#chapter one of multi

[critter-covenant]

Two more entries to the critters with bows:

Here's Bobby and Crafty! They were both fun, their bows are probably the most complex and my favorites. Enjoy! :D

[yueebby]

[megaerakles]

To Whom It May Concern

Tim couldn’t stay. 

No matter what Bruce had said when he caught Tim in the act of laying the paper trail to establish his Fake Uncle, no matter how long Dick had sobbed into the phone at him during an inordinately expensive long distance (read: off planet) phone call, no matter how much Alfred had been fussing over him and insisting it was no trouble at all to care for him since Tim’s scheme had been revealed and promptly foiled, it just didn’t change the fact that Tim couldn’t stay. Truthfully, the Wayne family’s apparent sudden burst of affection for him actually made this whole thing worse because somewhere along the way, without even trying, Tim had failed to keep things wholly professional between them and somehow tricked them into thinking he belonged in their family! 

He couldn’t let it stand. For the sake of Jason’s memory, for the sake of preserving the sanctity of the true Wayne family, he had to stop this… this absurdity of pretending that Tim belonged with them from continuing! Tim had to run. Tim had to vanish. It was the only way to make things right again. Sure, the thought of never seeing any of them again, the thought of being done with Bruce and Alfred and Dick and Barbara and everyone in his life he currently held dear once and for all made it feel as though his heart was being ripped out of his chest only to be shoved back down his throat to stop the flow of air into his body—but it didn’t matter. He didn’t matter, not nearly as much as they did. This would be for their own good. 

Tim was leaving, and it turned out to be easier than he thought it would be in the end. Not emotionally easier, but logistically easier. Bruce had been extra attentive lately, so he thought he’d have to fake an injury and get ‘benched’ so that they would lower their guard long enough for him to slip away. But by some divine stroke of luck, a new player had waltzed onto Gotham’s criminal scene not too long after Tim’s Fake Uncle plan fell through and started making threats against Batman and Robin. They had apparently freaked B out enough to prompt him to send Tim off to Titan’s Tower to ‘focus on his team for awhile’. Tim had accepted the command with the requisite amount of complaint, planted some fake texts to make it look like he’d actually communicated to his Team that he would be there, shoved everything from his guest room in the Manor that he couldn’t bear to part with into a duffel bag underneath a spare uniform, gave Bruce what only he knew was a more emotionally charged nod goodbye than usual, and then poof. Tim Drake was zapped out of the Batcave for the last time ever. 

He let himself have one night in the Tower. Partly to catch a few hours of sleep in a familiar and secure environment, but mostly so he could clean up his room for its next occupant, sweep his belongings and his person for any extra trackers, and repack his bag more efficiently. He also took the time to grab a spare backpack and fill it up with emergency rations. While he was taking plenty of cash, he didn’t want to risk having to go into stores with security cameras for a while, at least until he’d cleared a suitable distance from San Francisco proper as well as implemented the first of his many planned disguises. He didn’t think a bottle of cheap hair dye and some colored contacts would be enough to fool Oracle indefinitely, but if he was appropriately cautious it might keep her from getting a confirmation of his location long enough for the Bats to either get bored looking for him or to actually realize they were better off without him around. 

When the early rays of dawn started to bathe the sides of Titan’s Tower in ember colored light, he was off. He left behind seven trackers pulled from his clothes and bag and one more from behind his ear; he’d kept the one he noticed in his favorite pair of sneakers because it was a type that wouldn’t start transmitting data until the Bats actively started tracking it and he was hoping to find someone who wore his size at the bus station he could pay to wear them so he could throw them off for even longer. If all else failed, he would just toss them in an out of the way trash can. He had also left a letter of resignation for Batman that he’d whipped up based off of an online template, signed and sealed and awaiting discovery atop the pillow in his nearly empty dorm room (he had tried for something more personal, a longer note of explanation for Bruce about why he couldn’t stay despite being asked, but—the words just wouldn’t come, and he’d been running out of time). His bag was heavy, courtesy of all of the extra supplies he’d grabbed in anticipation of having to evade not only Batman’s team but the rest of the Justice League. His heart was heavy, courtesy of emotional baggage that he wished was as easy to unpack as his actual bags would be when he finally found somewhere to settle. 

He boarded the first bus he saw after he’d gone a few blocks and took a seat towards the back, where he leaned against the window and stared back at the iconic giant T that he used to belong in, however briefly, until it disappeared from sight. And just like that, Tim Drake’s life as Robin was over. 

—

To Whom It May Concern:

This letter is to formally notify you that I’m resigning as Robin in Gotham City, effective immediately. 

Thank you so much for the opportunity to work with you all for the past three years. I’ve enjoyed getting to know the team and appreciated the opportunity to learn about vigilantism and hone my detective skills. I’m excited to take these skills with me as I pursue the next step of my career.

During the past two weeks, I have done everything possible to wrap up any ongoing cases and leave no unfinished business. The Robin suit as well as my spare have been cleaned and placed in the armory of Titan’s Tower along with any gear I have been issued. 

I wish Batman and team the best, but am afraid I will be out of contact for the foreseeable future. 

Sincerely, 

T. J. Drake

—

Red Hood stalked into Titan’s Tower with all the grace of a wildcat closing in on its prey, his vicious smirk hidden by his helmet, his unauthorized entrance hidden by virtue of the heroes’ own stupidity in failing to remove his codes from the database. Seriously—he’d thought gaining entry into their so-called fortress would be the hardest part of this little trip, and had only tried his access codes for the sake of checking the most stupidly obvious Plan A off his list! For them to work, to realize that there was nothing truly separating the precious sidekicks from the wrath of a vengeance minded crime lord, well… it sure made the message he was about to send feel all the more poignant. 

He had come equipped to subdue an entire horde of Teeny Titans without hurting them (much), but to his surprise, the tower was empty of kid sidekicks despite Robin having been sent to work with his team yesterday afternoon, a fact Jason had gleaned last night from listening to the mind numbing chatter of Nightwing being bored on a stakeout and wanting to chat with anyone over the comms Jason had hacked into. Which he’d done in order to better plan his aggressive takeover of Crime Alley, not because he missed hearing his family’s voices. Nope. 

(Since coming back to Gotham, it had been more difficult than he anticipated to stick to the plan when some part of his mind still stubbornly clung to those foolish, childhood dreams of belonging and family and a father who gave a shit and things like that, and kept popping up with annoying questions like ‘what if he revealed his identity to Dick or Alfred or someone just to see if maybe Talia had been right and they’d want him back after all. Clearly, the existence of a new Robin meant that they’d never really given a damn about him, so he was going to go through with this thing, just watch him.)

Truly this had to be fate, because the path to Robin was practically unfolding before him with no barriers. All that was left to do was find where in this gigantic clubhouse the itty little birdie was nesting. Jason tried the common room first. Then the kitchen. Then the rec room. And then the training floor. And the med bay. And then the armory, where he found Robin’s suit, but no actual Robin. He supposed the next place to check would be Robin’s bedroom, because even though it was well past eleven, Drake was a teenager and could conceivably be sleeping in, especially since there was no Alfred around to rouse him at a reasonable hour. Luckily, the doors on the floor with sleeping quarters were all clearly marked with either the name or symbol of the person it belonged to, so it was easy enough to find the one with that all too familiar stylized ‘R’. Jason paused to take a steadying breath before gritting his teeth and deciding to really make an entrance by kicking down the door. 

…To an empty bedroom. Like, not just devoid of Tim Drake, but also devoid of books, trinkets, photos, decoration, clothes, dishes, mess, et cetera, et cetera. It looked as clean and sterile as a hotel room, and if Jason hadn’t literally just seen Robin’s insignia on the door he would think he’d entered an unassigned room by mistake. He frowned and yanked off his helmet, as if looking with his own two eyes would suddenly change the scene, but no. Nothing. He strode into the room and yanked open the closet—empty. He walked over to the desk and yanked open the top drawer—empty. He yanked open the bottom drawer, and mostly empty except for—wait, was that a pile of deactivated Bat trackers? Fucking bizarre. When he stood up, he glanced around again, and this time something on the bed caught his eye. It had been easy to miss against the white pillowcase, but there was an envelope tucked up against the pillow. With a scowl, he stalked over and grabbed it. 

When Jason flipped it over, he noted that it was addressed to Batman, but decided that since he was a crime lord now he didn’t have to care about something as trivial as opening someone else’s mail. He didn't want to take off his gloves and risk leaving prints on anything, so he pulled out a dagger and used it to slice open the envelope. As he flipped it over to dump its contents on the desk, he had the fleeting thought that he probably should have put back on his mask in case this had been some villain’s ploy to poison Batman, but luckily all that fell out was a single sheet of printer paper folded into thirds. 

This he was careful not to damage as he unfolded it. It wasn’t a long note, just a few small paragraphs, so it was quick enough to read: To whom it may concern. This letter is to formally notify you that I’m resigning as Robin in Gotham City, effective immediately… 

Jason dropped the letter and took a step back, staring at the innocuous piece of paper with wide eyes and racing thoughts. Robin had—Drake wasn’t—Timothy—the kid, he was quitting? Leaving? Gone? 

It could be a trap. It probably was a trap. Except Robin shouldn’t have had any way of knowing Red Hood would be able to track him all the way to Titan’s Tower so why would he have set a trap for him in the first place? A trap for someone else, then? If it was, it was really, really stupid of him because the kid had signed his resignation letter from Robin with his actual name, and surely he wouldn’t have made it this far if he were that careless with his identity. So, it was either a very bad trap, or not a trap at all. And if it was not a trap at all, then… 

Then Robin had… resigned. Which, ok, Jason’s stated goal coming into this thing was to get Tim Drake to stop being Robin. So he should be happy about this, right? Except he’d not gotten to toss the kid around and work out his aggression at all so there was no satisfaction in it. Also, the timing was fucking obnoxious. Go figure that the very day he decides to do something about his replacement, the kid decides to peace out of the Gotham vigilante scene and… and go… 

… Somewhere. Jason had no idea where Tim Drake would go if he were no longer Robin. Given how he’d waited until he was alone and then left the note to be found on the other side of the country, Jason had a sneaking suspicion that returning to Gotham was currently off the table. The letter had said he would be ‘out of contact’ for the foreseeable future; Jason could read between the lines enough to figure out that meant he was running away. 

—Which, fuck. Another Robin was running away from Batman because of… well, Jason didn’t know what this kid’s issue with B was, but there were plenty of potential flaws in the man to choose from so Jason was going to play it safe and assume it was something Bruce did. Clearly, the man could never learn. And now, this poor dumb Robin was going to pay the price! Jason was more than familiar with the number of horrors that awaited kids who ended up on their own. He could starve; he could freeze to death; he could catch some disease like the flu, or get cut on a rusty nail and get tetanus, and then die from it because he couldn’t access medical treatment. He could get mugged, or harassed by cops, or snatched up by traffickers, or—

And fine; Jason himself had meant to hurt him. But that had been for ideological purposes, to prove a point about putting children in danger and not taking good enough care of them and stuff. It wasn’t like he was going to hurt him that badly, just bad enough to freak out Bruce a bit. But Jason was also the Red Hood, and the Red Hood’s mission was to do what was necessary to stop awful shit from happening to vulnerable kids. And this stupid, stupid letter was apparently enough to abruptly transfer Timothy Drake into that category in his head. 

Everything Jason had heard about the kid said he was smart, and the timing of his disappearance pointed to some thoughtful planning on his part. Jason could imagine that the little shit had some sort of plan in place to evade Batman’s attempts to locate him, and he probably could manage to run without getting caught by Bruce and the Gotham team for a while. Heck, the kid probably had strategies to get away from most if not all of the Justice League members, since B was sure to call in favors once he got frantic enough about the little bird. But one thing the kid likely did not plan for was being pursued by him. Ex-Robin, currently a crime lord, League of Assassins connections, and a bone to pick with Timothy specifically? (He ran away from home and left a fucking resignation letter about it? Does he not realize what that would do to Dick, to Alfred, to Bruce—)

After stuffing the letter into his pocket, Jason put back on his helmet and stalked out of Titans Tower as silently as he’d arrived, this time with a new yet equally furious purpose sharpening his steps. Sucked to be Timothy Drake, he thought, because the Red Hood got his message and he was officially concerned. 

[dantoru]

sunflowers 🌻

[stupidfatpenguin]

fanfiction math is opening an ao3 tab at 11pm and calculating which word range you can pick a one-shot from in order to still gain a reasonable amount of sleep before your 8am appointment

[waytooinvested]

Forgotten, Not Forgiven - Chapter 1

Still reeling from finding out the truth herself, Lena suddenly finds herself in the midst of an odd role reversal in which she knows that Kara is Supergirl, but Kara no longer has any idea she has ever been more than an ordinary human.

And what’s more, Lena has no choice but to keep the truth from her for her own protection…

This and previous chapters also on AO3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alex: Have you seen Kara?

Lena glanced at her phone and raised an eyebrow at the text lighting up her screen.

That woman had such a nerve.

She ignored the message and turned back to her computer, only to have another text ping in five minutes later.

Alex: Seriously Lena, she was due back hours ago and I haven’t heard anything. I need to know where she is.

Lena huffed irritably, but gave in.

Lena: I have no idea where she is. Kara and I are no longer friends, remember? I’m sure she’ll turn up in her own time.

Lena: We both know she can look after herself.

Alex didn’t respond again, so naturally Lena assumed that Kara had indeed turned up in her own time, and that everything had been fine after all.

That is, until she saw the headline in the news a week later:

SUPERGIRL MISSING?

She almost didn’t click the link.

Since she had found out the truth about Kara three months ago, Lena had done her best to comprehensively uproot the weed of their friendship from her life, and so far had been reasonably successful.

She had deleted Kara’s number from her phone before she had even made it back to her jet after her run in with Lex.

On the flight home she had called her assistant and asked her to make sure that Kara Danvers was escorted off the premises immediately should she show up at L-Corp, and had left a similar message with the security staff in her apartment complex.

Selling Catco had taken a little longer, but only because dealing with such a large asset could not be rushed. She might have been in pain, but Lena was a shrewd business woman and ensured that the sale was made with a hefty profit, the value of the company boosted by the revenue generation improvements she had made while in charge. She had also wanted to take her time to pick the perfect boss for Kara: someone who would inarguably make the magazine more profitable as a business than it had ever been before, while systematically and comprehensively destroying everything about it that had made Kara love her job there.

The new three year contracts with a non-compete clause thrown in had been a nice touch.

She could have taken her revenge further than that – had even planned exactly how she would do it.

The night of Kara’s Pulitzer prize. A damning speech about truth and lies, followed by Andrea Rojas leading the exposure of Supergirl’s secret identity to the world. Betrayal returned like for like, and Kara left as broken hearted as Lena had been.

Oh yes, she could have done it. Luthors were scorpions, and Lena knew how to sting.

But something had held her back from taking the final plunge that would have ripped safety and anonymity so irrevocably from Kara’s life. She wanted to believe it was her own compassion – an innate goodness that led her towards the moral high ground and made her fundamentally better than the Luthors she had so often sought to distance herself from, but it wasn’t true.

The reason she hadn’t done it was Lex.

Maybe if she had managed to pull the trigger last time they met, if she had murdered her own brother in cold blood for the sake of her traitorous false-friend, maybe then she would have done it. If Lex was dead and buried and out of her life for good, Lena could finally have stepped out of his shadow and stopped framing every decision she made against what he would have done. But Lex was still out there somewhere, laying low for now but undoubtedly still scheming, killing, making the worst decisions a human being could make while still being labelled as such, and that made a difference.

Revealing Supergirl’s identity to the world was a plan that Lex would have wanted her to carry out.

And so Lena hadn’t.

That had been enough at first, but as the weeks passed and the first fire of her rage cooled from white hot inferno to mere black smith’s forge fire, she found she was glad that she hadn’t taken the nuclear option. Kara might have deserved retribution for what she had done, but exposing her identity would put everyone she knew, including the entirety of the Catco staff and her unsuspecting apartment neighbours in serious danger from every human and alien criminal out there with a weapon and a score to settle, and Lena wanted no more innocent blood on her hands than had already been passed down to her as part of her dubious Luthor inheritance.

And she didn’t want Kara to die.

That didn’t mean she cared if Supergirl really had gone AWOL. She had had nothing to do with it, and it was none of her concern anymore...

Lena clicked the link.

According to this site, Supergirl had been observed flying off to the north of National City on an ‘unknown errand’ eight days previously and had not been seen since, leaving two major bank robberies, a fire at a children’s hospital and a collapsed ceiling at a swimming pool without support from ‘everyone’s favourite hometown hero’.

Eight days. That tallied with how long it had been since Alex had asked if she knew where Kara was, allowing for the full day that had passed before the DEO Director had made the decision to reach out to her. It struck Lena now that it was an odd thing for her to have done under normal circumstances. She might not have done anything to Alex specifically during the first fierce storm of her separation from their little group – at least not beyond a few short, sharp words and a door slammed in her face – but Alex had taken Lena’s swift and total removal of Kara from her life if anything even worse than Kara herself had, and had been round to yell at her over hurting Kara’s poor little feelings before the end of the first week.

She must have been desperate to have reached out to Lena like that after all this time.

Now she was looking for them, Lena found that there were dozens of similar stories popping up, ranging from serious think pieces about what this could mean for National City and Supergirl’s own welfare, to tabloid trash that suggested she might be having some sort of torrid three way affair with a sexually promiscuous alien couple from Saturn (why Saturn? Unclear. What was clear was that the entire story was utter garbage apart from one essential point: Supergirl was nowhere to be found).

Lena picked up her phone and tapped in Kara’s number, her chest tight with unease as she waited for the call to connect.

Of course she knew Kara’s number by heart. If she hadn’t she would never have been able to make herself delete it from her contacts.

It rang.

Maybe Kara was carrying a big stack of files and didn’t have a hand free to get her phone out of her back pocket.

And rang.

Maybe she was in the shower and didn’t want to rush out to answer the phone while wet and covered in shampoo.

And-

‘Hi this is Kara! I can’t get to the phone right now, but please leave me a message and I’ll get back-’

Maybe she was just screening Lena’s call. After everything that had happened between them it was what most people would have done, and Lena would understand that.

She hung up and redialled.

‘Hi this is Kara! I can’t-’

Kara would never have ignored a second call from Lena. No matter how angry she was, if she could pick up the phone, she would have done so by now.

Again.

‘Hi this is-’

She tried Alex instead.

This time, the phone was picked up before the end of the first ring.

‘Do you have Kara?’

A stone thudded into the pit of Lena’s stomach.

‘She really is missing then?’

‘Fuck. Yes she’s missing. You didn’t even know?’

‘Not until I saw it on the news just now. When I didn’t hear anything more from you after that last text I assumed she’d made it back safely’.

‘No, you had just answered my question and clearly didn’t want to help, so-’

‘Yes well, I thought she had just taken a detour to France for crepes or something, not that she was actually gone’.

‘Right, and you were so concerned you waited a week to check’.

‘Much as it may surprise you to learn this Alex, I don’t make a habit of keeping tabs on people who have betrayed me. So if you don’t want my help finding Supergirl I’ll just-’

‘No, Lena, wait. Look, I’m sorry okay? I’m just worried about her. If I send you the co-ordinates for her last known location do you think you could see if you can find anything? She went after this weird energy signature we’d picked up, but then her radio went dark and we couldn’t get anything else from her. We went out there to see if she was in some kind of trouble, but the place she was headed: it’s just a field. There’s nothing there, not even a trace of the energy we got before, and no sign of a struggle or any kind of indication of where she went next’.

‘Send me what you have and I’ll see what I can do’.

‘Sending it now’.

Less than a minute later Alex’s email arrived with the relevant details about Supergirl’s last known location attached, as well as everything they knew about the energy signature she had been investigating.

It wasn’t a whole lot to go on, except-

There was something vaguely familiar about the signature. It reminded her of…

Lex.

It reminded her of Lex, and the trap he had once devised to lure in a certain type of pseudo-photosynthesetic alien who fed on a very particular wavelength of light that wasn’t naturally produced by Earth’s yellow sun. Once it was absorbed the aliens could be hooked up to a generator that would produce massive amounts of electricity and could have made fossil fuels all but redundant overnight. In theory. In practise however Lex had never been able to make the conversion work, and had eventually given up on the plan.

So why was it showing up again now? And what did it have to do with Kara’s disappearance? It seemed far too much of a coincidence to imagine that the two things were unconnected, especially when Lex was the common thread.

Quickly, Lena skimmed through her options, and picked one she could adapt to this new purpose. The DEO had been scanning for days with no luck, but she had one thing they didn’t.

She knew her brother.

It took another two hours to fine tune the software and upload it to a satellite with scanning capabilities, but at last it was ready. She cast a wide net, centred on the location Alex had given her but stretching out from it to search a 30 mile radius. If it really was Lex then the place he had lured Supergirl was a decoy, and would be located well away from wherever he actually wanted her to end up.

She had to extend her search parameters twice, but at last she found it. Not the same energy signature – that would be too obvious. No, what Lena had been looking for was the special coded frequency that Lex had developed in his teens. To most people it would look like background radio noise, but Lena knew better.

It was him alright.

She reached for her phone to call Alex, then hesitated. All she had actually done was locate her brother, or at least somewhere he was broadcasting from. But the site was more than 80 miles from where Kara had last been seen, and Lena was working on a hunch rather than any kind of real evidence that Lex had taken her.

Besides, if the DEO got him they would just send him back to jail, and it had become abundantly clear that a maximum security cell was not enough to contain him.

No, Lena was going to have to do this herself. She would find Lex, and if he really had kidnapped Kara, she would finish what she had started the night he revealed the truth about Supergirl.

She was going to kill him.

[scuderiahoney]

Blackbird // Daniel Ricciardo x Reader

Coming 2/1/24 @ 8pm EST

[wizardofgoodfortune]

leave me there, dreaming (dreamling d&d au)

Rating: Explicit Chapter: 1/? Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Dungeons & Dragons, Dream is a Sorcerer, Hob is a Fighter, What more can I say?, Violence, Blood, Vomiting, Corpses, BAMF Hob Gadling, Slow Burn, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added Summary: Hob Gadling, a cavalier of a prestigious order, finds his life turned upside-down when his hometown suddenly disappears from the face of the earth. He was at his lowest when he meets a mysterious, starry-eyed elf, who happens to be the solution to one or more of his problems.

Written for Cara (@staroftheendless) and her prompt, "Dreamling!Knights AU", as part of the @dreamlingnation's winter exchange event!

(read on ao3)

[rain-is-cool]

[bizarrelittlemew]

do you like the idea of Ed finding Stede's long lost letters?

do you also like canon divergence au, both of them being each other's manic pixie dream girl, and a whole lotta pining (while fucking)?

well, earlier this year i wrote a fic with all of this (and more) called Something Timeless Going On, and you can read it right here! 💗✌️

[rarlkove]

I've had an AU brewing for well over a year now that I just KNOW would emotionally destroy all of my followers in one fell swoop. However, I keep running into the problem of presentation. It only works (or at the very least, it only works best) if the viewer is given a set of events in a specific order. As in, it's still an interesting concept either way, but I don't feel like I can in good conscience present it in the same way as Long Con or "Third Ice Emperor" where I just throw the concept out there like bread crumbs for the pigeons to peck at. No. I need the whole loaf at once.

However, every time I sit down to write the full, several page comic, I just end up redoing the first page five times over. So then I go, you know what? I'll just write it. Even if no one reads it I'll still have actually made the thing! Then, I sit down in front of a document and start to write. And then, maybe a few paragraphs in I go, "What am I doing? I do comics." So then I go back to the canvas and start the perpetual loop all over again. So, y'know. Be excited for that when I release it in some form in the next... Decade. Maybe. I'll work on it. Sometime.

[courfee]

@jilymicrofics | april 30 - rational | wc 100

“Have you ever had a rational thought in your life, Potter?” “Merlin’s pants, Evans, all I did was ask if you want to go to Hogsmeade with me.” “Oh really?” Lily asks, her voice dripping with acid. “That’s all you did?” “Evidentially,” James says, but the innocent, and (as far as he can judge) charming smile on his face is wiped off instantly upon impact with a handful of white flowers. “How about next time you ask me out with a bouquet, instead of drowning my breakfast in lilies!” James beams. “So you do want me to ask you again!”

[smirkingkitten]

Reading list November 2023

It's December and that doesn't just mean the Christmas season starts and it's the time for cozy evenings with candles, blankets and a hot chocolate, but also: it's time for another reading list.

It feels like it's been so long since Loki graced us with a new episode every week. I'm still not quite over the ending, although this interview did heal my poor heart a little, if only just a bit. I hope you're coping well with the ending. And now, happy reading.

✨And don't forget to reblog the storys you read to support all these lovely writers.✨

My other Reading lists can be found in my Fanfiction Bookshelf.

Series | Collections | Multi Parts

The Redbridge Hunts @fanficshiddles

8 Chapters (on going) | Vampire!Loki | fluff

prev. | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7 | Ch. 8

Summary: Claire moves to Demsdale to take up a new job as an assistant teacher for one Loki Laufeyson. She's also very intrigued with all of the rumours within the borough of Redbridge. However, as she starts to fall for Loki's charm and good looks, she also learns that all of the rumours might not just be rumours after all.

Double Cross @gigglingtiggerv2

12 chapters (on going) | Jaguar Villain!Tom | dark, smut

Summary: In Dante’s inferno, the Eighth Circle of Hell was reserved for liars, panderers, thieves and murderers.  For the criminal underworld it is an opulent London club, representing neutral territory where deals can be made, grievances aired and scores settled.

For the owner, Thomas Cross, it is his own private kingdom, one where he makes the rules and wields absolute authority. Recently, however, that authority has come under threat.  In order to maintain his standing and the Club’s ruthless reputation, it is imperative he find the perpetrator.

In this violent place, where lies are currency and everyone has their own agenda, who can he trust? Certainly not Verity Williams, the talented thief who has her own reasons for infiltrating his organisation. 

Neither can deny the sparks that fly whenever they’re together, but if he’s not careful, will those sparks burn down everything he’s created?

Déchiré @ijuststareatstuffhereok89

7 chapters (on going) | Loki, Bucky, Captain America | smut

You are a HYDRA agent sent to infiltrate the notorious Avengers, to tear them apart in the worst way possible in order to make them vulnerable to attack. In the midst of the wild heat you generate, three suitors take your bait.

One Shots

Firestarter @delaber

4,2k | AvengersMovie!Loki | smut, hatefucking

Rule Number One @just-the-hiddles

medium | Jonathan Pine | smut, dom/sub, daddy, spanking

Gorgeous @ghostofskywalker

1,2k | Avenger!Loki | fluff

Heavy Petting @wheredafandomat

800 | Loki | smut

I gave your girlfriend cunnilingus on my couch @wheredafandomat

short | Loki | smut, oral (f reserving)

Aftercare @sarahscribbles

680 | Loki | fluff, spicy

If I was your best friend @wheredafandomat

medium | Loki | smut

Worshiped by a God @sarahscribbles

1,1k | Loki | fluff, smut

Best of Friends @just-the-hiddles

long | Actor!Tom Hiddleston | fluff, friends to lovers

Duty of Care @muddyorbsblr

1,9k | Jonathan Pine | smut, fluff

Winter Warmers: A Winters Night on Asgard @lokischambermaid

930 | Asgard!Loki | fluff

The Sandwich Incident @holdmytesseract

1,2k | Tom Hiddleston | fluff, humour

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[jout--jout]

every now and again i think of that ghost!laudna au where she haunts imogen’s home and interacts with her as if she were alive and waits for imogen to come home every day and then i cry a little

[pbpsbff]

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[waytooinvested]

Forgotten, Not Forgiven - Chapter 11

This and previous chapters are also on AO3

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Clinical trial for Q-wave brain stimulator.

Trial subject 1. Session 5

First official sleep study: subject agreed to an overnight sleep study, during which two periods of Q-wave treatment are to be applied for 40 minutes each, one commencing during the deep sleep stage and a second at onset of REM sleep.

11.11pm – Deep sleep phase treatment commenced.

11.51pm: First treatment application successfully completed: blurring evidenced on Q-scan slightly extended to 0.7mm

2.07am: Following initial treatment dosage subject was allowed to complete one full sleep cycle at rest, followed by commencement of second treatment application on entering REM sleep

2.19am: Negative effects of Q-waves observed, treatment aborted.

Q-wave brain stimulator trial terminated with immediate effect.

Everything had been proceeding exactly as they had been anticipating. The deep sleep phase had been perfect, and to begin with the REM sleep treatment seemed even more promising, with the blurred patch expanding by 0.4mm within the first seven minutes. Success had seemed inevitable.

Then Lena looked over at Kara and saw the thin ribbon of blood trickling from her nose, and her heart stalled painfully in her chest before thumping back into action at twice its usual pace. She bypassed the dial completely and yanked the plug out of the wall to stop the Q-wave generator, then ran to kneel beside the bed.

‘Kara? Kara, please wake up. Are you okay?’

Kara stirred sleepily, blinking up at her in evident confusion as Lena tugged at the straps and pushed the Q-wave cap off and away with one hand while the other tenderly cradled her head.

‘What is it, did something happen?’

‘Do you feel alright?’

‘Of course, I’m totally fine. I was having the strangest dream though. I was flying, and... I think I was carrying you’.

Lena forced a laugh that might more properly have been called a sob as she remembered saying almost those exact words to Kara after she had been poisoned by Edge.

And after she had saved her life yet again...

It was a piece of real memory, and that Kara had it at all should have been incredible news, but combined with the nosebleed all it did was prove Lex had been serious about the dangers of forcing her to remember.

What if Lena had looked up five minutes later?

What if it had been too late?

Kara could have died tonight because of her.

She could have died.

‘Anyway, I don’t suppose you woke me to hear about my weird subconscious. Is everything alright?’

‘No, I’m afraid it’s not. I’m stopping the trial’.

The bed frame squeaked in protest as Kara sat up abruptly, looking properly alarmed for the first time since her rude awakening.

‘What? No! It’s been going so well, you can’t just stop!’

‘We have to Kara, you had a nose bleed’.

‘Don’t be silly, I never get-’

But the protest died as Kara reached up to touch her face, then examined the smear of red on her fingers.

‘Huh’.

‘I’m so, so sorry, I really thought this was going to be completely safe. I can’t say for sure that it was caused by the Q-waves, but I’m not willing to take that chance. If there is even the slightest possibility that this is hurting you, we are not doing it again’.

‘But it’s only a little one. Couldn’t you just… do some checks on the wave frequency or whatever before we try again? I would feel so awful if you cancel the whole project just because I had one tiny nose bleed, especially when I feel completely fine and it might not even have been caused by what we were doing. Think of all the people you were going to help’.

I was going to help you. That’s all. It was always just you, and now I can’t even do that.

‘No, I just can’t take that risk. I’m sorry Kara, but it’s over. I’ll just- I’ll find another way to continue the work. Come on, we’d better give Alex a call and get you over to the DEO so they can check you out properly’.

It looked like Kara wanted to protest further, but after taking in Lena’s expression for a few moments she apparently decided there was no point, and nodded reluctantly.

‘Alright, if you really think we need to stop, then I trust you. There’s no need to wake up Alex though, she’ll only fuss and there’s nothing wrong with me’.

‘Oh, we’re waking Alex for her sake, not yours. Otherwise she’ll be looking at a life sentence for my murder after she finds out I didn’t tell her about this so she could check you out for herself. What’s a bit of lost sleep compared to that?’

Kara rolled her eyes, a look of fond exasperation on her face that could have been for Alex or Lena or both as she picked up her phone to call her sister.

‘You two are as bad as each other, you know that?’

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After Kara had been checked out, cleared, and taken back to her apartment, the core task force for Project Atlantis (as Operation-get-our-girl-back had become more formally known) gathered for an emergency meeting to discuss what had just happened. Given that Kara had been cleared medically and was now back in her own home none the wiser this probably could have waited until morning, but when Kara had called Alex, Alex called J’onn, and the others were already en route to the DEO after Nia had seen something troubling in her dream, so they had decided not to wait.

J’onn, Nia, Brainy, Alex, and Lena.

There were a few other agents who knew Supergirl’s identity and therefore part of what they were working on, plus James, who was helping to hold things down at Catco, but the five of them were the only ones who knew everything, and Lena was glad she didn’t have to admit her failure to a bigger audience.

She had already presented the progression of the trial and the hopes she had had for the sleep study, and now went on to explain how it had gone wrong shortly after starting the REM treatment stage. For a long minute everyone was quiet as they examined the scan progressions Lena had just given them, then Alex banged a fist on the table and swore.

‘It was going so well. I really thought we had the answer’.

‘The probabilities looked quite promising, I too am surprised that this happened’.

‘So what do we do now? Do we dial back the treatments? Make them shorter, or less frequent?’

Lena had nodded along in commiseration with Alex and Brainy’s comments, but at J’onn’s contribution she stopped, brows drawing into her boardroom “someone just suggested dangerous cost cutting measures at the children’s hospital” expression.

‘Of course not. This is it for the Q-wave stimulator, I’m terminating the trials effective immediately. I assumed that was implied’.

The nosebleed was proof that her premise had been flawed, and it was sheer luck that the whole thing hadn’t ended up a lot worse than it did.

Kara could have died tonight. She could have died. She could have-

‘I’m not certain that is a logical course of action Lena. My calculations show only a 6.3% chance of further injury to Kara if the sessions return to being carried out while she is conscious, and with greater spacing between-’

Now Brainy too?

‘That is 6.3% too much. I’m sorry, but this is not a debate. It’s my device and I am telling you that I will not let any of you use it on Kara again. If I have to smash it to pieces and destroy the schematic to make sure of it I will not hesitate’.

Alex raised her eyebrows, reaching out towards Lena as if she was going to put a soothing hand on her arm, though she stopped short of actually touching her.

‘Woah, hey, there’s no need for that, we’re all on the same side here. But we don’t have another plan – if we can’t use Q-waves, what are we going to do?’

‘For now, nothing, Kara’s brain needs time to heal from the trauma it’s just experienced. Maybe in a few weeks we can think about trying something new, but until then-’

‘A few weeks?’ Alex interrupted, extended hand withdrawing along with the conciliatory tone. ‘We can’t wait that long. We’re barely holding things together as it is without Supergirl.’

At another time Lena might have been sympathetic, but right now the image of blood running down Kara’s face while she lay apparently unconscious (just sleeping in fact, but the seconds when Lena had been unsure if she would ever wake up again had felt like an eternity) was hovering just behind her eyelids ready to ambush her the moment she closed her eyes, and Alex’s protestation seemed flimsy at best.

Kara could have died tonight.

Lena could have killed her.

The roil of panic she was trying not to acknowledge boiled over, and her reply lashed out like a whip.

‘National City survived for years without superheroes. Are you really telling me that you can’t last a couple more months without your little sister holding your hand?’

Alex slammed both hands down on the table, her own tenuous grip on her composure snapping under the weight of Lena’s goading.

‘DAMN it Lena, this is not about me! Do you realise that Kelly nearly died confronting Malefic? He was seconds away from forcing her to cut her own throat. Seconds. I can’t let that happen again!’

‘And I can’t let you risk hurting Kara to make sure it doesn’t!’

‘You think I want to? She’s my sister, I love her more than almost any other person on the planet, but we have to be realistic. Kara is not the only one in danger here!’

They were both standing now, eyes locked, though Lena wasn’t sure when or how that had happened. If the two of them had been alone they would have fought it out until they had vented what they needed to, then calmed back down enough to figure out a new plan together, but they were not alone. J’onn interrupted their glaring match with a stern throat-clear, looking between them like a disappointed teacher with two unruly pupils.

‘That’s enough, both of you. Will you please sit down so we can discuss this rationally?’

Lena was prepared to ignore him and continue their debate to its conclusion, but after a few more seconds of crackling tension Alex flickered her gaze to J’onn and nodded stiffly, a part of her apparently still reacting to the authority of her former boss. She dropped back into her seat looking partially (though not entirely) chastened, and after a moment Lena followed suit more slowly, schooling her own features to avoid showing any hint of similar emotion herself.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care what happened to Kelly.

She was actually the one person connected to this little group that Lena had not entirely cut contact with after she’d found out about Supergirl, and she liked her very much. It was awful to think that she had so nearly been hurt, and if there was anything Lena could do to keep it from happening again, then she would. But she was a scientist, and a researcher, and she could not in good conscience support the continuation of a trial that would put her subject at a greater level of potential harm than was warranted, especially after having assured them that they would be entirely safe.

And she would not allow Kara to be harmed. Not for anyone. Not even if it meant every other person in the city suffered for it.

‘Thank you. Lena, you may be right about continuing any form of physical intervention at this stage, but Alex is also right that we can’t wait too long to do something. So, I suggest we stop trying to break down the barrier with external force and take a different approach entirely’.

J’onn paused, looking round to check he had everyone’s undivided attention, then continued before anyone (Lena) could raise objections.

‘Sometimes Martian powers will kick in without conscious direction when presented with imminent threat to life, and I think a similar instinctive approach could work for Kara. A survival reflex could bring back her powers without having to pass through her conscious mind, allowing the memories to follow after them once the way had been opened up and avoiding the potentially dangerous weakened pathways created by the Q-wave treatment’.

‘Interesting… Like avoiding the locked door in her mind altogether and instead creating a hitherto undiscovered window. I predict that that course of action would have an 84.2% chance of success’.

There was a beat of silence while Lena waited for J’onn to add something that would make his idea sound more sane, but it appeared he was done speaking.

‘Are you actually suggesting that we should put Kara’s life in danger? That’s your safer plan?’

J’onn raised his hands, fending off the argument they both knew was still simmering just below the surface.

‘Controlled danger. Something we could set up and monitor, and bring her out of if needed. She wouldn’t be at any real risk’.

Controlled danger.

Inducing hypothermia until Kara’s muscles gave up shivering and her heart slowed and eventually stopped.

Pressing on her throat to make her fight for air, her eyes wild with terror as she tried to free herself of the constriction.

Submerging her in water and watching her thrash and struggle, breaking the surface only to be drawn back under without having managed to take a breath, water replacing air in her lungs until at last she went limp and sank out of sight, just like-

‘NO’.

Her muscles tensed, ready to jump to her feet again, but Alex broke in before she could manage more than that single, reactive syllable of negation. It was probably lucky that she did, because for all her years of social training, Lena wasn’t at all sure her own response would have been as measured as Alex’s.

‘Sorry J’onn but I’m going to have to side with Lena on this one. We need Supergirl back, but we can’t take the chance on something going wrong with that plan. Even if we made some artificial danger that we could fully control, if it was real enough for survival instincts to kick in, it would also be real enough that something could go really badly wrong. Besides, that still leaves a 15.8% chance of failure for a plan that would be seriously traumatic to Kara, and that is way too high’.

‘It doesn’t have to be real danger. If we put Kara into a simulation-’

‘That doesn’t negate the trauma of thinking she’s dying!’

Lena’s volume was creeping up again, but she managed not to actually shout.

‘Maybe not, but Supergirl is tougher than you’re giving her credit for, and we can’t afford to take a kid glove approach on this one. Kara would want us to try it if it meant reducing the risk to the rest of National City caused by her absence’.

‘Kara has no idea what’s going on, so she can’t really express an informed opinion right now, can she?’

‘Exactly. That’s why we have to make a decision based on what she would want us to do. You’ve worked with Supergirl before, when have you ever known her to choose her own safety over someone else’s?’

J’onn had a point. The Kara Lena thought she had known was someone who had needed her protection, who had stood behind her when danger threatened and let her take the lead. It had made her feel strong, protective, trusted to keep her friend safe, and that trust made her believe she really could be an immovable object between Kara and whatever threatened them, no matter how bad things got. Now she realised with a pang that Kara’s attempts to hide were in reality her trying to slip away to return as Supergirl, and whenever she had she had immediately put her own body between Lena’s and the source of danger, and Lena had let her. Of course she had. Supergirl was the girl of steel.

But right now she was just Kara, and whether she wanted them to or not, all of those old protective instincts surged at the idea of standing back and allowing her to be killed, even if it was only in a simulation.

Lena folded her arms and stared steadily back at J’onn.

‘Well then. Maybe it’s time someone made the decision for Kara that she would make for them.’

‘Maybe… but I think you’re wrong about what that would be.’

She laughed, but there was no humour in it.

‘You’re telling me that Kara wouldn’t keep the truth from someone to protect them, whether they would have chosen that for themselves or not. You’re telling me that.’

J’onn had the grace to look uncomfortable, but he still didn’t rise to the provocation.

‘This situation is different from Kara choosing not to tell you about her Kryptonian identity.’

‘Yes, it is. Because finding out the truth wouldn’t have fucking KILLED me!’

‘No one is going to let that happen!’

‘You literally just suggested that we should try that exact thing and hope that the barrier breaks in time for Kara to save herself. Tell me J’onn. Would you be saying the same thing if it was Alex’s life? If she lost part of her memory, and the fastest way to get it back also risked giving her a major stroke or a fatal brain hemorrhage, would you do it? Or would you decide that a kid glove approach might be better if we were talking about someone other than Supergirl?’

‘Lena, that’s not f-’ Alex started to protest, so Lena snapped her attention to her instead.

‘How about if it was Kelly? Right now Kara is more vulnerable than a human, so you can’t argue that we should push ahead because she’s Kryptonian and her body can take it. It can’t. Not right now. So would you risk leaving Kelly brain dead for the sake of a few weeks? Brainy, how about you? Would you think a 6.3% chance of killing Nia was acceptable? Or you Nia, if it was Brainy? I know things are difficult in the city right now, but the world is not in immediate danger, and Kara is safe like this.’

There was utter silence around the table, so thick it would have taken a machete to cut through it. Nobody quite met Lena’s eyes.

‘You’ve made your point Lena’. Alex finally said in a subdued voice, fists clenching and unclenching on the table before her.

‘You’re right. We’re used to Kara being physically a lot stronger than she is right now, and we need to take that into account with whatever plan we make. Maybe we should to go right back to the beginning and look over all the test results again – see if there’s anything we missed the first time round and-’

‘Um… Alex? Maybe I could try something else first?’

Everyone turned to Nia, who until now had been silently watching the argument pinging from Alex to Lena to J’onn and back round again like it was a game of ice hockey.

‘What are you thinking Nia?’ Alex asked.

‘Well, I’m not sure, but maybe there’s a way I could reach Supergirl through Kara’s dreams. It would be less direct than the Mind space because dreams aren’t supposed to be literal, it’s all more vague and symbolic there, so she might fight it less. Plus what Lena told us about the flying dream shows that maybe that’s where the cracks are going to appear’.

‘Oh.. yeah, you could be onto something!’

‘An excellent proposal Nia’.

‘I agree, that could be a good compromise’.

They all looked at Lena, waiting to see if she was going to object to this plan too in spite of everyone else’s support for it. And to be honest, she would have been more comfortable continuing to approach the problem with science rather than something as wishy washy and unpredictable as “magic”. But then… so would Lex. He would be much more likely to anticipate and plan for anything she could do with science than Nia’s dream powers, especially when even Nia didn’t entirely understand how they worked. It was by far the best option on the table at the moment, even if it did mean she was going to have to trust Kara’s treatment and welfare to somebody who wasn’t her.

That part was going to be a wrench after all this time feeling so sure she could crack it, but in a way it was also a relief. For the last few weeks Lena had not so much been burning the candle at both ends as throwing the candle into the centre of a blazing fire and keeping it from melting up entirely by sheer force of bloody mindedness. Between working on the Q-wave stimulator, keeping L-Corp running and spending more time than ever with Kara as part of Project Atlantis, not to mention check in meetings with the rest of the task force, it had been weeks since she had had a full night of unbroken sleep, and that was starting to take its toll. She sighed.

‘I’m in too. But if we’re going ahead I think Alex or I should be there during the sessions so we can keep an eye on Kara and bring her out immediately if she starts showing dangerous symptoms. Sorry Nia, it’s not that I don’t trust you to take care of her, but if you’re in a dream state you might not be so aware of what’s going on physically’.

‘Sure, I’d be fine with one of you two being there – it might be easier to explain as a group thing anyway’.

Around the table shoulders visibly relaxed as the tension eased, and the general mood finally began to shift to something more hopeful – optimistic even – as they started discussing how Dreamer should approach the task. Now that their course was decided Lena sat back and let the conversation go on around her, half listening but making no attempt to direct the flow, or even step into it. It wasn’t like she knew much about powers in any case, and she needed a minute to collect herself after what had just happened.

In the heat of the argument she hadn’t cared what bridges she was burning or what the fallout from that might be just as long as she was keeping Kara from being hurt, but now it was over she felt slightly... unbalanced by the experience. She wasn’t sorry that she had stood up against the suggestion that they should suffocate Kara for her own good (or whatever other ridiculously dangerous alternative J’onn would have come up with), but had to admit, if only to herself, that the way she had gone about it might not have been entirely prudent. Because she wasn’t the top-of-the-food-chain CEO here, whose word had to be obeyed by the majority of the people she came into contact with whether they liked it or not. In fact, now that they no longer needed her technology she wasn’t really anything to this group, and the idea that they might realise as much and drop her from the project made bands of panic tighten around her chest all over again.

She couldn’t walk away from this now. She was in too deep for that. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet.

Not to Kara, but not to the rest of them either, because somewhere along the way she had stopped thinking of these people as adversaries she was forced to partner with to achieve a shared goal, and started to think of them as… something else. People that she cared about, and whose company she would miss if it suddenly disappeared from her life.

The hours she spent with Brainy working through technical details and swapping jargon-based humour that no one around them understood.

The coffee breaks with Nia when she and Dreamer both had cause to be at the DEO Headquarters, and the conversations they had that had begun, very lightly, to touch on families and the otherness that both of them experienced in their own different ways.

The camaraderie with Alex and mutual needling that increasingly felt like their own private in-jokes, and the fact that despite all the teasing (and even sometimes fighting), she was the first person Lena wanted to call when something well wrong with Project Atlantis, because Alex cared about Kara as deeply as she did.

Even J’onn, despite a somewhat awkward beginning, was becoming a respected colleague that Lena could almost forget had also posed as her best friend while she opened up about her love life and family insecurities…

Alright, that last one still stung, but they had been making progress. She didn’t want to just throw it all away now, no matter that that was exactly what she would have to do sooner or later, when Kara got her memories back.

‘Lena?’

She blinked back into the room, chagrined to have been caught zoning out just when she most needed to justify her presence here.

‘Sorry Alex, what did you say?’

‘I just asked if you could make next Monday instead of Thursday for the next Atlantis meeting’.

‘Oh-’ She was still in then. For now at least. ‘-Yes. I might need to move a couple of things around, but I can make Monday work, definitely’.

That meant there would be a few extra days until the next meeting, and Lena resolved to spend them (or as much of them as wasn’t already taken up by L-Corp) proving that she could still be a valuable asset to the project. Somewhat regretfully she let go of the extra couple of hours sleep per night that she had promised herself following the end of the Q-wave trials, and instead allocated the time to the study of dream interpretation. Because while it was true that Lena was just about as unmagical as it was possible for a person to be, she was excellent at research, and there was bound to be something in the established body of peer-reviewed literature that would begin to explain the mechanics of Nia’s power. If she could only find it then they would be able to take a scientific approach to determining the right way for Dreamer to get through to Supergirl, and that was something Lena could do in her sleep. The bands around her chest loosened, and she took what felt like her first full breath since she had looked up to see Kara’s blood staining her pillow.

‘How long do you think before you’re ready to get started Nia?’

Is there time for me to express ship some pertinent reading material from overseas, or should I only look locally?

‘Well, there is one snag I’m going to have to work out first... It turns out that Kara doesn’t actually know that I’m Dreamer anymore. That memory must have been pretty tied up with her own identity as Supergirl, and she has just blocked the whole thing out. So. I think before I can start on any of this stuff, I’m going to have to come out to Kara’.