#but like an exact confirmation in chapter 1 that eight months ago was the last time kal let himself trust in the concept of honor LOLL

[kingjasnah]

Coming this way was dangerous. These lands were ruled by nobody, and by cutting across open land and staying away from established trade routes, Tvlakv could easily run afoul of unemployed mercenaries. Men who had no honor and no fear of slaughtering a slavemaster and his slaves in order to steal a few chulls and wagons. Men who had no honor. Were there men who had honor? No, Kaladin thought. Honor died eight months ago.

'honor is dead' 'honor is dead' literally whatever. honor died eight months ago.

[aion-rsa]

What Did Batman Do Between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises?

https://ift.tt/3cfgO0Z

The Dark Knight not so much glided back onto cinema screens in 2012 as he hobbled across them. With a scraggly, unkempt beard and a bathrobe acting as his cape, Bruce Wayne appeared more like how one imagines Christian Bale exists between gigs than Batman at the start of The Dark Knight Rises. He appeared like an invalid whose great adventures were behind him.

In retrospect, this is probably not the version of the Caped Crusader fans expected to find after The Dark Knight’s thrilling finale. At the close of what many still consider to be the high water mark for superhero movies, Batman has agreed to take on the burden of Harvey Dent’s sins, framing himself as a murderer and saving Gotham City from cynicism through a veil of lies. Yet it’s not really a sad ending. Gary Oldman’s Jim Gordon even pens a triumphant eulogy for the superhero’s fallen image. The Batman’s become “a Dark Knight.”

After the film concluded, many fans began speculating just what a third chapter of the Christopher Nolan directed and co-written Batman films would look like: the police at war with Batman? The rise of a criminal underworld of masked freaks like Joker and Batman, embracing the chaos unleashed by their fight? Maybe we’d get to see Batman tackle the Riddler, a foe almost as mentally taxing as the clown.

None of these came to pass, however, as made exceedingly clear in the first seconds of Bale’s introduction in The Dark Knight Rises. Eight years have passed in the film’s narrative since last we saw our hero, and Bruce is now disheveled and broken, haunted by ghosts while living like one in the shadows of Wayne Manor. Prior to directing Batman Begins, Nolan dreamed of making a film about Howard Hughes’ final years: the period when the millionaire aviator, film producer, and mad man succumbed to his neuroses and obsessions. Rises not so subtly revisits that iconography, with Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) even expressing disappointment over Citizen Wayne not having Hughes’ long fingernails.

To many moviegoers, particularly fans, this is apparently all Batman’s been doing for the last eight years: living like a recluse and leaving the burden of saving Gotham to the GCPD. However, given all the context clues in The Dark Knight Rises, this is hardly accurate.

Bruce Wayne’s Greatest Crusade

While Nolan’s third Batman movie begins with Bruce Wayne fully entrenched in his traumas—the loss of his parents, his murdered childhood love, Rachel Dawes, and an overwhelming sense of despair about the state of the world—he didn’t immediately hang up the cape at the end of The Dark Knight and start growing the beard. In fact, more than just obsessing over “saving Gotham,” Bruce moved on to trying to save everyone.

The timeline is never fully explained, but various scenes between Bruce Wayne, the woman who calls herself Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), and other members of the Wayne Enterprises board reveal Bruce Wayne only gave fully into his demons about three years before the events of The Dark Knight Rises.

“You have a practiced apathy, Mr. Wayne,” Miranda says when she sees Bruce has stepped out of his cave, literally and figuratively, and is now at a charity event. “But a man who doesn’t care about the world doesn’t spend half his fortune trying to save it, and isn’t so wounded when it fails that he goes into hiding.” In another scene, she clarifies the timeline further when she tells Bruce (and thereby the audience), “Three years ago, a scientist published a paper on weaponized fusion reactions. One week later, your reactor started developing problems.”

When these details are fully considered, they paint a tragic portrait of Wayne’s isolation. In Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy, Bruce Wayne never imagined Batman to be an indefatigable superhero who valiantly fights an endless war on crime. With the filmmakers’ quest to ground their Batman in verisimilitude—which is to say make him feel real even as his exploits are far from realistic—they opted to depict the character as neither crazy or misanthropic. He did not only put on the cape to soothe his fractured psyche, and he doesn’t get his jollies from beating up the desperate poor every night… a grim implication for a “grounded” interpretation of a billionaire patrolling “dangerous neighborhoods” looking for a fight.

As Bruce tells loyal butler Alfred (Michael Caine) in Batman Begins, “[I’m coming back] as long as it takes. I’m going to show the people of Gotham their city doesn’t belong to the criminals and corrupt.” In his way, Bruce viewed the Batman as akin to a political campaign. Batman’s a symbol to galvanize the better angels of Gotham around an idea of anti-corruption and anti-organized crime reform. And like a political operator, Bruce built a network of allies and true believers to implement incremental change through the system. But as the saying goes, the road to Hell is paved in good intentions.

After several years of Batman-ing, Bruce has inspired copycat vigilantes who got themselves killed and a nihilistic anarchist who called himself Joker, a glorified terrorist who did irreparable harm to Gotham’s institutions, its morality, and the public trust. Still, Bruce Wayne had a desire to use his wealth to improve the world, and not just his own mood. Hence instead of spending “half his wealth” solely on an ego-stroking war on crime, he invested in building a clean energy fusion reactor.

While it seemed like an almost incidental plot point in 2012, the increasingly dire effects of climate change with each passing year makes the fantasy of powerful nuclear fusion ever more appealing. A nuclear fusion reactor that actually produced comparable amounts of energy to modern nuclear power plants (which run via nuclear fission) would mean a much cheaper power source, as well as one that did not have the drawbacks of nuclear fission, including dangerous radioactive material that must be disposed of for millennia, and power plants that run the risk of melting down.

In Nolan’s fantasy action movies, Wayne Enterprises spent hundreds of billions of dollars on “some save the world vanity project,” as one of Bruce’s rivals puts it. A clean, cheap, and massive nuclear fusion reactor could be a silver bullet for curbing carbon emissions around the world, and a chance to stop something far scarier than supervillains.

Yet after five years of investment, it resulted in more chaos. A scientist’s paper in a professional journal reveals Wayne’s dream machine was also a weapon in the making. Indeed, that’s exactly how Tom Hardy’s Bane uses it during the second half of The Dark Knight Rises. Like the abstract idea of Batman before it, the good intentions baked into Wayne’s nuclear fusion miracle result in more death, more destabilization, and more chaos.

The man with an obvious hero complex failed again. Only then does Bruce give up on the world and indulge his myriad traumas.

Batman Returns Off-Screen?

That is how Bruce Wayne spent five of the eight years between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. However, that doesn’t mean there was not also room for Batman. While the canonical text of the film states no one has seen Batman in eight years, there is reason to believe Bruce Wayne did not hang up the cowl on the night Harvey Dent died.

In another scene in Rises, rookie cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) recalls the myth that grew around the night Harvey Dent died. Blake says it was “the last confirmed sighting of the Batman [before] he then vanishes.” But confirmed is the operative word here since there are little things that don’t line up between the two movies that fit this narrative. For starters, there is the swanky Batcave sitting beneath Wayne Manor. When we first see it in the third film, finally renovated after primarily being a long lost historical site from the 1800s in Batman Begins, Bruce is perched at a bank of computers, trying to figure out the identity of Selina Kyle.

“You haven’t been down here in a long time,” Alfred says to his surrogate son. The implication is that in some earlier time, Bruce would spend days in the Batcave. Why would he if his war on organized crime was over? Why build an entire second Batsuit in the cave to complement the one he keeps hidden in his off-site location if he’s done? The answer is that he wasn’t. At least not for some months or years after the events of The Dark Knight.

Read more

TV

The Actors Who Have Played Batman

By James Aquilone and 1 other

Movies

The Batman: Can a Superhero Movie Be Too Dark?

By David Crow

Throughout the movie, memories about the violent days after Two-Face’s death and the passage of the Dent Act abound, with all the characters describing it as a “war.” It seems plausible someone as obsessive and exacting as Bruce Wayne would want to participate. In fact, it’d be odd if he did not. Embracing hidden and more surreptitious tactics after becoming a public enemy might also explain how Batman injured his knee so badly between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises that he needs a brace to hide the limp.

It also might explain why no one bats an eye at Selina Kyle’s cat-themed costume. While no character calls the femme fatale with a heart of gold “Catwoman” in the film, she isn’t afraid of embracing the theatricality of her catlike ears either. She even hisses, “Cat got your tongue?” to a mark. The impracticality of this entire aesthetic seems inspired, at least in part, by the Batman. While there is never a line of dialogue confirming this, Hathaway and an uncharacteristically restrained Nolan rely on inference to get the point across.

Like Jim Gordon, Catwoman is given a moment to pause in what she’s doing to marvel at the television when news of Batman’s return breaks. And when she hitches a ride in the Batman’s sci-fi aircraft, she steals a glance at her surroundings when he’s not looking, smiling to herself about being in the same space as an apparent childhood hero. Indeed, Selina would’ve been a teenager during the events of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and like perhaps so many other members of the next generation of criminals and adventurers, her imagination took flight with news reports of a man dressed as a Bat jumping off rooftops.

It returns to the theme of “escalation” from The Dark Knight, with the Joker saying to Batman, “You’ve changed things forever.” At the beginning of that film, the Bat was still fighting mobsters; by the end he was facing clowns in war paint. The transition was painful for Gotham, but no one seems to think it odd anymore for a famed cat burglar to turn her goggles into cat ears. It makes you wonder if there were any more elements of a rogue’s gallery in the interceding years before the Dent Act brought vaguely unconstitutional order?

This is admittedly speculation. And the kind which reminds us that there were stories that could’ve been told between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises that we’ll never see. It’s probably this knowledge that disappoints some fans. Before details of Rises’ plot leaked, the nascent comic book Twitter theories of the era imagined Bale’s Batman opening the movie still running from the Gotham City Police, and fighting the next war.

Instead Rises begins with the war over, and Bruce all the bitterer for it. It was a large pill to swallow for fans who dream of Batman as a crusader always ready for the next robbery, mugging, or burning building. They wanted to see Batman fighting serial killers who leave riddles, not as the Phantom of Wayne Manor, and then as a retiree who’s conquered his pain well enough to enjoy a glass of wine in Italy.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

For those disappointed, Matt Reeves’ The Batman looks poised to offer the follow-up they wanted a decade ago. But Nolan’s choice to depict a Batman who had the vision to see the big picture, and to then walk away from it, remains satisfyingly singular and whole.

The post What Did Batman Do Between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3kUYuym

[happymetalgirl]

Батюшка - Панихида

After hearing the message that the band’s once anonymous founder, Krzysztof Drabikowski, posted in desperation on YouTube, I did not think I would be getting a new Батюшка album so soon, at least, not from him. The past few months have certainly been eventful and have kept fans of the band’s magnificent breakout debut album, Литоургия, with their eyes fixed on the current tumult unfolding with the band this year, and it’s what made me so surprised to hear Drabikowski coming out with a new album as soon as he did.

A few months ago, Drabikowski posted a message on YouTube, that was picked up by fans and spread far and wide very well, saying that his former collaborator  Bartłomiej Krysiuk had hijacked the band and taken control of almost all of  Батюшка social media. Drabikowski said that Krysiuk had been pressuring him to make faster progress with a follow-up to Литоургия, eventually became impatient, and resorted to going behind his back to recruit stand-ins to form his own version of the band, essentially splitting the band into two factions (at least for now with a legal dispute about the rights to use the band’s name ongoing). This is why I was so surprised to see that Drabikowski had beaten Krysiuk to the first full-length of 2019 despite the split being driven apparently by Kysiuk’s impatience for this exact album.

Even before the release of this album (ever since Drabikowski’s message really), much of the band’s fan base had been embroiled in the conflict between the two sides, and with both versions of Батюшка releasing singles over the past few weeks, Drabikowski independently and Krysiuk through Metal Blade Records, the verdict in the metal community at least has been decided.

I myself decided to perform the same side-by-side test a few weeks ago that many Батюшка fans did with the songs "Chapter I: The Emptiness - Polunosznica (Полунощница)" from Bartłomiej Krysiuk’s version of Батюшка, and “Песнь 1” from Krzystof Drabikowski’s version of Батюшка. "Chapter I: The Emptiness - Polunosznica (Полунощница)" is certainly not a terrible song from an entirely aesthetic standpoint, and its chorally-supported progression made for an at least meditative atmosphere, but it seemed to be a very timid and dragging composition, one that sounded more like someone more familiar with blackgaze recently becoming influenced by Батюшка than Батюшка itself. This was largley the response I saw echoed most by fans of Батюшка, and it certainly hasn’t helped Krysiuk’s case that Metal Blade disabled comments on the video for the single’s release. But even more damning was how much “Песнь 1” blew it out of the water.

“Песнь 1” very quickly confirmed for most of the Батюшка fan base Drabikowski’s legitimacy as the original creative sovereignty of the band, and after hearing the track, I couldn’t help but agree. The intermingling of liturgical choral vocals and faster atmospheric black metal was, as many put it, a display of the true heart of Батюшка. The song is clearly far more confidently put together and not only closer in resemblance to Литоургия, but also something that feels like a more natural continuation of it. It’s a great song that makes far more comfortable use of the signature elements of the  sound than what Krysiuk had offered up on his version’s first single, and its familiar enrapturing by way of the low-register choir vocals over both galloping and spiritually atmospheric forms of black metal makes for a great start to an album that, whose swiftness I can take with a grain of salt, makes for a respectable, though not rivaling follow-up to Литоургия.

I say that because Панихида feels at least partially constructed from leftovers from Литоургия. Like I said, “Песнь 1” ushered in and begins the album on an exciting note of that crucial spiritual vibrancy that has made Батюшка what it’s known for. But the rest of the album proceeds with a tangible sense of being less fully matured than what its creator probably had in mind and it ultimately comes across in the form of a more homogeneous album than the debut it’s trying to live up to. Again, the whole contextual dilemma in which the album was released almost certainly has had an impact on its creation and is an unfortunate grain of salt that has to be taken with listens to it.

The song “Песнь 2” is the longest on the album, but despite its interesting progression through its several sections, it stands out in the track list more for its featuring of this oddly light-spirited, classic metal guitar chord motif that seems just a little out of place on a Батюшка song, the rest of which is more in line with the kind of soulful meditation that the band is known for.

I may have been a bit extreme earlier in calling this album homogeneous as the next song, “Песнь 3”, seems to take on a lot of the same atmosphere that much of American blackgaze does after its slow, clean guitar intro, while the very next song, “Песнь 4”, makes excellent use of some slow eight-string guitar riffing as its more menacing vocals and double-bass fury take the album back to a more sinister and cultish vibe.

The echoed baritone/bass vocals that show up on the liturgical “Песнь 5” are some of my favorite on the entire album. The song rings very true to the sound of the debut and is possibly one of the most suspicious tracks as far as this album being made of leftovers is concerned, but for a potential leftover from a great album, the song feels pretty well fleshed out and perhaps its suspected age and time to mature is part of why it stands out at one of the more well-groomed tracks on the album. And while I like the odd intro of the subsequent “Песнь 6”, it does feel to be one of the more dragged out tracks on the album, with the composition kind of walking in circles to bide time until the album’s shortest song, “Песнь 7”, enters. “Песнь 7” feels like another leftover from Литоургия with its liturgical vocals flowing smoothly over fast double-bass/blast-beat drumming, deep, bass-y guitar grooves, and bright guitar atmosphere.

“Песнь 8” ends the album on a somber, yet seemingly triumphant note, wrapping together all of what Батюшка combines so well. It feels much like a continuation of the tracks before it that echoed Литоургия so clearly in a way that concludes the album as a largely identical offspring of Литоургия, and perhaps that was kind of the point for Панихида. Being that Drabikowski was up against a former collaborator who had (in his words) seized much of the band’s legal collateral alongside a relatively big record label, he really didn’t have much going for him going into this legal dispute other than his creativity and his ability to channel the heart of Батюшка. Like I said, this album needs to be taken with a grain of salt, and I imagine that its close resemblance to Литоургия was an intentional display of Drabikowski’s artistic sovereignty and his being the driving creative force that produced Литоургия.

While writing this, I learned that Polish courts ruled in favor of Bartłomiej Krysiuk’s version of Батюшка bearing the rights to use the Батюшка name just a few days ago, which may explain why Drabikowski released Панихида so quickly. I’m honestly not surprised that the court ruled in favor of Krysiuk and Metal Blade Record, it seems like because he and they had access to all the band’s legal and organisational resources, Drabikowski unfortunately left himself vulnerable to this kind of mutiny, and perhaps midway through the proceedings he realized this and decided to make his one last stand for Батюшка in the musical sparring arena. While Krysiuk has the legal upper hand and the advantage of not having to rush his release quite as much as Drabikowski did, his first single doesn’t really suggest that those advantages are even going to matter. The gulf in class between the two sides’ material so far really is what it comes down to at the end of the day, and even if Krysiuk has convinced the courts that Батюшка is his project, he will have a hard time winning over the fans (who have mostly decided their allegiance to Drabikowski) without a serious step up to contend with Drabikowski’s work, which seems unlikely with what we have to gauge this debacle by currently. For now, court ruling aside, Drabikowski’s Панихида stands as a far more worthy follow-up to Литоургия, than what Krysiuk’s version’s new album seems like it will be. As seemingly rushed due to what appears to be unjust or at least unfortunate circumstances, Панихида is an album that bleeds from the heart of what made Литоургия and of what made Батюшка.

Батюшка/10

[smkkbert]

To make you feel my love (10/10)

Cover with the help of @pr0fessi0nal-fangurl and an edit by @candykizzes24

Also special thanks to @cainc3 for editing the story!

- Third and last installment of the There goes my life Series -

Summary: One year after the Gambit went down, the incredible happens: Oliver is found alive and brought back to Starling City. All he wants is getting back to Felicity and Madeleine. Though Felicity welcomes him back with her arms wide open, Oliver struggles to find his place in the family. It seems like his place – at least in Mae’s heart – is already taken. And it doesn’t help that it’s his best friend Tommy who seems to have taken it.

Rating: Teen

Previous chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Six years later

“You ready?” Felicity asked Mae in a whisper.

The eight-year-old nodded eagerly, putting her hand to the door handle. “You?”

“One second,” Felicity replied, lighting the one candle on the cake. She pushed the lighter into the pocket of her sweatpants and gave Mae a nod. “Ready.”

“Okay, then one, two, three.”

Mae opened the door and both of them started signing, “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear daddy, happy birthday to you.”

Oliver had opened his eyes and sat up in bed halfway through his birthday serenade. His hair was tousled, an imprint of his pillow showing on his cheek. Mae jumped onto the bed and hugged her daddy tightly.

“Happy birthday, daddy!” she exclaimed.

Chuckling, Oliver wrapped his arms around her and kissed her head. “Thank you, sweetie.”

Careful not to drop the cake, Felicity sat down on the edge of the mattress and scooted closer to her two loved ones. “Make a wish.”

Oliver smiled at her for a moment and closed his eyes before he blew out the single candle. Felicity had debated with herself whether or not to put all of them on it, but since she didn’t want her husband’s birthday to start with a burning bed, she had decided for the much safer version. Mae clapped her hands while Felicity put the cake on the nightstand for later.

“Happy birthday, Oliver,” she whispered then.

“Thank you,” Oliver replied.

Felicity leaned over and brushed her lips against his in a gentle kiss. Oliver’s hand came up to cup her cheek. His thumb stroked over the edge of her jaw gently. Felicity was about to deepen the kiss when Mae demanded, “Mom, you have to get the presents now.”

Chuckling, Felicity and Oliver broke apart. Felicity turned her head to look at her daughter, complaining in a mocking tone, “I was giving daddy his birthday kiss.”

Mae rolled her eyes, making both of her parents chuckle. At eight years old, Mae was starting to feel like her parents love for each other was less sweet and more embarrassing and annoying. Felicity had hoped that attitude would wait until high school, but of course everything happened way too fast, just like it had always been with Mae.

“Well, now that Mae mentioned presents…” Felicity turned her head to Oliver, perking up an eyebrow. He gave her an innocent smile before he whispered, “I’d be really interested in that.”

“And the birthday child always gets to make all the decisions,” Mae told her mother.

Felicity puckered her lips and nodded. “That’s right.”

“The birthday child decides it’s time for presents now,” Oliver said, “so chop-chop!”

Chuckling, Felicity turned on her hands and knees. She was about to crawl to the edge of the bed when Oliver slapped her butt playfully. Mae giggled at that, while Felicity turned her head back over her shoulder and gave Oliver a look that was a warning as much as it was a promise. Once Mae was in bed at the end of the day, she would take this up. Since what she had in mind wasn’t exactly child appropriate, it would have to wait until Mae was fast asleep.

Felicity strolled out of their bedroom and headed towards her home office where she and Mae had hidden all the gifts for Oliver. She grabbed the small hamper they had put all the presents in and returned to their bedroom. She was still in the hall when she heard the whispered voices of her husband and daughter.

“So you’re sure mommy didn’t bake the cake herself?” Oliver asked.

“Yes,” Mae replied. “Raisa baked it and mommy got it yesterday after work.”

“You are really sure about it?”

“Yes.”

“So I can take an extra big piece of it without having to feel like my insides are dying with every bite?”

“Yes,” Mae confirmed once more. “We don’t want to repeat the disaster of your eighteenth birthday, right?”

Felicity rolled her eyes, unable to keep herself from chuckling at her daughter’s words nonetheless. The way she mimicked Oliver’s voice whenever he told her that her baking wasn’t a good idea given the terrible muffin she had baked for his eighteenth birthday. She had planned on baking at least a dozen for him, but only that one muffin had made it out of the oven without being either raw, burnt or a mixture of both. That one muffin had made it, though. It had looked perfectly fine. Unfortunately, it had tasted terrible as Oliver loved to remind her whenever he got the chance.

“You two do know that I can hear you, right?” Felicity asked, stepping into the room.

“We didn’t say anything,” Mae hurried to say. “I just told daddy that I am sure the cake is yummy.”

“Mhm,” Felicity hummed, giving the two a look that told them that she had caught them. When she winked at them, though, they both chuckled. Joining in on the chuckle and shaking her head, Felicity put the hamper on the bed. “Now let’s start with the presents.”

“Oh, there are so many presents,” Oliver said with a look at the hamper. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Take that one,” Mae urged him, pointing at one of the presents.

“Mae,” Felicity said quietly, cocking her head a little. “Let daddy decide.”

“But, mommy,” Mae replied, giving her a look.

Felicity had to bite her tongue to contain the huge smile she felt threatening to form on her lips. Mae loved birthdays and she had been very excited about this birthday in particular. For the last two days, she hadn’t been able to talk about anything else. Felicity had almost been worried that she would spoil the surprise before Oliver’s birthday. She was sure that if they didn’t reveal it soon, Mae would burst.

“Okay, I will start with this one,” Oliver said, taking the gift Mae had pointed at. He looked from Felicity to Mae and back again. “Since it seems to be so important to Mae.”

“Mommy and I made it together,” Mae explained to him.

“That sounds like a very great present to me already,” Oliver stated.

Felicity smiled. She put the hamper down on the floor and snuggled to Oliver’s side, watching him unwrap the present. He discarded the torn paper on the floor carelessly, looking at the photo album in his hands.

“You made me a photo album?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mae replied immediately, nodding her head, “with all the memories since you and mommy met.”

“Thank you,” Oliver said. He kissed Mae’s head and then turned to Felicity. He smiled at her for a moment before he leaned in for a kiss. Felicity duck her head, pressing her lips to his gently. Her fingers moved through his scratchy scruff slowly. He nuzzled her nose before he repeated, “Thank you.”

“Mae did a lot of the work,” Felicity said, shooting a short look at her daughter, who smiled proudly. “I couldn’t have done it without her.”

“You need to open it, Daddy,” Mae prompted, already opening the album.

Felicity couldn’t bring herself to tell Mae to slow down. As much as she wanted Oliver to enjoy looking at the photos that were a reminder of all the years they had spent together, she also couldn’t wait to reveal her surprise to him. She actually felt her heartbeat quickening at the thought of it. Taking in a deep breath to calm her nerves, she rested her chin on Oliver’s shoulder to look at the photos with him and Mae.

“God, it’s been so long,” Oliver said with a chuckle when he looked at the first photo of Felicity and him together. They were sitting in the library at their high school. Felicity remembered how Oliver had tried to take a photo of her, but she had tried to fight him given that she had thought she looked like crap. In the end, he had convinced her to take a photo of the two of them together. They were both making faces at the camera.

More photos of their first months together followed. Though they had never been able to share the photos with anyone and there had always been the danger of someone getting to see them, Oliver and Felicity had taken photos whenever they had felt like it. Keeping their relationship a secret had been one thing, forbidding themselves to do at least some things a normal couple would do was completely different.

Photos from the time during the pregnancy and their first year with Mae followed. In some ways it felt like yesterday that they had taken those photos, in other ways it felt like it had been a lifetime ago. She and Oliver had been so young back then and all too often they hadn’t really known what they were doing. Yet they had made it through and raised a beautiful and wonderful girl.

When they got to the two pages of photos that had been taken of Mae while Oliver had been away, Felicity took a look at his face. She saw the slightly saddened reaction on his face. No matter how much time had passed or how good his relationship with Mae was right now, the pain of having been robbed of a full year with his daughter and her had never fully left him.

Felicity understood that. She felt the exact same way. When she had started working at Queen Consolidated and had started to take over more and more tasks at the company she had to going on business trips, it hadn’t been easy for her to go. She had almost canceled when Oliver had offered for him and Mae to come with her. It had taken years of slow progression from one night away to one week away now. More than one week away from her family was still impossible for Felicity and she saw no reason to push herself past that limit.

Felicity put a gentle hand to Oliver’s shoulder, squeezing slightly. Oliver turned his head and looked at her, so she gave him a comforting smile. Not taking his eyes off her, Oliver took in a deep breath and tightened his arm around Mae’s shoulders, nodding his head at Felicity slightly. Felicity pecked his lips and turned the page for him.

They looked at the first photos that had been taken since he had come back from the island. None of the photos showed any sign of how hard that first time had been. Felicity looked at Mae and about how she told stories about the photos though she probably couldn’t remember anything and just recited what she had been told about them. It was like Oliver had never been away. Of course, Mae knew that her daddy had been away for a year, but she loved him because he had always been a part of their lives, even when he had been away.

They looked through the rest of the photos as Mae continued to babble on. Oliver always smiled when he told her how much she had taken after her mother with her talking. As much as Felicity liked to object, she knew that it was true.

“Mommy, the last page is coming,” Mae pulled Felicity from her thoughts, shaking her knee slightly.

Felicity chuckled though she felt her heart beating up into her throat. She had been waiting for this since the beginning of the week. Actually, she had waited for it even longer, but she had only allowed herself to really hope for this since the beginning of the week when she had gotten confirmation.

Oliver turned his head to look at Felicity and she could see in his eyes that he already knew. She wasn’t good at keeping secrets from him. She had been sure that he had suspected that something was going on. Now she knew that he had known all along what exactly it had been.

She watched Oliver take in a deep breath and turn the page of the album, revealing the photo of Felicity and Mae, holding a positive pregnancy test together.

Felicity bit her lip, looking at Oliver expectantly. When they had gotten married last year, they had decided to wait for another six months until the project Felicity had been working on at QC had finished before starting to expand their family. Four months ago, Felicity had trashed her pills and since then they had worked on it constantly.

“We’re having a baby!” Mae called out when nobody said a word. “Well, mommy is having the baby, but then we all get to have it.”

Oliver didn’t reply. His fingers moved over the picture slowly like he couldn’t feel the plastic under his fingertips and was trying to convince himself that this was real. Felicity felt her heart stumbling in her chest at the sight and she felt it stumbling even more when Oliver suddenly turned his head and, with a heartbreaking sob, pushed his face against her chest to hide it. Felicity wrapped her arms around him, holding his trembling torso to her body and cradling his head to her chest.

Felicity kissed the crown of his head and whispered into his hair, “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

She had prepared for a reaction like this. She had been close to tears when she had seen the result of the pregnancy test, too. As much as they had done whatever they had been able to do since they had learned about Mae, she knew that they had both been young and made mistakes and life hadn’t been easy on them, either. This, this baby, was their chance to make things right and make it work better than they had managed to do with Mae. Felicity wouldn’t push Oliver away. Oliver wouldn’t feel guilty if he needed a little more freedom. Neither of them were going to leave this family, willingly or unwillingly if they had any control over it. This time they would do everything right.

“Is daddy sad?” Mae asked, frowning in confusion at what was happening right in front of her eyes.

Felicity snuggled her cheek to the back of Oliver’s head as she looked at their daughter. “No, Sweetie. Daddy isn’t sad. Daddy is very, very happy, but this is also a lot for him to take in.”

“But he wants a baby, right?”

“Yes, of course he does,” Felicity replied. “You know, he just missed so much time with you when you were little and he knows that he’s been given a second chance now. He loves you very much and he wishes everything would have worked out the way we wished it would have when you were little, but it didn’t. Daddy loves this baby, too, so now he hopes everything will be alright this time.”

Mae looked at her for a moment before she hugged Oliver from behind, resting her cheek between his shoulder blades. Her arms wrapped around his torso as far as they could reach.

“It’s okay, Daddy,” she told him. “This time everything will work out. Everything will be right for the baby.”

Felicity smiled, putting a hand to Mae’s head and stroking over her hair in silent thanks. Eventually, Oliver took in a deep breath before pulling back slightly. He pulled Mae closer, so she was sitting right between him and Felicity. He kissed her head before he looked at Felicity with tear-filled eyes.

“I am not going to miss anything.”

“You are not going to miss anything,” Felicity repeated, the reassurance strong in her voice.

Oliver brushed his lips against hers, pulling Mae closer at the same time. They sat like that, hugging each other and holding each other close for several minutes, celebrating the new start of their family.

Felicity put a hand to her stomach, thinking about Mae’s words. This time everything will work out. Everything will be right for the baby. Felicity hoped she was right. Actually, she felt pretty confident about it. Resting her cheek on the crown of Oliver’s head, she closed her eyes.

This was their second chance and this time they’d do anything right.

@just-arrow @secretglimpses @promiseyoullbepatientwithme @bytemegeekette @felicity-said-just-in-case @phanseptiic @mariel-olandag @orangeisorange @aguscha333 @whentheheavenfades @aussieforgood @emmaamelia95 @smoakingskye @seaolicity @ourwritinginvein @lightwoodhook @1022bridgetp @felicityqueenforever @leagueofolicity17 @yryssss @myhauntedblacksoul @muslimsmoak @sherlock44 @sinceriouslybea @arrowsalways @olivyflavescentdeer @olicitys-castle @ofnothingcharming @boo-ritz-radley @vaelisamaza @smoakedandcharmed @alexisa1206 @mysaudadespt2 @florence-bubbles @addictiontelly @queens-of-arrows @memcjo @hysterical-for-joshifer @oswinelevenforever @olicitylovemaking @bandanab310 @mymusiclove101 @lynslogic @scarletqueen23 @olicityshipper19 @alex-wesley @arrows-4ever @unabashedlynerdypatrol @louehmysoul @ligiapimenta @chattyyana @charlie-leau @coal000 @samcrowleys @sherrynoconan @ishippolivia @julianegomesqueen @malafle @miriam1779 @charlinert @melaux @ontheolicityship @hiddenchamb3r @myshipperlife @wrightainsley @lexi9515 @ladygreenwood @multi-fandom-crazy-fangirl @morinamel @mje-thomas @kebarr @canadianheartgirl @nannett2307 @almondblossomme @paarti12 @kathrynelizabeth89 @imdfabulous @cutearrowgirl @mrt2501 @insecureneuroticcontrolfreakk @mecha1330 @arsipaci14 @o-li-ci-ty @mzminx @chellemanalastas @salasvia @brandis91 @cainc3 @clarkesoverwatch @morganmiguess @pr0fessi0nal-fangurl @iamisalima @nessafra @sammaldonado9 @jonhdiggle @niki-is-amazing @universed-posts @hopeful-warrior @senoritaswiftie @bellemmie @green-arrows-of-karamel @iheartarrow @olicityovereverything @oliverfel4 @navyaarsha @fandoms-breathe-life @simone4mcswarek @olicity-in-the-heart @fullychippedcreation @geemarie @eternal-olicity @everything-but-normal-cat @tookurmatches @myarroworld @tjmartinez @pleasantfanandstudent @itsmagnoliagirl @j69confessional @scentedcolorpirate @icanica74 @felollie @javinancupil @tjmartinez98 @certainmentalityface @tatianadamaceno @ryelew @wildwillowzepplin @kath4703 @missafairy @letsplaymurde-r @lipizette @positivepiper @nuttymilkshakehologram @laksagirl @ccdimples88 @turnupthemusicandscream @pumpernickle93 @cinfos @lastnameisqueen @onceuponanolicity @1106angel @jaspertown

(If you want to be tagged or untagged, just let me know. :))