#but them both sharing a connection to the speed force is more or less a constant

[fezwearingjellybananas]

is it okay if i ask you the same question you asked me? i'm really curious and i'd like to know more about your take on Barry and Cisco and their powers and how they connect and work together. if it's okay?

Yes definitely!

Usually I headcanon Cisco's powers come from the Speed Force, and almost in two parts? So, there is the general in dctv canon metahumans are created at exposure to some unnamed dark matter, established in series 1 but not a constant requirement of exposure at a moment that would otherwise result in death, almost like a rapid evolution in a single organism instead of over generations (which might have a name but I can't think of one right now). And dark matter might just be everywhere, so presumably there is a specific particle or something that activates an existing metagene, and the most likely source seems to be the Speed Force? It's opening the Speed Force in s4 that creates the bus metas, the Philosopher's Stone in s3 is from the Speed Force, even way back at the start the purpose of the particle accelerator is to channel a path for the Speed Force to reach Barry. Which actually what you said the other day about Cisco's powers coming from Barry first travelling through time fits so well, I have been writing them in fic as starting to develop slowly from the initial explosion, but travelling through time is sort of the first time Barry accesses the Speed Force rather than just draws power from it if that makes sense? And he doesn't know it yet, but that moment, that surge of power Barry unknowingly lets out being what triggers Cisco's metagene, again with the end goal of saving his life... Yes, I like this idea, I'm going to stick with it after I talk about the second half of how I headcanon Cisco's powers are connected to the Speed Force.

Which is Cisco's powers are literally from the Speed Force, he's connected to it just like Barry is, it just manifests in different ways. Barry when he travels through time intentionally sees things in the Speed Force, in a similar way to Cisco's vibes, they can both access different universes through their powers, both their powers are linked to vibrations, so maybe the Speed Force is impossible to truly say what it is, but it's somehow connected to the vibration of the multiverse. And I think maybe Cisco's powers might also be linked to the other Forces too- the Speed Force uses plural pronouns in their early appearances, then stops after the arc with the other Forces, after they become separate entities, so with Cisco's abilities meaning he sees through time maybe he draws from the Still Force a little at least, I think it could have been fun to have Cisco's powers glitching after Crisis and at first they think it's because the multiverse is gone and then it goes into the Forces arc and they slowly piece together the Forces are no longer together and that's what's causing Cisco's problems, when they get them to work together again Cisco's powers are fixed too.

Anyway I got distracted. There is a line in episode two "[Cisco's] the eyes and ears, and [Barry's] the feet", and I think that almost later sums up their powers? Or at least how they use them together- Cisco gets his vibes and can tell Barry where to be, Barry can run through time and Cisco can see through it, he can see the changes and other timelines. Barry can share his speed through Flashtime, and Cisco can stop a speedster in their tracks, and I think Barry's probably glad it's Cisco that ended up with the power to stop a speedster, Cisco and Iris are probably the only people he would trust with it if he had to give it to someone.

So now I want to go back to Cisco's powers being triggered by Barry changing time. If Cisco's powers come from the Speed Force, it's by Barry accessing it at that point, giving it that path into the world, and by the Speed Force deciding that is the point Cisco needs them. He gets his vibes so he can see his death, knows what happened, can learn how to avoid it this time around. And his death came at the hand of a speedster, eventually he'll get the powers to stop a speedster, to cut them off from their powers, it's like they were tailor-made so if Cisco had had powers in that moment he would have been able to stop Eobard and save his own life, like the Speed Force knows they can't protect him exactly, but they can give him the tools he needs to protect himself.

(And, well, pulling a little from the comics, Barry is the Speed Force, or it came from him, either way there's an echo of Barry within it, of course the Speed Force wanted Cisco safe, and maybe it was a part of Barry that chose to give Cisco the powers to stop him should they ever need it after all)

[orbitswritings]

a neteyam/fem!human reader series. word count: 3k

Chapter 1 (here)

Chapter 2

future NSFW content/smut, breeding kink

synopsis: Neteyam and you are in a secret relationship because you’re a sky demon and he’s the clan’s future Olo'eyktan, so you have to keep it secret. However, one day his parents finally catch on, and Neteyam is told to stop any contact with you immediately. Unfortunately for them, he has a plan that he hopes will ensure you two can be together.

note: chapter 1 is here! nearly all the other chapters for this are about done too, i just need to do some more editing and ill have them up.

tags: @neteyamwifesstuff @christinechickiee @heaven1oo4

Chapter 1

The village was empty. Not surprising, all the other Na’vi having taken refuge to get away from the incoming storm. But Neteyam knew something was up, he just knew. What it exactly was was yet to be determined since nothing was out of the ordinary, but his nerves were on alert through a prickly feeling that wouldn’t leave his stomach. The rumbling storm must’ve been a warning by Eywa. Before, when he was still with you, the sky had been clear and bright as one would pray for. It wasn’t until after dropping you off at your studio and beginning his flight to home that the sky took a sudden turn for the worst. He and his ikran fought against the increasing winds, pushing through the growing storm as it progressively continued to gain in strength. Now inside the village, it was just beginning to unleash; the dark clouds opened with a loud crack of lightning, sending water pouring down. He increased his speed towards his family’s shared kelku. Before entering, Neteyham couldn’t help but hesitate for a moment, the uncertain feeling within him churning even more. Despite the apprehension, he shook his head and entered. Unfortunately, his gut feeling was entirely correct. Inside, he felt his heart rate pick up in speed, seeing only his father and mother, their backs turned to him.  Normally during a storm like this his entire family would be squished inside, taking shelter together. His flickering ears picked up some mumbling between his parents, their quiet words indiscernible, but the strain in their tone apparent.  The building tension in Neteyam finally snapped, his body becoming cold, the drastic drop in his body temperature made the Na’vi sharply inhale his breath. Hearing him, his parents turned their attention from one another to look at their son. The looks on their faces were nothing Neteyam, their golden firstborn, had ever been the subject of. Instead, both their gazes were piercing and cold. Neteyam could still discern the subtleties within each of them; his father was struggling, forcing himself to keep up the appearance of strong disapproval and anger. Meanwhile, his mother’s was of just pure, undiluted force- barely tethered by an impressive amount of resolve she found within. Her intention was clear: to put an immediate stop to whatever unsightly connection had blossomed outside of her approval. His mother’s strong will and determination made him already know that this wasn’t going to be a discussion. If that still wasn’t enough, her sheer disdain of sky demons was just the catalyst. His father was just being dragged along. It didn’t matter if his father was less definite on this, Neytiri had more than enough fury to fill the gaps of his father’s hesitation. Neteyam knew exactly what spurned this. It occurred earlier today, when outside his better judgment, something happened. A moment that exposed the real feelings you two had for one another. Neteyam swallowed down the growing knot in his throat, struggling with his self control to not outright mirror his parents’ glare. Turning away, Neteyam feigned ignorance. “What is it?” He asked with a obviously constrained tone, removing his bow from around his shoulder to set it aside with a little more firmness than usual. He was internally fighting to keep himself in check, something he never needed to force before. He disliked conflict with his parents, something instilled in him as a young Na’vi child. All his life he tightly held himself to high standards of not just being only a good role model to his younger siblings, but to all the Na’vi, and he excelled in just that. Now though, he felt himself fighting to keep from coming undone. Two paths laid ahead of him, one of feuding and the other of dutiful respect, and the other of doing whatever it took to protect you from the incoming attack.“You know exactly what this is about.” Neytiri hissed, rapidly closing the distance between her and her son. Neteyam flinched but stood his ground, staring holes into his mother’s eyes. Jake also went forward as well, his eyes nervously glancing between his son and his wife, considering whether he would need to put himself in between them. “How? How could you do this?” Neytiri exclaimed. “You, you, Neteyam! Us, your family, your clan! Befriending that sky demon, spending all your time with- I bit my tongue, I had to pray to Great Mother for the strength to tolerate it, but this?!” Neytiri took a sharp inhale, her nostrils wildly flaring as her lips flattened into a near non-existent line. His mother’s eyes were engulfed with a fury Neteyam himself had never been the sole focus of. Despite her enraged voice, a hint of hurt was detectable. That facet was keeping Neteyam inline, the smallest piece of shame.

Her voice lowered. “I would never even imagine this of Lo’ak, but coming from you?” She hissed through clenched teeth. Neteyam felt his upper lip twitch. “But what? What behavior, mother?” Neteyam pressed again, leaning forward slightly to press into his mother’s aggression. His feigning ignorance was clearly artificial, mocking. Neteyam was indirectly admitting guilt, but he still wanted his mother to say it out loud, own what she knew. Neytiri only snarled and bared her fangs, her curling tail rapidly flicking in irritation. She looked like a cat ready to pounce, clearly teetering on whether or not to claw her firstborn’s eyeballs out. Jake took the initiative and stepped in, forcing himself between the two. Jake raised his hands, giving his wife a silent but telling look to calm herself. He then turned to his son. “A clan member saw you and . . . your sky perso being more . . . more than friends.” Jake’s eyes flicked over to Neytiri’s for approval of his phrasing. Jake silently prayed there wasn’t a need to go any further in detail. The muscles of Neteyam’s jaw flexed as he tightly ground his teeth together, his eyes staring into the floor. Yes, your relationship with one another had progressed, much longer ago than his parents would guess. It was secretive, both of you understanding that the second it was found out there was going to instant uproar, like now for instance. So today must’ve been found out. You two had worked so hard to keep it under wraps, a shared understanding that letting anyone know any further was going to be looked upon in a unfairly negative light by not only your fellow humans, but most severely, his clan. The feelings were too just strong. Being near you, Neteyam would describe it as deep and close as a tsyhalu.  Neteyam would fly you out miles away so neither of you would be disturbed in your enjoyment of one another, all done under the excuse of helping you with your ‘research.’ Well, there was truth to it. You were still being productive, your chauffeur and bodyguard was just also your boyfriend. It was evident that Neytiri disliked you right out of the gate, especially when her son was spending so much time with you. If you were Na’vi the issue wouldn’t even have been raised, probably celebrated even. The future leader found himself a prospective mate. At the time Neytiri couldn’t protest much, since Lo’ak had his own human companion then Neteyam should be allowed one as well. At least, that’s what Jake had successfully argued. Now Jake was secretly wishing he hadn’t won that fight. He just never considered his son would develop this beyond friendship because of the obvious differences. Now, he feared how deep his son’s bond with you went. And he was right to. Jake didn’t know much, but he knew his son. For Neteyam to be acting like, so on guard and defensive, this connection wasn’t to be taken granted by any means.

It’s funny, today was the day you two actually had gathered enough gall to discuss your futures, sharing it with one another. Nothing was set in stone or even really planned, but the talk was deep and fruitful. It was heavy enough that on the trip back, as you reached your home and landed, you two broke the agreed rule of only sharing affection while far out, and shared once last moment before parting. That must’ve been when you two were spotted. By whom, well, Neteyam already had names for the three suspects. His father moved in closer. Neteyam felt the urge to throw his self control away and flip out just like his mother was just barely keeping herself from, he knew it wasn’t going to do much besides fan the flames. “You are the future leader of the clan.” Jake’s parental tone started, placing a comforting but firm hand on Neteyam’s hardened shoulders, his muscles twitching at the contact. Neteyam couldn’t meet his father’s gaze.   “You have responsibilities because of that, Neteyam. Responsibilities to the People, so you need be mated with another Na’vi. One of our kind.” Neteyam looked exacerbated. “Dad-! You were one the sky people!” Neteyam argued. It was rare, if ever, for him to be combative. But when Neteyam looked at their father’s hands, he saw the hypocrisy. Neteyam never thought in a million eclipses he’d be so passionately arguing for someone of the sky people. He found it hard to interact with them, even with the likes of Norm and Max, who more often than not got his cold shoulder. While he was greatly influenced by his mother, he didn’t share his mother’s outright disdain of the sky people. It was more like a disinterest. They lacked a queue, they couldn’t see or interact with Eywa or experience Pandora beyond whatever small, superficial bits they would scrape up and obsess over in their cold bright labs. Jake blinked, following Neteyam’s gaze. The ends of his lips twitched. “Yeah, yeah I was,” He held up his opened palm in admission. “But I gave it up- my human form, to be Na’vi. And I know that your girl,” His tone faltered on his word choice, eyes glancing between Neytiri’s wide-eyed, exasperated expression and Neteyam’s unreadable one. “-Doesn’t even have an avatar to ever transfer to.” Jake’s brows pinched together. “You two just can’t be. It’s just not right, not for you, and not for her. Think about it, Neteyam! She can’t even breathe our air!” Neteyam’s face remained like stone, but inside, he felt a hollow hole where his stomach was supposed to be. His upper lip curling into a snarl. A fire of jealousy flared within his chest. Both his parents were taken aback by the sudden and aggressive response from their usually calm child. Jake’s surprised expression quickly was fixed into a hardened, didactic one.

His father was trying to sell him on separating you two as a sacrifice for your ultimate well-being and happiness. It wasn’t fair for you to force yourself to be with him. It would just cause suffering. Neytiri was the first to shake away the initial shock, replaced with a refilled tank of anger. “Don’t you dare bare your fang at me, boy.” She hissed, shoving her finger into the face of her son. Neteyam growled but reluctantly shut his mouth, although an unhappy wrinkle from the curl of his upper lip remained.

Neteyam released the air from his lungs, shaking his head in disbelief. No, he couldn’t accept it. “But why?” He asked. “Why does it bother you so much that she isn’t Na’vi?” Neteyam asked, his strained, controlled voice edging into distress. Neytiri felt her harsh features soften. Both his parents were unable to witness their son emotionally struggle, but both knew it was best to break him now rather than later. “. . . . Because as the future leader you are to have children. You cannot do that with a sky person.”

“Well, has it ever been tried?!” Neteyam raised his voice, the strength of it shocking even him. The force was unintended, but he felt like you were there in the room with him, he needed to defend you.

Again, his parents both paused, an awkward silence filling their den as both their minds slowly processed his unexpected question. It was like both had to restart their minds in order to deal with it. This is what happens when confronting someone with such brute force in such a short amount of time since receiving the news that spurned such a moment. They should’ve given themselves more time to concoct a better strategy.

“Okay, okay, look, I’m not much of a science guy,” Jake started, clearly irritated. Oh, how he was wishing he’d payed way more attention in biology class when he was a kid, or Hell, even took a second to consult Norm or Max before this. But he didn’t think! Neytiri got all fired up, and well, he just didn’t think this exact topic would even be brought up! “But if it was even possible we would’ve known by now. Ok, someone would know.” Flimsy, bad reasoning. It sat in the back of his mind, heavy like a rock, the fact his avatar was the result of hybridization with human and Na’vi DNA . . . still, that was done with complex tinkering by brainiac scientists. There had to be something, something that he just couldn’t explain at this very second. 

“Listen, kid, you just need to accept it. As your father and your leader I am telling you, you are done with that human. Understood?”

That human. Neteyam’s mind flare in anger. It was insulting to you to be referred to as something. Jake really had no idea.Jake knew the ground was shaky and was just hoping his ultimatum would be enough to end this. Again, for the countless amount of other times in his life, Neteyam was expected to be selfless, mature, and act like the leader he was destined to be. “Yes, sir.” The words felt like bitter acid on Neteyam’s tongue, but like every other time before, he dealt with the retching disgust and bowed his head in submission.

Both his parents finally breathed, exhaling and visibly relaxing. They seemed pleased, like a weight had been lifted from their shoulders. The argument had been quite intense but at least it was brief, and a consensus was reached. Unbeknownst to them, the thoughts racing through Neteyam’s mind were anything but. 

Fine. Let them pretend there’s a consensus. It’ll keep them occupied for the time being. Turning his back, Neteyam grunted about needing some time to cool down, disappearing into heavy blue showers. Mounting his ikran, he flew off in the downpour. Despite the pounding of large rain drops beating down onto his body, he did his best to take odd turns and use his knowledge of the nearby terrain to his advantage, just in case any of his family attempted to follow him. For now he guessed they wouldn’t, taking their trustworthy son at his word. Eventually he assumed, as time would tick on and he remained absent, they would get a clue about where he was going . . . just not exactly where.

While you mainly lived with the other humans at their outpost, you also had your own space; an abandoned metal trailer you took ownership of as your personal ‘study studio.’ Inside, you could peacefully do your work or whatever else without the distractions that came with the cramped shared building the rest used.

Landing outside your space, Neteyam detached his queue, sliding off onto spongey grass that squished beneath his feet. He walked through the flooded terrain, at least an inch of water having accumulated. Neteyam called out your name, then again but a little louder in case you couldn’t hear due to the massive rain droplets hammering down on your metal cabin.

A few frustrating seconds passed until he saw a small light flicker on, then a warm orange hue filling the rest of your space. The door unlocked and you slowly creaked open the heavy door.

You must’ve been sleeping and he woke you up. Your tired voice was small and suppressed from your mask plus competing with the loud onslaught of rain. He managed to catch in your tone confusion and concern. What was he doing here this late? You only just saw him a few hours ago.

“We . . . need to talk.” His voice was low and strained as he climbed up the steps. You craned your head back to see his face. His facial expression was unreadable, but the position of his pinned ears and the slight pinch between his brows gave you a big hint. Blinking a few times as your sleepy mind slowly processed, you finally stepped to the side to allow him in. He had to hunch over to slip through the doorway, but luckily the inside of your dwelling had a ceiling just high enough to accommodate him.

You struggled with your strength to push the heavy metal door closed. The hinges on the door struggled in opening. Until Neteyam added his single hand, easily shoving it closed, sealing off your cabin to the outside. Once completely closed, a pleasant beep signaled the air filters were kicking on.

Inside Neteyam’s whirling mind, he managed to hear you tell him to stay put while you got something. You dug into a nearby drawer, pulling out a towel, before handing it to the tall Na’vi male, telling him to dry yourself off.

You didn’t want your giant, dripping boyfriend to create puddles on your floorboards or worse, accidentally inflict water damage on important papers. An annoyed Neteyam groaned but complied, quickly wiping himself off.

He had to bite his bottom lip, stifling a groan as he watched you so caring apply another towel to his torso, innocently helping him in wiping off the droplets that clung to his toned form.

He probably wouldn’t be this touchy if it wasn’t for what he’d drafted in his head on the way over. You then yawned, asking him about why he was here while taking the soaked towels to the hamper. Neteyam’s face immediately hardened, his brows knitting together. He wasn’t going to take any joy in delivering the news.

“My parents know.”

[regularconvexheadcanons]

aLSO WHATS THE NECKLACE HEADCANON NOW IM OUTTA SCULK!SCAR BRAINROT Please the readers would love to know

The readers shall have what they desire… and a whole lot of other Vex lore copied from the post on my main account this came from.

Being bitten by Vex (capital V because it’s magical vex, and normal evoker-summoned vex don’t bite) kills players. The amount of magic is too much for any player to handle, they die, and their soul/whatever keeps them alive, is destroyed, as is the Vex.

Vex live in groups - called Havocs - and share a hive-mind between each havoc. If the Vex want a bitten player, instead of dying, to become a vexling, the rest of the Havoc sacrifices itself, replace the player’s soul with their own, and revives the player as a vexling. But, as the player’s soul is now that of the Vex, their code is changed to gain the features of a Vex, and the Vex’s conscience remains within them and can take over (possession).

The vexling is taken the vex lands, noted as being a Vexling by the Vex leader (the High Evoker) given a mask to speed up the process of being a Vexling (because it’s a lot worse if not) and a necklace that connects them to the Vex Lands. These necklaces contain the soul of a ‘dead’ Vex - a dying Vex can choose to force their soul into Vex magic they produce and keep it alive, though their physical form and consciousness is lost. As the High Evoker can summon living Vex, they can summon the necklace, and therefore the player wearing it, to the Vex lands.

However, sometimes multiple Vex within a Havoc choose players to become vexlings. In that case, the Vex are split between the two players, and aren’t strong enough to maintain the life of either players if they die in any way. The High Evoker has to keep the vexling alive by ‘completing’ the half-soul. This is done by splitting the jewel of a necklace - and therefore the soul of the Vex in it, in two, each half binding to the soul of each player. The necklace, if worn, will now keep the players respawning, even through deaths that would permanently kill a normal player. The split soul also soulbinds the two vexlings together, and means the necklace jewel glows more/less depending on how close the two are, and both halves match the state of the Vexling’s souls (for instance, turning black if one is possessed by sculk). It also means that both are possessed at once, and both teleport to the Vex lands at once.

Cub and Scar are Soulbound Vexlings.

When a Vexling dies permanently, the Vex soul within them can become a Vex again. Though the Vexling’s physical form is lost, the Vex still holds vague memories of the Vexling that they can’t quite remember, but still hold significance. They will, for instance, be drawn to worlds or people the Vexling loved, without quite knowing why.

[electrasev5nwrites]

Ninja Daily: Vapors 24

Uchiha Itachi looked once more at the picture of his target, Uzumaki Naruto, and considered banging his head against the wall. It would be most undignified and out of character, but then again, so was the fact that he had managed to overlook the fact that his otouto's sensei had taken one student before the team with the jinchuuriki. Just one—which was more than a bit unusual. Even Itachi himself had been on a genin team (if only for about a month).

He had sent a query with a mutual contact about young, red-headed kunoichi in Konoha's active forces in an attempt to figure out who that girl had been. There couldn't possibly be very many, he had thought. Only about a third of the active forces were female, only 26 percent of which were under the age of twenty, and he knew that the vast majority of Konoha's citizens were far less colorful than those of Mist or Snow.

As it turned out, there were only two kunoichi who fit his description, and both of them shared a last name with his jinchuuriki target.

When he had received the initial briefing on his target, it hadn't taken Itachi long at all to put a few pieces of information together and come to a few conclusions. He certainly hadn't missed the connection between the boy's birthday and the day that he was sealed, and his last name implied that he was a direct relative of the former jinchuuriki. Public records listed that woman as one Uzumaki Kushina who had been listed as dying on the day of the nine tails' attack. The fact that his sister shared a shade of this Kushina's unusual hair color seemed to lend credence to the theory that she was their mother and not some other relative.

It seemed most likely that the woman had died in childbirth in a Madara-assisted tragedy and it had been covered up for some reason, Itachi had surmised. Perhaps it had been intended to prevent her name from being smeared after her death by upset villagers looking for a scapegoat for the horrors of that day? If that had been the intention, it had worked well enough. Itachi remembered the confusion of the days after October tenth and the moment that fingers had seemed to point at the Uchiha clan on the basis of a legend.

If Madara was to be believed, the villagers had been onto the correct path of deductive reasoning even if the people they pointed fingers at were innocent. However, when they turned their resentment towards the new jinchuuriki after his identity became clear, they had failed to show such clarity of vision.

After all, it was obvious even to Itachi who had no memories of seeing the man in person that this Uzumaki Naruto was the child of the fourth Hokage. The resemblance was far too strong for any other conclusion to be reached. Unless Namikaze Minato was an absolute monster of a man, he would not have sealed a demon inside his own child without being certain that it was safe. Itachi was certain that both of those children were kept under tight supervision. It would explain Jiraiya's connection to the girl and why he was taking a personal interest in Naruto when conventional wisdom would have indicated that the boy should have been kept within the village while S class criminals hunted him. Konoha's jinchuuriki was a treasure of the country for more than just the contents of the ink on his belly.

That heritage meant, he concluded rather bitterly, that the twin of the jinchuuriki may well be a person of interest on her own merits rather than as a note about a possible weakness to use against Naruto. No child of the Red Chained Death and the fourth Hokage would be content with mediocrity.

Still, no amount of Uzumaki sealing or Namikaze speed (he had been doing a lot of reading up on the two figures he had previously only known about in a passing sense) would explain the girl's strange visions. Unless it was a bloodline ability that had been concealed? Very possible, he concluded. Anyone with sense at all could tell that it was a very dangerous ability that could easily be misused. If the Uchiha had really had the predictive powers they boasted about, they would have denied everything that hinted at the ability and hoarded it as best as they could.

Then again, if it had been an Uzumaki trait, their village probably wouldn't have been destroyed, Itachi mused rather wryly. He struggled not to let any irritation rise. 'This is an unproductive line of reasoning.' He blinked slowly, lifting his head to view the sunrise outside his window. 'Without more information about how such an ability would function, I cannot draw conclusions about what limitations it may possess or what a user would do with it.'

What was more important, Itachi decided, was determining if he should act on the information he had unwittingly stumbled upon or not. His initial plan had been to stall retrieving the Nine-Tails for as long as possible and feeding Jiraiya information that would hopefully lead to the incapacitation of Akatsuki personnel to prevent their goals.

It seemed unlikely that the girl would do anything to interfere with those aims. Perhaps it would just be best to gather what information he could and step carefully.

There was an awkward four-way stare off between Aiko and the three genin she would be leading on a short messenger mission as a way to get them a little experience outside of the village and give her experience with command. She swallowed, hard.

The genin just looked so… tiny. Had she really been that small only two years ago? 'No,' her mind supplied. 'I was one of the tallest kids in the Academy when I was nine. At their age, I must have been four inches taller than that.' A voice that sounded a little like Sasuke's was laughing hysterically at her somewhere in the back of her head. She resolved to never let him know about this mission if it didn't go well.

They didn't exactly look impressed with her either, to be fair. They were probably not expecting a thirteen year old Chuunin who didn't even wear her flak jacket.

She spent a moment wondering where the hell that thing was. The one they'd given her at age eleven had been far too large to wear. Maybe it was in the back of her closet somewhere.

The three children in front of her (and they seemed like children, even if those headbands made them adults) were from the group that Tsunade had bumped up into the genin corps to free up more experienced ninja to take the missions the village desperately needed to function. They probably weren't happy knowing that they wouldn't be getting a real Jounin sensei until the village found its equilibrium again, but they were at least smart enough not to voice the doubts they were obviously having. Their best chance for escaping the trap that the genin corps sometimes became was to find a sponsor in an upper level peer… like Aiko.

She cleared her throat and pasted on a smile. "Ohayo, I'm Uzumaki Aiko and I will be your team leader." There was a beat of silence while the eleven year olds glanced at each other with varying levels of skepticism and uncertainty.

Aiko committed to memory that the girl with the sleek black pigtails and blue eyeshadow in a white halter top and slit blue skirt was Akira, the dirty blonde boy beside her in a green sleeveless tee was Ken, and that the other little girl, a shy thing with shaggy bangs who was practically swimming in loose yellow clothing, was Emiko. She led them to the red bridge her team liked to meet at before folding her legs and encouraging them to sit on the sun-warmed wood as well to look over the mission brief.

"Have any of you been outside the village before?" At the three heads that shook silently, Aiko sighed and leaned back. She readied herself for a lecture. "All right then. The town we are going to is near our closest border outpost, normally manned by Chuunin," she started easily, cracking one eye open to be sure they were paying attention. "Can anyone tell me why that this mission is going to be run by a team of genin instead of a single Chuunin posted on border duty?"

Akira was apparently insightful enough to guess that the Chuunin at the border were basically glorified genin. When her teammates gave her scornful looks, Aiko cut in by ruffling the girl's hair.

"That's right, actually. In much the same way that you three were promoted before you were to normal genin standards because we desperately needed to fill the ranks, so have they been promoted. Therefore, while it is normally acceptable to take one Chuunin off patrol to run messages, we will be doing that off and on for a few weeks so that the border outpost doesn't lose any strength. Does anyone think they know what all they will need to bring for a mission like this? Feel free to ask questions."

"Um…" Emiko bit at her lower lip and looked down. "Should we bring full camping equipment? I mean, it's pretty warm this time of year, and they're so heavy that we won't be moving very fast if we carry them everywhere."

"Good question, but I think you'll be surprised by how cold it gets at night," Aiko informed in an amused tone. "I would pack a change of clothing other than what you wear out of the village, at least one of which is for colder weather. Normally you would be right about camping equipment, but I will have that under control. I need to practice my sealing anyways. So when we meet, lug your sleeping bags along if you have them. If not, at least one warm blanket."

"Weapons?" Emiko asked with more confidence this time.

"No more than you can carry in your holster, and only the kind you are most skilled with," Aiko confirmed. "I hope you all had good survival scores, because I will be making sure you can take care of gathering and preparing food within Konoha's borders on this trip." She made a face. Because the class had been graduated half a year early, they hadn't yet completed their curriculum. That meant she might be walking sobbing children through their first time skinning a bunny rabbit. Joy.

They gave each other uneasy looks, but let that pass without comment.

Then Aiko broached the topic that Kakashi never had with his genin team. "Your outfits," she started, watching with some amusement when all three of them glanced down, "are unsuitable for field work. I expect to see you report for duty with close-fitting clothing of dark or camouflage coloring and any flapping sleeves or such secured with bandages or clips that won't snag. Mesh or other light armor is recommended, and I don't want to see any polyester blends. That means cotton or other breathable fabrics. Does anyone not have clothing like that in their wardrobe?"

When two hands went up and the other wavered uncertainly, Aiko heaved a sigh and wondered why the hell the Academy didn't make this point more often.

She swiveled her ankles to place her feet flat on the red painted wood and stood up without bothering to unfold her legs, letting her left leg slide over to stabilize her weight. "Alright then, follow me kiddies. I will finance exactly one work appropriate outfit for all three of you, since I know you haven't been earning much yet. But I will be very disappointed if I don't see that you've added to it in a month or so. I know that weapons and food are important, but your clothes are ninja gear too."

The next day, she and her three mini-me ninjas (clad in long-sleeved tunics much like her own, complete with adorable little masks that Ken had been decidedly unhappy about) met at the gate. Izumo didn't bother to hide his snorts of laughter, eventually descending into desk-slapping hysterics. Aiko tapped her foot, unamused and with her lips pressed so tightly together that they were turning white.

That was about when Kotetsu looked up from his paperwork, scrunched up his face at his idiotic coworker in disgust, and then caught sight of Aiko and her three genin. His face turned green.

"Am I seeing things, or has Hatake finally figured out how to reproduce by splitting in thirds?" he half-whispered as if afraid to catch her attention.

Aiko turned bright red, cheeks coloring under the half-mask and slapped down her mission orders with more force than necessary. "Cut the crap, please" she snapped briskly. They didn't have to be such total dicks all the time. Okay, so maybe she hero worshiped her shishou a little bit. But that didn't give them license to mock her. He was actually a really freaking awesome shinobi. On his worst day, blinded and with both hands tied behind his back, he could easily put the hurt down on the two of them at once. They had no right to be anything less than reverent towards such a fine specimen. Besides, his preferences in mission gear were both practical and good-looking.

"Sure thing senpai," Izumo wheezed, not noticing his coworker disengaging from the conversation and snatching the last of his cruller.

She reached over and hit him upside the head. It took a few minutes of glowering and paper stamping to get them out of the village, at which point her ducklings tried to give her inquisitive looks. "Don't ask," she practically growled. "They're just jealous."

The eleven year olds noted her stomping and clenched fists. Wisely, none of them commented, though they did exchange looks behind her back that they probably assumed she didn't sense.

It quickly became clear that the genin were still innocent enough to be delighted by their first trip out of the village walls. Not for the first time, Aiko wondered if the strictly enforced restriction of travel was actually intended to cause children to associate the freedom outside with the glamour of being a ninja and not something that everyone should be able to experience. She said nothing, however. It wasn't a productive area of discussion, especially when she was the only person she knew whose formative ideals hadn't been purposefully engendered as part of Konoha's military culture.

She drove them at a grueling pace to the outpost more because it was professional than because she needed to work off irritation, stopping only once for a twenty minute break and sympathetically watched them struggle to get down as much water as possible with shaking fingers, flopping down onto the cool dirt.

"Slow down," she cautioned mildly after giving them a few minutes to make bad decisions. They probably wouldn't want to listen, but it would only be fair to give them the information to make the right choice. They'd remember it later. "You'll regret it if you make yourself sick. Use small, constant sips. And don't just fall over like a dead cat, stretch so that you don't get cramps."

'Wow, timid little Emiko has an unexpectedly fierce glare,' Aiko noted. Outwardly, she gave them a big silly grin that she was sure they could see through her mask. That surety was partially based on the fact that Akira grit her teeth and began breathing slowly through them as if she was counting her breaths. She forced her smile to move upwards, creasing her eyes. One of them actually managed to achieve mild killing intent.

'Hey, this is actually pretty fun,' she giggled to herself while doing her own stretches. She was just doing what she had to do—keeping them on task and moving at a respectable speed. The transition from training to be a shinobi and even introductory level shinobi active duty wasn't an easy one.

"Okay kids, break's over!" She did her best not to relish the overly-dramatic wails that came after. It was a veritable chorus of "that wasn't twenty minutes!"

It hadn't been. It was twenty three minutes, but breaks always felt too short when you were still coming down from a stomach-churning workout.

The next time that they stopped, it was for the night. It felt more than a bit silly to spend more than one day en route to the outpost. On her own, Aiko could have made the trip in about five hours. Her shishou undoubtedly could have done it in four. But luckily for her poor genins' sake, Aiko had possessed the foresight to ask Iruka-sensei as to just what speed she could safely push fresh genin to. The surprise on his face had indicated that either the common sense approach to information gathering was rare or that Iruka wasn't usually the person people asked. She wasn't sure if she should be depressed by that lack of practical habits or wonder if there was something wrong with Iruka's assessments that would lead people to avoid asking him those types of questions.

As it turned out, Ken had the quickest reflexes and brought down a hare first. When Emiko brought down the second, she had them skin and prepare them while Akira gathered wood, lit the fire, and went out on a short hunt for edible berries.

She split the watch into two-hour segments that night, taking the last watch herself and running a short perimeter check while Emiko practically crawled back into her sleeping bag with gummy eyes.

When tummies grumbled and the bags had been re-sealed back into one of the short scrolls Aiko tucked into her hip pouch, she withdrew four energy bars and passed them out. "If we hurry, we can pick up our package and stop for lunch at a teashop close to the outpost," she said mildly, knowing perfectly well that the thought of real food would be irresistible after having those terrible bars for two days in a row.

She let Ken take point and set the pace when they left again, taking the rear position so that she could keep them all in sight and keep an eye out for threats. It would be pretty terrible to have her genin swiped out from behind her on her very first command. Aiko was pleased to note that her admonishment about speed had been taken into account and Ken was setting a pace that had both him and Akira panting. Emiko took much longer to seem to give out steam, face flushing pink about the time that her teammates first had to take a five minute breather for drinks.

"We need to veer east," she advised mildly, letting Ken choose the exact path. She would have taken to a higher route through the trees, but the rookie genin were all unfortunately still bound by gravity's rules and had to take the somewhat more circuitous route around the thickest copses of trees.

Of all the people in the world who could have been manning the outpost, Shikamaru was the Chuunin who ambled out to meet them. He shook his head wordlessly, giving the panting genin a somewhat pitying look. "She made you run the whole way, did she?" Dark eyes passed over Aiko's sweat-free form. "I'm glad you weren't my sensei, Aiko-senpai."

Akira lifted her head to give Aiko a strange look, darting back and forth between the two Chuunin. Her expression was most politely described as 'incredulous'. Aiko was mildly offended. She was the same age as Shikamaru and about as tall as he was. He didn't really look any more impressive than she did. Maybe it was that damn vest? Goddamn, she was going to dig through her closet when she got home. If the smallest size fit Shikamaru's skinny ribs, hers should work fine now that she was older.

Of course Shikamaru caught the look. "When are you getting promoted?" he prodded, giving a slight smirk at the way she glowered. "If I'm Chuunin material, you're Jounin material."

"What, you want to share all the fun you're having?" she asked dryly. Then she shrugged artlessly. "It's a long story, that begins and ends with Kakashi-shishou mouthing off to a Hokage and telling them they aren't qualified to make decisions about promotions. There may have been pointed comments about someone's alcoholism and relative lack of intelligence. At this point, I think it would be best if I just let Tsunade-sama forget I exist so as not to draw any attention. I'm fine with Chuunin clearance anyway."

The boy snorted. "Bet she liked that." Shikamaru dug around in his hip pouch, extracting a brown paper bundle tied with blue string. "Here. It's too troublesome to hold onto this longer than I have to. My supervisor keeps checking to make sure I haven't lost it. It almost seems like they don't trust me or something."

Aiko snorted. "That's an adorable package," she deadpanned, unzipping her own pouch and tucking the surprisingly hefty 4x4x2 box inside.

It was in fact very cute, but the colored string was actually a message itself. It would have been yellow if the missive had been top priority. As it was, a blue stringed message wasn't worth dying to protect. More importantly, it meant that she hadn't lied to her genin about stopping for lunch.

She withdrew her own package from her thigh holster. Shikamaru raised an eyebrow but didn't comment about the fact that she had sealed everything inside a scroll instead of carrying it normally. It hadn't been an impossible amount of material—a few letters with updated orders, a package from someone's sweetheart that she suspected contained baked goods, and a few porno mags and personal items that had been unofficially entrusted to Aiko when word got out that she would be making the deliveries between Konoha and the outpost for the next few weeks. Officially, such things were contraband and personal belongings other than regular letters from family were not allowed on base.

Unofficially, it was widely accepted that border duty was magically even more fucking boring when one was off duty and extracurricular reading material was traded for prices that luxury goods were back home.

Aiko certainly didn't mind bringing the reading material with her; although a couple of the men who'd handed them to her seemed to expect to be beaten roundly about the head. She wasn't sure if the fact that they expected her to scream 'hentai' but had delivered it anyway meant that they were brave or just stupid. There was a fairly good chance that anyone who gave a thirteen year-old known for a cool head reason to scream about perverts would end up full of holes before Anko stopped to evaluate the situation. She did so love to puncture things.

Aiko did, however, mind the idea of passing adult contraband out to her bright-eyed genin to stick in their packs and carry. They were eleven, after all. Hence the sealing scroll.

"There's a 100 ryo delivery charge," she half-joked, trying not to wince at the idea of the expense she'd sunk into sealing it. That wasn't particularly cheap, and it hadn't been for her benefit.

"Ha, no." Shikamaru stuck his hands in his pockets and slouched, looking upwards like he was praying for strength. "I suppose I should get back to work now."

"Not likely," Aiko deadpanned. She turned a critical eye to her ducklings. "Does anyone need to rest a little longer, or are we ready to set out?"

Her brave trio of genin agreed that they were ready to leave (probably thinking with their stomachs) so she waved absentmindedly to Shikamaru and a woman she didn't know who yanked the scroll out of his hands and began to unfurl it before they had even set off.

The sun was cruel and yellow like the eye of a snake, sending punishing lashes down on her deceptively frail shoulders even through the material of her kimono. Temari flushed with heat, eyes darting back and forth between the two males arguing. She considered cutting in, but her newfound bravery around Gaara only went so far. It wasn't like he wanted anything ridiculous, after all. Better let him deal with it.

While all three of the siblings had been promoted to Chuunin after the far-too-eventful exams in Konoha (mostly because Gaara had informed the Council that they had been promoted and left without another word while they sputtered), they had been sent on very few missions as a team. This was in large part because the triumvirate of Sand elders jockeying for power and position placed very little trust in Gaara. She suspected that this mission was largely a trust exercise. Someone was sticking out their neck to demonstrate that the demon container could be controlled for the first time in his life and sent on a mundane mission. If they were wrong, there would doubtlessly be hell to pay. If Gaara snapped in Konoha and so much as stepped on a housewife's toes, Suna could very well be manhandled into even more painful settlements and treaties.

Of course, it was also possible that Gaara had delivered one of his once-frequent threats in order to finagle a rather extended trip to Konoha because he wanted to see his friend. Either way, it mattered little to Temari. Regardless of why, she was taking him back to the place that had changed his mind about defining himself in opposition to every other living being. Temari thought it was a bit of a hellhole- unpleasantly damp, full of loud and obnoxiously dressed weirdoes, and definitely more than a little bit hostile to Suna nin lately- but she was going to have to go and make nice with the Hokage regardless.

It still seemed strange to her that one fight could have altered her baby brother so much. It was almost a shame that she had been cowering behind a copse of trees for most of it and missed whatever the hell Uzumaki Naruto had said to convince Gaara to change his entire philosophy of life. Sometimes she woke up in the morning, saw the sand on her bedroom floor that indicated Gaara had checked on her during the night, and suffered a panic attack that constricted her throat and made it impossible for her to breathe before she remembered that he no longer wanted to hurt her. The absence of the threat almost weighed more heavily on her mind than the ever-present danger had for years.

They set off for the Land of Fire without words. Kankuro was not with them for this mission, a fact that would have worried her far more if she didn't know that he would be safely ensconced in his workroom while they were gone.

This mission was important, of course, but Temari, who had been trained in niceties since she was old enough to toddle, was really the only one being sent as a diplomat. Gaara had definitely not had many of those lessons, a fact which she had awkwardly tried to remedy in the past week when she heard he would be coming with her. With Gaara included on the team, she needed no other escort. It would have been too threatening to send another member at this delicate stage of negotiations. Besides, Sand had been so weakened by the failed invasion and Orochimaru's misuse of their forces that even the removal of a single talented Chuunin from the village could mean the difference between an adequate response force within the village walls in case of an emergency and being totally overrun.

That was probably why Councilman Shu had been arguing with Gaara about going, she idly noted. Despite being frightened of Gaara, all in Sand respected his strength.

She let him set the pace. It was no skin off her back if Gaara wanted to travel at insane speeds. Kankuro wouldn't have been able to keep up. Temari herself was misusing wind jutsu in order to travel on top of her fan while her red-headed brother sprinted like a man possessed. He didn't do things by halves, Gaara.

Of course, he didn't sweat either, she pouted when they reached the oasis where they habitually stopped to refill their water skins. It was unfair. The barrier of sand that protected his skin from even fatal glows also seemed to keep Gaara's porcelain skin safe from wind and sun burn. She wasn't utilizing the air-based jutsu that kept the hot air off her skin with a cushion of artificially cooled air—it was stupidly difficult to maintain while flying at high speeds, and the gusts she experienced on top of her fan kept her from getting too hot.

They didn't save her from minor sunburn, however, so she took a moment to withdraw her little blue pot of lotion and rub it onto her cheeks and the back of her neck while they stopped. Gaara's nose flared as if the scent bothered him, but he gave no comment.

[horsemains]

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[just-dreaming-marvel]

The Bond Between Us ~ 7

THE BOND BETWEEN US MASTERLIST

< previous chapter

Word Count: 3,440ish

Summary: You and Obi-Wan find Kamino and are surprised by what you find there.

Notes: It’s really going to be a slow burn type series… and it’s kinda killing me. (Especially when I have some future scenes already written out…)

You and Obi-Wan shared a ship to your flight to Kamino, him piloting. He had offered you the chance since he hadn’t flown with you before and he honestly didn’t love flying. You turned in down, not wanting to wreck his ship.

“There it is,” Obi-Wan stated after you exited light speed. “Right where it should be. Our missing planet Kamino.”

You inhaled sharply. A sense of secrecy washed over you. Whatever was on Kamino, someone was trying their best to keep it a secret from the rest of the galaxy. Obi-Wan could sense your mind worrying about what was ahead and he had heard your sharp intake of breath.

“Little star? What’s wrong?” He asked.

“Someone’s gone through a lot of trouble to keep this place a secret,” you whispered, eyes focused on the planet. “The Force is uneasy around this place… I don’t like it.”

Obi-Wan was impressed that you could feel all that more than he could. But, even when you were untrained, you always had a strong connection with the Force. “We’ll be together the whole time. No need to worry.”

“I’m less worried about us than I am about what is happening down there. Didn’t Dex say that they are cloners?”

“Yes.”

“So what could they possibly be cloning that they needed to be erased from the archives?”

“That, little star, is a very good question.”

As you descended to the planet, you observed what it’s system was like. The whole planet seemed to be a raging ocean storm. The waves were high, barely missing the buildings that seemed anchored to the planet some how. The lightning that frequently struck seemed to be the only light available through the dark storm clouds. 

Upon landing, you and Obi-Wan slipped your cloak hoods on to protect yourself from the rain outside. The winds were forceful and the rain hard as Obi-Wan helped you out of the starship. Staying close beside each other, the two of you heading toward the doors. You entered, immediately being treated by one of the beings living on the planet.

“Master Jedi,” the female being greeted. “The Prime Minister is expecting you.”

“I’m expected?” Obi-Wan questioned. 

You shot him a worried glance as you set your soaked hood down on your shoulders, your worry for this assignment growing more. You heart slightly skipped a bit at the sight of Obi-Wan’s wet and disheveled hair. The sight of him made you feel warm and you had the sudden urge to comb your fingers through his hair. Shaking your head slightly, you pulled yourself out of your thoughts. It was strange. You had never felt anything like this before, towards anyone. You knew that any feelings like this were against the Code so you quickly tried to shut them down.

“Of course,” the being continued. “He is anxious to meet you. After all these years, we were beginning to think you weren’t coming. May I get your names?”

“I am Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and this is my Padawan, Y/N Sky— Y/N L/N.” He would probably never be used to calling you by your adoptive name. 

“Pleasure to meet you both. I am Taun We. Now, please, this way.” 

Taun We led you down a bright, white hallway and into a room where another of the same species was sitting in a chair anchored to the ceiling. The new being, who you could assume was the Prime Minister, stood up as you and Obi-Wan were led to stand in front of it.

“May I present Lama Su,” Taun We introduced, “Prime Minister of Kamino.” You and Obi-Wan bowed to the Prime Minister. “And this is Master Jedi—“

“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Obi-Wan responded. “And this is my Padawan, Y/N L/N.”

“I trust you both are going to enjoy your stay,” Lama Su said. Two seats were brought down from the ceiling. “Please.” You and Obi-Wan each took a seat with the Prime Minister doing the same. “And now done to business. You will be delighted to hear that we are on schedule.” Your brows furrowed in confusion. “200,000 units are ready with a million more well on the way.”

“That’s good news,” Obi-Wan went along with what you two were being told. You could both feel each other’s confusion.

“Please tell your Master Sifo-Dyas that his order will be met on time.” That caught you and Obi-Wan more off guard.

“I’m sorry. Master…”

Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas is still a leading member of the Jedi Council, is he not?”

“Master Sifo-Dyas was killed almost ten years ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. But I’m sure he would have been proud of the army we’ve built for him.”

“The army?” You repeated.

“Yes. A clone army, and I must say, one of the finest we’ve ever created.

“Tell me, Prime Minister, when my Master first contacted you about the army, did—did he say who it was for?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Of course he did. This army is for the Republic.” 

You felt the air grow thick around you, telling you that something about this wasn’t right. You tried not to show that you had begun struggling for breath.

“But you must be anxious to inspect the units for yourself,” the Prime Minister continued.

“That’s why we’re here,” Obi-Wan said.

The Prime Minister got up and began showing you and Obi-Wan out of the room. You stood up on shaking legs, Obi-Wan reaching out as he noticed.

“Are you alright, little star?” He asked, concern evident.

“Yes,” you rasped with a nod. “I’m fine.”

Obi-Wan was clearing not convinced but had decided that now was not the time to question you. Linking your arms, Obi-Wan helped you follow the Prime Minister. He could feel that you were sensing something within the Force but he was unable to tell what it was for himself.

The two of you were shown the various places that were used to help create, grow, and train the clones. You couldn’t help but feel saddened, thinking that these clones deserved better than what they were getting. Yes, they were clones but they were still individual life forms.

“Very impressive,” Obi-Wan complimented.

“I’d hoped you would be pleased,” Lama Su said. “Clones can think creatively. You will find that they are immensely superior to droids. We take great pride in our combat education and training programs.” You paused in front of one of the windows, looking in at a group of clones on training screens. “This group was created about five years ago.” It was clear that the clones were not five years old, most likely double that.

“You mentioned growth acceleration.”

“Oh, yes, it’s essential.” Your group began walking again. “Otherwise, a mature clone would take a lifetime to grow. Now we can do it in half the time.”

“I see.”

“They are totally obedient, taking any order without question. We modified their genetic structure to make them less independent than the original host.”

“And who was the original host?” You inquired.

“A bounty hunter called Jango Fett.”

“And where is this bounty hunter now?” Obi-Wan wondered.

“Oh, we keep him here. Apart from his pay, which is considerable, Fett demanded only one thing: an unaltered clone for himself. Curious, isn’t it?”

“Unaltered?”

“Pure genetic replication. No tampering with the structure to make it more docile and no growth acceleration.”

“He wanted a child,” you whispered.

“I should very much like to meet this Jango Fett,” Obi-Wan stated.

“I would be very happy to arrange it for you,” Taun We responded.

You gasped as you and Obi-Wan were led out onto a balcony overlooking a large room of thousands of marching clones. They were armed and each wearing similar armor to each other. With your arm still being linked with Obi-Wan’s, your hand squeezed his bicep. His Force signature came over you revealing that he was just as nervous about all of this as you were.

“Magnificent, aren’t they?” The Prime Minister commented, looking over his most prize creations.

~~~

“I do not like how this place feels,” you whispered to Obi-Wan as Taun We led you to meet Jango Fett. “It is not the people, it’s the Force around it. Like it’s…” you trailed off, afraid to voice your concerns.

“Like it’s what, little star?” Obi-Wan pressed.

“Like darkness is slowly gathering around it. I can’t understand how the Council hasn’t felt it.” Looking in his eyes and in the bond, you knew that this was a burden you were carrying on your own. “How you haven’t felt it.”

Obi-Wan looked away, taking in your words and pondering them. You had a point. How had the Council not sensed what you have been? Taun We stopped them at a door, ringing the buzzer to inform those inside of your presence. The door slid open revealing a boy about ten years old. He glared at you and Obi-Wan.

“Boba, is your father here?” Taun We asked the child.

“Yep,” Boba responded.

“May we see him?”

“Sure.” Boba turned back and headed into the living space, leaving the door open so that you may follow. “Dad, Taun We’s here.”

You and Obi-Wan studied your surroundings as you walked in. The place was simple, plain, with no decorations. From behind you, Jango came out of a side room. You followed Obi-Wan’s led in bowing to him.

“Jango, welcome back,” Taun We greeted. “Was your trip productive?”

“Fairly,” Jango responded, keeping his eyes on the Jedi.

“This is Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Padawan. They’ve come to check on our progress.”

“Your clones are very impressive,” Obi-Wan commented. “You must be very proud.”

“I’m just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe,” Jango responded.

“Ever made your way as far into the interior as Coruscant?”

“Once or twice.”

“Recently?”

“Possibly.”

“Then you must know Master Sifo-Dyas.” 

You tried not to looked too confused as Obi-Wan’s statement. He sent you a Force push to trust him as he felt your confusion. After Obi-Wan’s statement, Jango turned to Boba and spoke to him in a different language. The boy going off and closing the hallway door. You got a glimpse of the room before the door slid shut, allowing you to see the armor laying on the ground.

“Master who?” Jango questioned.

“Sifo-Dyas,” Obi-Wan repeated. “Is he not the Jedi who hired you for this job?”

“Never heard of him?”

“Really?”

“I was recruited by a man called Tyranus on one of the moons of Bogden.”

“Curious.”

You felt a darkness just by Jango saying the name, Tyranus. 

“Do you like your army?” Jango asked.

“We look forward to seeing them in action,” Obi-Wan replied.

“They’ll do their job well. I’ll guarantee that.”

Obi-Wan bowed his head. “Thank you for your time, Jango.”

“Always a pleasure to meet a Jedi.”

You bowed your head toward Jango before following Obi-Wan out of the room. Taun We walked with you back to the doors that would allow you to reach your starship.

“Tell your Council that the first battalions are ready,” Taun We said. “And remind them, if they need more troops, it will take more time to grow them.”

“We won’t forget,” Obi-Wan responded, “and thank you.”

“Thank you.”

Putting your hoods up, you and Obi-Wan walked out of the building and out into the raging storm.

“R4!” Obi-Wan called to his droid in the starship. R4 beeped in response. “Scramble code five to Coruscant, care of the old folks’ home!”

You let out a laugh. “Old folks home?” You repeated. Your voices were slightly raised to compete with the loud storm.

“I didn’t come up with it!”

R4 beeped as the droid began sending out a signal. A hologram appeared, showing Yoda and Mace Windu sitting in one of the meditation rooms.

“We have successfully made contact with the Prime Minister of Kamino,” Obi-Wan told them. “They are using a bounty hunter named Jango Fett to create a clone army.”

“I have a strong feeling that this bounty hunter is the assassin we are looking for,” you added.

“Do you think these cloners are involved in the plot to assassinate Senator Amidala?” Windu asked.

“No, Master,” Obi-Wan answered. “There appears to be no motive.”

“Do not assume anything, Obi-Wan,” Yoda chided. “Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.”

“Yes, Master.”

“What have you been sensing, Padawan?” Windu asked you. The Council, since having trained you personally, knew of your skills and how you went about assignments.

“There’s a darkness growing over this place, Master,” you responded honestly. “A darkness that I have never felt before.”

“Hmm. Interesting,” Yoda hummed.

“What other information have you gathered?” Windu questioned.

“They say Master Sifo-Dyas placed an order for a clone army at the request of the Senate almost ten years ago,” Obi-Wan explained. Mace and Yoda shared a look. “I was under the impression he was killed before that. Did the Council ever authorize the creation of a clone army?”

“No. Whoever placed that order did not have the authorization of the Jedi Council.”

“Bring him here,” Yoda directed. “Question him we will.”

“Yes, Master,” Obi-Wan replied. “We will report back when we have him.” The communication ended and Obi-Wan faced you. “How confident to you feel in combat?”

“Very, Master,” you responded.

“Good. Cause I have a feeling this won’t be easy.”

You took off your cloak before the two of you hurried back inside and headed for Jango’s apartment. Despite the rain, you chose to ditch it due to the fact that you hated fighting in the cloak. You tried to not make it seem like there was something wrong as you hurried through the halls but when you reached the apartment and found it empty, you knew you had to act fast. Obi-Wan and you ran through the halls, Obi-Wan allowing you to lead slightly because you could sense where the bounty hunter was. Running out onto the stormy platform, you saw Jango in his gear with Boba helping him load their ship.

“Dad, look!” Boba shouted, pointing toward you and Obi-Wan.

“Boba, get on board!” Jango ordered.

You and Obi-Wan unhooked your lightsabers and ignited them. Obi-Wan had to hold in his surprise when he saw that your lightsaber was a vibrant shade of yellow. The two of you charged at Jango, deflecting the shots he was firing. Jango used his jet pack to fly back, up into the air, and behind on of the large pillars. You and Obi-Wan went back to back, trying to sense where Jango might be coming from next.

“Boba’s in the ship,” you stated, noting how it was turning.

“Stay out here and help me with Jango,” Obi-Wan directed. “We can deal with the boy later.”

Suddenly, a missile was launch and exploded right in front of the two of you. Both of you went flying back. Your lightsabers fell out of your hands and rolled away.

“Y/N!” Obi-Wan shouted as he landed on the platform and slid to a stop. 

Boba began using the ship to fire at the two of you, the explosions throwing you both around some more. You ended up falling off the edge of the platform.

“Y/N!” Obi-Wan screamed.

You were able to catch yourself on the slippery edge before you could fall to what you presumed would be your death.

“Hang on!” Obi-Wan shouted in between grunts. 

A physical fight between the Jedi Master and the bounty hunter had started on the platform. You knew that it was pointless to wait for Obi-Wan to rescue you. Besides, you didn’t have the time as your hands began to slip. Closing your eyes, you focused on the Force around it. Using it to your advantage, you heaved yourself back onto the platform. 

Your hand shot out, pulling your saber to you. Obi-Wan tried to do the same thing with his saber, only for Jango to quickly shoot a grappling rope around the Jedi’s hands and begin pulling him around. You held out your hand in Jango’s direction and pulled him down to the ground. Jango landed on the edge, knocking his jet pack off of his back. He grabbed a gun that had been knocked out of his hands previously as Obi-Wan ran and kicked him over the edge and down the side.

“Oh, not good,” Obi-Wan said before he was pulled down the side as well, having still been connected to the bounty hunter by the rope tied around his hands.

“Obi-Wan!” You shouted, looking over the edge at the two of them.

Jango used something in the arm of his armor to slow himself down. Obi-Wan still slid off the side, dangling from the rope. Jango struggled with the weight of Obi-Wan, causing him to slowly be dragged off the side as well. Jango disconnected the rope, causing you to shout again.

“No!”

“I’m alright, little star,” you heard Obi-Wan’s voice through the Force. “Keep fighting. I’ll be right there.”

You noticed that Jango was climbing up the side. As you prepared yourself to fight him again, Boba started using their ship to shoot at you again. You used the Force and your lightsaber to help you dodge the oncoming blasts. That unfortunately distracted you from dealing with Jango. Jango ran to and up the on ramp. Obi-Wan rushed through the doors that led to the platform to see you fighting off the blasts. Your movements were beautiful and smooth. You glanced over, smirking at the look on Obi-Wan’s face. That one moment allowed you to be distracted enough to allow a blast graze your side. You groaned in pain as your hand came up to hold your head. Obi-Wan ran over to your side, already able to feel your pain, as Jango and Boba’s ship began to fly.

“Little star!” Obi-Wan called.

“I’m fine,” you responded, putting up blockers in your mind quickly. “We need to get to the ship, get after them.”

“But you—“

“I will be fine. It’s just a graze.” You stood up and ran for the door. “Let’s go!”

Obi-Wan called for his lightsaber before finishing a tracker out of his cloak. He activated it and tossed it onto the ship. Turning around, he saw you waiting in the doorway for him. Your hand was still clutching your side, making him unbelieving that it was just a graze. He tried to probe your mind but you had blocked him. 

“I don’t trust that your hit was just a graze,” Obi-Wan confessed as he met you in the doorway. “But we will deal with it after we bring Jango in. Will you be able to push through?”

“Of course, Master,” you responded. “The Council has instilled in me a strength to push through. I promise, I will be fine.”

Your response didn’t comfort Obi-Wan any bit. It just made him feel guilty that he didn’t fight to keep you as his Padawan with Anakin. You were still so kind and gentle, light flowing from you like Master Yoda had said. But now that he was actually spending time with you, he was noticing more about how the Council had trained you. They had trained you to be the Chosen One and not to be a Jedi. They had chosen you to train themselves because you were powerful and seemed moldable. You were going to push through, no matter how much pain it caused you, even if it cost you your life. Because that’s what you were taught was right. That’s all you really knew. 

Obi-Wan trusted the Council, always had, but this was different. You came into the Jedi order having been a slave with a power you didn’t understand and with a brother you were so willing to protect. To Obi-Wan, it was clear that the Council had used that to their advantage. He longed to confront the Jedi Council about what he believed that had been doing, but he knew it was not his place.

“Right,” Obi-Wan muttered, thoughts still clouded. “Let’s go.”

next chapter >

TAGLIST IS CLOSED - Taglist Information

[enchantestuff]

rekindle - rbr sebastian vettel

in which after a long time apart, you and Sebastian rekindle your love for one another in the least romantic place you could think of - a sweaty, packed nightclub

NOT MY GIF!!

warnings: public sex (ofc), fingering, teasing, lowkey angst at the start, nicknames, uncomfy ex, sebastain Vettel deserves a warning himself, happy sinning

taglist: @theringers​ @forestviper201 @icemanhoneybadger​ @formulamei @findthelightinyourlife

3.1k words

You smirked as your eyes met from across the club for what felt like the hundredth time that night. You hadn't seen him in over a year, the last time you were even in the same country as him had ended up with you climbing into a taxi, speeding away to the airport and him standing half naked in his driveway, wishing for the car to turn around and end his worst nightmare.

The relationship between you and Sebastsian was a complicated one to say the least. You had grown up with each other, your families vacationed together every second summer and you spent many christmases together. It was only when you got older that you started to really appreciate Sebastian.

Daydreams of what it would be like to spend a night in bed with him began to fill your free moments. Images of the two of you tangled in bed was once something that you could only dream about, but that dream certainly became a reality one unforgettable night in Italy.

It was during a celebratory dinner after yet another win that he had leaned over to talk to you. His lips brushed against the side of your neck and goosebumps had risen all over your skin, you cursed yourself for your reaction but soon began praising your childish antics once Sebastian finally caught onto how you felt about him.

The few words of “do i make you nervous, liebe?” led to the two of you making out in the corridor. That celebratory dinner escalated to a friends with benefits situation which set off a more than complicated relationship between the two of you where feelings were of course present, but stubbornness from both sides refused to let them be out in the open.

Your feelings for one another eventually escaped when he got into a nasty crash in the middle of a race. You ran up to him the minute he stormed into the garage, tears welling in your eyes as you crushed into a hug. He held you with just as much force and whispered into your ear what you had been waiting for months to hear.

He told you that you had been the only thing on his mind when he crashed into the wall and he didn't want to go a minute longer without telling you how he really felt about you

As much as you wanted things to be great with Sebastain, your relationship was unfortunately not plain sailing from there and the media had a bring role to play in your downfall. They wouldn't leave him or you alone, constantly following the two of you wherever you went and even going as far as sending mail to your shared home. It was the media that drove you to leave the man you adored and move to another country in search for a new career and a new life away from the public eye.

You stared at him now, unable to tear your eyes away from his beautiful frame. He looked as good as ever and you knew deep down that you would probably never see him again. So against your brain telling you not to, you engraved every detail of his face into your memory, not wanting to let him go just yet.

You felt horrible for leaving him and strongly believed that he hated you for abandoning him. You wouldn't have blamed him if he did, you sometimes hated yourself for that decision. So you kept your distance from him all night, repeatedly telling yourself that if he did not harbor any bad emotions towards you, then he would approach you himself.

To tell the truth, you were too embarrassed to go up to him yourself, too full of guilt to face him after what you had done. But when he made eye contact with you as he pulled a girl into his body, something inside you snapped and you found yourself being dragged into an all too familiar game of cat and mouse with him.

Your night of teasing had officially begun the minute he kissed the brunette's neck, refusing to break your stare as his hands ran up and down her hips. You decided it was your turn to reciprocate the teasing and pulled a random, but still handsome, man towards you to dance. Holding your gaze with him, you allowed the man to grip onto your hips and sway from side to side. Your ass pressing against him with every beat of the music.

You maintained eye contact with him as he chatted with multiple women, his hands resting dangerously low on their backs as he smirked in your direction, you hated how much you loved his little games.

You decided to take a dance break and stepped away from the claustrophobic dance floor. Moving towards the less packed bar, you leaned against the contour top as you ordered yet another drink. The feeling of hands wrapping around your hips didn’t surprise you, nor did the hot breath fanning across the back of your neck. You were used to the warmth of Seb’s body by now and after so much time apart, you still recognized his touch.

“Quite a show you put on back there,” he muttered, gesturing to the bartender for another drink before turning his attention back towards you. You kept your face forward, staring at the variety of liquor stacked on the shelves as Sebastian flirted with you in your ear. He was still positioned behind you, which you saw as the perfect opportunity to press your ass against his crotch.

The tightening of his grip only fueled you to press yourself further into him in hopes that you would emit an even stronger reaction from him, and boy did you get what you wanted. One of his hands rested underneath your breast and as he emitting a small amount of pressure against you, he forced you into him.

No longer leaning against the counter, you could now feel the entirety of his body pressed against you. Every vein and muscle. Every curve and dent of his body, Still, that didn't stop you from wiggling your bum against him.

“Are you trying to turn me on right now, love, or are you really that fucking oblivous?”

You twisted your head to finally look at him, momentarily taken aback by his pure beauty before regaining your confidence again. “That depends,” you hummed, purposely brushing your lips against his neck as you spoke, “Is it working?”

His hold on you tightened and somehow he pulled you even closer to him, allowing you to feel every inch and vein of his hardened cock. “Someones excited,” you smiled, immediately freezing up when you caught sight of your ex boyfriend standing next to you.

He was the man you had been with before Seb and it was safe to say he had completely broken your heart.

Confusion immediately filled Sebs body at your reaction, fearful he had done something wrong he moved to stand beside you, holding onto your bicep as he looked you in your eyes. “Are you alright, darling?” he questioned, his eyes bouncing back and forth as he searched your face for any indication of pain.

“Yeah its - “

“Y/N! Great to see you.” Dread immediately filled your body at the infamous voice, you felt yourself go rigid in Sebastian's grip and desperately wished for your ex to leave the two of you alone.

“Who's this douche?” Seb whispered in your ear, trying to relive some of your tension and comfort you in what seemed to be a terribly uncomfortable situation.

“Brad, hey,” you muttered, you grabbed hold of Sebastian's hand that was previously sprawled on the bar countertop, using the warmth of his touch as a confidence booster to finally turn around and face the brutal ex.

“How have you been?” he asked, refusing to even glance at the Redbull driver next to you, focusing his hungry gaze on you and you only.

You sighed deeply at his attempt of small talk. Could he not just say hello and move on? Did he really need to interrupt your night.

Sebastian kept a close eye on you throughout your short conversation. A sense of protectiveness filled him at your rigid stance, he knew you could handle the situation yourself but he couldn't help but want to aid you. He felt the need to get involved. So he did.

He didn’t let you answer the man's next question of what you had recently been up to, instead he grabbed hold of the side of your face, his fingers dipping into the nape of your neck as he pulled you into him. He grinned smugly at the worried glance you threw his way before connecting your lips together.

The kiss was hesitant at first.

Taking into account this was your first shared kiss together since the breakup, it felt both natural and unusual to be kissing him again, but as the seconds passed you found yourself relaxing in his hold and began kissing him back with much more force.

You lost yourself in the moment, the idea of your ex boyfriend watching you make out with your other ex boyfriend didn't even cross your mind. You solely focused on the way Sebastian’s lips felt against yours after such a long time apart. He was addicting.

Your eyes fluttered open when he pulled away, blushing slightly at the sheepish look he threw your exes way. “What were you saying, mate?” he confidently asked.

The feeling of his palm burned against your cheek and you couldn't even bring yourself to look at Brad, but you didn't need to as he just stumbled away, clearly intimidated by Sebastian.

There was no need for you to say anything to Seb - if the way you were teasing him earlier on in the evening was of no indication to how you felt about him - then the lustful look you were giving him now certainly was.

He immediately pulled you back into him, your lips reconnecting in a lustful kiss. With no more awkwardness surrounding the two of you, you found yourself enjoying it even more.

Moving one of his hands down your body, Sebastian forcefully squeezed your bum which emitted a gasp from you, allowing him to slip his tongue into your mouth, further deepening the kiss. He pressed his body against yours and your hands raked across it, feeling his muscles flex against your hands.

You moaned into his mouth the minute he dug his hips into you, the feeling of his body so close to you bringing you back to when the two of you dated. Confusion filled you when he pulled away, ending your lovely make out session and disappointing you tremendously. “Don't start what you can't finish, love” he warned, leaning down to scatter kisses across your chest, nipping and licking at every exposed area.

“Who says I can't finish this?” you remarked, grinning at the way his eyebrows rose at your statement.

“Look around us, darling” he stood up straighter, craning his neck to glance from side to side, taking into account the multiple people surrounding the two of you. Hundreds of people filled the room, hundreds of eyes that could possibly witness something. Hundreds of reasons why the two of you shouldn't get ahead of yourselves. But then again, when he looked back at you and the playful pout that crossed your features - he found himself making up a hundred different reasons as to why it was such a brilliant idea.

“But then again,” he continued, leaning closer to you in order to whisper in your ear, “that's never stopped us before.”

A shiver ran up your spine at his words, images flashing through your mind of previous encounters the two of you had in the most inappropriate areas. Cutting your daydream short, Sebastian grabbed hold of your hand and guided you up the stairs to the more secluded vip area.

The bouncer merily glanced at Sebastian before lifting the red velvet rope and letting the two of you in. Nodding a small thanks to the man, he continued his journey into the dimly lit area, a content hum leaving his lips at the sight of a small booth in the corner.

He sat down on the plush seats and you fell down to sit on top of him, the lower half of your body covered by the wooden table in front of you. Sebastian wasted no time in kissing your neck, unable to detach himself from your skin for more than a few moments.

Your head fell back onto his shoulder, watching the small group of people ahead of you dancing and laughing at each other caused a blush to quickly creep up your cheeks. The thought if anyone witnessing your antics both embarrassing and exciting you.

“Are you sure you want to do this, liebe?” Seb questioned, he placed his finger on your cheek and forced you to look at him as he spoke. “Because once we start, I won't be able to stop.”

“And why would I ever want you to stop?” you shot back, pressing your bum further into him to prove your point. Sebs eyes scanned the area, having seemingly decided the risk of getting caught was worth it, he ran his fingers up your thigh, under your skirt and into your underwear.

His other hand trailed the opposite direction, moving up your body to gently squeeze your breast. You arched your back at the sensation, your ass moving further into him and a harsh squeeze being delivered as a result.

Slipping a finger into you, his hand flew away from your breast to clamp over your mouth, muffling the sudden moan that escaped you. “You have to be quiet, sweetheart. There's people around us,” he reminded.

He littered gentle kisses up your neck and you could feel his smirk against your skin at the shaky breath you let out the minute he slipped a second finger into you. “I don't think anyone else deserves to hear your moans, darling.”

You hummed against his hand, wetness pooling at his words and your eyes fluttering closed as his thumb began to circle your clit. “Move up for a second, liebe,” he demanded once he removed his fingers from you. Having no other option but to comply, you braced your hands against the table and stood up on shaky legs. You patiently waited as Sebastain undid his belt, the sound of the metal coming undone bringing a newfound wetness to your core.

“Ready?” he questioned, moving his hand up and down your thigh to comfort you. You nodded your head, biting harshly on your lip, you quickly glanced behind you and yet another shaky breath tumbled from your lips at the sight you beheld.

Sebastain was sprawled across the couch with his dick barely covered by your body. The sight of him shamelessly sitting there did something to you and before you lost your confidence, you slowly lowered yourself down onto him.

“Keep quiet now,” he reminded once you took all of him in. Your hands gripped onto the table in front of you, your knuckles quickie turning white as you used it as leverage to start moving.

The sound of your skin hitting against sebastians was muffled by the laughter of the crowd and the loudness of the msic booming across the grand club. “I'm trying,” you grunted.

You slowly bounced on him, trying to keep your movements small and inconspicuous to the people around you. But Sebastian could only last so long without needing to take over. A moan accidentally escaped you once he began thrusting his own hips upwards to meet yours. In response to your foolishness, he grabbed a fistful of your hair, yanking not so gently on it as a warning and forcing you to look at the dim lights hanging above you instead of the people ahead of you.

Holding onto your body he quickly steadied you, forcing you to halt your movements as a random man walked up to the two of you. You shifted in his hold and attempted to reposition yourself to look more natural towards the stranger. You just wanted it to seem like you were cuddling the driver, not bouncing on his dick.

One of your arms wrapped around his neck while the other laid on his chest. You spared a quick glance downwards, making sure your skirt covered everything before looking back up at the man. Sebastian greeted him, admittedly not poilelty, but he greeted him nevertheless. It only took a few seconds for the two of you to realise he was a fan and by the looks of it, would do anything to hold a conversation with the Sebastian Vettel.

You couldn't help but move on his lap, the need for friction overwhelming you after staying put for several minutes. You slowly began rolling your hips, your heart racing at the sudden release of pressure and also at the fact you were grinding on him with a fan of his only a few feet away.

Sebastian cleared his throat, trying desperately to pay attention to the man in front of him and not on how good you felt clenching around him. His hips unintentionally runted up into you, muttering a quick curse under his breath he grimaced at the man, cutting his sentence short as he gestured towards you. “If you wouldn't mind,” he sympathetically commented.

“Right, right sorry,” he mumbled, “Enjoy your night.”

He soon scrambled away from view and Sebastian began carelessly thrusting into you again. You returned to your original position, now resting your head against the table, thankful for the pleasure filling your whole body. You could feel a bead of sweat forming on the nape of your neck and were almost certain you looked a mess but you couldn't have cared as you got nearer and nearer to your peak.

This new angle allowed Sebastian to take control of your activities. He guided your hips back and forth, not paying attention to the movement of the table nor the attention that the two of you could possibly bring your way. All he wanted was to bring you to your release. “Are you going to cum for me, darling?” he whispered. You nodded against the table, the coolness of the wood reliving your flushed cheeks as you felt the knot begin to release in your stomach.

You moved your hand to grip onto his thigh, “I'm gonna-” you mumbled, unable to finish your sentence as he gripped onto the back of your neck and forced you to sit up straight. His fingers immediately fell down your throat in a poor attempt to muffle your moans. You whimpered loudly at his show of dominance, your attempts to keep quiet failing profusely as he hurried his movements.

His fingers moved further down your throat as your walls clenched around him. Before you knew it you were spilling yourself against Sebastain. Your eyes rolling to the back of your head and heat filling your body as he followed in your actions.

[hollandsmushroom]

Broken Rules and Ruined Lace

Pairing:Tom Holland x Reader AU:No Word Count:3,134 A/n:Um, this is just pure filth pretty much, its slightly edited so I hope it is good but I am not sure…I think everything I write is shit so um, feedback is greatly appreciated. Warnings: Smut Masturbation, Dom/Sub Dynamics, Slight Degradation, Cum Play, Cum, Dom!Tom, Smut, Oral(F receiving), unprotected sex, orgasm control, orgasm denial, spanking(one mention). I think that is everything if not I am sorry.

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It’s not that you wanted to break Tom’s rule, you didn’t want to be his brat, you really wanted to be his good girl. But as soon as you woke up you knew that you were fighting a losing battle and all you could do was try and hold off the inevitable.

You remember when Tom set the rule, both of you laying in bed, your had rested on his sweaty chest as you stared up at his flushed face, entranced by the movement of his lips, they were still wet with your arousal and his spit, the slickness catching the minimal rays of light in the shadowed room causing the thing yet plump flesh to glisten, distracting you from his words.

“Y/n?” he gave your head a light tug, forcing your eyes to meet his “Are ya listening to me?” His accent was thick and words were stern.  

“No, sorry”

“I was saying you can’t touch yourself without permission” he growled, mashing his mouth to yours teeth hitting each other with the pressure of the open mouthed kiss. “So no more of what you did today, you hear me?” he asked, breathing heavily from the intensity of the kiss, his eyes looking deep into yours searching for recognition, you gave it to him in the form of a nod and a quiet “Yes, Tommy” before curling even further into him.

As you recalled what that night you knew you should be focusing on the assertiveness he used when speaking to you but all you could think about was how his lips felt on yours. On days like these his words never left your mind, but today you were more focused on remembering your cum on his lips. You knew that you needed permission but you didn’t want to bother with asking him if you could get off without him. Deep down you knew the excuse of not wanting to bother him was simply that, an excuse because you knew what his answer would be and it would be so much easier to disobey if he didn’t know that you had been thinking about it already, if he didn’t know to check if you had broken, if he didn’t remind you of the consequences.

When you had woken up Tom was already gone, you knew that he had press for Spider-Man No Way Home which was premiering tonight, your cunt on the other hand, had a mind of its own. As soon as you had fully awoken you felt a heat in your core, a fire that was waiting to be stoked, one that the clenching of your thighs in an attempt to alleviate the desire only worsened. A small whimper passing your lips as your thighs pressed your labia together, applying pressure to your swollen clit. You tried to ignore it, hauling your ass out of bed and to the kitchen, fixing yourself a nice cup of tea, sipping slowly as you tried to focus on anything else. The burn of the hot liquid on your tongue or how the marble counter was digging into your lower back, even Tessa’s cold nose nuzzling your calf, but nothing was working.

Deciding to put off making a choice until after breakfast, you fixed yourself something to eat. Focusing on the food in front of you as you did your best not to burn anything. Your brain was a debate, divided and arguing over the pros and cons. The pros were simply that you would get off, that the burning itch of ecstasy would go away, the cons well out weighed them, Tom’s punishment should have been threat enough but the state you were in was something past rationality. You surprised yourself by your decision that you were gonna do it. Eyes looking at the clock on the oven, the digital flash of numbers alerting you that Tom would be home in a couple hours, enough time for you to have your fun and not get caught.

You felt a little bad about disobeying Tom, but as soon as your hypersensitive skin met your sheets, and the pads of your fingers touched your clit, all guilt evaporated from you. Your mind was on him the whole time, how his fingers felt in you and on you. Pinching your nipples between your thumb and pointer finger, rolling the nub gently as you rubbed your clit furiously. Your body had been ready to go since you woke up, your orgasm building mere minutes after you began, your fingers covered in your slickness, you wished they could be cleaned by Tom’s tongue. You wanted it to be his fingers or better yet his cock that grazed over your g-spot making you dive into the pool of ecstasy that overflowed in your lower belly. You came down from your high, eyes falling upon the large blotch of liquid that squirted from your core, tainting your pure grey sheets, you assured yourself that it would dry before Tom got home not finding it in you to change the bed sheets.

You felt much more calm, your body feeling less like it was vibrating in a high speed desire ridden anxiety, it felt like you could breath and like you weren’t about to explode. You looked at the clock, knowing that you needed to get ready and you still had just over enough time to get yourself to the state that was presentable to the world. Making your way to the bathroom, turning on the shower and stepping in, scrubbing your hands clean, trying to rid them of your strong scent.

Tom came home from the press junket an hour later, already ready for the event, having had to be all put together since this morning for press. You heard him, his footsteps sounding on the hardwood floor followed loudly by Tessa’s claws clicking as she ran up to him, his voice was tired and beautiful, sounding like home and calling to you.

“Love, you here?”

“Up here Tommy” you shouted in response, continuing to apply your final bits of makeup to be prepared for the evening, specifically the red carpet.  Tom followed the sweet notes of your voice, wanting nothing more than to hold you in his arms, to ground himself from all the insanity that was the countless interviews. Tom found his plans changing when he saw something on the covers of your shared bed, his eyes catching on some patches of dampness on the grey duvet cover, they were mostly dry but still altering the color of the sheet a shade darker than it would normally be. His eyebrows raised up his forehead he went to check it was, making sure that Tessa hadn’t peed on the bed again. As soon as got near the spots a familiar scent hit him, arguably his favorite smell, one that almost always made his cock harden, the only exception being when he was already fucked out. It was the smell of your arousal, your cum to be more specific.

He was confused, you hadn’t had sex in a couple of days so why would your cum be on the sheets, unless you broke his rule. He felt a fury boil inside of him, mindlessly drawing him to where you stood in front of the mirror preparing yourself for the premier of his movie tonight.

“Hi Tommy!” you spoke excitedly as you could, your focus on the spooly in your hand applying mascara to your lashes. Without a word his hand wrapped around your wrist pulling your dominant hand to his face.

“Tom what the fuck” you exclaimed, angry that he had interupted you and almost ruined your face of make up but that anger melted quickly, realizing what he was doing as he unfurled your pointer and middle finger from around the mascara wand, bringing them to his nose as he glared at you.

The scent was faint on his nose, not as noticeable as it had been on the bed sheets but yet it was still present, hidden under multiple bouts of hand washing trying to rinse your disobedience down the drain with your lavender scented hand soap but clearly you hadn’t be thorough enough, the faintest hint still present.

“Tom, I-”

“No talking” he bit at you, your mouth shutting immediately as you nodded at his words. He pushed his body against yours, the imprint of his dick showing through his trousers before it pressed against you. His lips burn the skin on your neck before scratching his teeth over the juncture of your shoulder and your collar bone, biting down hard, making you hiss at the pain. “You broke the rule, I should have expected that you being the little fucking brat that you are” he chastized, his fingers bunching up the edges of your dress, hiking it up until the ruffled silk sat above the round of yoru ass, you barely clothed core visible to Tom’s hungry eyes as he knelt infront of you, fingers slipping inbetween your thighs and forcing them apart, a wave of yoru arousal hitting his nose. “You smell so sweet, I would love to devour your pretty little cunt but that’s only for good girls’’ he leans in and bites your mons, the lace barely protecting you from the blunt of his teeth.

The lace scrunched up beneath his teeth as he tugged it farther from your burning skin, pulling them downwards as he exposed your core, mouth watering as he saw your wetness connect to the crotch of your panties to your cunt. He had to remind himself that he couldn’t that you didn’t deserve it, that he was angry with you, but god did you look fucking delicious.

“Im gonna fuck you so hard, your legs are gonna shake the whole way down the red carpet, you’re gonna need me there to hold you up, even though you don’t need me cause you got off on your own” Tom spat, undoing his belt buckle.

“I do need you” you whimpered, the cold on your core nearing pain, all the blood rushing between your thighs increasing your sensitivity, the contrast of the chilled atmosphere on your burning skin already too much for you to handle.

“What did I say about talking, pretty girl” his often soothing voice coming out as a snarl. Taking the base of his cock he ran his tip through your folds, coming downwards over your clit before stopping at your entrance, thrusting into you without any warning, fully entering you with the first thrust. Tom watched as you bit your lip, nearly hard enough to draw blood.

“Good girl, stay quiet” he ordered as he started to thrust, the impetus of his hips making his balls slap against your taint, a jolt rolling up your spine as you felt every inch of him pulsing inside of you.

You wanted to scream, to whine, to moan, but all you could do was bite your lip as the pleasure started to overtake your body, every inch of your body being set aflame as Tom continued his thrusts. Tears were pricking your eyes as his hand gripped into your yielding and supple flesh, you felt your orgasm building, and you knew that Tom was too, his tip twitching against your walls, but just as you were about to unravel he pulled out, grabbing his cock and sliding his hand up and down it, thick white spools of cum shooting out, and landing on your panties, tainting the french lingerie that Tom had bought you on a romantic get away not long before. You were less worried about the lace, more about the intensified burning between your thighs that you now knew wasn’t being satisfied or eased anytime soon.

“It’s time to go,” Tom informed, pulling back from you leaving you standing there, your face portraying nothing but shock, eyes flitting between the cum that tainted your red lace panties and Tom’s smirking face. He tugged your panties back up your legs, soothing the lace over your core and spreading the cum across your folds before planting a kiss on your lips. “Come on” he tugged your wrist and led you down stairs to head to the event.

At the red carpet you felt his cum cooling on your folds and slipping between them, spreading around with every single step you took, you felt it seeping through your lace, smearing on your thighs and making them sticky. It was all you could think about the whole evening, how it continued to spread and absorb into your soft skin, it felt too much, and he wasn’t even touching you. Tom could tell how much it was affecting you, occasionally rubbing his hand up your thigh and gathering a little on his fingers, sneakily placing them in his mouth and sucking them clean. When you arrived home, you were a mess, your thighs sticking with his cum but slipping with your own arousal. It was enough to make you cum just thinking about it, and you were pretty sure you could if given the chance, but you weren’t. As soon as you reached the solace of your bedroom Tom spoke up, really the first time since before the event.

“Let’s get ready for bed” he suggested, causing a frown to overtake your face, but not wanting to make things worse you gave a curt nod and headed to the bathroom, grabbing one of Tom’s shirts on the way in there. You stripped yourself of your constraining dress, slipping on the loose fabric, and involuntary sigh escaping your lips at the feeling of freedom. You had already finished your nightly routine when Tom came in, you were right about to sit down and clean yourself up when he caught you by the waist.

“Nuh uh, don’t clean yourself up yet” he whispered, breath hot on your neck making goosebumps spread wherever his breath touched. “Go lay on the bed and wait for me” he ordered, placing a soft kiss beneath your ear. Spinning you in the direction of the door, and laying a slap on your ass, watching it jiggle as you walked away.

You laid down on the bed, you were stuck on thinking about what was about to happen, having been nearly positive that you already got your punishment for your disobedience. Tom sensed your confusion as soon as he walked into the room, standing at the end of the bed for a moment, watching you as you watched him, his eyes eager as they caught your pussy peeking out from beneath the hem of your shirt.

“I’m gonna make you cum with my tongue” was all he said before he was on you kissing his way down your body, lifting up the oversized shirt that now covered your body, nothing underneath it. The soft cotton bunching up much like your dress had earlier in the evening.

“Look at this cunt, so fucking gorgeous” Tom groaned, looking at how his cum still covered the lips of your pussy. “I love seeing my cum on you” his tongue flicked out and licked some of the arousal that was leaking from your entrance, the mixture of his spunk and your slick delicious on his taste buds.

“Tommy I want you in me” you whimpered, tugging on his hair.

“Nuh uh baby girl, I’m letting you cum on my tongue, you don’t get to be greedy, “ he growled, softly sinking his teeth into your clit. “You can moan, you can touch me, but you will only cum when I tell you too” you nodded your head eagerly, at the point where you would have agreed to anything just to have him touch you properly. He said nothing else, no words, no noise, simply licking over the closed lips of your pussy, enjoying the taste, if he hadn’t drained his cock earlier he knew that he would have been hard, and he was actually happy he wasn’t, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to hold out from fucking you to completion if he was.

“Taste so fucking good, baby” he slipped his tongue between your lips, licking over the folds and vallies that lined the inside of your vulva.

“Tom T-t-Tom you feel so- fuck good” you moaned, threading yoru fingers in his hair as you tried to pull him closer to you trying to smear your cunt across his face, but he fought back, he was gonna make you cum, but in his own time. Finally after multiple minutes of kitten licks and light kisses between your folds he fully delved into your cunt. Licking a heated spitty stripe from entrance to clit. He pulled back and spat on your clit, rubbing his nose against it as his tongue slipped into your cunt, licking the inside of nudging that one spot deep inside of you as his nose bumped into your clit. He continued this action over and over again, the thrust of his tongue increasing the pressure on your clit.

“Tommy, I-I-I’m gonna cum” you whimpered, your legs trying to clamp around his head but his hands held them in place.

“Cum on baby, cum on my face” he spoke into your cunt as he sped up his movements, letting pushing you over the edge, and you fell, your back arching off the sheets as your body tensed, toes curling into the duvet as your breath was pulled from you lips, a silent scream on your mouth. He held you through your orgasm, only tearing away from your pussy when he was sure he had milked you of everything that you had. Licking his lips and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as he watched you, your eyes were clenched shut as you tried to catch your breath. Your high, leaving you so blissed out that you didn’t realize Tom had left and come back until a cool wet towel soothed your burning core, a sigh escaping your lips.

Throwing the towel into the hamper he crawled into bed next to you, pulling you into him. His touch still burned your skin, the need to unravel around him still not having been satiated. He seemed to sense your tension, rubbing his hand down your back and breaking the thick silence in the air.

“You’ll get what you want tomorrow morning, love, I promise, but don’t you dare think of getting off while I’m asleep,” he hummed, kissing your temple before turning off the light. You wanted to whine, to complain and be a brat but you knew that would just get you even farther from cumming around Tom’s pretty cock, so you maintained your peaceful silence, eyes fluttering shut just thinking of what you were gonna get the next morning.

@thehumanistsdiary @spydeysense​

[plutoswrath]

✧ astro notes and titbits ✧

 part 1, part 2 x

- a common misconception regarding the South and North Node: it’s not the mission to abandon your South Node, it just represents what you already learned and brought with you here on earth and should be expanded. The Lunar Nodes represent a constant seek for balance, South and North Node should both be equally integrated in ones life. 

 - regarding North Node: the North Node is more an uncomfortable placement as it pushes us towards what we don’t know and have a hard time understanding and integrating in our life, even though we desire it. The North Node is impulsive and aggressive in its desire and thus, on the negative side, can equally lead to trouble when blindly followed.

- when looking at our own, or even other aspects, especially the harsh ones, we always have to consider the age of the person. As you grow into your placements over the years, we then can have the abilities to handle conflicting energies within us better - this is not only an encouragement to people with harsh aspects, but also newbies who might get intimated by their own and others placements!

- a Quincunx (Inconjunction) can be even harder to resolve than a Square. While a Square can find common ground in the modalities at least, the Quincunx comes from completely different sides and can manifest as unknowingly doing the same mistake over and over again, while the individual wonders why it always hurts. At the same time, it can seem like the only option left for them, even when they know it’s not the optimum. Quincunxes can go under the radar as well, since they are a small aspect 

- this a fun thing I recently did with my own and other charts: If you were born too late or early and you happen to know the approximate delivery date of your birth go and calculate that birth chart! I found myself lucky to be born two weeks later than expected asdfghj

- when you have Aquarius/Uranus touching your ascendant or any house that is about self expression and/or the public it could give you a very scattered energy;  you might be flipping on and off energy wise and people could have a hard time keeping up with you or adjusting to your flow of energies. This can also result in a lot of different ‘phases’ the individual goes through, or in equally getting passionate about something but then losing interest 3 weeks later

- A very common trait that a lot of Pisces Ascendants have are the droopy, watery eyes and often times pointed features on the face/a rather pointed face shape

- Taurus, Sagittarius and Cancer Ascendants could stretch features of the face/the overall face shape. Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter and Cancer is exalted in it: both of these signs can be prone to easily gaining width, Sagittarius and Cancer also can indulge a lot and thus can lead to quicker wheight gaining. Taurus, being the bull, can give the individual a rather wide, squary/boxy look, but always very sensual and serene with Venus being it’s ruler

- some thoughts on Ceres: Ceres is an asteroid that tells us equally about nurture and destruction. Ceres was Persephones mother, as much as she loves to take care of her lovely daughter, she sometimes doesn’t know the limits and when to stop - once what she loves is taken from her, she can leave a path of destruction behind her and become deeply obsessive. She can cross boarders and break rules for those she loves. Ceres is a mother archetype, responsible for harvesting, she is not only directly linked to nature, but also a good representation of mother natures extremes

-> Also: Ceres can give you insight about the relationshio between a mother and a child. I would recommend looking at your synastry with your mother figure. It can give you additional information to your parental relationship despite other very telling planets, such as Moon. Look where their Ceres touches your chart and what aspects they form

 -> Ceres in synastry can also show you where your mother figure was most present, what they cared for most and maybe even where they were overly critical/concerned, protective or didn’t care for you at all. 

- some thoughts on North Node an karmic connections in synastry: links from one Nodal point to the other don’t always have to indicate a karmic link that has a major impact in your life. Think about it: All people that are born around the same time as you and have their NN in ~ 10 degrees to yours will conjunct it, but does that mean we’re all karmically connected? It’s more likely these people all share a similar karmic life path, sharing the same soul mission.  Most likely the really big feelings and influences are when the Lunar Nodes touch the inner planets/angles, as they have an almsot immediate and very direct influence on the other

- those with Mercury square/conjunct or opposite Mars/Uranus are the ones to accidentally say something they shouldn’t have if they are in a flow of speech or just really comfortable

- Venus square/opposite Uranus often go against social norms or revaluate them, so this could give them naturally the image of a misfit and provocateur even if they don’t actively intent to do so. Their ‘out of the norm’ behaviour/attitude could leave many people irritated. This also can make them suffer from a lot of misjudgement in their life, as people could put them in a box constantly

- having a water signs in an earth or air house can make the individual a huge advocate and humanitarian, especially when it’s in inner planets or when Uranus/Neptune in Pisces are in an air/earth house

 - This might be a quiet controversial thought for some, but I am a social studies student so just a little food for thought to everyone: let’s look at the heteronormative use of astrology, aka women = Venus, men = Mars, and I am not talking about energies, I am talking specifically about assorting a gender to these planets. Venus and Mars will both show up in someone when pursuing a person of interest and developing feelings. But now think about parts of society trying to raise women as ‘the harmonizer’ and men as the ‘conqueror’, because these are the often associated traits with these two forms of gender. Back at astrology, let’s look at the archetype and temperament of Venus and Mars. Venus is the represent of unions and forming connections thus standing naturally for harmony (mostly that is), and Mars is the fighter the pursuer and represent of raw sexual energy aka life force. If people believe that the association of Venus to women and Mars to men is true, maybe look a bit closer into the environment you grew up in and maybe you can see that it’s a consequence of heteronormativity. Chances are, Mars and Venus would be looked at equally, or only preferred in insights if an individual conciously is more attracted to ‘masculine/feminine energy’ - again, regardless of gender.

- Basically: Astrology is defenitely not free of the negative sides of society and interpretations should be scanned of our own bias as best as we can!

- I noticed that people with profound Mercury, Uranus, Sagittarius or Aries/Mars influence in their chart are the ones to watch YouTube videos in 1,5 x speed. The nervous and impatient energy inside their chart wants either to spend less time on a YouTube video (trying to watch 10 minutes in 5) or feel like how most people talk and the videos flow are just too slow (chances are they wish they could do that irl too asdfgh)

 - Pisces with profound Mercury influence (especially in inner planets) can give the possibility for a very quick to judge individual - and usually they are very expressive with it as well, either in accidental, small gestures or by openly showing their thoughts through facial expressions or quick reactions

- that being said, people who have strong Pisces influence in their chart, especially those with Ascendant/Pisces in 1st, usually give their first thoughts away with their facial expressions. Their eyes do reflect their inner nature a lot, more so than Cancers and Scorpio do since these are naturally more guarded and hesitant when it comes to self expression in new environments 

[pansyslut]

stilettos

pansy x fem reader

summary: you get needy on your date and pansy punishes you for it

warnings: dom pansy/sub reader, shoe humping, spanking, mommy kink, degration, praise

you took in pansy for the first time as she sat in front of you. she had on a silk dress with a plunging neckline and matching colored stiletto heels. you tried so hard all dinner to not look at her but you couldn’t help but throw small glances. her face, her collarbone, her breasts, her heels. your eyes darted everywhere and you knew she knew what she was doing to you.

shifting in your seat you try to look casual as the waiter comes up to your table. pansy looks at your stiff, flustered composure and orders for you. watching the waiter walk away,“are you okay baby,” she asks with an innocent tone.

to answer her question, no. you were most certainly not okay. you knew you were soaked through your underwear and possibly even through your dress and all you could think was about sitting on her face. you look up at her and stare at her glossy pump lips as she sips on her wine.

“i’m perfectly fine,” you say unconvincingly. pansy only replies with a hum and you knew she knew you were full of shit. you had spent the whole evening wiggling around in your seat- but you also knew that if you were to act up in public then you would never get her to relieve your problem. in fact, she’d probably make it worse and edge you on all night.

she starts to ramble on about wanting to have a get together with old friends and how much she misses everyone. looking at her chest, you let out an involuntary whine. covering your mouth quickly, you look up to pansy giving you a smile. it was only then that you realized she knew exactly what she was doing. she knew how much you loved her in that dress and those heels would add to her already bossy aesthetic.

“pans, stop it.” you plead.

“what was that? are you trying to tell me what to do? what are you even implying? all i’m trying to do is have a nice evening with my girl.”

bullshit, you thought to yourself. giving in, you start to twine your legs between hers and give her puppy dog eyes. propping your elbows on the table, you rest your face in your hands and look up at her.

“stop. it.” she says while throwing you a warning look. before you could reply, the waiter come up and starts setting down your meals. feeling pansy’s foot snake up to your thigh she starts rubbing it slowly. clenching your thighs, you wrap a leg around hers to keep her foot in place on your heat.

watching your waiter walk away, you try to secretly move down your underwear, letting them sit at your knees. moving your hips forward, you grind against her heel feeling the tip run against your clit. pansy catches on and starts moving her foot up and down. putting your head down, you try to hide your whimpers but you were reaching your climax fast and pansy knew it. drawing back her foot, she goes back to normal and starts eating her food.

“momma,” you say under your breath.

“needy slut. take what you got and be grateful. behave yourself before i take you on my heel in front of everyone.”

the rest of your dinner was spent trying your best to act unaffected. you were still pent up and pansy said nothing of it afterwards. she would go back to rambling on about something so insignificant even though she knew what you truely wanted and it certainly wasn’t to hear about how her nosey coworker and how her husband is doing.

getting in the car, you sit in the passengers seat and try to sit as close to her as possible. grabbing her hand, you place it on your upper thigh and let out a whine.

“please momma,” you beg but she ignores your pleads once again and snatches her hand off of your leg. “needy whore. you couldn’t even wait until we got home. maybe i should’ve let you get off on my heel in front of everyone.”

that shut you up quick. you knew her boundaries and how far to push and you were worried that if you pushed any farther she would have you up all night with no relief. you mutter a quick, “yes ma’am” and spend the rest of the car ride being silent.

getting out of the car in front of your shared home, you thought she would pay no attention to you but she grasps you hand and walks you inside. “do you want any wine? i never got to finish since we had to leave earlier because someone decided to act up.” simply shaking your head, you follow her out to the deck in the backyard and sit next to her on the bench.

“what are you doing?” she asks, snapping at you abruptly.

“um... sitting next to you?”

“well not less than an hour ago you were so inclined on sitting on my heel. go on then,” she says sticking out her foot. you stare blankly and see your leftover juices from earlier. bashfully, you kneel down and sit on the tip. “go on then, be a good girl for momma.”

she didn’t have to tell you twice before you started grinding on her. wrapping your arms around her calf for stability, you wiggle your hips, unashamed. the tip of the heel was hitting right on your digit causing you to let out a moan. you feel her push her heel up, pressing harder, making you shudder.

you look up at her briefly to see her sipping her wine with a smirk on her face, showing how much she was enjoying this. noticing your movements slowing down, “well don’t stop now, bunny. put on a show for me. i’m enjoying this immensely.” starting your speed back up your jump up and down slightly, trying to cause more friction.

“more momma, i need more,” you say looking up at her. you watch as she pops out her lower lip and you can see her fake sympathy all over her face. “oh, is that so? come on the baby. come sit in mommas lap.” you were quick to oblige and got off her heel but she pushed her heel to your shoulder, making you kneel again.

“i said you could come in my lap but i didn’t say you could lose your manners,” she says taking her heel off your shoulder, “you’ve made a mess. do clean it up for me.” her heel now propping up your chin, you grab her ankle and lick the shoe clean slowly, watching her reaction.

“good girl, y/n. i knew you could behave well. i don’t know what got into you at dinner,” she says shaking her head. you stand up and fall directly into her lap and straddle her. she grabs your hips and pulls you even closer, connecting your lips.

testing the waters, you push in your tongue earning a moan from her as she grips onto your behind. she starts to bounce her legs, pushing pressure on your clit. feeling her back away suddenly, “don’t think you’re getting away that easy, bunny. you still have yet to have your punsishment. bend over for me, yeah? i’ll make it quick and easy for you since you’ve proven you can be a good girl.”

before you had a chance to speak, pansy had yanked you and forced you over her lap. with your lower stomach resting on her thighs, you grabbed onto her legs for support. feeling fast slap to your behind you try to push back your hand as you feel the sting.

you feel the slash of her hand a couple of times as you try to muffle your whines in her dress. you feel her stop and suddenly rub you softly as she shushes you. “it’s okay, baby. you did so well. and now i can reward you good you’re being, yeah?”

she pulls you up and positions you in her lap as you instinctively wrap your legs around her waist. feeling her stand up, you wrap your arms around her neck and shove your head in her hair. she walks you into your room and sets your gently on your bed. “are you okay pretty girl? momma wasn’t too harsh was she?” she asks sweetly while caressing your sides.

rapidly shaking your head, you grab her hand and place it on your center trying to show her what you want. after placing a kiss on your temple she pulls off your panties and starts rubbing your digit it circles. grabbing onto her hair, you pull her towards you and connect your lips. your hips buck up as you grind onto her hand needing release.

hearing her click her tongue, she swiftly moved positions, placing her heat on yours. feeling her wetness, you try to rub your clit against hers. frantically swiveling your hips back and forth, the room is filled with both of your moans.

“fuck, bunny. just like that baby. feel so- so good,” you hear pansy praise. grabbing onto her thigh for stability, you almost manically move your hips. “cum with me, pretty girl” you hear pansy as she moves her hand back to your center, circling your clit to push you over the edge.

“mommy, i’m gonna-” you cut off feeling both you and pansy gush onto each other. both falling limp, you feel her move to fall directly atop of you, both too fucked out to clean up. kissing your shoulder, she mutters a soft, “i love you y/n,” before falling asleep in your arms.

[rocorambles]

It's Always Been You

Pairing: Semi x Reader

Genre: SFW, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff (I swear it’s more fluff than hurt/comfort), Getting together

Summary: You’ve always known Semi was your first choice. Now you just need to convince HIM that it’s true. Easier said than done.

Prompt: “When will I be someone’s first choice? Tell me, when?”

A/N: This is my contribution for the HQHQ SFW collaboration. There are so many talented writers on the server and I highly encourage you to check out the collaboration masterlist here to see how everyone decided to run with this prompt. (Also this is an AU where the boy’s and girl’s volleyball teams practice in the same gym. Just go with it. LOL Please and thank you.) Thank you for beta-ing @sawamooora~

There’s a certain sense of pride and anxiety that comes from being accepted to Shiratorizawa as a student athlete. Pride from knowing your athletic prowess has been recognized as being at least notable. Anxiety from not knowing if that’s all it’ll amount to, talent that’s forced to remain seated on a bench as other, even more capable athletes surpass and outrank you. But as wide-eyed first years, Semi and you don’t feel that full weight yet, not as you watch and learn from your senpais in awe, and it’s that curiosity, that love for the sport that brings you two together.

Semi’s always been on the quieter side, but when he sees you in the corner of the girl’s side of the gym all by yourself, practicing setting a volleyball against the wall, recognizing you as a fellow newbie from his class, he takes his chance. It’s an easy friendship, one that easily crosses from the court, to the classroom, to after school study sessions and hangouts. And even though it sucks to still be set aside on the bench, left to cheer on your upperclassmen while the both of you hone your skills, it brings both of you comfort that you’re not alone, that you have someone else cheering you on, growing and improving right alongside you.

It’s hard work trying to stand out among all the hopeful first years at Shiratorizawa, but the endless hours of hard work and encouragement you give each other, the shouts to keep on going, the careful bandaging of each other’s fingers before and after grueling practices, it all pays off. The two of you proudly stand side by side in your second year as your parents snap a photo of both of you donning your brand new team uniforms, marking you as starting players.

The adrenaline of the cheering audience, the exhilaration of being in a real game, it’s everything both of you have wished for and more. But through the excitement, a nagging worry tugs at Semi as he watches the new rookie setter, Shirabu Kenjirou, from afar.

There’s nothing wrong with Shirabu. He’s a smart kid, albeit a little short tempered and rude at times, but aren’t they all in high school? But it’s not his attitude, not even his shitty haircut that bothers Semi. It’s the ease with which he connects with the rest of the team, the natural skill and talent he possesses, the way Coach Washijou stares at the younger male with interest, that has Semi striving harder, his desire to stand out and prove himself only hindering him and the team more.

And reality comes crashing down around him one day as a shrill whistle jars him from his razor sharp focus, the paddle with his number being held up by Shirabu making his heart drop to his stomach as he’s subbed out, face heating with humiliation and embarrassment as his teammates eagerly high five and clap the younger setter on the court, welcoming him into the game.

Just like that, he’s been replaced.

It hurts, but he knows it’s to be expected. He had seen it coming, and acknowledges that it’s the better decision for the team. But that doesn’t make it sting any less. And he watches with steely eyes at how effortlessly Shirabu melds in with the team, the ball easily and smoothly connecting.

He thinks this is the worst of the heartache, vowing that he’ll just work harder, at least be a useful pinch server. He’ll be the best setter he can when he’s needed. But what he isn’t expecting is the lancing stab to his heart when he sees you rush over to Shirabu after the match is over, the way you’re practically bouncing on the soles of your feet as you fawn over the younger setter, congratulating him on his first game, complimenting him on a job well done, not even sparing a glance in his direction. In your defense, you do make your way towards him eventually, but he can feel the pity in your eyes, the way you approach him as if he’s a wounded animal, and he slaps your hand away before it can come in contact with his arms, storming off, leaving you gaping in his wake.

The situation was poorly handled and he knows he owes an apology at minimum, but those words get stuck in his throat when he spies you chatting one-on-one with Shirabu at practice the next day while the boy’s and girl’s teams share the same gym. It’s vaguely reminiscent of watching a horror film and despite the way he freezes, heart clenching, Semi can’t tear his eyes away as you demonstrate some setting techniques and drills to Shirabu. And when your bandaged fingers carefully wrap around the younger male’s forearms to adjust his posture, Semi rushes off, unable to bear watching how once again, he’s become irrelevant.

He wonders— hopes that it’s just a one off thing, that things will return to how they once were. But they don’t, and he watches as Shirabu and you laugh and joke, high fiving and cheering each other on as you help one another practice, time and time again. He tries his best to ignore it, gritting his teeth and using more strength than necessary in his practice serves, brushing off the concerned questions from even usually stoic Ushijima. But it all comes to a head when Shirabu is absent from practice one day and you cheerfully walk up to him like no time has passed, like you hadn’t turned around and instantly betrayed him for a better version of himself, grinning as you ask him to practice with you.

There’s a sick satisfaction in how quickly your smile disappears, the flash of hurt in your eyes when he sneers at you, thanking you for “gracing him with your presence”.

“Glad you could find it in yourself to make some time for me. Thought you’d skip out on practice to take care of your little boyfriend.”

“What-”

The whole gym stares at both of you as his harsh voice echoes throughout the area.

“When will I be someone’s first choice? Tell me, when?!”

Semi and you don’t talk to each other for the rest of that year, although not for quite the same reasons.

For Semi, it’s a completely burned bridge and, as good as seeing you feel some of the same pain he feels is, there’s an emptiness inside of him as he goes home that night. The belief that he’s ruined everything between the two of you heavily weighs inside of him.

For you, it’s a medley of hurt, shock, and confusion. You give Semi the time he needs to cool off, give yourself the time and space to ponder and think into the late and early hours of each night, wondering where everything went wrong.

Shirabu? Boyfriend? How could Semi possibly even believe that?

Being an upperclassman means mentorship and guidance. So when Shirabu had come up to you one day after he became the boy’s team’s starting setter, you had graciously offered up some tips, let him know that you’d practice with him if you were free, encouraged him. You had missed your easy banters with Semi, missed how in sync and in tune with each other you were. But how could you turn away an underclassman in need?

Yet, the more you think about it, the more you really try and understand Semi’s perspective, guilt gnaws at you, clawing at your heart.

Had you meant to neglect your closest friend? An emphatic no.

Could you see why he had felt abandoned? ...A begrudging maybe laced with remorse.

Do you want him back in your life? A resounding yes.

You know it’ll be hard work to regain Semi’s trust, know he has a stubbornness that’s hard to crack — especially when it’s been hot glued together by seeming betrayal. But you’re just as determined, just as headstrong, and to both the dismay and amusement of both your teams and classmates, you twirl together in a chaotic dance.

To say he’s caught off guard when you knock on his door one morning to walk with him to school is an understatement, but when realization comes crashing down on him, he scowls, and his parents watch while shaking their heads and hiding a laugh as you scramble to keep up with him while he pointedly ignores you and speed walks a few steps ahead of you.

His mom points out to his father the way their son slows down just the tiniest bit when you stumble in your haste to catch up.

Ushijima watches in uncomfortable confusion as you sit with them at lunch, plopping down in the empty seat beside Semi, chatting away at your old friend despite the way Semi resolutely stays silent, not even sparing you a glance.

But if the ace notices the way Semi doesn’t snap at you or pull his bento box from you as you grab a piece of fish Semi’s mom had cooked, he doesn’t say anything.

Shirabu pouts when you completely bypass him, fondly ruffling his hair as you stride towards Semi, volleyball in hand at practice. And both your teams watch in exasperation and fascination at the unintentional comedy show the two of you provide as you waddle after Semi like a baby duck following its mother, quacking your head off and never giving up even though Semi pretends he doesn’t see you in the corner of his eyes, mimicking every drill he does.

Coach Washijo and your coach wonder if they should slap both of you on the heads for this madness, but when they observe the way Semi painstakingly slows down and exaggerates his form when you struggle with an exercise, they roll their eyes, turning their attention to the other players lounging around.

Yet as amusing as it is, all shows must come to an end and your grand finale arrives with the devastating loss against Karasuno, the chances of going to Nationals again ruined just like that for the third-years.

Even for you, a bystander in the audience, just another spectator in the crowd, it’s a hard pill to swallow. Unshed tears glisten in your eyes when you see the years of hard work they’ve all put into the sport go down the drain, the slump of Semi’s shoulders as they walk off the court. You can’t even begin to imagine how the players themselves are feeling, don’t know a single word you could say to make this alright. Yet your legs are sprinting, wobbling and shaking in their frantic need to comfort your long-time friend, to try and soothe him, to tell him how proud you are of him, how this doesn’t change how you think and feel about him.

It’s more than a little awkward, panting to catch your breath as the entire dejected team stares at your sudden appearance in confusion. But Tendou’s always been a little quicker, a little sharper than the rest, and he grins, practically shoving Semi in your direction, playfully waving farewell at both of you before slamming the locker room doors shut before Semi can process what’s happened.

There’s a tense silence as you try and wrap your suddenly dry mouth around words.

“I’m sorry for your loss-”

You jolt at the cold scoff, the way Semi quickly spins on his heel, set on re-entering the locker rooms, turning his back on you.

“I don’t want to hear that from you. Go comfort your little boyfriend. I’m sure our star setter would eat those sweet words right up-”

“SHUT UP!”

This time it’s Semi’s turn to clamp his mouth shut in shock, hesitantly turning around, eyes wide as you storm towards him, jabbing your index finger into his chest.

“I swear to God, if you mention Shirabu’s name one more time while I’m talking to you, I’m going to muzzle you until you can’t say ANYTHING.”

(If either of you hear Tendou’s giggle from behind the closed doors, neither of you mention it.)

“I came to talk to YOU because I miss YOU. I like YOU. And if you could take just a minute to get your head out of your ass, you’d know that you’ve always been and always will be my first choice.”

Your chest is heaving, blood rushing in your ears from the exertion of your passion. But the reality of your accidental confession comes crashing down around you and your face heats in embarrassment, heart plummeting at the way Semi just gapes at you, speechless. You turn to rush away, mortification triggering your flight response. But a gentle, but firm tug on the hem of your shirt keeps you still.

You brace yourself for the rejection you know is coming, nervously turning around, slowly lifting your head to meet Semi’s gaze. But your heart flutters at the hope and disbelief in his eyes.

“But I thought...You and Shirabu- OW!”

You roll your eyes, a satisfied smirk on your face at the way he gingerly rubs his head, shooting you an accusing look.

“I did warn you about mentioning him, didn’t I?”

But before he can open his mouth to retort, you gently peck him on the cheek, giggling at the flabbergasted and stunned expression on his face, cooing at the faint blush that radiates across his skin.

“Hurry up and get your things. You owe me a popsicle for being such an ass this past year.”

There’s a lot more cheering and celebration in the locker room than there should be for a team that’s just lost their shot at Nationals as Semi re-enters the space, his already packed bag (courtesy of Ushijima) shoved into his arms by a gleeful red-head.

[sirowsky]

The Lonely Castle

Chapter 10 - Lives Forgotten

Chapter Summary: History is brought to the surface for both Pero and Ember, though in vastly different ways. And Ash has some surprises in store for Pero, which will both complicate, and simplify things, from now on.

Author's Note: There's a lot of conversation in this chapter, like A LOT, so sorry if that's not your thing.

Rating: Mature 18+ONLY Warnings: cursing, angst, unspecified descriptions of domestic abuse, magic, minor character death, historical errors a plenty. Word Count: 7063 Masterlist (this story) Author’s Masterlist

It was so invigorating galloping through the snow at full speed on such a specimen of an animal, that she almost forgot her worries for a few moments, as they sprinted away from Boden. Not a single word passed between the two companions during their shared journey, and Rosa kept behind her the entire way, following her lead without hesitation or question.

Ember did her best to ignore her, only glancing over her shoulder now and then, to make certain the woman was still there, while keeping her focus on trying to recall how to ride, as it had been more than ten years since she last mounted a horse. Her father had owned a small but sturdy mare, which she had inherited when she took over his trade, in order to make deliveries, or to haul greater amounts of materials home, whenever a customer had placed a larger order. It had fallen ill and died a few years later, and they had never replaced the old mare, deciding to save their coin instead, should something happen to father, which would’ve meant the women would’ve been forced to support themselves, as they would’ve no longer been able to rely on Ember’s skillset for coin. She was glad to see that her body largely remembered the activity, falling back into the familiar rhythms with ease, despite the stallion being both larger, stronger and feistier than the mare had been. He constantly pushed further, wanting to run faster, complaining when she held him back, by whipping his tail and throwing his head, but he didn’t buck. He wasn’t trying to get rid of her, just assert his strongly held opinion that no speed was too great for his majestic self. She liked him. His energy was infectious, and helped make the journey somewhat less dull, not to mention lessen some of her increasing sense of impending doom. But when darkness began to fall, all lightness fled her chest along with the sun, and she found herself studying shadows, imagining them hiding beasts, ready to pounce at any moment. She guided her horse to a clearing in the woods, just off the road, and dismounted, still amazed that the animal showed no sign of tiring, despite the many hours of running. Inspecting his saddlebags produced both blankets to sleep on, and a large bundle of good rope, meaning her old ‘friend’ was perhaps not as inept at caring for herself as Ember might have assumed. If there was one thing that was invaluable on a journey on horseback; it was rope. She tied a length of it between two trees, and then tied the stallion to that by a loop, meaning he could move back and forth between those trees, scraping the ground to uncover some food. She left the saddle and bridle on, in case they needed to make a hasty departure, and saw Rosa do the same with her grey mare.

“You’ve travelled like this before.”

It wasn’t a question, but Rosa felt compelled to explain, all the same.

“Yes. I’ve been to both Hallen and Crown Hill many times. My husband likes to bring me along when he goes to trade.”

“Not that it’s any of my business, but if it’s your husband you’re fleeing from, shouldn’t you try to avoid places where he’s known and perhaps respected?”

“Hallen might be friendly towards him, but so it is to me. I have made many connections there, and have assurances that I will find help there should I need it.”

“Okay. Just checking.”

They fell silent again as they prepared beds for themselves, by digging the snow away from the ground, covering the exposed patch with pine-branches, putting the blankets down on top, before laying down and using their own cloaks as covers. It wasn’t overly comfortable, but it was warm enough to keep them alive for a night. Ember didn’t expect to be able to sleep much. There was a full moon rising upon a clear sky, creating deep shadows around them, and she was increasingly aware of how exposed they were out there, sitting up every so often to investigate a sound, only to discover it to be a squirrel or fox. And of course, Rosa noticed.

“What are you so scared of?”

“Trust me on this; you don’t wanna know.”

“Well, your insistent moving is noisy, and prevents me from sleeping, so if you’re going to keep me up all night, we might as well talk. I’m sure you have questions.”

Rosa sat up, turning to look at her companion, seeming to settle in for a conversation. Ember wasn’t really in the mood to talk, but perhaps it would prevent her from going mad with trepidation, and it was true that there were things she wished to understand. She mirrored the woman, sitting up and turning herself completely to face her.

“Fine. Did you start that fire?”

She obviously hadn’t expected that question, or at least, not as a start, so her answer was slightly delayed.

“…Yes.”

She seemed perplexed by Ember’s lack of outrage at her actions, but this particular fletcher knew all too well how far a desperate person might go. She did wonder as to the nature of that desperation, though.

“You do realise that you might be responsible for burning down the entire town, right? That’s many livelihoods and homes forever lost, because of you. Are you sure you could live with that?”

“All I know is that I can’t live there anymore, and I’ll do anything I have to, to be free of it.”

Ember had never really known the fisher’s daughter, but with their similarity of age, they’d sort of followed each other through life, and she did know a few things about the woman. Such as that the man she’d married was called Eric Norman, a truly gifted leatherworker whose skills in making clothes was well known throughout the area, and saw him and his wife live a comfortable life as the second richest family in Boden, after the Constable. They were by all accounts, a happy couple, popular with the town and known to be kind and friendly to most everyone. But she also knew that Rosa had never born a child, despite being married for over fifteen years already, and most men did not take kindly to barren women. However, such a thing was grounds for annulment of marriage, and most men would simply divorce and find someone else to wed.

“Is it because of Eric? Does he treat you badly?”

Her gaze fell to the ground at that, and a humourless huff escaped her.

“You were right when we were children, to scoff at marriage. I had been taught that being the woman on a man’s arm was the only true honour in life, which is why I was so offended by your reaction back then. But I was a child, and knew nothing of what I spoke. I was blinded by ambition, and the idea of love, but I know now that no such thing exists.”

“What? Love?”

“It’s just a construct of the mind, no more real than dreams.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because I hold his arm and I smile and curtsy and he looks at me like a lovesick fool, whenever we leave the house. But once we return… the things he does to me… If that was love, none would seek it.”

“Does he punish you for not bearing fruit?”

Her eyes came back to meet Ember’s, and a harshness had settled into the woman’s gaze.

“He doesn’t want me to. He spills his seed anywhere but to my womb. All he wants is just to hurt me, he even confesses to it when he gets worked up, how he loves to hear me cry in pain.”

“Rosa… that’s not normal. That’s not what everyone experiences.”

“No? Then why do I see the same insincere faces that I place upon my own, to keep his depravity secret, everywhere I go? Why do most women I meet have that same hopelessness in their eyes, as I feel in my heart?”

“That I couldn’t say. Perhaps they, like you as a child, dreamed of fantastical things, only to learn that the real world is hard and cold and demands more of us than we believe ourselves capable of. Maybe there’s more than one reason why people might adapt a false expression.”

“I would have thought you, of all people, would agree with me. You were never blinded by those dreams. You were always so serious, so unaffected by attention, never seeking or even wanting love, of that sort. You were so adamant, so sure about yourself and rejecting anything that didn’t suit you, propriety be damned.”

“It’s true that I was never interested in being a lady, it seemed much too dull to me. And it’s not until recently that I even allowed myself to consider the possibility of love. But not because I didn’t want to before, only because I didn’t have the luxury of dreams.”

That made Rosa pause, and cock her head to the side.

“Why not? I thought you were allowed to do anything you wanted? It certainly seemed like it.”

“No, not at all. It’s true that my parents allowed me to pursue interest that were perhaps not suited to me, but only because they knew that they might become dependent on my abilities in the future.”

“How come?”

“My father was very ill. He hid it well enough to fool a visitor, but by the time you were married, I was taking over his craft, making weapons that went to sale, in his place.”

That made her eyes widen in shock.

“Oh, gosh… You made…? So, that’s why you disappeared. We all wanted to believe Ethedred, she was so distraught, but it was such an odd timing, and then the Guard…”

“Mother made me go, I didn’t want to. I assumed they’d kill her, but if she’s alive, I have to try and save her.”

“You do realise that no other woman would even think such a thought, much less actually try it. But I suppose, that’s why I decided to try and elicit your help, once I saw you walk into town. Because you’re so different.”

“You must’ve packed and saddled the horses mighty quickly. I was only in town for half an hour.”

“I have brought nothing but what I need to get to Hallen, I don’t want anything to remind me of this time. And I’m good with horses, I can ready them in no time as long as they’re clean.”

“What are their names?”

“The stallion is Scout, and the mare is Luna. If my contacts honour our arrangement, you can take them both as payment, as I’ll be travelling by boat next and won’t be able to bring either.”

“I appreciate that, but I might not be able to take them either, depending on what happens with mother and the Guard.”

“Then sell them. They’ll fetch a good price, especially with such fine saddles.”

“Thank you, Rosa. I never imagined I’d be in a position where I’d feel grateful to you, but I am.”

“Hey, you’re the one saving me, Snow. I don’t require your thanks. Especially not after how I’ve treated you in the past.”

Ember offered a slight smile in response. She had never held any grudges against this woman, even if she did perhaps have enough cause to. Such things had always seemed too unimportant to waste energy on, to her.

“You’re taking the river next, then?”

“Yes. I don’t know how far I’ll go, but at least far enough that Eric will never find me. My friends have simpler clothes waiting for me, and will help disguise me for the journey.”

“It takes a great deal of courage to walk away from all things known. You’re very strong.”

She merely nodded, hesitating to ask something else, but only for a moment.

“You said that it was only recently you’d discovered love. May I ask what you meant by that? Did someone actually manage to find you in favour?”

She couldn’t help but avert her gaze, staring off into the shadows while she tried to decide whether or not she was willing to talk about Pero.

“When I was away… I fell in love with a man that helped me. But he’s gone now, so there’s nothing more to say.”

“See? I told you, just a construct of the mind. A dream that can never be achieved.”

She tried in vain to stop the tears from falling, as she shifted her gaze back to the woman, and entire mountains of pain seemed to fill her voice.

“But it was for me. I lived it. For one glorious night, the dream was real… He was perfect, and then he was gone, torn from me by a darkness neither of us can escape. I’ve tried to blame him, to hate him for leaving me, but I can’t, because in my heart I know that he didn’t want to go.”

“How could you possibly make any judgement based on a single night? That’s not nearly enough to know if you love someone or not. Besides, if he truly loved you, then he wouldn’t have left, no matter what.”

“It’s not that simple, Rosa. There’s so much-…”

She cut herself off and quickly tried to blink the tears away, when she realised that something was moving, further down the road, keeping to the shadows. She quickly put a cautionary finger against her lips, so that Rosa would know to stay quiet, while she reached for her bow. If it was one of the others, the weapon wouldn’t save them, but if she was gonna die, she was gonna do it fighting for her life. Because as much as the pain in her heart had made her want to lay down and give up, she never would. And not just to have a hope of saving her mother, but because there was still a chance, however small, that she might see her beloved grump once more, and that alone was enough to make the fight worth it. Rosa’s situation had only clarified her own fortunes, in not having been forced into a marriage, with or without love, or suffered the pain of a man that took no care for her desires, or pleasures. Pero truly was perfect, in every way a man could be, and she would fight for him until her dying breath. How peculiar that it was the words of Rosa Fisher that had made her realise her fortunes. She stayed completely still, watching the spot where she’d seen movement, very intently, and she was just about to decide that enough time had passed for her to have misjudged the shadows, when something moved again. And this time, she could make out its contours against the snow.

“Untie your horse, and pray she’s fast enough to outrun the devil.”

It was barely a whisper, but the ice in her voice carried over to her companion, and the woman sprung to action as Ember did. Dawn was still hours away, and so was Hallen, even at a full sprint.

Pero had very nearly thrown up twice by the time the sun broke over the horizon, and almost fallen off some half-dozen times already, when the beast shifted directions, without warning altering the way the wind hit him. Birds made it seem so easy. Of course, it didn’t help that he was distracted, his mind lingering on those last images of the castle, being overrun by monsters, but no Snow in sight. His heart told him that she was still alive. He refused to believe that it would still be beating if her soul had left it, whether his mind knew it or not. His beloved was still alive, he had to believe that, or he would have nothing left to fight for. He would suffer her anger, disappointment, even sorrow, for the chance to hold her again. He knew that her reaction had been her way of protecting herself, and he didn’t have any blame to lay upon her, for doing what she needed to do after he’d made such an impactful decision for the both of them. But he wished they’d had more time. That he could’ve explained in full, so that she would’ve had a chance to understand why there hadn’t really been a choice. The others still tracked them, but Ash had managed to outrun them by the time she began to drop towards the ground once more. He was nervous about the landing, but she pushed the front of her body upwards, putting her rear legs down first, which resulted in a very soft touchdown, and allowed him to cling to her neck for most of it. Her wings disappeared, scattering into fading sparks, the moment she no longer needed them, and Pero jumped off as soon as they were safely on the ground, before doubling over and putting his hands on his knees in the deep snow, finally unable to force his stomach to hold on to its contents. He scooped some fresh snow into his mouth to rinse it out, before rising to his feet to look around. The morning sun was shining on a large structure, coated by the three feet of snow that had already fallen there, despite winter having only just started. It stood alone in an otherwise completely empty landscape. Not one tree or mountain or even hill could be seen, it was just an endless flat white surface, in every direction.

“Where are we?”

“We call it The Land of Lost Souls. The snow never thaws, and the winds can become so powerful that men will be blown away by them. It has no name, for none live here, and those that venture this way, die before they ever get this far, which is precisely why the demons and the Knights decided to build our temple here. Stay close to me, Tovar, or the cold will soon render you unmovable.”

It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment, that he hadn’t felt cold at all during their journey, despite flying through what had to be cold winds, for an entire night. Whatever fire the beast had access to, in order to create those wings, it apparently also made her capable of emanating a great deal of warmth around herself. He walked up to the side of her head, and followed closely as she led him towards the structure. It appeared to have been made with stone, although Pero struggled to understand how anyone could’ve hauled such materials out there, in a land so unforgiving, much less managed to work all day, presumably for years, judging by the sheer size of the thing, in such harsh conditions. They reached… well, not a door, it was much too big to be called that, a portal was perhaps more accurate, on the south side of the building, seemingly made from ice, and Ash nodded at him to open it. It had to be thirty feet high, and twenty feet wide, he’d never be able to push it open, it must weigh more than a whole herd of bison. He eyed the creature suspiciously.

“You’re joking, right?”

She just shook her head, and then nodded towards the door. He sighed and stepped closer, looking for a handle, but couldn’t find one. He thought that perhaps the snow had concealed it, so he ran a hand over the surface, and momentarily lingered when the smoothness of it took him by surprise. But before he could do anything else, the ice was suddenly just gone, and a vast hallway appeared before them.

“There are no regular doors into this place. We sealed it using ancient magic, so that only those with elemental blood can gain access. The others no longer have their blood, so try as they might, they could never get in.”

“Did you know that when you built this? I’m assuming you helped the Knights, because this place would be impossible for humans to make by themselves.”

“We did help, yes, but this was made long before our powers began to fade. Nearly a thousand years ago now. It was merely a fortunate coincidence that it also kept the others out. Had we known, we would’ve built more of these structures, to try and keep humans safe, but by the time we’d realised what was happening to us, our ties to the ancient magic had already been lost, with our collective weakening. And it wouldn’t have made much difference in the end, as the binding forces that maintain this magic will be broken once all elementals have perished.”

She walked inside and Pero followed, straining his neck to see all the way up to the ceiling, maybe a hundred yards away. There had to be windows up there, because light bounced off the walls and filled the entire building, which he could now see was a blend between stone walls and ice columns and ceilings. And it wasn’t just tall; it was enormous. The entire city of Boden could have fit into it.

“Why make it so big?”

She had to stop in order to answer him, but she started again as soon as she fell silent.

“Because back then, there were hundreds of us, and each of us had at least one Knight, so our councils were crowded.”

“Wait, I don’t understand. What do you mean you had Knights?”

He stopped walking when he noticed that they’d reached the middle of the structure. The columns that stood at regular intervals along the hall, stopped, opening the space up into a large dome, twice as high as the rest of the ceiling, held up by a symmetrical web of ice high above their heads, and he could see another four halls leading up to it, identical to the one they’d passed through. And right in the middle, a sculpture made of ice seemed to be perpetually falling from the sky, apparently held to the very centre of the dome by an ever-twisting spiral of snowflakes, and nothing more. There was no rope, or continuing tendril of ice reaching towards it from above. Nothing solid at all, just a vortex of snowflakes, not attached to anything other than the air around them, but still somehow holding up the suspended figure. It portrayed a creature similar to Ash, but bigger in every sense of the word, particularly if the depiction had been made to scale, as it was easily three times her size. Had it been alive, its wings would’ve been made of flesh and bone, having taken the place of its front legs, and the entire being appeared to be made to kill, garnered in deadly spikes and horns on every available surface, and even its skin looked like it could cut through flesh, as it was covered in something similar to fish-scales. Its head was broad and filled with sharp angles, its eyes positioned forwards, like most predators, with its jaws held fully opened, and teeth bared as it dove straight towards the ground, where another sculpture, this one made of stone, stood directly underneath it. A human, carved to scale but quite small, wearing clothes similar to Pero’s own, but as he stepped round to the front of it, he realised that it was a young woman, a girl, probably not even eligible for marriage yet. Her face was sad, but held no trace of fear, even as she stared straight up into the eyes of the monster that was a mere moment away from devouring her. There was something immeasurably powerful about that girl. Pero stared at her for a long while, trying to ascertain just what it was that he saw in her calmness and sorrow, that made her seem so unbreakable to him, but it kept evading his grasp.

“Who was she?”

“We never knew her name, or where she came from, or what possessed her to defy the demon. All we know is that this is where it all began.”

He kept circling the two opposing sculptures while she told the story, stopping every now and then to just listen, before nervous energy made him move again.

“We know that this happened long ago, in the early years of men, atop a mountain somewhere, so tall that most wouldn’t even survive climbing it, but where this girl and her tribe lived. We believe that this fire-demon attacked them, either to feast on the animals they kept, or on the men themselves, in whichever case, this girl was the last survivor. But she chose not to flee. Nor fight. She recognised the demon’s might, and made the decision to let it take her, in honour of its superiority.”

Sacrifice. That was what he saw in her face. The acceptance of one who’s chosen her fate and is at peace with all things, even herself. What a tremendous thing for one so young.

“The demon crushed and ate her, but because of her sacrifice, nature rewarded her by letting her soul meld with his, for just a few moments before it left this world, forcing him to feel everything that she had felt throughout her life. And in his confusion and fear, the demon released his flames upon the mountain, burning so hot that all the snow thawed, exposing the earth and creating lakes and rivers, and forcing the wind down into the valley he’d created, and thus, all elements had been brought together by his power. But when his flame ran out and his fear was quieted, he was no longer a mindless beast. He understood what he had done, the pain and sorrow he’d caused, and he begged the mountain to take his life in penance. It granted him his plea, letting him fall where he stood among the fruits of his rage, and from his body, nature tore four pieces and gave to each of the elements, thus creating the first of us.”

Pero stopped and looked at Ash.

“Why? What’s your purpose? The elements exist with or without you, don’t they?”

“Yes. We were a gift to the human race. A way to help you better understand nature, and to live in harmony with it. We explained why forests burn down, why the sky sometimes rumbles so hard it seems as though it might fall down, and why the ground sometimes shakes until it opens up and swallows the land. We were a gift to you, given because of the selfless act of one human, which proved to the Earth that your souls are good and pure. And for centuries, we coexisted, helping one another. Until one day, when a man discovered something that could pierce our skin, and decided that such a thing might give him power over us. His discovery could have led to a war between our species, and those that understood the true value of our powers, tried to explain that his endeavour was foolish and wrong, but he was blinded by ambition. Realising they had no other choice, a small group of people came together to share the burden of ending his life, and made sure to scrub all knowledge of the weapon he had created, from the world.”

“They were the first Knights.”

“Indeed. After that day, an agreement was struck between our species, never to raise arms against one another, but also that perhaps it was best if the larger population didn’t know about demons. Because there would always be those who would seek to test our strength. So, we hid. For a very long time, none of us showed ourselves to any human that wasn’t a Knight, and after a while, we became legends, and then we were completely forgotten. The Knights remained our allies, and kept teaching the people the things we’d taught them, but with the years, people stopped listening, and the knights grew old and died. And then we started losing our powers, and now here we are.”

“Why didn’t you create more Knights? Bring younger people into your council?”

“We did, for a while. But the more people forgot about us, the more we started being met by fear whenever we tried to reveal ourselves to a person with the deviant blood. And since the transfer requires a bite, and there was often no Knight available to help explain what we were trying to do, the chosen ones often ended up going mad, and eventually it all seemed to cause more damage than it was worth.”

“So, this place is just a monument now. No more than a memory. But then, why bring me here? You could’ve told me all this anywhere.”

“The Temple is much more than that. This place is imbued with the most powerful magic that still exists in this world, and through it, there are things I can do that would be impossible elsewhere. I brought you here for two reasons, Tovar. Both of whom breaks every rule and code that this council once gave one another. But I face a precipice, with nothing but fire behind me, so all I can do is jump, and hope that as it was for this brave girl, my sacrifice will be enough.”

“What do you mean, ‘your sacrifice’?”

“I won’t be leaving this Temple with you. But before we get to that, there’s something I must give you.”

Pero was about to press the matter, when she suddenly rose to her hindlegs and sparked her wings into existence once more. But she didn’t take off. Instead, she lifted her wings up to encircle the sculpture of the fire-demon, and then a strange sound escaped her. Not a growl or a shriek or a vibration, but a kind of song. Something sombre and quiet, but as it bounced off the walls and through the ice, it seemed to take on a life of its own, echoing louder and louder, until the twisting vortex of snowflakes suddenly stopped, and the sound disappeared. For maybe two seconds, everything was eerily still, and then the sculpture of the fire-demon came alive. It was still suspended in the same spot, but it twisted its body to face Ash, and when their eyes met, the sculpture reached its winged front legs towards her, revealing a weapon which had suddenly had just appeared in its paws. Ash took it, and the moment she did, the entire sculpture turned into snowflakes, swirling through the air for a few seconds, before they collectively made their slow journey down to the floor. She let her wings fade away, the sparks joining the snow in a strange little dance between heat and cold, before they all died out. Then she held the weapon out to Pero, who took it with a knit brow, having suddenly forgotten his burning questions from before.

“What exactly am I meant to do with this?”

“Defeat the others. Don’t be fooled by its blunt appearance, what you hold in your hands is the only thing that can pierce our skin.”

What he was holding was a mace, or club, with a metal handle about the length of his lower arm, which connected to a top roughly the size of his hand, and which appeared to be made of bone. Eight white flanges filled the rounded head of the weapon, but he’d never seen a design like this one before. Each flange was quite small, not rising from the body of the head by much more than half a finger, and unlike the typical blunt edge of such a weapon, to buckle armour without getting stuck in it, these had been made sharp. Meaning this weapon wasn’t made for battling an armoured enemy. At least, not any armour known to men.

“Is this bone?”

“Yes. Stolen from a demon that died of old age, before it could be consumed by nature. We hid it here, where we knew that none could find it, or get to it.”

“This is from one of you?”

“The teeth of our own kin are the only things that can cut us, but the man that made this weapon, figured that our teeth are just visible parts of the skeleton, and bone should work just as well. Unfortunately, he was right. I believe that his betrayal of the friendship between our species, is what ultimately made the elements leave us. With the trust broken, and the demons forced into hiding and forgotten, nature’s generous gift to you was no longer appreciated, and thus, it was rescinded, to the detriment of us all. It’s quite fitting, really. That when our species respected each other, we both thrived, and now that that relationship has been lost, we all suffer.”

“I suppose that makes sense. But how the hell do you expect me to take on a small army of demons with just one weapon? Why not make more, create an army of our own to meet them?”

“Because you won’t find an army of people willing to help quickly enough. People don’t want to believe that the monsters in the shadows are actually real, and if they did see those monsters, their inclination wouldn’t be to fight them, even if they had weapons. But that mace isn’t the only reason I brought you here. I have another gift for you, and this one will enable you to take on an army, all by yourself.”

He scowled incredulously at her. Because it would take power beyond belief for any human to be able to fight an army of demons by themselves. He watched her close her eyes, and a moment later, the entire Temple began to rumble and vibrate. The remaining sculpture of the girl turned to pebbles and scattered over the stone floor, before a powerful wind nearly knocked Pero over, as it swept through the cavernous space, but didn’t leave. It turned into a twister around him and Ash, lifting the pebbles that were once a girl, and the snowflakes that had been a demon, from the floor, and keeping them spinning through the room, before sparks from Ash’s sides were drawn into it as well. She opened her eyes again once all the elements had been united, and then she turned back to him.

“Listen to me now, Tovar. I’m dying. And when I go, the last tether to the magic of the elements will be lost, and the darkness will take hold of this world, there’s nothing I can do about that. But I’m also tethered to you, by blood, and that gives me a chance to keep the magic alive. One last chance to keep the darkness at bay. There’s just enough power left here, to give mankind one final gift. I’m going to use that power to give you all of the elements, so that the others can’t hurt you. Their remaining powers won’t work on you, and nature will have no choice but to follow your command.”

He stood there, surrounded by an indoor twister that rightly should be impossible, and tried to absorb what she was telling him, but despite the overall alienness of his current situation, he couldn’t understand how such a thing could ever be made real.

“But, and this is the most important thing; once you defeat the darkness, you have to set the elements free again. You have to let the power go. Do that, and everything will be returned to a state of balance between all beings. All magic will cease, meaning none will be more powerful than any other. Do you understand?”

“…No. I don’t understand any of this!”

“I’m sorry, I wish I had more time to explain, but I’m afraid my journey has reached its end. You’ll find your wife in Hallen. Goodbye.”

“Wait, what-…”

Right before his eyes, the demon turned to dust, and was swept up into the whirlwind, which suddenly intensified and grew considerably. Before he’d had a chance to even realise that she was actually gone, the light from above shifted, and suddenly seemed to stretch towards him through the centre of the twister. And even though he didn’t know why, he reached a hand up towards it. It was as though lightning had struck him. Sharp and nearly unbearable pain shot through him, and then the twister was no longer around him, but inside of him, still whirling and howling and sparkling, and he fell to the floor, unable to control his movements at all. The Temple grew dark and lifeless around him, as though all light was being drained into his body instead, and then abruptly… it was over. He laid there, breathing hard in the empty darkness, dazed and not even trying to understand what had just happened, it was much too confusing. Slowly, he sat up, feeling no pain at all, but a kind of… movement… inside of his own body. In his skin, flesh and even bones. Not movement like something was crawling, but more like the waves of the ocean, pushing against the shore, or trees swaying in the wind. He looked at his own hands in the small amount of daylight that still managed to find its way down from the dome. They were empty now, as he’d dropped the weapon when he fell, but as he kept looking at his open palms, it was as though he could see the elements inside himself. Each one making its own trail through his body. He focused on water for a moment, and then scrambled to his feet and tried to back away, when water indeed flowed from his hands as though he was a well. But it stopped as soon as he wanted it to. Suddenly, the darkness of the Temple felt like a pressure over him, and he grabbed the mace and started running towards the door they’d entered through, feeling almost as if he was being expelled from the now dead ruin. The magic door of ice was no longer there, and the wind was already pushing snow into the hall. It chilled him to the bone in a mere moment, and he quickly focused on the fire within him, instantly getting warm again, but also setting himself on fire, which made him panic, and throw himself into the snow, frantically trying to put it out. When he finally realised that the fire wasn’t burning him, or his clothes, he tried picking up a handful of snow, to see if it would melt, and it did. So, it really was fire, it just didn’t hurt him. He couldn’t very well walk around on fire, though, so he took some time to experiment with the intensity, until he found a level of heat that kept him warm, but didn’t set him ablaze. He wondered if Ash had ever been so overwhelmed by her powers, or if she’d been born with the knowledge of how to wield them. But now that he was back outside, trudging through the snow, he looked around at the emptiness of the land, realising he had no clue where he actually was, or how to get home. He had no spikes on his back that could be turned into wings. But he had to get to Hallen. Why the hell had she gone there? He’d told her to stay away from towns and people, had she no understanding at all of the danger they were in? Or… had she deliberately ignored his words? Had her anger and heartbreak turned her bitter against anything he’d said, and made her want to do the opposite? Or worse… Had she been broken enough not to care what became of her? Abruptly terrified, Pero conjured the wind on instinct, pushing himself up into the air like a leaf, hurling around uncontrollably on the erratic gusts, until he was almost up in the scattered clouds. It was cold up there, and he’d lost focus on the fire as he struggled with the wind. Fuck, this was hard. But he had to figure it out, fast. Because he didn’t care if he drew the creatures to her anymore, if she was indeed angry or sad or broken enough to completely ignore her own safety, then he would have to protect her. He knew of no one else that would, and there was every chance that a beast

might still find her. Even if she hated him now, he wouldn’t let her die. He’d left her once, not knowing if he’d ever get to see her again, and he wasn’t willing to let that decision stand in his way anymore. The warmth of love in his heart helped to guide his powers, and the ferociousness of his hatred towards the others, gave him the focus to gain control over them. Or, enough of it to keep from crashing to ground, at least. Now all he needed to do was figure out where in the world he was, to have a hope of knowing where to go. His gaze was drawn back down to the ground, by something glimmering, and he saw the Temple beneath his own feet… very, very far beneath them. He gulped, and nearly lost his senses, having to raise his eyes towards the clouds and take a few deep and calming breaths, while the wind shuffled him about once more. Good thing he’d already emptied his stomach. Gods, that was a long fucking drop! But he had to get used to it, there was no other way. So, he looked down once more, forcing himself to study the structure closely, ignoring the height, and noticed that the Temple was shaped a lot like a star, with five arms and a round centre. But that wasn’t what had drawn his gaze. One of those arms was glowing faintly in red, at the very tip, as if pointing, and the sun told him that the direction it was pointing to, was southwest. Could Ash have left him one last helping hand? He decided to believe that that was the only thing it could be, and directed the wind to take him there.

“I’m coming back, my love. Stay alive.”

***************

Link to Chapter 11

Just to reassure you; next chapter will see our lovebirds reunited! Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day/night!

@sarahjkl82-blog @marydjarin @idreamofboobear @agingerindenial @tiffanyleen @hounding-around @tobealostwanderer @deadhumourist @toomanystoriessolittletime @tintinn16 @nolanell @prostitute-robot-from-the-future @dihra-vesa @feminist-violinist @lowlights

[diavolosthots]

Could you make a fic about Diavolo being in love with mc and confessing. Lot of fluff and love

After everything, here’s some much needed love

My Feelings (Diavolo x GN!reader ft. Barbatos)

“Barbatoooss…!” The butler turned around, knowing what was about to be asked of him for the 35th time today, “yes, My Lord?” The pout that Diavolo tried to pull off on him has long lost its effect, about 3000 years ago or so, but he had to at least pretend to fall for it, unless he wanted a super upset Demon Prince; Barbatos knew better. “How could I possibly go about telling them my feelings?” For someone who’s so old and has met all kinds of people and or creatures, Diavolo was really not the best when it comes to feelings, considering he always makes sure to eat up his own. It’s just, that in this particular case, Barbatos felt like he was also the one confessing which he doesn’t understand; how did the Prince manage to lure him in so deeply? “My Lord, I would just tell them. Maybe take them out on a walk and go for it. It’s really not that hard.” It really wasn’t that hard; not to him. Make it nice, make them feel wanted, and then just go for it. 

To Diavolo, however, that seemed utterly impossible. He fell for you, hard. He never saw it coming until he was already stumbling down the cliff. It felt hopeless, considering you were just their exchange student. For once, he felt like he had no power, no control over something, as if he was just another regular person. That was the problem! Well, not really… you made him feel like just another person. He felt safe and oddly comfortable around you and he was scared of losing that feeling, or more so this thing you two shared. “What if---!” “My Lord, with all due respect, if you ask me one more ‘what if’ question, I will turn around and leave, and deal with the consequences later.” 

Barbatos can’t remember the last time he talked back to his master. It doesn’t happen very often but he was getting tired and he still had things to get done; the last thing he needed was a man child on his back. “Barbatos…” His voice was low, almost threatening, before it turned into a sigh, making Barbatos let out a breath of relief he didn’t realize he was holding. “I know you’re right. I’m worrying about nothing. I’m a perfect match; I have everything they could ever want, including a, what I consider to be, deep connection with them, which is important. Thank you, and I’m sorry for bothering you. I shall get them over here as soon as possible.” The butler smiled, half because he has to and half because he was actually proud of his master for once. Instead of continuing like he usually would, he actually listened to someone. He nodded, watching Diavolo leave with a small wave. “That doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for talking to me like that.” And his smile turned upward painfully as he bit the inside of his cheeks, “of course not, My Lord….”

He did it. He had texted you to come over as soon as you could, “Can you come to the castle? It’s urgent.” Of course, it was nowhere near a life or death situation, but he loved the idea of seeing you hustle and get back here as quickly as you could. Meanwhile, he had Barbatos prepare some wine and turn the lights on in the garden for a nice stroll. Diavolo walked past the mirror for the hundredth time this hour, waiting for your arrival almost too impatiently. He had thought of elaborate things to do, trying to impress you, but Barbatos’ words came flooding back and he knew his butler was right. Why beat around the bush?

“My Lord, (Y/N) has arrived. I sent them to the garden to wait for you. The wine glasses are on the terrace.” A smile crept across his face and he quickly brushed past Barbatos, speed walking to the terrace to greet you, almost like a child. “(Y/N)! Glad you could make it.” He engulfed you in a hug, quite selfishly so, as he didn’t care in the moment how you felt about it, but you actually hugged him back tightly, “Are you okay? Your message seemed so urgent.” He chuckled softly, pulling back, although reluctantly so. “I’m fine, dear, don’t worry.” He turns to his side, picking up the two wine glasses and putting one in your hand, “There’s simply something I’d like to discuss. Care to take a walk with me?” He turned to his side, holding out his arm for you with a soft smile playing on his lips. You gripped the glass tightly, suddenly feeling a little nervous as you reached out for his arm, holding onto him. “Of course. I’m just glad you’re okay and nothing serious happened.”

Words cannot describe how warm he felt in that moment. You were worried about him. You cared for him. You took his arm. These are all good signs, no? “Nothing happened. I’m glad to see you’re so worried about my well being, though. It shows your big heart, which is something I love about you.” Your eyes flickered up at him, a smile spreading across your lips, “Of course I care for you, silly. You made my life here so easy… well you and the brothers, but mainly you. You always look out for me, and I can come to you for anything. Honestly, sometimes I forget you’re the King-to-be, and I have to catch myself to make sure I’m not too informal.” You laughed softly, taking a sip of the wine as you looked around the garden. 

“I… like that.” He cleared his throat, avoiding to look at you right now as he stared out ahead, “I like that you see me as more than the future king. It’s quite refreshing to have someone by my side that just sees me as their equal. After all, we’re just two people trying to find our place in this world, no?” You listened, trying to match his step and smiling when you ended up in sync, nodding back up at him, “yeah… I don’t believe we’re that much different. You might have everything you could ever want, but you’re really light hearted and easy going… I like that about you. A lot, actually.” Heat caressed your cheeks, your eyes averting his, but he stopped walking to turn your head toward his again, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be pushy. Barbatos told me to… be a little more straight forward and less cryptic. What I mean is… we’re both trying to find our place in this world. Mine has somewhat been decided, and I’m jealous of the freedom you carry, but I’d like to ask… would you like to share a place beside me? I mean…” He’s chewing the inside of his cheeks now, trying to find the right words. His eyes are looking hopelessly at you, trying to make you understand somehow.

“I mean… I hold you dear… I want you by my side, if you will have me. I don’t want to force you; this is a big decision you’d have to make, and I’m not asking you to answer now bu-- hmpf!” Before he could even finish his sentence, you reached up. Your arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer into a sweet kiss. You were at a loss for words, too, and this seemed like the only way to get him to calm down. He clung to you, his arms wrapping around your waist to pull you closer the minute your lips were on his. He didn’t dare pull away, not yet. His lips lingered on yours for a long time, before you broke it off again. A pout formed on his lips as he tried to follow yours and you giggled softly at his child-like behavior. “Diavolo…. I’d love to stay with you. As a matter of fact, if you wouldn’t have said anything, I would have, because the longing gazes and tension between us has become too much to bear…” You nuzzled against him, putting your head on his chest. His heart was racing, you heard it, no matter how hard he would have tried to hide it, “so yes… I want to stay with you.” 

Words couldn’t begin to describe how much happiness that brought him. All he could do was squeeze you tighter against him, hoping his racing hard and sweet kiss to the top of your head was enough to at least get you to understand. 

[ailuronymy]

do you think every disabled character in wc is handled poorly? i understand theres def some cases of ableism but at the same time when i hear ppl say that its usually bc the disabled cat wasnt able to become a warrior due to their disability. and i feel like ppl forget, that not everyone irl CAN do what they want after they become disabled. ex. someone wants to be an athlete, but their legs have to be amputated. a cat like briarlight esp i feel is p realistic and could be a source of comfort

Hello there, thank you for writing in. I’m going to reply to this question with a series of questions I think are a bit more useful, given what you’re trying to ask me. I hope that’ll clarify what is a deeply complex, multilayered issue. 

Do I think Erin Hunter handles anything in the series “well”? Not really. I don’t have a high opinion of the work of the collective and, broadly speaking, I think every right note they play, metaphorically speaking, is an instance of chance rather than effort, skill, or intention. Stopped clocks are right twice a day, mediocre writers will sometimes do something cool by accident, similar principle. That’s not to say Erin Hunter hasn’t ever done anything on purpose--just that overall the underlying drive of the series isn’t so much quality as it is quantity, and speed of production, and it shows. 

Do I think Erin Hunter puts any significant research into how they portray disability? No. I do not think it is a priority for this series. They’re not trying to make a meaningful work of literature, or capture a realistic experience of disability, or tell especially impactful or thoughtful stories, or even make a particularly good or coherent fantasy world. Warriors is a specifically commercial product that was commissioned by HarperCollins to appeal to a particular demographic of drama-loving, cat-loving kids. It’s not really trying to do anything but sell books, because it’s a business, so the text in many ways reflects that. They’re not going for disability representation, in my opinion. They’re including disability in many cases as a plot-point or an obstacle. 

Do I think this means that people can’t connect to these characters and narratives in meaningful ways? No. Often I say that a work is completed only when it is read. Before that point, it doesn’t have a meaning: a reader finishes the work through the act of reading, and interpretation, and filling in the spaces and resonance of the story with their own values and experiences. When people talk about subjectivity, this is what they are talking about. What this means in the context of disabled characters in Warriors is that these characters and their stories can be multiple, conflicting, even mutually exclusive things at the same time, to different people, for different reasons. 

Do I think characters have to be “good” to be significant to someone? No. I think genuinely “bad” (i.e., not researched or poorly researched, cliche, thoughtlessly written, problematic, etc. etc.) characters can be deeply meaningful, and often are. Ditto above: for many people, and especially marginalised or stigmatised people, reading is almost always an act of translation, wherein the person is reading against the creative work of the dominant culture in a way that the author likely didn’t intend or didn’t even imagine. There’s a long documented history of this in queer culture, but it’s true for just about everyone who is rarely (or unfairly) represented in media. Disabled people often have to read deeply imperfect works of fiction featuring disability and reinterpret them in the process--whether to relate to a kind of disability they don’t experience themselves but which is the closest they’re offered to something familiar, or to turn positive and meaningful what is intended as narrative punishment, or simply to create what’s commonly called headcanon about “non-disabled” characters who echo their personal experiences. 

Do I think everyone has to agree? Extremely no. As I said before, people will actually always disagree, because all people have different needs and different experiences. What can be interpreted as empowering to one person might be very othering and painful for another. There is no “right” answer, because, again, that is how subjectivity works. This is especially true because marginalised communities are often many different kinds of people with different lives and needs brought together over a trait or traits they share due to the need for solidarity as protection and power--but only in a broad sense. It’s why there is often intracommunity fighting over representation: there isn’t enough, there’s only scraps, and so each person’s personal interpretation can feel threatening to people whose needs are different. You can see examples of this especially when it comes to arguments over character sexuality: a queer female character might be interpreted as bisexual by bisexual people who relate to her and want her to be, while being interpreted as lesbian by lesbians who also relate to her and want her to be like them. Who is correct? Often these different interpretations based on different needs are presented as if one interpretation is theft from the other, when in fact the situation is indicative of the huge dearth of options for queer people. It becomes increasingly more intense when it comes to “canon” representations, because of the long history of having to read against the grain I mentioned above: there’s novelty and, for some people, validation in “canon” certainty. And again, all of this is also true for disabled people and other stigmatised groups. 

Do I think this is a problem? Not exactly. It is what it is. It is the expected effect of the circumstances. Enforced scarcity creates both the need for community organising and solidarity and the oppressive pressure to prioritise one’s self first and leave everyone else in the dust (or else it might happen to you). The system will always pit suppressed people against each other constantly, because it actively benefits from intracommunity fighting. Who needs enemies when you have friends like these, and so on. A solution is absolutely for everyone in community to hold space for these different needs and values, and to uplift and support despite these differences, but it’s not anyone’s fault for feeling threatened or upset when you don’t have much and feel like the thing that you do have is being taken away. It’s a normal, if not really helpful, human response. But until people learn and internalised that the media is multifaceted and able to be many things at once, without any of those things being untrue or impacting your truth of the text, then there will be fighting. 

Do I think my opinion on disability on Warriors is all that important? No, not really. I can relate to some characters in some moment through that translation, but my opinion on, say, Jayfeather is nowhere near as worthy of consideration than that of someone who is blind. I don’t have that experience and it’s not something I can bring meaningful thinking about, really. That’s true for all these characters. If you want to learn about disability, prioritise reading work about disabled rights and activism that is done by disabled people, and literary criticism from disabled people. And as I mentioned above, remember that community isn’t a monolith: it’s a survival tactic, that brings together many different people with disparate experiences of the world. So research widely. 

Finally--do I think there’s only one kind of disabled narrative worth telling? No. For some people, a disabled character achieving a specific, ability-focused dream is a good story. For other people, a story that acknowledges and deals with the realities, and limitations, of disability is a good story. The same person might want both of those stories at different times, depending on their mood. That’s okay. Sometimes there’s power and delight in a fantasy of overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles and defying all expectations. Sometimes there’s value and catharsis in a narrative that delves into the challenges and grief and oppression experienced because of disability. There’s no one truth. 

To round all this off, I’m going to give my favourite example of this, which is Cinderella. I think it’s a great and useful tool, since for many it’s familiar and it’s very simple. Not much happens. In the story, she is bullied and tormented, until a fairy godmother gifts her over several nights with the opportunity to go to a royal ball, where she dances with a prince. The prince eventually is able to find Cinderella, due to a shoe left behind, and they are married. In some versions, the family that mistreated her are killed. In others, they’re forgiven. 

Some people hate the story of Cinderella, because she is seen as passive. She tolerates the bullying and never fights back. She does every chore she’s told. She is given an opportunity by a fairy godmother, and she doesn’t help herself go to the ball. She runs from the prince and he does the work to find her again. Eventually, she’s married and the prince, presumably, keeps her in happiness and comfort for the rest of her life. 

For some, this story is infuriating, because Cinderella doesn’t “save herself”: she is largely saved by external forces. She is seen as a quintessential damsel-in-distress, and especially for people who have been bullied, infantalised, or made to feel less capable or weak, that can be a real point of personal pain and discomfort. 

However, for some others, Cinderella is a figure of strength, because she is able to endure such hostile environments and terrible people and never gives up her gentle nature or her hope. She never becomes cruel, or bitter. She is brave in daring to go outside her tiny, trapped world, and she is brave to let the prince find her. She doesn’t have to fight or struggle to earn her reward of happiness and prove her worth, because she was always deserving of love and kindness. The prince recognises at once, narratively speaking, her goodness and virtue, and stops at nothing to deliver her a better life. 

Depending on the version, the wicked family disfigure themselves for their own greed--or are punished, which for some is a revenge fantasy; or Cinderella forgives them and once again shows her tenacious kindness, which for others is a different revenge fantasy. 

The point? Cinderella is the same character in the same story, but these are almost unrecognisable readings when you put them side-by-side. Which one is right? Which one is better? In my opinion, those are the wrong questions. I hope this (long, sorry) reply is a set of more useful ones. 

[winchesterxxi]

To Make you Mine (Din Djarin x Reader)

Rating: PG-13

Type: Fluff

Summary: Din got the darksaber and as we know he can’t yield it to Bo Katan, it needs to be won in a fight. He doesn’t want the darksaber to land in Bo’s hands because she doesn’t sit right with him, so he suggests you take it, along with an interesting proposal

Word Count: 1.9k

Warnings: CH.16 SPOILERS, graphical descriptions of violence, mentions of blood, implications of sex

A/N: This idea came to me in one of my many maladaptative daydreaming moments a few weeks ago so bear with me

MASTERPOST | REQUEST HERE | KO-FI

✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸ ✸

You were trying to find a sense of normality.

After yours and Din’s life had been turned upside down just the week before, with losing your home and giving away your kid all in less than a couple of days, you had to go somewhere and deal with things. And you knew the Mandalorian by your side would never willingly take a single day off.

But with the help of a newly acquired ally, who also happens to have become the newest leader of Jabba’s Palace, Boba Fett, you managed to get in the possession of a small A-47 Airspeeder. Having a friend feared by all of Tatooine had its advantages.

You flew the fighter to what you knew to be a safe place to rest, across the galaxy: the forest moon of Endor.

You landed three days ago, and you and Din have been living a nomad life, using the ship to sleep in and igniting fire every day and night to cook and keep yourselves warm. You could’ve easily settled on a planet with a more hospitality feel to it; staying in an inn. But you knew this is what you both needed – fresh air away from everyone.

Despite Din’s way of dealing with the past events was to either cry alone or keep quiet, you always found intense physical activity the best way to blow off some steam. Tragic events had a way of making you angry, and this is the coping mechanism you found.

Slipping out of the small cot in which you were pressed against Din’s chest, you get some sturdier clothes on and get out of the ship, and run in big circles until you feel tired.

Once you were in your 15th lap, you couldn’t really tell anymore at this point, Din descends from the ship, full armor on which catches your eye.

“What’s wrong?” you yell so that he can hear you from how far you are.

From where he stands, he simply motions you to come closer with his left hand. You stop running and head in his direction instead, regaining your breath.

“What’s so important, you couldn’t wait for me to run my laps?” you question him, letting your hair loosen itself from the tight ponytail in which you had put it in to prevent it from getting in your way.

“I was thinking about something, and I’ve come to a decision.” His modulated voice explains calmly.

“Okay… and what decision have you exactly come to?”

“I don’t want the dark saber.”

“Yeah, you made that pretty clear to everyone three days ago.” you frown up at him, not understanding where the conversation was going.

“And I don’t trust Bo Katan.” You nod along, following his words.

“I want you to have it.”

You almost choke on your own spit when he communicates his decision to you, completely aloof as to why he would’ve thought of such a stupid thing.

“Are you out of your kriffing mind?!” you practically yell at him, waving your hands in the air, striding away from him to calm yourself down. You take a deep breath before turning to face him, still a few feet away. “What in the galaxy makes you think that I would ever do that?! Plus, you do remember that if I were to get that thing,” you gesture to his right hand, which has since reached for the dark saber “we would have to fight over it. As in, beat each other up.”

Din doesn’t dare to get closer to you, simply talking from where he is standing.

“It’s not a thing, it’s the single most powerful weapon in all of the Mandalorian history and yes, I do know that.” His helmet nods down and you finally connect the dots as to why he was in full armor when there was virtually no one on this moon besides the both of you. You sigh and your shoulders lower. You can’t believe that you’re actually considering this, hand coming up to press against your forehead.

“What’s in it for me besides the pain in the ass of having to rule all the Mandalorians in the galaxy?”

“I’ll marry you.” Once again your body as if goes into shock, stiffening up every possible muscle and your eyes widening.

“You -…” you stop yourself, before you scream, quickly striding over to him “You’ll what now?”

“If you can win the dark saber, I’ll marry you, you’ll become part of my clan, you’ll become a Mandalorian, and no other will be able to oppose you as their ruler.”

If before your heart was beating faster than ever with a mix of rage, confusion, and just overall annoyance, it has now sunk to the bottom of your stomach.

You and Din shared a connection beyond words, having spent countless nights together, both in union acting as guardians to Grogu and if anything ever happened to him you know you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. So many were the times when you thought you’d lose him for the crazy stunts he has pulled to save the people he loves.

It was a love that didn’t need to be spoken, rather felt or shown, but now you weren’t so sure it was reciprocated as his answer bore a purely practical solution to a problem. Not a declaration in any way.

“Oh… Yeah, that makes sense.” You can’t hide the way your body slouched slightly and your face dropped at his answer. Din walks over to you, his chest tight at the words that he wants to say to you.

“And…” He places his free gloved hand upon your cheek, causing you to look up and meet his hidden gaze. If you could see through the dark visor of his helmet you would you could see the gentle smile that made his eyes crinkle at the corners as he looked adoringly at you, maybe soon “obviously, because I love you, mesh’la.”

You take a quiet breath in as your heart skips a beat at his confession. The words he’s wanted to say to you for so long and that you have longed to listen to for longer than you’d care to admit.

“I’ve lost too many things in my life, and if there is the chance for me to take you like a piece of myself for the rest of my life, I’m going to take it.” He brings his helmet down to meet your forehead and you take a deep breath before stepping backward and away from him, crouching down into a fighting stance, as you bring your hands up to be close to your face, closing them into two fists.

“Are you sure?”  You ask “What if I hurt you?”

“Give me your best.” Is all he says, igniting the saber at the same time as he reaches for the spear lodged in the back of his cape and throwing it in the direction of your chest. You grab it before it falls to the floor, handling it the way you had been instructed all those months ago when you insisted the man standing in front of you to teach you to defend yourself. “I know I’ve taught you well.”

The corner of your mouth lifts in a smile and you speed up to where he is, bringing the beskar speer down to meet the saber’s glowing blade as the sound of the clash echoes around you.

You breathe in before moving the spear to try and strike him from a different angle, moving forward as he backs away at the same time, grunting at the effort, all possible friendliness within the combat having completely flow away.

Once you finally think you have a good aim, he steps out of your trajectory, causing you to stumble forward with the momentum of the blow you were about to deliver.

“Think before striking, Y/n. We’ve done this before!” his voice comes heavy and sharp through the modulator in his helmet. Turning back at him, you are panting before running back to him, lifting your spear as if to strike him, but as his blade goes up to meet your weapon you slump below it and turn back, immediately hitting him on his defenseless back, in between the beskar plates.

He groans in pain and stumbles forward.

“Faster, Din. We’ve done this before.” You mock his earlier statement, smirking at him.

Oh. The man is pissed off. You can’t see his face, but having known him for so long you can tell by his body language that he is no longer padding around the playground. He means business.

He charges at you full force, but you block his blow with your spear, rotating and pushing it away from you at the same time, both of your weapons fly to the side.

You both look at the weapons, before looking at each other in sync, knowing exactly that you were going to try and go for the saber.

Din runs from you but you quickly catch up to him, advantages of him being in full beskar armor, weighing down on him and you only sporting some training clothes. You throw one of your legs around his waist and the other over his shoulder, rotating with his neck in the center so that you’re in front of him, and you pull your body weight to the side, bringing his own down with you.

You both fall to the ground with a heavy thud, his side crushing the leg that landed under him as you let out a cry. But you fight through the pain as you look to your side and notice that the place you are is only a few feet away from where the weapons landed. Holding him in a chuck hold with your legs, you hastily reach for the saber’s handle and switch yourself from underneath him, straddling his chest and holding the blade dangerously close to his throat.

You are both heavily breathing, you visibly sweating and his grip on you loosens as he holds his hands close to his face, surrendering.

You shakily exhale as a smile makes its way onto your lips and you nod in amusement, standing up from where you were.

Looking down at your lover, you extend him your free hand, which he takes as you pull him up to your level. He hovers over you as your right-hand turns the dark saber off, both chests still heaving up and down.

He brings his forehead down, shoulders slouching as he bows to the new Mand’alor.

“Ner alor.” My leader. “Mand’alor.” Sole Ruler.

You smile up at him once he straightens back to his full height.

“Now,” you grin with your tongue in peeking behind your teeth, and hanging the dark saber’s handle to your belt “If I remember correctly, I heard something about getting married... am I correct, my loyal subject?”

You walk slowly up to him, swaying your hips in the course.

His arms come to rest upon your waist, his voice letting out an amused hum and you just know he is smiling like an idiot underneath the beskar.

“And if I remember correctly, according to the Creed, that means that all this…” you tap with your pointer finger on the beskar of his helmet, chest and arms finalizing with a light tap of your nail against his crotch protection “gets to come off. Right?”

His grip on your waist tightens.

“Let’s go inside to find out.”

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[sariahsue]

A Cat of Their Own - Ch 1

Sabine checked her phone again in anxiety. There hadn't been an akuma attack in the last two days, which meant that one would begin any second. She'd been telling herself that every few minutes since breakfast. Tom was playing video games with Marinette, hunched forward over his controller. He was supposed to be getting information out of her, but it didn't look like he was trying too hard. Sabine watched them while she stirred the soup. Steam rose off the surface in faint curls and twists.

The phone screen lit up, and she grabbed it. An emergency alert. An akuma had been spotted. Civilians were advised to shelter in place until Ladybug and Cat Noir had dealt with the problem.

It was the same message that she'd read dozens of times (and ignored more often than that), but now it made her mind numb with fear. But she had to go through with their plan.

"Oh, there's another akuma attack." Her voice sounded hollow and forced. To her dismay, Marinette immediately paused her game and turned around, eyebrows pinched with concern.

"Where is it?"

"Parc Montsouris," Sabine said. "I just got the text."

Marinette looked out the window, her face steely, game controller forgotten next to her. Tom and Sabine shared a worried glance.

"Dinner won't be ready for another half hour," Sabine said, then took a deep breath to keep her voice from shaking. This was the most important stage of the plan. "Did you finish all your homework?" Please. Please, say yes. 

"Oh, uh, now that you mention it, I do remember that I forgot to do something." Marinette waved goodbye quickly, then bolted up her stairs, letting the trapdoor thump loudly behind her. Sabine came to sit next to Tom, soup completely abandoned.

"It's looking likely," he said. Sabine could only nod. Her fingers were cold, and she flexed them to try to bring life back to them, but it didn't help. Her whole body felt numb, and she wondered if she would actually go into shock.

Tom reached for the remote and switched to the news. Cat Noir flitted across the screen, fighting a giant frog monster by himself. He jumped off window ledges and rolled across the empty street to avoid a steady stream of some type of red projectile.

The camera was far away, and the angle was bad so it was difficult to tell, but he looked like a teenager himself. He was thin and lanky, like he was in the middle of a growth spurt.

"We could still be wrong," Tom said.

Nod.

Ladybug swung into view amid scattered applause. Cat Noir dodged a jet of steaming red goo that shot out of the akuma's wide mouth and shouted hello to his partner. She waved back, her cheerfulness jarring against the backdrop of the fight and Sabine's own dread.

"Do you want me to check?" Tom asked.

She couldn't even nod. The screen had her transfixed. She barely registered the shift of the sofa and the creak of the floorboards under his footsteps.

Tom reached the top of the stairs. "Marinette?" No answer. He knocked on the trapdoor, and it sounded hollow. "Marinette?"

Sabine closed her eyes as the trapdoor creaked open and Tom's footsteps disappeared into their daughter's room.

Faint screams and gasps from the television filled the room while Sabine sat and waited, holding her breath. She didn't even hear Tom come back down.

"She's not there," he said, sitting down next to her and grabbing her hand. "And the skylight's propped open."

She squeezed back tightly. "That basically confirms it," Sabine finally said. "Our daughter is Ladybug."

Tom sighed. "Yeah."

On the screen, reporters were running for shelter, hiding behind cars and in recessed doorways, Cat Noir was yelling at civilians to stay out of the way, and bright red puddles sizzled on the cracked pavement.

"What are we going to do?" Sabine asked. "How did this even happen?"

The questions she wanted to ask were why Marinette had never told them, and how could they have not noticed for so long? How was Sabine supposed to keep her own child safe?

The camera shook as the crew set up again, much farther away, but Sabine wished they could do one closeup shot of Ladybug's face. Maybe they'd made a mistake. One good look at her face, and Sabine would be able to prove herself wrong about the superheroine's identity.

The battle had looked fine up close, but from a distance it didn't look like it was going well. The super duo was on the defensive and having a hard time avoiding the frog's goo. The akuma had covered most of the available surfaces already, so they had fewer and fewer places to safely land. Ladybug hung from a lamppost. Cat Noir was just above her, perched on top of the light her yoyo was connected to.

The cameraman crept closer and closer, finally stopping when he was a mere twenty feet from the fight, and Ladybug yelled at him. Sabine squinted at the television, but the image changed too fast, focusing instead on the monster. It was a little smaller than a car. Its muscles rippled as it stalked toward the two heroes.

"We should turn this off," Tom said, though he made no move for the remote. "She's going to be fine."

"No, I need to watch."

They flinched and gasped for the next few minutes, and Sabine shrieked when Ladybug slipped and got hit in the chest. It knocked her to the ground, but she sprung back up before Cat Noir could reach her, even though he ran at top speed, ignoring the spray aimed for him and almost getting hit himself.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Fine just... Ugh! Gross!"

"You could say you're in a sticky situation," Cat Noir said, before laughing loudly at his own joke and his partner's predicament. Sabine's heart was still pounding as she clamped down on Tom's hand.

Ladybug's face tightened with the effort of holding in her laughter, then scooped a bunch of the stuff off her stomach and reached to touch him. Thick strands of it hung off her fingers.

"Oh no, not slime!" Cat Noir jumped back, dodging both Ladybug and the akuma, who shot another mouthful at them. "Slime! Whatever will I do?"

Tom pulled Sabine closer. "Well, it doesn't look like a very dangerous one."

She was sure he was trying to reassure himself as much as her, but she wasn't having any of it. "They should be taking this threat seriously," she said. "If they're overconfident..." She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence, so it hung in the room along with her dread.

Sabine was unfortunately right to worry. The frog reared back on its hind legs and came down on the street so hard it cracked the pavement, letting out a wide stream of the goo. Ladybug, still distracted with teasing her partner, didn't react fast enough. Cat Noir did, and he jumped forward fast enough to shield her, though he got a faceful of slime. He spat it out on the ground while Sabine and Tom leaned forward in their seats, desperate to know if he was all right.

Ladybug just patted him on the back and laughed while he wiped his face with both hands.

"See?" Tom said. "See? He's fine. They're both fine."

"That thing can break pavement. What if it had landed on them?"

But the atmosphere changed as their daughter laughed with her friend. They seemed so earnest in their amusement and maybe even relaxed. The voices of the onlookers and reporters changed in response, becoming less strained. A few people laughed along with them.

The news report itself even changed. Cat Noir tried smearing the goo on a camera as a warning when it got too close, smiling the whole time, while Ladybug rolled her eyes at his antics.

Her parents watched their exchange in interest. Despite the levity they were injecting into the fight, Cat Noir was obviously still very protective of their daughter, which they were both grateful for. He pushed her out of the way of another jet of slime when she was distracted by her own Lucky Charm, and he didn't hesitate to continue fighting without her while she took a few minutes to set up a trap for the monster. They didn't miss the adoration on his face as he watched her.

Ladybug – Marinette – was protective of her partner too. When the monster got too close to him, she would yell out a warning. When it landed on top of him with another sickening crack, she dropped the trap she was crafting and leapt forward to wrench the monster off of him. To anyone else, Ladybug still looked calm and in control, but to her parents, they saw the panic that briefly flashed across her face when she realized her partner might be hurt.

That delay made the fight take a little longer than it might otherwise have been. At the end, Ladybug dashed off, hand over an earring. Cat Noir waved at her as she left, a hesitant smile on his face, then turned and comforted the frog victim, who was now nothing more than a disheveled and confused-looking man in his fifties.

"She'll be coming home soon," Tom said. "Should we go up there and wait for her?"

"Not yet," Sabine said.

The reporters were trying to get close again, no doubt to interview Cat Noir and the latest victim. The poor man looked shaken, and Cat Noir did his best to shield him from the reporters, finally picking him up and carrying him away.

"We need to talk to her about this," Tom said.

They fought against impossible odds with laughter, though they were both just children. And Cat Noir cared about their daughter so much, that was plain. How deep did that go?

"We need to talk to him too," she said.

Read Chapter Two

***

Author’s note: This is a reblogging of an old thing that I originally posted two years ago. I’ve altered it slightly. (Content-wise, nothing is different.) If you’re curious, the original can be found here.

Chapter two is almost completely done, and I think chapter three is in okay shape, so hopefully those updates will both be next week. 

@tbehartoo​ @redhoodsdoll @salsyy301 @lunadensmidnightprowl