Tumgik
#changed my mind actually im putting this in the tag
paeliae-occasionally · 23 hours
Note
hi pae pae!!!
what is your process of designing your maps? and how do you approach lore? how does that brilliant mind of your work to create such fascinating history and complex worldbuilding?
je would like to know the trade secrets pretty pls
p.s. how far along are you on xaeren? if it’s not far enough, im afraid i’m going to have to start protesting soon… 😔
p.p.s. before you say school is taking up your time—understandable. have a great day. keep being brilliant. i just really want more xaeren content.
p.p.p.s. in my head, i imagine xaeren as so mighty fine that there’s an occult in some middle school of a suburban neighborhood with an old classroom turned into a shrine for his feral fangirls to host club meetings simping over him
that’s it’s. that’s all the pspspsppsss i have. miss you! have a great day! cheerios!
Hello Naveena! Lots of questions! We will go through them one at a time.
What is your process of designing your maps?
So with maps I will start by just noting down the history and current function of the city which gives me an idea of style and layout e.g. all of the cities that were part of the Laith’Edrels have lots of circular designs whereas a modern altic city may have more typical alleyways and rectangular buildings Next I plot in the districts of the city, like where the upper class live, where the high streets are etc. I also add any key buildings at this time, like a plot relevant church or a mages tower. Lastly I go back in and draw boxes and house shapes for 2 hours.
How do you approach lore?
A lot of my lore is just a set of stories where I look at a place on the map, or a group of people and go ‘what could have happened here?’ The bigger worldbuilding points like the dissolution came from me wanting to have magical decay from fewer more powerful beings to more less powerful beings, so I needed gods. However it always frustrates me when there are canonically gods in a world who just sit back and ignore the world crashing and burning as one frustrated hero has to fix the problem, so I made a reason for them to be gone
History and worldbuilding
Honestly a lot of my history writing was based off of the large amounts of real life history I read in my free time. Studying how cities and empires develop then putting my own spin on them because magic would change some things. Worldbuilding comes from my maps really. I will label different cultures on the map then come up with myths and legends for that culture, magic specific to them or their ancestors, wars and internal conflict. Then that spirals into pages of notes on the socioeconomic background for Onkairel. It is lots of fun.
“would like to know the trade secrets” she says after writing a whole book with detailed political lore and plenty of depth to the world.
You know the secrets. You also know the secrets to actually writing the book too.
So about Xaeren…
I will be writing the scene where he meets Kell soon so I will tag you in it when I do, but you are right about the school work :( so it may take a little while.
“an occult in some middle school of a suburban neighborhood with an old classroom turned into a shrine for his feral fangirls to host club meetings simping over him”
So you say that jokingly… No, to be fair he isn’t known for his an appearance but he is quite well known in Zairel as an assassin and member of house Hiresias. He is terrifying and intriguing to many because of his unique magic that Lysandri can’t explain so I would not be surprised if there was discussion of him in the lower ranks of Lysandri and Hiresias.
I will write some Xaeren soon. Have a lovely day <3
21 notes · View notes
sunshades · 4 months
Text
Also a thing that's relevant is in the canto even when they meet face to face Catherine is never actually able to speak back like she physically can't, she must reply through her diary and play out a memory in response, because she's already in a state that's more dead than alive. Then all those convos really take more of a vibe of well. They're farewells. Of course Heathcliff never chooses to spend those moments chastising her for her evil lab or something! Their time is running out. Bringing that up wouldn't go anywhere, she's already seeing the consequences, and he's already seeing what the thought process behind it was, because he can tell it would've been the same for him, and in fact he drops this right before the thunder actually shows him the flashback in the coffin.
Tumblr media
Now that he's back, the manor is Catherine's shame. Her diary is the only way that's left to reach for him, tell the story of the choice she's made, and it... does resonate with him.
Which! The erlking has already taunted him about before, responding to his claim that causing more death in this already ruined place isn't the way to go.
Tumblr media
But he does in fact still make his own choice! Which is the heart of it! Why does he want her back? Well! All the way to the end the erlking and Catherine both think the only way to reach redemption is death, as annihilation. And Heathcliff definitely can relate. But by the end he still knows the only way to fix what you've broken is to keep on living and work with what you've got.
Tumblr media
And in this scene Catherine is unable to reply, but what she does is try to do a little fix of her own- they're in the memory where her words made him believe she never loved him, so she opens the door to a moment where she was as clear as she was able to, to amend for what she's said. Small steps, but they're taking them nonetheless. Which is also why it's important to recognize hashtag wh of a certain future is actually the two of them and not anybody else:
Tumblr media
Through the ghosts, which the whole time have been a dangerous presence that's aware of the workings of the #narrative, we actually get proof of what Heathcliff's belief was that made him able to defy that fate, which is that it's never too late to make a change, become a better person for yourself and the people that love you. Of course he wants her alive again. He's survived the abuse at the manor and started his way to become a person he can be proud of, of course he'd want that for her as well.
11 notes · View notes
s4ndg3m · 4 months
Text
Tumblr media
hear me out on scag x split guys. they both start with "s" it's practically canon.
280 notes · View notes
moomeecore · 1 year
Text
here's that essay i accidently hyped up (sorry) on how fionna & cake did a poor job of concluding betty & simons characters + story in the final 2 episodes. sorry it is so insanely long. i don't know what my deal is. sometimes a show just does such a bad job of handling your favorite characters that you have to write 19k+ words complaining about it, i guess. im linking it as a pdf bc i DO NOT want to have 2 copy & paste this all over to tumblr & i kinda don't think tumblr would be happy with me making a post that long.
225 notes · View notes
cheswirls · 5 months
Text
looking @ old fic i started when i was 14/15 is so funny bc im realizing once again why i never mark fics as abandoned even if its been literal years since i've touched them. specifically i was checking docs for stuff i started and either did or didn't post to ffn.
and its like. nothing is bad??? like i can see where my outside-the-box ideal of fic writing comes from. not just fics but writing in general, i'm p sure. even if it's a total cliche plot setup, there are details on each that rly make it stand out like oh yeahhhhhh i did have this great idea once upon a time.
funny too bc was it executed well in prose??? no absolutely not i wrote like shit when i was 15. would i revive an idea one day and revise it to be less cliche or cringy while still keeping the stand-out elements??? yea maybe. i might. everything i'm currently working on that i started from 2021 up to now still holds my supreme interest, but like i'm not gonna say never.
esp since i write fic first and foremost for my own need and specifically what i like to read, it makes it impossible to consider an idea i've thought extensively about "not worth writing anymore". anyway not making this too long i jus found everything interesting to consider
#writing#this fic i pulled up from JUNE 2014 crazy was the old chosenshi au i was trying to write for a friend#i dont ship blue/silver and never will and thats prolly why i never finished it#but i do still like!! the idea of rocket!blue raised w silver and breaking free of tr while running the hoenn branch#no idea how i remembered bc it wasnt in the plot pts on the doc but she was gonna get sent to the battle frontier#to nab jirachi and have encounters w frontier brains and change her mind at the end of it all#hell i could go back and not make it ship fic at all - have silver be a little one-sided obsessed or#even jus like.. attached to blue as a rivalry like as a way to show her up at every turn#another fic around the same time was the old pokespe hs au where i changed all the dexholder's names for some reason#i have no idea where i was in reading spe bc i put lyra in for some reason and had the sinnoh trio even tho i never read past v2 of dp#idk if it was more gameverse or what but its so funny looking @ the ship list n seeing i had gold paired w black#bc i had manga!ss and manga!ferriswheel so was it rly speverse or was i projecting????#actually i think black was supposed to die and gold was gonna go thru this whole thing abt grieving#looking at the ship list so funny bc i never shipped gold/crys or entourageshi#and clearly i did not know the superiority of pmshi if i threw lyra in jus for silver#god but i do love (most!) of the alt names i gave them#would absolutely fuck up the ship list if i ever redid it tho#also have perfectworld tho im sure i have the most recent rewrite on pen and paper somewhere#that one i also gave up bc the idea i had for flare!sycamore was cringe along with#every time i went back to work on it enough time passed that i thought my writing sucked#i rewrote that damn thing so many times but oooooooo i still love the idea#as long as i changed the cringe parts to smth better i could still rock w most of these#that fic rly had everything... psychic!korrina. leaf/serena. sycamore hacking the secret to mega evo. lys/syc that ends in failure#bc of the ending line i will never forget > only in a perfect world could you and i be together. destined and doomed from the start#im rambling n im boutta run outta tags gimme a sec
6 notes · View notes
jsdimensions · 5 months
Text
i can't believe it. i might be a pokemon. shinji chair pose
4 notes · View notes
hopecel · 4 months
Text
Uuuh guys? Hadestown really blew up.
4 notes · View notes
fox-guardian · 1 year
Note
where might one find your evil sideblog?
one must simply Wait Until I Accidentally Reblog Something From There Onto This Blog Again
7 notes · View notes
akinachiri · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
shinobu layout i made for my own personal use thumbs up
PLEASE do not use it without asking first, ty
6 notes · View notes
humanmorph · 1 year
Text
I still think about “Another Word for Righteousness” by boo_cool_robot btw. Like its just up there. The Divine Scrupulosity is making me sooooooo. Like what do you meannnn thats MY brand of mental illness in the form of a divine software program that lives in a man’s brain/the suitcase he carries around. Good lird
It’s so sick that theyre listed as synonyms truly but like I get it. I got there. It’s incredible really.
righteous (adjective) 1: acting in accord with divine or moral law : free from guilt or sin 2: a: morally right or justifiable     b: arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality
(+ from the fatt. wiki article for Rightenousness: “[...] a deep commitment to others in the broad sense, but in the narrow sense is willing to do whatever it takes for that commitment, [...]”)
scrupulous (adjective) 1: having moral integrity: acting in strict regard for what is considered right or proper
And like. The way that scrupulosity too makes you intensively care about others and to do right by them but in a way that puts yourself down while holding yourself to this high standard that righteousness just brings from itself...
It’s Ibex and Righteousness putting themselves Above... They know what’s best. What has to be done. And then Orth and Scrupulosity
But then again, Scrupulosity never likes its Candidates to be too comfortable.
-
Orth closes his eyes. “The first thing in any situation that Scrupulosity finds the flaws in is me. I don’t think meanness can scare me anymore.”
And how this makes Orth easier to manipulate like I’m going to screammmm. The way he numbs to it it is internalized and also what’s so so good here is that it is really truly exhausting to feel like this. And Orth is Oh so miserable and susceptible to someone complimenting him or trusting him even if he KNOWS it can’t be true.
“Meaning no offense to you of course. Dogs are wonderful. People trust dogs.”
“None taken,” Orth assures him. It would be nice to be trusted.
^ So good to meeeee because when you constantly have to be on guard that extends to yourself too and how you think other people perceive of you. Orth mentioning multiple times he Expects people to be put off or not trust him. Augh !
ALSO Orth making a point to separate himself from Scrupulosity (specifally to put himself down too. “Not my specialty. Scrupulosity’s.“). BUT at the end when
Scrupulosity says, You can’t trust him.
Scrupulosity says, You can’t trust yourself.
“I know,”Orth says aloud. He’s always known that.
Attar Rose looks down at him and smiles.
                  sorry i lost it for a moment. Because it Is a part of him it’s in thereeee. Maybe it’s always been.
anyways. good fic good fic
3 notes · View notes
lukeskqwalker · 2 years
Text
my line of thinking is that if i post enough untamed stuff then i'll either a) make more mdzs friends or b) lose followers and both are a lowkey a plus so
#CLARIFICATION: i do not actually mind yall following me obviously this is a public blog its just funny and also wild to be perceived#im sorry i really am but i Am baffled by this number that keeps going up and never goes down like guys!! im a mess!!!#i never stick to one thing HOW are yall not leaving en masse#hit me up if you would like to sob and wail loudly with me over this delightful necromantic comedy/tragedy two in one#ok but seriously all of my friends are like 'yeah lol i lost so many followers for posting x' WHY ARE YOU NOT LEAVING#I CHANGE SO OFTEN WHAT#im not WANTING people to leave but im just. so confused.#i dont MAKE THINGS and when i do i dont make multiple things for the same fandom#i make one (1) post about it and then i vanish into a vapor#ok but to be fair i guess i do put stuff in a queue if i notice im posting a lot of it#like if i go into a tag i always put it all in a queue so yall dont have 500 at once#gotta introduce it slowly. like when youre changing your cats petfood brand.#thats how you catch em#hello. can you tell i do not want to study for my test anymore. anyway.#here is a joke if you get this far#one sec i have to actually think of a joke#i just googled 'good joke' and this one was on a minion meme photo that was very grainy so prepare yourself for the best joke of all time#'there are three kinds of people in the world. those who are good at math and those who are not.' thank you facebook moms#everyone say 'go to bed sam'#this is a joke. i will not. i will wail 'no' like a petulant child. and then i will laugh.#evilly.#if this shows up in any tag at all i will be mortified#to sum up: watch untamed. minion mom joke. patrick star 'who are you people' meme.#will i delete this in the morning? perchance.
4 notes · View notes
arolesbianism · 26 days
Text
I may be failing my plan to not make any isat aus. So there's this guy her name is Euphrasie right. What if I took her and combined what could be 3 separate au concepts into one. And in the process forced myself to go back and reread a bunch of shit to make sure I know how to maximally fuck over this sad wet puppy of a woman
#rat rambles#did I ever actually make a proper isat talking tag? I don't remember but erm#stars posting#anyways dont count on me committing to this au too hard since Im mostly eternal gales brained rn but I am rotating ideas in my head#shes always interested me deeply as what am I if not a sucker for women who are mostly silhouettes of a character#I was mostly just thinking abt other ppls aus where she is also looping and was thinking abt how fucked it be for her in general but also#how much more fucked it would be for her if it was Only her looping#because as far as she would know theres straight up nothing that can be done to fix this and shed be stuck in a hell of what shed be sure#is her own creation#and then I thought to myself. what if she then accidentally did a loop while trying to fix it#and then my brain also said but what if loop was also there#so I did some mental gymnastics to ignore the possible problems and decided to take an extra spin on it and just sorta add her to the main#party by having her have basically wished to be able to help them defeat the king to make things right and her getting dropped earlier#on in the adventure so I can fuck around with potential character dymamics more (cough cough siffrin)#and for the actual loops I think it'd be funny if she could remember just like loop but was fully convinced that she was looping alone#so itd be siffrin and her acting at eachother trying to hide their seperate breakdowns while meamwhile loop is just staring at her with a#whole heap of mixed emotions but mostly the confusion of who the fuck is this guy???????#and sif is just like yeah thats secret. shes a powerful craft user who's craft experiments backfired and fucked up her body. duh.#and loop just Knows that thats not true but they have no real way to bring it up properly without drawing too much suspicious#oh yeah and Im calling her secret for now. in my minds eye shes like constantly putting on different fronts in hopes that one of them will#stick but shes been able to get away with it by playing up her belief in change to a cartoonish degree#shes really trying to be strong and not raise suspicion since she does want mirabelle to be able to learn and grow from this just the same#as her own mirabelle before and just wants to be able to fix the broken wish by being there to defeat the king herself#which she had already convinced herself was the reason the wish broke since she was the one stuck remembering#I should reword it to that probably because saying shes the one looping isnt Wrong but asside from sif not remembering it still entirely#revolved around him she was just the one forced to deal with it without any real way of learning how to fix it#and while she never figured out the entirety of the sif stuff it was always him taking to her that reset the loop#so she has. complicated feelings on him. she doesn't want to be avoidant or distant or to dislike him! and as time goes on she does grow to#like him a lot! but its just. hard to look him in the eye sometimes.#and then theres the horrors of the actual main game starting and the slow but horrifying realization of how badly she fucked up
1 note · View note
sunshades · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
miss penelope 🧵 + cathy 🌿 warmups induced by listening to too much mountain goats today....
34 notes · View notes
pathologicalreid · 6 months
Text
next of kin | S.R.
Tumblr media
disaster strikes and you and Spencer try to take custody of your younger sister
part two
who? spencer reid x fem!reader category: angst content warnings: actually might be gn! but i'm too scared to say it is. death, orphan-ing, funerals, child custody issues, blood, general cm violence, like actually an abhorrent amount of death. sorry i killed your parents for the sake of my fanfiction can we still be friends? word count: 3.33k a/n: this is the fic that this post is about. i am in fact my own worst enemy. i hope y'all like it actually genuinely i am most definitely overthinking this. if your name is maya im sorry that sucks.
Tumblr media
“What did your parents say?” Spencer asked, walking into the conference room that the local precinct had offered to you.
You had been staring blankly at your phone since you got off the call with your mother, “Uh, they said thanks, but no thanks.”
The uneasy feeling had settled in your stomach as soon as you found out the team was being called to your hometown, and you had been nauseous ever since you found out the UnSub’s pattern.
Married couples with an older child who had moved out and a younger child who was still at home.
Your little sister was a surprise, you had incorrectly assumed your parents were done having kids.
Until today, you wouldn’t have traded Maya for the world, but now you sat in fear of your family being targeted by a serial killer. Hotch had offered them a protective detail, but they declined. Self-righteous as they were, they told you it wouldn’t feel right for them to accept help that couldn’t be offered to everyone.
Clenching your jaw, you stood at the table, “I’ll go by later and check in on them.”
Spencer had met your family twice by now. Last Christmas he had tagged along to meet them and celebrate with your family before the two of you spent New Year’s with his mom. Then, while your sister was on Spring Break, they flew out to Virginia, and you and Spencer had shown your family around Quantico and the District.
Maya had loved Spencer, partially because you loved him, but mostly because of his magic tricks.
“Do you want me to go with you?” He asked, stepping up next to you and placing a hand on the small of your back.
You sighed and shook your head, “No, not if you’re needed here.” You reached up and cupped his cheek, smiling softly, “Thank you for offering, Spence.”
He nodded affirmatively, “If you change your mind,” he offered. Gently, he pressed a soft kiss to your forehead before the two of you returned to the rest of the team.
The fact that your parents lived only five minutes from the police station gave you some relief, but you still felt tightly wound. Everyone had noticed. You just needed this case to be over.
The porch lights were on when you got there, and you used your house key – which you had never taken off of your keychain - to open the front door. “Hey, kiddo,” your dad greeted from the couch. A peek into the kitchen showed you that your mom was wiping down the counters. It all felt so eerily normal.
It was dark by the time you had gotten there. Maya was already asleep, but you tip-toed into her room anyway and kissed her goodnight before going back downstairs. Once you had hugged both of your parents and told them you loved them, you made your way back to the police precinct.
By nearly three in the morning, there was no new information, and the team was starting to consider calling it a night until the police chief got a call.
“We just got a call. Lady reported shouts coming from her neighbor’s house at 86 Meadowbrook,” he informed you, putting his hands on his hips and looking around at the team.
None of them even spared him a returning glance, everyone’s eyes were on you.
Blinking rapidly, you nodded assuredly, “I have to go get Maya.” You didn’t even recognize your voice even as you said it. It couldn’t have been your voice. That was the rasp of someone far away from you.
All of the other voices around you were muffled, you couldn’t hear what people were telling you, let alone understand them.
Maya. Maya. Maya.
Brown eyes. There they were, right in front of your face. “Let’s go get her,” Spencer whispered.
You had been speaking out loud. Repeating your sister’s name like a prayer without even realizing it.
Hotch let you go with them, but he made it abundantly clear to you – and the rest of the team – that you weren’t working this case anymore.
Surrounded by reverent voices in an SUV, JJ drove while Spencer stayed in the back with you. He held your hand tightly in his.
The house was closed off with police tape. Bright yellow plastic fluttered in the wind as you watched your team and other emergency personnel enter and exit. At your insistence, Spencer went in to get Maya, it felt like it had been hours before he walked out, carrying her in his arms.
Carefully, he brought her to you, and you pulled her close to your chest, blocking her eyesight as two body bags were brought out of the house.
You didn’t hear anything after that. You just let yourself be moved to wherever you needed to be, holding your kid sister as she cried for your parents.
They had to take their bodies to the hospital even though they were already gone, and you needed to be the one to confirm their identities. Spencer stayed with Maya while you were busy. She had cried herself to the point of exhaustion, you were grateful that she was sleeping, and then you felt cruel.
By sunrise, she was still asleep, and you had been set up in that same conference room from earlier. Sitting across from you was a social worker, a representative of the state. Your lips had parted in shock as you looked at her, “What do you mean they denied my request?”
In an attempt to be helpful, JJ worked with you to file an emergency request for custody of Maya, and the case worker had just told you that the request was denied. “The state doesn’t believe your request is valid,” she told you.
Your mouth went dry, “I don’t…” you glanced over at your little sister. “Our parents were murdered last night, and they won’t let me take custody of my sister?” You asked indignantly, peering at the social worker. It wasn’t her fault, somewhere in your grief-ridden brain you knew that, but you couldn’t help the feeling that she was somehow your enemy.
“They don’t believe you can provide her with a stable living environment,” the social worker, Brittany, explained.
Narrowing your eyes, you responded, “A stable living environment like a foster home? I’m her sister. We’re family – the only family each other has left.” You stood up, excusing yourself for a moment before walking out of the precinct. Once you were outside, you promptly hurled into the bushes.
That was how he found you, to the side of the building with your hair haphazardly moved out of your face, dry heaving into the shrubbery. Gently, Spencer placed a hand on your back before starting to rub small circles on your back, “You should eat something, love.”
You just shook your head in response, you weren’t hungry. “They won’t let me take her,” you whispered morosely, straightening up, you kept your back facing him.
“What?” He asked, his hand abruptly stopping its movement on your back.
Taking a deep breath and sitting on the curb, you looked up at Spencer. “The state thinks I’m not stable enough to take her in,” you said, resting your chin in your hands.
Your boyfriend crouched down so that he could sit next to you, “Are you going to challenge it?”
“Of course I am,” you cried. “But what happens to her in the interim, Spence? She gets placed with whatever foster home here and I go back to Virginia? I see her when the family court resolves this in two years?”
Treading carefully, Spencer cleared his throat, “What are you going to do?”
Defeated, you shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m…” your voice trailed off. “My parents are dead, Spencer,” you murmured softly, tears welling in your eyes.
He reached out and wrapped his arms around you, “I know, darling. I know. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t think I can do this alone,” you whispered, leaning gently into him.
Spencer turned to kiss your temple, “It’s a good thing you’re not alone then. I’m not going anywhere.” He waited for a moment before continuing, “Give me something to do. Give me a job to take off of your shoulders.”
In the end, you let Spencer take over funeral planning. He thanked you for trusting him before the both of you went back into the precinct.
Tumblr media
You had just hung up with a family lawyer who had offered to take your case, letting your phone drop to the floor, you let your arms hang at your side. Someone had taken Maya to get breakfast while you spoke with the lawyer.
At the sound of the phone falling to the floor, Spencer stepped into the conference room, letting the door click shut before him. “Hey, what did he say?”
Pressing the heels of your palms into your eyes, you took in a deep breath, “Um, he said he’d be willing to take the case if I could put together a case plan to present before the judge.”
Before that phone call, you didn’t know what a case plan was, you could’ve gone your whole life without knowing what a case plan was.
“I need a year-long plan for how I’m going to prepare to have Maya in my custody, but he said a year is the best he can do,” you said, staring blankly at the wall ahead of you. “A year?” You whispered aimlessly, “I’m not waiting a fucking year to take custody of her. I have to take her home, Spence. I have to.” It wasn’t your intention to snipe at him, but you felt like you couldn’t help yourself.
The events of the last twelve hours threatened to take you down, but you had to stay strong for Maya.  
Taking a shaky breath, you looked up at Spencer, “Why is it that every time I convince myself that it’s going to be okay, I get tossed to the ground again?” You asked him.
Maybe because you weren’t fully convinced. Maybe it was because it had only been seven hours. You needed to remind yourself of that.
“She’s a ward of the state?” Spencer asked for clarification, holding you tightly.
Nodding absentmindedly, you rested your head on his shoulder as he swayed gently. “She can stay with me until after the funeral, and after that, she has to go with the social worker.”
The sad look on Spencer’s face told you that he was running out of ideas, and you were coming to the very same conclusion. “We could get married,” he offered.
“Stop, Spence,” you said, shaking your head. You couldn’t believe this was where he was going.
He shrugged helplessly, “I’m serious, Y/N. If we get married, they might think we’re stable, as a couple. They might give us custody.”
Your shoulders slumped, “I don’t want to get married just to get custody of my sister.” It certainly wasn’t that you didn’t want to marry Spencer, just not like this.
He nodded understandingly, “I know, but I’m just saying. If that’s what it takes, then I’ll do it.” Placing a comforting hand on your knee, the two of you sat in silence for a moment. “Do you have any ideas?” He asked you carefully.
Looking through the blinds of the conference room, you saw the rest of the team coming back to the precinct. Setting your jaw, you nodded, “I might.”
Opening the door, you had Maya go in with Spencer while you approached your Unit Chief. “Hey,” Hotch said, a glint of sympathy in his eyes. “How are you holding up?” He pulled you away from the people, wanting to give you privacy.
This wasn’t fair, they were still working on an active case. A case that was disturbingly close to you, and yet, you felt you were out of options. “I need a favor,” you blurted to him, wringing your hands. Your nervous energy made it impossible for you to stay still.
Hotch nodded, “What do you need?” He asked, studying your composure with the eye of a profiler.
You took a deep breath, “I was… I need you to call in a favor with someone. Anyone, really. The state won’t let me take custody of Maya, but I can’t let her become a ward of the state. Not when I’m right here, ready, willing, and able to take her.”
“Okay,” he responded, not even pausing to think about it.
Taken aback, you looked at him curiously, “I- that’s it? I had groveling prepared.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly as if he was trying to tell you it wasn’t necessary. “You’ve been a part of this team for years and not once have you ever asked for anything in return for everything you do for everyone else. This is the least I can do,” he told you.
You couldn’t help it. Overwhelmed, you tackled Hotch in a bear hug, “Thank you.” Your voice was low, “Thank you so much.”
Succinctly, Hotch hugged you back before you pulled away, “I’ll go make some calls.”
Tumblr media
It was the smell.
The smell that you’d sensed countless times before on the job, the metallic tang of the blood. It should’ve been mostly dried by now – you supposed you were more susceptible to the scent, considering it was your parent’s blood, but it put you on high alert.
Emily had brought you by so that you could pack a bag for Maya, but you found yourself stuck on the landing. To one side, there was your childhood bedroom and Maya’s room. On the other side, there was your parent’s room.
“Y/N?” Emily called your name from downstairs, “Are you alright?”
No, you wanted to say, but you bit your tongue, scanning the house you had grown up in. “This doesn’t belong here,” you told her, glancing behind you as she made her way up the staircase.
You didn’t have gloves, so instead you pointed at the figurine that was resting on the bookshelves, a little bear facing in the direction of your parent’s bedroom door. “This is in the wrong spot?”
Nodding, your eyes followed the ceramic bear as Emily picked it up with a gloved hand. “It’s mine, it should be in my room,” you informed her. Your parents never changed anything about your childhood bedroom, not since you moved out. “It was like it was watching them,” you thought aloud.
“Do you think the UnSub did it?” She asked you gently, her voice was low but steady.
Blinking rapidly, you kept your eyes focused on the figurine, “Little Bear,” you murmured, “They called her Little Bear.”
Emily shook her head in confusion, dark hair swaying as her head moved. “Who was called Little Bear?”
Dropping the bag you had packed to the floor, you buried your face in your hands, “I should’ve seen it sooner.” The victimology, it all suddenly made sense to you. “When I was a kid, there was a family like mine. A brother who was in his twenties when his parents had another baby, a girl. They called her Little Bear.”
Realization dawned on Emily’s dark features, “Like this bear?”
You picked up the bag and started making your way back down the stairs. “Their mother made those figurines. The parents died in a fire two weeks ago – they left everything to the younger sister. It was all over the news. God, I should’ve figured it out sooner.”
“Hey,” Emily said sympathetically, “You had other things going on. None of this was your fault.” Her voice was stern, harsher than you’d ever heard her, as she pulled out her phone and called the team.
Your teammate drove, passing the police station on the way to drop you off. They left for the takedown, and you felt yourself floating into the precinct. Maya was waiting in the conference room for you, watching cartoons on someone’s laptop.
Kneeling in front of your little sister, you tapped the space bar, pausing the video. “Hey, kiddo,” you whispered, reaching over, and smoothing her hair away from her face. “How are you feeling?”
She had cried herself to sleep earlier, and you felt like you hadn’t been around enough. Maya sat up on the couch and rubbed her eyes, they were red, but not teary. “I miss mommy,” she told you, pouting slightly.
You nodded gently, moving to sit next to her before you pulled her into your lap. At six years old, she was all gangly limbs, just starting to grow into her own person. Just old enough to understand death, “I know, baby. I miss them too.”
“They wouldn’t lemme go home,” she continued, leaning her head on your shoulder. “I wanted Thumper,” she whined, sounding younger than she was.
Looking up at the light, you silently begged for your tears to go away. “I got him for you,” you told her, reaching into your bag and producing the small stuffed bunny that you had given her as a baby.
You savored the way her eyes lit up as she grabbed the stuffed animal from you.
“So, you and Thumper are gonna come to stay with me in Virginia. Do you remember going there? You said you liked it?” You kept smoothing her hair back as she held her toy.
She was silent for a moment, “Will Spencer be there?” She asked quietly.
Smiling slightly, you nodded, “He and I live together, so he’ll be there with us.” Slowly, you started rocking back and forth, trying to soothe the both of you simultaneously.
“As long as he doesn’t pull money out of my ear,” she answered succinctly, shutting her eyes as she leaned up against you.
There was approximately an hour before you watched the team return to the precinct, slowly, you laid Maya down on the couch before walking out. “It was a clean shoot,” you heard Rossi tell Morgan, and one look at the rest of them told you everything you needed to know.
The team went back to the hotel, and Spencer filled you in on the funeral arrangements he had made on your behalf. You were about to try to get some sleep when Hotch approached you and told you he needed to speak to you.
“I called a good friend of mine on your behalf, and he gave me some information. We were able to work out a plan,” he told you, sitting across from you in the hotel lobby.
You were about to tell him that a case plan wouldn’t work, but he held his hand out, telling you to wait.
He nodded before he kept going, “He was able to file an emergency request to grant you temporary custody of Maya, and it was granted.”
You felt sick to your stomach, “She’s mine?”
“Temporarily, you’ll have to take care of some formalities back in Virginia, but you have full custody of her,” he informed you. “You’re being granted family leave, and I’ve encouraged Reid to apply for it as well,” Hotch told you, reaching out and placing a hand on your shoulder. “I am… I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through this but thank you for coming to me when you needed the help.”
You nodded absentmindedly, your head still whirling with the information that you had just been given. Stumbling, you walked back to your hotel room that you were sharing with Spencer and Maya.
The funeral was planned, the custody issue was solved, all there was left to do was…
“Baby?” Spencer said softly as you swung open the door, “Everyone else took Maya to get ice cream, I figured it couldn’t-“ his voice broke off at your first sob.
Everything you had held in came bursting out, all of the grief and stress and exhaustion nearly knocked your legs out from underneath you.
But Spencer was there to catch you.
part two
Tumblr media Tumblr media
1K notes · View notes
moomeecore · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
f&c finalle bingo sheet. made w my younger sibling - they made one also but i didn't photograph it. it was their idea to have it say "betty" instead of bingo, which is genius. happy f&c final episodes eve everybody!
36 notes · View notes
lystring · 2 years
Text
I got ID'd at the store earlier buying cigarettes and the girl at the register was like "oh good job you look a lot younger than you are, you go girl!" and I was like "lmao thanks it's genes"
0 notes