#bc they are safe and alive

[dont-let-me-eat-pears]

Newt | Peeta

[tsukk1]

holding the sun 

[starry-bi-sky]

i need to get this out of my head before i continue clone^2 but danny being the first batkid. Like, standard procedure stuff: his parents and sister die, danny ends up with Vlad Masters. He drags him along to stereotypical galas and stuff; Danny is not having a good time.

He ends up going to one of the Wayne Galas being hosted ever since elusive Bruce Wayne has returned to Gotham. Vlad is crowing about having this opportunity as he's been wanting to sink his claws into the company for a long while now. Danny is too busy grieving to care what he wants.

And like most Galas, once Vlad is done showing him off to the other socialites and the like, he disappears. Off to a dark corner, or to one of the many balconies; doesn't matter. There he runs into said star of the show, Bruce who is still young, has been Batman for at least a year at this point, but still getting used to all these damn people and socializing. He's stepped off to hide for a few minutes before stepping back into the shark tank.

And he runs into a kid with circles under his eyes and a dull gleam in them. Familiar, like looking into a mirror.

Danny tries to excuse himself, he hasn't stopped crying since his parents died and it's been months. He rubs his eyes and stands up, and stumbles over a half-hearted apology to Mister Wayne. Some of Vlad's etiquette lessons kicking in.

Bruce is awkward, but he softens. "That's alright, lad," he says, pulling up some of that Brucie Wayne confidence, "I was just coming out here to get some fresh air."

There's a little pressing; Bruce asks who he's here with, Danny says, voice quiet and grief-stricken, that he's with his godfather Vlad Masters. Bruce asks him if he knows where he is, and Danny tells him he does. Bruce offers to leave, Danny tells him to do whatever he wants.

It ends with Bruce staying, standing off to the side with Danny in silence. Neither of them say a word, and Danny eventually leaves first in that same silence.

Bruce looks into Vlad Masters after everything is over, his interest piqued. He finds news about him taking in Danny Fenton: he looks into Danny Fenton. He finds news articles about his parents' deaths, their occupations, everything he can get his hands on.

At the next gala, he sees Danny again. And he looks the same as ever: quiet like a ghost, just as pale, and full of grief. Bruce sits in silence with him again for nearly ten minutes before he strikes a conversation.

"Do you like to do anything?"

Nothing. Just silence.

Bruce isn't quite sure what to do: comfort is not his forte, and Danny doesn't know him. He's smart enough to know that. So he starts talking about other things; anything he can think of that Brucie Wayne might say, that also wasn't inappropriate for a kid to hear.

Danny says nothing the entire time, and is again the first to leave.

Bruce watches from a distance as he intercts with Vlad Masters; how Vlad Masters interacts with him. He doesn't like what he sees: Vlad Masters keeps a hand on Danny's shoulder like one would hold onto the collar of a dog. He parades him around like a trophy he won.

And there are moments, when someone gets too close or when someone tries to shake Danny's hand, of deep possessiveness that flints over Vlad Masters' eyes. Like a dragon guarding a horde.

He plays the act of doting godfather well: but Bruce knows a liar when he sees one. Like recognizes like.

Danny is dull-eyed and blank faced the entire time; he looks miserable.

So Bruce tries to host more parties; if only so that he can talk to Danny alone. Vlad seems all too happy to attend, toting Danny along like a ribbon, and on the dot every hour, Danny slips away to somewhere to hide. Bruce appears twenty minutes later.

"I was looking into your godfather's company," he says one night, trying to think of more things to say. Some nights all they do is sit in silence. "Some of my shareholders were thinking of partnering up--"

"Don't."

He stops. Danny hardly says a word to him, he doesn't even look at him -- he's sitting on the ground, his head in his knees. Like he's trying to hide from the world. But he's looking, blue eyes piercing up at Bruce.

Bruce tilts his head, practiced puppy-like. "Pardon?"

"Don't." Danny says, strongly. "Don't make any deals with Vlad."

It's the most words Danny's spoken to him, and there's a look in his eyes like a candle finding its spark. Something hard. Bruce presses further, "And why is that?"

The spark flutters, and flushes out. Danny blinks like he's coming out of a trance, and slumps back into himself. "Just don't."

Bruce stares at him, thoughtful, before looking away. "Alright. I won't."

And they fall back into silence.

Danny, when he leaves, turns to look at Bruce, "I mean it." He says; soft like he's telling a secret, "Don't make any deals with him. Don't be alone with him. Don't work with him."

He's scampered away before Bruce can question him further.

(He never planned on working with Vlad Masters and his company; he's done his research. He's seen the misfortune. But nothing ever leads back to him. There's no evidence of anything. But Danny knows something.)

At their next meeting, Danny starts the conversation. It's new, and it's welcomed. He says, cutting through their five minute quiet, that he likes stars. And he doesn't like that he can't see them in Gotham.

Bruce hums in interest, and Danny continues talking. It's as if floodgates had been opened, and as Bruce takes a sip of his wine, it tastes like victory.

("Tucker told me once--") ("Tucker?") ("Oh-- uh, one of my best friends. He's a tech geek. We haven't talked in a while.")

(Danny shut down in his grief -- his friends are worried, but can't reach him. When he goes back to the manor with Vlad, he fishes out his phone and sends them a message.)

(They are ecstatic to hear from him.)

It all culminates until one day, when Danny is leaving to go back inside, that Bruce speaks up. "You know," He says, leaning against the railing. "The manor has many rooms; plenty of space for a guest."

The implication there, hidden between the lines. And Danny is smart, he looks at Bruce with a sharp glean in his eyes, and he nods. "Good to know."

The next time they see each other, Danny has something in his hands. "Can you hold onto something for me?" He asks.

When Bruce agrees, Danny places a pearl into his palm. or, at least, it's something that looks like a pearl. Because it's cold to the touch; sinking into Bruce's white silk gloves with ease and shimmering like an opal. It moves a little as it settles into his hand, and the moves like its full of liquid.

Bruce has never seen anything like it before, but he does know this; it's not human. "What is it?" He asks, and Danny looks uncomfortable.

"I can't tell you that." He says, shifting on his foot like he's scared of someone seeing it. "But please be careful with it. Treat it like it's extremely fragile."

When Bruce gets home, he puts it in an empty ring box and hides the box in the cave. He tries researching into what it is. he can't find anything concrete.

Everything comes to a head one day when Danny appears at the manor's doorstep one evening, soaking wet in the rain, and bleeding from the side.

[lassieposting]

Concept:

Post-tadpole, Tav offers to help Astarion find a way to walk in the sun again, and she starts by going to different libraries and repositories and archives around the city to look for books that might be relevant. Astarion, obviously, has to stay in the rental room with the shutters closed during the daytime, so he can't come with her.

At some point, this takes her up to the posh part of the city, where the fancy ✨ scholarly ✨ archive is. She remembers most of the walk - it's not too far from the graveyard Astarion took her to, in the neighbourhood where he once used to live.

And like, it's never actually occurred to her that he could still have Actual Blood Relatives still living? It's not a topic she's ever thought to raise with him. But she has to sign in and out of the archive, and she just happens to notice the name three or four lines above hers: an initial and a surname she recognises.

Ancunín.

The same name from Astarion's gravestone.

A parent? A sibling?

A niece or nephew Astarion has never even met?

Thus begins a secondary quest of trying to reunite a broken family. Astarion is willing enough to talk about the few memories he still has of the thirty-nine years he had with his family before turning - a drop in the ocean compared to the 200 years spent suffering under Cazador - but he shuts down when she nudges him towards the likelihood that Mr & Mrs Ancunín are still alive. He retreats back behind the selfish, catty survivalist he was when she first met him and claims he has no interest in ever reconnecting. The pain in every clipped syllable says drop it, so she does.

But then he asks her, very quietly, several days later, what the initial was. He doesn't really react when she tells him - there's no obvious recognition, and he doesn't ask any follow-up questions or try to discuss it further. He just goes back to his book. She watches him out of the corner of her eye though, as she skim-reads her own giant tome of magical artifacts. A very long time goes by before she sees him turn a page.

For a good long while, the family issue gets put firmly on the back burner. They have other shit going on. Sometimes, it's following promising leads on a possible workaround for Astarion's sunlight allergy. Other times, it's the kind of ugly, ragged-edged breakdown that so often follows a period of relative safety and stability after a major trauma. He's been running in survival mode for two centuries, and now he's finally starting to feel secure enough for the rest of his mind to come back online, and all the trauma he couldn't handle at the time, all the pain and fear and tangled emotions survival mode was protecting him from, is catching up to him. During those sporadic episodes, trying to keep him from falling apart is her top priority and, well, time gets away from them and by the time he brings up his parents again, months or more have gone by, and they have a fairly good idea of what artifact of daywalking they need to find.

By the time it comes to actually meeting with them, still more months have passed, and they have already found it.

It's horrible, and heartwarming, and heartbreaking, and healing, and hurting, and so many other conflicting things that for a while - a long while - Tav doesn't know whether she actually did the right thing encouraging him to reach out to long-lost loved ones. It's a mess of moments that makes her heart ache for a dozen reasons. She finds out that Astarion looks most like his mother, but has his father's nose. She holds him for hours while he shakes and sobs into her shoulder because they never even left the city, they were here the whole time, and they never found him - and he's so angry and full of grief he doesn't know what to do with himself. She accompanies him to the home he was raised in, and the once-familiar surroundings jog memories he thought lost for good - he's glassy-eyed, recounting them to her, but she's fairly sure it's the good kind of glassy-eyed, so she doesn't mention it. She tries to make conversation at family dinner while he stares at his hands in his lap, dissociated, looking even more uncomfortable than she feels, utterly lost in a world that once fit him like a glove. There are a lot of feelings to try and mediate. They are all hurt, all damaged, all afraid, all looking for the ghost of a loved one in the face of a stranger.

But, eventually, there is a day where she overhears Astarion having a conversation with his father, and he sounds like himself - not the persona he puts on in public - and his father laughs at something he says in a way that's entertained rather than awkward. There is a day where his mother reaches out and he doesn't shake his head or step away - he lets her hug him goodbye. They have not slipped back into the graves they crawled out of in each other's lives - they are all very different people now - but they are learning new ways to fit together, and he seems to be pleased about it.

So she thinks, yeah, it was worth it.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

FOR A BEAT OF HEART, THE BREATH IS SHOT. AND WITHIN A BREATH, THE HEART IS CAUGHT. THE PIPES ARE BURSTING, UNDER GREAT STRESS, BOLTS TORN ASUNDER, MAKING A MESS. A FINAL COUGH, A FINAL RETCH, A GOREY SLOUGH, CLAIMED BY WRETCH.

[tvheadfalls]

u know what fuck u. eldritches ur lesbians

[wingsofhcpe]

we as a fandom need more hange whump in levihan fics, actually

(and I'm willing to provide)

[blueskittlesart]

hello! im pretty sure the reason dgs herlock isnt called sholmes is because he wasnt public domain yet so i assume they couldnt get all the necessary rights!

that’s what i assumed too when the localization was announced but like shouldn’t tobias gregson, enoch drebber, selden, etc have theoretically also had that rule applied to them??? why were certain borrowed characters left completely unchanged and others localized Like That. not that i pretend to understand international copyright law or whatever the hell the conan doyle estate is doing at any given time but that seems weird to me lmao

[the-incident-on-show-day]

okay okay but. hear me out. lister bird gets to be a little genderfluid. as a treat.

[bogkeep]

it's been over a whole month since i had a stupid argument with my parents about driving, a skill that i legally possess but hate doing because i have a special brain illness that makes me fear death and injury, but i'm still chewing over an absurd claim that it's "equally dangerous to go on a 14 hour train ride like you just did". literally how is that more dangerous. in what way. in what world. public transport is nice and good and i like it and i don't have to enter my personal torment nexus

[azaracyy]

today, cupimon prays for your happiness too.

[jilyandbambi]

the ceasefire would still be on rivht at this moment had Hamas not broken it with the terrorist attack in Jerusalem and by repeatedly reneging on its agreement to release Israeli hostages.

[redrobin-detective]

Cackling with absolute maniacal glee, pure unhinged energy, terrible wicked unholy merriment, with a screech that makes all mortals reel back with fear and unease while cleaning my house

[ayphyx]

Guys imma be real with you

This whole anti-criticism “don’t like don’t read”* culture is kinda making it unsafe for poc to call out racism in fandom spaces without being called “pro-censorship”, “antis”, “or puritans/puriteens”

*i don’t necessarily disagree with this take btw, i’ve just seen this phrase be used to deflect any form of criticism and its getting pretty annoying

[whoslaurapalmer]

i was listening to slippery slope yesterday and. i forgot!! how much this part hurt!!

"Hello?" Violet called, looking around her at the rubble. "Hello?" She found that her eyes were filling with tears, as she called out for the people she knew in her heart were nowhere nearby. The eldest Baudelaire felt as if she had been calling for these people since that terrible day on the beach, and that if she called them enough they might appear before her. She thought of all the times she had called them, back when she lived with her siblings in the Baudelaire mansion. Sometimes she called them when she wanted them to see something she had invented. Sometimes she called them when she wanted them to know she had arrived home. And sometimes she called them just because she wanted to know where they were. Sometimes Violet just wanted to see them, and feel that she was safe as long as they were around. "Mother!" Violet Baudelaire called. "Father!"

[snekdood]

if ppl telling you "jewish ppl in israel were already kicked out of other countries and have no where else to go" makes you feel compelled to call whoever said that a "zionist", I really just dont think you give af about jewish ppl's lives quite frankly.

if your "free palestine" means "getting rid" of all jewish civilians in israel I think you're probably just a heartless asshole.