse in WWII who wrote home about how she saw boys without a mark on them ruined worse than those who would walk with a limp for the rest of their lives, and Marco doesn’t believe in regret. It’s also this mentality that generally leads to him and Rachel being a Problem for Jake. That doesn’t stop Jake from accepting the offer of gin from Marco’s personal still, or from more than occasionally getting swept up in the shenanigans himself.

Corporal Tobias Williams, who is in charge of triage and about 80% trained as a nurse in addition to his other duties. (I know MASH doesn’t formally have someone in charge of triage but they SHOULD okay, listen, they SHOULD.) He’s a decent chopper pilot, too, but the unit tends to contrive reasons to keep him around. Rachel likes to have him assist her in surgery because he has an uncanny talent for spotting things that have the potential to kill her patients almost before she does, and isn’t afraid to mention it. Tobias and Ax fall in together as inseparable besties within about a month, and Tobias learns not to wait for the announcement that wounded are coming in not long after--he just watches Ax tilt his head in that particular way and sprints off to the staging area without missing a beat. For a bit a lot of the unit talked shit behind Tobias’ back, claiming that triage was slacker work, but then there was a day where Tobias spent nineteen hours on the staging area directing choppers and ambulances, stopped for twenty minutes to eat and chug an entire pot of coffee, and turned back out for another twenty hours, and went to assist in OR once the wounded stopped pouring in. Then folks stopped talking shit. Tobias is nervous and jumpy and generally quiet enough that no one ever thinks to suspect him of being trouble, which is why people are always shocked when it turns out that, say, it was his idea to smuggle in a dozen kegs of beer for New Year’s.

(Elfangor spends three months getting really attached to Tobias before he finds out some relevant information and has about a six month crisis about how to approach it. His ultimate solution is TBD.)

Major David Pence, aka That Rat, who is Elfangor’s second in command and a screeching pain in everyone’s ass. Everyone except David knows that his dad bought his way into med school and leveraged his rank in the army to force Elfangor to take the kid on as his second. David’s under the impression that he’s great shakes at surgery and command both, and he straight up tried to report Elfangor when Jake was appointed chief surgeon over his head. That was not a major event, because David tries to report someone about twice a week. About half those attempted reports are either Rachel or Tobias or Ax--Tobias and Ax because he thinks they’re getting above their station, Rachel apparently for the crime of being herself. He cannot be trusted to keep a level head in a crisis and Cassie has had to swoop in and save his patients more than once.

Ji-Min “James” Song is a civilian doctor, their primary contact at a long-term recovery facility in Seoul where they send patients who are destined for a discharge. Every time James rolls up to collect a patient, it is heavily implied that very similar chicanery is going on at his place, and he and Jake get drunk together to commiserate a lot.

Elfangor gets drunk with them too, sometimes.

#mash #animorphs #the one where the 4077 is full of babies #featuring stealth david? i just wanted him to be there to get kicked around as an easy target #for my soul #all i ever want is for the kids to get to burn david all the time always so he is frank and i'm not sorry #rachel and marco are the SOURCE of a lot of the shenanigans but the others cannot be trusted not to enable #elfangor is slightly more onboard with stuff than henry but also he gives biweekly lectures on how they need to not get court martialed #i have my reasons for these assignments!!!! i am particularly pleased with tobias as a jack of all trades but mostly a triage commander #(get it: he's the one with the wider view of the situation)#marco (idly): do you think i can make this still more efficient?#ax (chipper): i could double your output no problem #marco: .......marry me immediately #probably erek is the priest having a perpetual crisis about violence but much more slappable than father mulcahey #after jake beats the bejeezus out of that one dude erek gives him a lecture on turning the other cheek #and when he nods stiffly and marches out of erek's tent he gets a rousing ovation from the unit at large #also OBVIOUSLY rachel and tobias start doing the kissing thing eventually #it just takes longer because they are not as emotionally articulate as jake and cassie #which is not to say that jake and cassie were quick about it--everyone got to stifle in the pining for A Minute before they got together #marco feels like he Deserves his still at this point #ax had actually never been drunk before marco got him plastered and marco is THRILLED with drunk!ax as a phenomenon #idk i've got a remarkable amount of this sorted out given that i thought of it maybe three hours ago #idiot teenagers with a queue #m to the 6th power #asked and answered

31 notes · View notes

oneofthosecrazycatladies · 6 years

Text

Arrowverse Re-Watch: Arrow season 1, episode 1 “Pilot”

***Disclaimer: I recommend you read the tags before digging in to this review.

So I’m doing my annual Arrowverse re-watch (where I go back and watch all the Arrowverse shows in chronological order) and this year, I decided I would make these reviews/commentaries about each episode as I re-watch them.

So here goes... WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Oliver: The name of the island they found me on is Lian Yu. It’s Mandarin for Purgatory. I’ve been stranded here for 5 years.

Okay, don’t get me wrong, the main reason I love Arrow is because the characters are great and real and the stories are so interesting. And Stephen Amell is a fantastic actor, definitely one of the best in the Arrowverse...but hot damn just look at that body

I really don’t like objectifying anyone (of any gender), but art deserves to be appreciated and this body right here is art.

Okay I literally couldn’t find a gif of it anywhere, but that shot of Oliver looking into the mirror and the lightning flashes and you see him in the hood for like a split second...that shot...yeah I love that shot. Ugh it’s so amazing and just chilling.

Okay so apparently a lot of people hated the flashbacks...which I don’t understand??? But I loved the flashbacks. Mostly because I just love flashbacks in general. I mean, they weren’t always super interesting and a lot of the time the flashback storyline wasn’t really as interesting as the main storyline, but I still really liked the flashbacks. I actually kinda miss them sometimes.

TOMMY!

Like basically everyone else in the Arrow fandom, I miss Tommy sooo much. And I know, I know Colin has Chicago Med now, but I gotta be honest...I still haven’t quite gotten over that Tommy (any Earth version) wasn’t Vigilante. Like honestly, what was even the point of making him Vince (or Vinny they literally changed his nickname). God season 6 was such a fucking mess...but more of that later.

Okay so I have a bone to pick with this little moment where Oliver speaks Russian to Raisa. So like I guess it was supposed to demonstrate how Oliver has changed and all that...but like, Oliver’s not stupid. He wouldn’t be so careless as to speak Russian in front of his family and friends when he knows that they know he didn’t speak Russian before the island (thus revealing something about his time away when he’s usually so careful not to let things about that time slip).

I just don’t really like that moment because it seems a bit out of character for him.

Oliver: I didn’t realize you wanted to sleep with my mother, Walter.

Tommy: Have you noticed how hot your sister’s gotten?

It does kinda make me cringe a little though tbh. Although, full disclosure, the first time I ever watched this show, I did kinda ship them. I thought they had great chemistry. Better chemistry than Tommy and L*urel (but we’ll get to that later).

Tommy: So what’d you miss the most; steaks at the Palm, drinks at the station, meaningless sex?

Oliver: L*urel

Oh god here we go with this bullshit...can we just skip to the part where the writers realized that L*uriver was awful and they all jumped on the Olicity train?

Oh look it’s L*urel L*nce, the Queen Bitch of Starling City.

Okay that was an exaggeration...and I don’t actually hate LL, well at least, I don’t hate the idea of her. (Alright, strap yourselves in.)

I feel like LL was only the “real” LL in the first like 3 episodes of season 1 and then like the last 2 episodes before she dies. Every episode in between those she was like the off-brand version of LL. In the first couple episodes, she’s a pretty great character. She genuinely wants to help innocent people, she’s independent, she fights for what she believes in. Other than her being a totally soulless, cold-hearted bitch to Oliver, I actually liked her. But the whole Oliver drama really ruined her. And I blame the writers for that (namely the notorious misogynists Kreisberg and Guggenheim).

So first, they thought that “you cheated on me with my sister” was a great beginning to an epic love story. And then they made her totally cold to Oliver. Like look, as much as I dislike LL, I will always take her side on this issue. Playboy Ollie was a grade A fuckboy jackass and LL has every right to be pissed at him. But...then he spent five years in literal hell. Whatever mistakes he made before the island, he paid for them and then some. Now I know LL doesn’t know all the particulars of what went on in those 5 years, but she must’ve at least seen the movie Cast Away, right? I mean, from her perspective, Oliver spent 5 years completely alone on a deserted island. In that situation he would’ve had to teach himself to hunt and kill animals for food, he would’ve had to learn how to build shelters, he would’ve had literally no one to talk to or interact with for five years. She would’ve had to know that he probably has PTSD...and he comes back and she says “I’d hoped you’d rot in hell a whole lot longer than five years.” Like, are you fucking kidding me?! Why in the fuck would the writers think anyone would ship them with this kind of beginning? How are we supposed to have any sympathy for LL when she won’t even let Oliver try to apologize? And saying that he deserved what happened to him on the island? Jesus fucking Christ. God I couldn’t be more anti-L*uriver if I tried.

I get what (I think) they were trying to go for with LL, but they completely fucked up the execution.

LL: ‘Cause her body was at the bottom of the ocean where you left her. It should’ve been you.

“It should’ve been you.”

Okay bitch let’s go. No one talks to post-island Oliver that way. Ever. Oliver Jonas Queen is a gift to the world and I don’t care what dumbass Ollie Queen did you do not get to say that to Oliver. He has lost and suffered so much, too much. JFC where the fuck is Oliver’s unconditionally loving and supportive wifey when he needs her? Don’t worry bb, only two more episodes and you’re home free.

Mercenary Dude: What did he tell you, Mr. Queen?

Oliver: He told me I’m gonna kill you.

God yes where has this Oliver been the past couple years? Not the kill-happy Oliver, just the intimidating hardcore Oliver that can take down half a dozen guys single-handedly. That’s one of the things I hated about season 6 was how they wrote him so out of character just for plot. Ever since they introduced the newbies in season 5 they’ve written Oliver like he literally can’t even function without having like 5 other people out in the field with him. I don’t mind having a team (I love Roy and Dinah for example) but the team is just too big. (I’ll talk about that in much more detail when we get to seasons 5 and 6 [and that bullshit “civil war”])

Mercenary Dude: You’re delusional. You’re zip-cuffed to that chair.

Oliver: Not anymore.

*shivers*

God the MUSIC! Ugh I love the music in this scene when he’s taking down the kidnappers.

Oh yeah...and this incredible stunt...

And I love that you can tell that Stephen did all these stunts himself. But I especially love the above stunt because it’s so incredible, but like he just does it and it’s as if it’s no big deal because he’s just that physically fit.

QUENTIN!!!

With hair!!!

Oh Quentin deserved so much better than all that nonsense the writers put him through in season 6. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I’m just so happy to see him! And to see the journey that he took in the first 4 seasons. (Seasons 5 and 6 [especially 6] weren’t the real Quentin. It had to’ve been one of his doppelgängers because the real Quentin is smarter than to be fooled by BS’ bs).

Ahh did you see what I did there?!

I love Raisa and I’m so happy they brought her back for season 6! I hope she returns again in season 7! I love the way she takes care of the Queen boys!

John Thomas Diggle is in the building ladies and gentlemen! This man is a gift and honestly I sometimes think we don’t deserve him.

Okay I kinda miss seeing Oliver in regular clothes. It seems like, ever since he became mayor, the only civilian clothes we ever see him in are suits. Don’t get me wrong, that man can fill out a suit, he looks delectable...especially when he’s just wearing a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up (those arms!)

But I also kinda miss just seeing him in like jeans and a t-shirt. Maybe once he gets out of prison we’ll see more of that (since he won’t be mayor).

The whole workout/training sequence is just...

We were completely deprived of shirtless Oliver in season 6 and I just cannot stand for that. We better get like double the amount of shirtless Oliver in season 7 to make up for it.

Tommy: Now, by my rough estimate, you have not had sex in 1,839 days.

Yeah except for Shado and who knows? maybe Sara or even some random girl in Russia.

LL: I’m sorry about saying that you should’ve been the one who died. That was wrong.

Nice apology, LL (this is the real LL I was talking about earlier), but you’re gonna change your mind in like 2 episodes. @jbuffyangel calls this phenomenon “as the Lances turn” (referring to the crazy inconsistencies in how the Lances [especially LL] are written). And I love that phrase I’m totally gonna steal it because it’s so true, but I’ll discuss that more when it flares up in later episodes.

John: I would believe you, Mr. Queen, if you weren’t so full of crap.

John Diggle, ladies and gentlemen, taking none of Oliver’s shit since 2012.

Please, someone, give this man a medal.

Okay but did John and Oliver ever talk about Oliver putting John in that hold and knocking him unconscious? I don’t know why, but I kinda have this headcanon that they never actually did talk about it until like years later (probably after Oliver and Felicity returned from Ivy Town and Oliver and John made up) that John was just like “remember when you knocked me unconscious at your welcome home party”.

Okay I know that it’s Yao Fei’s hood, but I kinda wonder why Oliver didn’t get it lined with Kevlar from the get-go. I mean it’s not like he trained in medieval times and then time-traveled to the 21st century to start his crusade, like he’s aware that guns exist and that a lot of the people he planned to take down would use guns. I mean, he could’ve just gotten Anatoly or someone else in the Bratva, I’m sure they know people who know how to do that.

But at the same time, I guess it kinda fits with his whole persona and his plan. When he first starts out he’s not really waging a full-on war against all crime in the city, he’s just trying to take down the corrupt one-percenters and once he does that he hangs up the hood and moves on with his life. So it makes more sense that his suit is more “raw” because he’s more raw. He doesn’t have a team, doesn’t consider himself a hero. It’s just him and his bow and his list.

So I’m watching the scene where Robert kills himself and it makes me think of the scene in season 5 when Oliver is watching the video that Robert left him and Felicity comes along and is like “wow no prssure” and I’m like yeah! I mean, what a crazy and horrible burden to put on your child. I mean, there they are, Robert’s made all these mistakes, but instead of trying to fix these mistakes himself he’s like “nah I think I’m just gonna tell my son to right my wrongs and then blow my brains out right in front of him leaving him traumatized and completely alone”.

This is Robert:

Like jfc, no wonder Oliver’s so screwed up.

I just don’t get what Tommy sees in LL. I mean, throughout the season they just go on and on about how much Tommy and LL love each other, but I just don’t see anything between them. I mean what did they even have in common besides losing Oliver? I mean the only thing I kind of get about their relationship is LL encouraging Tommy to be a better person. Once again, it’s the idea of LL, but it didn’t really work out that way in execution.

And honestly, you know what the worst part about M*rlance was? Knowing that they only did it to create even more drama between Oliver and LL, but then the fact that the writers ended up dropping L*uriver in favor of Olicity made all that drama pointless. Now obviously I know that the writers didn’t know that L*uriver would be a total bust (though they should’ve) or what Felicity and Olicity would become at the time, but still...hindsight is 20/20 I guess.

Ah Moira, being shady af.

I miss her. I always loved her character and Susanna Thompson is such an amazing actress.

I miss her pretty much for the same reason I miss Tommy: the potential. Both Tommy and Moira never really got to see Oliver become the true hero that he is today. They never got to see Oliver fall in love and have his own family. I feel the same way about Quentin. They could’ve done some great things with him. I always wanted the writers to explore his relationship with Felicity more. They had a great father-daughter kind of relationship in season 2. And especially knowing that Felicity’s father abandoned her and Quentin had lost his daughter, I thought it made so much sense that they sorta would’ve adopted each other as a surrogate family. But no. Instead, the writers went with that BS bs (hehe I did it again). And now Quentin is dead; another great character wasted.

Anyway, that’s all for me about this episode. I hope you enjoyed my ranting and I’ll see you later for episode 2.

#arrow #arrow season 1 #arrow 1x01 #oliver queen #stephen amell #tommy merlyn #thea queen #anti laurel lance #anti merlance #anti lauriver #olicity #felicity smoak #raisa #john diggle #robert queen #moira queen #quentin lance #fandomlife-universe

59 notes · View notes

jamesbarnesbestgirl · 7 years

Text

Just The Beginning Part 3

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader (Slow Burn)

Featuring: Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, Steve Rogers

Word Count: 1728

Warnings: Porbs cringy writing as this is my first fanfic in over 4 years. Swearing.

A/N: Here is part 3. Sorry it’s been a while, but I’ve been busy with sorting school out, and I was very sick and I’m just bouncing back. If you wish to be tagged please feel free to message me. Also any feedback is much appreciated.

Reader POV

I was so caught up with watching my friends interaction with Steve that I didn’t notice the initial explosion until Howard had knocked me to the ground.

By the time my ears stopped ringing and I looked up Dr. Erskine was on the ground, dead. “What the fuck happened!” Howard shouted, looking around at the damage that had been done.

I slowly start to get up, being mindful that the pressure from the blast might have given me a mild concussion. “Is anybody injured?” I ask beginning to try and help.

A half hour later I had just finished patching up those who were hurt when Peggy and Steve walked back into what was left of the lab. They went strait over to Colonel Philips and began speaking to him. I could see that Steve was getting visibly frustrated so I decided to walk over and see what was going on.

“Ah, Nurse Y/L/N. As you can see, by the disastrous events that just occurred, Project Rebirth is being terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your assistance in patching up people from the blast and your work in helping patient zero over here survive.” Colonel Philips said, while gesturing to Steve.

“Thank you sir. What are my orders?” I ask, stealing a glance at Steve who has calmed down a bit and is now politely smiling at me.

“Well, I’m going to give you a choice. You could either be deployed to the front lines of Europe as originally planned, or you could stay here in the states. Rogers here needs a nurse to be able to monitor him while we run tests to see if we can recreate the serum.” Philips stated.

“Well, if Steve needs…” I began, but was cut off.

“With all due respect Y/N, you don’t need to stay behind. You said earlier you enlisted to help people, so don’t worry about me.” Steve interrupted you with a bitter sweet smile on his face.

“Alright, I guess that means I choose the front lines.” I say with a smile.

“Good, plain leaves 0800 tomorrow. But before you go please give Rodgers here the once over.” Colonel Philips says before dismissing you.

The next 24 hours that followed were a whirlwind. Between re-checking Steve’s vitals and drawing blood to see if the scientists could attempt to recreate the late doctors formula, helping Howard clean up the lab, and packing up for tomorrow, I barely had enough time to catch some shut eye before I found myself on a plain towards Europe.

After a 12 hour flight from New York to London; including a stop off in St. johns to refuel, and a 5 hour train ride I finally arrived at the camp.

“Welcome to what we’ll call home for the foreseeable future.” Colonel Philips stated as we exited the truck that had picked us up from the train station. “Better go rest up girlie. Your day starts at 0700 tomorrow morning.”

I quickly thanked him and headed towards the nurses barracks. To say slept well would be an understatement. I normally don’t sleep at all when I move to a new place, but I was so exhausted from the trans-atlantic journey that the second my head hit the pillow I was out cold.

I was woken up; far to early in my opinion, by the bugle call. I quickly got dressed and head to the mess tent where I grabbed a quick breakfast. I then made my way towards the medical tent.

When I entered the tent the first thing that caught my eye were what appeared to be the 30 or so cots all lined up in two orderly rows. Only about 10 or so cots were occupied, although a sinking feeling in my gut told me it would’t stay that way for long. My eyes trailed along each cot with sympathy, before reaching a makeshift desk that had a young nurse standing behind it talking to another nurse with a clipboard. The first nurse turned towards me, while the other went to go assist one of the occupants of the cots.

“You must be the new girl?” she asked with a kind smile.

“Yes, Nurse Y/L/N, but you can call me Y/N.” I replied shaking her hand.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Dita, and the other nurse over there is Lucy.” Dita said while pointing over to Lucy who waved. “Let me catch you up to speed on how things work around here. Day shift is 0700 until 1900 with an half hour lunch and dinner rotation, and night shift is 1900 until 0700 with an hour sleep rotation. We switch shifts every other week, but since you’re new we’ll start you off with a day shift.” She says kindly.

“Sounds simple enough. Where do I start?” I ask with enthusiasm.

“You can start by giving out the soldiers breakfasts based on their respective charts. Once thats done, you and Lucy can start redressing any wounds with fresh bandages.” she said while pointing to a tray of food and a stack of patient clipboards. “Each cot is numbered with its matching clipboard so it shouldn’t take to long. Mornings are usually quiet. It’s the afternoons when the troops get back from there rounds and objectives that things start to get really busy. If you need any help feel free to ask.” Dita said, then sat down and started filling out some paper work.

I spent the morning handing the soldiers their meals. Lucy had introduced me to the 8 soldiers that were currently staying in the med ward. When it came time to redress there injuries we each decided to treat 4 of them.

My first patient, Adam, had a head wound that looked worse then it actually was. He said he had been pushed out of the way of oncoming fire and hit his head on a rock. He said that the doctor wanted to watch him overnight and had given him antibiotics to ward off infection.

My second patient barley spoke while I redressed his wound. From his patient chart it said his name was Edmond from Morristown, New Jersey. He, according to Adam was the soldier who had saved him from the enemy fire. He had suffered from a bullet wound to his right side. Luckily it looked liked the bullet had passed trough, and missed all vital organs.

Jack, my third patient, didn’t need a wound to be redressed because he had apparently been admitted with Tuberculosis. The poor soldier couldn’t have been any older then 22, but sadly he had already begun to cough up blood, according to his patient chart. I gave him his dose of antibiotics and an extra piece of bread to help keep the nausea at bay. My forth patient for the morning, David, only had a concussion, so he had stayed asleep after breakfast.

It wasn’t until around 1500 hours that things started to pick up. Soldier after soldier came in, some with easily treatable things like sprained wrist and dehydration, others with bullet wounds that had just barley missed their lungs. It wasn’t until 1630 hours, when I was just finishing wrapping a through-and-through that Dita called me to the front of the tent.

“Y/N can you fill out this patients paper work for me while I help him to a cot?” she asked while she put the patients arm around her shoulders and began to walk him towards a cot with one of his fellow soldiers.

“Sure, no problem.” I say as I quickly walk over to the desk and start a new patient form. I look up towards the other soldier that had brought in the new patient when I was met with a pair of the bluest eyes I had ever seen. Standing before me was an incredibly hansom soldier. He stood around 6 foot tall with a blinding white smile, strong jaw line, and broad shoulders. His hair was slightly out of place, most likely due to helping his fellow soldier, but he still looked as if he had just gotten ready for the day. I had to prevent myself from letting out a gasp as my eyes quickly shifted down to focus on the form, trying to suppress the blush that was rising to my cheeks.

“Name?” I ask, keeping my eyes trained to the form.

“The names Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, but you can call me Bucky. What’s yours Doll?” he says with a confident tone to his voice.

I quickly collect myself and laugh a bit at his response. “I meant your friends name, who is currently being helped to a cot.” I state with my eyebrow arched, daring him to defy me.

“Fair enough, his name is Mike Brown.” Bucky said chuckling at your attempt to intimidate him.

“Date of birth?”

“Don’t know.”

“Place of birth?”

“Queens, New York I think.”

“And how exactly did he end up hurting his leg, Sergeant Barnes.” I ask while writing the other information down.

“Well Mikey here is a bit of a klutz. He might have tripped when he was trying to get out of the transport truck, and landed on his foot in a wrong way. I heard a crack when he hit the ground and I think it’s broken.” Bucky stated, eyeing you up and down.

“Barnes! You better not be lying to my nurse!” Mike shouted from across the tent, causing you to giggle.

“Of course not Mikey!” Bucky called back. “He hurt his leg fighting off 100 nazis single handedly.” Bucky said loud enough for Mikey to hear winking at me.

“Damn straight!” Mikey called back causing me to smile and shake my head at the soldiers antics.

“Thank you Sergeant for your help. You are free to go.” I say as you put the finishing touches on the form, struggling to not to glance at his eyes.

“Please, call me Bucky. Plus you still haven’t told me your name Doll.” Bucky said with a cocky smile.

“I know.” I say with a flirty smile and turn away from him. “Have a nice evening Sergeant Barnes.” I toss over my shoulder as I walk towards Mikey’s cot to get the remaining info for the paper work and help Dita bind his leg.

Tag List: @mizz-kraziii @littlebunnybigheart @c-ly-g

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #40s!bucky #40s bucky #james bucky barnes #bucky #bucky imagine #james buchanon barnes #marvel

19 notes · View notes

writing-yj · 7 years

Text

Robin x Reader: The Bird Tattoo~Part Seven (Soulmate AU)

A/n: Angsty as hell, at least in the beginning, and this part is very long. I feel like I sloppily explained Mockingbird’s (your) backstory, so should I made a post that is specifically for Mockingbird’s backstory?

By the way, I absolutely love it when I get feedback from readers. I love getting messages and comments about my writing; it gives me a ton of motivation to continue. I’ll be cranking out parts, getting one out almost every day. Please let me know what you think, be it by ask or inbox!

You and the rest of the team were in the med bay, and for good reason. You were all pretty banged up, fortunately, with injuries that wouldn’t take too long too heal. The worst one being (out of all of them) a cracked rib, as far as you knew. Most of the pain came from being sore, and M’gann was mentally overwhelmed from having to use her powers constantly.

While they were awake and scattered around your ‘bed’ and talking, you were once out cold. And you pretended to still be out, partially because you wanted to hear what they were saying and you didn’t want to face them. You noticed how unhappy they were when they got here. Otherwise you didn’t feel like moving yet.

“I don’t know how she broke from the mind link,” Megan said and shook her head. “She was there, and then she wasn’t. Like she shoved me, or, us out of her head. That could be what weakened me.”

That made you feel worse.

“I know she had her reasons for what she did, but,” Artemis didn’t want to admit that she, too, was upset with her best friend. “Some of us could have gotten killed. It’s not unforgivable, but I need to know more.”

Conner was pissed at you because M’gann got hurt; his protective nature was the source of that. Wally was annoyed, not quite angry. He had his fair share of reckless decisions, but this wasn’t something he could entirely ignore. Kaldur lightly said he was disappointed in you. He wasn’t very angry either, just disappointed. You hated disappointing your leaders, and he was one of them.

“Mockingbird was reckless, I understand that much.” Robin said quietly. He sounded close to you. “And she put us in danger along with herself. But it’s my fault this happened.”

“She’s the one who ditched us, how is it your fault?” Conner questioned.

Robin sat on the edge of a bed near yours. “Because I deleted everything on her tablet. It had everything that could convince the Justice League that The Doctor was still alive. If she showed them that, they would have believed her.”

“I had a feeling there were going to be more consequences than just her anger.” Wally stated. “But you guys saw M. She was practically possessed and out for blood. I think she would have still gone after him, and by herself, even if you didn’t get rid of all her info.”

Robin weakly shrugged, completely guilt-stricken. But they were right. You risked their lives so you could try and get revenge. You turned into something else on the mission, and it wasn’t the Mockingbird they knew.

They briefly talked about how your mask came off, and you could feel that it still wasn’t on your face. They didn’t know your name, though. Only Artemis and Robin knew. The others couldn’t recognize you, since they don’t go to Gotham Academy. You were remarkably beautiful, and most of them agreed to that. They thought your eyes were especially unique, even thought the didn’t get much of a look.

You felt the heat coming off of Artemis’ body as she stood beside you, looking down at your ‘sleeping’ figure. “Mockingbird faced one of her biggest fears, and it wasn’t easy. I’ve never seen her so terrified.” Her voice was quiet. Artemis wouldn’t say this on usual day

“I don’t think we’ve seen her even remotely scared, so that was a bit of a shock.”

Artemis placed a hand on your arm, but you instantly seized up. Your eyes shot open and out of instinct, you grabbed her wrist with a bruising grip. She jumped, but didn’t fight to pull away. It wouldn’t make anything better.

Wally quickly got up to help, but you dropped her wrist when you saw it was just her before he could take one step. You pushed out an apology, but it was quiet and cracked. You sat up in bed and swung your legs over the side, but a biting pain refused to let you get on your feet. “Fuck,” you hissed quietly as you clutched your chest. Your cuts were skillfully bandaged, but your chest was bruised as hell.

The following awkward silence was unbearable, and it was hard to break. You owed them a big apology, so that’s what you gave them. “I’m... I’m really sorry. For leaving you guys.”

“Well I’d hope so.” Conner snapped and he turned to face you. “We could have been killed by those things, whatever they were, because you decided to bail!”

You often wanted to punch him in the face sometimes, even if it most likely meant a broken wrist. He was too temperamental, on most days. Conner was a nice kid at heart, but his protectiveness over Megan strongly annoyed you.

“Hey, calm down. Yelling at her isn’t going to solve anything.” Robin tried to dial things down.

Conner whirled around to yell at Robin. “We barely fought them off! And by breaking out of the mind link, Megan-”

Of course, it was about Megan. You had nothing against her whatsoever; it’s not her fault he was so clingy. “Oh drop the protective boyfriend act already! She can defend herself without you always trying to shield her from things she can handle on her own!” You snapped. You were still a little fired up. You looked past the boy, who you defined as an angry rock in that moment, to look at Megan. “It’s nothing against you, I swear. But if I knew that breaking the mind link would affect you negatively, I wouldn’t have done it.”

“It’s okay, Mockingbird. I’m fine now.” Megan said and sent you a small smile. She was such a forgiving girl, and she was the least upset out of all of them. And you were thankful for that. You weren’t as close to her as you were with Artemis, but she was still a very good friend.

However, you were still facing a furious Conner. It was like an angry staring contest, with neither of you backing down. He was ready to throw you out another window, and you wanted to backhand him at the very least. You didn’t want to risk any further injuries.

“What more do you want from me?” You growled after more intense staring.

It was Kaldur’s turn to speak. “We want answers.” Kaldur said firmly. “We need to fully know what your affiliation is with The Doctor.”

“It's time to stop hiding things from us, Mockingbird.” Artemis said quietly, and you were ready when she put her hand on your shoulder.

You looked down at the ground and let out a quiet and sarcastic chuckle. “You really want to know what happened to me, huh?” Your tone made them wary, but you saw them I'd out the corner of your eye. “Then take a seat. Grab a chair. It'll be a while. This isn't exactly easy to talk about, so I hope you have patience.” There was a bite to your words, but they understood why. You were talking about a sensitive subject that haunted you.

But once you started, you couldn't stop. “My family and I were walking home after eating out at my favorite restaurant in Star City. We lived just down the street from it, so we weren't expecting anything bad to happen. It was dark, the stars were out, and it was snowing lightly. It was a beautiful night, but it was the last time I was happy alongside them.

“I don't know how it happened, but he attacked us. He kidnapped all four of us single handedly. I was only eight years old. The Doctor set up a lab in a warehouse basement on the outskirts of Star City, and that's where he kept us. We weren't the only ones he nabbed, though. There were so many others.” Your eyes were trained on the floor and your body was tense. “Some dead, others still alive. We all went through the four steps of his experiments.”

You watched him go through all four steps so many times. You could never forget them. “Step one, electrocution,” you gingerly pulled up your shirt to show a small spiderweb scar on your hip. “Step two, surgery,” you pulled the collar of your shirt down past your shoulder to show them a deep scar on your upper back, not far below your neck. “Step three... radiation exposure.” The amount of radiation you all were exposed to was painful, and most didn't survive. “And step four was being injected with a serum that contained animal DNA and chemicals. No except me survived step four.”

Suddenly, Robin set next to you on the bed and cautiously, but secretly, placed his hand over yours for comfort; something you never expected. It made your heart skip a few beats before you fought to continue.

“Mom died after surgery. The last thing she told me was to keep being her strong little girl,” you bit your lip to keep yourself from crying. The last thing you wanted to do was cry in front of them. “Dad died after radiation. He told my sister and I that he loved us, and he told my sister to protect me before he passed.” Their last words still rang out in your head; you could repeat them if you wanted. “One by one, the survivors dwindled until it was only Arlene and I. The Doctor started step four, and she actually survived the transition, and to be honest, her powers were cool as hell. She could change colors to match her surroundings, like a chameleon,” the moment she came back alive gave you hope, but you lost it just as fast.

“But she was too weak. She couldn't walk straight and she was slow to respond to everything. “One morning, or night, I never knew which, she could barely move by herself.” The metal part of the bed started to dent under your grip. “Arlene told me to survive for her, mom, dad, and everyone else who fell into The Doctor’s clutches. He saw how weak and defenseless she was, so he dragged her out of our cage... and killed her. She never got to see her tattoo. Then it was my turn.”

Robin lightly squeezed your hand, and he was thankful that your body shielded your hands from the team’s view. He felt lucky that his movements didn’t seem suspicious.

“I stopped fighting, I didn't want to fight anymore. I accepted my death before my sister was taken from our cage for the last time. As I went through all the steps, I prayed to the gods to bring my death as soon as possible. At the time, my will to live died with my family. But death never came, and I was turned into this.” You gestured to your body, implying that you never wanted to be Mockingbird. “He almost completely brainwashed me into being his weapon of revenge and I became obedient. I listened to everything he said, but I was still in there, and I hated it.”

Wally cocked his head and asked, “Is that why you also don't listen to orders?” You weren't the only one who disobeyed orders sometimes, they all did at some point.

The team thought you were going to blow up, but you stayed surprisingly calm. “That's a big contributor, but I always had authority issues when it came to adults who weren't my parents. So it kind of just added to it.” You were a little shit as a child, but it didn't get you in trouble. Usually. “The Doctor taught me everything. How to fight, he home schooled me, I read every book he gave me from cover to cover, and I was trained to control my ability. All that in four years.” The hurt from digging up your memories still swirled inside you, but it was more dull.

“Before the plan could be officially set in motion, he kidnapped another girl. She looked around ten, and looked a lot like I did at that age. Instead of being sympathetic, I was enraged. I felt I like was being replaced.”

Your heart started to pound when Robin slowly and awkwardly wordlessly weaved his fingers between yours. What was going on? What was he doing? Instead of hating it and pushing him away, you welcomed it. It made you feel better, and made it easier to speak. It felt natural, almost. Having your hand in his.

There was a short silence after, like a cliffhanger. “So I built a bomb,” You abruptly started up again, louder this time. It sounded almost comical, like a teen coming home to tell their mom they did something bad, without caring.

“You what!?” Artemis spluttered. “You made a bomb!?” As she exclaimed her questions, Wally snickered and Megan smiled at the short comedic break. You needed it.

“Like I said, he gave me books and I read them. They had some very useful information he clearly didn't know was there, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten the books.” You shrugged slightly. “That night, I placed the bomb accordingly and I used my powers to blend in and sneak out. It was the first time I had been outside since my family was snatched off the street. It was dark, the stars were out, and it was snowing lightly again. As if I never left.” You remembered how nice the cool snowflakes felt on your unhealthily pale skin. The cold wind blew through your hair, and you were finally free. “I sprinted away until I could barely see it, and I used the detonator. The bomb definitely worked; I completely decimated the warehouse.”

There were comments on how you made the bomb; maybe you could deactivate/take them apart. You never had to, so you said it would take some practice before you actually tried it.

“After the first year of being gone, the search for my family, and everyone else, was called off. They had video evidence that we were taken, but it lead to nowhere. No license plate on the vehicle, and no good view of his face.”

Not even the best of detectives could solve the case. Nowadays, there were better and rarely corrupted detectives in the police force, and heroes who might as well be detectives. Shoutout to you and Batman.

“Black Canary was good friends with my mom. When I popped up on her doorstep after four years, she tried hitting me at first because she thought I was a shape-shifting alien. When I proved it was me, she almost had a breakdown. She was so happy to see me, and when she hugged me, I started to freak out. I forgot what loving embraces and affection felt like, and I thought she was going to hurt me.” You then chuckled.

“I started to kick her ass until she restrained me and kept me in a hug. I remember her saying, ‘I’m going to hug you whether you like it or not!’.” The memory brought a little laughter. “And I did like it, after around five minutes. Oh God, then Green Arrow walked in,” you all but snorted, and the others laughed. But not Robin. Robin was completely silent. A smile barely appeared on his face before drifting away.

“Who is this?” Oliver asked. “Did you adopt a child while I was gone? Couples usually make that decision together, but since we usually throw away the receipts, I guess we can keep her.” Your head turned almost 180 degrees in a flash, and you broke out of Dinah’s arms and dove at Oliver.

He barely dodged your attack, and he was startled at how fast you could move, and how well you could fight. Furniture got knocked over and some things got broken, but you were no match for the both of them; you still needed a lot of training.

As Oliver and Dinah pinned you to the ground, he asked again. “Seriously, who the hell is this kid?” He was joking about Dinah adopting you, but he was both intrigued and impressed by you.

“(Y/n) (L/n). Katherine (L/n)’s youngest daughter.” Dinah’s voice cracked. She couldn't believe that you were alive. But you were also alone, so she didn't even attempt to hope that the rest of your family was alive.

Oliver’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought they were pronounced dead a few years ago.”

You went limp under them, and you started to cry at the mention of your mother’s name. You had no one left. Although you were ecstatic to be free, almost everything terrified you. It was pure hell to find out where Dinah lived, let alone actually get to it.

“Just stay my strong little girl, (Y/n).” You said in your mother’s weak and dying voice. That threw Oliver and Dinah way off.

“(Y/n), did you just-”

“Arlene, (Y/n), I love you girls so much. I’m so proud of you. Protect your sister, Arlene. Keep her safe until you can't anymore.” You used your father’s voice this time. His was cracked and raspy in his final days.

Were you metahuman? Did you always have this ability? Questions like that ran through their minds.

“You have to survive, (Y/n). Survive for me, for mom, for dad, and all those other people. Don't forget us. I love you.” Arlene’s muddled and broken voice came last. And a sudden loud, stomach-churning crack came from your mouth, and the sound of a body falling to the floor followed. You were reliving and replaying the loss of your family with alarming accuracy.

Dinah cried a little, too. Katherine was dead, Jack was dead, and so was fifteen-year-old Arlene. She didn't know you or your sister too well, but enough to be attached.

That night, Oliver and Dinah brought you in. And from then on, Black Canary took you under her wing as Mockingbird, and she helped you get better.

You didn't tell them about what you said, or what came after they tackled you to the ground. You just left it at that. “And now... I’m here.” Your voice was quiet and meek again. The story of your past was finished. The End. You didn't feel as shitty as you thought you would, but you were still a little traumatized. You slowly started to bury the memories again, no matter how much of a struggle it was.

When Kaldur stepped in your direction, Robin pulled away from you and let go of your hand as if you burned him. Like you were toxic. He grunted as he got off the bed and moved over to where Wally was, placing a hand on his ribs with a wince. He let the dull ache go away before moving again.

Some questions were made, and most were answered. You refused to describe and share gory details, but they didn't ask. Surprisingly, there were hugs, and then some jokes and laughter. You eventually veered the subject away from your past, and you once again apologized for jeopardizing their safety. And you were forgiven. Mostly, anyway.

But Robin hung back. He didn't smile, he didn't laugh, he didn't breathe a word. He stood as far away from you as he could without seeming suspicious, and it hurt a bit. ‘Does he hate me again?’

Did his opinion on you change? Did he think you were just being too dramatic and attention-seeking? Was he always going to avoid you now? You didn’t know. You wanted to, but you didn’t dare ask. Not in front of everyone else.

“I made fake files about me for school, as Black Canary’s niece. Otherwise, I’m still legally deceased.”

“Cool!”

Robin still didn’t speak to you, even when you were moved to your room. That was where you were harshly scolded by Batman, mildly by Black Canary, and you were banned from going on missions until further notice or until you proved yourself to be capable of following orders, but all seven of you were going to be out of commission for a few days anyway.

Wonder Woman took the time to talk with you about the mission, and about what you did wrong. She wasn’t being condescending or critical, but it more of a discussion about what you could do differently, and trying to find the silver lining. That part wasn’t easy, but still. You definitely got along with her, but you didn’t see her as often as you wish you could.

Superman showed up for a brief moment, but you weren’t happy about it. You didn’t like him for a multitude of reasons. He was regularly a jerk to Conner. Sure, you didn’t get along with Superboy on rare occasions, but he didn’t deserve to be treated like crap. In your eyes, Superman was egotistical and often put his emotions before his duty. He was too out-of-check from your point of view. However, it gave you some comfort when you discovered he wasn’t Batman’s favorite person, either. That made you smirk every time you thought of it.

Now only Black Canary was in your room with a tall glass of water for you. She sat on your bed and talked to you for several minutes straight, but you didn’t respond. You were very passive and it seemed like you were just ignoring her, but your eyes were glossy and your face was blank. You once again went into an unresponsive trance.

Dinah worriedly called out your name. “(Y/n)?” She put a gentle hand on your leg and shook it a little. “(Y/n)!”

After half a minute, you slowly blinked and turned to look at her. “Hmm?” Dinah was staring at you, and it was obvious that she had been talking to you. “Sorry, I was thinking. What were you saying?”

She huffed. “I hate when you do that, it’s very unsettling.” She only saw you go into such a daze a couple times before, and still startled her. Artemis got used to it after the fifth or sixth time. “Are you sure you didn’t get a head injury?”

“Trust me, I am concussion free. I’ve never had one, believe it or not.” You chirped, and you reached over to knock on your wooden bedside table. You didn’t want to jinx it. “What were saying?” You asked again.

“I-” Dinah started, but she got up and closed the door before speaking again. This was a private conversation. “I was apologizing. For everything.”

Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and you cocked your head. She already apologized for not listening to you when you claimed Cassius Henze was still alive; what else was she talking about?

“When your team was formed, I brought you here. Instead of taking you back to our home, where I raised you as my protege, I left you here. I said that you needed to learn how to work with others because you and Roy were successfully completing missions but in unnecessary and inconvenient ways.”

“I’ll admit, that’s very true and it was fun as fu-” Her sharp glare stopped you from swearing. “And I needed to get some friends my age, since all of my friends were adults and Roy,” you agreed. Aside from Roy, the Justice League members were the closest to being considered friends. “So you had your reasons.” Her reasons were perfectly valid unlike Robin’s and you understood, but it still hurt at the time.

Dinah handed you the glass of water, and you took a big gulp. “And then I only came here to train you all, not to see you. We patrolled Star City, but I only treated you like a sidekick, instead of like a,” She cleared her throat and paused, looking away. “Instead of like a daughter.”

Dinah and Oliver never officially adopted you, and it was a subject you skirted around. You did kind of see Dinah as a mother, and Oliver as somewhat of a father. But you definitely never called them “Mom” or “Dad”. You weren’t ready for that, and you didn’t think they were either.

You stared into your cup, looking at your slight reflection in the water. You still didn’t have your mask on, and you were starting to want it back. “I forgive you, and it’s in the past. We can learn from our mistakes, and know what to not do in the future.”

Dinah nodded, and you sat in a comfortable silence until she asked, “Is there anything else I can get you?”

Your head perked up. “Yes, actually,” You looked down at your over-sized white button-up shirt you were given to make treatment easier. “I need a different button-up. I can see my tattoo through this.”

Her gaze shot down to your rib cage, and sure enough, she could faintly see your very colorful tattoo through the thin material. “Wow, that is one of the brightest tattoos I’ve ever seen,” She found it extraordinary. “Can I see it?”

You smirked and your eyes lit up with a joke. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours~” You didn’t have any time to say you were kidding before she whacked your leg with an audible slap.

“Do not ever say that again, young lady.” She scolded you and she walked over your closet. “Understand?”

“Yes, Miss Lance.” You snarked. “It’s funny that you reacted more to that than the time I dropped the f-bomb during a Justice League meeting, when I was tagging along.”

Dinah chuckled as she shuffled through your closet. “I remember that. You insisted on going because it was ‘bring your kid to work’ day.” She emerged with a big navy blue button up. “You could have met Robin, but Batman flat-out refused to bring him. I guess he had hunch that you two would clash.”

You shrugged at the mention of him, and your face turned a light pink. Robin held your hand, without warning. He used to do anything to not touch you, but then he did it willingly. And for him supposedly not liking you, it sure was an intimate gesture. And you enjoyed it.

Black Canary reached to unbutton your shirt, but she noticed your expression and gasped. “Are you blushing?!”

“No!” You denied it, but it was feeble.

She had a big grin on her face. “You definitely are!” She gasped a second time. “Oh God, do you have a crush on Robin?!” Dinah became a mother who was proud that her child was romantically interested in someone for once. “My beautiful bird has a crush on Batman’s bird!”

“Quiet down! Someone will hear you!” You hissed and you started unbuttoning the shirt. You didn’t care that she saw you in your bra; she was unofficially your parental guardian and another female.

Her face fell a little when she saw the giant, horrid bruise that was right in the middle of your chest; almost in the shape of a footprint. Some of the bruise touched the edge of your breasts, much to your discontent. The entire bruise looked very painful, and it hurt just looking at it.

Dinah helped you into your shirt cautiously, and she examined your tattoo. You jumped a little when her cold finger touched it. “That’s amazing. You must interact with your soulmate every day, several hours a day.” She pondered. Then she looked up with a smirk. “You know, the bird is starting to look like,” she paused for a dramatic effect. “A robin.”

“You’re kidding! You have to be joking!” You said frantically and you looked down at your tattoo, but your groaned when your bruised torso protested the sudden movement. “Alright then, you are not joking.”

Black Canary planned on joining the betting pool on who Robin’s soulmate was going to be; over half the Justice League thought it certainly wasn’t going to be you. Dinah thought differently.

Black Canary bid you goodnight after more conversation. And nonstop teasing, of course. She was not always the serious and stone-faced woman everyone thought she was. She had her moments when all seriousness melted away, and fun, affection, and playfulness took its place.

When you insisted that you didn’t need anything else, she opened the door and left. Neither of you noticed Robin slipping in before the door closed completely.

You looked up at the ceiling with a hand over your covered soulmate tattoo. Her claims that you had a crush on Robin rang through your head, and you questioned yourself. ‘Do I?’

Robin stood against the wall, waiting for you to notice him. The whole team was staying in Mount Justice that night, to take time to heal. Like an overnight stay at a hospital, but better. He technically wasn’t supposed to be out of bed, but he ignored that rule and the dull ache in his body.

You reached over to turn off your bedside lamp, but you saw Robin silently leaning on the wall. His face, completely emotionless like he was in the med bay. It scared the hell out of you; when did he get in your room!?

“How the hell did you get in here!?” You exclaimed and it was enough to hurt your chest again. “When!?” You weren’t unhappy to see him. Just intensely surprised.

“When Black Canary left.” He nodded to the door and he walked over to you. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice; if I was an enemy, I could have killed you by now.” He plopped down on the bed, making sure to not sit on your legs.

You rolled your eyes and leaned back onto your pile of pillows. “Well for your information,” you lightly nudged him with your foot. “It is a sin to kill a Mockingbird.” In your opinion, it was the best reference and best joke you ever made. And you were exceedingly disappointed that he didn’t laugh, or even crack a smile.

His face was still cold and hard. You sat and looked at each other without speaking. While you were trying to find out why he was acting so out of character, Robin was going through all the different things that could have happened on the mission.

Specifically things that could have happened to you. When you went after The Doctor, Robin thought there was a slim chance of the team defeating all the zombified victims. In the moment, he was upset with you. But when you crashed through the ceiling with the moonlight shining down upon you, when you shielded him from The Doctor, and when you were cut with the scalpel and violently kicked out the window, he was terrified that you were going to die.

Robin realized how much you meant to him, and he was trying do stop being so attached to you. But he was failing miserably. Here he was, trying to be cold and hateful towards you once again, but all he wanted to do was stay by your side for the night, his cracked rib be damned.

But when Robin heard your backstory? It was like he was torn apart. All of the things you went through was like a wooden stake to his heart. You previously told him some of it, but he wasn’t prepared for the rest. Not at all. No one had any idea that it was that bad.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong or are you just going to sit there?” You inquired, raising an eyebrow at him. His strange behavior was getting hard to decipher and it was very difficult.

The words Robin wanted to say weren’t coming together properly, so he looked away with a grunt. He wanted to scold you for putting yourself (and the team) in danger, and he also wanted to comfort you about your past. But he didn’t know how to say it.

“Robin,” you voice was firm, almost annoyed. “What is your deal? You’ve been uncharacteristically quiet, you haven’t smiled, hell, you’ve barely said a word since we got back!” You couldn’t see his eyes through his sunglasses, so there was no telling what he was feeling from your position. “If it’s about not listening to Kaldur’s orders, I’m sorry. How many times do you want me to apologize?”

“You almost died.” Robin mumbled. It was too quiet, so you asked him to speak up. “You could have been killed!” He said loudly. “You stepped in front of me when The Doctor was going to cut me up; that could have been you getting sliced open. I thought you were going to die when you were thrown through the window, shattering it,” he started to ramble. “And when we heard you scream? I thought he did kill you!”

“And he didn’t. I wasn’t going to let him kill you; his personal quarrel was with me, not any of you guys.” You were touched that he cared, but you didn’t think it was that much of a big deal. “I was doing my job, what we’re all trained to do.”

“You’re not getting what I’m saying!” Robin stood from your bed and started pacing. “You’re just as important as we are, and you were being careless about your own life!” He pulled at his hair with frustration. “And just... Everything you told us, about what he did to you and your family... You were so young, you barely go to live a normal life.” He was furious at The Doctor. Robin finally understood why you said he was such a wicked, twisted man.

“It’s not something any of us can change,” You said. His outburst was unexpected. “It’s called a past for a reason. There isn’t much of a silver lining, but it made me the person I am today.”

Robin was so not whelmed, he could barely talk. He itched to hug you, to embrace you, but he didn’t want to hurt you, and damn it, he didn’t want to be attached! Being Batman’s protege would have made an ordinary kid emotionally stunted, but Robin was far from ordinary. His emotions raged inside him, constantly contradicting each other and fighting all the time.

Kind of like you and Robin.

“What I want to know is why you held my hand, and why you pushed me away afterwards.” The feeling of him holding your hand was stuck in your noggin. “And instead of feeding me a lie, I’d like the truth. Please and thank you.”

Now that was a question Robin would murder pay to not answer. He knew why he did it, he knew why he pushed you away, and he knew damn well what he felt for you.

“If it makes you feel any better, I liked it.” You said awkwardly and you scratched the back of your neck. “But you seem to regret it.”

He didn’t mean what he said, and he didn’t mean to sound so cold. “That’s because I do.” Seeing the emotional hurt in your eyes was like a punch to the gut. Their usual sparkle in them died, and was replaced with sorrow.

Robin’s statement was like a slap across the face. Your stomach dropped, and the pain that came from your injuries was nothing compared to what you felt now. You didn’t know that three words and a contraction would cause your heart to crack.

Another reason to not want a soulmate or a relationship: heartbreak and biting words.

Robin briskly walked to the door before you could tell him to get out, like you planned to. You didn’t know if what you were feeling was anger, sadness, deceived; maybe all three? But you said something anyway. “I guess I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” you then added under your breath, “Jerk.”

He poked his head back into your room for a quick moment. “I don’t think any of us will be at school, but you’re not going anywhere with a fractured sternum.”

You almost choked on air. “What do you mean I have a fractured sternum!?” You yelled after him, but he closed the door.

A/n: This is so long and sloppy and I’m so sorry, but please tell me what you think!

452 notes · View notes

alwaysaprille · 7 years

Note

I'm sort of torn on Raven's "She saved us again"? It's like from a character standpoint, I get it. Their friend just "died", so of course they would elevate her. But it still sort of feels like the writers hitting me over the head with "Clarke is THE hero always". When the reality is that Raven has been the one to save their asses in basically every finale. I don't know, it just felt sort of eye-rolly and like JRoth's "Clarke single-handedly took down the mountain" during S2 hiatus.

Alright, Nonny. Let’s get down to business (to defeat….the Huns!).

The actual reality is that there has never been ONE hero in ANY season and no this isn’t me trying to downplay Raven to boost up Clarke because I “hate WOC”. Let me explain the Bravenlarke of it all:

We talk about the Core Four all the time, but in reality the actual core of our show rests on Bellamy, Clarke and Raven (Octavia is usually included in the Core Four, but for the most part her story is almost always separate from the main cast until the very end of the Season). Let’s begin our exploration with Season 1:

We know how the Season 1 finale ends, with the Delinquents closing the Dropship door and “blasting off”, but who actually made it happen? Lots of us would say Raven because, well…she is the genius, but when did the actual idea come into play?

Clarke: “It can’t be that simple. You said there’s fuel in those rockets, right?”

Raven: “Enough to build 100 bombs. I also said we’ve got no gunpowder left.”

Clarke: “I don’t want to build a bomb. I want to blast off.”

Raven: “Draw them in close. Fire the rockets. A ring of fire.”

Bellamy: “Barbecued grounders. I like it.”

Finn: “Will it work?”

Raven: “The wiring’s a mess down there, but yeah. You give me enough time, I’ll cook them real good.”Clarke has the idea. If she’d never had the idea would they ever have been able to stop the Grounders?

Bellamy runs the physical side of things as the leader of the gunners to get Raven the time she needs to wire up the Dropship.

Raven implements the idea by walking Clarke through the steps (because she is too wounded to do it herself). Jasper does have to complete the job because Raven has passed out, but Raven does most of the setup.

The Season 1 finale was a 3 part save. It’s not Raven who saves their asses, it’s all three of them.

On to Season 2:

The plan to take down the Mountain once again utilized Bravenlarke (with some Monty actually). This might have been harder to recognize because it happened over the course of several episodes. The plan goes into action in 2x09 when Clarke reverses her original refusal to let Bellamy go into the Mountain and decides “It’s worth the risk”, although at the time, we don’t see it that way:

Bellamy: “We need to do this now. You’ve got the alliance. Now is the time to use it.”

Clarke: “First, we need an inside man. You were right. Without someone on the inside to lower their defenses, turn off the acid fog, an army is useless. You should go.”

Bellamy: “I thought you hated that plan, that I would get myself killed.”

Clarke: “I was being weak. It’s worth the risk. My map of Mount Weather. Find a way to get on that radio and talk to us. Good luck.”

The idea to shut down the Acid Fog is initially Clarke’s, but is accomplished with help from Raven(Wick) and Bellamy in 2x14:

Raven: “Wait. Corrosion. The protective oxide film would have to be restored in tanks this old. They’d need to be cleaned.”

Wick: “And neutralized. Bellamy, go to that subdirectory. See if there’s anything there that says “passivation."”

Bellamy: “Ok. I’m on it. Got it. Says, uh, "aqueous sodium hydroxide bath."”

Wick: “That’s a base. That’ll neutralize the acid. Select that.”

Bellamy: “It’s doing something.”

Raven: “You should be able to hear the pump.”

Bellamy: “I can hear them. Needle’s moving. pH is rising. It’s working. Passivation success.”

Raven and Wick: “Yes!”

As we know, the Mountain discovers the tampering and reverse the Passivation so Bellamy winds up having to blow up the acid, but the initial plan was Clarke’s idea, Bellamy doing the work, Raven(and Wick) walking Bellamy through implementing the idea.

In the end, the final save actually comes down to Bellamy, Clarke and Monty (because Raven is being harvested). I actually think Monty temporarily replacing Raven in the Season 2 finale is because they were originally going to develop Wicken in such a way that they needed the extra development that the harvesting scene gave them.

Clarke: “Monty, can you do it? Can you irradiate the level?”

Monty: “I can do it.”

A bit later:Clarke: “Why are you stopping?”

Monty: “Because I did it. All we have to do… is pull this. Hatches and vents will open, and the scrubbers reverse, pulling in outside air”

Bellamy: “He’s gonna blow the door. Clarke, we’re out of time.”

Bellamy: “My sister. My responsibility.”

Clarke: “I have to save them.”

Bellamy: “Together.”

So again, a 3 part save, not just Raven.

Clarke has the idea to irradiate the Mountain and pulls the lever.

Bellamy spends the Season as the inside man, disables the acid fog and helps pull the lever.

Monty implements the idea by setting up the Mountain for irradiation.

Let’s discuss Season 3:

The Season 3 save was, again, a Bravenlarke combo. Let’s break down why:

Clarke: “Good. Then we have time.”

Murphy: “What we don't have is a way down.”

Bellamy: “Time for what?”

Clarke: “An Ascension ceremony.”

Murphy: “Ascension? You just said Ontari wasn't an option. Besides, she's still chipped, and we no longer have an EMP.”

Clarke: “We're not putting the Flame in Ontari's head. We're putting it in mine.”

Bellamy: “Clarke, that thing killed Emerson in seconds, liquefied his brain.”

Clarke: “Emerson wasn't connected to a Nightblood.”

Pike: “Transfusion?”

Clarke: “Not exactly.”

Abby: “Connected like Mount Weather.”

Clarke: “Yes. Everything we need is in your med kit”

Abby:.”No. It's too dangerous, and there are too many variables.”

Clarke: “But no options.”

Then, after Clarke has taken the Flame:

Bellamy: “I believe you.”

Abby: “Do you even know what you're looking for?”

Clarke: “I'll know when I find it.”

Abby: “May we meet again.”

Clarke: “We will.”

Bellamy: “We'll keep you safe.”

And, in the City of Light:

It’s Raven who reveals the door to the kill switch and, when Clarke doesn’t open it immediately, paints her raven across it.

So once again, this is not just Raven at work

Clarke has the idea to take the Flame herself (and even the how-Mt. Weather blood recycling), and taking the Flame is how she knows she needs to take the Chip.

Bellamy leads the guard for Clarke’s physical form, giving her time to complete her mission, with Abby as the last line of defense.

Raven uses her ALIE super brain to read the code, discover that Clarke is inside the City of Light, where she is and that she needs help, then provides that help to her.

And we’re on to our latest Season, 4! And, as I’m sure you’ve picked up on the pattern, Bravenlarke is back at it again, we arrive in 4x12 to:

Bellamy: “Clarke, unless I am missing something, there is no other way for all of us to survive.”

Clarke: “What if there is?”

Skip forward to the Space Squad Seven (Plus Clarke) arriving on Science Island:

Raven: “But there’s no time to go back.”

Clarke: “We’re not going back. We’re going up.”

Murphy: “Ah, don’t look so surprised. It was all your idea to begin with.” (Speaking of Raven’s desire to commit suicide by space, however Clarke is still the person who has the idea to actually live on the Ring).

Raven: “Space? We don’t have enough fuel to get down.”

Harper: “Sounds like a 5-year problem to me.”

Raven: “You’re (said to Clarke) talking about the Ring.”

Bellamy: “Seems like a shame to let a good rocket go to waste.”

Raven: “How do we live?”

Clarke: “They left a water reclamator up there and we know that Go-Sci has an algae farm. We just get those two things up and running and we have food and water.”

Murphy: “Algae salads and recycle urine. Sign me up.”

Emori: “Better than dying.”

Murphy: “Yeah, you say that now.”

Raven: “All right. Slow down. Breathing’s important, too. What’s the plan for oxygen?”

Monty: “Based on what Murphy says about the Lighthouse Bunker, I’m guessing-make that praying-there’s an oxygenator there. We take it with us. You hook it up. Bob’s your uncle.”

Raven: “You’re an engineer, Monty. You do know there’s about a thousand things wrong with that plan, right?”

Monty: “Yes, and every one of them kills us. Of course, staying here will kill us, too, so-”

Bellamy: “Raven, we need you to get us off the ground before the death wave hits. What do you say? Can you do it?”

Raven: “What do I say? I say that death wave can kiss my ass.”

Clarke: “Good. It’s settled then. We’re going back to the Ark.”

Now we’re going to finish this bit of evidence up with 4x13, I’m not going to pull quotes on this one, because the finale should be fresh in our minds as it wasn’t even two weeks ago, I’m just going to do the wrap up:

Clarke has the idea to return to space and even figures out how they’ll supply themselves with food and water once they make it up there and makes sure that the uplink is ready for the rocket when they arrive.

Bellamy is responsible for inspiring the masses (Raven and Echo specifically this episode) and ultimately making the hard call and choosing to close the door on Clarke instead of waiting.

Raven uses her non-ALIE powered but still super brain to figure out how to turn a 2-seater into an 8-seater, run the flight check, pilot them to the ring and get them into the hanger bay.

So when Raven says “She saved us again.” She’s not wrong. If Clarke had not had the idea to go to Space in the first place, everyone except for her would have died. If she hadn’t chosen to make the sacrifice and stay behind, physically moving that satellite dish to make sure the Ark was up, the ones who did manage to make it into space would have died.

Consistently, every Season, the finale save has always been a combination of Head (Clarke), Heart (Bellamy) and Guts (Raven) saving the day, but so many of y’all would rather look at it as Clarke being elevated, or a fandom being racist against a WOC (Raven), or (if you’re a Br/ven) the Bellarke fandom being unable to accept Br/ven as a romantic pairing without putting Clarke in it as well, when Bravenlarke is truly a platonic ship, lmao.

I’d bet you anything that in Season 5, Bravenlarke team work is once again what saves the day (even though 6 years and space has changed their relationship).

#Anonymous #the 100 #bravenlarke #head and heart and guts #bellamy blake #clarke griffin #raven reyes

287 notes · View notes

srseattlestreetnews · 8 years

Text

Seattle Street News 44, Crying For Freedom

City News:

Rally for SINless Recognition Marred by Police Violence

This Saturday the SINless and their allies gathered in Westlake Park for a rally and protest. The event brought together numerous community organizers, spoken word poets, VR artists, musicians, and even Redmond Mayor Sonya Scholl spoke briefly about the need for SINless protection and recognition. It wasn’t just a general desire for recognition that brought the SINless together this day, however. It was the crisis surrounding the kidnapping of SINless children and Knight Errant’s Law Enforcement’s lack of response paired with hope that the new administration might change things for the better of all that brought everyone together. There was an estimated three thousand protesters and rally-goers. There were young children and senior citizens. The crowd were at times outraged, at times anguished, at times inspired and full of hope. They spoke of what they hoped to accomplish.

Knight Errant presence was heavy, but local SINless community security force The Knights of Red were also on hand to keep the protesters safe. But it wasn’t enough. Someone in Knight Errant got mad and decided to start shooting at the protesters. It started with Knight Errant officer Augustus Ivan Polk, a man with a reputation for alcoholism and multiple citations for insubordination, who somehow still has a corporate badge, who shot Ork Pedro Tanaka in the belly. Pedro was doing nothing but protesting peacefully, but that didn’t matter to Officer Polk. Polk’s regular partner Patrick Oliver Mahon in “defense” of Polk also shot an unarmed peaceful protester.

The situation threatened to become a riot but the work of KE mages who cast a calming ritual alongside some moving words and song by Ork Underground activist Sarah Brown who led the crowd in a version of the song “Crying for Freedom in the Metroplex,” stopped any further escalation of violence.

Pedro Tanaka’s wife, human Aki Tanaka, well loved tattoo artist in the Barrens spoke passionately and with steely determination before the crowd in the wake of her husband’s shooting.

A Transcript of her speech:

"My husband is an Ork. So he never had a SIN. My parents didn't have SINs so I never had one either. We live in the Barrens. And we are honest people who work hard. I do tattoos and he works on a fishing boat. We have never hurt anyone in this city. We get up, trade for the things we need. We were excited for this last electionl. We couldn't vote, but we had friends in the Underground that finally could. We felt like the future might mean something good for us finally.

"We dreamt that maybe we might be able to walk in the streets outside of the Barrens without fear. That maybe we could go to one of those fancier places and get all the things we only dreamed about getting one day. Nicer food. Nicer clothes. "

"I work out of the burned out building where we live. And I babysit the building’s kids for their parents while they are out doing whatever they can do to survive. But lately some kids have gone missing. There was no one to turn to. Our babies are being kidnapped. And we don't know who's doing it.

“Is it some maniac serial killer cuttin' up us SINless because no one cares? Is it some corp kidnapping us for experiments...again? I don't know. But I've had moms and dads in my tattoo studio crying at night in pain over their missing kids and frustration that no one would listen.So that's why we came here. Because they don't think the lives of our babies matter. And then what happens?

"Some jack-booted corporate thug shoots my man. Sees him only as a SINless piece of trash that can be abused with no consequence. But we have a new governor now, there will be consequences. They took my husband off in a med wagon. But he has no SIN, so he has no medical records. I don't know if they'll actually treat him or if they'll dump him in an alley to die.

"His name is Pedro Tanaka, he is my husband and he is not trash to be dumped. He is SINless, but he is a person.

"This just can't go on anymore."

Although the police violence threatened to turn this protest into a tragedy, SSN is happy to report that, thanks to the work of some good Samaritans, Pedro Tanaka was able to get medical care and he is currently at home recovering. He isn’t able to work while recovering and so the Tanaka family could use help. Any help for the Tanaka family can be delivered to SSN, Sarah Brown, or the Knights of Red.

Despite this violence, the call for SINless recognition will not be silenced. Knight Errant, find out what is happening to our children. Governor Dzhugashvili, start a program to get the SINless recognition.

Open Letter from Lt. Salazar Monroe Concerning the Recognition Rally Violence

Lt. Monroe was not assigned to the protest, had he been, I imagine it would have turned out differently. That said, Monroe is a man of honor and he has taken it on himself to make a statement about the Recognition Rally violence:

Dear citizens of the Seattle Metroplex,

I come to you, in one of our darkest moments, to condemn the actions of two fellow Knight Errant officers. From what I have heard from their sergeants and colleagues on the scene is that they’ve been dealt with and disciplined on-site, but my sources refuse to elaborate. I can only hope that our hands have not shed any more blood than what we have already done today. I trust that the officers who serve under me and were also present understand that we must hold ourselves to a higher standard of ethics. The city has placed a lot of trust in us and we must do everything we can to ensure that everyone in Seattle knows that it is not misplaced. They’ve been burned before, and they’re not eager to find out that they’ve made that mistake again.

What these two officers have done has irrevocably shaken all of us to the core, surely, but please know that this isn’t the Knight Errant I enlisted in, the Knight Errant that trained me, shaped me, molded me into the man I am today. These bad apples must be culled swiftly and precisely before they spoil the rest of the barrel, and though it might already be too late, it’s better late than never.

I didn’t set out to change Knight Errant from the inside, nor did I set out to single-handedly save Baltimore or Seattle from themselves. I enlisted into Knight Errant because I was sick and tired of seeing criminals of all stripes getting away with their schemes while the common man suffered. I set out to ensure that everyone had their dues, from the SINless down in Dundalk to the hotshot corporate types Downtown. Everyone gets their day in court, as it was back in the Fifth World, and as it should be in the Sixth.

I’m on personal leave right now due to...excruciating circumstances that are regrettably beyond my control, but as soon as I come back into the office tomorrow, things are going to change for the better not just for the executives but for the SINless and everyone in-between, I can promise you that. And if you think I can’t live up to that boast? There are a few people in Baltimore who can vouch for me.

Sincerely, Lieutenant Salazar Timothy Monroe

Stoking the Fires—(by Demmalition1)

Eustace Zhalang died the moment she put the revolver in her mouth and pulled the trigger. She’s going to die for a second time in the press tonight after they get ahold of her financial records and skewer her fresh corpse over the burning coals of public opinion. Molotov was after her, you see, and when he sets his sights on something, he won’t stop until it’s dead or close to it. She chose the quick way out, as opposed to being burned alive at the hands of him and his henchmen. Oh, you didn’t know? Yes, he’s recruiting followers like the night of the Christmas tree burning a while back. But back to Ms. Zhalang.

As a citizen of the venerable corporation of Wuxing and a prominent name in many a circle of high society, one would think she had it all. Money and fame were synonymous with her name, and her presence was hard to escape from even when she wasn’t in the room. But she will forever remain a black mark on the face of Wuxing, for she was not a good woman. She destroyed the lives of countless people by running sham charities in the names of noble causes in order to rake in funds from a gullible public. These stolen funds were then used to prop up a multitude of failing businesses, all under her name or the Wuxing banner. When Wuxing found out they let her go and sent her home with a generous package to placate her duplicitous ways. They killed any investigation into her dealings as well in order to quell any negativity against a high ranking executive of the board. Better to hide your sins under the carpet than deal with them openly, I guess. Shortly after her forced retirement she developed lung cancer, it progressed until she turned into a bedridden grey husk at 88 years old.

She was very good at tugging at the heartstrings you see, pulling in money for orphans, SINless, even disease research. Therein lies the rub, the roaring spark that would turn into an inferno. She syphoned research funding that was meant for whichever disease Molotov’s wife had. A horrible woman’s greed and depravity lead to the indirect creation of a monster who seeks nothing but revenge at the crucible of the flame. This money would not have cured his wife, she was too far along and the time too short, but it was enough to grab his attention. She would be an easy hit. After all, who would care about a little old woman who never left her estate? She was going to die soon anyways, might as well finish the job before the reaper could drag her screaming soul down to Hell.

Molotov began the hit by driving in through the front gate with a few accomplices disguised as a catering crew. Once near the front door their decker attacked the cameras and they burst out of the van guns ablaze. Their decker did not, however, destroy the cameras as they had thought. Their actions were all caught on tape. They killed three guards at the front door, one at the gatehouse, and another who came outside soon after. Once inside, the first accomplice, Bai Zhao, is dropped by a drone. Another, Choi Zhao and sibling of Bai, was killed by a guard with an antique spear from a display (bricked smartgun). Nearing Eustace’s last redoubt, she shoots herself before they could get inside and do the deed themselves. I guess that would rob Molotov of some of his satisfaction. Good. When the door was smashed open, a third accomplice, Agnes Peterson, was killed by uzi fire from a guard rushing down the hall. Molotov then burned Eustace’s corpse and killed all staff inside be they butler or cook. He burned their bodies as well before looting the place and escaping with two other then unidentified accomplices. After that he burned the van a mile away from the mansion. A total of 16 people lost their lives that night. The identities of his two surviving Hellhound accomplices are known: one is a female decker by the handle 5t@1k3r (Maria Stoyanova) and another a brute named Charles Whiteman. Investigators already found most of the fenced goods which had tracking RFIDs and were sold well below their street value.

Here’s what we know: all accomplices were members of the Hellhound gang, all were human, and all had a history of violence against the better angels of society. I warned the police over 2 weeks ago of Molotov’s movements, but nothing was done because there was no concrete evidence. 13 innocents and 3 assailants died because of this. The forces of Knight Errant did nothing, in fact they did less than nothing despite the heavily detailed but incomplete information I gave them.

I guess this is what Molotov wanted, to get Eustace’s story out there. Well congratulations you monster, you won. But here’s the thing, you don’t get away with the killing of someone so recklessly in both deed and message. You are going down, Knight Errant has partnered with Wuxing to form a special task force sent out just for you, you special little firebug. I got your home, your hideout in the Cedar Rim Apartments, and your current hideout in the Hellhound Den. I’m watching you right now as I type this. You will not escape The Truth, for it is a fire so pure that it will engulf you and incinerate you until not even ash is left. You will go out dying in agony or in the deepest pit they can throw you in as a broken man.

I spoke to your sister-in-law, Rachael. She spoke of you in a spiteful fashion usually reserved for the tyrants of history. She said you defiled Maki Adsida’s memory with your actions, and how she would be ashamed of you and what you have become. Maki has died a second time. She would kill herself again without hesitation had she known that the monster that she married bombs and burns innocents in her memory. So I’ve decided to do something. You know that picture of you and her that you had in your apartment? The one on the mantle that I saw the night I went there, the one that was conspicuously missing? I’ve burned it. I’ve also destroyed the empty urn you left in her memory after you scattered her ashes. I’m erasing anything that may associate her to you besides this article. That will be her legacy with you: nothing. You are a wretched man who will end up in the annals of history as a monster. You will not make it out, you will not honor her memory, you will not win.

Come find me, I dare you.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

-- Ernest Hemingway, A Call to Arms --

Corp News:

Reflections on the Matrix Services Market

The article is one of a series looking at the current state of individual corporate subsidiaries in the Seattle Metroplex. This particular issue focuses on the Metroplex Matrix Services.

The Matrix Services market is the second largest Market of the Metroplex, right behind media with a value of 219.9¥B. Matrix Services are the life blood of modern society and this life blood is controlled by four megacorporations in Seattle: NeoNET (39.9%), Mitsuhama (36.0%), Horizon (16.7%), and Renraku (7.4%). Matrix Services, unlike Media, has historically been more volatile, with NeoNET viciously attacking Saeder-Krupp’s Matrix division, back in August (See Issue 24) when they still had one, and a flurry of anonymous, not as effective attacks against NeoNET’s Matrix Services two weeks later (See Issue 26). In the months since then, the Matrix Wars seem to have calmed down, but with such an important market sector one never knows what the future will bring.

SSN reached out to NeoNET, Renraku, Mitsuhama, and Horizon for comment on their view of the market, only NeoNET returned any commnent by the time of publication, though if you want a comment by anyone in Matrix Services, it is NeoNET. An executive in NeoNET responded:

Matrix services is a big, boring and, frankly, thankless business. Big, as everyone relies on it and it takes huge capital expenditures to become a significant player. Boring because it generates steady revenues with limited room to grow. Thankless, as customers only remember what company sends the Matrix bill when it stops working for them. Thankless, also, when a longtime customer such as the Seattle Metroplex unfairly terminates a contract. The current state of the market, with two leading companies and two comparatively minor players, reflects the characteristics on which it depends: reliability, to avoid a repeat of the two catastrophic crashes that took place in the last fifty years; resilience, with built-in redundancies; and fairness, as ensured by the monitoring of the recently created Grid Overwatch Division. As a whole, the Matrix services business is second only to Media, which relies heavily on it. Though remarkable for what is seen as just another utility, this fact points to the path for real growth: deliver compelling contents on the Matrix infrastructure. Which is exactly what NeoNET set out to do and why it sponsors events such as the Blast from the Past competition that spotlight the best of both worlds. Coming from the opposite direction, Horizon used the cash generated by its huge Media business to start its in-house Matrix division. Mitsuhama’s big share of the market points to Japan’s long tradition of self-reliance and defiance of foreign meddling. It is difficult to say whether there is more to it for them in the doldrums where they currently are.

Finally, Renraku’s looming presence in Law Enforcement suggests its involvement in both Media and Matrix services may have more to do with surveillance than customer satisfaction. To conclude, NeoNET can be relied on to keep doing its share in preventing a new crash of the Matrix for the foreseeable future and to deliver the best contents on it.

Again, SSN was able to get insight and analysis from one of Seattle’s premier financial analysts, Saeder-Krupp executive Vorack. Gentle readers will be asked to remember the…complicated…relationship Saeder-Krupp and NeoNET have had in the past, especially surrounding Matrix Services:

Vorack: Oh man it’s Matrix time eh, guess its time to ask a simple question. What is the Matrix? The answer is out there, readers, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to. We at SK are no longer in Matrix at all but that is mainly because of one certain corp trying to push us out in particular, but we will talk about that later. First of all we should talk about matrix as a whole, it pretty much connects the entire world and if you don't use the matrix.... well you're a liar. Look at anything and you'll find a link to the matrix in some way. It might be a product that you bought off the matrix, and let’s say you got it physically, well the person you bought it from probably filled out an order and used the matrix to make that initial purchase, and even if they didn't do that, the person who first wanted the product to be made, oh they connected with the producer through it for sure. This little interview, that's able to happen because of the matrix, all the research I do on all the corps and subs, matrix. That advertising Horizon does, oh the matrix was involved in that. You could say we are all tapped into the matrix, even if we don't think about it. As someone who personally taps into it regularly, looking for information I find it kinda weird, since unfortunately, no one can be told what the matrix is. You'll have to see it for yourself, and its something special. [SSN editor: I thought the Matrix was a series of tubes, no?]

So let’s talk about our history in the matrix, about what’s happened to it and what looks like will continue to happen to it. It started off with four corps investing in it, Mitsuhama, NeoNET, Renraku and Horizon. Us here at SK joined in at one point but we were pretty much pushed out by some heavy opposition and completely bought out later on, I swear I’ll go into details about this later. All in all, Matrix has been a safe industry to be in, as profits continue to raise and the market value seems to be constantly rising with very little infighting, well except for what happened to us, but that's another story. The first big event in this industry happened to be SK dipping our toes into the segment, but mainly using it as a platform to show off what we had been working on, show off our products and maybe help recruitment in some way. And I just want it known that SK was the first corp to do this! Matrix had never been used to specifically promote an entire AAA Corporation up to that point, we were trend setters and other companies ended up copying us later on and maybe this is why we were so unjustly targeted, but anyways. Then before we knew it Renraku and Mitsuhama did something massive, something drastic. Clearly Mitsu wanted to be the big boys when it came to Matrix as they traded everything they had in Law and Heavy Industry to Renraku for 40B worth of their Matrix division. (I gotta say this seemed to end up being a good deal for Renraku, they are one of two Corps left in Heavy industry aside from ourselves, and in Law enforcement they are only beaten out by Ares and only by a small amount). All of a sudden it was a competition to see who would be the larger force, was it NeoNET or was it Mitsuhama? NeoNET always seemed to be a bit behind and even to this day they are still playing second to Mitsu. [SSN editor: Fact Check. NeoNET is the current market leader and have been consistently in the Matrix Services market segment.]

I guess this is where I should mention the act that I've been hinting at, the unjust and outrageous attack NeoNET did against our Matrix division. Where NeoNET tried to completely reduce and destroy 100% of our industry all because we defended ourselves from them and perhaps they were jealous. I am happy and proud to say that they were ineffective at doing so and in the end they just hurt themselves. They might have destroyed 67% of our entire Matrix segment but we were able to hold them off and the entire time this transpired, we had a secret going on with their own division. I’ll admit it here for the first time, SSN you are getting one hell of an exclusive in this, I am damn proud to say we had a team of SK workers inside NeoNET's entire matrix R&D crew for well over a month and easily learned their secrets, more than enough to pay for 116% of any damage they ever caused us. The real kicker here is that us at SK apparently traded our 5.7B matrix division (which was mainly valued that high because of the work NeoNET had done and we had taken) to NeoNET for their Robotics segment which was estimated to be worth over 15B. Though I was "occupied" at this time and can’t confirm this. Seems like we clearly pulled ahead as the winners at that one.

One other main event has happened in Matrix, and it happens to feature our good friends over at NeoNET yet again. Two weeks after they attacked us, it seems karma decided to show her fickle head and something happened to them. They were attacked, over and over again and it was glorious. To this day I don't know who did this, I don't know which of the corps decided to stand up against them and in doing so, defend SK in their own way, but I have to say thank you. Be it Renraku our long time allies and friends, Mitsuhama a generally unknown and quiet competitor or maybe even Horizon the Media powerhouse, I send my thanks personally to whoever took NeoNET down a peg and reduced their market value by a noticeable 28% or a large 24B Nuyen. I don't usually condone these sort of attacks, but for this one, you have my respect and my appreciation. So who knows what’s gonna happen with Matrix, which of the two corps, be it NeoNET or Mitsu, stays ahead. There could be more attacks as it seems to have been awhile since the last major event. I know I personally have no idea what will happen. As a whole, SK seems uninterested in rejoining the division, but I would be lying if I didn't say I use Renraku's services for my own needs and I hope they continue to do well.

Vorack broke some interesting news and my own research corroborates that indeed NeoNet’s Matrix Services had been plagued by espionage problems around the time that Vorack claims SK had been spying on NeoNET. As for Vorack’s claims that they had nothing to do with the flurry of attacks that NeoNET suffered two weeks after they attacked SK (it should be noted NeoNET claims that round of attacks were retaliatory for an ealier SK transgression)? Well, maybe they didn’t attack NeoNET or maybe they did. That is something that only the attackers know. That said, will Matrix Services remain quiet? Or might it become the next battleground in the Corporate Wars?

Features:

Once More 4--(by Breach)

On February 8th, 2029, computer systems around the world began to fail - sometimes spectacularly, actually burning out hardware in the process - as an unknown virus ravaged world networks. Within months, the Internet - the precursor to our Matrix - lay in ruins, and distrust of communication and computers ran rampant. Seattle’s Redmond district, once home to the greatest technological companies in the world, was especially ravaged by the virus and the subsequent riots against technology’s masters. Now, over forty-five years later, it still has not recovered; it’s hard to believe the Barrens were once one of the richest and most luxurious parts of the city.

The Crash Virus did more than destroy computers, as those computers ran systems that the world depended on. Safety protocols were breached globally, causing outbreaks of once-contained pathogens and experiments in population centers, as well as sabotaging the control systems of the many orbital platforms surrounding the Earth; the direct, immediate death toll of February 8th was in the tens of thousands, with the long-term death toll reaching the millions.

The United States government organized a response to the virus; a team, dubbed “Echo Mirage”, was formed from leading computer scientists and military cybersecurity specialists. The team utilized then-revolutionary cyberterminal technology to enter the Internet and computer systems to combat the virus directly in cyberspace.

They failed completely.

A month later, Echo Mirage was reformed using less conventional expertise; fringe theorists, white-hat hackers, conspiracy nuts and wide-eyed dreamers were recruited instead. Today, we’d recognize the attributes of most of the people, and it’s widely accepted that Echo Mirage was the first team of “Shadowrunners”.

Cyberterminal technology continued to advance, and at the end of August, the new Echo Mirage team once again attempted to battle the Virus and save the Internet; and while not a complete failure, they were once again rebuffed by the destructive computer worm. Four members of the team were killed by lethal biofeedback - destructive impulses sent to their bodies through the ASIST interfaces of their cyberterminals.

By the end of the year, Echo Mirage has mastered their cyberterminals and discovered new ways to defend against the Virus’s biofeedback, and over the course of the next few years, they actually managed to isolate and contain the Crash Virus. The Internet never truly recovered, but enough infrastructure was eventually saved to allow the creation of the first Matrix.

The Corporate Court would spearhead this initiative in 2032, finishing the transition of our communication infrastructure from its government-sponsored beginning to our modern corporate-owned reality.

Questions about history? Ask Breach! [email protected]

Seattle Street News is an independent activist news source released weekly on Tuesdays or Wednesdays

[Watch CorporateSINs on every Wednesday, 6pm PST or on Youtube at, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11c7BLFQtc&list=PLHKocVDXoWBtzze1SGGUnU6KB5UFrDLFo]

#CorpSINs #Hyper_RPG #shadowrun

1 note · View note