#but instead it was Knuckles' dad puppet what we got

[the-brucest-fan]

I NEED THIS KNUCKLES PUPPET 😍😍😍

[canary3d-obsessed]

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 03

(Masterpost)(Previous Episode) 

Warning: Spoilers for all 50 episodes!

 Wei Wuxian demonstrates the purple nurple technique of the Jiang Clan

Should’ve Used Trivago

The Jiang Clan’s reservation got cancelled while they were on the road, so they are going to wander around this small inn for hours being fussed about it, rather than trying another inn. Yes they say the other inns are all full but…so is this one, now. 

The Jin Clan sends an advance party to fancy up the inn for them.

Fuckboi Wei Wuxian

Wei Wuxian decides to use his considerable powers of prettiness to get them a room.  He drops some poetry on Mianmian and brazenly flirts with her before shifting to properly introducing himself and asking for a room. 

This actually works.

...until her boss shows up.

(Much much more after the cut!)

Worst Person // Best Jin

Jin ZIxuan is an ass and a snob. 

I guess we have to give him credit for having a beautiful sidekick and never hitting on her, given that his dad is a rapist and one of his half-brothers is (reputedly) a sex pest and the other half brother is (definitely) an incest perp. But I feel like it doesn’t take much to be the best Jin of his or his father’s generation.

The Jin folks are snobs and talk about how great their fancy and expensive stuff is. It’s an interesting contrast with true connoisseur Nie Huaisang, who loves everything that is fine and beautiful and can quote stacks of poetry off the top of his head, but is not even a little bit of a snob. 

This Tea Smells Like Farts

Ok, let’s talk about generation names in the Jin clan. Ru is the name for Jin Ling’s generation, hence his courtesy name Rulan. The name for the current generation is apparently Zi (子), because both Zixuan and his jerk cousin Zixun have that as their name.  Sect Leader Jin Guangshan would seem to be using the generation name Guang, but then names his son Jin Guangyao so…the whole system breaks down. 

Anyway, my point here is that even considering generation names, if I had a baby and named it Zixuan, and my sister-in-law promptly had a baby and named it Zixun, I would slap her. 

Find you a lover who does not make you feel like this 

Jin Zixuan is mildly intrigued by his betrothed, and expresses it by being rude to her in front of Wei Wuxian, starting a chain of events that will culminate with Wen Ning’s fist going all the way through Jin Zixuan’s chest.

Side Note: Look at these young Jiang Brothers and their casual shoulder hugs. Sigh.

Wei Wuxian’s Combat PlayBook

When Wei Wuxian wants to throw down, he starts with smack talk, moves along to boundary crossing, then to direct threats, and then brings out a weapon if he hasn’t won already. 

Here he starts shit with Jin Zixuan by complaining at him for taking up too much space and having too many sycophants.  Then he goes for the unwelcome shoulder touch. 

Having been sufficiently provocative to get someone to draw a sword and threaten him with physical violence, he shifts to formal verbal sparring. 

This gets the other guy to back down, because even at this age no-one actually wants to tangle with Wei Wuxian, and Wei Wuxian gets to claim the moral advantage, although he still doesn’t get to keep his hotel room. 

Actually Not A Fan of My Sister’s Betrothal

Jin Zixuan and Jiang Yanli have the first of many, many moments of heterosexual ineptitude together. Wei Wuxian quickly rescues them.

Hi, I’m Young Master Cockblock.

Neither of the boys understands what Yanli sees in Zixuan and neither do I, at this juncture. He does improve later after multiple beatings from Wei Wuxian.

This Is The Day Your Life Will Surely Change

Yanli’s encounter in the Inn is the first step toward the inexorable end of the three of them as a unit, although it’s still a long ways off. They are all growing up and she and Wei Wuxian are both going to fall in love at summer camp, like in a 1980s teen movie but without the virginity betting (presumably). 

Meanwhile poor Jiang Cheng is going to be swept along just trying to keep up with events, which becomes the story of his life for the next two decades.

Welcome to Transylvania

We meet Wen Ruohan. He is boring and he sucks. Also I’m summarizing the Transylvania parts out of order because they break up the rhythm of the story. And are boring and suck.

We meet Xue Yang. He seems nice.

Wen Ruohan’s living room is like a shitty nightclub where everyone is too drunk to dance except Xue Yang.

Dee Jay: Undead undead undead, Bela Lugosi’s dead

[OP can’t get a video to embed in this post with looping enabled, so the alternate version of this joke has its own post right here. That will teach OP to get fancy.]

Anyhoo

We meet Wen Qing. She is the bestest most wonderful girl in the world but this isn’t actually when we find that out. 

Right now we just find out that she is absurdly pretty, that she loves her brother deeply, and that she is helping Wen Ruohan with his “take over the world by murdering cultivators” project. OKAY, PROBLEMATIC, BUT SHE IS THE BESTEST GIRL OKAY? 

Gatekeeping

The Jiang Clan don’t get another inn but they do manage to change into immaculate white robes while they’re out on the street, so - nice work, Jiang Clan. Be free!

They get stuck outside the gate because they don’t know that the secret to getting into Cloud Recesses is to set the gate guard on fire. 

Walking Thirst Trap Hanguang-Jun

Lan Wangji shows up and everyone except Yanli, who is already in love with Sir Golden Pants, makes thirst faces at him. Including Jiang Cheng tho he will never admit it. One girl in the background is actually biting her knuckle. 

Note: Lan Wangji knows exactly how fine he is. Look at his fucking hairstyle. 

He is sixteen years old. The only person in the entire cultivation world with fancier hair is Nie Mingjue, and that’s because he indulges his dìdi’s braiding hobby. 

Wei Wuxian loudly stage whispers that LWJ is their key to getting in and LWJ is is like, not fucking likely, person I didn’t glance at yet. 

But then Wei Wuxian says a smart cultivator thing about the puppet dude, and Lan Wangji turns around and has the first of many long mutual staring sessions with this boy he totally isn’t going to like at all.

Jiang Cheng has a bad feeling about the future: a 2-frame gif

Unrelated gardening note: the red-crack puppet is more commonly grown in Gusu and Dafan, while the black-line puppet is native to Yiling

I Must Arrange a Date with this Uninteresting Boy

The rest of the evening is a series of tests that Lan Wangji puts Wei Wuxian through. Wei Wuxian doesn’t know this and Lan Wangji probably doesn’t exactly know it either. 

First he sends WWX back to town to get the invitation. Yes, go get it. Not your entourage; YOU, talky person who thinks he can manipulate me and is smart and looks...intriguing. Go find it and come back. 

When Wei Wuxian complains, Lan Wangji silences him, which is literally the most boss move he could have used on smooth talking Wei Wuxian. 

You tried, Fuckboi.

Would you like to try some more because I think I would like you to try some more

Jiang Cheng is the Better Baby Brother

Sorry, he just is. Wei Wuxian is all about being taken care of and adoring Yanli without actually doing much for her. Jiang Cheng is the one who thinks about her feelings and giving her what she needs, even to the point of arranging that wedding rehearsal dinner so she can be with her favorite brother again -- the favorite who isn’t him, much as she also loves him. 

Date Test 1: Can You Get In.

Once Wei Wuxian is definitely gone, Lan Wangji shows up again and collects the entire retinue, guaranteeing that Wei Wuxian will be stranded outside the gate when he gets back.  LWJ doesn’t wait by the gate; he goes and waits up on the roof instead of going to bed or whatever else he’s supposed to be doing. Because he already knows the route Wei Wuxian will be taking. 

Wei Wuxian passes the “get in through the wards” test with no problem besides a minor headache and bent fingers. 

Is that Xiao Zhan’s hand or did they use a double-jointed hand model?

Date Test 2: Fight Me (Lan Wangji’s Combat Playbook)

As soon as Wei Wuxian shows up on the roof, Lan Wangji picks a fight with him. 

LWJ fights all the time; he’s perfectly comfortable when he’s fighting and it’s a good venue for him to express himself. His style is graceful and aggressive. 

Attack attack attack strike a pose, vogue, you know it.  

He starts by going all in on swordplay, but that doesn’t gain him the advantage; Wei Wuxian fends him off without ever drawing his sword. Which is probably the hottest thing that has ever happened to Lan Wangji in his young life.

Do you like me better when I’m horizontal? 

Next Lan Wangji deploys the pettiness by breaking WWX’s wine. Then when Wei Wuxian starts insulting him he upgrades to next level pettiness by dropping another silence spell, this time with the added bonus of preventing WWX from drinking. 

Wei Wuxian’s Combat Playbook, Redux

Meanwhile Wei Wuxian is running his own fight routine, starting with a charm attack, which doesn’t work at all. 

Are you admiring the moon? 

He keeps trying to de-escalate for the first phase of their fight, until they reach a pause and he reflects that Lan Wangji has real skills. As soon as he makes that determination he goes on the offensive - with words. 

He very formally says he’s too busy to continue fighting, and turns away, which is a pretty solid roast when you say it to someone who’s been trying really hard to kick your ass. Then he continues defending easily until Lan Wangji uses the wine against him. 

At this point the gloves come off, with Lan Wangji lecturing Wei Wuxian, Wei Wuxian making ad hominem attacks, Lan Wangji forcibly shutting him up... 

...and then throwing him on the floor in front of Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen. 

Sincere Grief for the Death of our Colleague

Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen feel really bad for their disciple who has been horribly turned into an undead creature. Ha ha j/k

Date Test 3: Face the Authorities

Lan Wangji gets to pick Wei Wuxian’s punishment.  This probably won’t awaken anything in him. 

Surprise surprise, Wei Wuxian actually passes the Authority test with flying colors. Lan Qiren doesn’t like him, but listens respectfully to his thoughts about the undead cultivator. And Lan Xichen clearly does like him.

When Wei Wuxian learns that Lan Wangji was nice to his sister, his entire demeanor changes, to such an enormous degree that Lan Wangji starts to run away.

He’s not going to let this boy (who has passed all the tests oh no he passed all the tests) make out with him in front of his family like he is obviously planning. 

But once again, Wei Wuxian’s cultivation knowledge captures Lan Wangji’s attention and breaks through his reserve. 

This Hardy Boys moment is the beginning of their cultivation partnership.

Lan Wangji is brave but is extremely constrained: by the authorities in his life and by his own rigid reserve. Wei Wuxian is brave and is also free. His companionship gives Lan Wangji an opportunity to engage with a much broader range of the things that interest him than he’s ever had before. 

After Wei Wuxian has been sent to bed, Lan Wangji stands outside and -- just as WWX had suggested at the beginning of their date/fight -- admires the moon, with an expression that’s anything but upset. 

Sure, sex is cool (probably), but have you ever analyzed a walking corpse with a beautiful boy in the moonlight?

If you’ve got your true honey Life can be pretty funny If you've got money, money to burn Rooty toot toot for the moon It's the biggest star I've ever seen

The Fine-as-Hell Brothers

Alone together, Lans Xichen and Wangji talk over the various things on their minds. 

Xichen: What the fuck is up with you? ...Rooftop fights and dropping spells on boys?

Wangji: You and uncle were ignoring me so I was making my own fun

Xichen: Yeah, we are dealing with this zombie situation; shit’s going to hit the fan

Wangji: what are you going to do about it?

Xichen: fuck-all

Wangji: Well, you can rely on me

Xichen: I totally do. So how about you get to know this Wei kid, he seems like a fun ride.

Wangji: *death glare*

Xichen: You know, since Dad died you’ve become even more uptight. I wonder if I’ve been too strict with you?

Wangji: Um, you think? 3000 fucking rules, dude. Fortunately I’m not going to go off the rails and fall in love with my polar opposite and cause havoc in the cultivation world or anything like that.

Xichen: good, me neither

Outtro

Writing prompt: Lan Xichen’s secret nightly letter to his Mom’s memory or spirit (your choice), in which he confides in her about his day. May be written in flute solo form. 

(As always if you use this prompt feel free to post a link to your fic in comments!)

Soundtrack: 1. This Is The Day by The The  2.  Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus 3. Rooty Toot Toot for the Moon, Greg Brown version 4. Madonna, Vogue

Bonus: FineAsHell-Jun

Episode 04 Restless Rewatch coming soon!

[nalgenewhore]

Slipping Through My Fingers - Six

masterlist - ao3 - last chapter - next chapter 

warnings: none! 

an: i know i usually post every other day, but i hit 700 followers today aaannndd im real happy so enjoy! this is the drama yall’ve been sittin pretty and waitin for 

Elide glanced at herself in her mirror, popping her lips as her front door was practically bashed in. 

Aelin was always an impatient brat, but tonight, Elide couldn’t blame her - they were finally getting to meet the mysterious Rowan and some of his friends as well. She knew her sister was inordinately anxious for this to go well. 

Finally, Elide walked out of her bathroom, smoothing her hands down the fronts of her skin-tight jeans, and it looked like her door was just barely hanging on. Thank the gods for her deadbolt. “For Anneith’s sake, Ae, calm your titties, please.” 

Elide sighed and unlocked her door, opening it to find her sister there, a slightly apologetic wince on her face. “Sorry! I’m nervous,” the blonde said, lifting her hand to run it through her locks, but she’d forgotten she’d thrown them up in a ponytail and so Aelin settled for picking at her cuticles. “Are you ready to go?” 

“Yeah, just gotta put on my shoes,” Elide said, “come in, maybe drink some water, calm down?” 

Aelin entered and closed the door behind her, practically bouncing up and down uncontrollably. “I’ve been trying to calm down all day! I was pinning pleats and stabbed myself so many times.” 

“You really like this guy, huh?” 

A blush rose to Aelin’s cheeks and she ducked her head, “I don’t know! He’s just… you know? I like being around him, he’s… not really ‘nice’ but he’s nice, you know?” 

Elide laughed softly, shaking her head. “No, I don’t, at all, but I get it. I’m happy for you, babe.” 

“I’m happy for me too,” Aelin reached out and took Elide’s hand, squeezing once as her eyes filled with tears. “I’m really happy.” Breathing out and blinking, she smiled, “Ok, enough of that, can you get your shoes on please?” 

“Bossy,” teased Elide, dropping her sister’s hand to sit down at her front hall bench and shove on her platform Doc Marten’s, lacing them up tight. “Pass me my jacket, darling?” She stood and held a hand out for the coat Aelin passed to her. Elide patted her pockets, feeling her phone, keys, and wallet. “Alright, I’m good to go.” 

“Finally,” Aelin said, dragging Elide out into the hall. She was barely patient enough to wait for Elide to lock the door. 

Aelin chattered nervously the entire drive to the pub, only talking faster when they picked up Nehemia. 

Nehemia and Elide exchanged amused glances as they parked and Aelin practically threw herself from the vehicle, stopping herself from racing into the building when she remembered the two of them. “Sorry,” she said, smiling a bit as they walked over to her and were joined by Nesryn by herself. 

“Hey, Ae, Lys had to work tonight,” Nesryn said, an apologetic furrow in her brow. “I’m sorry, she really wanted to meet him.” 

“Oh,” Aelin replied, deflating slightly. “It’s ok, she can meet him another time, right? It’s fine, really, let’s go!” 

+*+*+*+*+*+*

“Auntie D!” 

Dresenda smiled as Kohana launched himself at her, wrapping his arms around her legs. “Hey, kiddo.” She reached down and picked him up, propping him up on her side. Kohana smiled widely, his hooded eyes crinkling and nearly disappearing with his joy as they pressed their noses together, as part of the Bogdano greeting. “Lorcan, what’s up?” 

Lorcan smiled at his sister-in-law, “Nothing much, what about you?” 

“Same old, same old,” Dresenda replied, tickling Kohana’s side. The adults both chuckled as he giggled and squirmed away from the fingers. “But really, how are you?” 

Lorcan found it hard to look at her sometimes. They had always looked alike, her and Essar. That had changed after Dresenda had joined the military and risen up the ranks, becoming hardened. Desperation, that’s what it was. A desperation to see the love of his life again, in anything, anywhere. “I’m ok, really. Little man’s in school and he’s liking that, aren’t you, K-Man?” 

“I love school, Dad. I love it.” Kohana corrected him. He turned to his aunt and began speaking Bogdano to her, conversing easily in one of his native tongues. 

Dresenda smiled and responded in the same language, putting him down and letting him run off into the house she was assigned after being discharged. 

“And how’re you, D?” 

“Well, I’d like to think I’m going good. Got a new therapist, one that has actually been in active combat,” she said with an eye roll. Lorcan had heard it all before when she’d first arrived back in town, about how an active combat soldier should receive an active combat therapist. Civilians couldn’t understand it and he couldn’t blame her for that. 

“That’s good. Thanks for watching him, again, I know it’s not what anyone really wants to do on a Saturday but—” 

“Lorcan, for fuck’s sake, man. I genuinely enjoy looking after your kid. What is it with parents, thinking everyone else just dreads interacting with their demons?” She punched his shoulder and he grimaced. 

“Ow, that hurt.” 

“Oh, you’re a big boy, I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Dresenda said, shaking her head. “Get out of here, go have fun, I’m gonna go corrupt your child.” 

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Lorcan said, calling out a good-bye to his son who raced back towards him, his face stricken.

“Até!” Lorcan crouched and hugged Kohana, swearing he died when the little one hugged him tight and pressed his cheek against Lorcan’s shoulder. “Bye-bye, até.” 

“Bye-bye, prince,” he said, brushing back Kohana’s long hair and kissing his forehead. “Be good for D, yeah?” 

“Mm-hmm. D told me we could watch a movie!” The two adults chuckled at his obvious anticipation. “Love you.” 

“Love you too, K-Man.” Kohana stretched up on his toes to leave a little peck on Lorcan’s cheek before he spun away and reached for Dresenda. “Have fun, D.” 

“You too.” Dresenda and Kohana stayed on the porch as he walked away, waving the entire time. 

When he got in his truck, his phone rang and he connected it to the car speaker so he could drive. “Ro, what’s up?” 

“Where are you?” 

“Gods, man, can you calm down? I’m dropping off my child, I’ll be there soon,” Lorcan said, rolling his eyes. “Why’re you so jumpy?” 

“‘Cause I really like this girl and Fen’s fuckin’ AWOL, L!” 

“Ok, stop yelling, I’m driving to his house right, now, geeze.” 

“Wait, are you driving? Why are you on the phone—” 

“Calm down, daddy, it’s hands-free,” Lorcan said, laughing through the sentence. 

“Don’t call me that.”

“Then please remove your dick from my ass.” 

Rowan groaned in frustration, “Mala fucking fry me, can you just pick up that fuckhead and get here faster?” 

“Anything for my daddy.” 

“Shut up.” 

“Bye,” Lorcan crooned, “I love you.” 

“Fuck off,” Rowan snarled. Lorcan waited patiently. “...iloveyoutoo.” 

Lorcan laughed and hung up, slowing down in front of Fenrys’ house, where the golden-haired man was already waiting outside. When Lorcan honked his horn, he looked up from his phone and smiled, jogging out to the truck. “You ready to meet this chick?” 

There was a smile Lorcan didn’t trust on his face and he gave Fenrys a suspicious look as he drove. “Yeah, I guess. I’m happy for him.” 

“Well, me too,” Fenrys declared, still grinning. 

“You’re freaking me out, what’s with the smile, Fen?” 

“Nah, it’s nothing. Just excited, is all.” 

“Alright,” Lorcan said, still wary. “Do you know any of her friends besides Mi?” 

“Nossir. Ay, look at that, we’re here!” He was out of the car before Lorcan had parked the truck and stepped out, grabbing his beat-up jean jacket. Fenrys was waiting a metre away and waited for Lorcan before they stalked over to the pub’s entrance, where Rowan, Connall, and Vaughan were waiting.

“Finally, you’re here,” Rowan said, relief flooding his face. 

“Hellas, you really like this girl, huh?” 

Even under the darkness of the fall evening, they all saw Rowan’s cheeks flush as he ducked his head, “Yeah. I do.” 

Fenrys jumped onto Lorcan’s back, “Well, then let’s meet her! Sooner I can tell her the story, the better!” They walked into the pub, Lorcan easily carrying Fenrys. 

Time slowed as Rowan began threatening him into silence over a stupid and humiliating story from college, as Lorcan’s eyes landed on the corner booth where Nehemia sat and right next to her… Elide Lochan. 

He was frozen in his spot, his mouth dropping open which seemed like his new thing around her, gawking. Lorcan was going to kill Fenrys. Maybe Nehemia too. 

Probably having felt his gaze on her, Elide turned her head, an irritated expression on her face that faded into shock, closely followed by fury when Nehemia giggled and waved at him. Seeing her hit Nehemia’s arm with the back of her hand had Lorcan snapping out of his shock and dropping Fenrys unceremoniously, tersely telling Rowan to shut the fuck up. “Are you fucking kidding me, Fenrys?” 

“What are you- oh, I see you saw Elide, hmm?” 

“How long have you known,” Lorcan accused him, balling his hands into fists. “Fenrys.” 

“Known what?” Connall asked, looking between his twin and Lorcan, who looked two seconds away from bashing Fenrys’ teeth in. 

“The girl next to Nehemia is Kohana’s teacher. And I slept with her.”

Everyone waited with unimpressed expressions as Fenrys sighed, “Since poker night. Mia was out with her and pieced it together.” 

Lorcan’s hackles raised and his fists twitched, his knuckles practically aching for the burst of pain when they collided with a face. Instead, he shoved Fenrys’ chest, making him stagger back a step. “You can’t fucking do that, Fenrys. What were you even trying to do?” He shook his head and didn’t wait for Fenrys’ response before he was grabbing Connall and Vaughan, dragging them to the bar. 

“I’ll talk to him,” Connall said as they ordered drinks. “You know he ain’t mean nothing by it, bro.” 

He did know that, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel manipulated or puppeteered. Lorcan just nodded vaguely and knocked back a shot and grumbled, “Let’s get this shit over with.” 

He did feel a twinge of remorse as he watched the myth herself, Aelin, launch out of the booth to hug Rowan. Vaughan clapped him over the shoulder, whispering in their mother tongue, “Just give it a try, huh? You liked her enough to talk to her for at least three drinks.” 

Lorcan rounded on his cousin, “You’re on his side?” 

“No,” Vaughan placated, “but it’s Fenrys. Boyo thinks he’s the second coming of fucking Lumas or some shit. He’s a romantic.” 

“He’s a fucking busyody.” 

“Whatever. You coming or nah?”

+*+*+*+*+*+*

Elide was watching in amusement as Aelin babbled on and on, clearly nervous as she sipped from her drink. Nehemia exchanged a weird look with Nesryn and Elide, raising her brows towards the chattering blonde. 

“So,” Elide stated, interrupting Aelin’s rambling. “What are his friends like, Mia?” 

Nehemia’s eyes twinkled with something Elide couldn’t read, “Oh, they’re nice I suppose. Very rowdy, very loud. All pretty boys, very nice to look at, Elide.” 

 She rolled her eyes and looked to the door when a group of loud men tumbled in. Elide recognized one of them immediately, as well as the dark-skinned man on his back. Lorcan. Carrying Fenrys.

Life froze and Elide watched Lorcan’s mouth drop open. His eyes flicked to the side and she followed his gaze to find Nehemia waving. “Oh my fucking gods, are you serious, Nehemia? Lorcan?” 

Nehemia smiled serenely, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“You so do! I saw you waving at him, what the fuck?” She smacked Nehemia’s arm with the back of her hand. 

“Girl, come on,” Nehemia said, nudging her, “it’s kind of funny.” 

Elide scowled, “You know, it really isn’t. Not telling me that the guy I slept with, who also happens to be the father of one of my students, is also your husband’s friend? And Aelin’s boyfriend’s friend too?” 

Nesryn’s eyes widened, but Aelin didn’t notice anything as she jumped out of the booth and ran to meet a silver-haired man. Nehemia slipped out to greet Fenrys and Nesryn moved to sit next to Elide. “You don’t have to talk to him, you know. I’ll ignore him with you,” she offered, smiling when Elide chuckled and leaned into her side. 

“Thanks, but I should probably be an adult and be polite. It’s not like he’s dying to talk to me either.” 

“El, Nes! Come meet everyone,” Aelin called, beckoning them over with eyes that read: If you don’t come over right now I will gut you two. 

Rolling their eyes, they tossed back the rest of their drinks and stood up, walking over to the rest of the group. Lorcan caught her eyes and nodded once, acknowledging the awkwardness of the scenario. Elide relaxed a bit as Aelin pulled her to her side. “Hey, I’m Elide, Ae’s little sister,” she said, sticking her hand out to Rowan. “It’s nice to meet you.” 

Rowan looked nervous as well and his eyes darted around the group, mainly telling some sort of message to his friends before he took her hand and smiled, “I’m Rowan, I’ve heard a lot about you.” Fenrys coughed and smirked, but Nehemia swiftly elbowed him. “It’s nice to meet you too.” 

Introductions were made all around and the larger group moved back to the booth. Elide and Lorcan both scowled at Nehemia and Fenrys, respectively, when the meddling couple forced them together, making them sit side by side. Nehemia mouthed, Talk to him!

Sighing, Elide mustered up all her willpower and turned to Lorcan, “So what is it that you do? I’ve been wondering - you’re always covered in grease and wear overalls a lot.” 

Lorcan loosed a chuckle and drank some of his whiskey, “I’m a mechanic. I work at the same shop as Ansel and Fenrys.” At the mention of Fenrys’ name, they both frowned for a split second, but after, they were visibly more comfortable. 

Elide hummed and accepted the Manhattan Nehemia slid her way in apology with a forgiving smile and a slight eye roll in response to her friend’s triumphant smile and not-so-subtle eyebrow wiggle. “I admit I’ve been confused about something else.” 

He rose a brow in question and looked down at her. She flashbacked to the fateful night and felt her cheeks heat. “Yes?” 

“How old are you,” she blurted, thankful for the other conversations at the table so that no one would hear her bumbling words. “It’s just- you look so young and you have a kid, too.” 

Chuckling, he said, “Haven’t you ever heard it’s rude to ask someone their age?” Elide rolled her eyes and jabbed his side with her elbow. “Hey, ow, I bruise easy,” Lorcan joked. She rolled her eyes again. “Fine, fine, got married the summer after highschool to the love of my life and she got pregnant a couple months after we graduated university. I’m twenty-five. How old are you?” 

“Twenty-four,” she said, running her finger over the rim of her glass. “What’d you go to university for?” 

“Mechanical engineering. Got a job at a firm and realized I hated it so I got a job at Malakai’s. Been there ever since.” 

“Are you any good?” 

He looked quizzically at her, nodding. “Yeah, I’m good at what I do. Why?” 

Elide waved her hand vaguely, “I just moved here and I have a vintage VW that’s prone to throwing temper tantrums and breaking down on me. I’ve been meaning to look for someone since I’ll be driving more ‘cause it’s getting colder now.” 

Lorcan bobbed his head and turned to Fenrys, “Marama, you got a business card on you?” 

Fenrys perked up and opened his mouth to say something that would no doubt irritate both Lorcan and Elide. Thankfully, Nehemia deterred him and he passed one over. “Yeah, here you go.” 

Lorcan took it and fished a pen out of his jacket, scribbling something on the back of the smooth paper. He handed it to her, tapping the back with a long finger, “Call whenever you need to.” 

It was a number with his name beneath it. Elide traced it with the tip of her now-clear with iridescent butterflies acrylic before putting it in the back pocket of her tight jeans, smiling easily at him. “Thanks. I’m probably due for an oil change soon, so you’ll get to meet Betsy soon.” 

“You call your VW ‘Betsy’?” 

Elide laughed and nodded, “Yeah, what do you call your truck?” 

“I don’t call my truck anything, the K-Man on the other hand…” Lorcan trailed off and shook his head. It had to come up eventually, the subject of Kohana. Less awkward than she thought it’d be. “He has a name for it.” 

“Oh really? And what’s that?” 

“Fillmore.” 

Elide choked on her mouthful of alcohol, laughing incredulously. “Like the hippie van in Cars?” 

Lorcan winced and nodded, “The exact one.” He smiled at her laughter and didn’t see the looks exchanged by their table mates. 

They chatted easily, like that same night, but there wasn’t anything expected or alluded to. Just talking, no big deal. 

Her drink was soon empty, as was his, and they both stood up from the booth to get another. Elide walked ahead of him and he unashamedly drank in her curves wrapped in blue jeans and a tight black top, exposing the ink on her back as well as the delicate laurel leaves on her collarbones. 

He admired the coiled wyvern taking up most of the space on her back, recognizing the decidedly Frozen Wastes and Ironteeth influence in the artwork. The last time he’d seen her skin, he hadn’t exactly been focused on her tattoos, but thinking back on it now, he should’ve been. It was stunning, just like the rest of her. 

Oh fucking hell, those drinks must’ve been stronger than he’d thought because there was no way his sober mind would’ve thought that. 

Elide leaned against the bar and Hellas save him, he should’ve had more self control than to stare at her ass for as long as he did. 

A group of college boys passed between him and Elide, separating them for a few moments, just long enough for some skinny kid to walk up behind Elide and put his hand on her lower back. 

Lorcan stiffened, his grip on his empty glass tightening, as she did too. After the guy said a few words, she laughed and spun to the side, leaning back against her elbows. “L, baby?” 

She had a look in her eyes, one Lorcan knew better than to mess with so he walked up to her, a small smile on his lips. “Yeah?” 

“Will you buy me a drink?” she asked, pouting and batting her lashes as she glued herself to his side, fitting under his arm. “Pretty please?” 

Go with it, her eyes said and he obliged her, a hand fitting perfectly on her waist. “Whatever my girl wants.” 

“Oh, I’m- sorry, I didn’t know,” the other guy said, not that they were focusing on him any longer. Elide didn’t even notice when he’d left, but Lorcan did and he semi-reluctantly stepped away, putting that distance back between them.

“So what about that drink, Salvaterre?”

Lorcan laughed deeply, nodding in confirmation. “Yeah, you know what you want, kid?” Elide did not care for that nickname one bit. 

I do know what I want, she thought to herself. And it wasn’t any damned drink.

+*+*+*+*+*+*

@mythicaitt @tinywolfofeyllwe @schmlip-scribble @the-regal-warrior @empire-of-wildfire @rhysands-highlady @shyvioletcat @alifletcher2012 @tangledraysofsunshine @ttakeitbacknoww @tswaney17 @ourbooksuniverse @flora-and-fae @thesirenwashere @queenofxhearts @maastrash @mynewdreamwasyou @cursebreaker29 @superspiritfestival @empress-ofbloodshed @queen-of-glass @sleeping-and-books @beccasophia95​ @exersize-me-i-dare-u​ @thewayshedreamed​ @hizqueen4life​ @ifinallygavein​ @bat-wing-rhys​ @awkward-avocado-s​ @b00kworm​ @mu-si-ca-l​ @lovemollywho​ @tacmc​ @soitsgorgeous​ @staarligght​

[hannahmcne]

Her Royal Highness - Chapter 29

Back at the castle, Belle was waiting for them in the garage. When they opened the door and waved goodbye to Stewart inside his limo as he pulled away, she looked up with a frown and a stern expression. Ben gulped and froze under his mother's gaze as everyone paused behind him. Mal felt ice creep into her spine.

Belle scraped something black from underneath her nails. "I thought you would be back yesterday," She said primly. Her lips pressed into a thin line. "The Fairy Godmother called to say the barrier over the Isle of the Lost had been broken, Peter Pan appeared from Neverland for the first time in almost forty years to take the Jolly Roger back to Neverland, Aurora has called nineteen times to ask if Audrey has returned, and a dragon was visible over the Isle from Auradon. All I can say is that your excuse had better be good." Belle folded her hands in her lap and pinched her lips as she cast her eyes about the group.

Mal shuffled forward. Belle's eyes fell on Malice and her mouth formed a little: 'O'. She looked up at Mal in wonder. "Did you bring me a grandchild?" She asked. Ben stepped forward to support Mal as his wife's eyes grew large.

"No!" Mal hurried. "This is, um, my little sister. She's brand-new, and my mom is in this bag right here." Mal held up the drawstring bag that they'd put Lizard Maleficent in. "Ben was captured by Gaston and Dr. Facilier on the island." She explained. "They wanted the Fairy Godmother's wand to bring down the barrier, I made a deal with them and brought it down from the inside by myself because I was stupid enough to think I'd be able to be faster than everyone else on the ship, and then mom turned into a dragon and we all almost died."

"I see," Belle replied in a flat tone. Her eyes flickered down to Malice in Mal's arms. "Where's Audrey?"

"She asked to stay another night," Mal explained.

Belle examined each of the young adults. She held out her arms. "I'll forgive you all if you give me the baby." She decided. "What's her name?"

"Malice, but I think she needs a new one," Mal explained as she walked forward and carefully put the baby in Belle's arms. Belle's entire face lit up as she studied the girl's tiny hands and mouth.

"She's so cute!" Belle squealed softly. She wrapped the baby in her arms expertly and began to walk away.

"Wait, where are you going with her?" Mal asked as she followed Belle out of the garage. Everyone trailed along behind her.

"I'm going to introduce her to Adam and we are going to be her foster parents." Belle decided. Ben's face wrinkled up a little in disappointment and offense.

Mal blinked. "Um, just like that?" She asked.

"We'll file some paperwork to adopt her and name her," Belle said passively. "You're queen anyway. This way, I'm not bored, and I get another child, which is something I always wanted."

Mal stopped in the hallway and Ben bumped into her before he put an arm around her shoulder. "You wanted more kids?" She asked.

"Yes." Belle nodded. "But we didn't for a variety of reasons. For one, most royals generally only have one child so there's no power struggle if the younger ones want the throne. Also, being queen was pretty tough, as I'm sure you know. Even with Adam as my partner, there wasn't a lot of time. But now I'm old and I will adopt this small child and she will be happy with us." Belle slipped through a door into the main palace sector.

Mal rubbed her hands over her arms, which were now covered in goosebumps. She looked up at Ben, who seemed to understand with only a glance. He reached forward and grabbed his mom's arm.

"Hey, Mom?" He asked. "I get this is your dream, but this is also Mal's sister. I, for one, would like to consider adopting her myself. Can she and I have a conversation about it before you make any decisions?"

"Okay." Belle wilted a little but smiled still when she looked down at the child. "You still need to see your father, young man. He's up in your office finishing up things for you."

Ben tensed up like a live wire. "Finishing things for me?" He repeated tersely.

Belle raised her eyebrows. "Is that a problem?" She wondered.

"Can I have her back…?" Mal asked hesitantly. She looked a little tense, even though Belle clearly had experience with small children and Malice was still fast asleep against her chest. Ben took a deep breath beside her.

Belle carefully put Malice back in Mal's grasp, even though she looked sad to see the girl go back to her sister. Mal sighed in soft relief as soon as she had the girl back in her arms. "Thank you." She told Belle, carefully nuzzling Malice's cheek. Belle smiled and clasped her hands together.

"Yes, alright." She smiled. "Let's go see Adam then." Belle began to lead the group up the stairs. Jay, Evie, and Carlos slipped around Ben and Mal as they inched closer together. Belle waited at the end of the hallway, but Ben waved her ahead. "We'll catch up." He promised, though he still looked anxious about his dad being in his office.

The group disappeared.

Mal turned towards Ben with a gentle exhale as she held Malice right up next to her shoulders. "I'm sorry." She whispered. "I love your mom. I just… never had a sister before. I wasn't expecting her to walk off with her so soon."

"It's okay," Ben whispered. He put his arm around Mal and curled her up to his side. "I panicked when she started walking away too." He watched as she wrapped her arms tightly around the baby and as she smiled and relaxed under his grasp. "You're pretty amazing, you know?" He whispered. "Just today, you were holding on to a ship with your knees, throwing swords to cut us free from the dock, healing your worst enemy, and now you're sitting here, blown away by the idea of a sister."

Mal leaned her head against Ben's chest. "What would have happened to her if she'd stayed with mom?" She whispered. "Or if I'd never become queen at all, and you'd only have made me a puppet queen without any sway at all?"

Ben bit his lip. "I read your blessing a few months ago." He whispered. "And there was a line that… I couldn't make sense of at the time." He brought his hand up from her shoulder and ran his fingers through his hair. "'Your strong relationship with your husband will one day be your greatest achievement. Your fondest memories will be forged with your new family in Auradon.' And, I thought, will I still be that husband for her? She might marry some other guy once the curse is broken. And this family, is it talking about me and my parents? Or is there any small chance that one day, she and I-" Ben turned and looked into Mal's eyes as she looked up. Her cheeks turned a dusty pink.

"We have time. But the point of this pep talk was that you have a family. You've forged your own family here. Evie, and Jay, and Carlos, wherever they go, will always be your family. Mom and Dad are parents to you too. I am meant to be more than a puppet ruler over the moors and the Isle. I'm here for a confident, a supporter, a partner. And now, you have your sister. You're not going to lose her. Whether you let Mom and Dad adopt her or whether you keep her with you and bring her back and forth to the moors and to the Isle, she will always be your sister. Okay?" Ben finished his speech.

Mal chuckled. "You're a little too over-the-top." She told him, then sighed. "I know." She sighed. "I think I'll ask Belle if she'd like to adopt her. She can be raised a princess of Auradon, and hopefully, I can pick up on how Belle parents, so I don't have to figure everything out by myself if we ever have a kid."

"If?" Ben asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Give me some time." She rolled her eyes and then paused. "Unless you plan on leaving me?" Mal asked. She gave him a nervous smile.

Ben wrapped his arm around her tightly and kissed the top of her head. "Never." He promised her.

Mal laughed, closing her eyes against his chest and burying her face in his chest. "Ben... I meant what I said on the Isle."

Ben loosened his grip and began to trace little circles on her arm. "On the ship, or on the beach?" He asked for clarification.

"On the beach," Mal clarified. "Right before we went into the city." She put her hand on his knee. "I think I'm ready for you, now."

Ben moved his other hand to be on top of hers and hummed in thought. "I don't know if that's something we should be doing without protection if you don't think you're ready for kids. We've got to take this one step at a time."

Mal hummed in neither agreement or disagreement as he rubbed the knuckles in her hands a little. She watched as he lifted her hand up in his palm, brought it to his mouth, and kissed the back of it before standing up and helping her to her feet. "Now, let's catch up." He mumbled against her hair. They both turned and continued following Belle's group up to Ben's office.

________________________________________________________________

Ben's desk was messier than it had been before he'd left, even though Adam had only gone through completing paperwork and filing things as they came in. Several things he needed to sign and approve were stacked in a heap beside the keyboard and Adam had continued pulling pens out of Ben's mug without putting them back until most of them were scattered in between stacked papers and hidden beside notepads and the mug was only half-filled. Mal walked in first, then turned to watch Ben's lips pinch together in disappointment as he took in the rest of the mess. Adam was sitting in Ben's chair, and Belle was standing beside him. Mal's friends had all taken seats along the outside of the room and looked to be trying hard to stay awake.

Adam turned to greet the two as they walked in and his mouth fell open at the sight of Malice in her older sister's arms. "Wha- how?" He sputtered.

Ben made a thumb to one of the chairs alongside the room, looking a little white. "Nice to see you too, Dad. Can you please get out of my chair?"

Adam stood up slowly and, instead of taking a different chair, leaned forward to gape at Malice. "Where'd she come from?" He demanded.

"This is Malice, my little sister," Mal explained slowly, stepping forward a little so that Adam could see the tell-tale purple hair spilling out from around the girl's head. "She's a daughter of Maleficent and Jafar. And, uh, my mom is in the bag on my arm, in lizard form." She tried to move her arm so that Adam could see the bag without jostling Malice.

"Sister," Adam repeated, craning his head to look at the bag on Mal's arm. "Oh, I-I see." He ran a hand down his face and stepped out from behind Ben's desk, giving Ben enough space to step in and began sweeping things into neater piles. He slipped all the forms Adam had left out for him into the second drawer in his desk for the next day and began gathering pens. Already, his space looked more... him. "I was trying to figure out... I mean, she looked just like you when you walked in and you were holding her..."

"I'm not her mom," Mal shook her head with pink cheeks. "Malice, my sister."

"I want to adopt her," Belle announced to Adam. "I always wanted a girl. She can grow up with us and that way we'll have a daughter and a daughter-in-law from the same family."

"Belle, we haven't had a baby in twenty-two years." Adam reminded her, blinking and looking very shell-shocked by the entire experience.

"Well, eighteen, really," Belle hummed, leaning over to ruffle Ben's hair as he continued pulling sticky notes with detailed accounts of phone calls that had come in throughout the day off of his desk and putting them underneath his screen. Ben made a face and ducked away from her touch a little as he capped a highlighter that had been left to dry out and dropped it into his trash can. "But really, Ben's always going to be my baby."

"Thanks, mom," Ben sighed. He pushed his chair out and bent down to make sure there wasn't anything under his desk.

Adam watched his son feel around underneath the desk. "Now, really, Ben. Don't you think that's a bit excessive?"

Ben came back up with five different papers crumpled in his hands and quickly smoothed them out to examine them before dropping them into the trash. "I can't leave my kingdom with anyone," He sighed. "How did you make such a mess in one day, Dad?"

"Some of it was already here," Adam began, but Ben looked up with a raised eyebrow and the former king gave up on his excuse before it was fully formed. He turned back to Belle instead. "So, you want to adopt the other daughter of Maleficent?" He asked. Mal wrinkled her nose in hurt. The other daughter of Maleficent sounded like a particularly unfavorable title; as if the first had been a torturous experience. Ben, too, balked at the description and Evie, Jay, and Carlos all blinked in surprise.

Belle observed the reaction with tight lips and then corrected her husband: "Mal's sister, dear. Just say 'Mal's sister' next time. And yes, I want to adopt her."

Adam glanced to Mal. "Is that okay with you?" He asked.

Mal swallowed with her arms tight around Malice. "I... I think so. I mean, you guys did great with Ben, so I'd trust you with her."

Adam laughed, loud and boisterous, as Ben rolled his eyes and turned his attention to his desktop, where dozens of tabs and applications were open. "Dad, you don't need five different streaming services open at once," Ben sighed as he began to click through the various pages.

"So, the daughter of Maleficent and Jafar?" Adam asked, stepping forward and putting a hand on Mal's shoulder. Mal nodded cautiously, and then Adam pointed across the room to Jay. "Aren't you the son of Jafar? And you're older than Mal, so shouldn't you get the first say what happens to your little sister?"

Jay looked like he'd swallowed a jar of hot coals. "Um, I don't know anything about kids." He gasped and hurried to find an excuse. "And Mal's queen and she probably needs the prac- I mean- no, I don't want to raise her. I'd be happy to just see her from time to time."

Adam nodded in understanding and then put his hand on Malice's head. "Are you sure that you wouldn't want to raise her, Mal?" He asked, meeting his daughter-in-law's eyes. "Ben's children have priority over the throne of Auradon and he's supposed to sire an heir, but she could still be a Princess of the Moorlands or of the Isle."

The room felt incredibly tense. Mal could feel something in the air as physical as if it were freezing on her skin like Isle air. Two countries were directly depending on her, and giving Malice up would mean she was holding out on them for an heir to their lands. Assuming, of course, the Isle stayed an inherited monarchy. Still, something in her gut told her that it wasn't right to try and take this on quite yet.

"I don't think I'm ready for children yet," Mal mumbled, looking past Adam and at Ben. "I mean, I don't know about Ben, but that's-" She heaved a sigh, "a huge responsibility I don't quite have the time or the preparation for yet."

Adam turned around to his son, whose expression was mostly masked. "What do you say, Ben?" He asked.

Ben held up his hands in defense. "This is Mal's decision," He rebutted. "I don't get a say in her sister and her two kingdoms. This is all on her and I will support her either way. Whether Malice gets a place as my sister or my daughter, I am going to stand with her every step of the way."

"Do you want to raise her?" Mal asked, shifting her weight from foot to foot anxiously.

Ben let a dreamy little smile slip onto his face as he stared at Malice. "I'd be more than happy to." He admitted. "She's a great little girl. A little you. I'd love to raise her. But I'd also love to just watch her grow and it's more important to me that you're comfortable with your choice." He put his hands into his pockets. "I'm ready for kids when you are, but if you're not, then I don't want them. You make your decision, and your decision will be mine."

Mal nodded and closed her eyes, exhaling. "I... don't think I'm ready yet," She decided. "I think it's probably better to give her to someone else." She loosened her arms and Adam held his hands out to take the small child from her. She forced herself to let the small child go and, with her, felt a weight lift from her shoulders. Adam balanced Malice carefully in his hands and Belle stepped forward to loop her arm through his and peer down at her new baby girl. Ben's sister.

Mal chewed on her lower lip anxiously and glanced at Ben, standing behind his desk. He held out an arm for her. "Come here, you," he laughed. Mal hesitantly slipped around her mother and father-in-law and underneath his arm as he curled it around her side.

"Are you disappointed?" She mumbled, watching Belle smile and examine Malice's features. Ben laughed.

"Do you really think I'd give that whole speech and then be disappointed you didn't give me parental rights over your sister?" He rolled his eyes. "No, no, I'm proud of you. Good job. And you know, when the time is right for you, it'll be right for me too. Okay?"

Mal nodded in agreement, and Ben uncurled his arm from around her. "Now," he began, taking a deep breath, "Dad, where did you go in my office?"

Adam chuckled. "I think you got all of the mess, son." He told Ben. "I was mostly taking calls and sorting through things that came in."

"No, where did you go?" Ben repeated firmly. "I need to know every cabinet you opened." The specific, brutal tone of his voice conveyed exactly how important it was. Adam's smile faded a little.

"I opened your top desk drawer and the last one looking for some cords," Adam began, walking over to gesture to the drawers. "Then, I opened all the drawers in your filing cabinet there while I was sorting things, and then that closet beside the door." He nodded to each place as he spoke.

Ben's mouth pressed into a thin line. He strode over to the cabinet and opened it before gesturing to his dad to come over. Adam frowned. "I was only grabbing extra paper and paperclips. And I opened that little drawer for index cards."

"Nothing else?" Ben prompted.

"What is this about?" Adam frowned. "Is there something I was supposed to be avoiding?"

"Nothing else?" Ben repeated, voice growing even firmer than before.

"Nothing," Adam agreed. Ben shut the cabinet, relaxing with a small sigh.

"Ben?" Belle asked, furrowing her brow. "Is there something you need to tell us?"

"No," Ben shook his head. "Nothing I can tell you. I have-" he paused, unzipping his Isle jacket and peeling it off his arms to hang up on a hook beside the door, "National Secrets in that cupboard. Things I'm going to be moving, now." He went to his desk and found a ring of keys in the topmost drawer.

"Well, it's nothing I haven't seen before," Adam shrugged. "The country hasn't changed much in the last year."

"Yes, it has," Ben disagreed, flipping through keys and then walking back to the cupboard to lock it. "And those things are mine, for my eyes only until they're done."

"What about Mal?" Carlos asked, furrowing his brow in confusion.

Mal shook her head before Ben could answer. "No," She sighed dramatically. "Ben's 'National Security' is for leaders of Auradon. I'm not a leader, even though I'm Queen. So Ben's new laws aren't for my eyes."

"New laws?" Adam asked, glancing at Ben, who sent a grave look to Mal, indicating he wished she hadn't listed any specifics.

"Things I'm fixing," Ben admitted. "Things I'm making better. Old classified files that I'm considering releasing, new things that are going on around the country, and especially things going on in international territories."

Adam's brow knit tighter and tighter together as Ben listed some vague specifics, and then turned to put Malice in Belle's arms. Belle took her carefully, looking a bit hurt by Ben's overly direct tone. "Fixing?" Adam asked. "Making better?"

Mal watched Ben swallow and take a deep breath, and stood up a little straighter behind the desk. "It's not for you to know yet," Ben reminded his dad. "This is for me and a few distant advisors. When I tell the kingdom, I'll tell you beforehand."

"You're changing the laws on magic!" Adam accused, face growing red. "Aren't you?"

Mal blinked in surprise at the sudden accusation. She knew Ben was planning on drawing new borders with the Isle of the Lost - that was the paper he'd shown her at the table about a week ago - but removing the laws against magic was mostly her dream that Ben supported. She stared at him in surprise and watched his ears turn a little pink. "No!" He sputtered, then flinched. "Well, I'm... considering things, but - come on, dad, you know they're not right!"

"How long has this been going on?" Adam demanded, curling his hands into fists. "Don't you remember our tale? Our entire castle was cursed for ten years by an enchantress. Do you want to open our lands up to that again?"

"It's only been going for... It's not even really going... It's-" Ben trailed off, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. Mal moved out from behind the desk and went to stand beside him, putting her hands in her pockets until she was at his side. Then she held out a hand and he took it with a steady breath. "I've never liked them," Ben admitted. "Even when I was younger. I think you were wrong to instigate them. I've been researching for months and talking with dozens of different people and you've severely damaged our magical communities and hurt international relations with these laws. That's the real reason Elsa wanted to come down to the palace. They have to go in one form or another. Your tale happened because you were acting cruelly. You blamed magic, and that's wrong. So yes, that's one of the things in there. You may not know the rest."

"How could you keep this from us?" Belle frowned, sticking her lip out a small fraction. "We put those laws up; we could advise you on-"

"It's not your place," Ben repeated. "You put up the laws - I know you would be unfairly biased against the changes. There's a reason I haven't consulted Mal much either - she's unfairly biased towards the changes. The fact is, though, that I'm looking at the bigger picture, and I'm going to keep trying to make Auradon better." He exhaled and shook his head to clear it. "I won't say another word on it, though. All you need to know is that the things in that cupboard are for my eyes only. Thank you for looking after my kingdom today, dad, but we did more than just change crowns. This isn't the same Auradon you ruled over, and it's my place alone to lead them. Not Mom's, not yours, not even Mal's." He squeezed Mal's hand tightly.

Adam looked like he was about to explode and Belle looked very unsure of the situation. She chewed on her cheek as her eyes flitted back and forth between Ben and Mal. "Are you sure you're actually thinking about the kingdom, and not just about, well..." She trailed off.

Ben cocked his head to the side. "The fact my wife is a magical person herself?" He asked. Belle hesitated and nodded slowly. Ben shook his head. "I had ideas to fix these laws back when I was ten - long before Mal came into the picture. And yes, I'll have to work with her to make sure that we draft laws where magicals can't go around punishing people for small things, but this is something important that has to change. By the way," He turned to Mal. "I need your help on a few things that you won't be able to talk about with other people, regarding magic in Auradon."

"You'll consult Mal and not us?" Adam demanded. "You just said she was a biased source! We're your parents, Ben."

Ben stared at his dad and then put his other hand atop Mal's. "Mal is my wife," He reminded them in a slow tone. "She and I are partners. And she's the Queen of the Moorlands. She's had practice working with spells and looking for spell loopholes. I'm not going to let her help me draft laws, but I'm sure as heck going to make sure there aren't any magic loopholes people can jump through. Why wouldn't I consult her on that?"

"But why not us?" Belle frowned. "We're all family here, Ben."

Ben shook his head. "Family is important, and I love you guys a lot, but again, Mal is my wife. Dad, you can't honestly look me in the eyes and tell me you that I'm equal to mom in your sight, can you? Sure, I know you love me, but she's your partner, and Mal is mine. We're all family, but she's also my future."

Silence hung in the air. Belle's eyes were filling with shocked tears. Mal kept her palm tightly in Ben's, reeling over what she'd just heard. She could be mistaken, but she was pretty sure Ben had just told his parents that he loved her more than them. In nicer terms, of course, but there was only so many ways you could spin 'she's also my future'. Also, as in 'Mom, Dad, you don't fit into this category anymore.'

Ben held the keys aloft. "This stays locked," He announced. "I will arrest anyone who tries to sneak in and read stuff, before or after I move it all." He paused to let go of Mal's hand and run his fingertips down her jaw. His touch was soft above her neck. "Even you," he clarified with a little laugh. Mal let a little smile ghost onto her face and then stared silently at the floor, refusing to meet her in-law's faces. Ben returned the keys to his desk and then opened the door for everyone to filter out. "Come on," he commanded. "It's time for this day to be over."

________________________________________________________________

Later that night, Mal and Sophia sat on the floor, fiddling with the glass terrarium Sophia had found from back in Ben's childhood when he'd had a gecko. It had died of old age and natural causes. As Mal fiddled with the lightbulb that would keep her cold-blooded mom warm, Ben paced behind them and brushed his teeth. Both he and Mal were already dressed in their pajamas. When the bright light flickered to life, Sophia and Mal let out a little cheer.

"What's been going on with you and Stewart?" Mal asked as she fiddled with attaching the light to the terrarium.

"I met his parents," Sophia admitted with a blush. "They're super sweet. I dropped sugar in his dad's lap when I was walking with it back to the kitchen, and they made jokes about it for the rest of the evening. They're calling me 'sugar-stopper'."

Mal giggled. "Good thing Belle and Adam didn't do that to me. "I'd be called 'glitter-bomb', or 'dust-buster'."

Ben almost spit out a mouthful of foamy toothpaste as he choked back a laugh behind them and hurried back to the bathroom as Sophia and Mal laughed together.

They laughed and put the terrarium on a side table where Maleficent would have a view of the whole room. Mal picked up the bag where Maleficent had been put for the day, and carefully overturned it. She picked her mom up around the lizard's belly and put her in the terrarium. Maleficent trudged slowly over to the heat lamp, and sat down, shivering. Mal frowned. Maleficent didn't seem to look that good.

"I'm going to take my leave now, Mal." Sophia smiled as she gathered up the terrarium packaging and tucked it under her arm. The two girls exchanged a quick hug.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Sophia!" Mal said as she showed her to the door.

"Yes, assuming you don't leave straightaway!" Sophia laughed as she opened the door with her foot.

"I won't," Mal promised through her giggles. "Now, goodnight!"

"Goodnight!" Sophia called as the door swung closed between them.

Mal let her hand rest on the door for a few seconds as a soft smile spread across her face. She reached down and clicked the lock shut before she turned around and examined the room. Mal checked the lid on the terrarium and wandered into the bathroom. She brushed her teeth and used the bathroom before she went into the bedroom. Ben was awake and scrolling through his phone with the covers over his legs. "It's so nice to be home." He sighed without looking up.

Mal giggled. "Aw, so you didn't like sleeping tied to the ship?" Mal chuckled.

Ben shook his head. "No thank you." He said with a laugh, then held his phone out to her. She leaned over and skimmed the screen. A new post of the palace website under his name: "Some people think their mother-in-laws are overbearing and misinformed. Mine, however, is a literal dragon to deal with."

Mal laughed at the joke and watched him roll his eyes and pull his phone back to himself. He continued scrolling, catching up on the news he'd missed out on the day before. Mal went to him and climbed into bed at his side. She wrapped her arm through his and used it to pull herself closer to him as he chuckled and turned off his phone. She hugged her chest to his biceps so it was harder for him to move as he flipped out the light and then turned to face her.

"You're needy." He told her as he pulled his arm out of her grasp and instead wrapped his arms around her like he was a large, warm, sweat-scented blanket. She sank into his warm grip with a contented sigh as one of his hands began to trace a gentle pattern on her back. A hot, burning feeling was growing in her stomach.

"I want you." She whispered, tracing a finger down his collarbone. "Do you want me, now?" She shivered as his movements against her grew precise and careful.

There was a full moon outside, so light filtered in through the closed window. She could see the gentle smirk that pulled at Ben's lips. "Yes," He admitted. "I do want you." He cupped his hands at her hips, pulling her even closer to him. He tilted his head to steal a kiss that made her entire body feel hot and stared into her eyes through the darkness. "But we don't need to rush." He warned.

"It's almost been a year," Mal whispered, moving her mouth close to his ear, pulling the collar of his shirt down a bit further and exposing more skin. She could feel his breath, hot on her neck. She carefully bit at his ear lobe. Ben took a little fistful of the back of her shirt in response, then released her. "If anything, we've been putting this off."

"You're still-" Ben started, relaxing under her grip as she spoke.

"Young." Mal interrupted. "But I'm not a child. You're not going to break me. And there have been girls younger than me who were with their husbands. Snow White, Aurora, Ariel, Mulan, Jasmine, I could go on."

Ben's eyes sparkled. "No need." He assured her, leaning forward, and placing the softest of kisses on her nose. "You know that I want you - that I need you. It's all up to you."

Mal smiled and pulled herself on top of him. "That's all the permission I need." She laughed. She used the hem of her shirt to pull the fabric up and off her head as she pinned his legs down with hers and immediately started searching for the hem of his. Ben rolled his eyes as he sat up. He pulled her face forward to kiss her as the moon cast light down on them, and the night continued around them.

________________________________________________________________

It was a different sort of responsibility, what followed. For Ben especially, he felt a heavy feeling of obligation fall onto his shoulders when he watched Mal move to his frame under the moonlight. When she was trying and failing to keep quiet. When the first tears came and dried and she was okay. When she was gasping and doing her best to not turn his back into a field of red, raised rows with her nails. He had her now, and she him. He had her hand first, and then her heart, and finally, she was trusting him with something she'd never trusted anyone with - herself.

Early the next morning, Mal was in her office, creating a new type of form that anyone left on the rotten part of the Isle would have to fill out and submit before they'd be allowed a trial to get into the city. As she spaced bars and lines on the page to her liking, she heard a knock at the door. She looked up and smiled when she saw Ben. "Hey, babe." She smiled as she set her forearms down on the desk to smile at him. Ben was wearing a brown, close-knit vest over a pale blue shirt, which Mal couldn't decide if it was a step-up from his sexy Isle attire or a step-down. He was holding a glass bowl of strawberries.

"Hey." Ben smiled and flushed a little at her pet name. "I brought you strawberries and wanted to make sure you were good." He presented the bowl in a half-toasting manner, and a half-sacrificing manner.

Mal rolled her eyes. "I'm fine, silly. I will say yes to strawberries though." She smiled as he brought the small bowl forward and snatched a red fruit off the top.

"I just want to make sure I didn't, like, break you or anything," Ben explained as he took a seat on the edge of the desk.

Mal rolled her eyes. "I think you give yourself entirely too much credit." She told him. She had come to the conclusion, however correct or incorrect, that the only way he'd ever break her was if he left her.

"Whatever." Ben chuckled, folding his hands in his lap and smiling.

"Want to see what I'm working on?" Mal asked. She turned the screen towards him as he leaned back to catch a glimpse of the on-screen contents. "I was thinking for, you know, other kids the villains end up having, people who decide to change their minds, that sort of thing." Mal shrugged.

Ben's expression flatlined. "Oh, crap." He said. "I forgot that Doug needed me to fill out something in my office. Crap!"

Mal blinked. "Wasn't he here last night?" She asked.

"Yeah." Ben nodded. "He asked if I could get it to him by ten a.m, and that is in… thirty-four minutes." Ben jumped off the desk while looking frantically at his watch.

"Bye?" Mal asked with a sarcastic smile as he set one foot over the threshold.

"Oh!" Ben narrowly avoided skidding out into the hallway from his momentum, spun around, and hurried back to her. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and said: "Bye Mal." Then he hurried and sprinted down the hall. Mal chuckled to herself and continued work.

About a half-hour later, as she was finishing up, she heard heels clicking down the hallway outside her office. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of blue appear.

"M?" Evie called from the doorway.

"One moment, please, Evie," Mal begged as she saved her work and waited for the change to back up. There was a soft thud. Mal glanced up and saw a dark blue duffel bag – the same one Evie had come to Auradon with – at Evie's feet.

Evie shifted her weight from foot-to-foot as she began to tear up. "M…" Evie started. Her voice broke. Mal felt her chest go a little numb in shock. She stood up from her wheelie chair and offered the vacant seat to Evie. Evie sat down with a hiccup, and Mal gave her old friend a hug from behind.

"Auradon Accelerated?" Mal asked, feeling a lump enter her throat.

Evie nodded. "I'm sorry." Her voice shook as she began to wipe pearlescent tears from her eyes.

"Sorry for what?" Mal asked, though she, too, felt sorry. After all, it was her fault everything was so different. It was forever impossible to go back to the way things were.

"I'm leaving," Evie explained. "I don't feel like I belong here in the castle, especially with you and Ben. I thought I wanted something like this, but I hate the huge hallways and the empty rooms. I wanted to save you from Ben when I first came, and that idea has completely fizzled out. I don't know what to do with myself. I sit around all day and make clothes." Evie threw her hands into the air in exasperation. "I have no idea what I want!" She exclaimed. "I'm just… hoping I can find a purpose away from the past." She rolled her shoulders forward and slumped over in defeat.

Mal nodded. "I understand," She whispered. "You're one of my best friends and I want you to find out who you are. You don't have to worry about me." Mal squeezed Evie from behind. "We're a family. We may go different ways, but in the end, we always come back. We can do this. You can do this."

Evie twiddled her thumbs. "Ben mentioned once that you wrote a letter to someone on the Isle which was never sent." She sniffled. "He thought it was for us."

Mal blinked. She was surprised Ben had remembered that letter. She'd honestly forgotten it.

"It was," She confirmed slowly, trying to retrace her steps to remember where she'd put it. "I taped it to the bottom of my desk in my old room. I don't think it was ever moved. Do you want to read it?" After several long seconds, Evie nodded. Mal drummed her fingers in thought and walked towards the door of the office. She picked up Evie's duffel bag and waited for her friend to compose herself enough to follow.

Down the silent hallways, they stalked without a word. They briefly passed Ben's office where he was scribbling away but did not stop to say hi. When they reached Mal's old room and opened the door, a waft of aerosol cleaner and comfort drifted out. Mal set the duffel bag on the bed as Evie took in the room. "It's so… empty," She sighed.

Mal shrugged as she trailed her fingers along the wall. "Well, all my things were moved out when I married Ben," She explained.

Mal walked over to the desk and laid on the carpet underneath the desk. Evie followed her example and, careful of her dress, laid down beside Mal. Underneath the desk, a simple piece of flimsy printer paper was folded in fifths and taped to the desk at two corners. Mal pried it off at the seams and handed it to Evie. Evie took it and stood up. She returned to sit on Mal's old bed and began to read aloud.

"Dear Carlos, Jay, and Evie." Evie started. "I know you've probably been worried about me, and I want you to know I am safe. They're going to make me a queen, but I won't have any ruling power over Auradon. Prince Benjamin, though we call him Ben here, is planning on splitting the Isle off of Auradon and making it its own country. It'll be different, but I feel like I could make something out of it. Maybe I'll be able to make to safer for when you guys have kids. Then they won't have to fight for their lives like we did. As of right now, they don't want me to bring anyone over, but I hope one day it's safe enough for me to see you guys. The royals are truly some of the kindest people around. King Adam doesn't seem to like me much, but I think he gets angry when he's nervous and this whole system is really out of his depth. Belle is soft-spoken and understanding, and Ben is funny, but I think he feels restricted by what his parents set up. He sees flaws, but he doesn't want to offend them by fixing them. Even so, he's extremely strong and is the type of person who you straighten up when he's around. He's kind and thoughtful as well.

"Right now, they're actually training me to be a queen. I got to look up all of you in the computer, and Auradon knows literally nothing. They have the bare minimum of records, there's not even anything on Jay! When I'm queen, I'm going to have to find a foolproof way to keep track of everyone. That way we'll know how to distribute food and you guys won't have to go hungry anymore.

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be yet. Everyone here from Sophia, who is one of the palace servants, to the Fairy Godmother think I'm going to be a powerful Queen. I'm just not sure yet what I want to do. I've come to a conclusion though, that I'm happier being good than I was being evil. Sure, I'll never be the queen Auradon dreams of. I climb walls and hang out in the gardens with dirt on my face, but I think I can survive. The royals make it really easy to find a place with them. I feel like I didn't know I could belong here until I tried. In truth guys, I think I'm becoming part Isle and part Auradon. Maybe even something new and different entirely.

"I miss you guys a lot. You are always in my thoughts." Evie finished. More tears were in her eyes. She put the letter down and sniffled. Mal held her arms out for a hug, and the two embraced.

"It's going to be okay," Mal whispered in Evie's ear as she blinked back tears.

Evie took several shaky breaths as she leaned back and tried to steady herself. "I didn't know what you were going through." She whispered as Mal squeezed her hands. "Everything on the TV... I thought that you were dying and that world was lying..."

Mal put a hand on Evie's bicep. "The truth is out." She squeezed her friend's arm. "I don't want to let you down, E, but it'd... tear me apart to not listen to my heart."

Evie nodded and stretched her legs out and rubbed her sweaty palms on her knees. "I really have to go."

Mal rubbed her back lightly. "And I will never stop you." She promised.

"Even though we'll change?" Evie asked, shaking her head and scrubbing at her face. "Nothing can stay the same. If I go..."

"Nothing has to change," Mal promised. "And you know what? It's just growing pains. It'll end. Just... be proud of the scars because that's what makes us who we are." She squeezed Evie's hands. "You're a part of me. Just because I'm queen now, just because we're in Auradon doesn't mean I'll ever be out of reach. Between Auradon, the Isle, and the Moors... we can meet in between. And no matter how far you go, you're never going to be left alone."

"I don't want to leave you here," Evie admitted. Mal stiffened and opened her mouth to explain once again why she couldn't go, but Evie stopped her with a hand and a shake of her head. "I know you have to stay." She sighed. "Just... promise me you'll be safe?

Mal smiled and blinked back tears. "Nothing has to change." She promised

Those words did Evie in all over again. She couldn't help but be afraid of what was coming. Evie wondered if Mal could have possibly felt anything like this while en route to her future a year ago.

Evie wrapped her oldest friend up in a hug and began to cry softly into her shoulder. Nothing was going to be the same for them ever again, and while a part of Mal was bitter and sad, she understood everything would work out. She wrapped her arms around Evie tightly, and they sat on Mal's old bed, relishing in the past until both found the strength to withdraw and let it go.

________________________________________________________________

Down on the grounds an hour later, Mal, Ben, Belle, Adam, Sophia, Malice, and Lumiere gathered in front of the center circle to wish Jay, Evie, and Carlos goodbye. As Jay hefted their things into the back of a limousine, Carlos slowly twiddled his thumbs and Evie held her small backpack to her chest, shifting her weight in front of all the royals.

Mal sniffled. "You'll be okay?" She asked them all.

"Yeah." Carlos nodded. He looked downcast as he stared holes into the pavement. "We know how to turn in our papers, and Stewart will help us find our dormitories, and next week Jay and I will go get our driver's licenses so that we can drive while Evie learns, and we'll come up and see you guys every once in a while." He paused and was quiet for a few seconds. "We'll miss you."

"I'll miss you too." Mal smiled. "We all will. And, you know what? I'll come to visit you guys too. Come see how you're doing in classes and everything."

"Classes don't start for a month." Carlos reminded her. "We're just… going." The words: "because we can't stay" hung in the air.

Everyone remained silent. Ben stepped forward and put a hand on the small of Mal's back. Her cheeks went a bit pink as fire erupted in her chest. She tilted her head to curl into his shoulder a little as he continued to talk. "You have your phones." He reminded them. "You'll never have to fall out of contact."

The Villain kids nodded. Jay closed the trunk with a snap and walked over to stand behind Evie. Mal focused on him. "You're going to take care of them, right?" She asked.

Jay blinked in surprise. Mal had been carefully holding him at a distance since he'd kissed her. He glanced down at her mouth for a second longer, then a smile spread across his face. "Yeah," He agreed. "I will."

Mal stepped forward, dodged Evie slightly, and gave Jay a hug. "You remember that mantra your dad used to make you recite?" She asked.

"There's no 'team' in 'I'." Jay snorted. He slipped a hand around her waist.

"Well, I personally always thought you worked well with a team." Mal punched his arm lightly and then lifted his hand off her waist. Jay's face fell slack. Mal smiled at him. "You work well with others. You like having people you can back up and who back you up. So, when you get to campus, just… find all the friends you can. Your teammates, classmates…" Mal trailed off with a smile.

Jay nodded. "Yeah. I will. Thank you," He paused, then smirked. "Queen Mal."

A look of horror fell onto her face. Mal hit his arm. "No," She said, trying to wiggle out from under his grasp. "Don't you call me that. You call me Mal. I'm Mal to you."

"The first," Jay continued with a growing smile, holding fast onto her hips as she tried to slip away.

"No!" Mal groaned, giving up and clapping her hands over her ears.

"Of the honorable moorland and the Isle of the Lost," Jay yelled playfully over her protests.

"Found," Evie corrected. Everyone turned to her. "It's more the Isle of the Found, now." She explained.

Mal tilted her head as she thought. "It is," She agreed. "Like, eighty to ninety percent of the Isle is in the city now." She shrugged. "I guess it's the Isle of the Found."

Everyone chuckled. Hugs were exchanged, and goodbyes were said. Ben was pleasantly surprised when the three villain kids came forward to say their own personal goodbyes to him. Evie even gave him a quick hug. "Thank you for bringing us over," She told him without her gaze leaving the ground.

"Of course," A warmth filled Ben's cheeks as he smiled. He'd done good, this was all going to work out.

Carlos shook his hand. "Take care of her, bro." He whispered.

"Always," Ben confirmed. He turned to Jay.

Jay held out a hand for Ben to shake, but as soon as Ben's hand was in his, pulled him into a manly hug, with two thumps on Ben's back to accentuate the action. When they broke apart, Jay twisted a leather cord around his wrist as he thought of what to say.

"Look, bro." He started with a heavy sigh. "I know I've got lots to thank you for, but I'm not used to this so bear with me." He exhaled. "Thanks for taking care of Mal." He started, gesturing to the purple-haired fairy queen as she stood up beside Belle. "She's one of the most important things to us all, and you really gave her a home she deserves. And… thanks for bringing us from the Isle, and always thinking about us. You never judged us when we judged you, you took us to Auradon Accelerated so we could figure out what we were good at, and now you're helping us attend… I don't know if I'll ever be able to repay you for all this, man."

Ben clapped Jay's shoulder. "Hey, don't worry about it. It would be more than enough just for me to see you all happy."

Jay stared at Ben. He exhaled. "I can't deny that you are the best man I have ever had the pleasure of meeting in my life." He said honestly. "You're a brilliant king, a wonderful husband, and the best person in Auradon. If it had to be an Auradon man for Mal, I'm glad it was you. If I had a genie and only one wish, I would ask to be you." Jay shifted his weight. "And not just because you married the best girl on the Isle and my best friend." He added.

Everyone laughed. Ben nodded. "Thank you, Jay," He said. "That means a lot. Thank you."

They shared another bro-hug and then Jay walked over to the car. Stewart was already in the front seat. He helped Evie inside first and watched as Carlos climbed in. Then he got in and shut the door. The window rolled down. Mal walked over and handed the letter she'd written months ago to Carlos through the window. "That's for you all." She explained. "Evie's already read it."

They took it. Everyone waved as the car started, and the villain kids left the palace, off to Auradon Accelerated.

Sophia and Lumiere headed inside, but everyone else walked to sit on the steps of the palace. Belle gave Malice to Mal, who smiled and cooed at the wide-awake baby. "I've been thinking." Belle started. "Do you like Michelle or Madison at all?"

"Madison is cute." Mal nodded. "Let's not give her a bad middle name, though. I get that it worked with Ben, but I feel like being the daughter of the evilest Faerie alive is humbling enough."

"We should do something with rebirth and starting anew," Adam suggested.

"Hope?" Ben asked.

"Can we find an adjective that starts with B or A?" Mal asked. "You know, for Belle and Adam?"

Belle teared up. "You sure?" She asked.

Mal nodded.

Ben put his arm around Mal. "There's Blithe." He suggested. "It's like fly, almost. Blie-th. It means happy or joyous."

"Madison Blithe?" Mal asked.

"Benson," Belle added. "All of our last names are Benson unless you want her last name to be Fae for your mom."

"I like Benson." Mal shook her head. "Madison Blithe Benson?" She looked around. No one rejected.

Newly-christened Madison blinked up at Mal with big, round, green eyes. Mal chuckled and held her fingers in front of the tiny girl's face. Madison looked amazed as she tried to grab for the pretty polish on Mal's nails.

"Madison. That's you." Mal told her.

Ben leaned over her shoulder. "Hi, Madison." He called softly. Mal handed the small girl to him and smiled as he carefully held her in front of him. "I'm Ben, and I'm your new brother. You're going to grow up with us, and you're always going to be able to express yourself. You'll never have to worry about not fitting in because we'll always love you, and one day you and your sister will run around and prank us all with magic."

Mal snorted and laid her head against Ben's shoulder. He glanced up at her with a tiny smirk and held her gaze for a few seconds. She put her fingers back in front of Madison's face, where the small girl worked on slowly moving her tiny fingers to try and grab onto her older sister. Sunlight slanted past the palace roof, like the building was trying to cast as much light as possible. For many long minutes, everything was peaceful.

[chaniters]

Revealed

Thanks @kissingagrumpygiant for lending me Ana Basri! Your art’s so fking EPIC! 

(It was sooooo hard to find a title for this, all I could think of was Detective Pikachu!!!!)

_______________________________________

You knock on the door and stand back checking your cellphone as you wait. There are no new messages as usual. That's good.

He's the only one who has this number.

The message seemed quite urgent... "Please come by to my place tonight, we need to talk"

You're not sure what this is about, but you're not liking it one bit. Typically it's him pestering you for a little while until you crack and agree to meet.

But this message... he used "please". No flirting, no funny emojis, no bribe or boast.

That's not how he does things, he enjoys the power-play far too much. Something's not right...

The door open, and there he is, with a smile that seems a bit too forced dressed just a bit too casual... He's not trying to impress you.

"Ana... please, come in" He motions you to the living room, before disappearing and bringing drinks

"What's the matter?" You ask as soon as he gets back. This is starting to get on your nerves.

"I'm not sure how to say this but..."

"But what?" you ask impatiently.

"I know, Ana"

"You know What?"

"I mean... I KNOW" he says looking straight into your eyes.

It takes a few seconds for the whole sentence to down into your system.

"I don't know what you're talking about," you say with a fake clueless smile. This isn't happening. It's just a setup... he can't possibly know...

"Ana I just want to help you..."

"I don't need your help Ricardo... and I still don't know what you mean" you cross your arms and look deep into him. Let him show his cards before you draw yours.

"You're not going to admit it to the very end, right?" he asked looking hurt

"There's nothing to admit. And I don't like this game... if this is why you called me..." You stand up and take your coat to leave.

"I followed Eden," he says.

"Should I know that person?" Your answer is almost automatical. Like you were trained to. Keep the flow. He will never catch you stuttering...

"That's how I met you at that bar... I was waiting for him to appear and instead, you did... back from the dead"

That gives you pause. He was spying on Eden before he found out you were alive?

"I know whom he works for... I followed him many times. I know he lives under your own apartment, Ana... "

This can't be happening...

"You're spying on a neighbor?"

He sighs exasperated.

"Drop the act... I know you are Puppet Master"

The words are like a hammer shattering the world you've built around yourself to feel safe.

He walks closer to you. "I can help you... I can..."

He extends a hand...

"NO!" you scream, pushing him back with all your strength. "Stay away from me!"

He stumbles as you take several steps back, trying to remember which way was the door... If only this was his old house!

"I can't help you if you won't let me!"

"I don't need your help!" You say heading for the corridor. THere's the door...

He takes your arm. "I'm sorry... But I can't let you go. Not like this!"

Panic.

Your free hand goes into a fist and connects with his face before you even know what you're doing.

Knuckles connect directly with his nose, but he doesn't let go. You try to hit him again and again, but he manages to get a hold of your wrist.

You scream in frustration showing him your teeth and trying to shake him off, but he pins you down against a wall instead, your arms held above your head.

His nose is bleeding, but he won't let go.

"STOP THAT!" he yells at you.

Of course, you don't do that. You try to struggle as hard as possible. Kick him... but he only draws closer, using his whole body to keep you pinned down.

"Stop it" he speaks a second time a bit more calmly. "Can't we at least try to talk about this?"

Your struggle becomes weaker as it becomes obvious he's not going to move. Without your armor, his mods have easily decided this fight. You're trapped.

"THere's nothing to talk about," you say looking away from him.

"Nothing to... ANA! I'm Telling you, I want to FUCKING HELP YOU!"

"Oh yeah? And how in the hell are you going to do that?" you yell back.

"I... I know they're using you! I know it's all part of their plan... If you help us, we can finish this... and you'll be free. She won’t control you anymore!"

Now, this is turning bizarre.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I know Hollow Ground's forcing you to do this! Making you turn against us...  I just don't understand how..."

You give him a blank stare... he thinks Hollow Ground is...

You can't help it... you burst into laughter... which only makes him more agitated.

"Why are you laughing? Let me fucking help you! I can't let her keep using you! I want to get back my friend..."

"Hahaha.. ha... oh wow.. this... this is rich..."

"Stop mocking me already!"

"I'm not mocking you... it's just... Hollow Ground has nothing to do with it"

"I know she does! Eden always works making contacts at places she owns... that's where he met that scientist... and he lives under you. I know he's there to keep an eye on you and make sure you follow her orders... THat's why I've been spying on him.. befriending him. I’m going to get you free of Hollow Ground!"

So that's why he ended up training with Eden all this time?... You can't help the laughter again... really...

It’s impressive. If he followed him for that long without you knowing, then that means Detective Charge actually gathered a huge pile of evidence, lied to you about it all along not to tip you on his findings... 

...and then drew entirely wrong conclusions out of it all. 

"You're not going to admit it, then?"

"You only got one part of this whole fantasy right amigo...  I AM the Puppet Master. But I am NOT Hollow Ground's bitch. I'm my own person."

“What…?”

“The question is… what are you going to do about it…?” you ask, your voice subtly changing back into puppet master’s tone. Even without the distorter, he knows you well enough to realize it. “Still going to help me?” you ask with a cruel smile. It’s not fair for him… but since when has anything been fair to you?

“Are you trying to protect her? Just tell me what she’s got over you! Is she holding someone hostage? What did she do to you?! Just tell me, please!” there’s desperation in his eyes. He thinks he’s so close to his answers. And he is, just not the answers he expects.

“Always ready to blame Hollow Ground for everything since she killed your second dad, aren't you?” Fuck. Too hurtful… .You wish you hadn’t said that the moment it comes off your mouth.

He gives you an angry stare, before going on “Look, I already know she’s behind this so…”

“SHE’S GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING!” you blurt out.

“THEN WHO’S EDEN?! WHAT’S HIS ROLE?”

You could lie… tell him a thousand different things… You’ve been trained for it. Maybe he would even believe some of them

But you can see the end of the road from here. You’re not running from it this time.

“He’s just another puppet, Ricardo. That’s how I see everyone these days”

“A pu… ? Como quieres que te crea eso?” he turns to spanish. Perhaps he thinks you can’t lie in spanish?

“Me vas a soltar en algún momento? Or is this just turning you on?” You smile looking at his hands holding your wrists against the wall, his chest pushing against your own… you’re so close...

“If I do that you’re going to run away! It’s what you always do…”

“I won’t… You have my word, for what it’s worth” you say with a smug smile.

He looks down for a brief moment before releasing your wrists and pulling back “Fuck…ok.. but don’t you DARE run!”

“Told you I wouldn’t”

“Alright if it wasn’t Hollow Ground... then who captured you?! You never spoke about your past!”

“You really have no idea…”

“And why didn't you look for me after you escaped?"

"Oh, so it's my fault for not running into your arms? I don't think so. It was you who abandoned me, remember? You let me there to rot!!!"

“Where? Who took you? Make some fucking sense already!”

“The people you work for… they’re the ones who took me, hero”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You should know better than anyone… Your own father gave you up to them, and they’ve been pulling your strings ever since”

“Leave my family out of this!” He bursts in anger

“THe government owns you Ricardo. Just like they own me. The only difference is I escaped”

“I told you to make sense already? Or do I have to keep guessing? Is it all a game to you?”

“No. No more games…”

He’s just so angry… so confused… you’ve never seen him like this.

“Ana, I…” he looks right into your eyes “I fucking love you! I’d do anything for you! Just tell me what’s wrong! I don’t know what else to do...”

“You ... “ your voice breaks for a brief second... “ You can’t love me. You don’t know what you’re talking about”

“But I do!”

“No… you can’t. And I’ll show you why”. No. No, don’t do this. No no no no…

You start to take off your shirt and the nanomesh underneath… This is madness. Why won’t you stop?

“What are you doing?”

It finally comes off… exposing your skin. Letting him see the ugly truth. The orange lines tracing your skin everywhere. The scars inflicted by your torturers

“What are those?”

“You asked me to tell you what’s wrong. Well… what if I told you just about everything is?”

“You mean you’re...?” He’s having trouble finishing his sentences right now...

You nod. The tears are coming already. You cross your arms protectively over your chest, but that only exposes a new set of tattoos going all over them.

“So you see? You can’t love me. I’m not real Ricardo. I never was”

“You’re one of those…” He stops short of saying it. But you know what he meant. He thinks you’re one of those things.

He goes silent.

He just keeps staring… saying nothing.

You can’t read his mind… You can’t hear his words. Only see his eyes, judging you. You always knew what he thought of regenes.

This was all a mistake… a huge mistake. Now that he knows… What is he going to do? He can’t accept this. You fooled him all along. You pretended to be human and he fell in love with you. And now you’ve ripped all that apart.

He gives a step towards you… he’s about to say something…

NO! You won’t let him judge you. Nor him, nor anyone else. And you’re not going back to the farm ever again…

He extends a hand to your arm and…

THere’s your chance. You send a sudden headbutt into his bloody nose like your training tells you to. He’s caught completely off guard, making him pull back.

You push your way through and rush to the couch, getting your coat again, pulling if over your shirtless self, and you run.

Run to the door…

“Stop!” you hear him cry out, holding his nose. “Please don’t leave me. You gave me your word, remember?

Your fingers go white as they grip the handle with all your strength, turning it… 

...until you let go.

 Running won’t help. It’s all in the open now.

Time to face consequences...

_________________________________________

You lay down on the couch. He sits rights besides you.

Both of you stay there the longest time. Your mind is racing a thousand thoughts per second. You just wish he said something. Anything... the silence is deafening.

“Alright... Alright then” he says in the end. “Where do we go from here?” he asks.

“I don’t know? And you said WE or am I hearing things?”

“Of course I said we” he looks at you. He looks hurt and shocked, and afraid… but there’s no doubt in him. “I mean WE need to find a way to solve this”

“What if it can’t be solved?”

“Then I guess we’re going to have to make a mess out of it?” he smiles weakly.

“I guessed I already started? I messed you up... twice now...” You say apologetically

“Oh this?” he motions at his bloodened face “This is just a regular workday for me, you know it!”

“Let me help you clean those”

“If you feel like it”

You head to the bathroom and then come back carrying a wet towel and some antiseptic. He buys the best brand... just like you.

“I’m sorry,” you say cleaning the blood. 

“Ouch” he lets out flinching as you gently clean the stains over his face.

“Just stay still…”

He takes a hand to your cheek… his fingers clearing some of your tears.

“It’s ok” he speaks softly.

“I keep doing this….” you smile bitterly.

“Doing what?”

“Hurting you.”

“Yes, we really  need to work on that cariño…”

He leans in…

“I haven’t finishe….”

It’s a clumsy kiss. His face’s still in pain…

But he’s kissing you.

He knows.

He knows what you are and he’s still kissing you.

Only one way to go now…

You kiss him back.

“Ooouch!” he lets out as you press your lips against his perhaps a bit too forcefully.

“SORRY!”

_____________________

My Fanfics: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/181692759294/my-fanfiction-for-fallen-hero

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction using characters and the setting of the Fallen Hero: Rebirth and upcoming Fallen Hero: Retribution games written by Malin Riden. I do not claim ownership of any characters from the Fallen Hero wold. These stories are a work of my imagination, and I do not ascribe them to the official story canon. These works are intended for entertainment outside the official storyline owned by the author. I am not profiting financially from the creation of these stories, and thank the author for her wonderful game/s, without which these works would not exist.

[twofacedwritings]

Freedom

TW: drug, alcohol, and gambling addictions. Depersonalization It should've been easy, letting Dyl--no. Ace go. It's not like there was a mind attached to the body before, so there is no reason to get sentimental about it. Sure, its plans require a lot more work, now that it doesn't have a trustworthy middle man, but what's a few sleepless nights when its so close to its objective?

...It will miss the kitchen, though. Dylan's apartment had everything. A pressure cooker, a sous vide, a proper working oven... Dylan could make anything and everything. Sometimes, it made sure to bring food from Dylan's place to its own just so it could have a decent meal.

Logically, it could try cooking in its own kitchen. Sure, it might not have all that fancy stuff but... no. Cooking was more Dylan's thing. Just like everything else.  Fashion, socializing, reading, watching movies... dating.

No, don't think about that. It shook its head. Mortum still hasn't gotten back to it yet. Maybe... for all it knew, the doctor prefered the real Dyl-- Ace. It makes sense. Dylan is everything that Kirse isn't.

And Ace is even more so. He’s handsome. Charming, flirty and funny. He’s an amazing cook and fights well even without any boosts. And despite having the body of a greek statue, he has a way of making people feel better about themselves. He’s alive. A real person.

That's all the more reason it had to let him go.

A sharp knock on its door startled it out of its thoughts. No one knows where it lives. No one should... It reached out, trying to feel for the mind on the other side.

A familiar mind. Much fuller than when it last saw him. It immediately recoiled, then ran to open the door. Think of the devil and he shall come.

"Hey." Ace's low voice sent shivers up its spine. It never knew the actual affect of hearing that voice rather than speaking with it. No wonder so many were charmed by it; like warm honey poured into spiced rum.  Those deep hazel eyes widened and he flashed one of those bright, disarming smiles. "...Oh my god, you are so cute and adorable."

"How did you find me?" It squared its shoulders, not that it would really do anything to intimidate. Aikido lessons agreed well with that body and Ace easily has two feet over it.

The smile faded. "Really? How many times have I been over the past few months?" Ace rolls his eyes, pushing past Kirse.

"Hey!" It clenches its fists, ready to-- it stops, catching a rich, warm smell. Spiced, but not spicy. "That was before you... came back."

"And you never really wiped my mind of that."

"There wasn't a mind to wipe."

"Details. Point is, I remember a lot of what you did in my body." Ace sets down the bag on the kitchen table.

It winces, memories popping up. Clandestine deals,  contacts, meeting Shroud again... kissing Mortum at the gala...

"It's fine. I get it. I'm not mad." He turns to look at it, a knowing look in his eyes.

"I'm the telepath here." Kirse murmurs as it goes to get plates and utensils. "So why are you here?"

"Aren't you the telepath?" A smirk tugs at Ace's lips. But he doesn't let the joke linger. "...You uh... eaten yet?"

"That's not an answer, Ace." It looks over, weary. "...If you want to kill me, then you know why you'd fail."

"I promise I don't mean any harm by you. Look, I..." He runs his hand through his hair now, sitting down with a sigh. "...Sucker was right about me. No friends, no family, no nothing." He paused, and Kirse took that as a sign that it had to speak.

"So? You're free now. You can make more friends. You're good at that."

"No, you are. No one gave a damn about me before..." He pales and unconsciously rubs his wrists. It doesn't pressure the point. "But when you're piloting, I'm better than I used to be. I'm... charming. Funny. I had a boyfriend, for crying out loud. I've never had one."

"...You do now, though." It turns to start unpacking the bag. It doesn't want to think about Mortum, the doctor with the brilliant mind, how adorable he can get over the strangest things, how excitable he can get and-- shit, it doesn’t want to think about him!

"No, you do. He's been calling, by the way, asking where the hell you are." He pauses, studying it carefully. "...You forgot to give him your number, didn't you?"

...Oh. That explains one thing. "...But you're back in your own mind now, you could--"

"Oh for--" Ace reaches over to grab Kirse's arm. It tenses, looking at him with caution; it takes willpower to not hit him in the face. "The guy that he loves is you. I'm just the body, and you've done a hell of a lot better of a job being me than I have."

"So why are you here? To ask me how I did it? To  blame me for how bad you were before? To--"

"I want you back."

That made it stop. "What?" "Before you-- no, before the Sucker fried my brain, I was a nobody, okay? A loser. My dad told me I'd never amount to anything, and he was right." Ace's shoulders  slump. It could feel the memories running through Ace’s mind. An angry, older man shouting. The sting of fists and the smell of stale beer. A mother who looked away every time. A broken home burning.... It puts up its own shields, hard and firm. "I drank a lot. Partied even more.  People I was with mattered less than the fun I was having. Fuck, I even got boosted because I heard the high was like nothing else." He snorts. "Never should've trusted a flier."

"No, you shouldn't." It thought back to Herald, how easily he scooped it up... It’s a better memory to focus on, even if thoughts of Herald still bring up embarrassment.

"Point being... I had nothing. Even the boost didn't help much. Swapped drugs with gambling.  And I was good at it. Damn good. I was a winner, but it didn't matter because I needed to win more." Ace looks down at the ground, fingers twitching. “...I always needed to win more.”  He places a hand on his chest above the tattoo that Kirse'd put on him before, a pair of spades. It remembered the impulse it had to get it for Dylan.

"...I'm sorry." It turns, looking at Ace properly. He's not a puppet anymore, not a tool. And yet here Kirse was--

"Don't be. Seriously." Ace looks up at Kirse and his brows furrow. "I wanted this before Shroud killed me. You just... helped me get it. You helped me so much."

"I didn't do anything but use you."

"Then keep doing it. Please. I'm... nothing without you." It never knew what Dylan looked like pleading. Ace was defiant to his last moments, strong despite what Shroud did to him. But now... he looked so helpless.

It pulled back, flinching. "No. No, you're a person. You're alive, you have your second chance. You don't have to  be a puppet anymore! You're not a tool!" The more it spoke, the more worked up Kirse got. Dylan deserves better. Ace deserves better.  Better than what Shroud did and better than what it did.  "Hey, hey, no wait, I didn't mean it like that!" Dyl--Ace reaches over to take Kirse's hands. "I mean, let me be what you pretended I was. Your right hand man. My mind is an open book to you already. Let me help."

"But... why? A Re-gene, a cuckoo fried your brain."

"And another, you, brought it back." Ace slides off the chair onto his knees, head lowering until his forehead touched its knuckles. "I know what you have planned. I know what you want done. If you're going to destroy that place, let me help."

"...You're giving up your second chance." Kirse doesn't pull away. It can't deny things have been more difficult without Dylan. And it missed accessorizing, dressing up in beautiful clothing. But Ace isn’t Dylan. He’s more than that... he’s... "You can be more than a lackey."

"Well... long as Shroud and them who made her are out there, I've got a target on my back. Way I see it, the best way to get it off is to help you.  And in the meantime, I... we both can get better at this... being a good person thing. So... Unveiler, will you let me be your lieutenant again?" He moves its hands to his throat, looking up at it. Gone is the helplessness, the desperation.  Instead is determination, strength. The same fire that Kirse saw back when Mortum showed Dylan the recording of what he found.

"...You're insane." It sighs, but moves its hands up to smooth out Ace's hair. "...Fine. Don't disappoint me, Ace."

The man cracked a wide grin. "Name's Dylan now."

[queenofcats17]

Okay I had an angsty prompt idea this time! Okay what if Sammy and Wally went back to the Lost One Village with Henry, and Annette managed to find it with Boris (because he’d probably be worried about Henry too and decided he should go with Annette just in case, to keep her safe.) and then since Henry is probably back under the ink’s control he will probably try to attack her, Sammy and Wally try to stop him? I just love the angsty stories! You’re so good at writing them, and the other stories!

Sorry this took so long.

After Bendy left, Boris went to go check on Annette. She was laying in his hammock, curled up in a little ball.

“Annette? You alright?” Boris asked.

“No.”

Boris sighed, sitting down on the cot nearby. Annette didn’t turn toward him, curling in on herself even more.

“I’m sorry.” He said.  

“You did the best you could.” Her voice was flat, betraying no emotion. Boris’ ears drooped. He hated it when people were mad at him. It was part of the reason he avoided Joey. Nothing any of the toons did was ever good enough for Joey. Nothing was good enough for him.

“We need to get you out of here,” Boris said. “It’s not safe for you to stay.” Annette didn’t say anything for a moment or two. Then she rolled over to face him. She looked so tired.

“Are you sure there’s no way to help Henry?” She asked quietly. Boris hunched his shoulders, beginning to wring his hands.

“No one’s ever been cured after becoming an ink creature.” He replied. “They can eventually get their minds back, but that takes a lotta time and I don’t think Joey’s gonna let him go now that he’s got him.” Annette had a lot of names she wanted to call Joey, but she was certain Boris wouldn’t be comfortable with most of them. So she bit her lip to stop herself from screaming.

“I hate him.” She said, sitting up. “I hate Joey.” Her hands gripped the fabric of the hammock so tightly that her knuckles were turning white.

“He’s…Not a good person.” Boris nodded. His head was bowed, eyes staring down at his hands. He was rocking back and forth a little, hands fidgeting.

“What did we do wrong?” He whispered, his lip starting to quiver.

“What do you mean?” Immediately, Annette was worried. Boris had been a pillar of support for the entire time she’d been there, but she knew he was battling his own demons. Now, it seemed, his emotions were overflowing.

“We had to have done something wrong.” He started rocking faster, hands going down to tap frantically on his thighs. “We should have been enough. He wanted us to live. He didn’t need to do everything else. What did we do wrong? Why did he do all of this?” Big black inky tears began to run down his cheeks.

“Boris…” Annette slipped out of the hammock to sit down beside him, putting an arm around his shoulder. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for what Joey’s done. You and Bendy are doing the best you can. You’re the only reason I’m still here.”

“I should’ve done more to save Henry!” Boris sobbed. “I could’ve saved him!”

“Don’t say that.” Annette pulled him closer, stroking his fur. “If I’m not allowed to beat myself up about it, neither are you, alright?”

“But-”

“No buts.” She cut him off before he could protest. “We’re both doing the best we can. You’ve kept me safe this long. Give yourself some credit for that.” Boris continued to sniffle, but this seemed to have calmed him a bit.

“Thanks.” He said, smiling slightly. Annette smiled back. She hesitated for a moment. If she wanted…She could ask to see Henry. Boris was in an emotionally vulnerable state. She could take advantage of that. She shook her head quickly. What was she thinking?! What a monstrous thing to do!

“Are you alright?” Boris asked. He looked better now.

“I’m fine.” She forced a smile and nodded. “I just…I know it’s dangerous, but I want to see Henry.” Boris opened his mouth, likely to tell her the perils, but she stopped him. “I know he’ll probably try to infect me. I know he’s not the same anymore. I know he’s basically Joey’s puppet. But…He’s my friend.” She didn’t want to just abandon him. Henry was the kind of person who always pretended he was fine when he wasn’t, who tried to do everything on his own. She didn’t want him to go through this by himself too. Boris whimpered quietly, his ears drooping again.

“I’m sorry.” She squeezed his hand. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

“Nah, it’s alright.” Boris tried to reassure her. “Maybe…Maybe you could see him. Just for a little.”

“You really mean it?” Annette perked up.

“I mean, it’d be good to check on him,” Boris said. He was pretty worried about Henry too if he was being honest. And if Annette was going to see Henry, it would be better for Boris to be there with her, to keep her safe.

“Then let’s go!” Annette hopped up, her energy renewed.

“Sure.” Boris got up as well, although he was unable to shake the feeling that this was going to be a mistake.

.

Sammy, Wally, Bendy, and Henry had returned to the Lost One Village by this point. Wally wanted to say a proper hello to the Lost Ones and Sammy had never actually finished checking on them. Not to mention Bendy wanted to “grace his adoring followers with his presence”.

“You’re not letting this ‘god’ thing go to your head.” Wally snickered. “Nope. Not at all.”

“You’re just jealous,” Bendy said, batting his eyelashes. An impressive feat given he didn’t actually have any eyelashes. Henry made some happy noises and hugged Bendy. As soon as they’d left Sammy’s sanctuary, he’d returned to being nothing more than a Searcher. This, of course, bothered Bendy a lot. But he didn’t want to dwell on that. Henry was still there, wasn’t he? He hadn’t lost him yet.

“Play nice, you two,” Sammy warned them as they exited the ink near the village.

“We are being nice,” Wally said. “You’ve seen me be nasty. That was not nasty.”

“Eh, give ‘im a break.” Bendy waved his hand dismissively. “It’s his job to be a stick in the mud dad.”

“I am not a stick in the mud!” If Sammy could have blushed, he would have been blushing at that moment. Wally and Bendy just laughed, darting ahead of him. Sammy sighed heavily, looking down at Henry.

“Do you see what I have to deal with?”

Henry offered no reply, just smiling up at Sammy dumbly. Sammy felt a tug at his heart. It wasn’t Henry. It may have looked like Henry, but it wasn’t Henry. He turned away, starting towards the village. Suddenly, though, a yell echoed through the cavern. Sammy picked up his pace, running into the central area of the village. There, standing by the dock, were Annette and Boris. A group of Lost Ones had gathered by their homes, all looking nervous. Bendy looked absolutely terrified, and even Wally seemed upset.

“I just want to see him,” Annette said, also clearly upset.

“He might hurt you!” Bendy said. “Bo! You know how dangerous it is! Why did you bring her?!”

“I-I thought it would be safer if I came too,” Boris said, ears flat against his head. “She was so upset. And- And I was worried too.”

“Boris, you gotta get her outta here,” Wally said. “Henry’s gonna be here soon-”

“Just let me see him, please,” Annette begged. That was when Sammy and Henry rounded the corner. For a moment, time seemed to stand still. Annette and Henry locked eyes. Relief washed over Annette at seeing Henry. But Henry didn’t seem happy to see her. Immediately, he changed. His happy-go-lucky demeanor was gone, replaced by the manner of a feral Searcher. 

“Henry, no!” Sammy tried to grab him, but Henry darted away before he could be subdued. He was headed straight for Annette, screaming at the top of his lungs. Annette’s eyes widened and she took a step back. Thankfully, Boris got between her and Henry, and Bendy and Wally managed to pin Henry down. 

“Go! Leave!” Wally yelled. The Lost Ones quickly jumped into action. starting to usher Boris and Annette away while keeping an eye on Henry. Annette said nothing. She was too stunned to do anything other than make her legs move. Boris put an arm around her, holding her close. It looked like he was going to have some more comforting to do. Guilt was weighing heavily on him. He’d agreed to take Annette to see Henry. He’d allowed her to be put in danger. He was a terrible person.

Meanwhile, Wally and Bendy were still holding Henry down. Henry kept fighting and screaming until Annette was no longer within his sight. Once she was gone, he immediately calmed down. He didn’t struggle any longer, instead turning to look at Bendy and Wally curiously, as if he wondered if they were playing a game. Bendy was on the verge of tears once more. He got off of Henry, hugging his knees and starting to sob. Sammy knelt beside him, enfolding Bendy in a hug. 

“It’s alright.” He whispered, patting Bendy’s back. 

“No, it’s not!” Bendy wailed, burying his face in Sammy’s chest. Wally got off Henry as well, just staring at the Searcher that had once been Henry. Normally, he’d try to lighten the mood. But he wasn’t feeling all that cheerful at the moment. He just sat there, watching Henry and listening to Bendy cry. Where were they going to go from here?

[ezilyamuzed]

The New Kid

Summary: Reader is a 10-year old kid that often has trouble fitting in with others because she is seen as different. She meets two different people in a short period of time that seem to get it. To get her. 

Warnings: Fluff. Brief playground violence. Bullying. 

Setting: 1989.

A/N: Started as a completely random one shot, however realized that this can squeeze itself somewhere along the “There’s no place like home” series since that has been the focus of my thoughts as of late. Please excuse any grammatical errors since I am human. Any feedback is always welcomed! 

*The picture is not mine, it came from google. Not trying to violate any copyright laws!

It was sunny Saturday afternoon as you laid, sprawled out coloring in your mom’s office. She was busy grading papers on the History of Norse Mythology. You doodled the stories she had often told you as bedtime stories. Thor with his mighty hammer and lightning. The goddess Freya with her cats. Character’s you knew all too well that you could have probably aced the college level exam although you were only 10 years old. A knock on the door brought both of your attentions to the doorway.

“Dr. Y/L/N?”

An older man walked in with dark hair that had little flakes of grey starting through the sides with scruff to match. He was wearing a beat-up leather jacket over top of a plaid flannel and denim jeans. He looked nervous as he saw you laying on the floor. 

“Yes, how can I help you Mr.?” your mother replied.

“John ma’am,” he stated. “I some questions you might be able to help me with. A friend told me that you were the best at this kind of thing... Bobby.”

Your mother’s eyes widen as her breathing slowly decreased. “Y/N, why don’t you go see if you can go play with Dr. Brown’s mice again sweetie?” she said while looking down at you from her desk.

“But mom…” you started to argue.

“Y/N, out now,” she snapped.

You got up slowly while scrunching up your nose to her. She was mad, so you knew that you should follow her orders although you’ve been in her office plenty of times when people came in with questions. They usually didn’t even give you a second look as you typically hid off to the side. 

You looked up to the man as you walked past. His dark hazel eyes watching you closely with sadness in them, like he knew a secret. You turned the corner out of the office to move down the hall as you heard his voice speak up while closing the door. “Does he know?”

You didn’t want to play with Dr. Brown’s lab mice again. The last time Luci bite you hard. Raph would often just sit there. Gabes would run around like a maniac, and Mikey would attack the other mice around him if he didn’t have your undivided attention. You opted to go outside and sit along the steps to the building instead. The college kids were all busy in their own conversations about papers and tests coming up as they all walked past in a hurry. Some of them that knew you would give you a friendly smile and wave. This was your home. After about twenty minutes the door behind you opened slowly as the man strolled past you down the stairs.

“You get everything you needed mister?” you asked politely. 

He turned his head to you and gave you a sheepish smile. “Yeah, kid. Your mom is really helpful.”

You bit your lip nervously before asking him the question you were dying to know. “You’re going after monsters aren’t you?”

He was pushed back in shock at your bluntness.  He rubbed the back of his head nervously before responding. “Where did you get that idea kid?”

You shrugged up your shoulders quickly. “You’re not the first one who has come to my mother to ask questions. Most of them usually have fake badges, but you look like the others who don’t care to pretend.”

He gave you a little nod as he walked over to sit next to you. “So how old are ya kid?”

“10”

“10 years old. Pretty young to be thinking about monsters being real don’t ya think?”

“I might be a kid, but I’m not blind. There are strange things that happen all the time. There aren’t many other explanations,” you replied while rolling your eyes.

“You’re pretty smart there. You must take after your mom. What about your dad?” he questioned while staring towards your face for your response. 

“He thinks I’m crazy, but he is the crazy one,” you said while shrugging your shoulders again.

“I see,” he said softly. “It’s not an easy thing for a kid. I got two boys around your age.”

You nodded your head in agreement as he got up and told you to take care of yourself, maybe seeing you again someday. John, the one adult who didn’t call you crazy. The one adult who seemed to understand. 

Monday morning in school was busy as usual. Classmates bragging about their weekends like they hadn’t seen each other in years. You didn’t even care to participate in the gossip and story sharing. They all knew what you were probably doing the last two days anyway, hiding in your mom’s office, probably reading another book on the supernatural. Going off on a shopping spree and getting new things that would go out of style the next week was a waste of time to you. Spending a Saturday night to braid someone else’s hair while talking about boys sounded like torture. None of it mattered in the long run. What you looked like, what you had, the group you hung out with, none of it would matter in the end. They were just things to fill the void for most people’s loneliness in the world. Although you didn’t really have “friends”, you weren’t lonely. You knew who you were and you were okay with it. You were just different…

A new kid had walked in as the morning bell rang. Typical 10 year old boy with a round face that was covered in freckles wearing jeans and t-shirt that had an interesting charm laying from a black cord around his neck. As the teacher looked at the note he handed her, she motioned for him to sit next to you in the back. He nodded and slowly walked toward you with his eyes focused on the ground. 

“Everyone turn to page 148 in the American Culture textbook,” you teacher said while turning her back to the class to start writing something on the board. The boy looked around uncomfortably as he sat down at the desk. Everyone was pulling out their books and supplies while he had nothing. You pulled out an extra notebook and pen that you had in your book bag and handed it to him. He gave you a surprised look as he gave you a soft thanks. His bright green eyes shined with gratitude. You nodded and pushed your desk towards his while laying your textbook open to the page between you. 

The rest of the morning continued with you trying to help the new kid catch up. He was grateful, but also seemingly uninterested in what was going on. His eyes always focused on the door like he would have to leave again at any second. At recess instead of reading the book you brought from your mom's office, you decided to get to know the new kid. To make him feel welcomed at least since all of your peers didn’t seem to notice. It must be hard being a new kid you assumed. You knew it was hard enough being the weird kid.

“You doing alright?” you quickly asked as you approached his side while walking out to the playground.

“Yeah, just…don’t know how my little brother is doing. Also, my dad…not sure exactly what he’s up to,” he said while kicking the gravel around with his sneakers while focusing on the pattern he was creating.

“I’m sure they are fine,” you smiled.

“Don’t talk to that freak kid,” yelled a voice behind you. Billy. The sheriff’s 11-year-old son that was only an inch shorter than you, but at least 50lbs heavier. He had tormented you for the last year, ever since his dad caught you in the abandoned farm nearby. You had lied and said that you were just looking, but the salt, iron bar, lighter fluid, and matches found on you gave you away. You were up to something and wouldn’t flinch from your story although they tried. 

“I can talk to whomever I want to,” spoke up the voice next to you defensively. Was he defending his new kid rep, or you?

“Freak found another freak to be her friend,” Billy taunted while bouncing his weight back and forth. He was making silly faces suggesting two people French kissing.

“Seriously dude, stop it. Alright?” You looked over at the new kid and saw that his face was getting red with anger. His fists clenching next to him. 

“Get out of here Billy. Stop being a jerk,” you hissed. 

“Y/N got herself a boyfriend…another FREAK!” he yelled. 

POW!

You didn’t mean to strike him that his nose started to bleed. Well, okay you did. As he caught his balance his eyes filled with rage. He began to charge after you but was met with another fist, this time from your playground companion that sent Billy onto his back.

A smile rose upon your face as you heard your teacher screaming for everyone to settle down. She pulled both of your arms into the building while another teacher tended to Billy’s wounded ego. 

“Y/N, I’m calling your mother right now. And you…” she said while glaring at the new kid. “I’ll be notifying your parents as well to take you home. We do not tolerate that kind of behaviors in this school.”

She left you both to sit in the hall. You leaned your head back onto some lockers while watching him rub his knuckles gently. 

“You didn’t have to do that you know,” you said while nodding to his hands.

“The guy was a jerk,” he said with a shrug. “Anyways I don’t really care, I’ll probably move on to somewhere else by the end of the week.”

“Move around a lot?” 

“Yeah, my dad does a lot of…on the road jobs,” he said while stretching out his legs. “So why did he call you a freak anyway?”

You rolled your eyes to his question. Why wouldn’t he, was all you could think. It’s not like you were like them…normal.

“I just don’t quite fit in I guess,” you said with a shrug. “Not really interested in talking puppets from outer space named Alf or playing on a game boy.”

“What do you do then?”

“Read mostly. History books, primarily about myths and legends.”

You’ll probably be some kind of teacher one day huh?”

“Maybe,” you shrugged. “My mom is a professor, so I guess I could stay in the family business.” 

“Y/N!”

Your teacher’s voice made your whole body shudder as she motioned to you to follow her into the office. Your dad was probably already on his way, or even worse…your mom. You got up slowly as her eyes glared at you to hurry up. 

“Guess I’ll see ya around then kid,” you said while looking back to him.

“Hey, Y/N,” he yelled. “I’m Dean by the way.”

“See ya around then. Dean.”

Dean. The new kid. One of the only people you had ever met that stood up for you. He hadn’t even known you, and he stepped in. He didn’t show up to school the next day, and after a week everyone else seemed to have forgotten he was ever there. The empty desk sitting next to you would often remind you of that brief moment when you had someone you would call a friend. Your Protector. Dean, the green-eyed boy. 

Tags @waywardbaby @jaylarkson

[illusioneddrawer64]

Stone-Faced

A/N: Some idea got stuck out in my head if this went in DC Comics Batman Two-Face route. I do not own GF or SU. Read recent postings of MiniJen (check out her deviant and Tumblr, they are great! MiniJen if you are reading this, then two thumbs-up! Love the crossover! No Worries, credits goes to you).

Edit: Favorite UF Character Homage to Stonemason

Quote: "Madness like GRAVITY, all it takes a little push".

-The Dark Knight, 2008

(First appearance)

"Who Are You-Stonemason?", exclaimed Ford Pines. "We're done with your ghoulish games!".

"Then you shouldn't have followed me", snarled Stonemason mysteriously."ONE OF ROSE QUARTZ'S "BUDDIES" IN CORNER POCKET!" (insert things got real)

(When confronting rest of minor characters/citizens of Gravity Falls, even terrifying Onion and Wendy's dad)

"NOBODY MOVE, DON'T EVEN BOTHER TO ADJUST THE PICTURE!"

(Insert any "tough person" to confront him) retorting "Im Not Afraid of You, YOU (insert decent insult)!"

"THEN YOU ARE DUMBER THAN YOUR OLD MAN!" Stonemason snapped, frightening (the person).

(Another Confrontation)

"So Here We Are Again RoSe QuArTz…face to-TWOFACE (showing his one-side yellow scarred face). Besides, YOU Always Have Been A "Boy Scout". Maybe You Should Just Give It Up, If "we" weren't That Causal!" Stonemason exclaimed.

"We?", Steven's mind wondered while shocked and awed by his beloved friend's current status...and split personality.

(Stan Pines Vs Stonemason…certain POV might be changed to Angst)

"SHOW Me-What You Really Are BUB!" shouted Stan, tugging at the mask with his grappling brass knuckles.

"NO!" replied Stonemason furiously (kicking him off, almost slicing Stan's tuxedo)-hinting a small sad familiar voice…

(After the shocking revelation-and confronting his once-been friends who have him cornered)

"…so all of you got everyone else to "smile" and keep their "lunches" down when I was gone…SO THEN-JUST LOOK AT ME WITH YOUR SO-CALLED SYMPATHETIC EYES AND HAVE YOUR "JUSTIFIABLE" TALKS!…get it over with, at least im back home…LOOK AT ME!" Stonemason angrily stated.

Steven flinched by the demand-and was struck by a brief image: Dipper's face covered on both sides instead of one under torturous experimentation he undergone through.

"…look at me…nothing would changed what happened…(almost breaks down in quiet sobs)…before…", Dipper revealed whimperedly.

(YD with her force of minions locating Stonemason)

"…so then "My Loyal Assassin"-do we have an understanding?"

After brief sweating and contorting his face in a full range of a panic attack…Dipper became stoically calm.

"...there is just only one problem…", Dipper grins dangerously-letting his bangs hide his eyes.

"And what is that?…", YD questioned unnervingly.

Dipper pulls out his once-been arm, turning it into a blade.

YD's eyes widened.

"YOU WERE JUST TALKING TO THE WRONG PERSON-I AM HIS STRONGER INCARNATE"

(Post-Stonemason, having YD at his mercy)

"…The universe is a cruel place, the only morality is CHANCE…Stonemason was right-it can be unbiased (turns to Ford) or unprejudiced (turns back to YD)…FAIR", grunted Dipper. "She Got the SAME CHANCE That Those UNFORTUNATE EVENTS That Just Happened All Over There" Dipper indicates at a random lone star in the sky.

Connie's blood ran cold. She learned three things to be aware about: stormy seas, a night with no moon or source of light, and anger of a good person...

"Fifty-Fifty"

Dipper held up a random coin. Mabel tries hold her tears-seeing her broken twin brother who was willing to commit murder.

"Dipper…", Steven sniffled. "What happened to you…at Homeworld wasn't chance nor fair…ALL of us tried to act-"

"THEN WHY IT WAS "ME"…FROM THE VERY START…FOR BEING USED OR MANIPULATED AS A "PUPPET" OR A SOLDIER (indicates YD) WHO THEN LOST EVERYTHING!", shouted Dipper as he raised his tone even more which prompted Soos almost opening his mouth about Dipper's past of voice-cracking but sees it is not a good time.

Lapis and Peridot tries to step forward but Ford's movements reassures them, "it wasn't-"

Dipper coldly interrupts, "CIPHER ONCE CHOSE ME!"

Everyone almost finch at the acknowledgment.

Steven replies sadly, "It was because…you were the Best of Us…even someone good as You…could fall…"

Dipper's mind raced furiously, "...then he was right…"

"Well Then...", Dipper turns back to YD.

"Prepare For Your Judgement! Yellow-I HOLD YOU WITH CONTEMPT!"

"NO-You Can't!", YD stated. (Tries to appeal to everyone else.)

"Dipper Please! Are You Actually Want To Do This?!", Mabel begged.

"I'm just taking control of my LIFE", Dipper growled.

"Yo, just let-" Amethyst tried but was interrupted.

"JUST LET HER GO?! WELL THEN, HERE'S WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NOW: The law of AVERAGES, the great EQUALIZER!". (Indicates to the about-to-be flipped coin)

"Then that would make yourself as worst enemy-Stonemason", Garnet deadpans.

"No…SHE's YOUR WORST ENEMY!…See this-the coin would now chose her fate".

YD's brows almost sweated, "what have I've created" her mind wonders.

(Stonemason is cornered once again, Dipper is himself again after sparing YD)

"Steven, Help Me!", exclaimed Dipper-hanging from a ledge.

Everyone helps Steven to pull up Dipper.

"NEVER!", screamed Stonemason-tries to swipe at Steven…which lead to his fall.

"DIPPER!", Mabel shouted fearfully.

(After being rescued, and was lead away to the Mystery Shack)

"Steven...", Dipper whispers out.

Mabel who was carrying him by side, awaits for their friends reconciliation-smiling that all of this was finally over. Beforehand, after the fall Dipper was shaking up and wept at certain events that just happened-however she comforts him telling him that "everyone is here for him" and cried with him slightly.

"Good o'l Steven…always there…you never gave up on me…" Dipper stated.

Steven gave a reassuring pat on his shoulder.

Stan and Ford both smiled. Soon enough the Pines family returned home.

"He's right, you know-you are always there for him…" Connie said.

"Yeah…", Steven replied, "Like you and Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst along with Lion are there for me too".

Pearl was discussing with Garnet.

"Poor Dipper", Pearl reflects-ever since she trained him as one of her proteges alongside with Steven and Connie. "Do you think in the future, is there any hope?"

Garnet adjusts her shades. "Where there is comfort and love…there is indeed hope", looks at her hand which holds Dipper's once-been coin that have been dropped from the recent battle.

"Then again, with a little luck-it wouldn't hurt…", flips the coin in the town's nearby lake.

Looks at her reflection where the coin has dropped.

"For you, Dipper Pines…"

End

A/N: Hope You enjoyed It! 

[thoughtsofdarc]

My Latest Mission... Part 15

Reader (Y/N), Rumlow, Pierce, Bucky, Some of the Avenger-gang. Warnings: Language. Being a Hydra asset. Anger. Angst. Violence, Blood.  Words: 2698

A/N: I’m really, really trying to get the entire story to fit in a few chapters, but as i write, i always get carried away... Sooo, maybe theres a couple of more chapters coming than i thought. But really... the end is coming closer!

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 -  Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 -

Feeling the hot water run down my body is amazing. I'm still sore in every single muscle in my body, even though it's been a few days since the training fight in the gym, where Jones decided to go rogue and attack me for real. Aiden had to be hospitalized, the hit Jones gave him was far too hard, and the doctors fear severe damage. I've been denied access to come visit him and no one can give me any information. I truly fear for my friend's health, and I can do nothing but wait to see what happens. 

I turn off the water and grab the towel to dry my body. As I wrap it around my hair and stand up, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I shudder as I see a long red scar on my lower abdomen and trace my fingers lightly over it. I remember the day I got it. My memories were starting to come back, and I was slowly trying to come up with a plan on how to escape, 'trying' being the key word. Every fiber in my body wanted to fight against what HYDRA wanted me to do, but I had to pretend to still be their puppet. 

"She's the best hacker in the country, and your mission is to make her find the information we need" Rumlow points to a woman behind the glass window. She looks scared, her eyes are red and puffy, she has clearly been crying. He face is dirty and her jacket is torn. she keep twisting her hands in her lap, staring at the door like she's waiting for someone to come in. "She hasn't been quite cooperative as you can see, we had to rough her up a bit" He looks at her through the glass as an evil grin spread on his lips. It takes all my strength not to break his neck right then and there, because I know what Rumlow means when he says' Rough her up a bit'. The two other agents in the room laugh as if he just told them a joke. "Apparently not enough if you need me to make her do what you want" I say, toneless like I don't give a shit, as a look at the woman in the cold interrogation room. "Well, that's because you're more suited for the job to come if she keeps refusing our orders" Brock looks at me, enjoying this way too much. "You see, we have her son now..." the door to the room opens and a kid, not more than 6 years old, runs in and into the woman's arms. I stare at them as I see her hug him tight, check him for injuries and then hug him tight again. "If she keeps refusing, your job is to kill him". "No!" the word leaves me way too fast by the thought of killing a child and Brock glare at me questioning.

Shit, I just showed way too much emotion for my own good right now. "I'm not doing your job, just because you don't have the balls to do it yourself!" I peel away my eyes from the mother and child and slowly turn to look at Brock. My eyes are hard, challenging and hateful. "I'm not your pet, just because you are a fucking pussy!" I add spiteful. "You will do as you are told, Soldat! Or life will be hell for you!" his eyes would kill right on the spot if it was possible. "It already is, you fucking looser" I mumbled under my breath turning back to look at the people in the other room. Brock's eyes never leaves me as he taps on the window and an agent come in to forcefully take the kid away again. He starts to cry, the woman starts to scream and all hell break loose in there. The last thing I see, is an agent storming towards the woman with a raised baton, then the window turn black from the flick on the switch that Brock hits. "You will do what you are told, or you will regret it, you stupid little piece of shit" he spits, as he slowly walks towards me. I don't step back like most people would do, but stand my ground, looking relaxed, bored even, but on the inside i'm so very ready to fight. "Or what? What will you do Rumlow?" I challenge, knowing very well that I can take him down easily. The agents behind me shift their full focus on me and take a step forward. His fist land on my jaw, but I did foresee that blow so I keep still only my head turned to the side by the hard strike. Slowly I turn my head back to look at him with a smirk, as I lick my lower lip and taste the iron in my blood. I spit out the mixture of saliva and blood and the thick mass land perfectly on his face. Quickly two sets of arms grab me from behind and try to hold me down. I use their hold on me to keep me up, as I raise both legs at the same time and kicks Brock hard in the chest. He slams into the wall behind him with such a force that he releases a mixed sound of a grunt and a wheeze, and parts of the wall crumble under him. "Hold her!" he screams to the agents and takes out his military knife. The anger I feel inside towards the man walking towards, me cannot be described with words and I struggle against the agents to get free. I head butt one of them, and get my arm free from his grasp. As I try to hit Rumlow's knife out of his hand, he instead swing it at me. The swing is low to avoid my reach. I feel the blade cut into my stomach left to right, leaving a long gash almost all the way across. The warm sticky blood starts to flow freely and I feel my clothes get soaked. The agent I head butted is back to his feet and grab me again as the door swings open with a loud crash and Pierce walks in. "ENOUGH!" the outburst rumbles in the tiny room "What the hell is going on?" I say nothing, just keeps staring at Rumlow, daring him to attack me again. He doesn't, but instead starts to ramble about me not obeying my orders. Pierce looks like he is ready to murder us all, as he dismiss Rumlow and walk over to me, his face mere inches from mine. "When you get orders you obey them, is that clear, Soldat? Or do you have a problem with that?" I can see in his eyes that he is questioning why I disobeyed Rumlow and I have to get a grip on myself, not to reveal what's going on inside of my head. I relax in the arms of the agents, straighten my back and take on the demeanor of the soldier that I am to them. "Yes sir!" I tell him, as a plan start to form in my head. "Good! Now take her to the infirmary and get her patched up, she has a fucking job to do" he commands the two agents. Pierce gives me a last look before he leaves the room again and the agents starts to walk me to get stitched up. 

I pull up the sweatpants, as I take a last look at the scar before I put on a tight fitting t-shirt. God I should have killed Rumlow when I had the chance.

I walk back into my room far away in my thoughts, but I am jolted back to here and now, when I spot a person by the wall. He is standing with his back to me tall, muscular and long shaggy hair that falls forward as he stands there with Steve's drawing in his hands. Fuck... Fuck! What the hell is he doing with the picture? Why does he hold the drawing in his hands? Did he find it? "Bucky?!" my voice is small and a bit shaky. He doesn't move, doesn't even seem to register me at all. I walk over to him slowly and on guard,as I try again "Buck? What are you doing here?" He turns his head slightly towards me, but keeps his eyes on the picture in his hands. His voice is low and sad as he starts to talk. "We had it good back then, didn't we? Always happy and ready to make some trouble. Do you think it was faith that brought us together?" I step up to him and put my hand on his back. I feel him tense under my touch, but he doesn't move away, just keeps staring at the picture. "I don't know Buck? I would like to think that there's a reason, a greater good, to why we became inseparable back then" He doesn't seem to notice my answer. "I remember a lot from back then by now..." he continues "... But not all. I'm jealous of you because you can remember everything. It hurts that I can't" Now he looks at me, his eyes are so sad. There's no hate, no anger, no blame, just sadness and my heart drops. "I'm sorry" I whisper, I don't know what else to say. He looks back to the picture and let his thumb brush over his face on the paper. "I do remember our dreams... Do you? Can you remember the day Mrs. Rogers got buried and the three of us stayed at Steve's place afterwards?" I do remember and I give small hum to tell him that I do. "You wanted to travel the world Y/n. You wanted to make people happy. Steve wanted to be an artist maybe even an art teacher. And I... I just wanted to get married, have a bunch of kids and be a fucking dad..." he pauses for a bit "... And now look at us? Death, war, destruction! I wish we could go back... God, I really wanted to have a family and now I never will" His voice is shaking and his knuckles turning white from how hard he's holding the frame. My heart starts to beat a bit faster in fear of him breaking it. I give his shoulder a squeeze before I reach out for the drawing in his hands. "It's not too late Bucky, we have gotten a second chance in life, to do good and to pursue our dreams" He releases the grasp of the drawing and I quickly pull it out of his hands, into safety in mine. As I step forward to put it back up on the wall, my fingers search the back and I let out a relieved sigh when I feel the USB secure in its place. I turn to him and put my hand on his cheek, knowing that I might very well overstep his boundaries, but I need him to listen. "We are not death, war and destruction, we never were. Our hands was forced, our minds was broken and reprogrammed. If we had been ourselves when we did all of that shit for HYDRA, we wouldn't beat ourselves up for it now" Bucky, my strongest friend throughout life, has tears falling from his eyes as he listen. "We never chose to do those things, Bucky. Remember that! It may have been our bodies they used, but it wasn't us! You are a good man James Buchanan Barnes, and don't you ever let yourself or anyone else tell you differently!"

His eyes search mine, looking for the truth in my words. His breathing is shaky and the tears flow freely down his cheeks.

When he doesn't find anything else than truth, the sight before me will haunt me to the day I die.

It looks like he breaks on the inside, like every damn memory of pain and hurt well up in him, all at once. He wraps his arms around me before I even register that he is moving. He buries his face in my neck and sobs like a child.

All the emotions he has been hiding inside, is spilling out through tears and I just hold him. Hold him close and pour as much love and comfort as I can into the hug, trying to calm him down, to let him know that everything is and will be okay and to let him know that he is never, ever  going to be alone again.

"Good news y/n, your boyfriend is released from the hospital. He got lucky, no damage what so ever, the doctors call it a miracle!" Tony walks in to the common room where I'm sitting with some of the other guys watching a movie. "Didn't know he was your boyfriend y/n, do I need to have 'the talk' with him?" Clint mocks before he takes a sip of the beer he's holding in his hands. I roll my eyes at him, starting to feel like I do that at him, as much as I've done to Steve and Bucky throughout the years. Apparently, that's a sign of my affection towards my friends. "He's not my boyfriend, Dumbass!" I throw a pillow at him and almost hit his beer, making Clint chuckle. "But that's awesome news Tony! I'm so happy for him, he must be excited to go home" I feel a little stab in my heart as I say it, because I know that Aiden lives on the other side of the country, so that means I won't see him much anymore. "Actually, he's coming back here. He doesn't want to quit when you are so close to being done. So you'll see him in the next session" Tony says as he throws himself into one of the large chairs in front of the TV. "Are you serious? He almost died just last week, and now he's coming back?" I can't cover the shock in my voice "Is he insane?" the sorrow I felt about losing a friend to distance, is suddenly overwhelmed by worrying about his health. "Just sounds like he's going to be a good agent... Not staying away from the job for too long. Sounds like other people I know" Natasha adds with a smirk, and looks around to the men on the couch and in the chairs. "Hmm" is all I can say, my thoughts already long gone. A sudden feeling of guilt is creeping up my spine. If it wasn't because of me, Aiden would never have been put in that position, where he had to defend me from Jones. Jones wouldn't have attacked him like that and he wouldn't have ended up in the infirmary. "He's a strange dude, I don't like him" Bucky adds to the conversation but doesn't elaborate further.

"You don't like anyone and don't be jealous tin-arm, you can't keep Y/n to yourself, you have to share" Clint mocks as he throws the bottle cap at him. Bucky catch it without even looking up and fling it back at Clint hitting him perfectly in the head, making the archer whine "Hey man! Ouch!"

 I look at Bucky and are just about to ask why, but F.R.I.D.A.Y interrupts "Mr. Stark, Captain Rogers you are needed in the conference room. Miss. Romanoff, Mr. Barton and Sergeant Barnes, you are all needed as well"

 We all look at each other questioning. What is going on? It's not common for the entire Team to be called in like that, without at least one of them knowing what it is about. "Thank you F.R.I.D.A.Y, we are on our way" Tony says and stand up, the rest of them follow and make their way toward the elevator. "Sorry Quees Elsa. It looks like we need to leave you behind for a while" He adds apologetic.

"Don't worry about it T. Go save the world" I send him a smile and wave him away with the others.

 As I see the elevator doors close behind them, I can't help but to wonder what it's all about, an eerie feeling creeping up my spine.

Part 16...

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[words-writ-in-starlight]

So your rant on Supernatural? Also I fell in love with the story you're talking about and basically want to know more. Sorry.

My buddy, you have made An Error, but let’s do this shit.  To any SPN fans who have wound up herethrough Ye Olde Search Function, I encourage you to stop reading now.

I watched up to about halfway through Season Five before Idecided that I could Do It Better (I think this is the novel you’re talkingabout, anon, unless it’s Earth is where the trouble comes from), and draggedmyself up to about halfway through Season Seven before I packed it in and gaveup, resigned that the parts of the show I loved were about four to five seasonsdead.  So like that’s the information I’mworking on here.

So, obviously, lots of people have lots of legitimatecomplaints about Supernatural,including treatment of queer characters, characters of color, and women, aswell as their fairly rampant history of queerbaiting.  And lots of people have covered this in morecompetent detail than I could ever manage, so like google “sexism in Supernatural” or something and you cando your own reading there.  Hell, if youwant to do it the lazy way, you can knock out two of the above with this onearticle in friendly, easy-to-read Buzzfeed format.  To the nominal credit of the people involved,I will add that the cast seems acutely aware of these problems and finds itdistasteful, HOWEVER the problems persist and therefore that credit is minimal.  Anyway. These things are covered much more thoroughly by many other people whoare far more cogent than I could hope to be, so I’m going to leave those alone.

Instead, my rant is mostly summed up as “YOU CALL THIS SHITSTORYTELLING.”

So there are four basic parts to this rant, or rather fourbasic flaws that form the fundamentally weak foundation of Supernatural as a narrative.

Failure to commit to a single cohesive narrativearc, also known as “SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OFTHOSE” syndrome

The persistent and erroneous belief thatcharacter death = character development and narrative progression

Inability to commit to a major change ofparadigm, also known as out and out narrative cowardice, which I personallycall “flinching during Plot Roulette”

Total incapacity to put their characterizationwhere their script is regarding the Winchester brothers and the other major players

*cracks knuckles*

POINT THE FIRST

Right, so first it’s the story of Sam having strange powersand their dad being MIA, which segues pretty naturally into the story of Sampotentially being the Antichrist, and then there’s Dean’s sacrifice of his soul,which at very least holds up even ifit sort of acts like the previous plotline about their dad’s soul didn’t happen.  Upuntil this point, I was pretty comfy.  Ihad some complaints covered below, but I was copacetic.  Season Three is largely about getting rid ofthe contract on Dean’s soul.  Okay, seemslegit, you have a tangible problem with potentially serious consequences.  Now, having had not one but TWO seasons whichwere easily summed up with ‘so Sam is mebbe the Antichrist or at very leastAntichrist-adjacent,’ I made what I thought was a logical leap and went “well,gee, if I was mebbe at the very leastAntichrist-adjacent, I would leverage the fuck out of that to do somethingabout my apparently beloved brother’s soul.” Even when they didn’t go withthat (news flash: I wrote that novel mydamn self and amazingly it worked out 100x better, narratively speaking,because it’s fucking logical), I wasstill kind of like “gosh sure is a good thing they remembered that they spenttwo entire seasons building up to Sam mebbe being Antichrist-adjacent.”  And there’s the whole drama with Ruby which Ijust…am very uncomfortable with for a lot of reasons, not least of which isthat it’s a very thinly veiled endeavor to rehash the same ‘Sam being afraid oflosing touch with humanity’ plotline as Seasons One and Two but without havingto worry about really altering the paradigm, see Point The Third, and alsobecause it’s really intensely literal about the concept of having a femalecharacter exclusively as a prop for consumption.  And Castiel shows up and a thousand ships arelaunched, blah blah blah, and then after the end of Season Four…we never hearfrom Sam’s powers again for more than a couple lines.  

As of about Season Four, the focus of the show abandons Samand shifts tangibly onto Dean, who is now The Interesting Character because hehas Been Through Hell (literally). Furthermore, we are now given Dean’s POV on any quandry between him andSam, which is a personal complaint because I honestly just think it’ssloppy.  Season Four is mostly dealingwith angels being assholes, which is really not as original as SPN likes tothink (Good Omens did it first and Good Omens did it better, get out of myface), plus Dean being the Righteous Man and the question of the oncomingApocalypse (sure is interesting how we spent two seasons building up to Sambeing Antichrist-adjacent).  The Apocalypseis less oncoming and implied to be more ongoing by the end of Season Four.  So Lucifer escapes and Season Five is prettymuch About That, involving the fairly unhelpful description that Dean isMichael’s ‘sword’ and they’re the true vessels of Michael and Lucifer,culminating in Sam being locked in the Cage because presumably someone realizedthat, hey, we have two maincharacters and we must make them both Interesting Characters.  Season Six is 50% about finding Sam’s souland figuring out how he got out of the Cage (sure would be helpful if we’dspent two seasons building up to Sam having inhuman powers and beingAntichrist-adjacent) and 50% a wickedinexplicable plot about the Mother-of-All and some kind of fucking jigsawmonsters and…Alpha monsters?  But thatnever really gets explained in a pertinent way except that they needed to anteup because they beat the Devil at theend of Season Five.  Oh, and a bonus 50% of some bullshit withCastiel and Crowley and ~Scheming~.  Andthen Castiel gets possessed by Leviathans (?) from Purgatory, which he openedwith Crowley (??) who he then betrayed (???), and Castiel decides He’s God Nowand also dies (????), and somehow these metaphysical more-powerful-than-angelsbadder-than-Lucifer things are sensitive to fuckingBorax.  

And it was at this point that I stopped the show in themiddle of a fight scene like 1/3 through Season Seven and actually said outloud “Gosh it’s almost like you needsomeone who’s Antichrist-adjacent to help you out here” before turning off the TV. And then I stopped watching and got better taste in TV and blew throughwriting a 250K novel in 18 months of being a full-time student because I waspowered by pure bitter spite.

Now, here are the two major things that matter about thiswhole deal.  First of all, the firstplotline is the most reliably coherent, although some degree of cogence lastedup until about Season Five—we understand why Lucifer wants out of Hell, weunderstand to some extent why Dean and Sam matter on the cosmic scale, we getpretty bored of watching Castiel do heel-face and face-heel turns like he’s ona Lazy Susan but like logistically it all makes a reasonable degree of sense.  That being said, the whole plotline ofSeasons Four onward would make a lot moresense, would it not, if they remembered that they’d spent a good solid twoseasons and change (Season Three, intermittent, Season Four, major) designingan Antichrist-like character who is now the last survivor of that batch ofexperiments.  Then, instead of having Samand Dean just be Inexplicably Special, you have Dean (who can still be theRighteous Man!) acting as the foil for Sam being forced into increasingly darkchoices, and Sam who’s a viable candidate for Lucifer-puppet because he’s partdemon.  Or, alternatively, Sam whomaintains his stance as the gentler of the two despite his demon blood, which would add a lot more depth to Supernatural’s fanatical hardon for theAngelic Asshole trope.  Honestly Irewrote the entirety of this show one time, predicated on the assumption thatthey actually went with the idea of Sam as the Boy King, and I think it wouldbe much less haphazard.  (Basically: hey,what if Sam actually used his status to strong-arm Dean’s deal into beingdissolved, as it’s implied that he’s totally capable of doing that and totallywilling to sacrifice his own humanity for his brother, and then Heaven sentCastiel to kill Sam, which would add a fuckton of legitimacy to Castiel’s LazySusan and Dean’s antagonism.  But no. Instead there’s monsters whose only vulnerability is fucking Borax.)

Second, and far more critical, is the total failure tocommit to a single plotline.  Okay, Sam’sstatus as the possible Boy King is a major plot point for two seasons, not somuch for the third season (he literally…a demon straight up tells Sam that he could have an army if he took up hisposition and it never occurs to himthat he could use that to help Dean), more so in the fourth season, and then itnever comes up again.  Even when it is unarguably pertinent to thesituation—Lucifer!  Fucking Luciferpossesses Sam and drags him to Hell and he comes back soulless and yet none of the writers ever, not once, went “Gosh, maybe we should remember those seasonswe spent developing Sam into sort of the Antichrist?  Maybe including at least a minor nod to thator somehow wrapping up the plotline would help cohere our current trainwreck ofa plotline?”  Nope, it’s just left as aloose thread, flapping in the breeze with all the subtlety of a limp dick.  It’s like Supernaturalis actually a Frankenshow of two shows with the same characters but totallyunrelated plotlines—maybe when Lucifer escapes he shunts them all sideways intoan alternate universe and there’s another show somewhere with a Dean whosebrother has never been even a little bit demonic and died through normal huntershenanigans suddenly having to deal with Sam the possible Antichrist, andthat’s the show that an alternate me is still watching.

And this is an ongoing problem.  Sam’s powers are just the major point that Ialways latch onto, because, first, I always think the phenomenon of “well fuckme sideways I might be obligated to end the world and ain’t that a messy thing”is pretty great (I really, reallylike Hellboy), and second, IT’S FOURSEASONS OF WORK YOU CAN’T JUST ABANDON IT.  But seriously.  Just. Throw a dart, you’ll hit a loose end. Because Supernatural is theequivalent of that one fucker we all hate in sitcoms—you know, the guy who’sdating a great girl he totally doesn’t deserve, but he can’t ~commit~ sothere’s all this ongoing Drama™.  Exceptthat in Supernatural, not only canthey not commit, they accidentally defeated their biggest gun—the literal Devil—less than halfwaythrough their series!  Whoops!  Quick, someone call up Satan’s cousin twiceremoved who’s even worse and more evil than he is!  And sensitive to Borax!  

No, no, I’m kidding. We all know that Satan’s cousin twice removed, who’s even worse and moreevil than he is, is actually named Metatron.

Fuckin’ Supernatural.

POINT THE SECOND

I know this is going to come as a shock, but rampantcharacter death does not actuallyqualify as a legitimate way to progress your narrative or develop yourcharacters.  In order, the major players(nominally on the Winchesters’ side) who die or seem to die in the first fiveseasons are Sam’s girlfriend, John Winchester, Ash, Sam, Bela, Dean, (Deanseveral times in Mystery Spot), Ruby,Castiel, Jo, Ellen, Sam, Anna, Sam, Dean, Gabriel, Castiel, Bobby, and sort of Sam with the whole Cagething.  And those are just the peoplewith arcs that extend over more than a season (except for Sam’sgirlfriend).  It’s entirely possible,even probable, that I missed some.  Thatdoes not include the one- ortwo-episode characters whose deaths we’re supposed to observe as emotionallywringing, nor does it include the frankly vast numbers of civiliancasualties.  So, for the ease of reading,we’re going to divide ‘character death’ into ‘reversible character death,’which is largely the prerogative of the primary trio, and ‘permanent characterdeath,’ and we’re going to talk about why there are real problems with the way Supernatural treats both of them.

First of all, the problems with reversible character deathare obvious—there are no fucking stakes! Like, arguably the stakes are ‘the whole world,’ but obviously not (seePoint The Third), so practically speaking the stakes should be life or death, because the show tells you that the stakes are life or death.  Now, sometimes resurrection is an importantplot point, I get that, in my spite novel there is, in fact, aresurrection.  But here’s the thing.  Either you have to straight up establish arevolving door policy and change your stakes (example: the show Forever, where the point is that the MCis immortal and would very much like to not be immortal anymore), or you can only use that resurrection once.  You use it once, and you still get theemotional gut punch of “Oh God, they’re dead”and the flood of relief when it proves that they’re not dead after all.  You use it more than that, and the audiencebecomes complacent that, well, you won’t reallykill them.  By the time you’re on a levelwith Supernatural, it just…doesn’tmatter?  A major character dies, but youraudience has already hit compassion fatigue because of the death rate, whichI’m about to cover, so there’s not really any oomph to it.

The problems with permanent character death aresignificantly different.  Now, I myselfam a Happy Ending person (like…the world sucks …let me have my happy fiction),but even I recognize that a certain percentage of the characters in a story orshow like this one are basically just cannon fodder (it would be great if itwasn’t so consistently the women, POC, orLGBT folks, but whatever).  Theproblem is that it’s constant.  And not just “well that person’s a corpsebecause that’s what vampires do to people” or “some kid pissed off the localspirit and now they’re six feet under,” it would be totally fine and reasonableif that situation was an every episode thing (it…kind of is, that’s kind of thepoint).  But every few episodes, we’reexpected to get attached to a one-off character and then be deeply affectedwhen they die.  Take, say, Season Three:you have the hunters Isaac and Tamara in the first episode, Casey and FatherGil in the fourth episode (some flexibility as they’re demons, but we’resupposed to be shocked and horrified that Sam kills them both), Callie in thefifth episode, Gordon in the seventh episode (again, we’re supposed to behorrorstricken that Sam kills him, even though it’s clearly self-defense), all the civilians in the twelfthepisode, Corbett in the thirteenth episode, and finally Bela, who admittedlyhas had some nominal presence for a while. This does not include any Winchester trauma, which you’re always supposed to be deeply affectedby.  I’m sorry, but after a season or twoof being expected to work up that kind of emotional upset between five and tentimes over the course of thirteen to twenty episodes, your audience is going toburn out and start to lose emotional engagement.  

So, basic summary: the Anyone Can Die trope does not playwell with main characters who are on a Revolving Door of Death, because itmeans that minor characters don’t matter because Anyone Can Die, while majordamage or trauma to the main characters doesn’t matter either because they’reon a Revolving Door.  You can’t kill yourmain characters once (or more!) a season and expect people to still…worry aboutthem.

On a more strictly structural note, using character death asthe primary way to drive character development is just fucking lazy.  It’s just an indicator that the writers don’tactually know how to progress their character development in any other way,which is a major problem because, since they only develop the charactersthrough the deaths of others, they have to hit the Personality Reset buttonfairly regularly to make it look like things are actually happening to thepeople who are supposed to be developing. Which, in case you were curious, is why you feel that overwhelming senseof déjà vu when the Winchesters getinto a huge blowout fight about ‘don’t sacrifice yourself’ in about thethird-to-last episode, followed by one of them sneaking out to sacrificethemselves, followed by the other onebeing angry about it.  It’s the samegoddamn script, it’s just that Sam’s hair is probably longer and Dean isprobably scruffier.  Furthermore, thefixation on developing characters with the deaths of others means thatbasically every character is fair game but NO ONE’S DEATH HOLDS MEANING,because of the above, which means that SPN’s ‘character development’ turns intothis recursive self-congratulating circlejerk of killing someone, developingSam and Dean accordingly, and then somehow regressing them so that the writerscan do it over again and be proud of themselves for Such Dynamic Characters,Much Develop, So Change, Wow.

And I feel like the reasons that character death =/=narrative progression should be pretty clear from the rest of this rant, butbasically if you’re killing someone to progress your plot, it needs to be asolveable death (emotional payoff is what makes walking away from a booksatisfying, such as catching a murderer) or a terrible tragedy that drives thecharacters to great acts or both.  Supernatural is basically a horror/fantasymurder mystery, so it would be fine if they stuck with that model, but theykeep trying to sell the deaths of any number of major players and many many minor players as this greatand terrible tragedy that’s pushing the Winchesters forward.  And like, I’m sorry, but if you commit withinthe first episode to a dead mother anda dead girlfriend and a missingpotentially dead father, you’ve already pretty well maxed out your terribletragedies.  Find a different motivator,or else it looks like your characters just leave huge amounts of collateraldamage and refuse to take responsibility. Or, alternatively, it looks like the individual deaths don’t matter toyour main characters, which is NOT going to help with making your audience giveeven a single fractional fuck.

TL;DR: Character death is a powerful tool that rapidly losesits weight and import if you overuse it, and can make your audiencedisinterested and emotionally detached if they’re expected to care every time.  Slow your motherfucking roll, stick to aMAXIMUM of one resurrection per character unless their immortality is anexplicitly discussed plot point (at which point their deaths need to not mattermuch anymore), and remember that you can progress your plot in literally anyother way before you go for a shock-value death.

POINT THE THIRD

Don’t be a little bitch in your writing.  Honestly it’s that simple.  I’m gonna get into it some more, but that’sthe gist of it.  If you already know whatI mean, great, skip to the next point, because the TL;DR is “don’t be aninfant.”

This is something that plenty of shows are guilty of(Merlin, anyone?), but SPN is terrifiedof actually changing the paradigm.  Theshow must always include a certainlist of things:

The Winchesters in the Impala, which, sure, I’llgrant you that

A home base, also totally reasonable

Monsters to fight, fair enough

A masquerade (meaning ‘civilians do not knowabout magic’), which should honestly have broken down after, like, Season Twowhen they accidentally release massive numbers of demons into the world

A world to have the show happening in, which isa problem since they started theApocalypse in Season Four

Now…listen.

It’s fine, even necessary, to have some fixed points in anarrative.  It offers a way to anchoryour characters against the ongoing changes that the plot demands.  That, however, is very different from beingtoo much of a coward to alter the paradigm of your story when the major driving force is a change ofparadigm.

The first major change of paradigm they cop out on is Sam’spowers.  If Sam was the Boy King, thishypothetically Antichrist-esque position in the cosmic dichotomy, that would radically alter the dynamic.  Sam would automatically be the most powerfulbeing in any given room unless he was in a room with a respectably high-rankedangel or demon, and he would certainly be able to go toe-to-toe with most oftheir targets on their own terms. Telekinesis is an exceptionally goodpower, guys, like, as powers go—even disregarding his position in thehierarchy, Sam would be pretty strong in his own right.  Which, I’d like to point out, can be a reallythrilling change to a narrative, because it means that you have this additionallayer of ‘well, how do we deal with the fact that Sam doesn’t like being this strong, how do we dealwith the way demons and monsters have started to view him as more us than them’ and would give a much more legitimate basis for the questionof humanity that they shoehorn in later with the Ruby plotline.  Buffyhas its flaws, but at least it frequently brings up ‘hey, Buffy might be ostensiblyhuman, but she operates on the level of her enemies more than on the level ofher allies’ as an issue that she thinks about. But they don’t do that in Supernatural,they bail completely on the Sam plotline because they panic about theimplications of having such a powerful character.  And then they bring in fucking Castiel likethat’s not exactly the same problemcloaked in ‘well, noninterference.’  Like, please, that ship has fucking sailed,choke down your anxiety and figure out how the rules of your powerful characterwork, and then let them be powerful. It’s gonna be okay.  Deepbreaths.  If you make an OP character,that’s fine, you just have toactually deal with it rather than having their powers be an asspull every timethe main characters are in Real Trouble (*angry sigh* Merlin).

The second one they balk at is the unveiling of thesupernatural world and oh my God it is constant.  But let’s deal with the biggest and mostimprobable of these here: Season GoddamnTwo, where they bust open the doors of Hell and unleash some thousands ofdemons into the world.  Like, is that asmany demons as it could be, in comparison to your six to seven billionhumans?  No.  But it’s still a huge population and is implied to be accompanied by a huge uptickin various other supernatural happenings and is furthermore really visible.  The Devil’s Trap is suggested to pass throughat least a couple towns and it’s a big flashy event, so like…sure, maybe peoplewrite it off as swamp gas or what have you, but sooner or later people who havehad demons exorcised or seen some vampire/werewolf/etc shenanigans and lived totell about it are going to start running into each other.  They start hearing people say “it’s likeshe’s a totally different person” and they take that seriously rather thanwriting it off.  They were maybe saved bya hunter who confirmed that the supernatural exists and they maybe tell thatperson that, hey, something like that happened to them, maybe they could cometake a look around.  Maybe they couldcall the person who helped them out.  Andyou end up with this fucking Ponzi scheme of The Great Truth, where each personwho’s in the know finds one or two more people who’ve seen evidence and brings them into the loop, and then they find one or two more people who’veseen evidence.  And for every personwho’s determined to call it bullshit or think they’re insane, you’re going toget one who saw that person turn intoa hairy monster and murder someone, or who waspossessed by a demon, or who witnessedblack smoke merge with their spouse and turn them into a killer.  So you get this whole rickety network ofamateurs who’ve…kind of learned the thing. And like any Ponzi scheme, sooner or later it collapses.

Basically the point is: there is a limit to the parts permillion of The Great Truth that can be present before that shit becomes commonknowledge.  Look at any availablegovernment conspiracy for confirmation. The more people you tell, the looser the rules of ‘secret’ become, so ifyou have a big flashy visible disaster that involves drastically increasing the number of uninitiated civilians who areaware of The Great Truth…you’d better be ready to deal with that.  What I’m saying here is that by Season Seven,you’ve not only had this whole demon situation for a while, and increased those numbers several times with variousdisasters, but you’ve also had at least one big flashy disaster in a city.  So the Winchesters should pretty much be ableto walk into a given town and wander into the church or the bar or somethingand go “So, I heard there’ve been some weird murders” and have at least oneperson come up to them later and be like “Yeah it’s a ghost here’s all theinformation but I have no idea how to get rid of them.”  And when the Winchesters go *gasp* “How do you know The Thing” theperson should look at them like a fucking moron and go “It literally rainedblood last year, everyone in this time zone knows The Thing and also it’sevident that the end is pretty seriously nigh, so get on that.”  Commit to your big flashy disasters, youcowards, or at least have the decency to make it an ongoing Sunnydale joke.

Far more crucial is the fact that they bail on the end ofthe world…let’s see.  End of Season Fouris when the Apocalypse properly gets underway, so they balk at the end ofSeason Five (Lucifer and the Cage), end of Season Six (Mother of All andPurgatory), and like minimum once bythe middle of Season Seven (Godstiel) as well as at the end of Season Seven (Leviathans, I am now past where I kept watching),end of Season Eight (Metatron, angel tablets, falling angels), presumably endof Season Nine from what I understand of the summaries online (some…war onHeaven nonsense), and based on the trend I’m guessing that Seasons Ten throughThirteen keep to the model, do youunderstand my point here.  Thesearen’t even all the near-Apocalypses that they avert.  Off the cuff, I can think of the Croatoanvirus (…twice?  Three times?), as well asthree out of four Horsemen within episodes of each other.  They’re probably averting the Very Seriousand Catastrophic End of Days two or three times a season by Season Five, and that number only goes up.  This is very similar to the character deaththing: quite simply, if the audience is expected to get that worked up multipletimes a season, and brace for thatkind of disaster multiple times a season,you are inevitably going to bore them.  Yourplot has to be intensely recursive sothat you can ‘reset’ and avoid a new Apocalypse the next season, which getsboring, because it feels like you’ve been there before, similar to how usingcharacter death to advance character development demands that you hit thePersonality Reset button on the regular.

Furthermore, repeating the same level of disaster over and over and OVER again means that it starts to lack emotional weight, and yourcharacters start to seem really, really stupid if they don’t start to treatthings accordingly.  One of the things Ithought of constantly during thelast, say, season and a half that I watched of Supernatural was a quote from Buffy,specifically from Riley who I usually very much dislike but who NAILED thisparticular thing.  “When I saw you stopthe world from, you know, ending, I just assumed that was a big week for you.It turns out I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural ofapocalypse.”  And that’s the running jokein Buffy!  That they literallydeal with an Apocalypse every few episodes, and they lampshade it, and thecharacters respond accordingly—Buffy and the Scooby gang start to act cavalier,almost unimpressed, about each new disaster. Like “well, we saved the world, I say we party.”  That’s a direct quote from Buffy (IN SEASON ONE NO LESS), and Supernatural could stand to take a pageout of their book with that one.  BySeason Seven, the Winchesters seem like they have somehow missed out on thelast decade of their own lives because they always act so shocked and horrifiedthat somehow someone could try to endthe world.  Like!  Yes, yes they could and yes they would,welcome to the party boys!  Please try toget in touch with your own history on this subject!

So the highlights here are: don’t be a fucking baby aboutyour writing.  If you’re writing toward abig paradigm shift, you need to recognize that you’re playing Plot RussianRoulette, and you have to pull the trigger. Change the paradigm of your narrative and deal with the fallout like afucking adult, you tepid fools, you limp-necked cowards, you ink-stainedwalnuts.

POINT THE FOURTH

Listen very carefully. Do you hear that?  It’s the soundof the Winchesters promising eternal brotherly devotion and saying things like“you’re my brother, man” and vowing to always have each other’s backs.  

Now wait a moment longer, and listen very carefully.  Do you hear that?  It’s the inevitablesound of the Winchesters stabbing each other in the back and/or throwing eachother to the wolves because they’re feeling pissy, and then getting a whole(static! See Point The Second!) “character arc” about how distraught they are.

All right, y’all, I don’t have siblings so maybe I’m wrong, but I do write a lot and I think I’m right, and you should probably put yourcharacterization where your script is. If your primary relationship that you expect people to care about isfraternal devotion, you should maybe nothave those people cheerfully feed each other into metaphoricalwoodchippers.  Like.  Okay, maybe you get ONE chance to have adramatic falling out.  ONE.  And then when they repair the relationship,they need to actually sort their shit out and not keep having the exact same dramatic falling out because thatshit gets boring and is a sign of lazy writing and—shocker!—lack of character development.  Next time they fight, it has to be aboutsomething demonstrably different, notjust the same issue with a new set of tits (c’mon y’all, this is Supernatural, it’s always a set oftits).

Let’s do a real fast recap. There’s a one episode plot in Season One about the two of them fallingout over the question of whether they should follow their father’s orders.  Dean spends a good percentage of Season Twotaking his guilt over their dad’s death out on Sam, but we’ll give a passbecause they explicitly acknowledge it and take steps to resolve theproblem.  A major plotline develops inSeason Two that hunters have started trying to kill Sam, and Dean reliably,consistently has his back.  Props.  Season Three is kind of a mess (if you have a big visible semi-Apocalypseyou should probably deal with it, see Point The Third), but whatever.  Pertinently, Dean’s big ongoing concern isthat Sam isn’t acting like himself, because he’s being much more ruthless(something Dean has consistently told him to do), while Sam’s ongoing concernis that Dean is being reckless (justified, he has a death sentence onhim).  Season Four is when things startto break down.  Castiel shows up and Deanresponds with aggression, Sam gets his rehashed ‘humanity’ plotline with Ruby,there are a lot of really incredibly poor decisions made and a lot of lies toldwith minimal regard for the trouble that’s gotten them into before (@Sam).  There’s a fight that includes Dean callingSam a monster, which has been canonically identified as the thing Sam is mostafraid of, and acting like this whole demon blood thing is a terribletremendous shock, despite the fact that Dean…knew and totally failed to reactin any way except to penalize Sam (for trying to save him!  Much like Dean sold his soul for Sam!  And got pissy about Sam being pissed offabout!).  Cue Lucifer.  Apocalypse, possession, Horsemen, etc, etc,more Lazy Susan Castiel, infighting about who should say yes to what in orderto save whom, whatever.  

And then Sam apparently dies in the Cage and Dean…goes offto get a nice white picket fence? Um…this is not consistent with the characterization of a dude who soldhis soul to resurrect Sam literally just three years ago.  Their falling out has never been intenseenough nor consistent enough to justify this. Even if you say that Dean’s honoring his brother’s final wishes by nottrying to resurrect Sam or anything, Dean should be drinking himself to deathor something similarly dramatic, because allthe drama in this show comes from the relationship between the Winchesterbrothers.  

Basically, here’s the problem: the show spends a lot of time and effort on telling youthat the Winchesters would die for each other. And while they do use that trope a lot (John dies for Dean, who dies forSam, who sacrifices his humanity for Dean, who risks his life for Sam, whojumps into the Cage for Dean…), they seem to have forgotten that, generally,you’re only willing to die for people who you actually like.  Like, peopleto whom you are genuinely emotionally attached,not just people who are your family because Blood Is Thicker or whateverbullshit you’re trying to pull there. And by Season Five, I’m just…not convinced the Winchester brothersactually like each other anymore.  Andthat never gets dealt with, they just expect you to believe that the Winchsterslove each other because the show says so,and listen, I hate the saying of ‘show, don’t tell’ as much as the nextperson who’s suffered through a college writing class, but honestly.  Supernaturalneeds to stop telling its viewers that Sam and Dean care about each other andactually…demonstrate that shit on a regular basis.  

Example: there’s the incident at some point where someoneplants a phone call on (I think) Sam’s phone, apparently from Dean, telling himthat he’s a monster and he should go do an incredibly stupid and dangerousthing because the world and Dean would be better off if he was dead.  Which Sam then believes and listens to.  This seems totally justified based on therelationship they’ve had for the past season. Pro tip, kids.  If your majordynamic includes two people who readily and easily believe that the other isliterally calling them an inhuman abomination and telling them they should justdie, that…that is not a Loving Affectionate and Devoted Familial Relationship.  And if you’re pitching it as one, A, you needsome therapy, probably urgently, and, B, your audience is only going to stickit out for so long before they give it up as a lost cause.

The point of this whole thing is that you better be ready toput your money where your fucking mouth is, and keep your characterizationsconsistent with what you’re telling the audience.

ANYWAY.  

The ultimate TL;DR here is that Supernatural’s storytelling is approximately as competent as thenovel I wrote when I was eleven, which I have hidden in a deep dark hole neverto be seen or discussed ever again.  Less competent, even, because at least Icommitted to a single individual plotline and dealt with the fallout of majorchanges to the universe.  And it’sfucking tragic, because this was a show with some real potential buried underall the chaos.  If you ever want my fullrewrite, please do ask and I will tell you, but this is now over 6K words andon its tenth page, so I’m going to stop now.

Long story short?  Supernatural: What The Fuck.

[nadiineross]

title: darkened nights and violent things, vaudevillian girls and violin strings

pairing: jade/tori

note: incomplete and old as hell so the quality of fic is not the best but im clearing out my folders

The first time they meet, Tori almost pisses her pants.  

Tori yanks her door open, ready to give Trina a piece of her mind, because goddammit, Trina, I don’t need your help with moving, I’m all set and, anyway, you’re just here to use my TV.

“God, Trina, stop. I don’t care if mom and dad are hogging the TV – Oh.”

The woman standing in front of her isn’t Trina.

She’s, well, she’s a lot angrier. And she has Edward Cullen skin, minus the sparkles. So, yes, she almost pisses her pants.

“Coffee.”

“I, um, what?” Tori manages dumbly, because she doesn’t know this gorgeous woman and also, what?

“Look, you seem like the type of happy-go-lucky neighbour I’d avoid, but I need coffee before I jam a fork into someone’s chest multiple times,” the woman says frankly.

Tori blinks, mind barely registering the words before the woman – her neighbour? – peers into her apartment without even trying to be subtle.

“Do you have coffee or what?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Tori glances over her shoulder at the pot brewing in her kitchen. “Do you want to come in?”

“No.” It’s blunt and there’s a sense of finality in the way the woman says it.

Tori clears her throat. “Okay. Um, I’ll just pour you a cup and bring it out?”

The woman grunts.

Tori coughs in her hand once more before turning to pour the coffee – door still open. “I’m Tori Vega, by the way,” she introduces after pouring two cups of coffee and handing it to the woman.

She takes it and sipping once before giving Tori a raised eyebrow. “Did I ask?”

“Did I – Did I do something wrong?” Tori frowns, she can’t remember doing anything bad to any of her new neighbours (and the one time she made neighbours mad in her old building was when she interrupted them in the middle of sex; they forgave her after she baked them cookies).

Instead of an answer, she gets a, “Stop talking.”

“What?”

“Your coffee isn’t entirely shit, but you’re ruining it, so stop talking.”

With that, Tori slams the door. (She thinks she catches a smirk on the other woman’s face as the door clicks shut.)

 .

 The second time they meet, it’s disastrously awkward.

Trina (it’s always Trina) has taken it upon herself to annoy the crap out of Tori by singing on the top of her lungs and lounging in her living room.

Tori leaves the moment Trina starts trying to reenact another musical using kitchen appliances as props.

“Hey, Tori, I’m calling this cute guy I met last week over, so don’t bother us,” Trina calls just as Tori closes the door behind herself.

“Don’t go into my room!” she yells through the door, getting a screech that resembles the chorus of One Short Day in return.

Great.

André, the man who lives in the apartment beside her, is out of town for the next week for a music festival. Cat, the eccentric redhead living in the third apartment, is visiting a brother who had apparently been put in a coma after an accident to do with a firehose (she doesn’t ask).

She has nowhere to go. She glances at the apartment opposite her. The fourth and last apartment on her floor.

She’s tried knocking before, but no one opened the door. She sighs and hopes to god it isn’t the coffee woman who opens the door. (But she hopes someone opens up, because she doesn’t want to sit outside her apartment while her sister does god knows what in her living room.)

Taking a deep breath, she raises her knuckles and raps on the door.

A shuffling comes from behind the door, but minute’s ticks by and no one opens the door.

She knocks again.

This time there’s a growl and the door’s swinging open.

It’s the coffee woman. And her hair’s messy. “What?”

“Um, my sister’s in my apartment waili- I mean, singing, and probably having sex on my couch, so-”

“No. I’m busy.”

“But-”

The coffee woman groans. “Leave before I find out how many scissors I can fit inside your body.”

A man appears behind the coffee woman. “Jade, don’t be rude.”

The coffee woman – Jade – elbows him in the stomach with a scowl. “She’s annoying.”

The man’s hair is also a mess and Tori notices his shirt’s hanging open. “I’m Beck.”

“Tori. I’m Tori Vega,” she says with a smile. Itching to get away. It seems everyone is having sex, Christ.

“Great. Can you go, now?” Jade snaps.

“Yes! Bye!” Tori takes a step back with a frantic nod, wincing as the door slams shut and a muffled moan makes its way into the hallway.

She ends up crossing town to hang out with her (weird) friend, Robbie, and his (creepy) puppet, Rex.

 .

 The third time, it’s Trina fault again (no surprise there).

She’s belting out the lyrics to, well, Tori doesn’t exactly know, but she’s sure no one could have come up with something this bad.

Just her luck, no one she knows is in town. So, she sucks it up and knocks on apartment 6D.

It takes ten minutes for the door to crack open and Jade’s at the door with a withering glare and a pair of scissors in her hands. “I will impale you, Vega.”

“Okay, I’m sorry, but can I please come in?”

The door swings shut, but Tori’s foot is faster. She winces when the door crashes into her foot.

Jade yanks the door back with her scissors in Tori’s face. “Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t stick this pair of scissors into your eyes right now.”

Tori grimaces, shifting on the spot. “Okay. Um, listen.”

“What?” Jade spits after a while of silence.

“No, I mean, listen.” A beat. “Do you hear it?”

Jade’s eyes twitches.

“Listen. My door.”

Silence. Then, a dying cat. No, nails on a board. No. Tori Vega’s sister.

The woman eases up with a slight cringe. “Your problem.”

Tori sighs. “She’ll only get louder and she’ll even try to do instrumental by herself with my pans.”

Jade pushes Tori away, marching to the door and banging on the door.

Two good threats and a bleeding finger later, Trina’s storming out of Tori’s apartment and Jade’s closing the door to her apartment with a satisfied smile.

The next morning, Jade opens her door to find a cup of coffee at her door. She drinks it, because it’s not entirely shit.

Third time’s the charm.

 .

 Tori sits up suddenly in a flurry of sheets and limbs. She fumbles for her phone, charging on her nightstand, and squints at the screen. 12:03 AM blinks at her.

“Fuck you!”

She squeezes her eyes shut and falls back to bed.

“What do you want, Jade?”

Sighing, she yanks the covers away and stumbles to her door.

“Oh, what I want, Beckett, is f–”

The fighting couple pauses when they both notice Tori’s door open.

“I’m sorry, did we wake you?” Beck asks just as Jade glares and flips her off with a snarl.

Jade scowls at her boyfriend. “Are you flirting with her, too?”

Beck groans, clenching Jade’s door frame tightly. “I’m not and I wasn’t flirting with that girl at the bar.”

“Really? It seemed an awful lot like flirting, Beckett,” Jade grits out.

The Latina sighs, closing the door and shuffling back to bed.

Fourth night of fighting and counting.

Beck doesn’t come back the next morning. Or the one after that.

 .

 Christmas rolls around. Tori’s got a secure job working as a music tutor and Trina’s tagging along to some European country with her parents.

She had a get together with her friends and Beck (apparently Beck has been friends with André for a while) at a bar a week before the 25th and they exchanged presents and wishes.

She sits alone in her apartment with presents pushed to a pile on her coffee table.

She sits alone and she’s so bored.

Then, there’s a knock at her door and she’s up before the person has even finished knocking.

Jade quirks her eyebrow and Tori marvels at the glint of silver, it’s the first time she notices the eyebrow piercing and she can’t say she doesn’t like it. “Hi.”

“You’re still here.” It’s not a question.

“Yeah.”

Jade just leans against the door frame. “Coffee.”

“You know, I might just start charging you,” Tori teases as she heads into her kitchen anyway, because she’s bored and she might just be a little bit gay for her hot neighbour. (See: incredibly, undeniably gay.)

After she hands Jade the coffee she smiles. “Would you like to come in?”

Jade pauses. “Do you have more coffee?”

Before Tori can finish her ‘yes’, Jade’s shoving past her and making herself at home on her couch.

They both down their coffees in silence until Jade puts her cup down and scrutinizes Tori’s movie collection.

“Entertain me,” she lets out after picking through her movie collection. “You also need more horror movies.”

“I can’t stand horror movies.”

Jade snorts. “Figures.”

They lapse into silence again.

Jade stands silently, sweeping out of the apartment without as much as a glance back at Tori.

Tori stands to close the door after her, but Jade shoves her way back in with a CD.

They binge watch horror films until Tori’s sure she’s going to have nightmares for the rest of the year.

 .

 Tori thinks they genuinely become friends on one faithful Monday night when she’s woken up at an ungodly hour again by furious shouting.

She stands immediately, ready to yell at whoever it is (she needs proper rest if she’s going to deal with the annoying kid with the potato nose tomorrow).

Her door swings open and her scowl set on her face, already knowing it would be Jade, because, really, Cat and André wouldn’t be keeping her awake at this time.

“Get the fuck out,” Jade hisses.

Tori just catches the back of Beck’s head as he storms into the elevator.

“Don’t come back,” Jade’s voice cracks, and Tori doesn’t say a word as she goes back into her kitchen to turn on her coffee maker.

When she comes back, Jade’s leaning against her door with her eyes downcast and her chest heaving. Her eyeliner is smudged and her shirt is crumpled and she looks so tired.

She’s not steel and stone, she’s not sharp and cutting, not anymore. She looks human, less like an abusive, stalkery vampire, so Tori steps out of her apartment still dressed in pajamas with a cup of coffee.

Jade glances at the steaming cup for a second before taking it and shuffling past Tori into her apartment without permission.

Tori pours more coffee and throws a pile of blankets onto the couch while Jade fluffs a pillow and buries herself in the cushion.

All this is done wordlessly, it’s still barely two in the morning, they’re both cranky, and the Mean Girls CD Tori put in acts as their background music.

The Latina snorts as Jade swipes the remote off the table and mutes the movie with a wrinkle of her nose.

“Scissoring.”

“Thanks, Jade, but I’d prefer dinner first,” Tori mutters, still half-asleep.

Jade throws a pillow at her head. “Shut the fuck up, Vega. Get the movie.”

Tori huffs, but doesn’t argue. She brings her laptop closer and finds an online version, pressing play and immediately leaping backwards when loud instrumental blasts through her speakers.

“Scared?” Jade taunts, she slaps Tori’s hand away when she tries to adjust the volume.

“No.” Tori brushes Jade away and turns the volume lower. The title flashes onto screen with a sudden drop and Tori jerks back. “Yes. I am very much scared. I prefer Regina George over this.”

Jade laughs, a rumble in her chest, and pushes the blankets more fully over Tori’s balled up form. “I don’t.”

Tori pouts, burrowing into the blankets (and into Jade’s shoulder). “You’re mean.”

Jade nods and hums in agreement. “It’s my post-breakup mope session, Vega.”

Point.

The first night of their friendship (Jade will deny that they were friends to her last breath) is also the first night they have a sleepover.

Jade shoves Tori on to the floor at seven in the morning, takes the coffee, and leaves.

Tori huffs and throws a pillow at her – it misses her retreating form entirely.

 .

 She’s tired and hungry.  

The orange juice is a nice change to her diet of coffee and take out.

She responds to the knock on her door with a glass of juice basically glued to her face.

André’s chuckle greets her and he watches her chug juice before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand unattractively.

He gives her attire a raised eyebrow. “Did you forget about today?”

“What’s today?” Tori responds with a furrow of her eyebrows.

“We’re hanging out today. Finished writing my song and we’re celebrating. Remember?”

Tori groans. “Oh, right. God, I’m sorry, André. It’s just this annoying kid called Ryder keeps trying to hit on me and I’m just trying to teach him how to play the freaking piano. He’s, like, barely 17 yet.”

André laughs again. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that, chica, but I have alcohol and you have a couch, so can you shut up and let me in?”

Tori giggles, stepping aside and letting him through. “Where’s Cat?”

“She’s coming over soon, I think,” André replies, pulling glasses from Tori’s kitchen and pouring the drinks into cups. “And Beck is busy avoiding Jade.”

Tori gnaws at her lips. Jade. She hasn’t talked to that grump in a week, after she was pushed to the floor on her face. Come to think of it, she’s barely talked to Beck either.

André sets the glasses down on the counter and turns to Tori. “You leaving the door or what?”

“Oh, sorry,” Tori mutters as she shuts the door and plops down at the counter opposite her friend.

“So…” Andre starts. Tori raises her eyebrows, waiting. “I was thinking, you’re beautiful and I–”

“I’m gayer than a pride march, André.”

André stares.

“Oops.” She wasn’t planning on coming out like this, but hey, she feels like she’s going to collapse, so give her a break.

She gulps the wine down before trudging to her fridge for a chocolate bar she’s pretty sure she has stashed somewhere in there.

When she pulls away with half a Mars bar in her mouth, André’s leaning over the fridge door with a smirk. “Want to be gayer than a pride march in front of me?”

Tori gives him a dirty look, ripping into her chocolate bar. “Don’t be gross.”

André laughs, and with a cup of coffee and the rest of her chocolate bar supply, she’s awake and less hungry. “Joking, Tor.”

A knock on the door brings a wide eyed Cat with a plate stacked with cookies, and Jade (Tori doesn’t know what to make of that).

Jade shoves past the two of them without so much of a greeting and plops down beside André.

“Just set the cookies down on the table, Cat.”

Cat does as told and the group elapses into a silence with André and Tori sneaking glances at Jade who is looking incredibly bored and a clueless Cat who seems to be admiring Tori’s beige walls.

Jade growls. “God, you guys are so boring. Do you just do this all day, sit and stare?”

“Well, Jade, what do you want to do, then?” Tori snaps back with a puff of air.

“You know what?” Jade snarls, she pushes off the couch and takes the plate of cookies. “I’m leaving.”

“Those are our cookies, Jade, and you weren’t invited in the first place,” Tori hollers as she scrambles to her feet after the cookie thief, only to be greeted by her own closed door. Typical.

They end up watching Luke Cage off of her Netflix account and tipsy baking.

By the time it’s twelve in the morning, Cat’s conked out on André’s lap and he’s dozing, sprawled out over the couch, leaving Tori picking blankets off the floor. She drapes a blanket over Cat and shoves them around so André’s got one too, and goes to clean herself up.

Tori reckons its due to the shirt barely over her head and the alcohol still in her system that she’s so slow to open the door, but she gets to it. Jade doesn’t appreciate it.

She wordlessly lets Jade blow past her, not even giving their friends a second glance, and nudges her over to her own room.

Jade locks the door and kicks her boots off.

“Is…” Tori blinks and runs a hand through her hair. “Is there something you wanted?”

Jade lies on her back in the middle of Tori’s bed and shrugs. “Writer’s block.”

Tori raises her eyebrows and gingerly sits herself down on the edge of the bed. It’s kind of weird, thinking about it. She’s really only known these people for a handful of months and she knows next to nothing about Jade.

“You’re a writer?”

Jade makes a face at her, a cross between annoyance and disapproval. “What do you think writer’s block means?”

Rolling her eyes, Tori moves to her headboard, so Jade is eyelevel with her knees. She lives in LA too, so she’s not exactly surprised all her friends are the artsy types.

“And you?” Jade asks after a moment, lips quirking up a little at Tori’s confusion. “What’s your pimp’s numbers? I’ve got some complaints.”

“I’m a piano and voice coach,” Tori says, indignant. “Why are you here?”

“Writer’s block. Pay attention, Vega.”

“I thought you hated me.”

Jade shuffles back, sitting next to Tori. “I’m bored.”

“Wanna play I Spy?” Tori smiles, not even fazed when Jade elbows her. “20 questions?”

“Truth or dare,” Jade says.

Tori raises an eyebrow. “Sober, like high school freshmen?”

She ignores Tori. “Truth.”

Of course. Okay, well, Tori’s drunk-ish and tired, so she’s not the most creative right now. “What’s your favourite colour?”

Jade scoffs. “Really?” She rolls her eyes and moves all her hair onto her left shoulder, so she can look at Tori better. “Red.”

“Truth,” Tori replies.

“Boring. What’s the kinkiest thing you’ve ever tried?”

Tori flushes and bites her lip. “Um. I once got handcuffed in the back of an empty classroom.”

Jade guffaws and her hands curl loosely on her stomach as she cackles. Tori rips her eyes away from the curve of Jade’s neck, huffing.

“Who knew Sweet Sally Peaches was an exhibitionist?”

“In my defense, it was a performing arts college, people were very experimental, and no one caught us.” Tori’s stretching the truth, because she’d just barely buttoned her jeans when a professor walked in. Her college girlfriend, on the other hand… “Fine. What’s your craziest kink?”

Jade smirks. “Oh, but how could I follow up after that, Whore-i Vega?” Tori’s just about to say something else, but Jade picks at her nails and continues, “Exhibitionism isn’t something I’m particularly interested in, not after a shitty under-the-table experience at Maestro’s, but you’ve seen Beck, haven’t you?”

“Your kink is mauling people,” Tori deadpans.

“Truth or dare?”

Tori blinks. “It’s your turn.”

They play for an hour, only truths, because Jade seems to realize Tori’s pretty tame, and Tori lets Jade sleepover.

She’s lonely. That’s why she’s here. Tori sighs and ends up sleeping till noon.

 .

[alshmitty]

Every Situation Is Different

Recently I had a conversation with a school teacher. The topic was bullying. The school teacher said that they teach their students to treat everyone with respect, no matter what. Treat people the way they want to be treated, no matter what.

 Now I am a big proponent for the golden rule. I don’t personally know someone who has a larger appreciation for life than myself. You will never see me making fun of or bullying someone. However, I value respect immensely.

 I am an even bigger proponent for respect. Without respect, there is no golden rule.

 I asked this teacher. I said, “What do you tell students when they’re confronted by a bully and the bully won’t react the way the student getting bullied hoped?”

 The teacher replied, “Doesn’t matter. No matter the situation, you must always treat people with respect.”

 To that I replied, “I admire the way you teach. Just make sure your kids know where to draw the line.”

 I got no response to that from the teacher.

 Respect is the value of a person in one’s eyes. If there is no value for a person, they are treated like such. That is human nature. Respect derives from the individual and from their peers. It’s a two-way street.

 I could not disagree with this teacher more. The teacher had implemented a system and a rule of thumb that only exists in heaven. In the real world, applying the same solution to every situation regardless of content, is not an efficient way to reach an objective.

 What is the objective of the bully? To assert dominance over his peers.

 What is the objective of the student getting bullied? To stop getting bullied.

 By treating the bully with respect, you are valuing his actions and enabling the bully’s hurtful habits.

 After you critically think about it, treating a bully with respect makes no sense at all.

 A personal example of mine comes when I was very young. I believe it was first grade and it was the first time I remember understanding the concept of negotiation. You’ll come to find out, there wasn’t much “negotiation” involved. At least, not the traditional sense of negotiation.

 In first grade, I took the bus into school. Like everyone else. We had assigned seats. I was assigned to sit next to this girl. I do not remember this girls name. For some reason this girl thought it was fun sport to take her wheelie backpack and hit me as hard as she could on the head with it. With the wheel side of the backpack.

Yes, the hard-plastic wheels would drive into my head.  

Admittedly, every day I got on the bus I was on the verge of crying. Not so much from pain more so frustration. My parents harped ethics to me, treating this girl with respect was all I felt comfortable doing. The teacher I spoke with above would have been proud to this point.  

One day I finally told my dad. I had a lot of pride, still do. Something my parents gave me.

Against my gut, I told my dad what had been going on. The very next day he waited for the bus with me and got onto the bus and told the bus driver what had been going on. It was one of the best days of my young life. Finally, this bully was going to stop tormenting me with this backpack she turned into a weapon. Preying on me, a weak little first grader that was allowing her to assert her dominance over me.

You know what happened after my dad told the bus driver? Nothing.

The bus driver assured my dad it would stop. I can still remember watching my dad turn away from the bus driver, give me a look as if to say, “Good luck buddy. If I could, I’d beat this girl to a pulp with my pinky but that’d likely be frowned upon” and walk down the stairs and off the bus. After, the bus driver looked at the girl and gave her a stern look. That was it. 

My sails were deflated. Finally, I was hoping the torment would stop. It did not. It was an early life lesson I was lucky enough to experience and grasp. The lesson being, you can’t count on other people to solve your problems. Which is why I’m so anti-protest.

Instead of sulking in defeat and blaming my dad or the bus driver for not solving my problems, I began brainstorming other ways to solve my problem. I quickly realized I needed to come up with a solution fast before I lost all my brain cells to this witch of a girl and her pink wheelie back pack. I still remember the color.

Abruptly, I concluded the only thing that would stop this idiotic girl’s violence is a greater form of violence. As the bus driver was distracted with his regular daily bus driving activities I wound up and delivered a round house right handed knuckle popper to the gut of this girl.

That’s negotiation. You’re not going to acknowledge my politeness? Well I’ll give you something you have no choice acknowledging.

Did it stop her tormenting? Not only did it stop her tormenting. She went to the bus driver and got her seat switched. All without snitching on the fact that I had just delivered a seismic “KABOOM” to her baby feeder. 

All situations are not the same. You must approach every situation differently with some sort of meaning and purpose. Approaching every situation the same is a form of naivety I do not understand in the slightest.

 This analogy does not only apply to school bullying it also applies to life and business. The point of this is to show how every situation is different and must be approached differently. You simply cannot approach everything in life the same. That is not how deals are made. Only in heaven may that be true.

 In my real estate deals I have struck deals with people who have been drug users and in abusive relationships. I have also struck deals with people across the country who owned an asset that depreciated 85% in three years. Did I approach both scenarios the same way? No. Of course not.

 I am very passionate about bullying and negotiation, and that is what this post is about, negotiation.

 I believe negotiation is one of the most valuable skills one can obtain. An expert negotiator can buy a property from an individual who paid 85% more than my partner and I offered three years prior. An expert negotiator can turn a dominance hungry bully into a puppet. Point being, if you can analyze other people’s wants and weaknesses, you can do just about anything.

 Disclaimer: These messages are intended for good. Readers can take them and use them for bad but that is not the intention of this blog. Using them for bad results in crooks. Again, there is no such thing as a “bad business man.” A “bad business man” ends up in jail, dead, or broke. 

[imbearlyawake]

The Anomaly

Explaining The Anomaly- April 2013

So there I was, sitting there, alone, in the dormitory lounge at three in the morning with the rain slapping against the dark windows. Rather than making a trip to the local drugstore for candy and energy drinks for the next day, I got online to sign up onto a dating website.

Naturally, I started with E-Harmony, then Match.com, but each well known site either cost a ridiculous subscription fee, or I was “rejected” and barred from the site. Most likely for all the right reasons, as I was barely 18 years old and seeking out romance with the wrong motivation. I went ahead and started looking at the lesser funded sites that most would definitely steer clear from. I signed up and I chatted away with many strangers, “winked” at those I found attractive, and clicked through many pictures. Really this site was based on sexual appeal more than anything else, but at the time I was looking for love.

I found a charming guy on this site, Chris. He loves to travel, cook, go on hikes, is of an athletic build, and loves dogs. So far, so good. I sent him a message:

“I would love to travel the world. Let's get to know each other and maybe we can be travel buddies :)”

Chris and I hit it off well, and for the first time in a few years, I had butterflies. I thought at the time that he was the one, that this was my miraculous love story, that it was love at first “site”. I barely knew him. Through texts with him and getting to know him, he was so charming to me, my crush on him only grew. I learned that he was working at the Long John Silver's in the Phoenix area, so I planned to surprise him by stopping in on my way from home back to my room on campus.

On the drive down, I got so terribly nervous. My parents didn't know that I met him online, I said that I met him through friends at school. I was about 10 miles out from the exit to the Long John Silver's when I had a panic attack. I was driving and suddenly I had tunnel vision getting worse, I was hyperventilating, I was so nervous to meet him, I don't know why. Maybe it was the idea that he was the one for me that set me off. I pulled off the road, got a drink from a convenience store and brought my nerves back down to earth. I then drove the rest of the way to park at the Long John Silver's/ I had to wait a while before he started his shift, but when I finally did meet him, my very first impression was that he was much, much less attractive than I imagined him to be, but I chose to look past his appearances.

I planned out our first date entirely by myself. A hike to the top of 'A' Mountain with my best friend and her boyfriend. For that date, I had to drive out thirty minutes to pick him up because he had no car or money. I did so and learned that he was drunk at the beginning of our date. He explained afterward that he was just so nervous that he just wanted to take the edge off. Only half way through the hike, and my best friend told me that she had a bad feeling about Chris, but that she was also very tired and had to go home early. Since that first date with Chris, we never went out on a real date again.

After what now seems like a complete disaster of a date, I was charmed by him and I continued to see Chris. After school and work I would drive out the distance to his apartment and I stayed the night, I practically lived there.

His apartment was pitiful. It crawled with ants in the bathroom, the carpet was stained with cigarette ashes and spit spots. His only furniture included a very lumpy couch that had to be covered by a blanket and a blow up mattress that was perforated to hell. He had a television, a Wii game system, and a strobe light all in a corner on the floor as his entertainment system. He had no cable, he only rented movies from Red-box’s over and over again. His favorite was Pulp Fiction.

After I would arrive at his apartment, usually in the evening, one of two things would happen: he would either be passed out on the couch and I would have to wait for over an hour for him to wake up to let me in, or he would let me in immediately and interrogate me as to why it took me 45 minutes to get to his house instead of my usual 30. I hated both outcomes, I hated the interrogation the most.

“Where the hell have you been? Did you have to stop by Tyrone's to give him his first?” he asked.

“I don't know any Tyrone. Where is this all coming from?”

“Oh don't pretend like you don't know, Tyrone is your big, black cock that you love to fuck around with before coming here to play me! How many other guys are there that you want to fuck behind my back? Why don't you just stay there with them? You never really loved me anyways.”

I never gave him any reason to believe that I had or would cheat on him. I did tell him I loved him, even though I knew deep down it wasn't real love, it was more like a childlike love. Every day that I said it, the more I believed it, the more I grew dependent on Chris to distract me from my every day worries such as my dropping grades.

At the beginning, Chris would only drink a 40oz of Mickey's, never got him drunk, so I never thought twice about it. I'm more of the hard liquor kind of gal, so I asked him to get Vodka so that I could make up some Bloody Mary's. He drank the rest of the fifth of vodka after the first two bloody marys were made and passed out on the couch for two hours, only to wake up to find me alone and bored. He then started to buy harder liquors everyday after work and drink entire fifths of vodka and whiskey by the hour. All of his worst traits were intensified by the end of each night.

He explained to me before that he was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but I never really believed that, just an excuse that he's using to cover his depression and anxiety, maybe some other disorder.

He was jealous, extremely jealous, of men that don't exist except in his imagination. I never gave him a reason to be jealous. He also felt condescended by me because I was attending a university, whereas he is a high school dropout living on minimum wage with no driver's license. He blamed me for his being upset all the time. He threatened to leave me time and time again.

Keep in mind, I got into this relationship by the fear of being alone, he held that over me like the strings of a puppet. He hated my morals and values which contradicted his. For instance he had three tattoos. Two of brass knuckles on each of his shoulders, and one of the Insane Clown Posse Hatchet man. I didn't believe in the idea of tattoos, really they turned me off because I'd rather see untouched skin and believe that I was the first to admire it. He hated that I was Christian and he thought that I judged him more harshly than he deserved, though I never passed judgment on him, only support and encouragement.

He hated my family because he knew that my parents would never approve of him, to him that was the final straw. He was willing to fight my dad simply because he didn't feel like he should be judged by someone he's never met.

We argued every night, though it was really him yelling at me and me trying to apologize and explain my situation more clearly to calm him down. Instead, he was like a lawyer with his words and he knew how to twist them to make me into the one at fault. He would yell at me, threaten to leave me alone, tell me how ungrateful, useless, unworthy, slutty and overall undeserving of life I was. He would have me crying on the bathroom floor.

I couldn't breathe or stand or fight him off and away when he broke me down. He kept battering me with his words, making me feel guilty for upsetting him, until he passed out from intoxication. I would be so greatly distressed that I found myself clinging to his cigarette-stained toilet vomiting from the stress and anxiety alone, and when I had nothing left to give, my stomach was still churning and heaving painfully in my gut.

I could never sleep after something like that, especially when all that I wanted to do was have him forgive me again and love me as his princess again. I was truly believed that his love was the only love I would ever need. I would lie on the floor next to the couch where he lied on and I waited for him to wake up. When he did, he found me covered in tears and my face swollen from crying and wanted to know what he did to me because he “didn't remember anything” from just hours before. But he was so sweet after, he would hug me so tightly and hold me together again after tearing me apart. I was his princess again.

This repeated every night, just like this. He would drink till he was drunk, verbally abuse me until I was crying and begging him to stop talking to me and to forgive me for everything that was wrong in his life, then he would pass out and wake up to apologize and piece me together again.

Over and over again, and I still made the drive to see him. I loaned him cash when he was strapped, even though I knew he was only going to buy more alcohol and cigarettes with it. I drove him to work, I had sex with him. He took my virginity and he found ways to use that against me.

“You might as well go ahead and fuck every guy you know, shouldn't be too hard now that you're no longer saving yourself for anyone.”

That stung.

Soon the school year ended and I was to move back in with my parents a few hours away from Chris. Chris told me to move in with him, and to hell with what others think. If I didn't move in with him, then I clearly didn't love him enough to stand up to my parents. So I tried.

“I'm moving in with Chris,” I told my Dad.

“The hell you are, if you do that, your mother and I are not supporting you at all. No cell phone, no college support, no car, nothing from us.”

I was devastated, I loved my parents, but I didn't want to disappoint anyone. So I called Chris and begged him to reconsider. After seeing the stress it caused me, he called it off. That night was my last night to spend with Chris, it was also the most brutal night.

He pulled a knife on me, though he played it off like it was a joke. After he was fully saturated with his drink of choice, he went through the motions again of blaming me for his problems and why he was depressed. He expressed his disappointment with me and wanted me gone because I was worthless to him. He yelled for me to leave his apartment for good, I even took his apartment key off of my key ring to return to him because I was sure he was serious, but he only used that action as leverage.

“Why would you even think I was serious? Are you really so stupid to not know that was a test to see if you could so easily leave me? What college would even want you, stupid girl?

“You were ready to leave me! You took my key off of your key ring and returned it! You were going to leave, that just proves you never loved me!”

He yelled more at me and I crawled to the bathroom, like I've done so many times before. I closed the door and leaned against it with what little strength I had left in me. I locked it behind me so that he couldn't just push me out of the way, but he broke through the frame and picked me up off of his floor to drag me to his front door to kick me out, claiming that he had called the cops to have me removed. But I insisted on staying, told him I would never leave him by choice. I sat there crying on the floor where he dropped me and he watched, waiting, for an hour as I sobbed, waiting for the cops to arrive.

Finally he had enough of my crying, and with a hidden satisfied smile on his face, he knelt in front of me and started to pick up the tiny, tiny pieces of me again.

“I'm so sorry, my princess, I'll never do that again to you. I can't help myself, my PTSD turns me into a monster that I just can't control. I don't deserve you, please stop crying, I don't want you to leave. Don't worry, the cops aren't really coming. I would never want you to leave.”

How I got out of this cycle of emotional torture was only thanks to my parents. I did move back in with them after the school year, and they demanded that I ended all contact with Chris. Either it was over between Chris and I, or it was over between my family and I.

I hate ultimatums. I will walk out on those who set the line in front of me.

My parents raised me to walk from “this or that”. I hated that they had drawn the line in the sand- it felt so incredibly betraying to me.

But I thought of my siblings, Dylan, Charlotte, and Taylor.

Who would I be to walk out on them? Who would I be to become the “older sister that we don’t talk to anymore”. No siblings, no cousins, no grandparents or aunts and uncles. My family is my community, my identity.

The thought of leaving my family behind terrified me, only because I know the pain it would cause. That thought was the reason behind my decision to leave Chris.

The last time I ever saw him was when I went down to pick up my things. He called me that night, as we were still at the rocky end of our relationship. I broke up with him over the phone and that started his drunken abuse. I was so incredibly upset with him after his last barrage of curse words and hate over the phone that I made up my mind.

“Dad, I know it’s late, but I need to do this. Can you drive me to Phoenix to get my things?”

On the way, as I was sobbing quietly in my dad’s truck, he pulled into a gas station and brought back to me tissues and Reese’s cups. Not a word was spoken, but I felt his love and pain because his daughter was heartbroken.

After an hour long drive in the middle of the night, I walked up the stairs to his door alone and I walked in.

His entire apartment smelled like blood. I could see that he punched the walls and the doors over and over again until his bleeding knuckles touched everything, putting his blood everywhere. I gathered my things, trying my damnedest to not acknowledge his presence or his scathing words. My dad waited outside the apartment as I insisted that I went alone to get my things.

I was out within moments and left his key on the counter, even though Chris begged and begged for me to stay with him.

I was out. I was done.