#and then i showed her that frame of Crocodile fucking murdering him

[mothfulhansel]

some magma doodles from earlier

[samadiw]

Hogwarts Library - Part 03 😘🔥❤

.

True to his word, Draco left Hermione well and truly alone, except a book she had wanted for ages was waiting for her on the table in their shared dorm and on another occasion her favourite flowers greeted her when she entered after a long day of classes.

H : "I know what you're doing, Malfoy."

D : "Haven't the foggiest, Granger."

He closed the book he was reading, walked into his room and closed the door behind him.

Hermione couldn't help but smile, she plucked a long stem rose out of the bunch, inhaled deeply, took it with her and placed it on her bedside cupboard.

The man was getting under her skin, she was shocked that he knew so much about her.

But strangely after that sweet gesture, everything stopped.

Malfoy barely looked at her, he was always deep in conversation with Blaise or Theo but would light up like a bulb when the owls brought their morning post.

Hermione couldn't help but feel resentful.

Despite her overall, fuck him approach, there was a softness in his eyes that melted or rather clawed it's way into her heart.

She thought about him more often than she should.

Cheating sodding bitch, she silently berated herself.

A beautiful owl enters and lands gracefully in front of Draco.

Hermione huffs.

H : "Who the heck keeps sending him letters?"

Ron looks her way and raises a brow in question.

R : "Did you say something, darling?"

Someone was talking to her, oh, it was her boyfriend.

Hermione swallows hard and vigorously shakes her head.

H : "No, nothing, just practising a spell."

She can't help but stare at the Slytherin table, Malfoy pockets the letter after a meaningful glance at it.

2 days to 2 weeks

Professor Slughorn (PS) impatiently yells over the noise.

PS : "Yes, yes, hurry up and take your seats."

PS : "Good, is everyone settled?"

Slughorn frowns at Seamus and shakes his head disapprovingly.

PS : "Thanks to Mr Finnigan's latest dung bomb explosion, we are forced to abandon the classrooms and conduct classes in the library."

Seamus looks around him sheepishly.

Madam Pince : "Hmph.."

PS : "Granger, Malfoy, bring your cauldrons to the front."

Hermione looks up in shock and Ron's ears turn bright red.

She weakly protests.

H : "But sir, I already have a partner."

Slughorn tuts his disapproval.

PS : "Mr Weasley will survive without your assistance for the duration of the class:"

Hermione tries one last time.

Draco is already at the table in front and staring at her smugly.

H : "But..."

PS : "No buts, Miss Granger, I have a rather complex potion for you to brew with Mr Malfoy."

Hermione sighs in defeat, gathers her things and make her way to the front.

She clumsily arranges her things, avoids the ice blondes gaze and mumbles to herself.

H : "Stupid Slughorn."

Draco rolls his eyes and hisses.

D : "Stop your muttering, Granger, I have no wish to paired up with you either."

His smell was fucking with her again, what in the name of heaven was in his bloody cologne?

Hermione reels back from the insult.

H : "Oh really? Who's singing a different tune now?"

Draco raises a brow.

D : "What are on about?"

Hermione hesitates but gathers her Gryffindor bravado.

She keeps her voice low.

H : "I thought you liked me."

Draco narrows his eyes.

D : "And you made it clear that you didnt return my affections, am I supposed to wait for you to realize how incredibly thick you are?"

Hermione feels a tightness in her chest and struggles to find the words.

H : "I, umm..."

Draco loses his patience.

D : "Stop stuttering like a fool, show me the list of ingredients."

Hermione bites back a nasty retort.

H : "You are unbelievable."

Draco let's out a sarcastic laugh.

D : "Says the woman who told me to leave her the fuck alone."

Hermione pushes the list of ingredients towards him roughly.

H : "Here, take the bloody paper, I hope you choke on it."

Draco points to the jars and viles that already litter the table and muses.

D : "Make yourself useful while I fetch the ingredients."

Hermione presses her lips together and a wave of emotions wash over her and she fights the urge to not cry.

Oh, fuck no, she would not shed a tear for the incorrigible wanker.

Hermione lights a fire under the cauldron and starts to add the few ingredients they already had.

She cuts the beans with more force than necessary and sneers.

H : "Stupid fucking Slytherin, who the hell does he think he is?

Draco is highly amused by her reaction to his indifference.

D : "Granger, you need to stir anti clockwise, it's right here in the bloody book."

Hermione jumps at the voice and almost cuts herself.

H : "Can you not sneak up on me."

Draco eyes her fingers to make sure shes still in one piece and then scolds.

D : "Can you please concentrate, the faster we finish this, the faster I can send my owl to Victoria."

Hermione's mouth drops open.

Who the fuck was Victoria? Definitely not a girl in their year.

She crosses her arms over her chest.

H : "Victoria?"

Draco looks away dreamy eyed and smitten.

D : "Yeah, a woman I'm seeing, she's an old family friend."

Hermione retorts sarcastically.

H : "How bloody marvellous for you, this is exactly why I wanted nothing to do with you."

D : "And you were right, Victoria is the most intelligent woman I've ever met, she's the one, Granger."

Hermione fumes at the stupid words coming out of Draco's ridiculously luscious mouth.

Fuck no, intelligence was her thing and no bloody bint was going to take that away.

She conveniently forgot that she had never met this Victoria person.

His words hurt, they hurt bad and Hermione couldn't remember when she had come to care about Malfoy.

Hermione turns away and returns to cutting the ingredients.

H : "Well, good for you."

Draco eyes the woman next to him intently.

D : "Thanks, Granger, shit, I forgot one more vile."

Hermione quickly wipes the angry tears before he returns.

Tears? Really? You pathetic fool.

Draco watches from the small crack in the enchanted supplies room and grins, she was definitely coming around.

Playing hard to get had definitely paid off.

He walks back to their shared table confidently and adds the vile to the other complicated ingredients.

Draco starts to skin the crocodile tail.

D : "You okay, Granger?"

Hermione mumbles.

H : "Yes, I'm fine."

Draco softens his tone and decides he's messed with her enough.

D : "Hermione?"

The way her name rolls off his tongue sends shivers down her spine.

She asks in frustration.

H : "What?"

Draco moves closer and leans over her small frame.

His hand slips under the table and grabs hold of her thigh, his fingers dig into the flesh and a gasp escapes her lips.

He whispers almost reverently.

D : "You. Are. All. I. Want."

Hermione looks up at him, her breathing elevates and she bites her lip.

H : "Draco..."

Draco removes his hand off her person and stares ahead, his expression has changed from loving to murderous.

D : "Not here, not now, your boyfriend is glaring a hole in my rather handsome head."

Draco calls out over the noise of other students chatting.

D : "What the fuck are you staring at, Weasley?"

Ron looks as if he's about to explode, his ears are the shade of rip tomatoes.

R : "I'm watching you, Malfoy."

Draco smirks triumphantly.

D : "Then watch closely."

Draco tenderly caresses Hermione's cheek.

Ron flexes and makes his way over.

Hermione steps away, glares at Draco and stands inbetween the tall men.

She places a hand on Ron's chest and the other on Draco's arm and pleads for them to calm down.

Gryffindor and Slytherin stare daggers at each other and everyone has stopped what they were doing to watch the scandalous scene that was unravelling before them.

Professor Slughorn's alarmed voice cuts through the tension.

PS : "What in Merlin's name is going on? Back to your seats."

Ron balls his hands into fists and threatens.

"R : This isn't over, Malfoy."

Draco sneers and stares the redhead dead in the eye.

D : "I look forward to it, Weasley."

Hermione looks at them and dreads the walk back to the Gryffindor common room.

Fuck, her life was going to become very complicated.

[zumpietoo]

Ummm....season 1

Slizzy was verrryyyy caught up in Dark Betty in the moment. It ended their relationship for awhile, actually. And she expressly stated “keep an eye on him”. So moar like “control”. And since Slizzy would soon be cam prostitute, the stripping thing was very much something she “dreamed” of. 

Oh and while they were split, she kissed Douchie...

Ummm.....that was moar Jughead and the FBI brother was also Jughead’s brother. 

I sent Douchie to do it and completely destroyed him. And never really explained myself. Actually, I cried moar over “breaking up” with Vermin, who I also quickly let in. But not Jughead. 

A kiss I initiated, he was then horrified by and after we flirted outrageously in front of everybody. And then I cried crocodile tears, cuz I kinda suck ass. And, yet again, was a total coward.

But I didn’t tell HIM I loved him, and even tho my “closest friends” had tried to fucking frame his dad for murder, I still would remain friends with them, and was cool with them throwing me under the bus with them. And considered he had a nervous breakdown, it was pretty minor, comparatively. And season 1

See how awesome I am? Not one bit snotty, bourgeois or elitist, unlike my stans! Interestingly, I never took the same attitude towards my cousin, whose father was an actual heroin trafficker (versus weed guy) and a son murdering bastard. 

I wrote a whole article!!! And the second the Serpents showed up, I got gross, snotty, bourgeois and elitist some more....even tho it turns out I’M a Serpent by blood, too! 

After suggesting he was on a one way trip to violence and Hell, even tho I’d already been living there since before we got together. And moar like, by that point, I just liked the title, and had already been a camgirl, dragged him into being an accessory to murder, etc....and imagine that! I permitted him to make his own choices about his own life! I trusted him because his choices were waaayyyy less reckless and gross than mine!

I went to try and talk him out of it (which isn’t terrible) and I made it clear I found everybody to be Subhuman Poors. And after he went to Pony Prep, I cheated on him and destroyed everything, while he had PTSD!

In all of this I was periodically weirdly flirtatious and inappropriate with Douchie, even tho I knew it was Jughead’s worst nightmare. And then I made it happen fully. And considered dumping him to be Douchie’s sidepiece then and there. And only when somebody talked sense to me did I flip back. And it turns out I had been lying all along. 

Oh and I was fine with telling everybody NOT Jughead...cause dumb.

I made everything about me, used him and exploited his love

Even my uber snotty “bestie” (whose BF I kept trying to steal and ruined shit for her, too), gave me her weird, unwanted “approval”...which was totally not her place. And she called us “soulmates” so she could fuck Douchie. 

Pussy does this shit in Douchie’s coma dream and told my stupid ass to snap out of it. Too late and I went on to really fuck the dog...and initially was all about me cheating on Jug, anyway.

Oh and both of them have always acted like Jug isn’t even human. So do with that what you will....

Granted it’s Douchie’s coma dreem, but turns out I really was the lying cuntwipe they all said I was, all along. Plus, probably being an actual prostitute and psycho killer has changed me a bit....

And my obsession is back because if can’t have anything but one thing, after having kept Jug at arm’s length and not GAF about him for 7 years, it so I can be half a power couple. FINALLY!

And if you’re saying Slizzy has regressed into a pathetic childhood fantasy as safe place? Yeah.....she has. And turns out she’s also an awful person

[ohmightydevviepuu]

our little life (rounded with a sleep) / chapter 12

our little life (rounded with a sleep) chapter twelve [12/12] AO3

--

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful detective. She had blonde hair, green eyes, no family, and she was good at finding people; in fact, she proclaimed this on her office door. “Swan and Humbert,” it said. “Private investigations, missing persons, and bail bonds.”

Only lately, she’s been thinking that maybe it should say “Emma Swan: Loner, Loser, Complicated wreck.”

Her partner’s been killed on a case after she made a deal with her landlord to find what had been taken from him. But when she tracks a possible perp to a bar on the outskirts of town, Emma will find out exactly how deep the rabbit hole goes.

--

this is it, guys.  THE END.

i need to take a moment and thank everyone who’s been here following along with me, especially @carpedzem​, @stahlop​, @snowbellewells​, @searchingwardrobes​, @kmomof4​.  i would have been lost without @thisonesatellite​, @profdanglaisstuff​ and @katie-dub​

to the fam in the @captainswanbigbang​ discord: truly, without you, none of this would have been happened.  i am so honored to have spent time with you while we all embarked on these journeys together:  @shireness-says​, @spartanguard​, @optomisticgirl​, @justanotherwannabeclassic​, @distant-rose​, @eirabach​, @winterbythesea​, @scientificapricot​, @phiralovesloki​, @thejollyroger-writer​.  thank you again to mods B, kait, phira and @shippingtheswann​ for running such a tight ship.  i was thrilled to be part of the crew.

this chapter is dedicated to robbie, a true hero with a happy ending.

--

cw: canonical character death rating: T/M (implied violence, language) word count:  ~5k AO3 chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter nine | chapter ten |  chapter eleven

--

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act IV, Scene 1

--

Emma exhaled a strangled gasp. She felt like she had been through a wringer--literally flattened and squeezed out until there was nothing left inside of her--and then a pulse of warmth and light had traveled through every part of her, like lightning pulling at her cells. The room around her seemed brighter and there was a quiet in Emma’s mind, peaceful and happy.

read the rest on AO3 (full chapter below the break)

chapter twelve

Emma exhaled a strangled gasp. She felt like she had been through a wringer--literally flattened and squeezed out until there was nothing left inside of her--and then a pulse of warmth and light had traveled through every part of her, like lightning pulling at her cells. The room around her seemed brighter and there was a quiet in Emma’s mind, peaceful and happy.

“What’s going on?” Regina asked. She sounded far away, her voice somewhere on the edge between suspicious and--what else--angry.

“That, Your Majesty,” Gold said, “was True Love’s Kiss.” He was all crocodile as he said it, his voice smooth and smug. When he smiled, it was not a pleasant expression.

“The curse,” Henry said. “Emma broke it.” He was smiling, and Emma grabbed him, squeezing him so tightly that he grunted, and there was a commotion all around them--

“Snow?”

“Charming?”

“EMMA!”

“She found us--”

“Did you ever doubt that she would?”

--and Emma found herself wrapped up in an embrace that squeezed her so tightly that she yelped in pain, being held by her mother and her father, her father’s hand cupped against the back of her head as he cradled her body in a group hug straight out of--well, a storybook.

“She saved everyone,” Henry said.

Mary Margaret’s--Snow White’s--hands cupped Emma’s cheeks. “I knew you would,” she said.

“Me?” Emma said. The peaceful feeling in her mind faded, just a bit. “I didn’t--”

“You did,” Snow insisted. David’s--Charming’s--hand was on her shoulder, rubbing the back of her neck. He couldn’t seem to move himself away from her, or from them.

“True Love’s Kiss only works,” he said, “if there is love and belief on both sides. And, Emma--I love you. We love you so much.”

“I just hope that now we can show you,” Snow said. She faltered for the first time as she said it, as though the weight of the better part of three decades was suddenly heavy on her mind.

“You believed,” Henry said. He was still smiling. “That’s what a hero does, Mom.”

“Henry,” Emma said, “I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom,” he said. Emma kissed him, hitting the crown of his head just like her mother had done--and she swore that, just for a second, she could feel that warmth pass through her again. The magic.

“Rumplestiltskin?” Lacey--Belle--dropped her bag and walked to him, nearly hurling herself at him instead of taking the last step, stopping herself and reaching instead for his arm. Her hand found his on top of his walking stick as she said, “I remember.”

Emma tried to extricate herself from her family--her family--waiting for his voice and the way it would say something stupid like “Hey, beautiful.”

Belle repeated herself. “I remember.” She said the syllables slowly, as if she was feeling each one in her brain and in her mouth before she spoke them. “I love you.”

Gold was very nearly in tears as he hugged her small frame. “Yes,” he said. His voice almost broke. “Yes, and I love you too.”

Where was Killian?

“Mom,” Henry said--

“What’s wrong with my brother?” Liam said.

“There will be time for that, Belle,” Gold said, and the way he articulated the words reminded Emma of that first meeting in her office--the way he sounded as though he was tasting them--his voice full of relish. It was creepy, and it meant nothing good. “There will be time for everything.”

The “later” was implied, but Belle heard it all the same, because she backed away, and that’s when Emma realized: Killian was still unconscious, comatose--cursed--on the cell mattress. Unmoving and even paler than he had been.

Emma went back into the cell and winced as her knee hit the floor, wanting to trace her finger along his jawline and settling for rubbing her thumb against his wrist.

Gold clicked his tongue and smiled, clearly unsurprised. “Why,” he drawled, “Hook is still under the effects of the sleeping curse. Naturally.”

Emma’s fingers reflexively curled around the dagger she still held as she reacted to his voice. Naturally. But there was no way, no fucking way this had been part of his grand plan--

Liam went at Gold, a fist already raised, and Emma grabbed his arm just as he tried to strike. She came up behind him and pulled him back. “Liam, no,” she said. “Not that I don’t applaud your initiative or anything, but--”

Liam glanced back at his brother. “He wouldn’t want this, would he?” He seemed to deflate slightly as he said it.

“No, kid,” Emma said. “He wouldn’t.”

Regina laughed. It was, truly, more of a snarl. “How do you feel about your brother now, Mr. Jones?”

And--dammit--Regina had read him correctly, because Liam flushed.

“I love him,” Liam said--insisted. “He has raised me as his brother with love and kindness for almost thirty years. He is my family, and I love him.”

“Perhaps,” Gold said. “But that anger and betrayal you still carry means that you cannot wake him. It must be her.” He lifted the tip of his cane two inches off the ground and used it to indicate Emma.

“Wait,” David--Charming--said. “Wait, is that Captain Hook?” His mouth opened to say more and--

“Charming,” Snow said, “now is not the time.”

Charming gave her a look that was fond but somehow grudging at the same time and Emma’s heart clenched at the affection there.

“I still have the bottle, Miss Swan,” Gold said. “I can offer you a deal.” The cane moved again, this time pointing at the dagger still in her hand.

He was calm, and he was composed.

But Emma could sense something beneath the layers. Liar. He was scrambling, Emma realized. His plan had failed, his grand big plan of several centuries was over, and there was still something he needed--something he wanted her to do, in exchange for the dagger.

Emma was not going to fall into his trap, or be ensnared in any more of his deals.

They would find another way.

They had to.

“No,” Emma said. “No, I’ve had enough of your bullshit, Gold, and don’t think for one minute that just because your magic curse grand plan didn’t work out I am not throwing your ass in jail for murdering Graham. You still killed someone, buddy, and in this world, that has consequences.”

Graham had died for this blade; Killian had crossed realms and time and still balked at using it. No way in hell was she giving it back to the Dark One.

Belle gasped. “You killed Graham?” She looked from Gold to Killian and back again. “This was all part of one of your plans? You knew this--” she gestured at Killian, dropping Gold’s arm “--was going to happen? Because Hook came for me in the asylum. He gave me a home. He was my friend.”

“He also tried to kill you,” Regina said. Gold growled.

“You locked me up and took away thirty years of my life,” Belle said, all five-foot-nothing of her with hackles up as she faced the queen. “He gave it back to me. I think--I think he changed.”

“Only I was given a gift: To wake up, for twenty-eight years, and not dread the day before it began" "...a life, and friends, and lovers, and none of it was real.”

“He did,” Emma said. She caught Belle’s gaze and held it as she said it again. “He did change, Belle. He is your friend.”

Belle’s expression looked suddenly very far away again, but not cursed; it was as if she was concentrating, searching through a mental catalogue of something until she found the answer.

“This is about the magic,” she said. She looked up at Gold. “Isn’t it? That’s what you meant when you said there would be time for everything later.”

Belle reached for Gold’s arm again. “Swear to me on your son’s life that this isn’t about the magic and I will believe you.”

Gold said nothing.

“Rumple,” Belle said, and she was pleading. “Swear to me. I will believe you. I still love you.”

Gold looked away.

Belle looked at Emma. “You said this was about Bae, and you weren’t wrong,” she said. “But in order to find Bae, he must need a tracking spell. And that means magic. That’s what he wants.”

“How would he bring magic to this world?” Snow White asked.

“There’s a lake,” she said. “In our land, we called it Lake Nostos. It has the power to restore--”

“What’s been lost,” David said. Charming. Whatever. “I’ve seen it. I’ve been there.”

“Assuming that everything in our land has a corollary here, there must be a well nearby that connects to the lake.”

“The wishing well,” Henry said. “It’s in the park just on the edge of Storybrooke.”

“That’s what he wants,” Belle said. “The potion must allow the waters of Lake Nostos to have power here. That’s how he planned to do it. Emma--you can’t let him. It’s wrong. And--”

“Hook wouldn’t want this,” Emma said. “I know. I won’t.”

She repeated to herself, almost like a mantra: they would find another way. They had to.

Emma stood beside her parents, her arms crossed over her chest, the dagger still in one hand.

David looked like he suddenly remembered something as he reached for his belt--the cuff clip he wore there. He handed the cuffs and the keys to Liam and said, “Cuff him.”

“Try it, dearie,” he said. “I’ve been imprisoned before.”

“There’s no magic here, Dark One,” David said. “And there won’t be. I think we’ll be able to hold you this time.”

“No deals,” Snow said firmly.

“Emma can do this,” Henry said.

“I--” Emma said.

“Emma,” Snow said. “We believe in you. So did Hook. That curse only works if you take it willingly. He wanted to save you, and to save Henry. He believed in you.” Her eyes were only on Emma, and on Killian. Her eyes with nothing but warmth and compassion and understanding and Emma had no idea what she was meant to do, or how she was meant to do it. “You know what you need to do, Emma.”

She didn’t. She fingered the ring around her neck and felt hopeless.

“I’m not okay with this,” her father grumbled, then grunted when her mother elbowed him.

“Mom,” Henry said in a loud stage whisper. “You have to kiss him. That’s how the curse works.”

Snow smothered a laugh.

“But--” Emma said. “He has--had--I’m not--”

My Milah. My dead lover. She knew I was motivated. Any port in a storm.

Emma stood motionless.

“Oh, dear,” Gold giggled. “Has the good captain infected you with his ghosts?”

Emma stiffened.

“Milah wouldn’t have wanted this. I would have done anything for her, but she wouldn’t have wanted this.” Think therefore on revenge, and cease to weep.

“He always did favor brunettes,” Gold said. He was taunting her, he wanted to make her doubt, and it should have worked--hell, five minutes ago, it would have worked; five days ago, it felt like, she hadn’t even met him yet, or Killian, and yet--

Emma closed her eyes and could feel it, the way his breath warmed her skin when they were close together, when he had been so close to her; she could feel it, the way it had been in his office, in Jefferson’s house--that moment between ‘what was’ and ‘what’s next’--and she wondered.

He had loved Milah. But--”It’s you. Don’t you know, Emma? It’s all for you”--and in her dream, it had been an inferno, the magic pushing everywhere in her body, the silver strands of light burning through her.

They’d known each other for five days.

But those moments still felt worth fighting for. She couldn’t lose him before she’d even had the chance to know him, or to know what it was that tied them together.

She already wasn’t the same person she had been before they’d met.

You should know better than anyone that Lost Ones recognize their own.

And she wondered.

“There’s hope, Swan. All you have to do is believe.”

What would it be like, to finally give in, to feel something instead of nothing?

“Just look at me, and believe.”

His lips were cold. Smooth, and cold, and Emma held her breath, waiting--

Waiting--

Come back to me, Killian.

And then she felt it, felt the moment he woke up even before he gasped.

(an inferno, burning everything in its wake as the energy rushed through her. It was raw and unfettered as it pushed every molecule in her body, electrifying her senses until she couldn’t feel anything but him)

“Swan,” he said, his fingers brushing against his mouth and his eyes wide open and so very fucking blue, “what did you do?”

Snow squeaked. Liam and Henry rushed for the cell door and Charming held them back.

But Emma wouldn’t know any of that until later.

She smiled. A real smile, the kind that lit up her face and her eyes and showed all of her teeth. “I’ve been wondering if I would like it,” she said.

His eyebrows went up, and he smiled back at her--a real smile, that softened his entire face. “So what’s the decision?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said, closing the infinitesimal distance between them, and there was the metal of his rings, cool as his finger traced the line of her cheekbone, and when his mouth opened and a sound escaped Emma wasn’t sure if it was him or her. She felt like she was being devoured, if the gentlest touch she’d ever felt in her life could eat her whole and make her crave it. It was everything--his fingers, the metal, his lips and tongue and the way he opened for her--

And it felt like magic.

Killian was breathing heavily, brushing his fingers against his mouth again, and she said: “It’s even better when you help.”

There were a thousand emotions flickering through his eyes, and Emma saw all of them: sorrow, remorse, understanding, desire, longing.

Love.

He was an open book.

Emma blinked. There was no way for her to look at him, to see him when he was like that, and pretend that she didn’t feel--all of it. Anything. Everything.

He smiled--a shy smile--and Emma realized that he saw all of those things in her, too. She leaned forward, feeling his forehead against hers when he met her halfway, his eyelashes fluttering across her cheek.

“What I wouldn’t give,” Regina said, “for another sleeping curse.” She sat on the cell mattress as if it was a throne. Her face was a mask of icy indifference.

Snow White stood in front of her, regarding her through the cell bars.

Emma tried to stand, but--

“Worry not, Swan,” Killian whispered, and she stayed with him, enjoying the weight of his hand on her arm.

“I agree with the pirate,” Charming said.

“Ah,” Gold sneered. “Twoo Wuv.”

“The curse is broken,” Charming said, ignoring him. “Neither of them can hurt us any more.”

There was a knock on the station door, a heavy object of some kind being battered against it.

“Open up,” Leroy’s voice called.

Snow walked to the door, slowly and with deliberation. “The curse is broken,” she agreed. She reached for the doorknob. “And now--we have a lot to figure out.”

“Together,” Killian muttered into her ear, and Emma nodded.

“Together,” she said, feeling the magic inside of her settle at the word; the inferno banked down to something warm and comforting and tied up between both of them, inextricable. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

--

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful detective. She had long, blonde hair that curled just so at the edges of her face with skin as fair as snow. Her eyes glinted green, like emeralds in the sunlight, and the fall of her lashes was thick and dark.

Her name was Emma Swan.

Sheriff Emma Swan stood up, remembering at the last minute to turn off her oversized CRT monitor before she hit the light switch. On her desk there was a picture of her son; it was hand-drawn, in pen and ink. There was a pair of boots on the shelf behind her. One of them was missing a shoelace.

“I’m heading out, Red,” she called.

“Mmmm?” Ruby murmured, not looking up from her makeup mirror as she fluffed her waist-length, red-streaked black curls until she was satisfied with their volume. “You coming by later? I think Ursula’s got something new she wanted to try with the music tonight.”

“Tempting,” Emma said, “but no.”

“Belle’s gonna be there,” Ruby said, her dark eyes glittering. “And Will.”

“Poor Victor,” Emma sighed.

“Who said he wasn’t invited?” Ruby asked. She smacked her lips and blew a kiss.

“Yeah,” Emma said. “That’s my cue. Besides, I gotta go home first.”

Emma was very, very good at her job, even though there was one mystery she couldn’t solve: how to mend a broken heart. She had once believed in love--in True Love--but now she wasn’t sure if it even existed. She had been given up by her parents, Snow White and Prince Charming, minutes after she was born, sent through a magical wardrobe so that she would have her best chance--so that some day, she would find them again. She would break a curse, and bring back the happy endings.

But Emma Swan didn’t know any of that. All she knew was that she grew up alone, moving from city to city with no one on her side, and no one who knew her.

The logistics were the easy part.

Well--the logistics were the part that was less hard, because magic, it turned out, was a very funny thing. It had no rules but its own, and the more questions Emma had, the more she had to shake her head and move on.

You really could handwave away anything in Storybrooke by the simple expedient of magic being involved.

Cursed neighborhood in a thriving city? Magic.

Mary Margaret Blanhard as the only living heir of Regina Mills? Magic.

“Not really,” Mary Maragaret--Snow White--had said. “She is, after all, my stepmother.”

More surprising was the fact that Henry Mills turned up as the legal heir to Robert Gold.

“How,” Emma wanted to know, “did the curse know that Henry was his grandson?’

And the Blue Fairy just leveled a glare at Emma, a superior air about her--a Mother Superior air--and said, as if it should have been obvious, “Magic.” She still wore her religious habit, the one Emma had noticed at Graham’s funeral, and it clung to her curves in a way that suggested “magic” had a sick sense of humor.

She didn’t know it, sent away from her family to live in a land without magic, but Princess Emma was going to grow up to be the savior.

There was no justice system in the city equipped to handle the murder committed by Robert Gold or the Dark Curse committed by Regina Mills. Storybrooke was its own jurisdiction; a mysteriously unincorporated neighborhood with no relevant law enforcement agency except a small, understaffed sheriff’s department. Then again, the former residents of the Enchanted Forest--two words Emma still struggled to say with a straight face--

“If it helps,” Killian had said with a wry grin, “we always called it ‘Misthaven’ on our navigational charts.”

Of Misthaven, then, were perfectly prepared to administer mob justice against the two people most responsible for their current predicament. Turns out, a ride with a Dark Curse was a one-way trip.

“When someone casts the curse, it’s a sacrifice of one world for another,” Blue said. “That’s simply how the magic works.”

Of course.

Nurse Ratched was perfectly happy to keep them in her asylum for a continuation of her current pay--plus dental. Emma agreed immediately. Anything to make the goddamn dwarves subside and leave her the hell alone.

Snow White looked on serenely. Prince Charming regarded her with pride.

Emma Swan was no stranger to tragedy, but she eventually made her way to Storybrooke, and found herself a home there. She had a home, and friends, and a job that she loved, until, on her twenty-eighth birthday, the curse struck her. It was a day like any other: she got up, went to her office, took on a new case.

But then her best friend--her partner--was murdered.

It wasn’t like the salty, half-assed dinners she’d had in so many foster homes--instant soup, just add water.

“Instant family--just add magic!”

It wasn’t easy. (That’s not how the magic worked.)

But heroes, Emma had learned, didn’t do what was easy. They did what was right.

Emma knew that she had no choice but to pursue justice for her friend, and to punish the person who had committed the crime. But when Emma tracked down a possible lead to a bar on the outskirts of town, she didn’t find a suspect. She found an ally.

And she found out how deep the rabbit hole really went.

“Wait,” Emma said to her mother one night at dinner. “Let me get this straight: you’re the head of the Mills Organization.”

Family dinner.

“You’re a teacher,” Emma said. “And you’re just going to--”

“She was raised to be a queen,” David--Prince Charming--reminded her with a smile, and Emma scowled. She had really, really wanted to hit him in that moment.

It must have shown on her face, because her father laughed. “God,” he said, “you’re so much like her.” He said it with wonder and pride and a lot of other emotions Emma was still learning how to deal with.

The emotions were the hard part.

Well--the emotions were the part that was less easy, because Emma.

Family dinners and Killian sitting next to her, squeezing her knee under the table to let her know that he was there.

“So,” Emma said, “how rich are we, then? Like, King Midas rich?”

Snow looked at Charming.

Charming looked at Snow.

Something passed between them.

“It’s kind of a funny story,” David said.

The night that Emma Swan met Killian Jones, she didn’t know his real name, or who he was, or where he was from.

She didn’t know how much she didn’t know, or how all of it would change her life. All she knew was that her partner was killed on a case after she made a deal with her landlord to find what had been taken from him.

All she knew was that something inside of her recognized him, like she had known him in another time and place; as if she had known him from her dreams. From her future.

Nights were the hardest, the part where the logistics and the emotions all bound up in each other; the part where she wanted, needed, desired Killian, to have him with her and to be with him. It was overwhelming, but the only part of it that terrified Emma was the part where it didn’t terrify her at all.

That first night--that first time--it was hot and raw and unchecked, all of those feelings, all of those emotions, that Emma had been denying herself coming up to the surface. She could feel it in her breathing, in her heartbeat, in the way that he laid hands on her and in the way the magic flowed through her, and it shouldn’t have been possible.

That’s not how the magic was supposed to work.

He was reverent and it left her trembling. It was too soon, too fast, too much.

But she slept, sated and spent in the arms of her True Love, and she dreamed.

She walked along the rocky shoreline, tilting her head toward the sky and feeling the sunlight on her face, and she looked for him. The sky was a perfect shade of blue and the air was crisp and clean and it was a perfect quiet moment; there was no sign of him.

Emma closed her eyes and took a breath, counting three before exhaling, and she was in Granny’s. It was empty: a glittering jukebox lit up in the corner, the wall clock set at 8:16.

Another breath and another three count and Emma opened her eyes, feeling something inside of her. A point of warmth that was getting warmer and the asylum laid out in front of her. The blind janitor watched her as he mopped the floor.

“That’s not how the magic works.” Regina’s voice, disembodied and hollow, drifted down the corridor. “Magic here is...unpredictable.”

“You know this isn’t right, Swan.” The whisper felt like it came out of the warmth, the warm spot that was still getting warmer. “Trust your gut. It will tell you what to do.”

The sheriff’s office looked like a dungeon, the bars made of fire, and Emma exhaled; Killian sat in the corner. She called his name.

“Swan,” he said, gasping, his fingers going straight to his mouth, “what did you do?” He didn’t look at her. “Why did you do it? Why did you not take the deal for the potion?”

The fire began to spread. He didn’t see her--he couldn’t see her.

“Killian,” Emma said, “come back to me, Killian--”

Emma turned, concentrating on the warmth inside of her, and pulled.

She held him against her, their backs toward the water as a wave crashed and bubbled up along the rocky shoreline.

He blinked. “Emma,” he said. His hand came up toward her face, and she leaned toward him. Their foreheads touched and his fingers were in her hair and he said her name again. “Emma,” he breathed. “What did you do?”

“I kissed you, Killian,” Emma said. “I kissed you, because you’re my happy ending.”

Emma closed her eyes. One, two, three--

And woke, Killian sweating and shivering in her arms.

Killian Jones was a complicated man. He had wandered, and traveled, and suffered many hardships. He had been a slave, and a naval lieutenant. He had been a brother and a pirate and, some would say, a villain. He had given himself to vengeance and turned himself toward the darkness after his first love was murdered. He had willingly subjected himself to the Evil Queen’s plan, to the Dark Curse, in the hope that he might finally see his vengeance delivered.

For the first time in her life, Emma asked her mother for advice.

She’d always wondered what it would be like, to ask her mom about clothes or makeup or boys or--life. It never occurred to her that she’d need to ask about a sleeping curse.

“What was it like for you,” Emma said, “after dad woke you? From the--from the thing?”

“Oh, Emma,” Snow said. There was so much understanding, so much sympathy, so much empathy in the single word. It shocked Emma how much her mother immediately understood, and how much of a comfort that was. “Is he having the nightmares?”

Killian Jones--Captain Hook--had spent many years in Neverland, the home of the Lost Ones, and still had not realized that he, himself, had been Lost. Until he met Emma Swan, and found himself again.

They found themselves in each other.

It wasn’t easy.

She had a kid who believed everything was going to be okay. He had a brother with a lot of justifiable anger issues.

Emma had literally never in her life lived under the same roof as her parents.

“You never even got to spend a single night in the nursery,” her father said, and Emma remembered the page in the storybook, of Prince Charming fighting off a horde of Black Knights and nearly dying in the process, all while protecting the daughter in his arms.

“There were unicorns on the mobile over your crib,” her mother said, and Emma could picture it, the colors and the crib and the toys, the hopes and the dreams manifest in a single room.

Emma had never gotten to spend the night with her kid, either.

The loft, Mary Margaret’s loft, was barely big enough for two. It had not been designed for six.

Fuck logistics.

But the nights were the hardest.

Because when Emma and Killian were apart, that’s when he was afraid to close his eyes.

That’s when the nightmares were the worst.

The night they met, Killian told Emma about the Dark Curse, and her parents, and about a creature known as the Dark One, who had killed both his first love and Emma’s partner. The Dark One had lived for centuries, immortal, his powers seemingly limitless. But here, in Emma’s home, in Storybrooke and the Land Without Magic, the Dark One had no power. He only had plans. It was his curse that had brought Storybrooke into existence, and forced Emma from her parents.

It was his curse that, unbeknownst to him, would bring the savior and the pirate together.

It wasn’t the same, every night--every time.

But Killian had so many regrets; when he slept, it was as if his body became, again, that prison--until she found him.

She always found him. She found him, and pulled with her magic, and they would stare at the ocean.

Peaceful, quiet moments. Together.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he always said.

“Killian,” she always said. “You’re one of the strongest people I know. You’re a survivor.”

“The only one who’s ever saved me is you, Swan,” he said.

It’s you, Emma. It’s all for you.

“Any port in a storm,” she said.

“That’s just it, love,” he said. “I’m not in the storm, not any more. Not since I met you.”

And when they were together, she could feel it, the way that her magic would settle around them.

No one knew why--that wasn’t how the magic was supposed to work.

Twoo Wuv, Emma thought, and held him tighter.

The nights were the hardest, with the emotions. And the logistics. And the fact that there was no goddamn space in the loft--no doors, even. Four adults--two couples--and two adolescent boys, or near enough, and Emma learned very quickly that when her mother sent her on a grocery run in the middle of the afternoon to take her time and knock very loudly before she used her key.

Not that Emma didn’t find her own ways--The Rabbit Hole had doors that locked and a bedroom and an office with a large desk and that one time up against the hallway wall, in between the kitchen and the restrooms--Killian did, after all, still work most nights. But they always came home, after. They always spent the nights together, all under one roof. It was a family rule.

And then one night, as Emma kicked off her boots, as Killian helped her off with her coat, the door barely shut behind them, there was Snow White sitting at the table with cocoa and cinnamon and Scotch and rum. “We should talk,” Snow said.

“Pleasant conversation then, innit?” Killian muttered in her ear.

Henry was already using his cinnamon stick in lieu of a spoon but Liam looked suspicious. He was quiet and reserved and holding himself back, like he was afraid everything would shatter around him. He had seen everything he thought he’d known change twice in the space of mere days, but Emma was determined to do what she could to erase the haunted lost look from his eyes in the way that it never had been in hers, or in his brother’s.

“Everything okay, Mom?” Emma said, sitting down.

“Your father and I--” Snow paused and smiled. For an instant, her parents were the only two people in the universe.

Ruby had only fifteen minutes ago been throwing French fries at her in an attempt to divert Emma’s attention from Killian--but, gross. Emma didn’t need to see her parents like that.

“We think it’s time to make a few changes,” her father said.

Emma stiffened. It was an instinct, and the habits of a lifetime were not going to be broken by a few weeks of relative peace, but--her breathing hitched and her heart rate sped up and then she felt Killian’s hand on her knee, squeezing gently.

“Like what?” Henry asked, slurping his whipped cream. Henry had nothing but glee at his suddenly expanded family. It would shock her ten-year-old son to know that in that respect, Emma wanted nothing more than to be like him, her amazing, empathetic, achingly open kid who wanted all of them to have their happy endings.

One roof, three floors; the Mills Organization, and therefore Mary Margaret Blanchard, owned the building and all three apartments tucked into it.

“Okay,” Emma said. “But seriously, how rich are we? You sure it’s not, like, Midas rich?”

Her father laughed. “I’ll leave that to Kathryn,” he said.

“Kathryn really did go to Boston, though,” Emma said. “So that’s relevant how, exactly?”

“She was Princess Abigail in our world,” David said. “Abigail, daughter of Midas.”

Killian’s eyes lit up and his eyebrow went up and the corner of his mouth went up and Emma knew it was going to be trouble before he uttered a single word. “And why,” he said, “would you want to give up an opportunity like that?”

Snow let out an indignant sputter as she choked on her cocoa, but Charming laughed again.

“You of all people know why,” he said.

Killian’s arm snaked around Emma’s waist and he pulled them closer together. “Aye,” he said. “That I do.”

It wasn’t easy. It was too soon, too fast, too much.

But they found a way; that’s what this family did.

Killian wasn’t someone who trusted easily. Emma wasn’t someone who trusted at all. But they quickly realized that together was the best way to get through, to get justice for Emma’s friend and partner--and to break the curse. When Emma’s life was threatened by the evil Queen of Hearts, it was Killian who was able to defend her. And when Killian put himself in the way of a sleeping curse to protect Emma’s family, Emma was able to awaken him.

It was True Love’s Kiss, and it sent a pulse of magic through Storybrooke. Emma realized that her feelings gave her strength. She broke the Dark Curse. She found her family. She brought back the happy endings.

Including for Killian Jones.

Once upon a time, after a long day at her new job with her best friend, Emma Swan came home to the apartment she shared with her family. She pulled off her boots, stepping over them into the apartment, and hung her red leather jacket on the hook by the door.

Killian Jones--Captain freaking Hook--was sprawled out on the couch, his hand over his eyes. In his lap was a black-and-white speckled composition notebook; there was no sign of the work crew that had left a small pile of equipment in what was slowly becoming her--their--kitchen.

In the apartment she shared with her family--the second-floor apartment. The one that was currently being fixed up with extra bedrooms and talk of breaking through the floor to the flat below, to make a duplex.

“‘Ello, love,” Killian called softly, and Emma smiled.

She did that a lot more often now--the real kind, that made her eyes light up and showed all of her teeth--and her smile didn’t fade as she stepped into the living room and took the notebook out of his lap.

“He told you the story again,” Emma said, gesturing at the sleeping form curled up in the oversized chair and the goddamn domesticity of it--

“Aye,” Killian nodded, scrubbing his hand down his face as he sat up, and she still wasn’t used to it, what happened with his face when he got all soft like that talking about her kid. “Your boy spent the entire day working on it with Belle, and he was quite insistent. Seems to think hearing it will--”

“He worries,” Emma said. The lack of walls when sleeping upstairs left no room for secrets, and Henry did worry. He’d come up with the idea, to write down their story like a fairy tale, about Emma and Killian and Liam and their family and it made Emma’s heart hurt, sometimes, when she thought about all that Henry had brought into her life. “He just wants to help.” She paused, then: “Does it? Help?”

Emma Swan hadn’t been looking for someone who would give his heart to the world, or some True Love riding to her rescue. The only one who saved her was her. But she had always hoped that somewhere in the universe, there might be someone who would keep her warm when she was cold, feed her when she was hungry, and maybe--on occasion--take her dancing.

No one was more surprised than Emma when she found her True Love in the Storybrooke Sheriff’s station, when she kissed Killian Jones and saved him from eternal sleep.

No one was more surprised when she found her family that night.

“Hearing a story where I’m not the villain? Yeah,” he said. “It helps.”

“You’re more than that,” Emma protested. “You’ve got a mark in the hero column, at least.”

“I’m not so sure about that, love,” he said. “I don’t believe I ever--to use your phrase--rode to the rescue, or gave my heart to the world.” Killian’s words were teasing, but his eyes were serious.

“You gave your heart,” Emma said. “You gave it to me.”

“I did,” he said. “But you have given me use for it: a double heart for my single one.”

Emma grinned. She could always tell when he was quoting something.

“Shakespeare?” she asked.

“Aye.”  He smirked.  "I'm getting a mite predictable, then?"

"Maybe you should try something new, darling," Emma said, her voice a terrible imitation of his accent, and he laughed and stood up and pulled the notebook from her hands, placing it with some care on the couch cushion.  

Killian's voice was low and sleepy as he began to speak.

"'i fear / no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want / no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) / and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant / and whatever a sun will always sing is you'," he said.  He pulled her until she was flush against him.  His finger traced the chain around her neck.

'"and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart,'" he said. 'i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)'."  He kissed her, starting at her forehead, trailing down to her mouth, and whispered against her lips.

“Dance with me, Swan,” he said.

And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

--

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act IV, Scene 1

-30-

[megalony]

Black heart- Part 1

This is a new murderer! Ben Hardy series I am going to be working on since @rogersatop kindly requested for this. I hope you all like it.

Taglist: @lunaticspoem @butlegendsneverdie @langdonzvoid @jennyggggrrr @rogmeddows @radiob-l-a-hblah @rogertaylorsbitontheside @chlobo6 @rogertaylors-lipgloss @sj-thefan @omgitsearly @luckytrashgooprebel @scarsout @deaky-with-a-c @killer-queen-ofrhye @bluutac @vousmemanqueez @jonesyaddiction @rogahs-drowse @milanosaurus @httpfandxms

Summary: (Y/n) knows being with Ben isn’t the best idea but she loves him and they have a daughter together. But when Ben takes things too far, (Y/n) tries to take their daughter and leave... but Ben isn’t giving them up so easily.

Murderer Ben masterlist

Series masterlist

Enjoy.

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(Y/n)'s eyes found themselves locked onto Ben's frame as she made her way into the living room where he was sitting. He actually looked relaxed which was not something (Y/n) was used to when seeing her boyfriend. He was normally tense or lost in thought with all the plans and ideas rattling around in his head.

She was so used to seeing every muscle on his body tight and tense, seeing him slouched down in the black leather chair next to the window was a new sight to behold.

Ben had his head tipped back against the chair as he seemed to be staring at the high ceiling. There was an almost burnt out cigarette clasped between his fingers that was rhythmically brought to and from his dark pink lips like a record on repeat. The slow swirls of smoke that left his nose and lips circled around his head before fading before reaching the ceiling and it seemed to mesmerise him. He had his arms resting on the arms of the chair and his knees bent high with his legs spread which wasn't usually how he sat.

When his emerald green eyes found her frame, Ben smiled around the bud of the cigarette and waved with his free hand to motion for her to come and sit with him. He had been rather busy the past few days and when he was busy or had a big job on he never seemed to sit down and relax even for five minutes. He was oddly calm right now.

He tipped his head back to blow the smoke up to the ceiling before stubbing out what was left of the cigarette into the ashtray resting on the table at his side next to the window.

He liked sitting in this chair which he didn't do very often, it gave him a perfect view out of the window of the apartment and he could just look out at rooftops and buildings and street lights. He especially loved it on days like today when it was pouring with rain and he could watch the droplets running down the windowpanes. It was as if they were desperate to get away from something and were trickling down the window to find their escape. But they never found it, some of the drops simply stopped halfway down, others collided with other droplets and some were simply smeared on the glass.

The raindrops reminded Ben of his victims.

Running for an escape that they both knew was never going to come. Ben was good at his job which was unfortunate for the people he killed. He never let any of his victims run free, he didn't have enough care in his black heart to want to do that. He liked watching them suffer.

That was one of the reasons (Y/n) had always been wary when she was around Ben. He had a heart that was as black as coal and hardly seemed to beat at all and it made her wonder how he could claim to love her as much as he did. But even Ben didn't know how or why he seemed to love (Y/n) when his job was literally to kill people without mercy. He didn't understand why he felt so cold and uncaring towards most people and how he could find joy in taking the lives of others, yet he loved (Y/n). He didn't know how she had worked her way into his heart but she had done it and he wasn't about to let her go.

Ben's black heart made (Y/n) even more confused and afraid when she told him she was pregnant. She didn't know if Ben would want or even be able to love a child but the moment she told him he changed around her.

He was known for the way he was uncaring and ruthless, the people who worked for him were all petrified of him because he didn't have a problem with hurting those who worked for him if they stepped out of line. But when (Y/n) told him about the baby it was as if she didn't know him anymore- in the best way possible.

His touches changed, he wasn't playful or firm or even the slightest bit aggressive when touching her like normal. He normally had such a firm hold when he hugged her or just when he touched her in any way, but now he was careful and gentle and delicate. It was as if she was made of fragile glass that Ben didn't want to break or fracture at any cost. He was more intimate now too, he always liked to have an arm around her or a hand resting on her body somewhere like he was making sure she was okay and was protecting her.

Ben opened his arms when (Y/n) approached him, moving his hand to motion for her to sit between his legs.

"You okay?" He asked quietly when (Y/n) sat down, leaning her back against his chest as he wrapped his arms loosely around her frame. Resting his hand on her stomach as he perched his chin on her shoulder, diverting his eyes from the window to (Y/n).

"Yeah... you don't normally sit here." (Y/n) commented, unsure what she was asking or how she was meant to ask. There was clearly either something on Ben's mind or something was different for him to just sit in silence and have a smoke like this. It was nice, but it was just unexpected and (Y/n) didn't know if that was a good thing or not.

"Hmm, just thinking. I have some business to sort out tonight, you're not heading out anywhere, right?"

(Y/n) shook her head before leaning her cheek against his chest and closing her eyes. Slowly turning so her side was leaning against Ben as she curled her legs up as much as she could with the baby bump being in the way. She didn't have anywhere to go and Ben knew she didn't tend to go out at night like he did. He threatened and killed people for a living and that was best done in the dark where there were fewer witnesses and the world was turning to sleep. A lot of things went a miss in the dark.

(Y/n) knew he was only asking because he normally assigned one of his men to watch her if she went out. To either follow behind her or walk around with her to make sure she was safe because his job wasn't the easiest and it came with a lot of enemies. He couldn't have those enemies going after (Y/n), especially now she was pregnant.

Ben seemed to be a little more relaxed around (Y/n) now that she was pregnant. There had been a few times in their relationship where he could get demanding, he would tell her she couldn't go out or she couldn't or had to do something but it was because Ben was always in control and he seemed to think it should be the same in their relationship. He had also taken to using threats to (Y/n), never the kind of ones he would threaten his workers or his enemies with, but little things to try and keep the control and the dominance.

But all that stopped when he knew about the baby.

"She's moving again." (Y/n) mumbled, taking Ben's hand in her own to move it to press against the base of her stomach so she could feel their girl kicking. She seemed relentless at kicking to the point it was getting annoying.

Ben leaned his head down and pressed his lips to the top of (Y/n)'s head as he proceeded to close his own eyes, content washing over them both.

"She'll be here soon."

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"Why the fuck did you do it?!" Ben shouted the words at a volume that made the walls of the apartment shake as his eyes turned to black holes that were trying to pull (Y/n) in. He snapped his jaw like a crocodile trying to attack its prey and right now (Y/n) knew it was working.

No matter how much she wanted to stand up to Ben, she was always going to back down. Ben was taller than she was, he was muscular and he was brutal. He had the advantage of being the boxer, being the one who was able to hurt her and he always used his personality and his abilities to his advantage. Threats were never enough for him to suppress (Y/n) so Ben went to other measures to keep her in the lines he had drawn around her.

"You'll wake Rory-" (Y/n) wasn't trying to get out of the conversation because she knew that wasn't an option here but she didn't want him to wake their daughter up when Rory had only just gone to sleep. She was two weeks old, she didn't need to listen to Ben shouting and scaring her.

“Answer the damn question." Ben lowered his voice but his tone darkened. It was a warning to let (Y/n) know that she was walking on thin ice and at any moment, that ice was going to give way beneath her.

"I wasn't going to lie, Ben. I'm not getting roped into your mess, we have Rory to think of now and if you keep doing this shit I'm staying out of it." (Y/n) didn't know where her sudden burst of adrenaline was coming from but she knew it wasn't going to last much longer.

Ben had a heart of coal and (Y/n) knew she couldn't change that. She couldn't stop Ben from being the way he was or doing what he did and she didn't want to. But she wasn't going to get involved because they had Rory now and she needed to be cared for. If Ben continued to murder people or beat them to a pulp then he could by all means but (Y/n) wasn't going to lie for him and get dragged into his mess because the police had tried to get to her before in order to get to Ben. She wasn't getting involved because she had to keep Rory safe and look after her.

A gasp escaped (Y/n)'s lips when Ben's hand fisted in her hair, his hand yanking on the strands to snap her head back before he pulled her closer to him. The look in his eyes was like nothing (Y/n) had ever seen before, it was as if all the dark matter swarming through his body was now pooling in his eyes and showing her just how ruthless he was prepared to be around her.

(Y/n) knew that Ben would change when he was around her now that she had Rory. She knew he was going to go back to being slightly aggressive or firm when he was around her or touching her and she didn't mind because he was so gentle and caring with Rory because he loved her more than he ever thought he would.

But with (Y/n) not being pregnant anymore, Ben wasn't likely to go as easy on her. He didn't touch a hair on her head when she was pregnant but now he was going to let his dark side show because he could. There wasn't anything holding him back anymore.

"Not only did you admit that I wasn't home that night, you landed me in the shit by telling them I knew him. They're gonna do everything they can to pin this one to me and you haven't helped matters." Ben sneered the words close to her face before he roughly threw her to the side before letting go of her hair when she fought against him.

When the police came to question (Y/n) they asked if Ben was with her that night and she said he wasn't because there was no way she was lying. If she gave Ben an alibi and it turns out that they had evidence that he was somewhere else, she was breaking the law by providing a false alibi. (Y/n) didn't want to be involved so she told them the truth and Ben could easily get an alibi from one of his men so it didn't matter what she said. But when they asked about the man who Ben had killed (Y/n) admitted that Ben knew him and that went against Ben telling them he didn't know the victim.

"It's already pinned to you Ben, you killed him!"

He was acting like he hadn't done this but now they were going to try and stitch him up for this crime when Ben was the murderer. They knew it was him and so did he but he was trying to get away with it and they all knew he would. Ben was good like that, he could slip through their fingers and gain hundreds of alibis in one evening. He could bribe a judge, frighten the jury of his case, clean up the evidence so there was no trace of him at the crime scene. Ben was amazing at the wrong kind of things and every time he killed someone or did something wrong, he got away with it.

"Do you want me to go down for this?" Ben spoke very slowly and clearly as he gave (Y/n) a certain look that made her knees shake with fear.

She didn't want Ben to go to prison. She loved him but she couldn't always lie for him like he wanted. He was Rory's father, she needed Ben around and she knew he loved her and Rory so she would never want him to go to prison but his dark side was something (Y/n) was finding it harder and harder to put up with and Ben didn't make it easy.

"You know I don't-" (Y/n) snapped her eyes closed as a squeak passed through her lips when Ben grabbed her jaw very tightly to the point she thought he was going to crush the bone between his hand. He tilted her head so she was looking up at him as she encased her arms to her chest to try and stop her body from trembling.

"So why go against me like this?" Ben shrugged his shoulders as he didn't know why she would go against him.

(Y/n) could see in his eyes that Ben was finding it hard to hold back right now. He was getting very angry very quickly and this didn't normally happen with (Y/n) but she had gone against him. He had told her he needed her to give him an alibi and he told her it would be safe and everything would be fine but she didn't. She even admitted he knew the victim and she knew that would land him in the deep end but she did it anyway. It was as if she wanted Ben to pay for something or that she wanted him put in prison and he wouldn't accept that.

"Payback." (Y/n) whispered when she managed to open her eyes, surprised when Ben let go of her jaw. He ticked his head to the side as he looked like he was snarling at her.

"What?"

"You treat me like you own me, you tell me what I can and can't do and you expect me to follow your rules like everyone else. If you love me you shouldn't put barriers around me like this, I've never threatened you or pushed you or tried to take control with you so you shouldn't with me. I told them because I knew either way you wouldn't go down for this, you always get away with what you do."

(Y/n) spoke quickly to the point Ben almost didn't catch all that she said but it was clear she was speaking quickly so she didn't lose the courage to say what she felt she had to. It was Ben's darker side that caused him to put barriers around her and want that sense of dominance over her that wasn't healthy in a relationship. (Y/n) thought that if she made things a little bit harder for Ben he would realise what he was doing to her. She knew he would get away with this just like he got away with everything else so she wasn't really endangering him.

She was just showing Ben how it felt to have someone have more control over him like he did with her.

"I've always been easier on you than anyone else and you know it... but now," Ben tutted as he shook his head very slowly in such a condescending way that (Y/n) wanted to run away. "You're gonna get punished for this."

Ben had never punished her before.

(Y/n) had never done anything that would make him punish her and she knew he was right. He had always been sweeter and kinder and easier around her, his rules were relaxed when it came to (Y/n). But now he wanted to punish her to show her that he was in control and she had to submit to him and his rules and his ways. She couldn't step out of the lines he drew around her and think that he would just let her get away with it. Having Rory didn't change things, Rory only meant that Ben had one person he would never dare hurt and that was his daughter, not (Y/n).

(Y/n) didn't have anywhere to run. The moment she spun around, Ben simply knocked her to the floor before he pinned her down so she had no form of escape. He was stronger than she was and he knew exactly what he was going to do, there was no way that (Y/n) could escape unless she could suddenly beat Ben in a fistfight within the next few minutes.

"B-Ben don't do this." (Y/n) shook her head as she tried to hit him off but he simply laughed. His tone was so sinister and uncaring that (Y/n) wondered if he felt any love or compassion towards her at all or if his heart wasn't capable of that anymore.

"Why not? You deserve it."

Those words felt like Ben had taken a knife to (Y/n)'s heart as if it didn't mean anything to him. He had no emotion in his voice but his eyes said it all. He didn't care. No matter how much he knew he loved her and how much he knew he shouldn't hurt the one person he loved, Ben was Ben. He was dark, calculated and brutal, he wasn't going to let love get in the way of the dark thoughts circling through his head.

"Ben stop!"

Her cries fell upon deaf ears, and for the first time, (Y/n) was afraid of the man hovering over her.

[hollenka99]

The One Where More People Die

Summary: Marvin confronts Anti and learns something he wishes he hadn’t.

Warnings: Mentions of death, murder and manipulation

Marvin is apprehensive when he approaches the door. He honestly shouldn't be involving his brother in his superhero issues. Still, he was hopeful Sean would talk sense into him. The meeting proceeds as usual with coffee and chatter on the sofa. Marvin takes advantage of a natural lull in conversation.

"If I kill Anti, will you forgive me?"

He has never seen such a double take of this magnitude. "Marv, that's- fuck. You know I've always got your back as your brother but holy shit. You can't just dump that question on me."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I just... I've been fighting this guy for years and he won't stop. Desperate times, desperate measures, you know?"

Sean places both his hands on Marvin's shoulders. "Listen to me, you are being super irrational right now. I get that you are extremely done with him, I do. But can you even hear yourself at the moment? Please tell me you can."

"One guy to s-"

"Oh no, we are not going there. Don't you dare start bringing these morality thought experiments into the conversation. This isn't some hypothetical situation, Marvin. This is real life. You are talking about killing an actual person. An extremely shitty person but still. I obviously can't speak from experience but I don't have to when I say it will fuck you up for a very long time. I am begging you, don't get your hands dirty. Hang on."

Sean abruptly heads to a mirror to scrutinise himself. When he goes to face his brother, he looks like a bootleg version of Anti. The hair's not long enough or the right shade of green. Nor is his skin as pallid as the true killer's. Also, Anti's ears seemed to be slightly pointed at the top, which Sean is probably not aware of. Still, for someone who has never seen Anti in person before, it's a decent attempt.

"Find a way to arrest me and get me to rot in jail. After all I've done, don't you think I deserve to?"

Marvin has stopped looking at his brother. Instead, he is pressing his face into his raised knees at the corner. "Please don't change into him. Come on, pretending to be him is a shitty thing to do."

"Yeah, no, you're... you're right." He returns to the sofa as himself before swinging an arm around Marvin's shoulder to pull him in. This would have to suffice as a conclusion to the subject for now.

----

Jackie is one of the first to witness Marvin's ecstasy when he is able to prevent one of Anti's attacks. It had been a chance encounter while he had been patrolling in the park. Anti's mistake was shifting prematurely. All it took was a small distraction to allow the potential kidnapping victim a chance to escape. Cat hadn't seen where the guy had run off to but at least he was safe. The only bad outcome was Anti disappearing from sight as well. Someone's life had been saved, Jackie encouraged him to focus on that.

Jackie decides to surprise him with cupcakes for when he comes home from a shift. The gesture goes down well. Marvin brings up his recent good deed again as they sample the baked goods. Jackie is really glad to see his friend in a better mood. He's seemed so stressed lately. Marvin won't confirm it but he can tell it's linked to his work as the Magnificent Cat.

Joel drops by to hang out with his Irish friends later on in the week. He certainly does his best to act as he does normally but it is clear something's on his mind. When Jackie temporarily walks outside the building for a smoke, he is surprised to see his friend follow him. They make small talk for a couple minutes before Jackie delicately questions whether Joel was okay. He reveals there'd been a death in the family, his grandfather. And no, seriously, there's no need to apologise out of sympathy. Joel rambles a little about the man before voicing an odd request. He asks about Jackie's father. Jackie doesn't understand how that will help things but there was no harm in humouring his grieving friend so fuck it. He's slightly taken aback by the fact this causes fresh tears to appear. It gets mentally brushed off as this being a highly emotional time for Joel.

Marvin interrupts the conversation when he calls down from the balcony for them to return already.

"I feel sorry for him. At least I knew this was coming for a while. Shit's going to hit the fan hard for him soon and he has no idea."

Joel doesn't elaborate. Jackie isn't sure he wants him to.

---

Jameson had better things to do on a Tuesday night than deal with his tormenter. Yet here the asshole was, dressed in skinny jeans and a dark t-shirt, leaning against the doorframe. Under different circumstances, perhaps the glowing red light that leaked into the hallway would have been pretty to notice. It's far from it when Jameson's swaying to music with his daughter in his arms gets rudely interrupted.

"Cool, huh? I think our meetings needed a bit of jazzing up. Where's Laura, by the way?"

"None of your concern." The radio transmits.

"Oh, we're doing this via radio?"

"I am holding a baby and I don't trust you to behave long enough for me to put her down. So yes, as much as I hate it, I am using a radio."

"Right. Well, anyway, the reason I'm here is because-"

"I am not your reset button. Fix your problems on your own."

"So you'll let a woman stay dead, knowing full well you could have saved her life?"

"I am not the one who killed her."

Anti does not appear to be impressed with this response. Arms still crossed, he walks in Jameson's direction. As he passes, clearly on the way to the front door, he delivers a side eye to the performer.

"You know the cool thing about having the gene? There's always something you can refine, explore or expand upon when it comes to your abilities. I suggest you keep that in mind."

Despite Anti's absence, Jameson doesn't feel like having fun this evening anymore.

---

Anti clearly wasn't too pleased about something. The news claims it doesn't know who is responsible for bodies showing up with evident trauma to the skull. Honestly, who else could it be? If Marvin's mind wasn't so preoccupied with recent developments, he may have noticed how suspicious it was to receive correspondence from his enemy shortly after venting to Sean about the new murders.

The note delivered personally by the sender to the apartment reads:

Alright Cat, town centre at 3 tomorrow?

Oh definitely. Marvin wouldn't miss this opportunity to end things once and for all if he tried.

Anti was a trickster, he already knew that. If there was somebody he could shift into, he would. And yet Cat was still momentarily shocked to find Jameson waiting for him. It's not him though. He can't exactly tell how he instantly knows but he does. The real Jameson is likely at home right now.

"Alright Anti, what are you trying to prove? You've already made it very clear you've done your research into my personal life. Why my cousin?"

The murderer begins speaking through his hands. "I'm sorry for not telling you sooner."

"No. Jameson can't speak and definitely wouldn't use his sound manipulation to pretend he could. You've been speaking the whole time I've known you. Do your homework more thoroughly before trying to frame him."

"Alright, you got me. Not Jameson. I wanted to have a little fun with it but I guess that's not going to happen."

No, it certainly wasn't. The door bursts open. Wind rushes in. Anti is thrown to the floor. The Magnificent Cat wastes no time ensuring he remains there. Weight on the chest, hand at the throat and fist raised to potentially target the face. A moment passes as Anti processes the rapid succession of events. That's when he resorts to the worst tactic. The person Cat threatens now looks like Sean.

"How dare you." He feels the cheekbone for a second when his knuckle connects with it. "Stop looking like my brother."

"It's me!"

"He is the last person you should shift into if you want me to listen." The nose is targeted.

"Marvin please."

"Shut the fuck up."

"It's me, I swear. It's actually me." Anti is beginning to produce crocodile tears now. As if that would work on Cat.

"Why the hell should I believe you?"

Anti wriggles his fingers. They spark slightly. Cat misses this detail, preoccupied with glowering. He certainly pays attention when Anti causes his own hair to stand as he moves his hands around it. Sean loved performing that trick when they were younger. Oh shit. Marvin rapidly removes himself from his brother.

The situation de-escalated, the two brothers allow themselves to have the past few minutes catch up with them. Marvin sits with his knees up, one arm around them while the other rests on his forehead. Sean, meanwhile, remains on his back while covering his entire face with his hands. His nose is bleeding as a result of the hit. They breathe.

"Are you alright? I'm s-"

"Oh, sure." The hands are moved so they don't obstruct his mouth anymore. Now the heels of them are being pressed into his eyes. "My baby brother just punched me in the face a few times but yeah, doing grand." Arms flopping to the side, Sean turns his head to face Marvin. "But would we be brothers if we didn't have fights?"

"Don't joke about that."

"I'd honestly take being beat up over having a knife aimed at me."

"I'm so sorry. I thought he shifted into you to try get me at a disadvantage. I-"

"Stop. We'll be here all night."

Eyes still springing tears, Sean forces himself to sit upright. Marvin takes this as his cue to strongly embrace his brother. Sean reciprocates the pressure following a moment of surprise. The brothers remain in each other's hold for as long as it takes for tonight's events to truly sink in.

"I want to go home."

Marvin couldn't agree more with that desire. At Sean's apartment, the two of them sit quietly on the sofa. Neither seems to know how to break the silence.

"You don't have to talk. But I wouldn't mind some answers."

"No, you're right. You deserve the truth."

Sean's tale begins when he is 16. One of the other boys from school had been following him home and harassing him. That nuisance combined with the foul weather made him want to get home as soon as possible. While taking a shortcut through a field, Sean had lost his cool and whipped round to confront the kid. All it had been was a shove. Of course, poorly suppressed aggression had to be translated into something. And when you have electricity at your disposal? Those results can prove deadly.

"He was just there on the ground. And I was 16, you know? What the hell do you do when you've just committed manslaughter? Then everyone started talking about it. I had so many opportunities to turn myself in but never did."

"Why didn't you then?"

"You're going to hate me for this but uh... you. Well, you and the fact it had been rough weather that afternoon anyway. No, don't look at me like that. You were like 6 or whatever. As if I was going to leave you alone with our parents just because my powers acted out for a second."

"I kinda remember it being on the news." Marvin mutters numbly. "...You killed someone."

"It gets worse."

As it turned out, Sean had befriended a fellow student called Will Andrews while at university. The two of them had organised a drinking session together. He had gone a little too far that night and unwittingly revealed the secret he'd believed he would take to his grave. Unbeknownst to Sean at the time, Will had the gene. In Will's case, it had manifested in the form of possession. It allowed him to completely take over the individual and, in cases like Sean's, use their power to his advantage. He'd then proceeded to blackmail Sean by threatening to turn him over to the authorities if Will wasn't allowed to have his way.

As Marvin allows himself time to silently process this, he glances at the portrait hanging on the wall. It's a picture of Sean, some 10 years younger and with barely any facial hair, as well as a woman with her black hair plaited past her shoulder. They're both evidently very happy in each other's company. Marvin would hope so, since they were dating. Or, at least, had been before Emily had ended it in the worst way. All Marvin remembers from that night is Sean going out for the evening, Emily coming over with her key and them ending up hanging out until Marvin reluctantly went to bed. Then being informed the next afternoon after school that her body had been found in a nearby river. His brother had been a wreck following what she had done.

"Was Emily alone that night?"

"Don't."

"She wasn't, was she?" It's clear Sean is unable to say 'no' aloud. However, from the way this topic appears to be his breaking point, he doesn't need to.

Marvin doesn't push it. He'd never understood how she could have been so happy while chilling with him then deliberately drown hours later. However, being 13 at the time, he'd simply taken Sean's word that it was a far more complex issue than he likely could grasp.

"This Will guy's been making you kill all this time?"

"Yes." A voice crack within the whisper.

They meld into one from the force of Marvin's arms around him. "I'm so sorry. I wish you would've told me earlier so I could have helped."

"Not your responsibility." is mumbled.

"As if I'm going to let you be upset just because I'm younger. Tell your single braincell that, Zapper."

-----

A man with green hair walks into the nursery. It's a lovely room, the little girl's parents hadn't done a bad job when preparing for her arrival. The majority of the walls are light blue, white clouds dotted about. Hardly a masterpiece but he's sure the 10 month old didn't mind too much. Little Freya had been peacefully dozing in her crib until he'd approached. Ah, even while sleeping, she proved to be her father's daughter. She begins stirring as she is lifted. Anti ensures her senses give her no reason not to settle. Still, that baby monitor wasn't purchased for no reason.

As if on cue, Jameson comes cautiously speed-walking through the door. His anxiety rapidly morphs into contempt.

"Sorry to disappoint, it's just me."

"Get out of my house."

"How about... no. Or at least, not yet."

Baby in his arms, he makes himself comfortable in the armchair positioned in the corner.

"A man repeatedly breaks into your house and now is holding your child. You're awfully calm for someone in this situation."

"You are in no way a threat to her."

"Oh really? I could do it. Just a few seconds and I'll be giving you my condolences."

"We both know you're not going to."

"You're really prepared to call my bluff in this situation? Somehow, I don't think you're stupid enough to risk your daughter's life."

"I'd simply rewind a few minutes."

"What about this afternoon?"

"Oh for the love of god."

"Marvin caught me off guard and it ended with me giving him a bullshit story. Obviously, he can't know any version of the truth."

"No."

"Jamie-"

The performer holds his hand upright. "How many times must I say 'no'? If he knows any part of the truth then good. He deserves to stay safe from your deception."

"Tried to frame you today, you know. He's thankfully too smart for that trick. But could you imagine if it had worked? Dozens of counts of murder will land you a whole life order. If they found you guilty, there's no minimum term. It's not like you'll re-enter society when she's in her 20s. No, you'll be there until you keel over."

"There is no evidence. I can't be convicted."

"But Anti's been seen at countless crime scenes. By none other than the guy who frequently collaborates with the police. You'd certainly be a suspect if he chose to talk."

"Then I would explain the shapeshifting serial killer has decided to use an innocent and well loved performer as his scapegoat."

The light suspended from the ceiling flickers. The disturbance increases speed until the lightbulb can't take the abuse any longer. Jameson simply sighs, fighting the urge to roll his eyes or facepalm to emphasise his thoughts on this display. Time halts. Extracting Freya from Anti's arms is relatively easy. As soon as he touches her and wills it, she exists outside of time with her father. A safe distance from the man, his daughter safely in her crib as she should be, Jameson grants Anti the privilege of being freed from a temporal limbo.

"Grow up already." He glowers. "I am done with this little 'partnership' of ours. We both know you would never intentionally harm me or Freya. And don't you dare even consider laying a hand on Laura."

Anti puts his hands in the air so they are parallel to his head. "Alright, I get the message."

"Tell Marvin the truth. The real truth."

"Like hell I'll do something so stupid."

"Either you tell him or I will."

"We both know I would never risk him walking out of my life."

"The truth will come out eventually and it will be better if it comes from you. As for people leaving your life, well... I would have physically distanced myself long ago if there were not things keeping me rooted here."

"Really?"

This is evidently the final straw for Jameson. "You have abused my powers for your advantage, dressing it up as if I am doing justice. You have threatened the people I love so that I feel incentivised to do as you say. I struggle to sleep and I assure you it is not because I have a baby. You have made my life a misery and I have no obligation to play nice. Even when you stop looking like that, I don't want to be around you. But of course, I pretend the opposite is true to protect you. And yet, and yet, after all that stress and strife, you have the gall to act as if I owe you loyalty. I never have."

"I uh... didn't get all of that, sorry. But-"

"Then perhaps this will be a good summary." With one finger, he does indeed condense his message to something much more universally understandable.

"He won't forgive you for keeping this from him, you know." Anti remarks.

"Get the fuck out of my house."

"Whatever."

Anti begrudgingly makes his exit. The whole time he travels home, he wonders how much time he has left before the inevitable catastrophic end of all he's known.

[lucarioisinthevoid]

Mike you look so cute! you know what this means, Foxy its story time with mike and phoney!!

(5/5) (And a read more, because this ended up being the length of half a one-shot, I’m so sorry.) “I ALREADY TOLD YOU-“ But before Mike could finish, Foxy had rushed up, almost jumping him in excitement, his tail wagging. “Story time?! Aye, we can do that! Right Mike? Right?” “I-“ Gritting his teeth Mike stared at the golden-eyed machine that seemed utterly hopeful. “You fucking know, I’m not just-“ Shortly he looked up, spotting Phone Guy watching on, radiating a certain form of bemusement that infuriated Mike every bit. This asshole KNEW he couldn’t refuse the dumb machine and he was relishing in it! Fucking- Fine.

But Mike would take him with him into this stupid hell. “… you know what, Foxy, let’s do this. Though if I have to play the princess, you and Simon have to be my royal parents.” “Sure can do!” The Fox rose up his hook, dangerously close to Mike’s eye. Phone Guy on the other hand looked MORTIFIED. “I, uh-“ Mike grinned. “What? You don’t want to? You don’t want to even pretend to marry Foxy? Do you hate him THAT much?!” The Fox actually turned now too, making himself smaller, looking concerned. “I- won’t try to make you-“ A bit overwhelmed the poor guy shook his head. “No, no, that- uh-“ Old Sport joined in. “We all know you like Foxy, so you’re going to take the role!” “Uh-“ The Orange Guy grinned wide. “Alrighty Foxy, what’s the story?!” Excited the animatronic wiggled. “Okay, o-“ “NOT the fucking sun princess. We’re NOT doing that again.” Mike called out. “That’s the other demand. We gotta put up something new.” “Aye, I wanted to do that anyways! If Phone Guy is my wife, and Mike our princess son, theeeeeeeeeeen…” “You gotta make space for ALL of us though!” Old Sport instantly called out. “I’m sure everyone here wants to take part!” “Arr…” The Pirate Fox looked around, trying to come up with something good- Then his eyes fell onto Ethan sitting in the back, his eyes wandering over the scene, seemingly lost in thought. “AHA!” Roaring in success, Foxy jumped onto the nearest table. “Ay, today we have a truly THRILLING tale! It’s a tale about MURDER!” Appropriately, Dave, Old Sport and Jerry gasped. The other animatronics who had stepped closer by now as well, joined in, mostly out of peer pressure though. They had no idea what was going on. “You!” Foxy gestured at Ethan, who seemed a little bit worried. “… yes?” “You must investigate a MURDER!” There wasn’t any response from Ethan, more like the strained silence of a man in a situation that was bad, but not quite bad enough to allow for any sort of lament. There is no release. Just endless torment. Foxy didn’t seem to notice the agony radiating from the man, as he looked about, scratching his snout. “But who died… who died… oh. You.” He pointed at the Marionette, who seemed for a moment offended, then scoffed. “I didn’t want to take part in this anyways.” “Yes, a terrible murder, of a guest from far, far away! A powerful political figure- but what for? Money? For war? What could have happened? Who could have done it?! Detective, you may step closer, to the mourning couple!" Before Phone Guy knew what was happening, Foxy jumped down beside him, dragging him close and started to dramatically sob. Ethan, who had been forced to step up by the sheer expectation of all the spirits surrounding him, coughed uncomfortable. But Chica stepped up, smiling brightly. "I want to be your help! I'm sure we will make a GREAT team! We will solve this mystery!" For a moment Ethan seemed taken aback, then his expression shifted into quiet sadness, before he shook his head and gathered himself. "That... would be good." Foxy wailed out. "MR. DETECTIVE! It is HORRIBLE! How could this have happened?!" "... the most terrible things can happen when people meet, Mr-" "Lord Fuchsia." "... Lord Fuchsia." Chica giggled excited, before trying to act out more serious. "Lord Fuchsia, that is why people like us exist! To right the wrongs. We may cannot help poor-" "Lord Marion-nâte." No, she couldn't say it, she broke out into another slew of laughter. The Puppet who had laid down on the ground in his best "murdered" pose groaned. Mike didn't manage to grasp the situation. "What the fuck is going on." Instantly Foxy began wailing again. "MIKE! OUR DEAREST DAUGHTER. LEAVE THIS ROOM! AVERT YOUR EYES!" "... in that order?" Looking at the body, then at Ethan he rose an eyebrow. Neither of them really knew what to do now, but due to a nudge from the quietly panicking Foxy, Simon coughed and spoke up. "Mr. Detective, we, uh- we have gathered everyone who was in the house during that time. Including uh- the princess. Yeah." Instantly Ethan spoke up. "The princess? Not your daughter?" "Uh-" A bit taken aback Simon stumbled. "I'm-" Instantly Foxy picked up. "We... remarried. It's a bit of a tense situation, please be discrete about this." Shortly Ethan nodded. "Of course. Would you mind introducing me to the rest of the people attending?" Knowing this was their cue, the others gathered closer, animatronics and people alike. Foxy swiftly turned. "There is Freddy, the most talented cook in all the lands, hired here recently. Bonnie is a capable musician and was providing our gathering with light entertainment, before the situation transpired... there is Jeremy, he's- our most loyal servant, he has been with us ever since I can remember. And that is-" Finally he truly started stumbling, looking at Nemo. Dramatically the boy flipped his hair back, the empty eye socket visible for a second. "How DARE you? Standing here so casually, shedding your crocodile tears- when it was MY FATHER who was MURDERED!" The Marionette made another noise, but before he could object, Nemo continued. "You're not doing anything! YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT FINDING THE MURDERER! This is all a pathetic attempt at distracting everyone here- when it clearly was YOU who was at fault! One way or another- you might not have murdered him, but you helped planning it! And I will prove it!" Even more dramatically he turned around and rushed away, leaving the scene. Shaken up, Lord Fuchsia looked after him, before shuddering and turning to the last two. "And... these two... they're-" Dave interjected. "Lord Eggplânt and Lord Orânge. We have been called here because we wanted to make a deal with Lord Marion-nâte. Now, of course, that seems to be done with. Must we stay?" Chica instantly moved forward, pointing at them. "Yes. Nobody will leave until the culprit was found! It could be YOU." With a devastating glare, the Purple Guy froze the animatronic in place. "That is defamation and we will NOT be treated like this. Watch your language young lady, or you will regret it..." "Don't talk to her like this." Instantly Ethan stepped in front of her, real rage breaking out of his expression, boiling under the surface. "We aren't accusing anyone, but everyone is a suspect until we can prove otherwise. Please sit down." Everyone turned silent. Another moment passed. Ethan looked around, then took a breath. "Now that you all know me-" "Fuck this shit, I'm out. Going to..." Mike wrecked his brain. "... play with one of my 100 ponies I guess." "You seem not concerned over the corpse in this room at all!" The detective called out. Foxy spoke up. "No! He is just- uh- he's sensible. He doesn't know how to emote!" Chica laughed. "Oh certainly. Most murderers don't know how to emote actually!" Lord Fuchsia gasped and grabbed Simon's arm. "HAVE YOU HEARD THAT!?" "Uh- yeah, that's uh- terrible. Mike wouldn't ever kill someone!" At least the second part had some level of conviction. "You're wrong in your suspicion!" Ethan rubbed his temples. "Okay. Now that one of the suspects is out of the room, I think we can forget a group interrogation- everyone may leave for now, while I check on the body and what we can deduct from it. Nobody touched him, right?" "No. Nobody." Jeremy nodded, with a grave expression. "Good. Nobody is allowed to leave the premises until the murder is found." Everyone began turning away, leaving, all telling Foxy first what they were going to do, out of character. Freddy first. "I am going into the kitchen. I am scared that someone is trying to frame me, seeing as most weapons are in there. I want to check and get rid of it if it's there." Then Bonnie. "I am high-strung and tense, I guess." He rolled his eyes a bit. "I'm going to play a little on my guitar, because I feel like that will be the least suspicious thing to do. I know more than I let on!" Dave and Old Sport grinned, knowing they were making shit up and nobody would stop them. "We leave, but into a SECRET PATHWAY! We will spy on the detective and what he's finding out!" Phone Guy shook his head. "I, uh- I begin wandering the hallways, uneasy." Foxy wagged his tail, very pleased with how it was going. Then Chica spoke up. "I will follow the people around and make sure they won't leave this place! I'll be back in a bit, detective!" "Hey, you shouldn't-" But before Ethan could tell her off, she was already away from the scene, walking around dramatically as though she was trying to look for someone. Then Jerry stepped up, smiling excited. "I will leave too, I get myself a knife and I kill Chica." Suddenly it was completely silent. "Aye- uh." Foxy opened his eyepatch. "... you wanna... really? You?" "Yes! Nobody will suspect me! I'm killing in the name of my Lord, who has almost been betrayed by the business deal between the evil Dave and Old Sport and Marion! And now I plan to get rid of someone else and find the right person to frame! Emotions will cloud the detective's judgement if his helper is dead!" Marion had sat up. Foxy nervously scratched his snout. "... okay, I guess that makes sense-" Cowering down a bit, Jerry began sneaking towards Chica, who dutifully showed him her back. She still seemed in a good mood. "I will haunt you though! I WILL become a ghost!" "That's okay!" Jeremy answered, holding his hand as though there was a knife in there. "But you will never see the light of day again. I will take the knife and ram it into the back of your head, I will twist it, again and again and-" Suddenly he was hit by something from the side, black and white, pinning him down, claws tightly wrapped around his shoulders as he was shaken so hard, everything flickered. 'STOP THAT! STOP THAT STOP THAT STOP THAT-' The voice echoed loudly through everyone's head, causing everyone a moment of pain, before Jeremy yelped. "I'M- I STOPPED. IT'S OKAY." When everything stopped moving, the young guard looked up at the distraught and upset looking puppet, feeling equally as scared. "... what- what happened? The Marionette just looked down at him, then clawed at his own face, trying to hide it. He couldn't say anything. This was just so terrible. So, so terrible. It clicked with Jeremy and he gently grabbed the machine, hugging him, feeling quite awful. "... it's okay. I'm sorry. I- I should have thought about this better- I'm-" Foxy stepped closer too, ears flat on his head. "Aye, I'm sorry... shouldn't have... did we trigger some bad memories?" The snake-like machine hissed. "No. No it's fine. I'm fine." Jeremy shook his head. "O-obviously not! You can't just- I'm-" "It's FINE." With that the Marionette floated upwards, dragging Jeremy along. Everyone else was left behind, looking after them. Finally Mike sighed and took off the dress, revealing the guard uniform below it. "... I guess the fucking play is over for now, huh?" The group dispersed. Nobody really wanted to continue the play. Maybe next time.

[theonceoverthinker]

Top 5 GH moments!

You know me too well, buddy!

5. To start off our list, we have a small scene from “Mother” -- the diner scene. After Killian was basically tortured by Rumple for so much of 4A and what with the threat of Emma going dark being a genuine possibility in much of 4B, to see that Rumple’s scheme failed as someone rooting for these two makes me genuinely happy! And so when Killian busts his way into Gold and Isaac’s booth to gloat, it’s really enjoyable! That tenseness is there as Killian remarks on how Rumple will never get to enjoy his happy ending, and the rest of it is GH snark! What more can you want, really?

4. Rumple taking Killian’s hand in “The Crocodile.” Who doesn’t love some good old fashioned mutilation?! Seriously though, Rumple stealing Killian’s hand is just an iconic scene, and for good reason! Everything gets more complex here. Milah goes from being a horrible bitch into being the subject of fandom discourse that persists to this day concerning a mother’s autonomy vs. her responsibilities as a parent. It furthered the painting of the picture that is Killian Jones into a man that like Shrek, has layers. He is just as much a man in love and a victim of his beloved’s murder as he is a horrible bully. And for Rumple, the scene successfully frames him in a tragic, but still villainous light. 

3. Dark One Rumple reunites with Killian Jones in “The Crocodile.” This is the scene that sets up Rumple and Killian’s dynamic for the rest of the series! I know that’s a not at all small thing to say, but really, while the hand scene is important, it’s this scene that first shows the Rumple and Killian we know interacting in the way that they will for the rest of the present timeline, snark, intimidation, and all, something that’s just not present in the initial hand-stealing scene. Here, we see the depths of not only Killian’s personality for the first time, but important reiterations of the depth of Rumple’s. On Killian’s end, this is the first time where we see Killian actually afraid -- not cowardly, just afraid. We see Killian speaking very carefully because he knows that unlike the last time they met, this time, it’s his life on the line, and he has someone he wants to live for. He is willing to suck up his pride to a large extent as to not die, but not at the cost of his honor. Killian never runs away, even as he’s dealt an invitation to a duel that may very well take his life. There’s a sense of self preservation on display. And on Rumple’s end, we see contrasts. On one side, we see the contrast between Rumple the human and Rumple the Dark One, and on the other, it’s Rumple as a victim vs. Killian as a victim. We see how his corruption as the Dark One has made him so similar to the man who once bullied him.

2. Killian getting the jump on Rumple in “Rocky Road.” Let’s face it: Despite Golden Hook being a rivalry, Killian doesn’t win that often, and when he does, it’s usually through a means of karma giving Killian an out more than he and Rumple directly coming at each other in a conflict. And that sucks because Killian balances Rumple out so nicely! Whereas Rumple gets by because of his magic, influence, intimidation, ability to pick up on desperation, and factual intelligence, Killian does so by his charisma, wit, and emotional intelligence. But the thing is, rarely do those aspects of their characters get to bounce off each other. But in this scene, they do. Rumple has most everyone fooled. Belle trusts him, and while Emma doesn’t, she also lacks the means to really challenge his credibility. Killian sticks with his guns though, trusting his instincts to develop a theory as to what’s going on with Rumple and incorporates what is basically a bluff into a win. And he succeeds. That...that is just awesome!

And the number one best GH moment iiiiissssss...

1. Gold stealing Killian’s heart in “Smash the Mirror.” You all KNEW this was going to be number 1! This sole moment had me basically create a whump fic-ematic multiverse! Everything about it is so good! First, there’s the tense, scary atmosphere that surrounds the scene. It comes as almost a bit of a surprise in a sense because of the previous scene’s happy ending, and it takes the viewer on an emotional roller coaster. This is mostly done by the music, but the creepy night time imagery as well as the hellish vines really sell it too! Second, let’s talk about the acting. Robert Carlyle and Colin O’Donoghue really sell this scene. Robert sells the aforementioned atmosphere through his soft, calm voice that holds until the second before the theft, the slow way he walks, and sharp movement of his hand as he plunges it into Killian’s chest. And Colin’s cockiness and the way it shifts to fear and panic are so fantastic. Third, as a payoff to the mystery of the hat and how Rumple’s going to use it, it is perfect! It capitalizes on Rumple enthusiasm over following Ingrid’s instructions, intertwines Rumple and Killian’s rivalry that had already been built into the arc (To varying degrees of quality, imho), and sets up a perfect secondary stake for the rest of the arc now that Emma’s has been resolved! Fuck, what else can I even say?! It’s perfection and I LOVE it!

Ask me my top 5 stuff!

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 15: orcas and penguins and pearls

It’s December, so I’ve got time to edit all these 13k chapters I wrote during NaNo! My buffer is assuredly smaller than I expected because it doesn’t take very many 13k chapters to reach 50k.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

What they actually have to do is not complicated at all. All they need is evidence of a murder weapon, any hint of anything that could have been used, because Orla is an orca and only humans and fae use tools to kill each other with. (As far as Phoenix knows. Maybe gorillas are getting more advanced. He might have free tickets for life to a circus but he doesn’t know anything about animals.)

If there’s a murder weapon, it means there was a killer that wasn’t Orla, because Orla is only an orca, not a shapeshifter.

And, well, okay, then after that they’ll need a prosecutor willing to indict, but Phoenix is going to take things one step at a time and not just because he’s coming up empty-handed at the question of any prosecutor who might take this one. Edgeworth might miss being able to stand in court but he cares too strongly about his work as chief prosecutor to take time away from it for an orca; Franziska is abroad, incredibly busy, and cares too strongly about her work with Interpol to take time away from it to kick Phoenix’s ass over a goddamn orca; and Apollo isn’t part of the defense team so there’s no chance of him seducing Klavier into abandoning good sense to indict an orca and also face Phoenix in court again, so his best shot is probably convincing Kay of the merit of the case and letting her drag Sebastian into it.

Sasha takes them for a very brief, circular tour around the top of the orca pool. “I know it looks real small in here, and it is,” she says, gesturing to the tank. Orla has circled it as they walk, keeping close and watching them. “We do a lot of training here, since we can leave the props all out but out of sight. At the front when you come in we’ve got with the aquarium maps a schedule of when Orla’s gonna be where. Here the guests can see her swim underwater, but we’ll only keep her in here for a bit since orcas like to be able to swim straight. So we’ve got the big big show pool, and since we’re right on the water we’ve got scheduled times that we let her out and go out with her in the ocean.”

“Like, take a boat out alongside her?” Athena asks. Sasha shrugs noncommittally. “She’s never just gone off and not come back?”

“‘Course not! She loves us, and the aquarium.” Sasha has a spring in her step as she walks and Phoenix, looking at the floor slick with water splashed up by Orla, bites back a fatherly warning to watch her step. It’d be too easy to slip and crack her head open, or fall in the orca pool. Fall in the orca pool after cracking her head open. “The captain found her beached and he fed her and made sure she was healthy and tried to take her back out to sea to her pod, but she just kept coming back. Ol’ girl got attached to him just like a barnacle!”

Her smile collapses from the corners inward, her eyes unfocused on a distant memory. “I can hear Sasha’s pain,” Athena whispers. “She really loved the captain.”

“Orla played with him all the time,” Sasha says. She’s lost her cheer. Athena might be the one who fully experiences others’ feelings, but Phoenix is pained, too. “She’d steal his hat and headbutt him and go tearing off, and he was the only one of us big and strong enough to keep up with her. She loved him! She wouldn’t kill him!”

Maybe - probably - it’s true that she loved him. And maybe - Phoenix realizes it with a sense of gnawing dread and familiarity - that still doesn’t mean she didn’t kill him. Humans are fragile, and powerful creatures that love them don’t always keep them safe. Sometimes it’s the opposite. Sometimes they don’t just die anyway, but because of. 

(Does it help, has it ever solved a case for him, to consider whether he is a funhouse mirror image of the situation beforehand? It doesn’t. He does anyway.)

Sasha is in the midst of explaining now to Athena how they give Orla commands for performances - a whistle with a pitch too high for humans to hear, and specific patterns to correspond to her every trick. “Anyone who knows the commands could ask her to do a trick, not just me - you could, Athena.” Athena brightens, standing up straighter, her eyes moving from the whistle Sasha put in her hands to the orca. “Except the commands are a secret, sorry!”

Athena’s shoulders slump. 

“You can’t just ask her to do whatever it is, in words?” Phoenix asks, secretly relieved that Athena isn’t going to get a lesson in orca-training because he’s terrified of how that could end. “Since you said she can understand people.” Or Sasha was just fucking with him saying that Orla was offended by his question. 

“That kinda breaks the show immersion,” Sasha explains, “if you’re yelling ‘now’s when you do a backflip!’ The whistle’s less noticeable.”

Orla disappears beneath the surface, a moment later launching herself up out of the water and wheeling through the air. When she dives back down she slaps the water with her tail, hard, and a wave splashed up over the three people standing by her pool. Sasha frowns in concentration. “She understands some people, somewhat,” she admits, apparently reluctantly. “Except the captain. He’d have full conversations with her and she’d chatter right back. Cap’n always joked his mom was a sea witch.”

“Are you sure it was a joke?” Phoenix asks. 

“Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t,” Sasha says. “But most people get acting like they were zapped by an eel when you say that, then laugh it away all awkwardly. Didn’t expect you both to be cool as sea cucumbers about it.”

“I’ve only worked with Mr Wright for three months but I’ve seen some crazy stuff in that time,” Athena says. “Three months” is definitely debatable - she’s worked with Apollo for three months, sure - but the regrettable amount of magical mishaps she’s been through aren’t. (Why, when he reluctantly agreed to give her office space, had he thought she wouldn’t get into any more shit?) “I could probably believe anything now.”

(An addition to his case notes: make sure Athena knows not every legend is true, so she doesn’t go chasing Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil.)

This first pass through the orca pool room doesn’t net them anything that in any way resembles evidence. They get information about their client, the importance of which he won’t dismiss, because they can’t exactly directly ask their client anything. Seals and whales that eat seals surely don’t speak the same language, or could they? Maybe they all have different dialects of ocean animal language, ones that are partially understandable by each other, but only partially. (There’s a word for that. He’s pretty sure there’s a word that specifically means that and he’s coming up empty.)

With nothing in hand to present to the prosecution, he and Athena leave the pool room, leave Sasha behind sitting on the edge emphatically explaining to Orla that the police won’t let her be moved back to the bigger pool because they’re afraid if they give Sasha an inch she’s going to figure out how to abscond with a two-ton whale. Phoenix crosses his fingers that won’t happen; the last time a client of his disappeared was - well. 

Fulbright has set up his investigative base in the lobby near the glass tunnel; Phoenix watches fish swim above his head, bright little reds and yellows darting between huge silver ones, and among all of them, sharks that he’s surprised don’t just eat the rest. Security camera footage from the time of the incident, taken from the first floor, looking in at the orca pool, is downloaded to a police laptop set up on a bench. As soon as Fulbright’s back is turned, Athena pulls up the relevant segment and films the screen using Widget. “There’s nothing you can see that’s absolutely damning for our case,” she explains, slowing down Widget’s playback and scrolling through its projection frame-by-frame. It’s about fifteen seconds when the victim’s body isn’t ever visible, but Orla‘s head tilts down like she’s headbutting something into the props at the bottom of the tank, and plumes of blood billow up through the water. Someone stands in frozen horror, back to the camera, in front of the tank. “This isn’t decisive! What’s Fulbright talking about? Decisive?—”

“I agree,” Phoenix says. “It’s not proof of anything.” But they can definitely expect to hear from that witness who was standing right there. 

Athena lowers her fists, abruptly silent, like she hadn’t expected him - even though he’s a defense attorney too, even though he agreed to this mad venture too - to listen to her. “We’ll keep investigating,” he adds, glancing over the police laptop again. The thumb drive stuck in it is shaped like the back end of a fish and labeled return to Pub O’ Danger. Presumably the location in the aquarium that the security cameras are managed from. “Shall we?”

Athena knows exactly where in the aquarium to go - of course she does - and she leads Phoenix up around, back past the orca tank, to the second floor where they find that the "Pub O' Danger" looks really nothing at all like anything he'd consider a pub. A few large decorative bottles, filled with seashells or jellyfish - are those real? - sit on a shelf on the back wall, and one giant one filled with more jellyfish hangs from the ceiling, along with a skeleton of some ocean creature. Or maybe a crocodile. It looks like a crocodile. "Athena," he says warningly, and she guiltily lifts her hand out of the touch tank. "We're here for a job, remember?"

"Of course I remember!" she protests, perhaps a bit too loudly, and Phoenix shakes his head at her. He scans the room again, watching Athena from the corner of his eyes, and thinking he doesn't see her she sticks her hands back in the tank at the center of the room to pet a starfish. 

"A-hem!" Someone loudly clears their throat; Phoenix jumps, as does Athena, wrenching her hands back and flicking water up into Phoenix's face. "Do you mind? I'm rather busy here, and you are being quite loud, young lady."

The woman already in the room, who they didn't see off to the side, standing in front of a door marked with Employees Only, wears a long black overcoat and a white scarf over her blonde hair. "Who are you?" Athena asks. 

“Goodness, young lady, don’t you have any manners?” The woman huffs and Athena blanches. Phoenix can’t really vouch for any of Athena’s manners, because they’ve had strenuous debates about what is and isn’t allowed in a courtroom, and no, Athena, asking the prosecution to “take it out back” is not, even if they are being jerks. “Aren’t you even going to introduce yourself first?”

She’s really got Athena thrown for a loop. “Oh, I, uh - I’m—”

“Never mind,” the woman interrupts. “I shall save time and space for more important things in my memory by simply calling you ‘yellow girl’, and him over there ‘blue boy’.”

“I’m thirty-four years old, you know,” Phoenix objects, and she ignores him as he expected her to, but at least he can say to his dignity that he tried. 

“My name is Norma DePlume,” she continues. “An esteemed guest and frequent patron of this establishment.”

“I’ve got it!” Athena crows. “So you aren’t someone affiliated with the aquarium!”

Solid work on that deduction there, kiddo. 

“And what exactly do you imagine you are?” DePlume asks icily.

Athena hikes her shoulders up toward her ears, her hands rising in fists at the ready. Widget might be useful for its functionalities in court, but its changing colors and blurted words aren��t close to necessary; all of its information on Athena’s emotional state, she’ll project plain as day on her face, in her posture. He doesn’t need to read her like he would opponents in poker - nothing is small when it comes to her habits. “I’m not a what!” she protests. Fair enough to get offended; it’s rude way to ask that question, even if what are you is one that’s technically valid to wonder. Better not to ask at all, and besides, Phoenix knows that DePlume didn’t mean it in the way that Phoenix wonders it, because he’s given her a once-over and she’s the one person in this room who’s normal. “I’m a lawyer!”

“And I, uh - run a law office.” Phoenix trips on the words. He sort of runs a law office. He badly runs a law office. It runs itself. It’s still easier for him to get that sentence out than to say that he’s a lawyer. What are you? Isn’t he supposed to know that now, again? 

“Well, I don’t have the slightest interest,” DePlume continues, examining her gloves like she can see her fingernails to fix them. 

Then why fucking ask what they are and risk offending a fae when they presume she’s asking what are you, human or not? Maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe she isn’t from around here. Maybe she doesn’t care if she offends anyone, human or fae or all the people at the crossroads in between. She certainly doesn’t care if she offends the two right here.

She’s damn lucky Phoenix doesn’t work cases with Maya anymore, even if Athena is growling, actually growling, in frustration and rage. “Just who does she think she is, Boss?”

“An esteemed guest.” The customer who is always right, and Phoenix is glad that the only vaguely retail career he’s ever had is one where he could kick the customers’ asses in a poker game after he offended their artistic sensibilities with his piano “playing”. His friendship with Kristoph was his customer service face: being pleasant to someone who wouldn’t hesitate to throw him under a bus or get him fired. Actually Kristoph did get him fired. And probably wouldn’t have hesitated to eventually get him fired from life. 

Right. Murder. That’s called murder.

“I thought they closed the aquarium to members of the public, though,” Athena says, squinting suspiciously and turning back to Phoenix, waiting for him to validate her suspicions. “Why are you here?”

DePlume has a deep, haughty chuckle that balances on the edge of smug before tipping straight into the center of it. “O-ho! But I have special permission to be here, you see.” She sounds less like she’s actually amused and more that she’s trying to signal to them their inferiority, that they are amusing, trivial things beneath her concern. Athena is close to blowing a gasket anyway, so if that’s what she hears she can’t actually get any more heated. 

Now that’s interesting. “And why is that?” Phoenix asks, doing his level best to sound like he’s only casually curious. She wouldn’t happen to have seen something, did she?

“Well, it’s of course because of the incide— good heavens, I’ve said far too much!”

The whole world blinks, pauses on an inhale - DePlume, turning away back toward the door she was lurking outside of; Athena, readying another objection - and the hum of the aquarium, the tank filters and the internal air, drops dead away, and almost instantly that still silence breaks with the stark cold rumble of chains and the two red locks that nail into place at the intersection of the chains. 

God dammit. Phoenix breathes in, lets his anger hiss out among the background noise of the aquarium that has come back to life. “What’s wrong, Boss?” Athena asks. All she would have seen was his mood drop suddenly, more than a reluctant witness should make happen, because how often do they have a witness who isn’t reluctant?

“Psyche-Locks.” It might as well be a curse word. It certainly is a cursed word - words? (Does the hyphen make it one word or is it still two? He assumes there’s a hyphen. It’s how he visualizes it and that might be magic that plopped the word(s?) in his mind in a written form.)

“Bike socks? Cyborg clocks?”

Athena, what the hell is a bike sock?

“Pysche-Locks,” he repeats, enunciating it clearer and louder this time. DePlume doesn’t care what they have to say and probably already thinks they’re crazy, so talking audibly about magic isn’t going to make any difference. “They’re locks around a person’s heart that represent the secrets they’re hiding from me. An old friend of mine granted me a blessing that lets me see if I’m being lied to - that’s how it manifests.”

“Oh, wow,” Athena says. “I knew you had your eyes thing” - she points a finger to her own eyes and swings it back and forth to signify the changing colors - “but I didn’t know you can tell that people are lying, like Apollo, too!”

Like Apollo, god. Like Apollo. He’d taught Apollo the trick to watching for people’s tics and told Trucy to explain to him the same, on basis of blood and a guess - that he knew how Trucy’s blessing worked for her, that Zak said Thalassa had the same, and Apollo is Thalassa’s child too. Even if Truth was his boon granted by a different source, maybe it worked the same, he figured. And it did, but the larger question has been gnawing at him since. Apollo’s blessing wasn’t from Magnifi; it looks nothing like either Trucy’s or Thalassa’s, and Thalassa confirmed that Magnifi never met Apollo. And when Apollo confronted Phoenix for not telling him about Kristoph, he sounded genuinely confused at the suggestion that he could’ve had any experience with the fae in the past. 

Some one of the fae loved Apollo enough to give him a blessing, but even for valuing Truth highly enough to give it to him, didn’t tell him that truth that they were fae and that he had this gift. It’d have to be love, wouldn’t it, because Apollo is human grown up in this world. He isn’t Thalassa, a tactical advantage to be played against an enemy; he looks nothing like his mother who is glamoured to the high heavens for spending so long in the Twilight Realm. 

(Note to self: ask Thalassa sometime why Apollo didn’t grow up with her and the Troupe after his father’s death in the Summer Court. Also, bother her some more to see if she’ll say where the Summer Court is.)

“Boss?” 

“I’m listening,” he says reflexively, even though if she’d said anything before that, he sure as hell didn’t actually hear it. Apollo, Apollo; Apollo’s a stable functioning kid who escaped growing up a Gramarye and his mystery can wait while Phoenix has a case with Athena. There is enough right here on his plate.

“Can you unlock these Psyche-Locks?”

Unlock, no; bludgeon into shattering with brute force, yes. Maybe that’s what the black ones meant, a warning that it wasn’t worth trying to break them, or that he couldn’t, because Kristoph isn’t great at poker but did know how to keep his cards close. “Yeah. It’s basically the same as cross-examining a witness; you hit them with evidence until they crack.” 

Athena smacks her fist against her palm, massaging out her knuckles. “All right! Sounds like a plan!” 

“Not literally hit,” Phoenix says hastily. She probably knows that, maybe. 

DePlume knocks loudly on the employees-only door. “I know I heard movement back there!” she announces loudly to the door, or whoever might be behind it. “I demand to speak with you!”

“Er, what are you doing?” Athena asks, already moving from the matter of the Psyche-Locks to this next mysterious behavior. 

“This aquarium’s veterinarian has an office here,” DePlume snaps. “And he has most ungraciously been avoiding me! I insist on being able to speak with him, and I will not leave until I get such an opportunity!”

“Okay,” Athena says, “but—”

“If you, yellow girl, wish to further badger me in your impolite ways, you will simply have to wait.”

Athena frowns. “We might as well investigate elsewhere in the meantime,” Phoenix says. If she’s not leaving until the vet does, and she acts this overbearing and demanding in every aspect, then there’s little chance the vet wants to talk to her and a much higher likelihood that wherever else they go in the aquarium, when they return, she’ll still be right here. “C’mon, kiddo.”

Athena’s boots smack off the floor louder than she usually walks, but as they move back through the aquarium, past tanks of sea dragons and lionfish and informative backlit wall displays about the represented species and ecosystems, her steps lighten and her pace slows. Light comes from the tanks, and only them, blue on Athena’s face, her eyes even brighter as wide as they are, soaking up every sight as though she hadn’t ever been here before. She’s eighteen, still a kid really, should be heading toward her senior year of high school or freshman year of university, not skipping half a dozen grades to have a law career for - what, exactly? Franziska had a father to live up to, Sebastian too, and Klavier an older brother. Athena carries with her righteous fury to find justice and save the innocent, with no catalyst that birthed it in her heart, no vehicle carrying her down this frantic road. He’s thought it before and will again, but she lives like she’s desperately chasing something always just out of reach. Something Phoenix can’t see.

He lets her smile at the fish a moment longer and then prompts her to get moving. “I wish I could actually visit without the crowds,” she says. “There’s usually so many people here, it’s kinda just eerie now.”

“A man did die here,” Phoenix says, but now that she’s got him thinking it, yeah, he doesn’t like this emptiness. Like wandering through the snow between circus tents, not a sound but their feet and fabric flapping in the wind, when a few nights ago he’d seen the full bustle of the crowd around a show. Like the bowl club in the quiet after closing, his voice echoing in the stairwell  after a call to the police, the only sound in the den his heart pounding in his ears as he realized this was the final round, the hand already dealt, and this was his last chance to bind Kristoph to iron. “That eerie feeling isn’t surprising.”

The next sign of human life they find is one of the animal feeders, hauling along two buckets full of fish and alternating rhyming and beatboxing as he goes. Budding slam poet? Soundcloud rapper? “Hello!” Athena calls, her voice ringing loudly through the dark. The man yelps, dropping a bucket and spilling fish across the floor. 

Once Athena has apologized for the fright, and he has requested that they purge his attempts at rapping from their memories, he introduces himself as Marlon Rimes, relatively new to working here, not always sure what’s happening on the best of days, and this is definitely not that. He does tell them that none of the aquarium staff have been allowed to go home, while any visitors not related to the incident have been thrown out. “Sasha had to get special permission to go out and get a lawyer,” Rimes explains. “Us staying overnight usually means we leave just after opening, but ‘just after opening’ is when the captain’s body was found…” He blinks furiously and rubs at his eyes. “Haven’t seen our vet, Dr Crab, around at all, though.”

Probably because if he is here, DePlume has him cornered in a back room. 

Rimes gives them a few more tidbits of information that could be useful: he certainly believes the orca killed the captain and says that Sasha is the only one here who doesn’t, he’s lost track of a penguin named Rifle who has the run of the aquarium but didn’t come in to get fed at her usual time, and he has a friend he calls “Small Fry”, a high school student - maybe an aquarium intern? - who went off after Rifle and hasn’t returned. “She mighta been going back to the orca pool,” he says. “And, hey, if you’re headin’ back there, or just around, Rifle loves the smell of fish, so if ya have some she might come over.”

Athena’s face lights up. “I would love to feed a penguin! Would that be okay, Boss?” 

I’m not your dad - you don’t have to ask me for permission. “As long as you’re the one carrying the fish.”

She seems much less enthused as Rimes plops some very stinky, very dead fish into her outstretched hands. “It’s so fishy.” She wrinkles her nose and cranes her neck to stick her face into her shoulder. “Whew!” Widget cries. 

“Can’t be all flower smells and penguins working here,” Phoenix says. Even though he really did manage to keep a straight face saying it, his amusement seeps into his voice and Athena lifts her head with a sour glare. She wants to befriend the penguin, she’s got to deal with the consequences and the method of doing it. Like befriending a fae meant suffering her crouching over him at two am to ask him when he can get more ice cream because there’s none left. 

Back at the orca pool, they find Sasha, and a walkie-talkie shaped like a sword that belongs to Rifle in order to locate her. Athena brightly suggests must mean Rifle is, or was just recently, around here; they might not have jackshit to work with on their case, but Athena’s going to feed a penguin if it kills her. 

It comes close, when Orla bursts out of the water, chittering loudly and smacking her flippers against the surface. Phoenix flinches, and Athena, with more sensitive hearing, closer to the pool where the floor is wet and slippery, springs back with a scream. Her feet splash down in a puddle and slide straight out from under her, dropping her right to the floor. The fish spill out of her hands across the pool deck, a few landing in the water, and a few falling in her lap. “Oww,” she groans, showing no inclination to pick herself back up, and she must really be hurting if she hasn’t recoiled from the fish yet. 

Orla whistles. She sounds confused, almost. Maybe apologetic? “You okay?” Sasha asks, extending a hand to help Athena up. “You’ve gotta be careful around here or you’ll slip right in!”

Athena groans again, scooping the fish up from her skirt back into her hands. “Yeah, no kidding.”

The large pirate hat balanced on Orla’s head, behind her blowhole, slowly slides forward and plops into the water. Orla hasn’t really moved, not enough to upend her headgear like that, but with the hat fallen away Phoenix can now see a penguin waddling along Orla’s back. She puts her nose to the edge of the pool, allowing the penguin to hop down to the floor. “Rifle!” Athena cries. “There you are!” She brandishes a fish at the penguin, who doesn’t even turn at the sound and movement and trots on unperturbed to the doors. “Hey! I have food for you! Don’t you run away from me!”

That gets Rifle’s attention. Its pace picks up to a run - away from Athena. “Now I think you’ve scared her,” Phoenix says, but Athena, not having learned the lesson about wet floors yet, starts running after her. Sasha exchanges a sideways glance with Orla but doesn’t say anything; if the penguin is running around outside of its enclosure on a regular basis, they probably expect or have a protocol for when it’s chased down by eight-year-olds. Or eighteen-year-olds. The penguin’s well-being is not what he’s worried for: for those stubby legs, Rifle moves fast, and Athena looks on course for another spectacular wipeout.

The doors swing inward as Rifle comes up on them, bumping it onto its back. How do they right themselves with those proportions - there must be some way for them in the wild, if they fall over, but Phoenix doesn’t actually get to witness the attempt more than a few seconds of flailing feet. “Oh my goodness! I didn’t know you were there!” 

Athena pulls up short, watching the young woman who crouches down and gently lifts Rifle to set it back on its feet. Her eyes lift up to study Athena with several seconds of the most intense stare that Phoenix ever found himself under. Fae eyes only change color to red when their glamours drop, but he knows that scrutinizing gaze. It’s the one she gives everyone when she first meets them, assessing who they are, what they are, and whose side they seem to be on. So much woven into a glance, so much caution and suspicion, but Morgan raised her to be queen, and the throne in Kurain isn’t a shield that stops knives coming from behind. 

“P-Pearls?”

“Mr Nick!”

He’s seen her more than he’s seen Maya these past eight years, but in his head she’s still the tiny child she was when they first met. Very little about her has changed in that time - she’s a little taller but still slight and petite, and her eyes are only a little too big for her head, her forehead no longer the same size as the other half of her entire face. And he blinks, and studies her again: her iridescent skin like the inside of a seashell, almost white but a dozen other colors, pale shades of blues and pinks and greens, shimmering with the light, with her movements, up to her horns that curve along her head and once they reach the points of her long ears, they curl up and loop in toward each other, forming almost the shape of her hair. She has six eyes, two where they should be and two smaller above each. All six blink in rapid unison, and she raises one dainty clawed hand to cover her open-mouthed, sharp-toothed shock. 

“What are you doing here?”

She asks at the same time he does, their same single thought tangling on itself. Pearl giggles. Her laugh doesn’t quite sound the same as it always used to; some of her smooth refinement has been chipped away, and even a giggle is a little louder and rougher, a little less regal. She’s lived with Maya as her closest family longer now than she lived raised by her mother. That rubs off and for once in this instance he doesn’t think Maya’s influence is a bad thing.

“A summer camp from Kurain Village took a trip here,” Pearl explains. “I came with them because I’d never been to an aquarium like this, but then this incident happened, and I only just got done being questioned by the police.”

She says it so calmly, this incident, a man is dead and she isn’t fazed and she’s steadily watching Phoenix with her big eyes wondering if this incident suddenly makes sense, why it happened, if Phoenix is here. People drop dead around him all the time. She’s been there for a bunch of those, and even though that’s hardly a moral indictment of him - there’s plenty of other reasons to make those - he feels the need to hurry to explain that for once, he showed up after the death. “We’re here investigating the case,” Phoenix says. “Ms Buckler - Sasha - asked us to defend Orla and prove that she didn’t kill anyone.”

Pearl nods, and Phoenix feels a surge of appreciation for her. Finally, the one person who isn’t going to question this entire providing legal representation to an orca thing. All she knows about lawyers, she learned from Phoenix, and that Orla should be one of his clients doubtlessly seems entirely normal. “Who’s ‘we’?” she asks. “This lady here with you?” 

“I’m Athena Cykes, attorney-at-law! I’m the newest member of the Wright Anything Agency!” Athena grins; the prospect of a new friend has given them a momentary reprieve from her frustration over Rifle. “Nice to meet you!”

Pearl’s expression lightens after the few seconds it takes to absorb Athena’s introduction, her very human manner of throwing out her full name first. Welcome back to this side of the veil, Pearls. “I’m called Pearl,” she says. It’s not her name, not who she is, just what others call her. She loves humans, tries in some ways to deliberately imitate them - he doesn’t know when or how exactly she got really into fashion, but that might be Trucy to blame - but names are names are rocky ground. “Or sometimes Pearly with my friends! How do you do!”

A moment later, something else sinks in, and Pearl jumps, actually jumps, and she hangs in the air just long enough to be noticeably weird. “Wait, Mr Nick! If you’re here to defend a client, that means—!”

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve got my badge back.” Or a badge. A new badge. He’s got a badge again. My badge. Practice saying that some more. 

He can’t summon the excitement that he should feel, but at least there’s Pearl, clapping her hands together, all the enthusiasm that he’s missing. “Congratulations, Mr Nick! That’s so exciting! Queen-Mystic Maya told me that you’d cleared your name but she didn’t tell me you were lawyering again!”

“That’s because those didn’t happen at the same time,” he says. “I only just passed the Bar. This is my first case - and my first day back.”

“Oh, I’m so happy for you! Have you told everyone yet? All our friends? We should throw a surprise party for you!”

“That’s not really a surprise if you’ve told me, Pearls.”

“Then - then we wait until you forget! Or we make you forget!”

He still has nightmares about forgetting himself, about walking into court with Maggey’s life on the line not just unprepared in terms of evidence, but his very head wiped clean of everything that would help. “I would prefer if you didn’t,” he says. “But I appreciate the surprise party thought.”

Pearl is distracted any further from protesting by Rifle, plucking at the hem of her robes with its beak. “How did you get her to like you?” Athena practically wails the question and Phoenix grinds his teeth together to keep a straight face, to say nothing, so that this time Athena won’t know just how amusing he finds her penguin dilemma. “What am I doing wrong?”

“You could try offering her some fish,” Phoenix prompts. She carried the stinky meat this far, she’d better not have forgotten about it. 

“Hey, Rifle!” Athena waves a fish by the tail; Phoenix steps back out of range so she doesn’t fling it at him while she tries to get Rifle’s attention. “I’ve got food for you! Fish chock-full of love from me to you!”

She tosses it in Rifle’s direction, but Orla lunges, hefting her body almost halfway out of the pool to snatch away the fish. “Oh,” Athena says. “Okay! I guess I’m bonding with Orla instead!”

“Friendship blossoming via exchange of food!” Pearl says. “Isn’t it moving, Mr Nick?”

Yeah, that’s one way to put it. Phoenix wouldn’t really agree, but that’s one way to call it. And this really is starting to sound more and more like a friendship with a fae. The easiest way to make a bargain with Maya is to pay her in food. There’s no cheaper price for a deal than a meal. 

“Orla doesn’t usually eat at this time,” Sasha says, frowning at Orla, who is making some chirping noises that sound like begging. “The captain’s the one who feeds her, every morning, and I don’t think he’d forget.”

That implies that the time of orca feeding is regularly before the captain’s time of death, if Sasha is talking about him forgetting, or not, and not the fact that he died this morning. Either he was preoccupied with something else before his death, enough that he didn’t think to feed the very large whale that he works with every day, or they’re all mistaken about his time of death. There’s no evidence at all to point to the latter thought, so Phoenix files it away as a last-ditch argument to pull out if he runs out of every other possibility in court tomorrow.

Athena brandishes another fish at Rifle, who ignores her. Orla chirrups again. “How did you do it, Pearly?” 

It’s a good question, and a surprise to Phoenix, too. He can’t say that mundane animals and the fae get along well - he’ll never forget when Gumshoe offered to lend Missile to him and Maya, only for it to start howling and wailing so loudly that half the cops in the precinct poked their heads out to make sure that nobody was physically torturing the dog. And he wouldn’t be surprised if Matt Engarde’s cat was just generally the most unpleasant cat in the world, but it had ignored Edgeworth and gone straight to claw the hell out of Phoenix and Pearl, so he’s again inclined to guess that it was a fae thing. Maybe wild animals, like penguins, are different, but there was also the time Regent the tiger tried to eat him.

So yeah, a good question, one he’s been pondering himself. “Didn’t he say that Rifle is drawn to the smell of fish?” Phoenix asks. Rimes had given Athena the fish for that reason, and there is a bit of a strange fishy smell coming from more than just Athena.

“A - are you saying I smell like fish?” 

Phoenix weighs his options for answering. The fae do generally appreciate the truth, even when it’s something rough. But Pearl already looks offended and ready to roll up her sleeves and smack him through two walls, so he’s got to tread lightly. “Uh, maybe a little bit, yeah…”

He tenses every muscle in his body and waits for the deathly strike, but Pearl just slumps over. “Oh,” she says softly, more to herself than anyone else. “I really do need to change my clothes.”

What’s she gotten herself into? Why, of all the visitors to the aquarium, was she kept here and questioned while almost everyone else had to leave? No easy answer comes as he ponders it, listening to Sasha, Pearl, and Athena talk about Rifle and Orla. It’s Pearl, of all people, who’s worried about Orla eating Rifle - maybe it makes sense that she would think about it, orcas being to penguins and seals what fae are to humans, but that’s exactly also why he’s surprised it would occur to her. It would occur to Maya, who for all her chaotic tendencies is well aware of the gaping divide between human and fae, but while Maya likes hanging around with humans, Phoenix has always gotten the impression that Pearl might want to be human.

(And Iris, he knows for sure, wishes she was human.)

“Our Orla’s a big ol’ sweetie,” Sasha says. “She puts up with Rifle picking on her! The captain said he only had to give Orla a talking-to once, when he first introduced them, but he was constantly telling Rifle not to be such a meanie.” 

Chalk a few more points up under the sea witch thing was not a joke. 

“They seem to be very good friends,” Pearl says. They probably remind her of Phoenix and Maya, except Rifle acts way more like Maya even though Orla is the one with the teeth. 

She leaves to escort Rifle back to Rimes. Athena, pouting exaggeratedly, plops a few fish in Pearl’s hands and with pained, obvious longing, watches her walk away with the penguin. The rest of her fish she throws to Orla. It’s Sasha, after Pearl has left, who answers Phoenix’s unasked questions. “I’m surprised you know her,” she says. “I thought she was a friend of Marlon’s or something - heard that she was down in the staff hallway by the food prep room, and that’s why the cops were questioning her.”

“Huh.” She’d said herself that she had never been here before, and Rimes - Phoenix will have to remember to check if he looks like someone who lives in Kurain Village. “That’s really odd.”

“We’d better just go ask her then, right?” Athena says. “Unless you think she’d lie to us when we ask?” She watches his face intently, looking for a clue as to what level his friendship is with Pearls, whether she’d lie, whether he’d expect her to.

“She can’t lie,” Phoenix says, “and she’s not great at hiding things, either.” Through the years he’s found her to be no good at hiding anything from him - he’s not sure how Morgan thought she would ever survive Court politics. Or maybe it’s only him that she’s no good at talking around the truth with. “Maybe if we’re lucky something she knows can help our case.”

They catch up to her near the eel tank, as she’s saying goodbye to Rimes and sends Rifle along with him. “Hey, Pearls.” She flinches at his sudden call and in the dim light her skin flashes to a shimmering surface like an opal, her glamour dropped momentarily in her fright. He’s always wondered if that’s an actual built-in fae defense mechanism - if something startles her, startle it right back by showing her true face. “We just had a real quick question for you about your relationship with Mr Rimes.”

“My—?”

The thing about Psyche-Locks is that they used to show up when someone directly lied to him, by contradiction or blatant evasion of his questions. What was I doing when the murder happened, Mr Nick? Why do you think I was doing anything when the murder happened? But exact words - I did not kill Juan Corrida - left him in the dark. Maybe he’s gotten stronger since then, or Pearl has and by extension so has the blessing she gave him; and he’s seen locks on half-truths when there’s something more buried deep within. He sees them almost proactively now. Pearl has barely begun to speak, to echo his question right back to him, and there it is. 

He’s afraid one day he’ll see locks without any prompting at all, that before he knows what to ask they’ll just appear. A visualization of how everyone of course has secrets, but he won’t know whether they’re related to a crime or not, and it’ll drive him out of his mind paranoid.

(It’s a common fae fate, losing their minds to paranoia. It’s practically built into their culture.)

“Pearls,” Phoenix says wearily, “why do I see a Psyche-Lock?”

It’s just one, thank god, one single lock sealed at the intersection of two chains. “Oh,” Pearl says, looking down at where the lock sits over her chest. She’s never been clear on whether she can actually see them or if she just otherwise senses the ones that Phoenix has already seen. “B-but there is no ‘relationship’ between Mr Animal Feeder and me!”

“I don’t necessarily mean romantic, Pearls.”

She laughs nervously. “But I, um - I still shouldn’t talk about it,” she says.

But she doesn’t say that she’s made any promises, specifically, to keep a secret. There will be a way to work it out of her. She gave him Truth, and he’s going to use it. 

“What were you doing in the staff corridor?”

The answer is simpler than her behavior makes it seem; she got distracted by the gift shop immediately when she arrived, bought a cute penguin calendar to help her with her understanding of the concept of time, and got lost when she tried to get back to the aquarium exhibits. She found the food prep room, scared the hell out of Rimes on entering, and knocked a few tubs of fish over onto herself, her new calendar, Rimes, his calendar, the floor—

Really, he’s just relieved that her fishy smell isn’t because she’d started eating some of the animal food. Or gotten into a tank and started eating the exhibits. And her mishap has netted them a little more information: Rimes didn’t want anyone to know he was in the food prep room, and Pearl picked up what must have been Rimes’ calendar instead of her own when they extracted themselves from the fish. Meet the captain @ orca pool, 7a, under today’s date. A clue to the victim’s movements before his death?

“You said you came here with your summer camp group?” Athena asks. “Did they get sent out of here with the rest of the visitors? Do you need to let them know where you are, or get back to them?”

“Oh, no, I’m not with them,” Pearl says. “I just traveled here with the group but they shouldn’t notice I’m gone. I’d rather help you and Mr Nick now anyway!”

Air hisses in through Athena’s teeth and she looks helplessly to Phoenix for a verdict. Like now he’s supposed to be Pearl’s dad, too. If she wants to go somewhere, no force on any earth can stop her. Her mother bragging about her powers was a preface to her attempts to get rid of Maya, but she wasn’t wrong, either, is the thing. Pearl has subtle control over her glamours that Phoenix has never seen in one of the fae; her slight manipulations of attention are the kind that Klavier and Thalassa do. There’s a reason that no one, not Gumshoe or Franziska or Edgeworth, ever questioned Phoenix bringing a small child to court and crime scenes. Pearl makes herself seem like she belongs anywhere, and disappear just as easily when it’s time to move on. The biggest surprise is that Sasha and Rimes even noticed something amiss in her presence at the aquarium at all. 

(It took Phoenix a while to actually realize what Pearl had done by giving him a magatama charged with the power of breaking glamours. Realize that she handed him the key to undo her greatest strength. Maya has teeth, and Dahlia curses, but in the end there’s little stronger than perception. Little Pearl, raised to be a usurper, raised to strike at what she feared and to fear all the world outside the royal manor, gave a human she just met a magatama and a blessing to see through her both literally and metaphorically. He was so focused on saving Maya he didn’t realize just then how much Pearl wanted to save Maya too, how much she loved her too, to make herself weak to help her.)

“So what’s next?” Athena asks. His silence has answered her as assent, permission for Pearl to stay. 

What next? Everything. They’ve meandered around learning all about the care and keeping of aquariums and nothing about the case. “We still need some sort of actual evidence we can point to for anyone other than Orla as the culprit, and her that to Fulbright. And we’ll want to go back and get Ms DePlume to tell us what she saw.”

“If there’s evidence anywhere it’s gotta be in the pool room, right?” Athena asks. “¡Vamanos! We’ll search over and over until we find something!”

Or at some point presumably accept that nothing turning up means that Orla probably did kill the captain. But they aren’t there yet, haven’t hit that wall, so he doesn’t yell after Athena as she careens down the hall, boots squeaking as she makes a hard turn on the sleek tile flooring. Two officers stand guard outside the orca pool room doors, like they expect Sasha to try and sneak Orla out this way. They both flinch away as Athena bodily slams into the doors and tumbles back inside. Neither smiles when Phoenix offers a placating one.

“I’m gonna go check out that mess in the back again!” Athena calls, barely slowed, her sprint picking back up.

“Hey, I’m doing my best!” Sasha hollers back. Her grin tells the rest of them she isn’t offended, but Athena, not looking back, has to hear it in her voice. “There’s a lot of work that goes into this place!”

With a shriek, Athena hits a patch of water and her feet shoot straight out from under her. Another epic wipeout snds her clattering into the pile of props and orca toys. Phoenix presses his hand to his forehead. “Athena,” he sighs, “you are the reason every public pool has about twelve ‘no running’ signs.”. 

“Ugh.” She’s slow to get herself back up, kicking a small prop dummy, marked by deep teeth marks, nearly into the pool, in the process of extracting herself from a skull-and-crossbones flag. “Yeah. But I’ve got us a new angle on it, right?” She brandishes a broken plastic sword that he hopes she didn’t break. Its other piece is nowhere to be seen, so maybe she didn’t. What she did do is scuff up the tape that marks the body’s location, which even before her was wet and barely stuck down in several places.

Pearl tilts her chin back. On anyone else it would be haughty, but she is regal until a moment later she inhales deeply and scrunches her nose up. “There’s blood here,” she says, nose still twitching, mouth pulled to one side in a grimace. 

“I think I’m just bruised, not bleeding.” Athena rubs her elbow. Then she freezes. “You aren’t, uh, smelling blood, is that what you’re—?” The terrified expression on her face isn’t subtle, and with Pearl standing right next to Phoenix, him noticing means she notices it just as well. Athena steps straight back through the prop pile, over the fallen limb of the ceiling-mounted octopus, until she’s bumping up against a pile of wooden crates with nowhere else to run. 

“No, it’s not you,” Pearl says. “It’s dried.” She closes her eyes and inhales deeply again, holding it in with her shoulders up. “Human, mostly.” Athena squeaks, but Pearl’s attention is fixed in the mess. Squatting, she shifts aside a few smaller plastic swords and a volleyball and then, with a soft but triumphant laugh, she holds up something above her head. Not that she’s holding it, exactly: the glinting circle hovers a centimeter above her fingers so as to not leave prints on it. It looks like a coin, another piece of prop pirate treasure, half bright gold that catches the light, and half dull red—

Blood. There’s blood on the coin. “Th - that’s—” Athena sounds faint. “That’s blood. That’s - do you think that’s the victim’s? And how did it get here?”

Phoenix accepts it when Pearl offers it to him. It certainly looks and feels like metal, but one side is emblazoned with a skull and the other an anchor - nothing usable as far as currency goes. “I don’t know, but this might be what we need. It’s blood outside the pool - not like Orla can leave the water. Hey, Sasha,” he calls. She springs up from where she’s sitting on the other side of the room and hurries over, slower and more carefully than Athena hurries. “Do you know anything about these coins?”

“They’re part of the show! Guess I missed a few when I was cleaning up. The cops gave me the go-ahead to put them away after they were done looking at - at—” Sasha crosses her arms tightly. “The coins were all scattered around - around by—”

“Around here,” Phoenix offers, motioning at the outline of Jack Shipley’s corpse. 

Sasha nods, and with a shudder, straightens herself back up, propping a hand on her hip. “No time to be a sad blobfish about it!” she says. “Gotta snapper out of it! Captain always says, when it’s showtime, you’ve gotta put on a smile!” She very obviously doesn’t look back down at the tape, the way Phoenix, if not occupying his mind with something else important, takes a wide step over the carpet beneath the window. 

“My mentor had a saying a lot like that,” he says. Sasha jerks her head up, barely catching her hat as it slides off. “She always said it was a lawyer’s job to keep smiling through the hardest times.”

“Sounds like a wise lady,” Sasha says, suddenly subdued again. Was the implication, the comparison from the captain to Mia, and the past tense, that obvious - the other thing they share, besides advice about keeping optimistic, that apparent? Hanging onto the words of a dead mentor right after it happened, yeah, Phoenix has been there too. She lets the silence rest a moment longer and then she adds, “I still haven’t managed to find all the coins. There should be about three hundred total.”

“Maybe some ended up in the pool?” Athena, now extracted herself from the trashed corner of the room, no longer trying to hide from Pearl, leans over the water from the top of the ladder. “I think I see something glittering down there. I’ll go in and grab them!”

She is really not learning her lesson today about having an ounce of sense in and around the orca pool. “No, you won’t,” Phoenix says. “Not dressed like that. It’s sixty-five feet deep and your clothes are going to make you sink and drown. Sasha, maybe you can — Athena. Put your clothes back on right now.”

Athena shrugs her shoulder back into her jacket, but she has the audacity to not look even slightly ashamed, just indignant that he would have the audacity to stop her from stripping to dive into an aquarium tank already occupied by a killer whale. What part of I’m her boss, not her father has the universe at large not understood? Apollo wouldn’t be putting him through this. He wouldn’t have to stop Apollo from drowning himself. 

“Sure thing, Phoenix, I’ll go grab them!” Sasha peels her crop top off over her head and even though he knows that she’s got a wetsuit on underneath the vaguely-pirate kinda-punk-rock gear, he still looks away - it’s polite. She leaves her shirt and shorts in a heap on the wet floor, her shoes having been discarded pretty much as soon as they made it back to the aquarium from the office, and without preamble or preparation she throws her hands over her head and dives down into the orca pool. Orla had been watching them curiously, and she swims slow circles around the pool, slowly descending, keeping some distance from Sasha but not enough that Phoenix isn’t still incredibly nervous for her. 

What’s the longest an ordinary human can hold their breath underwater? The answer for an ordinary human working as an orca trainer is surely longer than Phoenix could imagine, definitely way longer than he could manage, but he doesn’t actually have a number to know if a selkie in human form surpasses that. Sasha is difficult to see, blurry through the deep water, and making Phoenix even more anxious as time ticks by slower than ever and she doesn’t, and doesn’t, and doesn’t come back up. Then Orla sinks further, to Sasha’s level, and she grabs the orca’s fin and lets her rocket her back up to the surface. 

“There were a ton down there!” she exclaims, understandably breathless from her venture, and dumping the coins on the deck. “I mean, not actually a ton. They’re all around seven pounds in all.” 

“That’s still a hefty bunch of coins.” He watches Sasha hoist herself out of the pool, ignoring the ladder not far to her right. Seven pounds of coins, one with blood on it, scattered all around a crime scene and a corpse. What’s it mean? It’s always something - write nothing off as coincidence. Everything’s good for a bluff, if nothing else. Seven pounds of coins, blood, a corpse, no murder weapon so all the suspicion’s on the orca. Seven pounds of coins, blood, corpse, no murder weapon—

He watches Sasha carry the wet coins over to a small box and dump them in. “What if the coins are the murder weapon?” he says. 

“How?” Athena asks. “How could you kill a grown man with a little coin like that? Is this a fae thing?” Pearl shifts her stance, her sandals squeaking against the floor and her robes rustling. 

“One coin on its own wouldn’t do anything, you’re right - but if you took all seven pounds of them, and put them in a bag…” He deliberately trails off, leaving her room to logic out the rest of the thought.

“You could use it as a blunt instrument!”

“Exactly. Though I don’t see any coin bag around here.” Maybe in that mess of props, as though they haven’t already gone through it twice. 

“If the killer took it, it would look even more like Orla did it, and it doesn’t matter now, anyway!” Doesn’t it? Actually, for the moment, she’s right. “The coin and this theory is enough for reasonable doubt! We’ve gotta go let Fulbright know! This should be enough for him to take it to trial, right?”

“Right,” Phoenix agrees. “And I still wanted to speak with that woman and find out what she saw. She’s hopefully still where we left her. Let’s go.”

“Rapide! C’mon, Boss! Pearly!” In her excitement, Athena has already forgotten that she was, and rightly still should be, afraid of Pearl.

Norma DePlume is still at the Pub O’ Danger, now doubting that the veterinarian she’s harassing is here at all, and her Psyche-Locks snap like tree branches beneath a heavy Kurain snowfall. It was one of the weakest efforts he’s ever seen. She barely tried to pretend she wasn’t a blabbermouth who wanted to spill everything to the first person who crossed her path. 

(Still would’ve been nice if she hadn’t attempted the pretense at all and just said it.) 

Her claim is that she saw the moment Orla took the victim in her mouth and shook him to death, which - didn’t Fulbright say that the orca rammed him to death up against the tank glass? Until they have an official up-to-date and updated autopsy report it doesn’t really matter but it’s nice to know he can still spot contradictions, still remembers how to fire those connections in his brain. A stroke of fortune means that Fulbright shows up right as DePlume finishes her tale of the violent orca brutally maiming the poor owner, who she had so tried to warn of Orla’s tendencies, only to be so cruelly blacklisted from the aquarium. (And got back inside anyway.) 

“I think you can see from this testimony that there’s no way this can be anything but accidental death,” Fulbright says. “But don’t feel bad! It’s the thought that counts and you’ve done all you can, I’m sure!”

Is that supposed to be consoling? Kind of him to try, but also in legal matters, it really, really isn’t the thought that counts. “Actually,” Phoenix says, “I think we do have something.”

Fulbright listens intently to their theory about the bloody coin, while DePlume shrieks and recoils from it. “That’s not decisive evidence of a human killer,” he says, but over Phoenix’s protestations adds, “But your theory does seem enough to warrant further investigation. I’ll give the Prosecutors Office a call about reinvestigating from a possible criminal angle. When we spoke earlier there was one prosecutor interested in the case, if you could find some merit to it - maybe now he’ll be willing to take it to trial. I’ll let you know!”

Phoenix closes his mouth. Of all the batshit bluffs pulling through for him, he’s about to bring an orca to court. They’re not exactly going to be able to sit her in the defendant’s chair. “Thank you, Detective.”

“I really hope they’ll listen to him,” Athena says. “We’re so close now!”

DePlume snorts disdainfully. Pearl has a hand in the touch tank, allowing a crab to crawl up her arm. Nothing even close to fear enters her posture - she acts like she’s right at home here. A pearl happy as a clam in the sea. What’s in a name? Magic, and the fae shape themselves and others by what they’re commonly called. 

Athena joins her at the tank, leaning over it far enough that her hair swings across the surface of the water. She could attach a bobber and lure to it and go fishing with her ponytail. The two girls talk in quiet voices, either hoping not to disturb Fulbright just outside in the hall, or to eavesdrop on how the conversation is going. Phoenix paces a large circle around the edge of the room, watching the jellyfish bob lazily in their bottle-shaped tank suspended overheard. Do they ever get bored? Do they have enough brains to get bored? Do they have any brain at all? He can’t make out what Fulbright is saying on the phone, just that he’s talking, and then silent, and then saying something else. Is the length of time this is taking good or bad? Fulbright talking up a convincing case, or the Prosecutors Office going into detail about why this insane venture won’t be permitted.

He reenters with a yell. “You won’t believe what the Prosecutors Office had to say!” Athena snaps to attention. Phoenix hopes this is the good kind of won’t believe, where they won’t believe that Edgeworth actually agreed to allow someone to take a goddamn orca to trial, and not the bad kind of no, you wouldn’t believe that even with some evidence and reasonable doubt they’re just letting this one go.

“What happened?” Athena asks, bouncing on her heels. Pearl eases the crab back into the tank and folds her hands in front of her, waiting expectantly but much stiller than Athena.

“When I explained what you found, and your passion for the case, they said that the prosecutor I mentioned earlier is willing to take it to court!”

Phoenix’s stomach unclenches and then twists up in a worse knot. Holy shit, the day he gets his badge back and he’s got a case. He’s got a case and it’s an orca. “Yes!” Athena pumps her fist in the air. “We did it!”

“Does that mean there’s a human suspect being indicted?” Phoenix asks. Sure, he and Athena have already taken up legal representation of the orca, but maybe there’s a condition somewhere in there, that even a prosecutor who thought sure, what the hell to the initial matter has a line.

“No, I’m afraid not,” Fulbright says. “And to be perfectly frank with you—” He steps closer, posed conspiratorially, but his voice gets louder as he says, “Prosecutor Blackquill said he just wanted to prove the orca’s guilt in court.”

Ah. Of all the prosecutors available, this should not be a surprise. The witch (witch?) with the hawk. What are the odds that Edgeworth’s having a conniption?

“S - Ss—” Athena’s words comes out more like a hiss, no clue as to what words she’s going for, and then the hiss rises to an indignant yelp. “Prosecutor Blackquill?” Widget blinks yellow and immediately cycles to dark blue and then red. Athena’s tone tips past anger to a distraught wail. “It’s Prosecutor Blackquill who wants to prosecute Orla?” 

Poor kid. She must still be fucked up from the Tenma trial, facing down the samurai-convict and surely imagining that after that her life would be free of him. But Phoenix is - not looking forward to this, no, but this badge back on his chest is tied inextricably to Blackquill’s fate. For Edgeworth, and Edgeworth wants to help Blackquill. And to help, Phoenix needs to know Blackquill. Needs to face him himself, and not just watch Apollo do the same. “Thank you, Detective,” Phoenix says. “Thanks for getting this arranged.”

“You’re taking this rather calmly,” Fulbright says. 

“I’ve been committed to defending Orla from the start,” Phoenix says. With a few doubts and second-guessing what the hell he was doing, but orca or no, doesn’t that happen every case? “It doesn’t matter who’s prosecuting her - I’m not going to back down, now or ever.”

“And I’ll be doing my very best to make sure that justice is served,” Fulbright replies. 

It’s finally occurred to Phoenix why Fulbright is a familiar name, why it set off a weird itch he couldn’t scratch when he heard it back at the trial in April. Edgeworth had mentioned him at the same time he first told Phoenix about Blackquill. Fulbright’s the one who’s been backing Edgeworth from the beginning. Fulbright’s the one who volunteered to be Blackquill’s point of contact to the free world, to chaperone him about and keep others safe from him. 

(“This entire matter would have been dead on arrival if not for Detective Fulbright,” Edgeworth had said. “I was fighting with the precinct over Blackquill since before I officially became chief prosecutor. They refused entirely to allow any of their officers or detectives to be assigned as Blackquill’s monitor. If Fulbright hadn’t volunteered I’d still be spinning up against an endless argument about liability and rehabilitation for a man who aggressively pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.”

“Understandable on their parts,” Phoenix said. “But you think there’s more to it than that.”

Edgeworth fixed a withering glare on him. “I wouldn’t be letting a killer prosecute if I didn’t.”)

Three months have passed since Blackquill first took the bench, but the negotiations started much earlier, and with all that time spent around Blackquill and discussing Blackquill and acting as the liaison going between Blackquill and the people discussing him, Fulbright’s got to have heard a lot of shit about him. The mundane, and the loftier rumors. After all that it’s got to be a surprise for Fulbright to run up against someone who’s not recoiled in horror at the mere mention of Prosecutor Blackquill, the way Athena draws back against the touch-tank, her hands gripping tight against the edge of it, holding herself upright. 

What’s Fulbright’s impression of those particular rumors about Blackquill, the ones Edgeworth barely thought to mention? There’s no way to know for sure without asking - a person appearing untouched by magic might be the most superstitious, easily believing whispers about witches and monsters, and on the other side there’s Phoenix all tangled up in it but still with no idea what in hell Blackquill’s deal is. But the quick once-over he gives Fulbright tells Phoenix that he’s the opposite of the prosecutor he’s tied to, unchanging and unchanged through both sets of eyes. Statistically that’s what most people are supposed to be - according to Edgeworth, anyway - but it never fails to surprise Phoenix when he finds someone human and unmarred by the tricks of the Court.

“Hey, Mr Attorney,” Fulbright says, and Phoenix jumps nearly out of his skin, suddenly sure that he’s read straight into his mind, somehow, even though if mind-reading was any magic Phoenix had ever heard of, he’d probably be able to See it. “Huh. Funny, I thought for sure for a moment that your eyes changed color there!”

“Oh.” Phoenix’s voice comes out poker-table level, and he decides that a smile, even a small one, is trying a little too hard to put him back at ease, so he keeps his face blank. “Yeah, I’ve noticed the lighting gets pretty funny in here, too, what with…” He points a thumb at the jellyfish and shrugs.

He seems dense, the detective, but Phoenix isn’t going to doubt his commitment to justice. Not because he keeps spouting off about it at the barest provocation, but for what he’s done. For Orla, and for Edgeworth. For Blackquill.

They’re left with the hum of the tanks, the last splash of Pearl’s hand in the water, Fulbright and DePlume’s voices fading down the hall. She’ll be a witness for the prosecution. Phoenix would love to see the battle between her and Blackquill as he tries to prepare her testimony. If she’s this fired up about the injustice of the killer orca, what’s she going to think of a murderer-prosecutor?

“So,” Athena says. “You know how we need, like, the signed defense request from the defendant to put us on the docket? Who’s going to sign that?”

“We could get Orla’s flipper and a stamp pad?” Pearl suggests. 

“I think we’ll just talk to Sasha,” Phoenix says. She’s Orla’s trainer - she’ll be the next closest thing to the owner, someone who can be a representative of some sort, acting on her behalf. “We’ve got to let her know, anyway, that this is going to court.”

-

Sasha is thrilled. Hopping up and down - Phoenix once again fights the impulse to tell her to take more care on the wet floor - she turns to Orla and asks, “Did you hear that? They’ve done it! Your case is going to court!”

Phoenix swallows a lump that tastes something like shame. Poor Sasha - she just lost a coworker, show partner, and mentor, had not even her other coworkers believe in her animal friend, and she came to him on basis of a cross-examination of a parrot a decade ago. That’s desperation, and he nearly turned her down. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up too far,” he cautions, and Athena’s grin, directed at Sasha, snaps down into a glare affixed firmly on Phoenix. “We’ll still be fighting an uphill battle in the trial tomorrow, but we’ll do everything we can.”

Sasha plops down on the edge of the pool, dragging a foot through the water. She watches Orla nose a volleyball across the surface. “I feel so bad that she’s got to stay cooped up in here,” she says. “The big show pool outside, since we’re on the waterfront it’s a pretty quick shot to the ocean, we’d take her out all the time, butI think they’re afraid that I’m going to try and sneak her out and free her into the wild to save her.” Honestly, that doesn’t seem that far out there as a possibility. “But she’s so sad in here without the captain to play with - I just can’t keep up with her. You should see her fastball when she’s playing volleyball!”

She must know the word, or understand Sasha in particular, because Orla dives down deep in the water and breaches the surface, jumping high and spinning and smacking the volleyball straight into the back wall. It hits with a booming smack and bounces all the way back to land in the water again. “Oh, wow,” Athena says, a breathless, shocked kind of admiration, but Widget squeaks out, “Yikes!”

“And orcas if they’re kept in captivity in places too small for them, they start going crazy!” Sasha throws her hands into the air and then smacks them down at the pool’s edge. “Whacking themselves up against the walls, and there’s real problems with fin droop where it goes like—” She holds up a hand, perpendicular to the floor, and then swings it down flat. “The captain was always so concerned to make sure she had enough space, and was healthy, and that we were learning from every other sea park that did stuff wrong—”

“Sasha,” Phoenix says. 

“I’m smiling, I’m smiling!” She forces a pained grin, more of a grimace, onto her face. “But nobody else knows how to take care of her, just me and the captain. And it’s like he’s counting on me, but I can’t do it right.”

“It’s like any human defendant having to spend a night or a weekend in a holding cell before their trial,” Phoenix says. “We’ve survived it” - or at least I have, three times, and god forbid Athena or Pearl has to go through that - “and I’m sure Orla will too. She hardly looks droopy now, does she?”

“No,” Sasha agrees. Orla chirrups and Sasha reaches out and pats her snout. “Thanks, Phoenix. And Orla thanks you too.”

“I thought you said Orla only understands certain people,” Athena says. 

“Yep, pretty much!” Athena’s apparent argument seems lost on Sasha, but a second later she picks it up. “Certain particularly weird people, and your boss is one of them.”

Ah. Great. Sounds like a certain proximity to fae magic is what does it. “Thanks, Sasha,” Phoenix says wearily. At least it’s a better prospect than the animal vehemently hating him for that same thing. If he’s not being attacked, he’ll accept being called weird by an orca-training selkie. “No, weird is good!” Sasha throws up a hand in some sort of rock on! gesture. 

“Yeah, Boss!” Athena echoes Sasha with a peace sign. “We’re the weirdest law office in LA and we’re proud of it!”

Just in LA? Where in the rest of the world is she finding any office weirder than the Wright Anything Agency? In complete honesty, Phoenix wouldn’t want to meet them, not while he’s too much for himself to handle.

Sasha grasps at straws to keep the conversation going, reluctant to let them leave and return to having Orla as her only conversational partner. And Orla emits a soft, mournful cry as the doors close on the three of them, ushering them away. In the lobby, as they pass the tank, Orla dives down and puts herself on eye level with them, bumping gently up against the glass. Through the speakers placed around, her sad sounds waft out to them. Pearl meanders to a halt, drifts slowly back and presses a hand up to the tank. 

“Mr Nick,” she says. “You have to save her. This isn’t right. This isn’t fair.”

“We’ll do everything we can for her.” Phoenix watches frost form on the glass beneath Pearl’s increasingly sharp fingertips. “Pearls? What’s wrong?”

“She’s called a killer whale, isn’t she?” She grates her claws against the glass before she pulls them away.

“She’s not a killer!” Athena snaps. Has she even noticed the claws? “She didn’t do it! That’s just a name!”

Pearl sets a hard-eyed stare on her. “Names mean a lot,” she says. “They knew what her name is and what she is by nature, didn’t they? And even if they trained her and she still likes them, that’s still what - she still…”

“She still has teeth,” Phoenix finishes for her.

“But she grew up in this aquarium!” Athena protests. Has the subtext missed her? Is she too fixated on Orla and her case to hear that? “She didn’t want to go back to the wild! She wanted to stay! She was raised with people!”

“They were raising her hoping to change her nature?” Pearl asks.

“We’re not still talking about orcas, are we, Pearls?” Phoenix interrupts.

“What else would we be talking about?” Athena looks between the two of them, her eyes narrowing further and further as neither of them express the same confusion as her. She hasn’t been pondering what Phoenix has this whole afternoon, doesn’t think oh, this again. She doesn’t think of Maya’s glossy black hair and killer smile visible in the orca’s shiny skin and mouth snapping open to catch a fish, and she doesn’t think of Phoenix as the dead man bleeding poolside or maybe the trainer who fiercely believes in her despite everything. “Pearly, I thought you believed Orla is innocent!”

“I do!” Oh, god, if this turns into a fight Phoenix does not know how he’s going to stop either of them. Either could snap him in half. “If Mr Nick believes in her, then so do I! But the way they’re treating her even thinking that she did, isn’t fair.”

Who is Pearl thinking about? This veiled way they’re speaking - is it about changelings, sympathies for the devil? Or Pearl herself, walking her personal tightrope between worlds and the fae way Morgan raised her versus the pieces of a human childhood Phoenix offered. Nature or nurture, he always wonders - what makes the fae the fae? They can defy their natures, they can rise above circumstances - that’s what distinguishes fae and human from orca. 

Athena blinks confusedly. Phoenix presses his eyes shut and wishes that this conversation had never started. Forget it, forget what he’s thought since the beginning, the parallel running through a funhouse mirror. She’s just an orca. “She’s just an orca,” he repeats out loud. “I think we might be - humanizing her a little much?” Pearl raises her thumb to her mouth, sharpening her claw on her teeth. Phoenix corrects himself. “Personifying her. She’s smart, sure, but she’s still a wild animal and arguing about whether or not she can defy her nature and instinct is—”

“Orcas aren’t just animals!” Athena can harness her anger and turn it on one, and only one, person at a time. She’s playing against Phoenix now, not Pearl. “They have feelings! They have their own songs and languages specific to their own families and pods! They’re one of the only animals that goes through menopause because the older females stick around and help raise kids and look after the pod!”

“We’re not your opponents, Athena.” How long has she been this deeply passionate about marine life to have all these orca facts on hand to spout out. How much does Phoenix not want to be having the moral and ethical conversation about whether it would be wrong to punish an orca for killing someone, and if said orca can even have awareness of what she’s done, if she really did it.

Athena’s shoulders fall; her arms tuck in close across her chest. “I know,” she says. “It’s just, all of Sasha’s sadness, and nobody believing in her, and how Ms DePlume is, it makes me so mad!”

“Save it for the prosecution,” Phoenix says. “Hang onto it all, and then let him have it. Orla deserves someone to fight for her, instead of just writing her off like they were going to, but philosophizing about her is not helping us.” Is she smart enough to be malicious, or is that only people, fae and human, who are? That’s the crux of the question of whether or not she would deserve to be punished for killing a person, but how are they supposed to get an answer.

“Philosophizing - wait, so you weren’t still talking about orcas?” Athena asks. “I thought you both sounded way sadder than you were whenever we’d talk about Orla, but if it wasn’t just her what were you talking about?”

“Us,” Pearl says. 

[borderlandscast]

some more vines/tiktok for borderlandscast

or whatever it is that you kids call it these days!

rythian and his lactose intolerance:

rythian: (eyeing the plate of crackers and cheese on his desk and mildly sweating, camera jolts as he lunges for it, causing feed to blur)

ravs: (sprinting to rythian’s room with the chorus of ‘holding out for a hero’ dubbed over; as soon as he slams open the door, the gentle guitar ceases, replaced by the dramatic strum as he tosses a bottle of lactaid...right into rythian’s face)

rythian: (music ceases as he slowly slumps down out of frame and his voice is weak but grateful) my hero...

panda and their arsenal:

nilesy (badly dressed up as a security guard): you can pass, good citizen.

teep: (signs thank you and moves through checkpoint; they have a giant knife clearly strapped to their back)

panda: (checkpoint beeps, and panda pauses)

nilesy: (steps in front of panda) sorry, but i’m gonna need you to empty your pockets.

panda: (groans and rolls eye, and starts to remove a single weapon at a time from their pockets and piling it on the table)

nilesy: (adopts a glazed look as the pile continues to grow)

arsenal’s custom greetings:

arsenal: today, i’m gonna teach y’all how to properly greet a fellow captain. (view bobs in his hand as he breaks into a jog) HAMHA! (he slams his fist into daltos’ face)

daltos: (getting up) YOU...HAMBITCH! (lunges for arsenal, who chortles)

lalna’s doki doki:

arsenal: (blowing up a paper bag, slides behind lalna and pops it)

lalna: (emits a shriek of epic proportions before wheezing like a deflating balloon)

arsenal: did that make your heart go... (cue intense zoom on his face so he has a double chin and menacing grin) doki doki?

panda and their arsenal part two:

panda: (still removing weapons, this time shaking out their hoodie which continues to drop weapons onto the pile, which is now knee high)

nilesy: (has pulled out a magazine and is reading; the magazine is full of cats wearing bikinis)

teep: (can be seen in the background, perusing a stack of books from vendor)

lalna and his creation:

lalna: (leaning over camera with terrible spooky glow cast by flashlight; lightning caused by larry robert flickers in the background) IT’S...ALIVE!!!!

leggy gun: (said gun twitches on the bench and slowly rises to face lalna)

lalna: (voice cracks as he coos) say daddy!

leggy gun: DADDy!!!!!! (albeit heavily distorted and in a loader’s terrifying monotone, amplified through loudspeaker)

lalna: (shedding tears) OH, I’M SO PROUD!

larry robert: (dabs in background)

ravs the rooster and an unfortunate victim:

zoeya: (rocky feed as she hoists it up; happy clucking can be heard that grows louder) so what we have here is a vulture, not a chicken. ravs, do you know why you’re a vulture?

ravs the rooster: ovo? uwu! (zoeya holds the camera up properly to focus on the whiteboard sign hanging around ravs’ neck) uwu!

the sign says: i participated in postmortem cannibalism by stealing panda’s dropped chicken nugget, flying onto the roof and eating it in front of them despite my beloved lesbians yelling at me to drop it.

sips and dirt:

sips: (fully dressed and standing in shower) boy, i love coming home to a refreshing hot shower! (pulls something off screen so that a bucket of high quality dirt is dumped over his head; he majestically throws his head back in slow motion to scatter the dirt everywhere; ‘fergilicious’ also plays as he fans himself with a noteful of hundos; dollar bill glasses also spawn on his face)

zoeya and skags:

zoeya: (soft tones of ‘i wanna be like you’ start playing as she nods and gestures to a horde of domesticated skags behind her; as soon as the beat kicks in, all the skags, including zoeya, start to rapidly spin on the spot)

romeo and juliet, bandit style:

sparkles: (wearing a psycho mask with a jaunty blonde wig badly stapled to it) romeo, oh romeo, wherefore art thou romeo?

parvis: (voice reciting lines grows louder in volume before sparkles swings view over to a ramp; parvis approaches, dressed like a bandit edgelord, riding a christmas light decked out stingray) but soft, what light through yonder window breaks? (his voice starts to scream) it is the east and juliet is THE TITS!!!!!!!! (he hits the ramp upon the last two words and goes sailing into sparkles)

panda and their arsenal, part three:

panda: (hoodie is back on, is now thumping their upended boot; guns are still falling out; the pile is now waist high)

nilesy: (playing cat’s cradle with a string in both hands next to panda)

teep: (in background, is holding a tote bag filled with books and is now buying food)

trott is the sand guardian:

trottimus: (buried in sand up to chin) i am the guardian, guardian of the sand!

ross and alsmiffy: (both crouch low and slap sand mountain containing trottimus, and recite in perfect unison) posiedon quivers before him!

trottimus: (alsmiffy lobs a single bucket of water at trottimus) fuck off!!! (sputters and coughs as feed cuts)

lomadia and vapourwave:

lomadia: (swinging a baby rakk around and doting on it, set to that one vapourwave song like in that vine feat a woman and her cat)

arden and dick, janitors:

arden and dick: (slither across hallway floor like a pair of rocky crocodiles; ‘pink panther’ theme plays as the two approach someone’s abandoned trash and swallow it in one gulp and depart as silently as they arrived)

panda and their arsenal, final part:

panda: (unfolds eyepatch to remove one last gun from there) and that’s the last one!

nilesy: you may proceed in-

teep: (approaches and signs ‘i’m done shopping, let’s go’)

panda and nilesy: (both loudly groan, mostly panda, who starts to stuff guns back, starting with the eye one)

nanosounds takes sides:

strife: hello ma’am, nice to meet you! (shakes nano’s left hand, which pops off and he gazes at it, embarrassed and surprised)

nanosounds: oh, don’t worry! (sudden close up of toothy grin) i’m all right!

strife: (swiftly karate chops her on head with her own arm) no.

will’s nightmare:

strife: (clearly struggling in a dark room lit up by a lone bulb, initial view is of his neck and chin) NO, GET ME OUT! (view retreats to show him encased in layers of ties)

strife: (wakes up in cold sweat, wearing his trademark suit and sunglasses) looks like i was...TIED UP last night! (a second pair of sunglasses descend from above onto his face)

crying wolf:

alsmiffy: (mocking documentary voice) and what we have here, folks, is an extremely rare case of ‘crying wolf’, in my room. (steps over an inert trottimus wearing a banana suit, who is on the floor) ignore the trash.

ross: (curled up on floor, loudly blowing nose into towel) no, i don’t understand, because WHY DID THE THREE LITTLE PORKY BUGGERS MURDER THE BIG BAD WOLF? HE DID NOTHING AGAINST THE LAWS OF THE LAND-

trottimus: (trips alsmiffy using top of banana suit) :)

[theonceoverthinker]

OUAT 4X04 - The Apprentice

Apprentice? More like Apprent-ICE, am I right?!

...Yeah, that’s all I got. Unfortunately, be warned because it’s not a fun time here today, so strap yourself in and join me under the cut.

Main Takeaways

Past

Gotta say, I love how the writers had the balls to say that the reason Anna and Elsa’s parents went away was to find a more permanent solution for Elsa. Was it the right thing to do? Whether you think it was or not, just the fact that they implied that was heavy.

I love that scream when Rumple gets his dagger back. Seeing how much he hates it is so effective and had he not been the undeniable villain of the episode and more specifically the segment, it might have done more to reapply sympathy to him and allow for a really effective display about why being cleaved of the dagger means so much to Rumple.

So, as a warning, I get pretty angry at the present segment of this episode and to remember that this segment of it exists was like a breath of fresh air. Anna and Rumple have consistent characterization and even throughout all of the twists and turns of this episode, those characterizations are never lost. Because of that, the story is far more powerful in delivering something cohesive and entertaining. Sometimes, for as simple as a story is, that’s what makes it something truly good. The latte segment tries to be all over the place and as I’ll go over shortly, fails so hard because of it.

Present

This episode...was never one I liked. For a while, I found it simply difficult to watch because well...I like Killian. Like with seeing his lips cursed in the last season or seeing Henry turn against Emma in the one before, it’s an action that made complete sense to me from a narrative perspective, but is nonetheless hard to watch and for some reason, this one is harder for me to watch than either of the others.

And after rewatching it, I kind of understand why.

It’s good in terms of being a morality play of sorts. Killian not being honest with Belle about Rumple’s secret is a horrible thing to do and the punishment, while brutal, does make sense given his crimes. Rumple’s manipulation and reverse psychology is so cutting to watch play out. While Killian is trying to improve, obviously, there are cracks to his still developing sense of heroism and Rumple knows how to exploit that into getting a lackey and making Killian pay. It’s a lot harder to enjoy since Rumple’s the villain of the episode, but I also understand that that’s a personally hard point.

That ALSO having been said, Killian’s near snapping points kind of suck. In the case of the first instance, it’s really fucking stupid for him to be so pissed at someone who simply tripped and caused some drink to fall on Emma’s dress. I don’t care what kind of psychology Gold played on him, it’s still really dumb. Now on some level, I get that given the “rings” speech Killian gives in Season 5 (Assuming that he came upon those rings before his encounter with Rumple, and at least one of them came afterwards) and that the move was clearly more subconscious than anything in how it was shot and how Colin played it, this is more up old Killian’s alley, but just...for all of Killian’s confidence, this is such a petty thing to make it falter and it stretches my suspension of disbelief just a smidge too much. The way that it’s played doesn’t help. It drags the date down in a really awkwardly written way where Killian is both enjoying himself and kind of can’t because of the hand. And in the second instance, the moment goes by so quick and is given such little focus that it’s just not as effective as the former point. I found both instances to be so utterly weak.

And how Killian goes after The Apprentice with barely a moment’s hesitation because of such small incidents isn’t really that well written to me. Like, what’s worse: Punching someone or allowing your arch enemy to have his fucking way with a man who very likely doesn’t deserve it? It doesn’t paint Killian in the way that the episode is trying to. The episode is trying to show that Killian is a good person with inner demons that hadn’t finished coming out, but that he wants to stop. But instead, Killian’s getting scared over basically nothing in terms of this series and rather than look for any other solution, opts to help Rumple do Merlin knows! And Killian does NOTHING as it happens! I thought I remembered an apology, but there isn’t one! He just stands there, makes no attempt to even subconsciously stop the hat, and it really grinds the wrong way against all the goodwill he’s accumulated.

The ONLY action of his that was bad, but I at least get the nucleus of is when he threatens Belle. He was angry at Rumple and was trying to irk him (Also, it might have been just metaphorically given the news he had). And when that’s all the segment can provide for me, then that’s just sad.

What’s more: For all the bravado made at the end of the episode for how much Killian will owe Rumple for this, Killian breaks four episodes later the MICROSECOND Emma’s threatened. And the time in between simply has Killian out of focus for the most part in regards to this dynamic! Look, I’m normally one of OUAT’s more defensive fans, but this legitimately, given all the characterization that was picked up only to be abandoned after this episode, must conclude that this episode was only meant to move the plot along by trapping the Apprentice, but unlike other episodes, I mean that in the worst way BECAUSE it tries for so much else only to abandon it afterwards.

And here’s the thing: If they were aiming to make Killian a villain protagonist in this episode, someone who we thought was good but was actually bad, I wouldn’t be complaining. I wouldn’t like it from an emotional standpoint because I don’t like Killian being hurt, but I do understand that Killian’s a character capable of great evil and an episode delving into that would’ve been great (That’s why I like the twist in “A Murder Most Foul” so much). But Killian is clearly, despite receiving Emma’s forgiveness, disturbed by the danger his possessed hand poses and that’s a good thing in both the audience’s perception and in the episode’s framing. Him wanting to get rid of that hand for that reason is a good thing. It’s not like he hurt David or Emma or someone else he cared about -- he hurt an asshole thief (As far as he knew) and was still freaked out enough to make a deal to get rid of the hand. And because of that, the framing is all over the place and seemingly can’t make up its mind about what it thinks of Killian here. And works akin to that can work -- my favorite musical is Hamilton and that show is as scathing as it is praising at times, but Alexander himself is a consistent character. Killian in this episode is about as consistent as curds and whey and it sucks. This came after one of the best Golden Hook scenes EVER. How did they fuck that up in such a way?!

I like how Emma shows real strides in taking the advice given to her about not letting another crisis stop her from living her life. She actually makes the choice to not only go out on a date, but to not chase a thief. She’s prioritizing the important things and living and that’s solid development.

There is literally no point to Henry working at Rumple’s shop. Nothing comes of this and that’s a shame! It contributes nothing to Operation Mongoose, derails this already derailed episode even more with the awkward way that it pops up, and its lack of depth deprives the audience of Neal bonding as well as Rumple and Henry bonding. And again, that sucks. It doesn’t even contribute to saving Killian, like the placement of the hat during the ending scene implies that it might, and that makes it doubly frustrating! Like, there was potential for this idea (Maybe have Henry ask some more questions or delve into Henry’s feelings on Rumple’s betrayal and how it affects Operation Mongoose later since the villain who seemingly got his happy ending lost it).

All Encompassing

I like the more subtle theme of backing away from temptation. Anna steps away from the temptation of saving her sister at the cost of the Apprentice (Or so she thinks) and this is correctly framed as the right thing to do. Killian both does this and doesn’t do this. He backs away to ask for his hook back upon seeing the damage he does to others, but doesn’t back away at the darkness of the cost of that hook (Allowing for Rumple to put the old man in the hat).

Stream of Consciousness

-Ooh! It’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice! M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E! XD

-I like that we got to see Zoso again. You know, seeing as he was Rumple’s mentor, I wonder what it was like for him to train Rumple. I HC that it wasn’t a long journey since Rumple adapted to the darkness fairly easily, but the dynamic would’ve been interesting to see nonetheless.

-What parent names their kid Zoso? And I thought Malcolm hated Rumplestiltskin! XD

-”No Dark One will ever possess what’s in that box.” ...Well, you’re half right.

-“No, but I want you to be happy.” Someone remind me one day to write a giant ass post about why I think the Captain Cobra dynamic is so good because believe it or not, a line like this actually boosts my love for this dynamic!

-That missed dart will brighten me up on my darkest days! :D

-”What are you, like 300?” Don’t get people started, Emma.

-I don’t think I ever realized how close Mr. Gold’s was to Granny’s!

-”You kept it all these years?” Rumple, I know revenge and self loathing and all that, but there is no heterosexual answer to this question! XD

-”This hand belongs to the man you used to be.” I kind of wane back and forth around how bad that dude actually used to be. On one hand, “Good Form” shows that Killian was raring to go, violence wise, but his behavior in Milah’s town in “The Crocodile” suggests that there were circumstances where he wasn’t a pillager. So was it just noble pillaging or was that just an exception? Opinions?

-”That’s just A through E.” Was that an Adam and Eddy reference? Because that’s pretty cute! XD

-So my journey with Killian’s Storybrooke outfit was a bit of an adventure. I didn’t like it when it first came out, but I will admit that that was partially because I was holding out for seeing him in a suit or even a tux AND I missed the pirate coat and the glorious chest hair we got because of it. BUT the more time that I spent with the outfit, the more I liked it and as of a few months ago, I now own a kickass custom Funko of this specific outfit! XD

-”It seems he indeed has changed his ways.” Killian, I get that you’ve gotta explain the sudden reappearance of your hand, but that might be a little too much, even for you.

-I didn’t realize it, but the Apprentice has some jokes to him! I like that bit of personality and wish we got a bit more of it.

-Killian, you don’t get to make poses like that and expect me to live through them!

-”Shouldn’t you be happy [That Marian’s frozen]?” Dude, whether she’s with someone or not, an innocent woman’s doing her best popsicle impersonation because of that frozen heart! Henry, not your best moment!

-That weird bit of Killian looking at his hand mid-kiss is DUMB! Like, I can almost forgive the dumb snapping point at the restaurant because it was somewhat unconscious, but this is Killian focusing on kissing Emma and just a LITERAL SECOND AGO, he was happy with his hands around her. That was simply a poor writing, shooting, and music choice.

-SNOW AND DAVID ON THE COUCH IS NEVER NOT FUNNY! XD

-Emma, don’t just leave your folks! Gossip!

-”Because I don’t want to.” I love how blatant and frank Rumple is with so many of his lines! XD

-We got flowers! We got a run in in a car! DATE NIGHT 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO!

-I love how Rumple’s such a fucking drama queen that he HAD the fucking hook on his person! XD

-I love how Storybrooke has a dedicated radio station! That must be the most interesting job in the world! If by some miracle, I’m ever transported to Storybrooke, I’m getting a fucking internship! XD

-And I love how Granny’s sponsors said radio station! Does she not have enough money?! XD

-Oh hey! Rip Van Winkle survived his deleted scene with Rumple and made it to Storybrooke! XD

-...Wow, Will. They were really planning something for you….I think. (Fun fact: You ever want to unlock my hidden salt? Talk to me about Will Scarlet, apparently! XD )

-I know a lot of people think Killian might have been homeless at this point in the series, but I HC that he just drank himself to sleep or that he just didn’t want to be around people for risk of hurting them.

-I love how Robert Carlyle plays Rumple when Rumple loving what he’s doing, but he’s in Storybrooke mode so he can’t exactly show it but still is showing it. Does that make sense?

-I KNOW YOU, RUMPLE! “OLD FRIEND” MY AUNT FROU FROU!

-YES! MICKEY MOUSE SAVES THE DAY! M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E, MOTHERFUCKER!!!

-Anna, I will forever love the fact that you call the most danger artifact in the OUAT world a “wavy knife.”

-I also love how she proceeds to say “please” to Rumple! XD

-Anna, you are my fucking hero!

-Anyone notice how The Sorcerer is very likely the owner of that gaudy af red and white car?

-”So here we are, Captain. Still in business together.” This line was always weird to me. It had no congruity with the story and for such a big line, it has no presence.

-Umm makeup? Will doesn’t look like he has a shiner.

-Damn, that investigation scene was weird.

-”...before the trail gets...cold.” Thank you, Emma for gracing me with a pun! I needed that!

Favorite Dynamic

Anna and Rumple. These two are fucking hilarious together! Rarely does Rumple get to have a back and forth with someone not only oblivious, but also hysterical and Anna meets this weird mix to a tee! Their banter is truly one of a kind and I’d have seriously loved more scenes of them together! I also love how Anna learns from Rumple! When she finally gets her hands on the dagger, she is VERY careful about how she handles Rumple and her commands! Seeing Rumple’s lip twitch as he is forced to save The Apprentice is just one of the greatest moments ever! Not only that, but I found their dynamic to be a little necessary. While Killian is getting his just desserts for doing bad in this episode (Though it might be a bit overkill-y (Or should I say, over KILL-I-AN XD) for me), Rumple is doing bad too in the present with no consequence and I feel like the flashback here showing his proverbial ass getting handed to him made that a lot more palatable.

Writer

Andrew Chambliss and Dana Horgan are our writers today. It’s actually Dana’s first and...it really shows. I don’t feel too guilty attributing the present segment to Dana as she’s written second on the writer’s list, but correct me if that’s a mistake of judgment on my part. There is no understanding of Killian’s character or what she wants to do with him here and because of that, he flops on the deck like a fish. And when you’re dealing with such a delicate dynamic as Killian’s and Rumple’s, you need to provide it Andrew’s segment of the episode however is fantastic! Everything is much more cohesive!

Rating

6/10. This was is many ways such a failure of an episode. I GET what they were trying to do -- expose cracks in Killian’s redemption so that the door was open to explore more with his character, but the result of the work here made Killian an incomprehensible mess. His morality is all over the place, but not in the way it intended. Honestly, if not for all the goodwill Killian developed earlier on and following this episode, this singular episode might have destroyed my love for his character. If this segment were on it’s own, it very likely would’ve been tied for the series’ low of 3/10. Thankfully, the past segment is such a redeeming factor here. The story is far tighter and the characterizations were done so carefully. Additionally, Mr. Gold is at least consistent in the present segment and Robert Carlyle’s performances here are excellent in selling that sanrmyness of Rumple’s. But the rest of it is trash and apart from the hat scene and the flashback, are completely irrelevant throughout the rest of the series.

Flip My Ship - The Home of All Things “Shippy Goodness”

Captain Swan - So before we get into the squee of things, I gotta talk about Henry. Despite that “no,” Henry is the one to push Emma into that diner. If he didn’t want her asking Killian out, he wouldn’t have done that. I’ll get into this when I one day talk about how much I love Captain Cobra, but I love how Henry likes Killian, but his feelings towards Killian dating Emma are a lot more ambiguous. Okay, we good! Now let’s get into AWESOMENESS that is the date stuff! First off, Killian wastes no time focusing on the mission because he knows how important it is to Emma and assures her that they’ll find her, all the while oblivious to Emma’s adorable nervousness. And then she asks him out and he misses so adorably! And the age banter and the planning banter! Fuck! I just can’t! And I get to watch a whole date of them! I’m already in pain from smiling. But before that, I’ve got to point out how Killian, despite being a lot fucked up i his method, is going for his hand back on the off chance that Emma wants him to hold her! That is just too romantic! Rumple, you’re right about blackmail and his romantic side! Ok! I love those first few seconds where Emma and Killian cannot speak because they’re admiring each other so much. Like, oh my FUCK! That is too cute! And can we talk about And then we get the actual date and while Killian’s having his mini panic attack, Emma’s the one to comfort him and tell him it’s okay. I really like how they both support each other in this way! “Will you go out with me again?” Because I’ve seen that thread where people started the show because of a gifset of that and I’m STILL shook af! And Emma’s response with that kiss is too beautiful! Like, she can’t even think of how to verbalize how much “YES” she has in her so she decides to kiss that “YES” and burn it into everyone’s skull for all eternity! And the way she stands by the door once it’s closed...that’s actual perfection. Like, I can die a happy woman!

Rumbelle - I’m not gonna defend Rumple’s actions in this episode, but seeing just how far he goes to fuck with Killian for threatening his marriage really does show how much he values said marriage. I also loved the deleted scene where Belle returns to the library and think that would’ve been better had it made it on screen.

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I hate bitching about an episode and I wasn’t looking forward to doing it at all, so much so that I pushed doing this episode off twice! I want to say that hopefully that’s the last time I need to review an episode like that, but unfortunately, I’m not a fan of the next episode either. This...is gonna be a hard week.

BUT thank YOU all the same for reading! You made this bit of suffering worthwhile! And thanks to the fine folks at @watchingfairytales as well as @daensarah! See you next time!

Season 3 Total (35/230) Writer Scores: Adam and Eddy: (9/60) Jane Espenson: (10/40) David Goodman and Jerome Schwartz: (10/50) Andrew Chambliss: (6/50) Dana Horgan: (6/30)

*Links to the rest of my rewatch will no longer be provided. They take posts with links outside of searches and I spend way too much time on these reviews to not give them that kind of exposure. Sorry for the inconvenience, but they still can be found on my page under Operation Rewatch.

[theonceoverthinker]

OUAT 3X01 - The Heart of the Truest Believer

Finally, I can start Season 3! It’s been so long that I can HEART-ly believe it!

...Did you miss the puns? I missed the puns. I don’t think Emma did, because I’m just hanging on by a thread! 

(Ha! Snuck two in!)

Anyway, let’s get under the cut and see what this episode has to offer!

Press Release Emma, Mary Margaret, David, Regina, Mr. Gold and Hook enter Neverland to search for a kidnapped Henry, they’re greeted by a school of not-to-friendly mermaids who threaten to end their search before it begins; Henry finds himself on the run from the Lost Boys with another escapee from Peter Pan’s encampment; and Neal, recovering from his wounds, travels through the Enchanted Forest with Mulan in an attempt to learn the fates of Emma and Henry.

General Thoughts - Characters/Stories/Themes and Their Effectiveness Neverland Seas ”I blame you.” Yeah, I disagree, Emma. For one thing, this plays a pretty small part of the overall story. For another, while they tried to convince her of what to do, it was Emma’s ultimate decision to do it. As she says, “We’re the same age. We have equal amounts of wisdom.” For a third, their decision, while endangering Henry, saved Regina. For a fourth, the only people’s faults for Henry’s capture are Greg and Tamara. *sighs* Look, I get Emma’s grief and worry, but this writing direction doesn’t feel genuine for her to deflect blaming Snow and David. It feels like a conflict was thrown in so that there would be more of a disconnect between her and her family.  I love Emma, but I can admit when a scene makes her completely unsympathetic despite the framing telling me otherwise, and this is a prime example. And here’s the thing: This never comes up again! Emma doesn’t apologize to them. This moment is utterly pointless!

The importance of teamwork is the big theme of this segment and once we get over that hiccup of a scene as I just mentioned, it’s delivered incredibly effectively. The conflicts between the characters, both internal and external, are incredibly real and no one is holding back. And the twist of those conflicts causing the storm is handled well! Rumple presents the bare essence of the theme, about Emma’s lack of belief, and because he chooses to go off on his own, the narrative has him fail by putting him into a traumatising position, whereas Emma’s belief in their abilities as a team and, in correlation with Rumple’s speech, herself, allows for the rest of the Nevengers to succeed.

Neverland Island So I have a nice bit to say about this segment, but it all applies to my “Favorite Dynamics” segment, so you’ll see that down there!

Enchanted Forest There’s not really much to be said about the story other than I liked it. That’s not to say that I didn’t like it or I didn’t appreciate the characters re-introduced or the interactions between them, but it was rather simple and that just doesn’t leave me a lot to talk about in terms of a breakdown of themes of major character actions. Still, the pacing was nice and the story was engaging!

Insights - Stream of Consciousness -So I didn’t realize that Emma giving birth to Henry was the first scene of the season. For some reason, I was under the impression that it happened at the start of “Coming Home,” but I honestly love it being here. Immediately, you get the sense that this arc was well planned so that it could return to this moment at the end of “Coming Home.”

-Also, I love that flicker of light as Emma gives birth! Such a special part of Emma’s life -- one filled with both joy and misery as she decides to give Henry away -- deserves the magical treatment!

-I seriously got choked up as Emma denied her chance at being Henry’s mother from the start. There’s so much love for him from the start and while it’s causing her so much pain, she’s doing what she thinks is best for him. And the gentle and yet powerful way the theme plays in the background just kills me. Swan Believer forever!

-Damn, what a cool way to go back to the present! We’re put right in the action, not missing a minute of the adventure.

-I will NEVER get over how much I love hearing Killian say “Neverland.” Whether in “The Crocodile” or here, Colin puts so much energy into the word, encompassing the danger and adventure to be found there.

-”It’s a good thing you guys don’t ask any questions.” My sentiments exactly, Henry!

-”More time than I care to remember trying to leave this place to kill Rumplestiltskin.” This provides some interesting insight into Killian’s character. It implies (to me) that he devised his Dreamshade plan with quite a few years to spare before his escape, whereas I always assumed that the planning took most of the time and that the escape was just a pinch of time towards the end.

-”Villains don’t get happy endings.” It’s incredible that this line, said by a character that left so little of an impression, is what follows Regina, Rumple, and Killian throughout basically the rest of the series.

-”That’s a great use of our time. A wardrobe change.” To be fair, Killian, Rumple’s not going to be in fighting shape sporting a Calvin Klein suit. This...honestly weird ass outfit makes the most sense.

-”You don’t believe in your parents, you don’t believe in magic, or even yourself.” Talk about a kickass line of foreshadowing of all that she’s going to overcome by the end of this arc!

-”When have you ever taken a real leap of faith?” Give it about a half hour, Rumple!

-So I must say, it’s funny that a lack of evidence is brought up as such a big story element here, but once Tink enters the picture, it’s her need for evidence as to the safety of their voyage back that secures it. A bit of dissonance, but nothing too severe.

-I love how Rumple spins his cane as he disappears. Rumple is the most beautifully extra person across the realms.

-I probably should’ve discussed this last time, but I love the design for the Lost Boys. They give off this air of being lost souls and their numbers stand to make them very intimidating.

-So going off of Greg’s death as well as the events of “Awake,” I’m gonna say that a shadow rip doesn’t necessitate death unless the shadow ripper wants it to mean death.

-”No time for questions.” I like that subtle line that’s in tune with Greg and Tamara’s line of no asking questions, foreshadowing the revelation about him.

-Damn! JMO is strong!

-The dialogue in the scene with Neal, Mulan, Aurora, and Phillip flows so naturally!

-”How long was he with you?” ”Long enough for me to know that I miss him, too.” I normally don’t make timeline jokes, but...come onnnnn!

-”I will not be capsized by fish.” This may be my new favorite David line.

-Also, any pretense that murder leaves any long-lasting effects of Snow and David go the fuck away when David tries to kill mermaids.

-Why didn’t Regina get rid of them earlier?

-”If Pan wants you, he WILL get you.” This line is delivered so well. Pan is not only just barely holding out from outright bragging, but is trying to deteriorate Henry’s belief and seeing that it isn’t working, cementing his part to play in Pan’s ploy.

-”Lead the way.” Am I the only one humming “Follow the Leader?”

-I like how, until Rumple enchants her, Tamara physically can’t talk. Very realistic.

-You know, everyone talks about heart colors when it comes to Rumple, Regina, Snow, and Killian, but does anyone notice how Tamara’s heart was pretty freakin’ red when Gold crushed it?

-Did no one read “Lord of the Flies?” Get the conch shell away from your enemies!

-”Filet the bitch.” I’m starting to think that all of my favorite character lines in this show have to do with aquatic life.

-”We need to think this through.” Emma, that why they’re shouting at each other. They’re discussing the matter.

-Okay, so I’m not the biggest Robin Sr. fan (And I’m hoping that this rewatch changes that for the better), but this was a solid entrance. It feels iconic, plays to the character’s power and good nature, and the more neutral yet noble tone that the scene requires plays well to Sean’s strengths.

-”See these markings? He was keeping track of me growing.” Awwwww!!! Papafire moment! That was necessary and beautiful!

-I just realized, this is our intro to blood magic! Cool!

-”I ruined YOUR life?” Regina, please. I thought we were past that…

-”Don’t call my wife a slag!” Yeah, Killian. You deserved the fuck outta that punch.

-I love the music that plays during the flying sequence! It’s gorgeous, distinct, and whimsical!

-CAPTAIN CHARMING BROMANCE!!! We have taken off!

-So I’m guessing that Rumple has encountered Felix at least one or two times.

-”Each of us have been too busy being at each other’s throats to be believers.” Those things aren’t correlated.

-”We need to do this the right way.” “No, we don’t. We just need to succeed.” YESSSS! Emma! That is my girl! She gets her tactics from her mama!!

-”It’s easier to get people to hate something than to believe.” That’s...incredibly accurate.

Arcs - How Are These Storylines Progressing? Everyone Working Together AND The Mission to Save Henry- ”It’s time for all of us to believe, not in magic, but in each other.” Emma’s speech took a sentence to get going, but once it did, DAMN did it get good! Now, as one gleams from this episode, these two arcs are one and the same. The only way Henry is saved is by working together, and this episode completely captures why that’s so important.

Emma Accepting Her Parents - This second-part-of-an-arc got off to SUCH a weak start, and that’s frustrating because I KNOW it gets better from here. But what I said above does apply.

Greg and Tamara - “We don’t ask questions. We just believe in our cause.” Holy crap. Tamara and Greg went from being two pretty intelligent and well designed villains into being total morons. I will say, part of me is glad that they did because if not, their conflict would’ve been way too close to a science vs. religion debate for comfort. But they also die here. To be honest, if anyone but Rumple was to find one of them, I’d rather it have been Greg who got the additional moments of life to speak and allow for Henry to get away. His story, well, was actually a story, whereas Tamara’s connection to Neal is loose at best.

Killian’s Redemption - Killian’s redemption takes an honest-to-goodness step forward. He’s acting on his decision to care about someone other than himself (And that shows through the two people aboard the ship that can stand him), but still has quite a bit of his verbal firepower and contempt (Towards David and Rumple) that reminds us of his villainous past and that his redemption won’t be all sunshine and rainbows.

Rumple’s Redemption - Rumple takes what is a realistic step back, though I’m not even certain I should call it a step back. Despite being his Rumple-y self, the narrative makes it very clear that his decision to dessert the group and chastise them beforehand are made on behalf of the mission to save Henry. And as we see the personal trials he’s already taken on in this pursuit with the confrontation with Pan’s minion, there’s so much power that grows with these decisions.

Regina’s Redemption - Regina also takes a step back into some of her more vicious tendencies: hating on Snow, defaulting to magic and violence for all her solutions. I personally like this because while there’s an understanding that these people are family, the anger and resentment between Regina and them is still present and in the heat of the moment, Regina won’t forget it. I will say, the Regina Blames the World trope is back and it still annoys me, though slightly less so here because the framing wasn’t going for sympathy in that moment.

Favorite Dynamic Henry and Pan. Pan’s dynamic with Henry sets up perfectly the kind of monster he will be for the rest of the season. He’s an incredible manipulator and plans out everything he says in order to activate Henry’s belief just when he needs to. Look at the way he set up the pixie dust and how that moment pays off! It’s makes for a triumphant moment that becomes terrifying in hindsight. But what makes this dynamic work so well is how it is set up. In the few minutes we see before Pan’s disguised appearance, Neverland has shown itself to be a cruel place. The location itself is darkly lit and the two villains of the previous season are violently murdered. Because of that, we as an audience clutch to Pan just as Henry does and because of that, for the first time, our belief causes suffering as the deception is exposed.

Writer Adam and Eddy, as usual start up the season! And I honestly like it. A lot of it is good! I’d compare it to the Season 1 finale where it’s a good mix of story and character moments (And just like in the Season 1 finale, has a completely pointless and aggravating moment, but thankfully, this one doesn’t mean a lot)! I feel like the characters were put in a solid place where they have room to grow and are put somewhere that keeps them intimate and gives them opportunities for great dynamics!

Rating 9/10. This episode is a great way to start off the season! The settings and themes have been set up well, and the characters are in good form! It’s exciting and adventurous, but nerve racking all the same. It makes me super excited for what’s to come!

Flip My Ship - The Home of All Things “Shippy Goodness” Captain Swan - Look, season 2 was not Captain Swan’s golden time for shipping (For me, at least), but Season 3 is here and they are glorious! Killian is incredibly respectful of Emma, comforts her over her worries, addresses underlying grief she has for Baelfire, and supports her as she prepares for Neverland’s horrors. It’s honestly amazing! Also, Emma and Killian are sailing the Roger together during the storm!! They’re working together and it is the BEST!!! Ship of dreams...quite literally! Swanfire - And don’t think I forgot about Swanfire! Both Emma’s grief and Neal’s devotion to getting back to her is such a big presence in this episode. “Tell Emma I’m alive, and that I love her.” Letting Emma know that he’s both okay and loves her is Neal’s main priority and that’s just incredible! And I loved Neal’s scene with Mulan as he discusses his regrets leaving Emma. <3

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Woohoo! Season 3 is off to a solid start and I can’t wait to take the rest of Peter Pan’s Flight! Thank you for reading and to the fine folks at @watchingfairytales!

Next time...I don’t know. Reader, help me out, cause I’m lost...girl… ;)

See you guys then!

Season 3 Total (9/220)

Writer’s Scores: Adam and Eddy (9/60)

Operation Rewatch Archives

[theonceoverthinker]

OUAT 2X12 - In the Name of the Brother

Brother (Or sister, or any other sibling, real or metaphorical), can you spare the time...to read my latest review?

Great! Head below the cut!

Press Release Dr. Whale is tasked with mending Hook’s wounds and performing surgery on the stranger whose car crashed upon entering Storybrooke. But some of the townspeople fear that the stranger may have seen magic – which could expose their true identities to the world – and think that leaving him to die would be the best solution. Meanwhile, as Mr. Gold tries to reunite with a despondent Belle, Cora attempts to reunite with daughter Regina; and in the land that was, Victor desperately wants to prove to his disapproving father that he can, indeed, bring back the dead. General Thoughts - Characters/Stories/Themes and Their Effectiveness Past This is one of the most visually appealing segments in the entire series. The World of Black and White is such a crazy concept, but it absolutely rocks. The style and the use of color make it so hard to forget and it really makes for a world that feels like none other, something that the other realms aren’t always able to do. And when Rumple appears, it’s such a contrast. Like, had this not been done so carefully, the mix of a technicolor Rumple in a world like this would’ve looked sloppy, but instead, it’s as every bit as magical as one could imagine or want it to be. I also like how the acknowledgment of this distinction is never too much of a distraction for the characters. Rumple (And his gold) definitely pops out from the rest of the crowd, but they never stop to think about that in terms of the schematics of their world. I’m glad about this because it doesn’t invite a feeling of distraction away from the story. Finally, let’s talk about music because the music here definitely delivers on the dark gothic atmosphere of the world, and it starts to blend with our world as Rumple shows up. As for the story itself, it’s pretty basic -- good, but basic. It’s essentially a darker “Aladdin” and a gentler Frankenstein story mixed in to one. And it’s cool! Really, it is! The unique take on Frankenstein is cool and having Rumple be what amounts to a jerk genie in it gives a fun spin. However, there’s not that much that’s worth touching upon apart from the style. Present So, the present segment finds itself pretty divided among our main cast and as mixed as the plotlines get, so are my impressions of them.

Emma and co don’t really have much of a story, per se, but act as passive reactants to everything else at play, and to be fair, that’s the most that could be expected of them in this scenario. I found that the debate over whether to let Greg live or not compelling enough, but thankfully not made to be such a big deal, especially when the main players generally don’t harm innocents. Still, it was nice to have Grumpy and Gold to list off the problems that Greg’s existence could present as something to think about (And to be fair, I guess it was something to do before the crazed Plot Hole Police arrived to badger A&E over for years, if they hadn’t already at this point).

Watching Regina and Cora interact is the most uncomfortable thing in the world, and I mean that in the best way possible. Cora, whether true in her love for Regina or not, still manages to squirm her way into Regina’s heart where she knows she’s unwelcome. It’s honestly sinister seeing her apologize for things that we know she doesn’t mean (Making Regina marry Leopold and framing her for Archie’s “death”), but eventually convince Regina regardless. And to Regina’s credit, Cora only gets him by plucking the nerve of her most recent dilemma: Earning Henry’s trust back. Seeing Regina cradling in Cora’s neck is so awful, like seeing a spider ensnare her prey.

Finally, what the hell brought on Whale’s bout into depression? I guess it was seeing the watch which reminded him of his brother, but he was clearly drinking before he got the watch, so what gives? Was is because he couldn’t get sent back to his realms a few episodes ago because that wasn’t even in the “Previously On” section? Like, I’m sorry, but we see Whale on the verge of committing suicide. That’s a serious topic to show, especially for the very real way that Whale attempts it. There needs to either be more of a focus on Whale’s present situation to get to that point. I will say, there is a redemption here by Ruby because her speech at least connects more to the past segment in how Whale can’t change the past, but can change the future.   Insights - Stream of Consciousness -As a victim of a car crash, seeing that again wasn’t traumatic at all! *nervous shudder* -Killian, this is the exact worst time to be an instigator! What the hell?! -This is also the filming spot for my OTHER favorite blooper. I’ll give you a hint: Anyone down for some crushed nuts? -Credit to Emma and David for knowing exactly how to tame Rumple! Small moments like these give a nice amount of payoff for the respective dynamics! -”From the outside?” I feel like if this had happened during the last episode, I probably would’ve put that Peter Griffin meme here about matching the titles in the dialogue. -I love the opening title card here! I normally love them all, but the distinction of color is just magnificent here! -Whale, don’t drink on the job! -”That’s your cross to bear, I suppose.” Victor, making puns is my schtick! -”He’ll cool off.” Gerhardt, your dad wasn’t even mad. I’d say Victor was madder. -Emma’s coming into Killian’s hospital room all confident and I am so here for this! And looks like Killian agrees! -Killian sees he’s chained. “You’re really into this, aren’t you?” Killian is just getting the best lines here and I am also here for this! XD -”If I had to pick dead guy of the year? I’d pick you.” Give it a couple more seasons, Emma. -I love how Ruby knew there were 10,000 combos right off the top of her head! She’s so smart! -”A LinkedIn account.” Not only is this dude a loser, BUT he’s now spamming the few people that can stand him with invitations to certify that he knows PowerPoint! He’s a MONSTER, I tell you! -”And he tweets pictures of his food.” Greg, torturing Regina aside (Which is also pretty fucking horrendous), you are just the WORST person! -Leroy’s apparently a movie buff. Who knew? -”We need to tell Regina’s she’s been framed.” Yesss! Thank you, Snow! I’m not mad at anyone for not immediately thinking of her given the crisis, but I am happy that someone did (Actually, some two because of Snow and Ruby!). Also, it enriches their dynamics going forward! Also, credit to her for understanding the internal danger Cora poses to Regina! I’m seriously loving Snow this season! -”You better hope he dies.” I like the strength of the writing in this line. It’s the driving force for the morality that Emma and co are tasked with thinking about, however inactively, throughout the segment. -”It’s not murder if we let him succumb to his injuries.” “I’m pretty sure it is.” It totally is! Look, for all the moral conflict of this episode, it’s totally murder and I’m glad that the character framed as the one closer to the audience is the one aware of that. -Gee, did Disney buy Star Wars at around this time? I’ve no idea! -”Rumple Von Stiltskin.” Imagine if that’s actually how his name was structured! XD -”Are you a philanthropist?” “Well, I’ve been called worse.” Rumple’s also gotten great quips! -*Rumple sees box* ...August? “Hello, Rumple.” Ah! Cora! What a fakeout! -”The Crocodile snaps at the little bird.” I guess Killian’s vernacular grew on Cora throughout their time together. Now though, I want to know what animal Killian is. What animal is everyone?! -A moment of silence for the deleted Jello scene that never made it to air. A-woman. -Cora, do not smell Regina’s clothes! That is fucking creepy! -Disguising yourself as Henry? Cora, that is a new low! And your former low already bonked Hades’ blue head! -Cora, go away! You’ve been in Regina’s sights for all of a quarter of a second and you’ve already given Regina a panic attack! -I feel like the only reason Rumple held up that magnifying glass was so that the effects team could show off just how well they did his eyes. -Regina’s hiding spot is so beautiful! She has a gorgeous albino apple tree, christmas lights, jewels all around, and gorgeous wallpaper! Fuck the monarchy! Go into interior design! -”Determination.” Cora, shut up, you are not an Undertale character. ...Actually, you totally could pass as Chara. -”Emma and Henry and the two idiots.” I love how small, but still funny that line was. -Okay, so I totally want Ruby to just run on her own in my “Wacky Races” dream fic because holy shit! She’s fast! -I’m not sure if Gerhardt beating the crap out of his father for verbally assaulting Victor is the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen or the most heartwarming. -”It seems that science does too [have a price].” Bro, do you even physics?! -I’m not going to write down Ruby’s entire speech, but I do like the concept of looking at bright sides to Regina’s curse. It’s definitely not an admission that it was a good deed nor should it be, but in this isolated incident, it’s interesting to see Ruby and Whale commiserate over things. -Also, serious props to Ruby for cutting Whale’s self-hate monologue to get to the situation at hand. XD -”These carriages are strange.” I wonder if Cora was actually serious when she says this! XD I mean, cars are probably intimidating to those not familiar with them. -”It’s one of my most treasured possessions.” Awww! -It’s so freaky seeing Gerhardt moving around in his undead state. He’s like a gorilla in the way he moves his arms and legs and the way he cowers and sits. What a cool take on Frankenstein’s monster! Like that, more than anything would make me interested in a follow-up Frankenstein flashback. -I feel so bad for Snow as she’s being let down about not going into Greg’s room, but I can’t help but laugh. Like Snow, the fuck, bro? -”It’s a cup.” Am I the only one getting a sense of deja vu from “A Bug’s Life” here? XD -Greg, you sly dog! You, Killian, and Cora could bag Best Acting Awards until you die! -”I was texting.” ...While not my exact situation, this was too fucking real… -I love that globe and wish we saw more of it! On topic, everyone in Storybrooke should keep a private sampling of blood just for safekeeping at this point for identity purposes. -Awww! Poor Emma! Henry, just let her sleep! And then Gold comes in! The poor woman! -”If any harm comes to Belle while I’m gone, I’m killing all of you.” ...Was anyone in that room trying to hurt Belle? For the wham line it was supposed to be, it doesn’t come back in a meaningful way and it’s so oddly aimed. I guess this was written before Colin got hurt and maybe Killian was supposed to go after her again? Arcs - How are These Storylines Progressing? Rumple’s Redemption - As much as my inner sense of empathy is judging Rumple, his decision to essentially say “fuck off” to the request to help Greg is pretty in-character. Not only is he dealing with the anger over losing Belle and essentially letting Killian get away with it without killing him (Which is in itself a pretty great stride that holds through from his decision in the previous episode), but yeah, for as much as I like Rumple and think that the writing does an excellent job of painting him as not a complete fucking monster, I put the word ‘complete’ in there for a reason. Rumple still has a long way to go until he reaches a point where he can care for someone whose outside of his tiny circle of love, and for whatever can be said about his relations to Emma and David, they’re not at a point where they’re strong enough where he’d give them that much concern. Regina’s Redemption - “I have to let you know. I had nothing to do with Archie.” I almost feel like I can leave it there, but nah. You deserve more! So, just as much as Regina wants Henry to be by her side regardless as for as much as her attempted redemption had hurt her thus far, Regina’s still committed to doing right by Henry, and that’s amazing! Furthermore, Regina shows that even if she didn’t accept her treatment when the accusations came around over Archie’s death, she does accept that given the circumstances, it was a reasonable assumption to make. Honestly, the entirity of Regina’s scenes with Cora speak of how far she’s come, as she stands against Cora’s points over why she framed Regina. Obviously, part of what made Regina go as evil as she did was Cora’s influence, and seeing her work so hard to not let Cora control her again was just so impressive! Hell, even gives Cora an understanding of what she wants if she’s to trust Cora again. Greg Mendell - We get our first (Okay, second) piece of Greg in this episode. Definitely a good actor and I like how there was this subversion of expectations in this episode (until the ending, of course) while still raising all of the needed points about him and his existence here for later in the season where they would apply. Favorite Dynamic Rumple and Cora - I like how we get to see that Cora’s menace doesn’t just stretch to Regina, but how exactly it stretches to Rumple. Rumple and Cora are on equal footing in a way that Rumple and Regina only came to be during the final two seasons of the show, and that comes across so clearly in just how he acts around her in their one scene together. She’s able to push him a bit and even prompts a deal where he has to hesitantly accept it, and that’s so rarely done, especially by an enemy. Just look at the worry in Rumple’s eye and that bit of trepidation, but he still manages to keep most of his cool. That is how Rumple responds to a real threat. It’s almost karmic retribution for not bothering with Greg (Or trying so hard to keep Cora out of Stroybrooke that she’d let Emma and Snow die), but I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that for certain. Still, their one scene both establishes so much of their dynamic and sets up the board for later. Writer Jane Espenson is back, and she did a decent job here. I like how she balanced the screentime of so much of our main and supporting cast. No one ever feels like they got the shaft and what they were given to do fits their story so well. In addition, I feel like the writing is done very well, particularly with Regina and Cora. The way Regina speaks is a great reflection of the work she’s done as she deflects Cora’s points hit by hit and only succumbs to a situation that was well set up. Jane is really good when it comes to writing Regina, as “We Are Both” was also hers and the depictions of both her past and present character were marvelous! Also, as a side note, she wrote Emma and Killian much better here. There’s clearly animosity, but a level of concern and even flirting off of Emma’s side that is actually allowed to show up for a hot second. Rating 8/10. Style is the name of the game here. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the aesthetics weren’t impressive enough to bring the whole episode up a level. As for the other segments, they ranged in quality, but were more good than bad, though since Whale was the main segment, the shortcomings of that story stood out more. But thankfully, it wasn’t the only portion between the interesting broad strokes of the OUAT rendition of Frankenstein, the true horror story of seeing Cora take over Regina’s life again, and the small inner workings of Emma and co in the background as they react to all of this. Flip My Ship - Home of All Things “Shippy Goodness” Rumbelle - I noticed that just as the episode started, Rumple was calling Belle “Beautiful Belle” as the authorities were coming for her. That’s small, but pretty cute! And you just gotta feel for Rumple as he tries so desperately to make Belle remember him. While I’m not really sure if I like or dislike the failed TLK, the cup scene absolutely accomplishes what it sets out to do. Also, “do you have any spells to return memories?” Just look at Rumple here. He looks so nervous as he’s asking, as fragile as a young schoolboy! And he does that in front of CORA! That is adorable for Rumbelle! Captain Swan - Killian just gets hit by a freakin’ CAR and the first thing he says is, “Hey beautiful.” Killian, never change! ...Actually, yeah. You need to change a lot, but fortunately, you do! Hell, even Emma gives into the flirting a bit after a bit! Also, “everything else is still intact.” KIllian, could you be any more obvious?! Also also, Emma’s pretty keen on keeping an eye on Killian despite the fact that he’s handcuffed. Finally, Emma’s reaction to Rumple’s threat to kill Hook at the end of the episode...looks like she does care. Golden Heart - ”I’ve no reason to cheat you.” “Anymore.” Looks like we’ve got some angry exes! XD Also, notice how Rumple’s lingering juuuuuust a bit during that kiss! You dog! ()()()()()()()()() Finally! Another really good episode to talk about and get pumped over!! Thank you so much for reading and to the awesomesauce fine folks at @watchingfairytales for making like Frankenstein and bringing my creations to life! Bwahahahahha!

Any guesses on what will happen next time? I’ll give you a tiiiiiiiiny hint: It’s one of my favorites. See you then! Season 2 Tally (104/220) Writer Tally for Season 2: Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis: (29/60) Jane Espenson (25/50) Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg (24/50) David Goodman (16/30) Robert Hull (16/30) Christine Boylan (7/30) Kalinda Vazquez (10/30) Daniel Thomsen (10/20)

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