#consider me deceased until further notice | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thenexusofsouls · 2 years

Text

Private Muse: Nuada Bethmoora

[Bio and other information below the cut!]

Type of Character & Fandom/Source Material: Fantasy canon character from the movie Hellboy II: The Golden Army (I used to write him over at @fallxnprxnce).

Disclaimer: All the information in this post is a mashup of canon information and my own headcanons/fleshing-out/OCs, etc. I’m not going to bother to mention what’s what for most of it or I’ll be here all day, heh, so I’m just going to lay it all out as one narrative. If you have any questions on whether something is a headcanon or was actually in the movie, or you want further explanations about anything below, please don’t hesitate to ask. I have been developing Nuada, his friends, and his world for many years, so although this post is long, it is only a fraction of the info crammed in my brain about this muse, haha. So yes, feel free to ask about anything you wish. Please do. =)

What I Mean By “Private Muse”: This muse is only open to mutuals and people I already rp with, so no new partners with this one for now. I have my own mental health and time constraint reasons for limiting him, and I only want to write him in a limited capacity and on a trial basis right now. Anyone can send him or me informational asks (ones that aren’t starters or rps, but that just ask questions about him), but for actual rps I’m keeping this mutuals and regulars only until further notice. If you aren’t sure if I would be willing to write Nuada with your muse(s), you can always ask me through the inbox or messager.

FC: Luke Goss as Nuada

Species: High Elf (collectively refers to ancient lines of full-size, humanoid, bipedal Elven races; seen as sort of nobility among Elvenkind... as opposed to smaller, non-humanoid-shaped, quadrupedal, shapeshifting, cryptid, or aquatic races of elves)

Race / Ethnicity: Sun Elf (a race of High Elves associated with the sun, fire, heat, gold metal, gold and yellow and cream colors, and the growth of plants as nurtured by the sun; these elves are distinguishable by their cream skin, golden hair... unless white from age, ochre colored eyes, and ochre colored blood; they are known for their battle prowess, musical ability, intelligence, dexterity in many trades, and their resistance to fire)

Bloodline / House: Bethmoora (the longstanding ruling House of the Sun Elven race)

Age: Ancient (2K+) (Sun Elves are immortal but not invincible; they can still die of injury, illness, broken hearts, and they can “fade,” which is a graceful way of saying they lose the will to live and die of what they call “natural causes”; they consider fading to be nature’s way of returning them to the earth and allowing their spirits to rest when they have served their purpose in life; fading is cause for grief, to be sure, but it is also seen as something natural and better than living with bitterness, anger, or sadness in one’s heart, or outliving one’s usefulness in life)

Gender: Male

Romantic Orientation: Demi-biromantic

Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual

Occupation: Prince; Warrior

Family: King Balor (canon father, deceased or not based on verse); Queen Elunae (OC mother, deceased, but her ghost still hangs around him, unbeknownst to him; I used to write her under the url “queenofbethmoora,” but the blog was deleted because of T.umb.lr derp); Princess Nuala (canon twin sister)

Potentially Triggering Material in Threads: Violence; g.enoc.idal tendencies (against humans as a race compared to elves); toxic thinking and relationships; sibling rivalry; patricide; sui.cidal ideation

Negative Personality Traits: Arrogance; anger; impulsivity; shortsightedness; stubbornness

Positive Personality Traits: Bravery; fierceness; loyalty; passion; perseverance; and a surprising amount of love even though it’s been tainted in some ways over the years

Important Personality/Nature Aspect - Nuada’s “Wild Heart”: This is something that I’ve spent a long time thinking about and detailing, and it is crucially important to Nuada as a person, as it influences his thinking and actions in many ways. I call it "croí fiáin," which in Nuada’s native language means “wild heart.” With Nuada, it’s not just a case of being hard to catch and hold onto, being a free spirit, or being a restless person with a lot of energy. It’s much more than that, and it is a condition that is so much a part of him that he cannot escape it. It functions almost like a medical or mental health condition. It’s the essence of the difference between a domesticated animal and a wild one, on a mental and spiritual level. In this post, I explain all about it and give links to other posts that go into some analyses or talk about it from Nuada’s point of view. There is a good chance it will come up in threads, so you may want to read some of it over. Or you can just ask me for a quick rundown, that’s fine too.

Nuala was not born with this same "croí fiáin" condition. Even though they are twins, Nuala is very much Nuada’s opposite in personality, demeanor, emotional/mental inclinations, and temperament. She balances him out. So in contrast to his wild heart, she is serene, calm, practical, and measured. Their people believe that they are very literally two halves of one soul. The two of them together make one whole person, so each of them are incomplete without the other. This is a rare but known phenomenon that occurs among Nuada’s people, and it is the reason why they are physically and mentally linked to each other as well. Their people believe such occurrences of this split-soul phenomenon are indicative of some kind of special destiny for one or both of them, and that they are both cursed and blessed.

Important RP Note: I DO NOT ship Nuada and Nuala romantically or sexually. I know this is canon, but I’m just not doing it at all, sorry. My twins have a very negative relationship, with each believing they have been wronged/neglected/unappreciated by the other. Nuada is possessive of Nuala, and he does get jealous if she takes romantic interest in others, but that doesn’t mean he’s in love with her or wants her for himself. His jealousy more stems from his desire to mean as much to her as their father and others have, since he believes he doesn’t. It’s... a whole big mess and a longstanding feud of resentment between them. Nuada was closer to their mother but she died when they were younger, and Nuala was closer to their father. He resents Nuala for being their father’s favorite while also being jealous of others she gives her attention to. But yeah... I absolutely don’t ship them with each other.

Important Potential Medical Condition, the “Iron Malady” (tw: depression and suicidal thoughts/actions): The Iron Malady is an illness I created for one of my fictional medieval fantasy worlds that afflicted my own original races of elves, the Silverwood and Purplewood Elves. But I’ve also developed it for Nuada’s people as well, and this is actually the illness his mother died of. You can read more about it here. At its core, it is a lot like dying of grief or a broken heart, but there are some very specific causes, symptoms, and cures for it.

Background and General Information: I... don’t even know where to begin with this, heh. I’ve fleshed out parts of his childhood, his mother and his relationship with her, how his mother died, his early relationship with Nuala, his interactions with magical creatures that are now extinct, what his adolescence was like... There’s just so much. I feel like things will come out as they come up in threads? I’m just way to lazy to write out everything I can think of, haha. Feel free to ask me anything you’d like about him, though.

But very generally speaking, Nuada was born a prince to King Balor and Queen Elunae, along with a younger twin sister, Nuala. He’s a Sun Elf, meaning elves that are associated with warmth, sunlight, plants, forests, dawn, and the color/metal gold. They are naturally resistant to fire, cannot be burned, and unaffected by high temperature climates, but vulnerable to injury from freezing and hindered by cold climates. They are one of the older and more major races of elves, and one of the few with surviving members in the present day. Bethmoora is a well-known and longstanding House within Elven culture, whether you’re a High/Sun Elf or not. It was also a well-respected House, but news of Nuada’s break from the family and self-imposed exile put a tarnish on his reputation, and partly on Balor’s as well.

I keep pretty much everything from the movie as canon, I just add in a lot more to fill in the blanks, so if you’ve seen the movie, you’ve already got a good jump on Nuada’s story. Anything in his past that needs explaining or that comes up in threads, I will try to give enough context to understand it.

As far as the story of the movie if you haven’t seen it, Nuada is angry at humans for destroying the earth and causing the dwindling and extinction of numerous races and species, most notably his own. Non-human races have been relegated to the dark corners and underbellies of the Earth, being forced to live in fear and confinement out of sight and with the safety of their own kind. Instead of living in vast forests, Nuada’s people live underneath human cities, among brick walls, dark sewers, and metal pipes instead of trees, lakes, and mountains. They’re dying off, giving into what they feel is their time to “fade,” but Nuada, as one of the last real warriors of his race, refuses to fade, refuses to abandon the earth to human destruction, and refuses to accept that the future has a strictly human face.

His cause and his arguments are just and sound, but from there, he embarks on a cruel and misguided campaign to eradicate all humans from the planet using a weapon called the Golden Army. It is an army of magical, indestructible clockwork soldiers of goblin make that can almost instantly repair and rebuild themselves the moment they are damaged or destroyed. They are deadly, possessing immense strength and sharp blades. Whoever has the gold crown that conveys ownership of the Army controls their agenda. Nuada sets out to obtain that crown, which has been thirded to prevent anyone from taking control of the Army for the wrong reasons.

One piece says with Balor, one with Nuala, and one was given to the humans as a gesture of peace. Over time, humans forgot the treaty and the story, allowing their Elven friends to fall to ruin and treating their crown piece as a trivial piece of art. Nuada kills his father to obtain his piece, crashes an auction at which the humans’ piece was to be sold, and then goes after his sister for her piece. Nuala does everything she can to keep Nuada from getting the piece and reassembling the crown, but he does anyway, gaining control of the Army. Hellboy challenges him for control, being demon royalty himself, and Nuada has no choice but to accept. They duel, and as Nuada is about to win in a rather underhanded way, Nuala stabs herself, kill herself and her brother, since they are linked. Hellboy, now in control of the Army, ponders all the power it could afford him, but his girlfriend Liz melts it, destroying it forever.

I usually write Nuada before he thinks about gaining the other crown pieces, or I write him as not being able to find the human piece, kindof to stall the canon story in the movie so I can have more time and freedom with him in threads. I keep his basic agenda and opinions, but just pause the main story of the movie for threads to happen, heh. But I’m open to whatever people might like to explore at any point in his timeline.

Magical and Supernatural Abilities:

Fire resistance and heat tolerance (e.g. holding the glowing hot map case without burning his hand)

Empathic and somatic link to his sister since birth (they are mentally linked over long distances, and their bodies mirror wounds and ailments between them)

Potential for empathic link creation with others by touching with his hands (Nuala and Abe created a link between them by touching their hands together, so Nuada can do this as well with other empathic individuals if an emotional connection is there)

Supernatural empathic capabilities: gleaning information from individuals, creatures, surfaces, or objects by touching them with his hands (e.g. knowing who touched an object last, learning someone’s name by touching them, or seeing what recently happened in a room by touching the walls)

Magical energy infusion: granting qualities, characteristics, or abilities to weapons or individuals by infusing them with magical energy (e.g. his spear lengthening and retracting; flawlessly regenerating the spear head)

Magical compulsion: compelling individuals and creatures to do something by lacing his speech with magic (e.g. whispering “kill him” to the forest god)

Friends: These are characters that tend to make somewhat regular appearances in threads with Nuada, depending on the location and nature of the thread. (See below for details and lots of links to posts with headcanons! Just be advised that these are from Nuada’s now-inactive blog and many of these posts are very old. Some of the info and links contained within them may be outdated.)

MR. WINK (a rock troll, also known as a rock ogre to some): Nuada’s righthand man, no pun intended. XD Also his close and dear friend. He is strong, brave, loyal, and shares Nuada’s hatred of human beings.

Appreciation post

How Mr. Wink met Nuada and how they became so close

Mr. Wink & sweets

Mr. Wink & tea

Mr. Wink hates sneezing

How Nuada sees Mr. Wink

THE BARK CHILDREN (small earth fae): The little two-headed creatures seen scampering all over the Troll Market. They act as messengers as well as eyes and ears for Nuada throughout the Market. They are innocent, intelligent, timid, playful, helpful, and curious.

Appreciation post

How Nuada sees the bark children

Nuada musing on the bark children’s treatment of him

Headcanons based on canon, part 1

Headcanons based on canon, part 2

Bark children and naming/identity

Jix & the bark children

TOOTH FAIRIES (small sky fae): Tiny, cute, but ravenous little fairies with an appetite for biological calcium, e.g. the calcium found in bones and especially teeth. They are one of the most intelligent types of fairies, able to speak and learn. They are playful and mischievous, as well as frenetic and talkative.

Pictures of the fairies

Gifs of the fairies

Nuada befriending a poisoned fairy

“CATHEDRAL HEAD”, A.K.A. THE ARCHIVIST: A wise old cartographer and archivist who makes and stores maps, scrolls, formal documents, and important letters in his library/shop. He lives and works in the specific Troll Market that is located underneath the human city of New York City, under the borough of Manhattan. He is well respected and trusted by many.

Appreciation post

The most interesting thing about this fellow is that his race are typically colonized by very tiny beings who build on top of their heads! They build from biological material (bone, keratin, sebaceous material), so the cathedral on his head is actually made of living material, an extension of his head. Tiny members of this wee race live inside the cathedral, and if you look closely, you might see lights going on and off in windows, or even the tiny creatures walking around on ledges and walkways.

The tiny race that lives on the Archivist’s head are actually involved in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship with him. They gain nutrients and building materials from his body as well as protection from the outside world, and he gains a very valuable protective covering over his brain. Otherwise, his kind are born with very soft heads and frequently suffer brain injuries without the benefit of the hard, keratin-based (the same material that fingernails or horns are made of) material shielding them.

When someone of his race is born, tiny colonists from the diminutive race are introduced onto the baby’s head. As the individual grows, the colonists build and multiply, protecting the baby’s brain from harm. When an individual dies, their colonists are transferred to infants, very often within their same family/bloodline.

The relationship between the wee race and the Archivist’s race is considered a very sacred trust, with each race benefitting and protecting the welfare of the other. The Archivist loves his head colonists dearly and takes very good care of them. His race considers it a solemn honor to be colonized.

Potential Starter Ideas:

Maybe not a starter, but if you want to ask Nuada about his family, friends, life, etc., I have spent an inordinate amount of time fleshing him out over the years. I’ve expanded his family, detailed a lot of inhabitants and aspects of the Troll Market underneath which he makes his living space, and have elaborated on things like his fears, triggers, likes, dislikes, customs, habits etc. He’s my oldest T.um.blr muse that I really took seriously, and back when I wrote him (2015 to 2019) I had a lot more free time than I do now, so I had the time to spend delving into the minutia of his life and world. Feel free to ask him (or me) about anything, as I would love to get back into this muse I put so much work into in the past.

The bark children see Nuada as a protector of them, of their community, and in general someone to go to when something is... going down. They will inform him of threats, curious things they find, things that scare them, and intruders. Very often bark children will show up in threads with Nuada because they are such a part of his life. This presents a number of starter opportunities... A pair of bark children could be captured and put in a pet store, and your muse can set them free and let them lead them to their home. Or, your muse could be wandering near to a Troll Market entrance and encounter a pair, and decide to follow them. In other words, bark children can either directly or indirectly lead your muse to Nuada for various reasons.

If your muse is non-human or would be able to access the Troll Market with magic and gain entrance, they could hear about Nuada from the bark children or the Archivist. Maybe they go looking for him for some reason?

He could be injured and need help. If you’ve written with me at all, you know how I love the classic “I could die if you don’t help me” starters for threads, heh. Being shot by police in the city is a very likely thing that might happen to him. Or whatever injury situation we could think of is also fine. Fair warning that he would be grumpy in this situation. Or... your muse could be injured and if they’re of a race Nuada would be sympathetic toward, or he’s just having a bout of rare empathy for a human. He would likely take your muse to his home beneath the Market to watch them. He can’t heal, so he’d have to treat the wound and then just... wait. Makes for interesting conversation, heh.

Fun facts & Colorful Information:

Nuada’s and Nuala’s facial scars were given to them as infants. They designate them as royalty. Nuada was actually going to receive them first, since he is the eldest, but then they manifested on Nuala’s face automatically as a result of their supernatural somatic link. That was how Balor and Elunae found out their twins were two halves of one soul, or one soul split into two bodies. Them being born with this rare condition was seen as a potential curse or blessing from the gods, yet to be determined.

The darker coloration around Nuada’s eyes and lips compared to Nuala and others of his kind is indicative of the corruption that has taken hold of him. He is literally being poisoned by the negative energy of the dark path he’s chosen to go down. Negative emotions, evil, cruelty, a lack of mercy, and lapses in moral judgement are slowly poisoning him, both mentally and physically. This corruption affects his physical health as well as his personality and decisions, and is very similar to that experienced by Wanda Maximoff (1, 2) in the MCU.

Nuada was very close with his mother. When he left in exile, he took with him his mother’s wedding necklace, once a gift from his father to his mother on their wedding night.

Three reasons why Nuada might be pushed to violence.

I once did a rudimentary analysis of Nuada’s living space underneath the Troll Market, looking at everything he keeps/stores there. You can find it here.

If you want to know what Nuada thinks about fictional depictions of elves by humans in popular media, or his opinion on wandering about on Halloween, you can read about those topics here.

On the subject of human items being sold in the Troll Market and the general diversity to be found there: 1, 2

Nuada and Mr. Wink looking at human billboards

Nuada and Mr. Wink taking in the sight of the elves’ “home”

Muse Playlist: These are songs that I have used and turned to countless times for writing inspiration, many of which I’ve been associating with Nuada for many years. Some of them are related to the movie in some way or have had music videos set to clips of it that I’ve linked to, but most are just songs with lyrics that fit his mindset, the mood, or various situations perfectly.

Hellboy II Trailer Song / Reminds me of a quote from Nuada: “Let this remind you why you once feared the dark.”: “Mein Herz Brennt” - Rammstein (it’s in German, so here are the translated lyrics)

Main Theme Song: “Mordred’s Lullaby” - Heather Dale

The Golden Army: “Invincible” - Two Steps From Hell

Determination: “I Will Not Bow” - Breaking Benjamin / H320 dubstep cover version

Ancient Battles: “Heart of Courage” - Two Steps From Hell

Exile / Savior Complex: “Torn” - Creed

Pride: "Live Free or Let Me Die” - Skillet

Arrogance: “Fireproof” - Pillar

Anger At His Father and Sister: “Numb” - Linkin Park

Relaxed: “Kindred” - Jillian Goldin

Thinking/Meditation: “Nothing Else Matters” - Metallica

Pensiveness: “Winternight” - Visions of Atlantis

Sadness / Brokenhearted: The Old Ways - Loreena McKennitt

The Old Religions: All Souls Night - Loreena McKennitt

Heritage: “Ancestors” - Albannach

Wildness: “Beat the Speed of Sound” - Emmelie de Forest

United/Determined Twins: “Awake and Alive” - Skillet

Divided/Adversarial Twins: What Have You Done? - Within Temptation

Breakdown/Downward Spiral: “Let Go” - Frou Frou (Imogen Heap)

Failure/Defeat: “Failure” - Breaking Benjamin

Final Battle: “Blow Me Away” - Breaking Benjamin

#muse: nuada bethmoora #hellboy ii rp

15 notes · View notes

oldstorynewart · 6 months

Text

Of Nether Folk and Trusting Ghosts

“I always thought The Netherlands sounded like a magical realm made up by Tolkien.”

Being a huge folklore dork from the ever-so-grounded Nether realms, I took it as a big compliment to my native land when an English stranger said this to me a few moon cycles ago. The Low Lands are not typically thought of as being particularly magical – the only thing of mythic proportions being the rural realism that still haunts these crowded plains – but the idea that there is no Dutch folk tale tradition couldn’t be further from the truth: the magical creatures of the Netherlands are just particularly good at hiding themselves. I find it important that their stories are heard, and Groninger native Marlene Bakker seems to agree. By reimagining a long history of Othering women, pagans, and minority language speakers through her 2023 song ‘Witte Wieven’, Bakker does a fantastic job of showing us why the Dutch need to learn to listen to their foggy folklore.

As its title suggests, the song is a meditation on one of the better known creatures from the Low Saxon mythos. Witte wieven (‘white women’, although the original meaning was probably ‘wise women’) were believed to be ghostly female entities living in burial mounds in the northeastern Netherlands. Although stories vary from region to region, the general consensus is that wieven are the spirits of deceased pagan priestesses who wander around their graves in white burial shrouds. The wieven were worshipped in pre-Christian times, and in return they helped women in labour and farmers with their crops. With the word of God, however, these kindly spirits were outcast as heathen, and with that their ghostly garden found its grave. The townsfolk turned to telling tales of evil ones who dwelt the hills around their homes, leaving the once-so-valued wieven viewed as nothing but vicious ‘Others’; voiceless, seductive, and never to be trusted.

Bakker’s song returns soul to specter by giving these creatures a voice once more. A review by the CGTC (Centrum Groninger Taal en Cultuur) describes the song as being about the fear of women, and relates it to the real-life witch hunts that took place in Westerwolde, East-Groningen. Bakker masterfully reimagines the wieven by reflecting on them from contrasting perspectives; that of the fearful townsfolk in the verses, and that of the women themselves in the choruses. Where the pre-chorus cautions us to “never go into the woods past the deposit house” because “witte wieven haunt there,” the choruses ask us to consider the feelings those we fear. “Who of you is not afraid?” one of them asks. “My burial shroud is much too long. I wander through the night, trapped in time, until the sun shines on me.”

The bit about the burial shroud is telling of Bakker’s desire to understand the wieven, as it refers to the tale of the only wief ever heard to speak. As the story goes, a farmer once noticed that a wief kept stumbling over of her gown. She proclaimed “Mien henneklaid is mie te laank!” (“My burial shroud is too long for me!”) so the man decided to help her by cutting it short. After this, she gratefully rewarded him with a life of good fortune. By including this quote, Bakker manages to humanize the creatures once more: she gives them back their voice, their kind-hearted nature, and the human ability to struggle. But she also accomplishes something more subtle.

Bakker wails her words the Low Saxon dialect spoken in Groningen, just like the wife who couldn’t walk without the farmer’s kindness. There’s a parallel to be drawn between the histories of the wieven and Low Saxon tongues. Where the wieven were ruled out with the organization of religion, these dialects faced a massive, forceful decline with the advent of the Dutch language’s unification When performing her songs live, Bakker always introduces her songs in common Dutch, allowing all of her audience members to be familiarized with the oppressed. By shedding light on forgotten women from a forgotten folklore in a forgotten language, Bakker raises a significant, unresolved history of repression from the earth’s mounds and lays it bare for questioning.

‘Witte Wieven’ remains a cautionary tale, but not the one we’ve grown accustomed to. Rather than teaching us fear, it warns us to be wary of fear itself. It highlights a history the Dutch may rather have forgotten, and in doing so, it frees a dangerous discourse of Othering women and their wisdom from its prison of time – which, from a realist point of view, was only ever immortal in fiction anyway. This shows us that if there’s anything we shouldn’t trust, it’s a country that chooses to bury its magic for the sake of being ‘down to earth’. If we are to learn anything from Bakker, it is that thinking about folklore matters. It’s good to sing these songs, it’s good to celebrate and explore the history the Dutch do have. Thankfully, Bakker’s song manages to make the land I call my home a little more like the Tolkienesque realm my British stranger already believed it to be.

1 note · View note

awn-moo · 1 year

Text

<[VIDEO ID - PART TWO OF ???]>

Curtis and Ingo are in view, together they are walking behind the two Chandelure.

"So, Vic, ya really know your stuff about ghost Pokemon? What started that?" Curt asked, turning around slightly to look at Vic behind the camera.

"Finding Dyre, really. He was the first ghost Pokemon I cared for. The rest just kind of, drifted towards me. When you own a ghost Pokemon, they seem to start appearing more and more. Flit here attached herself to me in Kalos. I haven't been able to shake them off. Even non-pokemon ghosts like me."

"Non pokemon ghosts? I know ya mentioned it earlier, but I just don't believe that."

"Curtis, do you know how a lot of ghost Pokemon come to be? People die nearby things that turn them into Pokemon. Sinistea exists because someone died while in a room with a cup of tea. Most people think it has to be cold, but by the time people notice the deceased, the tea is almost always cold. It's really just as long as tea is in the cup. Anyway, now if someone dies that way, how in Giratina's name does the Pokemon come to be? Their spirit, or ghost, inhabits that cup! So if there's no way for someone to become a Pokemon, or their resistance to such a thing is so strong after death, what happens to their soul? They become lost, unable to move on, and stay stuck in this permanent limbo." As Vic rambles on, the footage changes to him rambling. With a camera in hand, he's gesturing as he speaks.

"Alright, but that sounds like such nonsense. Ghost Pokemon, like any other pokemon, come from eggs. Even the object mons." There is a stagnant silence as they walk. Vic's brow furrows at Curt's words.

"Not all Pokemon come from eggs, Curt. Some are born. You told me you wanted to be a rancher! You should know that!" Vic huffs. Curt just gives a little 'eh' in response.

"Boss, what do you think? Do you believe in non pokemon ghosts?" Curt asks as he swings the camera over to Ingo. Ingo hums in thought, a hand coming up to cover his mouth as he thinks.

"I don't really know. It seems plausible enough, especially with a lot of ghost Pokemon coming from death in one form or another. What are the ghost Pokemon that used to be human?" The camera pans over to Vic after Ingo speaks.

"Let's see, there's yamask, sinistea, frillish, phantump, at a stretch you could consider spiritomb and driftloon, but they're collections of spirits… Some even consider Gastly to be from human souls and same can be said with sandyghast." Vic then hums softly in thought. The camera then pans back to Ingo.

"So, how close are we?"

"Here, actually." The camera pans over to a large tunnel, the dim lights shoddily illuminating the tunnel flicker.

"I asked Emmet to turn on the lights down here, but since they haven't been on in so long, they're mostly out. Hopefully you can get good footage despite it." Ingo grabs the brim of his hat and tilts it downwards a bit. Vic walks forward into the tunnel, a massive grin on his face.

"Ah! It's perfect! Look at this!" Vic excitedly points down the tunnel. "And don't worry about lighting, we've got our pokemon and flashlights for anything too dark." Vic then heads down the tunnel, his pace quickening as Ingo follows behind. The camera stops and lets the two walk further down the tunnel until they’re unable to be seen clearly. The camera turns around to face Curt, he gives a small forced smile.

“So uh, I promised Vic not to do anythin’ too fuckin stupid, but I lied. I’m lettin’ him and Ingo go on ahead without me. Vic, I know you’re gonna see this when you edit later on, but hey, you hopefully had fun?”

The footage freezes and shows a photo taken on the abandoned tunnel as Vic’s voice comes in.

“Editor Vic here. He was very fucking stupid. It took us half an hour to realize he was gone. We did continue without him, but I was so worried he got lost. Turns out he went to the control room with Emmet to watch security cams. Fuckin idiot…” Vic then says something aggressively in Hoennese before cutting back to his footage with Ingo.

<[END VIDEO ID]>

#pokeblogging #pokemon irl #pkmn irl #vics urbex adventure #Urbex Adventures #tw death mention

1 note · View note

starshipsofstarlord · 3 years

Note

Hello, can I request a Wanda x Female Reader? Where R shifts to date Wanda and everything is all fluffy until Wanda asks why R has thoughts about a person that looks like her (Elizabeth O.) but she doesn’t recall ever doing these memories?

Break Up and Break Through

Pairings | Elizabeth Olsen x reader, Wanda Maximoff x reader

Summary | shifting to date the renowned and well loved scarlet witch comes with troubles, when the avenger reads your mind.

Warnings | angst, mention of a breakup,

Quick link to my masterlist, if you’re interested in reading more of my crap 😬

Wanda laid upon the well made bed, eating a packet of salt and vinegar crisps as she stared at you. She was waiting for the light to illuminate the room, as she watched you with a soft smile, down on your knees, cleaning the old disc that you had kept all through your youth.

It was one of her favourites too, it was one of the things the pair of your shared. The fact that you knew that she loved Bewitched when she was younger almost scared her for a second, but she realised that she must have let that detail slip in one of your many conversations before the pair of your had gotten this comfortable around one another.

The one thing that she would not allow herself to do around you however, was read your mind. She thought that as pushing boundaries, though, sometimes, the ability could not be helped. The avenger tried her best to respect your privacy, only looming in the corners of your mind when she was worried with how you felt about her.

It was no secret that the public had a formed opinion about her, they simply thought that she was not in control enough to save lives, all because of the ones that she has taken via incarnated accidents. But you, you accepted her just the way she was, and that gave her much comfort. And whilst you were sorting out putting the television on with the chosen agenda of what to watch, Wanda decided to go against her usual promise, and look into your mind.

The aura within it was sweet, and she found everything that she loved about you within the mental realm, however, she didn’t disrupt your own recollection locked away in your mind so that she could envision you in your child, chasing butterflies and sneaking an extra cookie against your parents’ orders, as nice as the character building of you was.

Her aim was to discover the folder that had inclusivity of her, she wanted to gather the thoughts that you had around her, and use them to keep herself content with being who she was. And then, she saw herself, though, she looked a little different. She had dirty blonde hair, and you kept referring to her as ‘LIzzie’.

Never in her life had she wore such a light hair colour, her roots were naturally dark, and had changed to hold a reddish tone as she had gotten older, and staked out during the split of the avengers. But all that ruckus was over now, was it not, or was somebody else creating illusions to trick your mind into seeing her as someone other than the scarlet witch?

It left her in a state of concern, hardly noticing how the beginning credits rolled onto the screen, and you dived quite goofily onto the bed beside her, for all that she could think about was how you had the incorrect image of her in your pretty and confusing mind. This Elizabeth that you harboured memories of was certainly not her, she had had a brother, whom was now deceased all thanks to Ultron, not two twin sisters that had lead her into the lifestyle of being... an actress?

Wanda was pulled from her invasion of your thoughts, as you reached beside her, stuffing it inside of the green chip packet, pulling out a few altered potatoes, and put them mindlessly into your mouth, as your eyes shon towards the screen. And so, the avenger cleared her throat, grabbing the grey remote and pausing the show, so that you would pay her some attention.

“Y/n...” She spoke your name, her accent peeking through as you tentatively listened, your ears perked for her only. “Who is Elizabeth Olsen?” The question was innocent enough, but the way that your eyes went wide was anything but. It had not been something that you had expected, but yo had been caught out, considering that your current, and girlfriend from another reality had the ability to read minds.

It should have been something that you had expected, though, it had been the last thing from your mind, and Wanda reeled that thought through her head as you listened to you mull over your possible answers that would grant her, and perhaps yourself, some clarity on the situation.

“Um, she’s my ex.” You reached your hand back to play with the roots of your hair, as you nervously admitted the fact aloud. It had been hard to let her go, it was stupid, you couldn’t even remember the fight that had caused the pair of you to break up, but in the end, the pair of you had still gone your different ways, and kept distance between you.

The memory had you gulping, there had been tears falling like faucets from your eyes, you had laid in your bed that night, immobile as she packed her things to stay with a friend. You wished that things could have worked out, but instead, you had opted to shift, and find another her, and whilst Wanda was an amazing woman, she wasn’t Lizzie.

Gulping, you registered what to say next, but Wanda placed her finger upon your lips, stopping them from moving. “It’s okay, I understand.” Wanda smiled, shrugging softly. “This isn’t real for you, and when you wake up, this will all be a very realistic dream. And that is fine, but you should go to her as soon as you open your eyes, if there’s another me there, there has to be another you here for me.”

You weren’t sure how to thank her, and so, you relaxed in her arms, and watched Bewitched, until your damned alarm interrupted your vivid senses, and brought you back to your reality, where you were in bed alone, but didn’t want to be. There was only one thing that you could do, and that was throw a pair of shoes onto your feet, caring not to change out of your pyjamas, and rush to your car.

You knew exactly where your destination was, and whilst remaining within the speed limit, you went as fast as you could to said place. When you reached there, you parked your car, and went straight to her new address, rapidly knocking upon the door, feeling urgent to see her.

It took a moment until there was an answer, and when you were met with her green eyes, it was clear that Lizzie was in shock of your presence. “Can I help you?” Her fingers nervously picked at the skin of her arm as she awaited for you to say something, but instead of speaking, you acted.

Reaching your arms forward, you tugged Lizzie closer, pulling her lips down upon your own, like a lovesick fool. “I think you can.” You confirmed, feeling proud that you had listened to Wanda, and done what she had suggested. Lizzie tucked her hair behind her ear as she opened the door further, inviting you inside.

“I’m watching Bewitched, care to join?” Accepting the invite, you entered her new place, looking around for only a second, until Liz tugged you onto the sofa with her, and rested in your arms, the pair of you having missed each other equally.

#elizabeth olsen x reader #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda x y/n #wanda x reader fluff #wanda x you #elizabeth olsen oneshot #elizabeth olsen imagine #Elizabeth x reader #lizzie olsen x reader #lizzie olsen #imagines #imagine #xreader #wanda maximoff fanfiction #wanda fluff #wanda imagine #mcu requests #marvel reader insert #marvel request

321 notes · View notes

violets-arepurple · 3 years

Text

All this talk of techno's will has me thinking, so without further adieu piglin mourning and death traditions

As mentioned in previous world building posts piglins send the departed of with a piece of gold that is never replaced

This giving of gold is to ensure that the loved one is protected in the next relm as well as an offering of sorts to the blood god to ensure safe passage

Piglins have two ideas on where you go when you die, for the average piglin folk you reincarnate into another form and it's often said that you soulmate is someone you meet in every life (however the relationship isn't always the same sometimes it's romantic sometime you're close friends)

The other idea is that for the most noble and accomplished warriors you are taken to the court of the blood god in order to live a glorious life of battle and victory (similar to the idea of vallhala)

Piglins believe these fates after death happen to everyone not just believers of the blood god (some traditional piglins believe that in order to enter the blood gods halls you must have at least some belief in them)

When a piglin dies there is a period of about a week were their body is laid to rest in the bastion center in order for anyone to pay their respects regardless of their relative with the deceased

Close friends and family members are tasked with watching over the body during this time in order to guard it from spirits that wish to prevent a successful passing so it's more of a symbolic role

The number of people tasked to do this can vary but it's never any more than six

The people who watch over the body are chosen by the deceased before their passing and to be chosen for this is considered a great honour

They stay for the entire week except for the last day when the piglins spirit if believed to have been judged and sent to their next life

On this last day one person stays and is tasked with protecting the spirit at the most delicate stage of this transition

Even technoblade isn't truly sure if he can die but just in case he has chosen people to watch over his body

Those people are phil, ranboo, tommy, wilbur, niki, and squidkid

The person who he's chosen to stay on the last day is phil

After this week the piglins body is dressed in their best armour and clothes and the gold given and placed on a pire and burnt until nothing remains not even the gold

The pire is usually left burning for a while in order for the gold to disappear and during this time the deceased life is celebrated through stories and feasts

These feast can go one for a number of days and are often happy event with traditional food and dancing as well as stories about the deceased

In the event of phil or ranboo dying techno want to give them as many piglin honors as he can without interrupting their cultural traditions. For example techno will send phil of with his crown and ranboo with his main earrings (both pieces would be noticeably missing), he would also make other pieces jewellery for them as well as invite other piglins to give gold which will be a lot both phil and ranboo are well liked in the nether

He'll also hold a funeral pire for them both even if the bodies themselves aren't being burned (if this is the case the gold stays with the bodies)

He would also leave gold with the bodies of other friends but likely wouldn't do all the piglin traditions

Piglins see death as a very important part of life so it isn't something that is shied away from so even piglin children have a solid understanding of death from a young age

The idea of techno not being able to die is considered a sad thing so he's often given sympathy from other piglins

However no one is sure if he definitely can't die but it's well known he can't die

As techno is a priest for the blood god he is often sort after to give blessing at the funeral of bastion leaders

Phil and ranboos funeral would be big events as not only are the held in high regard as warriors and people across the nether, their are funerals are being conducted by techno himself so many piglins are likely to come pay tribute even if it's something small

Techno funeral would be a massive event with nearly every piglin in the nether attending out of respect to him and the blood god

It may become and annual festival for piglins with those close to techno being guests of honour

The funeral feasts are often held in a special room in the bastion but at least part of technos would be held in the blood gods temple (his inner circle will likely have a small feast in the arctic)

For the entire funeral event all piglins we're plain clothes similar to a greek chiton

The only people allowed to wear gold or weaponry are those tasked with guarding the body but only in the form of a single gold sword which is kept and never used

At the feasts there is non mandatory brawls for people to let out and frustration and grief in a safe place, they never go further than something similar to piglet brawls and are often used by elders to see who needs to be watched our for and given extra support

#mcyt #mcytblr #world building #piglins #technoblade #ranboo #philza #piglin culture

75 notes · View notes

along-came-atsushi · 4 years

Text

Akutagawa – Dazai – Atsushi: An analysis about their relationship

And why Dazai treats them so differently.

The symbolism of Atsushi and Akutagawa:

From their outward appearance and their design alone, Atsushi and Akutagawa are meant as opposites, but they’re also a duality:

Both wear black and white clothes, but whereas Atsushi is mostly white with a streak of black, Akutagawa wears mostly black with a streak of white. It’s even represented in their hair colours.

Besides this, there are many other things that mark their oppositeness and their duality to each other:

Atsushi is a member of the ADA, while Akutagawa is a member of the PM. Atsushi’s ability colour is blue, Akutagawa’s ability colour is red. Being a member of the ADA makes Atsushi someone who works for the “light and day”, Akutagawa is someone who works for the “darkness and night.” Atsushi loves cats, Akutagawa hates dogs. Atsushi’s ability takes the form of a tiger, Akutagawa’s ability represents a dragon, both creatures are important elements in Asian mythology. Ultimately, Atsushi symbolizes life or is associated with life, while Akutagawa symbolizes death or is associated with death.

Considering this, the title Shin Soukoku (Double Black) isn’t even a fitting name for them, since they both aren’t simply a double, as both Mori and Fukuzawa or Dazai and Chuuya were.

[Beware: Spoilers starting from chapter 83]

Dazai’s mindset and his relationship with Akutagawa:

1.) One of the reasons why Dazai’s treatment towards Akutagawa as a mentor was so cruel and brutal, firstly lies in his overall negative mental state during his PM time. He was visibly unhappy, constantly surrounded by death and violence, and more than now struggled with his suicidal thoughts.

Is it an explanation for his treatment of Akutagawa? −Yes, it is.

Is it an excuse for his treatment of Akutagawa? −No, it isn’t.

2.) Another reason is that this is just how things are done in the Mafia. There is no sense in handling someone with kid gloves in the PM, a place where you get killed for disobeying orders, where you shouldn’t see your peers as friends or get to intimate with anyone:

“It’s an unwritten rule in the Mafia to not stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. One must never open the door to another’s heart and try to judge them for the darkness tucked within.” – Odasaku

If it wouldn’t have been Dazai who taught Akutagawa in such a cruel way, with high probability, it would’ve been someone else. Or as Dazai explained, a sign of weakness will get you killed in the PM:

And Dazai had the absolute chance to kill Akutagawa after he disobeyed orders and killed a person captured for interrogation. His ability can nullify all other abilities by mere touch. He could’ve simply touched Akutagawa, so that he wouldn’t have been able to use his ability to protect himself, and then shot him on the spot. But he didn’t do that, because:

“Akutagawa – he’s like a sword without a sheath.” Dazai grinned from ear to ear. “He’ll surely become the Mafia’s strongest skill user in the not-so-distant future. But for now he needs someone who can teach him how to put that sword away.” [...]

“When I first saw him over in the slums, I was horrified. His talents are extraordinary, and his skill is extremely destructive. Plus, he’s stubborn. If I’d left him to his own devices, he would’ve ended up a slave to his own powers until he destroyed himself.” – Dazai to Odasaku

He already valued Akutagawa’s skill and saw the huge potential in him:

I was surprised. I had never heard Dazai openly speak so highly of one of his men like that before. [...]

Dazai didn’t freely make people work under him, period; much less a boy on the verge of starvation in the slums. But Dazai seemed to have his own reasons for doing it. – Odasaku about Dazai

Something which is also later confirmed by Atsushi:

“I believe Dazai-san has acknowledged you long ago.”

Why is it then that Dazai still treats Akutagawa so badly and doesn’t tell his approval right to his face? Something that becomes Akutagawa’s main purpose for a long time, even after Dazai left PM.

Dazai’s relationship with Odasaku and Ango:

Dazai’s behaviour and actions when he’s with Ango and Odasaku clearly shows that he can be different and doesn’t treat everyone with cruelty and coldness, if he wants to.

But what’s the difference between the two people he considers his friends and the people who are his subordinates?

-> Ango and Odasaku value and respect life.

The reason Dazai becomes and is attached to Odasaku and Ango is their viewpoint about death and life:

“I would become a novelist and write a story about why the man stopped killing. But to become a novelist, I needed to sincerely know what it meant to live. – Odasaku

“You’re quite the interesting fellow, Ango. Doing that isn’t going to make the boss happy. […]” “You’re making records of the lives of the deceased. Am I right?” […] “The line between human losses and those of money and equipment begin to blur. There is no individual, no soul, and no dignity to death. But you’re fighting back against that.” – Dazai to Ango

This is the reason why he values them so much that he considers them his friends. He’s not friends with them because he gains something from it, or because they have interesting abilities, or because they are on the same intellectual level as him (which they aren’t). Something that gets emphasized by Odasaku’s rank. He descended from an assassin (a high reputation in the PM) to a maid-of-all-work and an errand boy (a low reputation in the PM).

Dazai is attracted to and fascinated by people who value life – something you don’t find in the PM, and something he himself struggles to understand. Probably because there never was a person who taught him this. Like a curious child, he turns to people who he knows have a better understanding in this than him.

He even becomes very irritated when one of his subordinates questions his friendship with Odasaku:

“Dazai, sir, I don’t mean to be rude, but… I saw him [Odasaku] sweeping behind the office the other day. A man of his status isn’t qualified to be your friend, let alone with an enemy like this.” Dazai stared, flabbergasted, at his underling.

“Are you joking? Odasaku’s not qualified?” Dazai asked, thoroughly surprised. […] “You fools!” Dazai’s lips curled into a sneer in genuine disgust.

This respect doesn’t solely concern Odasaku and Ango. Hirotsu is also one of the very few people he respects for this reason. Even though Hirotsu may not value life in the same terms as Odasaku and Ango do, but he also doesn’t lightly throw away his subordinates lives either:

“…Ha-ha! Just kidding!” Dazai abruptly added in a cheery tone. Hirotsu stared back at him, confused. “The reason you have so many people following you is that you don’t turn your back on them. I’ll leave things in your hands. I won’t tell the boss.”

It’s only when Odasaku dies in Dazai’s arms and tells him to go protect the living, that he starts to change his behaviour and viewpoint.

Dazai and his many failed suicide attempts:

Why is it that Dazai − a genius, a manipulator, someone who exactly knows how the human psyche works, someone who’s predictions always come true and who has plans within plans – then always fails when he tries to kill himself?

Dazai has read the book “The Complete Suicide” so often that he can cite it in his sleep. He has engaged in torture and killed many people. He knew exactly how to involve Ango and himself in a car crash without them dying.

If he really wanted to, he could’ve already killed himself many times ago. He claims that “he doesn’t like pain and suffering”, which according to him is the reason why his suicide attempts fail. But there are ways how he could kill himself without just that. It’s just that he doesn’t WANT to die.

„I thought if all went well, I could die a heroic death on the battlefield. But the dozen or so armed guys who showed up were a real scrappy bunch. […] Thus, I unfortunately avoided death once again.”

He always tells that something inconvenient happened that kept him from dying. But sometimes people around him notice that there’s something wrong in his attempts:

“I was walking and reading a book called ‘How To Not Get Hurt Out Of The Blue’ and fell into a drainage ditch.” A surprisingly absurd reason. – Odasaku and Dazai

“I glance at his desk and see the blasphemous book he bought the other day, ‘The Complete Suicide’, opened to a page titled ‘Death by Poisoning Mushrooms.’ Next to the book lies a plate with a half-eaten mushroom on it. However, upon further inspection, it appears to be a slightly different color from the one in the book. – Kunikida about Dazai

“I thought you [Gide] were similar to Dazai at first, rushing into battle and wishing for death without even considering the value of your own life. But he’s different. […] And he’s just a child−a sobbing child abandoned in the darkness of a world far emptier than the one we’re seeing.” – Odasaku to Gide about Dazai.

Dazai is a person who actively seeks life and wants to be freed from his own philosophy. He’s struggling between seeking death, which he thinks is the only way to free him from his loneliness and suffering, and seeking life for the simple reason that he doesn’t want to die.

Dazai’s relationship with Atsushi:

Atsushi saved Dazai from drowning despite the fact that he himself was on the brink of starvation. The first thing Dazai got attached to Atsushi is his view on life. Despite the abuse he suffered, Atsushi seeks life and wants to live, makes it even his reason to fight and his life motto.

“The lives of those who can’t save anyone have no value”. In that moment an idea suddenly popped into my mind. […] If by any chance I can let the passengers return home save and sound does that prove that it’s okay for me to live?”

Throughout the story, Atsushi transfers his viewpoint and determination to characters who have a connection to death, darkness and/or suffering (e.g. Kyouka, Lucy).

The reason Atsushi values life, being the symbolical personification of it, is the reason why Dazai is able to treat him much better than Akutagawa.

Forming Shin Soukoku:

Dazai says that Akutagawa is a highly skilled student, but he needs someone to sharpen him. He instantly decides and plans to team him up with Atsushi, the moment he meets him. He knows that Atsushi, due to his view on life, is the only one who can teach Akutagawa to value life himself and to change as a person. In other words “the one who can teach him how to put that sword away”.

This is something Dazai in the past couldn’t and still can’t teach Akutagawa (or anyone at all for that matter). Because he himself needs and wants to be taught that, so he seeks people who are able to give him a different understanding in this (see Ango and Odasaku). Vice versa Akutagawa isn’t able to teach Dazai how to value life, because he himself represents death and has a strong connection to it. It’s one of the very first things he says when he gets introduced in the story:

“Fear death. Fear slaughter. Those who desire death have an equal desire to die.”

Even though Atsushi’s words may seem very harsh, but it IS one of the reasons why Dazai so abruptly abandoned Akutagawa. Is it an explanation? −Yes, it is. Is it an excuse? −No, it isn’t.

Another reason is that Dazai tries to flee from his responsibilities, his past and the terrible things he has done (including Akutagawa’s abuse), because he is not able to face them. Not now that is. He is still in need of guidance and of change, in order to be able to do this.

[Side note: Dazai and guilt is something that can be analysed in its very own meta. I’m not expanding on it further here].

Akutagawa’s connection to death gets emphasized by him even disobeying orders to not kill, for the sole reason that in his mind, killing is much simpler and more effective. He lashes out and tries to kill the people who are respected by Dazai and/or considered friends, even though he should know that an action like this will definitely not get him the approval he so wants.

He was willing to kill Atsushi, even though his mission was to capture him alive, ignoring the possible consequences this would have had for him.

But throughout the story Akutagawa changes his viewpoint. He thinks that the reason why Dazai acknowledges Atsushi and puts him above him, is because he is a better (better in the sense of physical and ability strength) subordinate than him. But he realizes that this can’t be the case and questions it more than once:

His former pure jealousy and grudge towards Atsushi (something which he also felt for Odasaku) slowly turns into questioning, trying to understand what differs them from each other. Dazai knows very well that Akutagawa is still obsessed with him and his approval. Therefore if necessary, he uses this to manipulate him, if it’s to either protect/help Atsushi or to get them both to work together:

Akutagawa starts to constantly challenge Atsushi, questioning him, and demanding him for an answer. It’s only when Akutagawa saves Yokohoma from the Moby Dick crash, that Dazai openly tells him “you did well”.

The reason why Dazai does this so hesitantly, shows that he is still in his own metamorphosis. He’s slowly changing as is Akutagawa. He is still afraid to face his responsibilities, but doesn’t treat his former subordinate cruel anymore.

This change in Akutagawa goes so far that Atsushi is able to ask him to not to kill anyone until they meet again. When told about, Dazai is visibly happy, as it is something that he as a mentor wasn’t able to do. He is reminded of Odasaku, comparing Akutagawa now to him:

Due to this, Dazai now has this much faith in Akutagawa that he puts the task to keep an eye on Atsushi and to protect him in his hands:

Mind the difference of his expressions when he talks with Akutagawa then and now:

Dazai doesn’t team Atsushi and Akutagawa up only for strength and fighting reasons. Or because their abilities are compatible in battle. But because Dazai knows that Akutagawa won’t unnecessarily kill anymore, because he is seeking answers through Atsushi and is changing through their interactions:

He keeps his promise, much to Atsushi’s surprise, but it’s out of the question that he is happy about this:

Akutagawa promising not to kill anyone, keeping his promise in the end and even going so far as to protect someone, in other words valuing life, is something which Dazai could’ve never taught him. And again, he still can’t. Dazai is not solely the teacher, but the student himself. And although Atsushi may be a teacher for both of them in his philosophy, he is a student of Akutagawa and Dazai in other things.

Because what Atsushi lacks is self-confidence and his own worth, faith in his own abilities and the mental strength to overcome his past abuse and trauma. Those are things he learns through Dazai and especially, through Akutagawa.

#ryunosuke akutagawa bsd #atsushi nakajima bsd #osamu dazai bsd #shin soukoku #sakunosuke oda bsd #ango sakaguchi bsd #Ryunosuke Akutagawa #Atsushi Nakajima #Osamu Dazai #Sakunosuke Oda #Ango Sakaguchi #Bungou Stray Dogs #bsd meta #my meta

831 notes · View notes

uuujeewriting · 3 years

Note

Hi!! I was just wondering on the post where reader was a yandere and how the boys would react, could you do something like a part 2 to it? Like where they find out the reason why reader is like this? Sorry if its not really clear and you don’t have to do it! Anyways have a good day :D

change you [albedo, childe, kaeya, diluc, xiao]

part 2 of ‘stop it’ where fem!reader is a yandere

tw: UNHEALTHY/TOXIC RELATIONSHIP, gore, violence, cuss words, manipulative behavior, obsessive and possessive behavior, murder and angst of course

albedo x fem! reader, childe x fem! reader, kaeya x fem! reader, diluc x fem! reader, xiao x fem! reader

a/n: just a reminder that this behavior should not be tolerated or idolized as it is not healthy nor is it acceptable. sorry this took such a long time anon! i’m clearing my inbox tonight since i’m finally done with school hehe. hope this is to your liking nonnie, sorry if the bits are too short !!

i would like to clarify that if any of these scenarios/hc’s of mine are similar to other writers’ works, it is unintentional and i apologize

albedo

after the incident that happened between you and his former assistant, he hadn’t left the lab and you inside it for days

he claims to others that something in his research had come up and he would be requiring maximum isolation for the next few days

or weeks

(absolutely believable considering the timely announcement of his deceased assistant)

“albedo..” the alchemist’s eye twitched at the ring of your voice, beckoning him to you

“shouldn’t you at least entertain me–your captive?” you sickeningly chuckle as you notice his annoyance

soon this turned into complete panic

“come on,” you cling onto his arm, “pay attention to me before i leave you with no assistants at all.”

the audacity, albedo exclaims internally

“do not tempt me to bind you to a chair until i find a solution, y/n.” he peers menacingly into you in a futile attempt to guise his fear

fear that you’d be too much for him to control

that he’ll lose you even further

you let out a ‘tsk’ as you take a seat beside the busied alchemist

“why are you even trying so hard?” a mumble escapes your mouth

perhaps he felt responsible

or maybe he does this to avenge sucrose

there might even be a slim possibility of him still loving you

but none of these answers felt genuine enough to reason

“frankly enough, i, too, question why.”

childe

your trip home was awkward

and that’s to say the least

fuming in utter disbelief and rage was your alleged lover, intentionally averting his gaze from you

he was trying so hard not you hit you, the only thing holding him back is that he didn’t want to stoop to your level

you were rather pleased with what had happened and flaunted this

“that went well,” you smile and raised an eyebrow as you eyed childe

“you have no heart at all.” his voice devoid of any emotion aside from anger reaches your ears

at this, you dare laugh amidst the tension in the atmosphere surrounding the both of you

“now, i wouldn’t say that! i did it for you, isn’t that enough to prove i’m just as human as everyone else?”

“you make me sick.” the harbinger spits

you aren’t too pleased with this

moving to his side, you pinch his cheeks, “come now, love. a little warning from me won’t kill them!” you attempted to lift the mood but all is in vain as you feel a wet drop trickle down from childe’s cheek to your hand

eyes widening at this. you finally pipe down at wait for his response

he grabs your wrist and yanks it from his face

“don’t you dare come near me every again, you’re the worst person i’ve ever been manipulated by.”

kaeya

to say that kaeya was disappointed is an understatement

what’s worse than catching your lover trying to murder some nun for inconveniencing him at the dead of night?

having all this happen and being a captain of the knights of favonius

“what in celestia’s name has gotten into you, y/n?”

oh, he was mad

no ‘baby,’ ‘sweetheart–’ not even ‘snowdrop’

you idly twiddle your thumbs innocently, as if you weren’t about to be charged for attempted murder in a few hours

“i thought it would make you happy.” you admit

facepalming to the highest caliber, kaeya sighs and manages to break a sarcastic smile, finding the entire situation unbelievable

“simply outstanding, l/n.”

uh oh, he used your last name

furrowing your eyebrows, you raise one, “you’ve never called me that, sweetheart.”

kaeya glares at you, “let’s put it like this–i’m trying my absolute best not to knock you out right now.”

“i still don’t see how i did anything wrong.” you cross your arms

the knight chuckles hoarsely

“oh, you will.” he states

and after that, he goes ahead to the acting grandmaster’s office

things are going to be pretty rough for you from now on

diluc

once he had found adelinde’s corpse in the vicinity and see how you disposed of her, he felt sick to the stomach

yet another one buried six feet under his

“do you like my gift, dearest?” placing a hand on his stiff shoulder, you look at the mess you made

“why, you-” he grumbled and grits his teeth

and the worst has yet to come

“once i have you behind bars for this, i’ll make sure you repent.” diluc states with his clenched fists

“oh, about that-” you laugh, “you can’t”

what?

“excuse me?!” the pyro wielder exclaims

“well, mister flawless reputation, i’ve already devised a plan beforehand,” you pause to slowly circle the man frozen in place

“elzer had put in records of cannibalism in adelinde’s files, since suspicion has been around for a while.”

damn the maids for having such loud mouths

“a simple statement such as ‘it was self defense!’ and it’d be fine.”

you were truly a force to be reckoned with when aggravated

even so, if he couldn’t have you put in jail, no way was he going to let you live alongside him any further

“pack your things.” he clenches his jaw and drags you indoors

“i’ll give you five minutes to take everything with you, and if you dare defy me this time, i’ll make sure you are dealt with swiftly myself.”

xiao

out of everything you could’ve surprised him with, why did it have to be this?

this wasn’t a pleasant surprise, no

he didn't feel any love from what you’d done, only the flames of fury engulfed the adeptus

“in what plane if existence did you think what you’d done is flattering?!” the yaksha yelled once you and him got to a secluded room in wangshu inn

“xiao, i wasn’t trying to be mean, she laid her eyes on you-”

“like every other being does! gods, y/n, you’re unfathomable.” xiao rubs his temples

inching closer to the trembling man, you atemtped to massage his throbbing head

your efforts have been dismissed with a swat of xiao’s hand as he growls at you

“don’t touch me, filthy mortal.”

“you make me sound like i killed someone,” you laughed it off which angered him greatly

“you almost did!” he reasoned and you tilted your head, feigning ignorance as if this wasn’t a huge deal

“listen, if you’re not going to act accordingly and attack everyone who even lays their eyes on me, do not try to call out my name,” he turns back to you before disappearing into mists of green and black

“i won’t heed to your call.”

#genshin impact #genshin imagines #genshin headcanons #genshin impact x reader #genshin albedo #genshin kaeya #genshin diluc #genshin childe #genshin xiao #albedo x reader #kaeya x reader #childe x reader #diluc x reader #xiao x reader

92 notes · View notes

vanderlindemorgans · 3 years

Text

Cross My Heart (Chapter 6)

Pairing: Agent Whiskey x Reader

Rating: Explicit/18+

Summary: A traitorous Agent Whiskey returns to the United States on the run. Being cast out by Statesman, he soon finds that you’re the only person he can turn to - the embittered former flame from years long passed

Word count: 7.7k

Chapter-specific Warnings: Descriptions of blood from a gunshot wound, alcohol consumption, talk of drug addiction, more death talk, mentions of entitled kid + parent, everyone being in denial and uh I think that’s about it

Read on AO3 | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Masterlist

The strangest thing about dreams were how quickly they disappeared: you could be passed out in bed, a million miles away from the waking world before the rays of sun started to shine over the horizon to rouse you from your slumber, and just like that - whatever world you were in would vanish, being replaced by an often disappointing reality in front of you. For Jack, vivid dreams weren’t too often of an occurrence for him, not that he really remembered anyway. Nightmares were even more rare, though at one point in time they’d plagued him for months on end. That was how he’d spent the first few months after his wife’s passing: waking up in a cold sweat, heart racing in panic from the lingering remnants of dream clung to the back of his mind, horrifying scenes of loss and tragedy playing out to torture him in his most vulnerable state. Usually the nightmares involved him being forced to watch Lily’s death with his own eyes and being powerless to stop it, the illusion always shattering just as her body hit the ground. Other times he’d be confronted by her, blood cascading from the bullet wound in her head and onto her skin while she stared at him with harsh eyes. He’d try to reach out for her, only to feel her hands had gone cold. And then the blame would start. The words that were repeated over and over by her until he felt his brain was going to break.You couldn’t protect me. Those ones were always the worst, and thankfully, the most rare.

All of this being said, Jack hadn’t dreamt of Lily in a long time. As the sting of her passing began to fade with time, leading into hate and anger towards the world for taking her away, the dreams slowly stopped. He still mourned for her every day, feeling frozen in time no matter how many years passed, no matter how fine he seemed on the outside, but the worst of it had left him. Or, so he thought.

Jolting out of bed with a fierce start, he could feel the rough material of the duvet in his hands, his hands grasped around it with an iron grip. He felt compelled to scream, though no sound was able to escape his mouth, and as he took note of his surroundings he started to feel less afraid when he realised where he was. He didn’t know what the time was, if he had to guess it was probably after midnight. Hesitantly, he placed the back of his hand to his temple, feeling the stray beads of sweat running underneath. It’d been a long time since something had managed to scare him to that degree, much less a nightmare. He probably should have felt relaxed once he realised that none of what he just went through was real, but he still felt spooked by the entire experience. Jack couldn’t even remember most of what happened - it all blended together in a frightening blur. The only moment he could still make out in his mind from the dream were its final moments: his wife was standing in front of him, in the middle of the convenience store where she died, with a man holding a gun to the back of her head. He remembered screaming out, pleading for her to be spared. It was too late - the sound of a gunshot rang out and her body fell limp to the floor, a pool of blood forming underneath her head. That wasn’t even the worst of it, as when he looked down upon her corpse he realised that it wasn’t Lily’s body lying dead on the ground anymore. It was yours.

“God fuckin’ damn it” he cursed, placing his head in his hands. On top of everything else that had already happened, he now had to deal with the return of old haunting nightmares that somehow were even worse than the ones he had years ago, because now you were involved. He sat up abruptly, grabbing onto a discarded shirt that he’d thrown over the foot of the bed and pulling it over his head, using nothing but the moonlight pouring through the curtains to guide himself out of the room and into the darkened hall. He stole a glance towards where your room was, a droplet of fear etching itself into his mind. Before he entirely knew what he was doing, he was opening the door to your room, being careful not to make any sound lest you were awakened. His fears subsided when he saw you curled up beneath the covers, sound asleep and none the wiser to his presence. Exhaling gently, he untensed his shoulders and looked over at your sleeping form with a small but sweet smile on lips. Of course she would be fine. You’re being paranoid.

Pulling the door behind him softly, he turned his attention to the end of the hall where the stairs were, the vague recollections of the nightmare rattling in the back of his mind. If he didn’t do something soon, he would keep himself up all night mulling over the implications of it all, and he wasn’t keen to spend the early hours of Sunday morning losing sleep because of his fucked head. He supposed it wasn’t that out of nowhere to dream about his wife, as he had been talking about her with you just last night. What scared him more so was that you were there, taking the bullet and ending up exactly as she had: dead. He couldn’t begin to fathom its meaning. Did it have to have meaning? Was it nothing more than a nightmare?

Scooping up a glass, he poured himself a generous amount of whiskey to sip on, returning the bottle back to the corners of your liquor cabinet. He probably should have asked before helping himself but it wasn’t like you were awake to answer to him, and he had a feeling you wouldn’t notice anyway, considering he’d found the aforementioned bottle pushed to the furthest reaches of the cabinet. When he noticed the label on the bottle, he couldn’t keep himself from smirking at the irony of it - of course you’d keep the Jack Daniels whiskey towards the back. Reclining into the couch with the glass in his hands, he took an absentminded sip while his mind further delved into the worrying implications of such a dream.

The only part of it all that made sense was that the dream had been about his deceased wife - with the discussion that happened between the two of you last night about her it was only logical that his subconscious had lingered on some parts of it. After you’d turned in for the night Jack had stayed up for a little while longer, seated out on that veranda with a pensive look and the bottle of bourbon you’d neglected to bring back inside. Your words made rings around his mind, sparking a debate of sorts with himself as he considered your criticisms towards him. The emotional part of him wanted to blindly hate, and to keep on doing exactly what he’d always been doing. But when he realised that blind hate had gotten him into this whole mess in the first place, he’d allowed himself to listen more carefully to your words, and to examine them on a deeper level. Upon knowing your own past with loss and pain at the hands of another, it made him take a step back and actually look at everything that had transpired in Cambodia, all the little things that led him to working against an organisation that he once devoted himself to. Whereas you’d taken steps to try and live in a world without your parents, he’d remained angry and hurt, stuck in a world that had long moved on from the tragedy and still feeling every raw cut of emotion that losing her dealt. Sure, he wasn’t exactly inconsolable over it constantly - he had been able to live for sixteen years without Lily. If he went to a psychiatrist, he knew exactly what they’d say to all that: “You’ve externalised your hate onto someone easier to blame, in this instance addicts, when really the only person you feel should be to blame is yourself for not being there to save her”, or something like that. He couldn’t help but let out a small laugh at the ludicracy of it all. Never in a million years did he think he’d be one for deep introspection. What in the goddamn has this world come to?

Even so, your words wouldn’t leave his mind. Did you have a point? Was it wrong to blame every addict on the planet for the actions of a few? In a rational sense, he could see what you were saying. His actions hadn’t been based on rationality though, it was all emotion. His instincts wanted him to reject the notion of him being ideologically wrong in this, a notion he in turn fought to reject from himself. One thing in particular that Eggsy had said to him during their final confrontation had stuck out to him at that moment: “You’re working for the president?”. He’d denied it at the time, and there was truth to his denial: as he put it himself, he didn’t want any kind of association with that asshole. At the same time, his feelings on the matter did happen to crossover with the president's own agenda, and some part of that in general hadn’t sat right with him.

Would it even matter by this stage if he’d accounted for his errors? He’d already single -handedly destroyed all that he had by then, the only thing that could properly atone him in his own opinion would probably be death, and he’d be damned if he was gonna let himself die any time soon. The realisation that he might have to spend the rest of his days with the guilt of the incident in Cambodia eating away at him wasn’t too kind on his psyche, but he was ready to accept it in lieu of the alternative. And damn it, if there wasn’t something about that judgemental way you’d looked at him that gave him enough of a kick in the teeth to want to do better. You’d said it yourself that you didn’t believe him to be a bad man. Maybe somehow he could redeem himself enough to even be half of what you’d described of him.

Drumming a lone finger along the fine seam of the couch cushion, his thoughts circled back around to the disturbing dream and everything it entailed, including the part that had shaken him the most. Why you? Why were you of all people appearing in his nightmares? And not only that, why did you take the place of his long dead wife at the end? His mind was ticking into overdrive to decipher every little detail. There was only one other time in his life he remembered seeing you in his dream, and that was when you two were dating. He could chalk up your sudden appearance in his subconscious to the conversation the both of you were having the night before - it would explain the return of his nightmares about Lily too, although his mind swayed towards ruminating on a much more confronting possibility.

What if it means I’ve fallen back in love with her?

As soon as the concept crossed his mind, Jack frantically sought to purge it from his mind altogether. What a foolish idea, he reasoned to himself, taking a larger sip of whiskey out of the glass. There wasn’t anymore to this, and he shouldn’t be throwing out such wild theories based on a nightmare of all things. He went and thought back to the small moments you two had shared throughout the weeks together, times where one lingering touch almost seemed to convey something more. He realised just how many times he’d caught himself staring at you the last few weeks, or the times his touch lingered on yours a second longer than it should have, things he hadn’t noticed until he began to pick apart his own behaviour and examine it underneath a microscope. Old habits die hard, I guess. He may have teased you about making him coffee by “accident” a couple of weeks back, but there wasn’t meant to be any insinuation behind it. It was just that - a harmless tease, a simple reflex of his infamous flirtatious charm. None of this necessarily meant there were any reignited feelings, and furthermore, if by some insane stroke of dumb luck that did happen to be the case, then they were only small at best, fleeting in nature. He couldn’t fall for you again. He couldn’t. Not after putting you through so much pain.

No matter how hard he tried to convince himself it was nothing, even he wasn’t buying it tonight. If he was falling for you again, how would you take it? Not well he guessed, as you still felt hurt by his actions. Why wouldn’t you? He was the one that hurt you then came back into your life without warning because he had to go screw up the one good thing he still had. It was painful to be reminded of how little still had left by that time: his status as an agent stripped from him, everyone he ever loved being dead and buried, and not able to return back home as he was still on the run. Him being at your ranch at all was putting you in enough danger, a fact that made him uncomfortable in of itself. Falling for you would make things more complicated than they already were.

She doesn’t have to find out. Keep it to yourself, and she’ll never know.

That’s it. That’s what he’ll do. He won’t ever mention these returning feelings of affection towards you, and in doing that, hopefully they will run their course and die out. Jack would still be courteous towards you, it went without saying since you were implicating yourself in all of this by hiding a fugitive. He could do that, right? Ignore it all, and avoid anything more than general amicable gestures. A part of him hurt to think of that, especially when those thoughts he had when you two were on the veranda together last night pushed themselves to the forefront of his mind. The way your hair had looked splayed out over your shoulders under the dim porch light, the burn in your eyes that gleamed as you’d admonished him for every mistake he ever made that shouldn’t have made him so entranced. He chastised himself for thinking so lewdly of you in that moment, hating how the very image of you in such a light darted straight to his groin. Finishing off the last dredges of whiskey, he wiped his lips with the back of his hand and let out a heavy sigh.

Forget about it. Leave her be. You’ve hurt her enough.

_______________

At long last, there was finally a lull in the day, giving you some off time to relax and decompress a bit. There was still an hour to go before the ranch closed for the night, though nobody else had any riding lessons booked and it was unlikely that anybody was going to show up unannounced at five in the evening. To say the day had been busy would be selling the whole experience short - downright exhausting would have been a more accurate way to put it. There was a function going on for a good chunk of it, a birthday party for the son of some big-shot oil tycoon. You’d been worried your injury would slow down your progress with getting tasks done but to your pleasant surprise you were able to manage just fine, though having your other employees and Jack around had also been a huge help. It’d been four weeks since you’d gotten injured, and according to the doctor during your semi-regular checkups the recovery process was coming along nicely, which had been more than evident to you with the lessening pain. Sadly, you wouldn’t be able to get the cast off for a while, despite your protests. You didn’t see why it all had to take so long: you hadn’t been in any excruciating pain for a good while so it was clearly healing. As well as the cast being a nuisance when bathing and the like, it was also annoyingly itchy, leading you to talking yourself out of shoving a coat hanger down the side of it in an attempt to stop it several times. If only you didn’t have a ranch to run, then you could take an antihistamine pill and be done with it.

Dragging yourself back into the house, you headed straight for the stairs, eager to lie down and doze a little - normally a long day like that would call for a bottle of scotch. This time round, however, you decided to forego the alcohol in favour of a more straightforward way to relax. Once you’d come to the door to the guest bedroom upstairs you felt compelled to stop, your mind wandering to where Jack was at that very moment. Last you’d seen him that day he’d been bringing the horses in. The two of you had stopped to chat for awhile, your usual bitter-edged banter being exchanged, things playing out just as they should when suddenly that same familiar feeling started to make itself known, the same thing you’d felt when he’d handed you the painkillers, or when you two had been out on the veranda a little while back. That spark, so to speak, the frightening feeling of something burning in you, something that shouldn’t be there in the first place. You’d instinctively ended the conversation soon after, making up some excuse about needing to take care of some accounting and hurrying off. Thinking about it now you couldn’t stop yourself from going a tad pink in the cheeks at your behaviour, thoroughly embarrassed for daring to act like you were inflicted with something as trivial as a schoolgirl crush.

Don’t be soft on him. Don’t do this. You’re better than this, those words you repeated to yourself like a mantra started to wear thin during those weeks, especially after the conversation you two had shared where you’d divulged some of the pain closest to your heart. You never thought that you’d tell anybody what you felt after your parents had died, not in a million years, so to have you in a position where you were comfortable enough to reveal such details was nothing short of astounding, particularly when one took into account the exact person you’d told it all to. You could justify these choices with the flimsy excuse of being drunk, but even you knew that in order to run your mouth about something that personal, even while intoxicated, meant you had to feel a certain amount of trust to the other person. Did you trust Jack? Was that what was happening here? To that, you couldn’t fully answer, as you didn’t really know.

Glancing from the doorknob to the stairs and back, you twisted the handle and allowed yourself into the spare bedroom, letting your feet move you towards the closet at the back of the room. Like a woman possessed, you didn’t stop yourself from doing any of this, the feeling of your heartbeat ricocheting through your chest. It had been years since you permitted yourself to look at any of this stuff, let alone giving any of it a second thought. Out of sight, out of mind, you’d thought to yourself when you’d originally boxed it all away, not being able to bear throwing any of it out. Sliding the doors open, you took note of the fact that everything was left in its precise location indicating that true to his word, Jack hadn’t meddled in any of it. A small sigh of relief escaped your lips while you sunk to your knees, poking your head through the rows of old coats that you kept neglecting to donate or sell to the very back of the closet where your eyes locked onto what you’d been originally seeking: a plain velvet blue shoebox shoved underneath an ugly knitted blanket that you plainly despised.

For as much of a hardline no-nonsense woman others perceived you as, a huge part of you was deeply sentimental towards both people and things, or more specifically, things people had given you, hence the choice to simply box up every gift and memento he’d ever given you rather than setting fire to it in some overly dramatic yet cinematic manner. When Jack and you had broken up, you’d gathered up everything that reminded you of him, thrown it in a box and then tossed it into the back of the closet of your apartment to be forgotten forever. When you’d taken over the family ranch from your parents, the box had ended up in the guest room closet instead due to you not wanting an object holding that many sorrowful memories anywhere near where you slept. Taking the box out and setting it down in front of you, you stared at it frostily for a minute, considering throwing it back into the closet and forgetting that you ever wanted to open it. Ultimately you caved, lifting the lid off and opening up the treasure trove of mementos, symbols of a love that used to be that became tarnished with time.

A lot of the items in question were photographs, a couple of polaroid shots of the two of you out at some bar in New York thrown in with the myriad of photos depicting you on various other dates with him. One in particular that caught your eye was a polaroid that had a heart drawn in red permanent marker on the white margins - you were wearing Jack’s Stetson and had one arm thrown around his neck, looking as if you hadn’t a care in the world while he looked up at you with those heart-meltingly gorgeous brown eyes of his, as if nobody else in the world existed except for you. You could still recall the smell of the cigarette smoke from that day, how the loud music reverberated through your ears the entire night you’d spent there with your head rested against his shoulder, ignoring all your other friends in favour of him. You caught yourself grinning at the memory as if you were some kind of lovesick fool. Back then you might’ve been. Not anymore though. Not now.

That’s what you continued to tell yourself while you sorted through the box’s contents, pulling out items ranging from small bits of jewelry to a small cat plushie that he’d won for you at the county fair. Your gaze zeroed in on a small silver chain necklace with a little horseshoe charm dangling on the end, earning yet another foolish smirk from you. Jack had bought that for you as a Christmas present, although you had insisted to him that he didn’t have to go all out on a gift for you. He’d even gotten the underside engraved with your name, which you traced over with the pad of your finger at that very moment.

Looking through all these gifts and the significance they once held to you, your mind started to wander back to the possibility you’d considered during your last proper talk with Jack, questioning once more if he deserved such harsh hostility being thrown towards him. You didn’t want to let yourself be hurt again, so it only seemed logical to make yourself guarded and keep him at an arm's length. With that said, time and time again he’d managed to surprise you - he hadn’t been pestering you as much you thought he would. Sure, he did jokingly insinuate that one time you made him coffee that you were growing fond of him but other than that he’d kept the charm to a minimum, or at least, less than you were used to in the past. It all made sense to you after you’d learned what happened to him that brought him back to you, his magnificent fall from grace so to speak. You meant what you said to him that night - you didn’t think he was a bad person, rather just someone who’s done bad things out of hurt and anger. With everything he told you about his wife’s death, you couldn’t help feeling a sense of powerful empathy towards him, a feeling that scared you a little to tell you the truth. It’d been easy for years to write him off as a liar and a player, but in reality, Jack was far more complicated than that. How ironic: the advice you gave him ended up being a hundred percent relevant to yourself at the same time, you huffed with an absence of amusement.

If you had to be completely honest with yourself, without any kind of lies or facade to keep up, you didn’t know what you felt about Jack anymore. You couldn’t say you hated him, no, hate was far too strong of a word. Actually, you couldn’t really say you even disliked him that much anymore. But you didn’t really like him either. Or did you? Once again, the thoughts of how his touch had made you feel over those last few weeks invaded your mind, things that by all means shouldn’t make you feel some type of way but did. Hell, even how you continued to make his coffee exactly how he liked it every morning, not bothering to question it anymore than necessary for the sake of your own sanity.

Shaking your head, you let out a heavy sigh as you glowered down at the box witheringly. Great, now you’d made yourself confused on your own emotions, all because you felt the need to reminisce on the past. You’re being ridiculous about this. You don’t feel that way about Jack, and if you did, you can’t have him. He’s on the run, he’s a criminal now, and more to the point he broke your heart once. Who’s to say he won’t do it twice? Do yourself a favour for once. Ignore those feelings. Ignore it, and they’ll go away.

You quickly boxed up everything soon after that, pushing it to the back of the closet as if you’d never been there at all. Lifting yourself to your feet, you neglected to look back when you maneuvered yourself out the door and back into the hall, pulling your mind back towards any kind of ranch duties you could muster up out of thin air that you had to attend to, anything that could distract you from the small pink tinge that had crept across your cheeks that refused to leave, or the racing of your heart with every step you took.

__________

After a day that felt like it dragged on forever, you’d been looking forward to turning in for the night. For whatever reason, everything that could have gone wrong that day decided to go wrong - one of the horses had done a runner during one of the riding lessons and you’d had to go out and try to catch the bastard. It took forever to rope the damn horse back into the property. Jack, you and another one of the instructors managed to catch him in the end but it ended up setting your schedule behind for the rest of the day. Later on in the day, some entitled kid had come down and decided he didn’t like the horse he’d been assigned to ride, waltzing right into the stables and picking out one that he deemed more suited for him. The horse, one of the older boys, was understandably annoyed by this random loud kid appearing out of nowhere and being rough with him, leading to said entitled brat getting chomped on the arm. The rest of the day had to be spent dealing with the screaming kid and his mother, who was every bit as entitled as her son was. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it? Despite your damndest to put on a smile and placate the woman who was screaming threats of a lawsuit, she still wasn’t letting up so you’d metaphorically thrown your hands up in frustration and told her straight to shut up. She’d left soon after that, huffing and threatening to get your entire business shut down. You weren’t scared in the least of her empty threats: you’d dealt with hundreds of other people just like her in your stint running the ranch and nine times out of ten nothing ever came from their tantrums. It was still supremely exhausting to deal with, draining your energy and putting you in a foul mood for the rest of the day.

You’d been angling to end the day as soon as the first instance of idiocy started, so when it was finally late enough in the night and you’d grown tired of the bottle of merlot that you’d been speeding your way through, you’d taken yourself upstairs, thrown on a random t-shirt and sweatpants, and sunk right into bed ready to forget it all and start over.

However, you weren’t so lucky. From the moment you’d first entered your room that night, something had felt off. You couldn’t quite put your finger on it at first, so you’d tried to ignore it, writing it off as feeling slightly on edge from the rough day. The weird feeling wouldn’t go away though - everytime you closed your eyes, you felt like someone else was there, like there was another presence nearby. Five minutes passed before you’d flicked the lamp next to your bed on and looked around the room. You knew Jack had already gone to bed before you, and you couldn’t hear any sort of noise from downstairs that would indicate someone else being there. Nevertheless, you couldn’t shake the feeling that someone else was there, maybe not in the house precisely but somewhere on the property, as if there were a pair of foreign eyes staring at you from afar. Your eyes darted towards the window, the curtains open to reveal the glimmering starry sky outside, your breath becoming shallow as you were finally able to place the exact feeling that was making you tense up in fear:

You felt like you were being watched.

Diving out of bed, you scrambled towards the window and scanned the vast expanse of countryside surrounding your property, searching to see if there was anything out there that was unfamiliar to you. Nothing - all you could see were the stretches of field that lay beyond your ranch, with a lone few collection of trees situated off the edge of your property, exactly as it always looked. That alone should have eased your nerves a bit but for whatever reason that feeling of being watched wouldn’t go away. You glanced back at your bed, trying to talk yourself into downplaying it all as you being paranoid. There isn’t anyone out there.You’ve had a rough day, and about three glasses of wine so you’re a little bit tipsy too, you told yourself as you trudged back to bed and pulled the covers over your head, a useless action that did nothing to quell the anxiety festering in you. For the next twenty minutes or so, you did everything you could to push your unease away in favour of sleep to no avail. The entire time you’d been lying there you felt like there were a pair of eyes burning into your back, directly across from where the window was, yet every time you sat yourself up to check there was nobody there.

Fantastic, guess I’m not sleeping tonight then. Clearly, that creepy feeling wasn’t going to leave and you didn’t feel comfortable in that room anymore. Briefly you contemplated going down to sleep on the couch but that idea was dismissed almost as quickly as it came to you - if you felt like someone was watching the house, then moving sleeping locations wasn’t gonna solve anything. A part of you wanted to go grab a firearm and go on a patrol around the property to be safe, though once remembering that you were a little bit tipsy you didn’t feel it would be the best course of action to go hold a gun right then. Throwing a single glance towards your bedroom door, another idea popped into your head, and before you could try and talk yourself out of it you were already out the door and down the hall to where the spare bedroom was.

Opening the door as quietly as you possibly could, you poked your head inside and peered over to where Jack was laying in bed, covers tangled up around him and facing away from you, appearing to be fast asleep. “Jack? Are...are you awake?” you called out hesitantly.

It took a minute for him to respond, by that time you’d come close to convincing yourself that you were being a baby about all of this and that you should go back to bed. “Darlin’? Is there somethin’ wrong?” he replied, his thick southern drawl sounding groggy, matching his dazed expression he wore while he fought to keep his eyes open.

“Sort of...maybe, I don’t know...I can’t sleep” you admitted.

“Having nightmares or somethin’?” he asked, sitting himself up in bed to properly face you. You couldn’t help but let your eyes wander down his torso ever so briefly - it wasn’t anything you hadn’t seen a million times before but damn, he did look good. Shaking your head fervently, you attempted to ignore that fleeting thought and focused back on what you’d come there to say, proceeding to reply. “No, no, nothing like that. I just...ok, this might sound a little bit crazy but I can’t help feeling like I’m being watched in there, and it’s freaking me out”.

You could see Jack’s brow furrow through the darkness, a look of concern creeping over his face while he thought on what you’d just said. “Watched? Like how?”.

“I don’t really know how to explain it, if I’m gonna be totally honest. All I know is that everytime I close my eyes I feel like there’s somebody outside. Whenever I go to look out the window though, I don’t see anyone” you explained, and at almost the very second you finished your sentence you could see Jack’s eyes widen, the last remnants of sleep falling away and being replaced by an alert and alarmed expression. Before you could say anything about it, he was already throwing the covers off him and sliding out of bed, hustling over to where you were standing by the door. “Stay right here. I’ll go take a look for myself” he instructed sternly, pushing himself past you and making a beeline straight for your bedroom. Instinctively, and in all honesty against both his wishes and your own better judgement, you followed in behind him, seeing him linger close to the wall just enough so that he was out of direct sight of the window. Slowly, he advanced forward to a position where he could properly take a look out, his eyes steely as they examined the landscape, the tensity of his demeanour feeding into your own feelings of concern.

“Jack, what’s going on?” you asked in a small voice, something that was uncharacteristically meek of you. In all fairness, something like this had never happened before. You’d hoped that Jack would come in, take a quick look, confirm there was nobody on the property and give you a little bit of peace of mind but the way he was acting made the possibility of someone actually being out there all the more real to you.

“Darlin’, I’m sorry, but I’m gonna need you to be quiet for a second” he orders, not tearing his eyes away from the window for a single second. You didn’t know how long you two stood there for - it was probably no more than a minute or two at most, even so it felt like an eternity to you, until at long last you saw some of the tension in Jack’s shoulders dissipate and he finally slunk away from the window. “Give me a second, I just gotta go check something” he mumbled, dashing back out of your room and still looking vaguely distressed at the entire predicament. This time around, you did as he said, not wanting to leave the house on the off chance there really was something to worry about. You heard him run back into his own room briefly before darting off downstairs, hearing the unmistakable click of the front door lock opening. You had no idea what to make of any of this - why was he acting so weird? Was there something you should know? Was there really something to your weird feeling and should you be genuinely scared?

The sound of gravel crunching from the ground below alerted you, leading for you to wander over to the window for what felt like the millionth time that night to see for yourself what was going on. Your eyes first landed on Jack, who was pacing the gravel and looking off into the distance, searching for something. You could see he was holding something in his hand but couldn’t quite get a proper look at it as he was angled away from you. He disappeared from your view and a moment later he was back upstairs with you, appearing to be infinitely more relieved than he was before. Now you could properly see what he’d gone to fetch from his room once he’d left: his gun from his days as an agent, the moonlight streaming in through the window glimmering off the silver barrels and onto the floor.

“Nothin’ out there, thank fucking christ” he sighed, giving you a smile that was meant to be comforting. His gesture did nothing to ease your worries, despite the confirmation that there wasn’t anything out there like you’d originally hoped. Along with still feeling uneasy being in that room, there was also the matter of what you’d witnessed in Jack before, the plain and unconcealable look of suspicion and worry that had been showing on him.

“Are you alright? You...seemed worried. The way you were looking out that window, it was...like you were searching for something in particular...”.

“It’s nothing, sweetheart. Don’t worry your pretty little head off about it” he dismissed, obviously wanting to put this whole incident behind the two of you. You were having none of it, so you pressed further, taking a single step closer to where he was standing in the door. “You sure about that? ‘Cause you kinda got your gun out” you pointed out, your eyes flickering down to the weapon resting in his hands knowingly. “Did you think it was Statesman or something?”.

Jack looked surprised that you’d dared to be that direct in your line of questioning. He supposed he shouldn’t have expected any less from you, following your eyes down to where he was holding his gun. “Well, if I’m gonna be honest, yeah. For a moment there, I was worried they’d found me somehow. But there isn’t anybody out there - besides, if they were doin’ surveillance on the house they woulda had me led away in cuffs already. You’re safe as pie, sugar” he confessed.

Exactly as you thought. You’d wondered if Statesman would ever make an appearance, suddenly becoming hot on Jack’s tail. So far nothing had happened, thankfully, and seeing as your strange feeling tonight turned out to be nothing, you permitted yourself to relax a little, despite the still present feeling of discomfort from being in that room. “Alright...thank you for checking. Sorry I woke you up for something stupid”.

“Don’t apologise, sweetheart. I haven’t been sleeping great this last week anyway so I wasn’t even fully asleep when you came in. You make sure to get plenty of rest, ok?” he nodded towards you, turning to leave the room, the comfort of his presence slipping away from you and leaving you to feel the same odd and uncomfortable unrest that plagued you all night.

Glancing back over towards your bed, you dreaded the thought of trying to go back to sleep in that thing tonight. It sounded so childish and silly for you to say, or rather think, but you really didn’t want to be in that room tonight. If you stay in here you aren’t gonna get a wink of sleep.

What you did next was something you never thought you’d do in a million years. In your defense, it’d been a long day, you’d had some alcohol earlier, and you just had to deal with the intense unnerve of being watched only to discover that your feeling was nothing more than a spate of paranoia. With all that taken into account, it was only logical that you asked what you did next. “Jack, wait” you called out before you could stop yourself, freezing once you saw him stop in the hallway and turn back towards you with those sweet eyes of his. “Look, I know this is an odd request but...can I sleep in your room? Only for tonight. I don’t know, I still feel a little on edge and it’s dumb but I’d rather be around someone else right now” you mumbled, simultaneously hating yourself for asking in the first place and feeling utterly embarrassed at your own audacity.

Some part of you wanted him to laugh in your face. Laugh at you and make some stupid little quip about you being a “big girl” who could handle herself. It would be easier to hate him still that way. Of course, he didn’t do that at all. What he did instead was give you the sweetest damn smile you’d ever seen from him, different from those charming smirks you were used to and harkened closer to those rare moments from when you two were together that he would lay down the bravado and be vulnerable. “Sugar, you don’t need to feel bad for askin’ at all. I understand completely where you’re comin’ from” he reassured, holding his hand out and beckoning for you to come forward. And come forward you did, following him out into the hall and into his own room, the anxiety from before fading into nothing and being replaced by relief.

“Thank you. I know we’re not...like that anymore but…” you stumbled dumbly as you glided over towards the bed, fatigue overcoming your brain and making you more impatient to be in bed and asleep as fast as possible. It had to be extremely late by then and you wanted to get a decent amount of sleep before having to get up and go about with business as usual the next day.

Jack, meanwhile, was on the other side of the room throwing his gun back into a chest of drawers. “Say no more, honeybee. If you want, I can sleep on the floor if it makes you more comfortable” he posited, to which you promptly snapped your head back up and stared at him as if he were crazy. “You don’t have to do that, Jack, I’m not about to be kicking you out of your bed”.

“Technically it’s your bed, not mine”.

Rolling your eyes at him, you flopped down on the pillow and sighed. “Doesn’t matter, just...stay here. I’d rather have someone close right now, ok?”. If you weren’t already tired beyond all reason, your brain might have been fretting over the oh so horrific implications of staying in the same bed as him, though if you were really being honest you couldn’t care less right then. It’s not like sleeping in the same bed meant anything, plenty of people did that all the time. So what if you wanted someone near after feeling scared? Wouldn’t someone else do the same thing in your position?

“If that’s what you want, sweetheart. I’ll keep to the other side of the bed if you’d like” Jack assured you, sliding into the other side, doing exactly as he said and keeping a safe enough distance from you. It might’ve been silly for you to care so much, but you had to admit it was nice having someone else be there, and at the least it calmed your anxiety enough for you to feel fine sleeping. Stealing one last brief glance over at him, you wished him goodnight and let yourself relax truly for the first time in hours, letting the world fall away and fade into nothing as you closed your eyes and passed out in mere minutes of being there.

___________

When you awoke the next morning, it was to the strands of sunlight streaming through the parted breaks in the curtain, shining right over your face and rousing you from your slumber. Through bleary eyes, you became aware of the room around you, memories of the night before flooding back to you instantaneously. You noticed you felt warmer, becoming aware of the heavy feeling on your body, which caused your eyes to snap open fully. Looking back over your shoulder, you saw Jack, still sleeping and curled into your back, his arm lazily stung around you. You knew you two hadn’t fallen asleep like that, reasoning that he must have reached out to you during the night, leading to the position you were in now. You could feel the light tickle of his breath against the nape of your neck, something so small managing to light an unexpected spark in your heart. You should have pushed him off. You should have woken him up. You should have done a million other things in that moment instead of the one thing you did.

When instead of flinging him off you and darting out of bed like a skittish cat you curled yourself further into his light embrace, the mortifying realisation hitting you right then with a full force - Jack Daniels, the man who’d broken your heart, was caressing you in his sleep.

And you didn’t mind it, not one single bit.

Taglist (message me if you wanna be added)

Permanent: @greeneyedblondie44

Cross My Heart: @giselatropicana @absurdthirst

#agent whiskey #agent whiskey x reader #jack daniels #jack daniels x reader #Kingsman #kingsman fanfiction #Kingsman: the golden circle #cross my heart #Pedro Pascal #pedro pascal x reader

69 notes · View notes

ask-whitepearl-and-steven · 5 years

Text

Alright alright alright

You’ve all been asking for it, so here it is!

This will be (edit: HELLA) long and obviously spoiler-y, so everything is under a cut.

Are you ready?

Before we get to it, I want to mention that for the sake of keeping things organized, I will NOT be talking about my AU (@ask-whitepearl-and-steven) in this post. I want to just analyze the show as a viewer and a fan first. I’ll make a seperate post for AU-thoughts a bit later.

Without further ado:

EP 1: LITTLE HOMESCHOOL

This is a great way to open up the episode and show the changes through the lens of someone who has been a bit out of it for a while (we are all Cherry Quartz, fresh from the hiatus, aren’t we?) but I’m sorry, this post still takes the cake:

Okay, okay, back to the program.

“That used to be a loaded question...“

Right off the bat, Steven is SO much more confident about saying that he’s... HIMSELF! What a good feeling. I’m very proud of our boy.

I love the name “Gemglyph” for the gem language! I’ll need to know who wrote these, though. And who the heck drew the diamonds? Hopefully it was BP.

And I’m not the first one to point this out, but MORE ANIME REFERENCES!

Which can be seen as either a reference to the Chill Low-Fi Hiphop Beats to Study To OR Whisper of the Heart.

And absolutely no one cares but something that caught my eye is the fact that they have an EARTH FLAG at Little Homeschool! How cool is that!

Earth 4ever!!!

Off-note - I love how INVESTED they are in this conversation Pearl is having with Holo-Pearl.

Peak entertainment.

I love Professor Amethyst and I love the random human who snuck in to apparently take lessons on Not Giving A Single Shit About Anything, Ever.

And here we FINALLY are in the FUTURE

Where we FINALLY get Jasper as a functioning character

And

She’s

SO DRAMATIC, I LOVE HER.

This is literally SO funny like she... she was just... laying on top of her house... under a blanket..... FOr WHAT? To stand up dramatically and throw it off when Steven inevitably paid a visit?

Is that just what she dOES?

“It’s FINE I don’t need any HELP, I’m FUNCTIONING, I’m just having a SELF CARE DAY OK”

Also I’m sorry but

Jasper: “It took forever to yank those puny green earthlings out of the ground.”

Steven: “You mean grass...?“

THIS. RIGHT HERE. is peak Jasper.

It’s also curious how INVESTED Steven is in this:

“I’m TRYING to give you [a purpose]!“

Why are you... trying to do that, though? Isn’t the whole idea for gems to surpass their ‘purpose’ and just kinda... do whatever? Isn’t Jasper just kinda... doing whatever?

I mean, sure, it’s not useful to anyone, but she seems relatively happy. Aside from. You know. The whole laying on rocks under blankets until she’s disturbed thing and-- okay, you’re right, maybe an intervention would be healthy.

I’m not gonna talk at length about the rest of the episode - although I think it’s really good, I don’t know what I can say about it that hasn’t already been said. Jasper is definitely poking Steven’s buttons and rephrasing a LOT of what WHITE has said to Pink: “You surround yourself with inferior gems because it makes you feel better.”

And Steven REACTS to this. The taunt WORKS.

And yes, he gains some extra powers for it, but something tells me this AIN’T the only thing he will get. It feels like a two-edged sword. Like it’ll be his own downfall somehow....... maybe at the end of the series.

Ashes to ashes.... hole to hole.

And oh wow I thought they were gonna bond but LMAO

“Consider your fight back there your first and ONLY lesson.“

Basically:

I love you Jasper.

EP 2: GUIDANCE

I LOVE YOU AMETHYST.

sHE’S doing SO much and she’s SO good at it!! Look at her!! Organizing stuff!!!!

RUBIES IN SUNGLASSES. IN SQUARE SUNGLASSES.

I need 20.

And I also need 20 of Larimar because holy shit that’s hilarious.

Larimar: “I want to hear the human screams forever.”

Steven: “Okay that’s kinda troubling.”

I love the reference to Monsters Inc here and I love the callback at the end of the episode when Larimar switches to Human Laughter to get her fill of that particular erm... need.

And honestly the ensuing chaos is equally predictable and entertaining.

I’m SO glad to know that Rubies are just... Like That and that actually Navy is not a deviation from the norm but rather a different flavor of the chaotic energy all Rubies naturally seem to possess.

Amethyst is also super relatable:

“Ah yes, the fool comes crawling back. Come to beg for forgiveness, have you?”

In fact, the episode’s WHOLe HUMOUR is just very much My Brand

“Sometimes you save all the people but the rollercoaster still crashes into the ocean...... and that’s okay.”

Including the Running Gag that is Onion. Who... does not appear to have aged. At all. And that’s okay.

EP 3: ROSE BUDS

Okay where do I even begin with this one. Um.

I have to openly admit that I spent the majority of this episode wheezing with laughter. Let’s start with the Zoomans:

Who are CLEARLY STILL SUPER SALTY AT GREG ABOUT REJECTING THEM??? Which is hilarious.

And also this paradise is fascinating in and of itself.

But the next scene is basically where I started losing my shit.

Okay, okay, alright so. Uh. I have... a few questions.

Like Why. WHY. Does she look. SO MUCH like Rose?

Clearly Rose Quartz differ in coloring and etc. But She literally looks. Like THE Rose. VERY explicitly.

So here’s several options here:

1) Pink made Rose Quartz way before any of the Rebellion happened and Pearl just basically pigeonholed her into THIS specific Rose Quartz appearance because she (???) had a crush? Or somehow saw this specific Rose, thought ‘hot, i can make my sympathetic Diamond wear this exact costume and that would be EXCELLENT fanservice for ME’

2) Pink didn’t have any Rose Quartz until the Rebellion, and thereafter quickly decided ‘I need these gems as an alibi, so we’re just gonna make them” and she and Pearl basically inclubated Rose Quartz like a pokemon trainer hatching for a Shiny until they got one that looked Exactly Like That.

3) There was no Thinking involved because this is Pink we’re talking about, and it was all just a huge coincidence for the sake of this Very Hilariously Uncomfortable Episode.

While we ruminate on that, let’s look at some Relatable Reactions.

And here we have the holy trinity of “I have just seen the clone of my deceased parent/parental figure/lover.”

Featuring: Bonus ‘I’m Almost Over It’ Pearl

Also, I need y’all to make this into a meme:

For example:

Anyway, alright, alright.

That relatable feel when your (hot) dead lesbian lover’s clone asks you if you’re okay after another one of the (less hot?) clones offers you a whole ass stick of butter to eat.

And then you and your friends all hide in the bathroom to talk about your feelings:

Okay, the rest of the episode gives me FEELINGS and I love how hard Steven is trying, so I’ll just close it off with:

I LOVE THEM. Unironically, they are EVERYTHING I had hoped Rose Quartz would be. They’re SO MUCH like Rose herself - did she model her personality after them? Or are they just like her because she WAS like that, and they’re made from her essence? WHO KNOWS?! They’re adorable!

And the conflict between them and Steven is honestly so gooD! I don’t know if it’s completely relatable but I’m glad they ended up talking it out.

I wonder if we’ll ever see Her again... you know who I’m talkin’ about.

Her....

I’m madly in love with Rose, ok, I don’t need a callout post. Just leave me be.

EP 4: VOLLEYBALL

Alright, alright, alright.

OKAy,.... It’s fine. It’s FINE. I’m fINE.

Confirmed: 8000 years. That’s. UH. A LOT? That puts our timelines quite a ways back. We kind of estimated as much, but still, it’s so jarring to think about. And PP is VERY casual about it.

She’s also VERY casual about the injury.

“This is all Pink Diamond!”

It doesn’t seem like it bothers her to talk about it at all. She’s not even trying to keep it a secret. So I’m almost wondering - was there a connection to her being taken by White and the injury at all or not?

She came to Steven to get healed - she clearly wants it gone. At the time she was injured, did Pink not even attempt to heal the injury?

Follow up question: If she DID care, why didn’t she try to heal it?

Follow up to the follow up: Was it because she didn’t know she could? Or did she simply not have the time to (White removed her before she could)?

When Steven goes pink, she gasps - but makes no further comment. It’s presumably because she’s seen this happen before. She doesn’t try to move away, weirdly enough - she asks him if everything is alright. Perhaps the context is too different for it to be triggering for her. Perhaps there’s more layers to it? HMMM.

What follows is, perhaps, the SALTIEST we’ve seen Pearl since Greg rolled around.

“Did you come to compete?”

This is doubly curious to me because Crewniverse has previously explicitly stated that Pearl was NOT in love with Pink Diamond. She was in love with Rose. So if this is true, why would Pearl care about her place as Pink’s Pearl? She is supposed to be past all that, isn’t she?

And yet as time goes on, the salinity grows exponentially. Alright, you two, I know you’re Pearls but tone it down with the sass.

(Also, I’m sorry but I will NEVER call her Volleyball. That’s all. Bye.)

Also it’s worth noting that... PP is clearly VERY much in love with Pink.

This is, perhaps, where the lack of a grudge plays into it. She’s completely enamoured.

Moreover, she’s VERY casual about how she talks here. This isn’t exactly how one talks of their Diamond. This is how people talk about their romantic partners. She calls Pink silly, calls her ‘funny’. That’s not exactly a term of respect - it’s way more intimate than that.

Also, did anyone else notice how, although CG Pearl’s gem is usually shaded in teal, it’s in Pink in this episode? VEEEERY subtle, Crew.

Also, we can’t quite see Pink Pearl’s expression fully here because her working eye isn’t visible, which makes it hard to get a read on things like

“I’m older than you.“ Is she just saying it casually? Or is she fully aware that she’s poking fun at CG Pearl?

HI SHELL. ISN’T IT FUNNY HOW YOUR VOICE AND YOUR NAME ARE A SUBTLE NOD TO PORTAL, WHICH IS FORESHADOWING HOW BADLY THIS IS GONNA END.

Meanwhile, Pearl continues to be in character.

“No need to be overly... attached.”

And this has nothing to do with anything but

she cute

Aaaand now it’s creepy again.

The rest of this is super important so let’s get to it:

“Oh, no. Pink did this.”

“What did you say?”

“It’s a funny story, really. Once, Pink got tired of asking Yellow and Blue for her own colony, so she went straight to White. Of course, White told her she wasn’t fit to run one... and well! That set her off.”

“Set her off? What are you talking about?”

“You remember how she was! With her destructive powers, throwing tantrums left and right! She had a scream that could crack the walls. She didn’t mean to hurt me! (giggle) I just happened to be standing too close to her that time and--”

And then Steven interrupts.

We get more CG Pearl arguing for how wrong this image of Pink is to her. What CG Pearl knew was a totally different (or, well, same, but VERY changed) Pink.

But what we have to prove our point is Steven himself. He rolls into the EXACT same state as Pink presumably did - and begins to over-use his powers.

(This isn’t the first time we have seen him use this attack.)

The reactions from the Pearls are telling - this is clearly not Pink Pearl’s first rodeo with this type of Mood.

And it’s important to note that Steven clearly didn’t direct any attack AT them. He simply yelled - and the whole dang place literally started to crack. There’s weight to the argument that possibly, Pink really DIDN’T mean to hurt her Pearl - that she was just collateral damage.

Which doesn’t make it any better, obviously. Even if Pink had no direct intention of hurting her Pearl (and there are theories that Pink purposefully hit or threw Pink Pearl or somehow physically acted directly to damage her, which I was skeptical of) the result of it is still the same.

If you raise your voice and yell, even if you’re just yelling because YOU are hurt/have feelings, you might still hurt the people around you. If you throw a tantrum, even if your direct goal was just to let off some steam without aiming to harm anyone, whoever gets in your way is still the victim.

And this is all very much On Brand for Pink’s timeline as we know it. We already knew this about her - we KNEW she tended to throw tantrums (like in the flashback on Jungle Moon) and that she was childish. The fact that she accidentally hurt her Pearl in the process because she had no self-control at that period in her life comes as no surprise.

(Although it’s important to mention that perhaps hurting her own Pearl WAS the breaking point during which she finally realized how her emotional outbursts could have negative consequences on those around her.)

And this is a very beautiful message - even if Pink Pearl still doesn’t want to blame Pink for what was done to her (”But... she didn’t mean to!”) Pearl brings the point of it back around to her (”But you were still hurt!”) The point isn’t the person who did the hurting - the focus is on the victim and how they were affected.

And the rest, I daresay, is history.

I like the fact that they managed to still bring it back around to the main message:

It isn’t about just “Pink was bad”. It’s about how she did bad things. And there were multiple sides to her - multiple stages. And the Pearls who knew her knew different sides of her - the side that didn’t know how to be a good person, who was selfish and childish and unrestrained... and the side that was, arguable, too restrained. Who hated her own past, her own character and her own mistakes so much that she would rather bury them and keep secrets from everyone.

And neither of those things were good, and neither were healthy, but they are a GREAT contrast to a GREAT character arc that is, arguably, still being unearthed. And we have so much more context for it all now.

I, for one, can’t wait to see and discover more of Pink through Pink Pearl - no matter how ugly that side of her might be. I think it gives great perspective to her later growth.

And if you ship the Pearls.. .well, I get why.

Personally I’m not interested in it that way. Call me unromantic - I don’t think their relationship NEEDS to be shippy in order to be satisfyingly deep. I love the idea of them having a deep bond over this - a shared past, a shared experience, and gaining confidence through one another.

Cheers and thanks for listening!

#steven universe future #steven universe: future #steven universe future spoilers #su:f spoilers #suf spoilers #su spoilers #steven universe spoilers #spoiler warning #pink pearl #volleyball

4K notes · View notes

oscar-lettjohanssonloveme · 4 years

Text

I dont know whats real anymore (Delia x reader)

warnings: talking about death

You have to take these pills, Y / N .." Cordelia said firmly, holding out the two pills.

She watched the tears well up in your eyes and how you moved as far away from her as you could on the bed. You sat frightened in the corner of the bed, knees wrapped around your chest and your arms around your shoulders.

"Please Cordelia .. I can't .." you whispered.

"Honey, you're sick ... and if you don't take these pills you won't get well ...", her voice softened.

"The doctors said that too .." you whimpered softly and pushed me further into the corner.

The doctors? Cordelia frowned. Four days ago you showed up at the academy in the middle of the night. Your clothes soaked from the rain and tears made their way on your face. You didn't need to be a doctor to predict your cold in advance.

You haven't said much about yourself since you've been here. She knew your name and that you ran away from home. What she also knew was why you had come to the academy; you could talk to the dead and because you could no longer help yourself, you came to her.

"I don't know which doctors you're talking about .." Cordelia began and sat down on the bed. "These two pills only ensure that your fever is lowered and you can sleep ... nothing more .."

"I don't believe you .." you whispered, your eyes glittering. She got up, grabbed the wrapping of the pills, and tossed them into your lap before she sat down again.

"Please .. subsided on your own .." she said and bit her lip.

With trembling hands you examined the packaging and found that Cordelia was right. Without a word, you held out your hand to her and she let the two pills fall into the palm of your hand. She watched with satisfaction as you washed the pills down with a glass of water.

"Thanks Y / N..I just want to help you ..", she said and got up. "You should sleep now and let me know when you wake up .."

As she started to leave, your hand grabbed her wrist. She spun around and looked into your pleading eyes.

"Please don't go .." you whispered. "If you go, they talk to me .."

By they you meant the dead in this house.

Cordelia squeezed your hand gently and gave you a warm smile before she sat in the chair in the other corner of the room. You turned away from her because you were uncomfortable sleeping in front of her, but even with your body against the wall you could feel her gaze on your back and although it made you feel uncomfortable, it was still better than to be yelled by the ghosts of this house. Even now they were standing in this room and whispering things to you. Bad things. But it was much easier to ignore the dead in the presence of someone who couldn't hear them.

Cordelia sat cross-legged in the chair, her head in her hands, and watched your breathing slow down and become a steady rhythm.

After a few minutes, when she assumed you were asleep, she got up and let out a sigh. You had been here for just four days and she could safely say that no one had been this complicated in a long time. The problem was, that she couldn't figure you out and she didn't want to talk to you until you were really healthy.

-----------------------------

Weeks passed. You got well and started moving around the academy and taking classes. Everyone was nice to you, but you knew that most of them just found you weird for talking to people, that they couldn't see. It was not uncommon to see you arguing with someone who didn't exist to them and of course the other witches thought it was strange. Cordelia had tried to talk to you several times, but you always avoided her and she couldn't explain why.

It was Saturday afternoon and most of the girls weren't home. Cordelia was walking down the corridors of the academy as she often did when she heard your screams.

"Leave me alone .." you screamed.

Alarmed, Cordelia ran to your room and threw the door open.

You stood in the middle of the room with both hands wrapped around a knife and held it trembling in front of you.

"Y / N ..", Cordelia began slowly and entered the room. "Take the knife down .."

"I dont know what's real anymore ..", you sobbed and held the knife to your throat.

"Please Y / N." Cordelia's voice was low as she kept walking towards you. "Look at me, I'm real .." She wanted to grab your hand, but you back away.

"They're yelling at me, Cordelia ... they want me to kill .."

"Who should you kill Y / N?", She was almost in front of you.

"You!" You screamed.

Cordelia stopped. She was confused. "Me?" You nodded. "Yes ... all the others too.. I'm scared ... "

She was standing in front of you and had her hands around your wrists as she led your hand with the knife away from your neck. "I'm so sorry .." you uttered and started to cry. Cordelia, who had taken the knife from your hand, tossed the blade away and wrapped her arms around you.

"You don't have to apologize honey .." she whispered against your ear "Everything will be fine..". Her left hand wandered through your hair while her right pressed you against her.

"I just want to be normal .." you sobbed into her chest.

The next 5 minutes remained like this, you cried yourself in her arms while she whispered the sweet things in your ear.

When your crying subsided, she pulled back to study your face.

"I think we should finally talk .." she said softly and sat down on your bed.

You nodded slowly and sat down next to her. "So .. what brought you here?"

"Uhm .. I think it all started when my grandma died .." you started playing nervously with your fingers. "My parents told me, she was dead, but she was right behind them. At first I thought it was supposed to be funny, but then I realized that they were serious ... well and when I told them I could still see her and then talked to her, my parents took me to a doctor. But the doctor just said it was my own way of dealing with her death. It was weird to be at her funeral, even though she was still alive to me .. "you laughed nervously.

"One night two complete strangers were standing in my room, claiming to be the deceased owner of our house, then I realized that something was wrong. It got worse because there were more and more dead people talking to me and it became difficult to distinguish who was really alive and who was dead. At some point I could no longer hide it from my parents and they took me again to a doctor, who diagnosed me with schizophrenia. From then on my life became pure hell. I forgot how many nights I had to spend in clinics, but I remember every moment when doctors chained me to the bed and forcibly injected medicine into me. Then I was only allowed to leave the house under supervision and all objects were removed from my room, that I could hurt myself with. It was all bad, but worst of all were my parents. They no longer saw me, their daughter, they just saw this disease and the monster doctors made me ... and I tried so hard to improve, but it was impossible to ignore them, the dead ... and then one day I found this academy at Internet and somehow I felt like it was the only place, where I wouldn't be considered sick .."

When you were done you carefully looked up at Cordelia. She was lost in thought and was staring intently into your eyes, as if this enabled her to look into your head.

"Cordelia, I-" you started, but she cut you off.

"What do they say to you, the dead?"

"Um different things .. most of them want me to kill somebody .. they want their revenge. It's like I'm their bridge from the dead to the world of the living .. They yell at me and promise to leave me alone if I kill for them ... Then there is something else, when I was locked in my room after I was released from the clinic, sometimes they told me death was my salvation and how free I would be if I were one of them..Sometimes I am myself not sure if they told me that or if I did .. "you said. She didn't answer and just kept staring into your eyes.

After a while she cleared her throat and sat up straight. "I want to be honest with you..I can't make it stop or make them leave you alone..but I can teach you how to ignore them and how to gain control over them .."

You nodded quickly. "There's just one more thing .." you started. "It is incredibly difficult to sleep when dead people scream at you with their plans for revenge ...". You smiled at her crookedly.

"How long haven't you slept?" She frowned. Only now did she notice your dark circles.

"Couple of days .." you mumbled. "Since I stopped taking sleeping pills, I wanted to ask if I-"

"No Y / N." She said firmly. "I'll see what I can do, maybe there is some spell that can help and until then come to me if you can't sleep .."

When she got up from your bed, you got up too.

"Thanks Cordelia .." you said and meant it.

"I haven't done anything yet. I'm just sorry, that we didn't talk to each other earlier ...", she said and bent down to reach for your knife. "And as long as the situation doesn't improve, such items have no business in your room, understand?" She asked sharply.

You nodded quickly.

"Good ..", she smiled again. "I'll go now and see what I can do to help you .."

----------------------------------

Again some time passed, Cordelia began to teach you privately because you couldn't get along with most of the other girls and you didn't feel like telling the others about your past. For that you got very close to Cordelia and started to trust her completely. Your ghost problem was also progressing, it got easier to ignore the dead. Because you had not left the academy since your arrival, you now knew which of the people were still alive here and which were not. In addition, Cordelia had made a list for you at the beginning with all the names of the other witches and at first it really helped you to find your way around who was dead and who wasn't, but now you don't need the list anymore. But the list was still hanging over your bed, simply because you liked the thought of Cordelia did it for you.

As beautiful as it was, there was still a problem: as much as you could ignore it during the day, the way the dead screamed for you, it was all the more difficult at night. Still yelling in your face, they were standing in the corner of your room and staring at you. Even though you stopped talking to them, they still wouldn't leave you alone, because they knew it was robbing you of sleep. Cordelia had said you could come to her if you couldn't sleep, but somehow the thought felt weird and you didn't want to burden her any more.

That's why you looked for another way to find sleep: sleeping pills. It wasn't particularly difficult, you knew where Cordelia kept the pills and it was not uncommon for one of the other witches to take a pill when she couldn't sleep.

You usually got the pills while the others were in class, but you couldn't today, because Cordelia had rescheduled your class until the morning, so you snuck through the academy after everyone went to bed. Only to find that the pills were gone. You let out a frustrated sigh.

"Are you looking for something, Honey?"

Cordelia's warm voice behind you made you whirl around. She stood behind you, only dressed in a dressing gown, her perfectly manicured fingers holding the sleeping pills in her hand.

"Cordelia ..", you mumbled and wanted to come up with some explanation, but she got before you.

"How long have you been taking this?", Her voice was emotionless.

"Few weeks ..." you muttered, looking away from her.

"A few of weeks ??" she uttered aloud.

"I'm sor-" you started, but she interrupted you.

"You always say, that you are sorry .." she hissed and grabbed your hand. "Come with me .. I don't feel like waking up the other girls with my screams ..."

Without a word she pulled you through the corridors of the academy to her room.

"Sit down .." she growled softly after closing the door. She pointed to her bed and you sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Didn't I make it clear that you shouldn't take these pills?" She paced up and down her room.

"yes .." you answered quietly.

"I didn't hear you ..", she stopped and glared at you.

"Shit .. yeah damn .." you yelled at her while your eyes filled with tears.

"Hopefully you are aware, that if you are addicted to these pills now, I will have to take you to a doctor ..", her voice was soft and dangerous. At her words your eyes widened. "No..Delia please don't .." you pleaded.

"Don't call me like that .. It's your own fault ..". Cordelia put her hands on her hips and chewed her lower lip.

"I know .." you said.

"Oh you know? ..Argh Y / N.." She ran through her blonde curls. "It is my top priority to make sure that my girls are okay and that means for you that you follow my rules .."

You nodded guiltily.

She stared down at you. You didn't have to look into her face to be aware of the flames that burned in her eyes.

"Is that your pajamas?" She finally asked.

"What?" You let out confused and lift your head.

"Whether these are your pajamas .." she said impatiently.

"Uhm..yes?"

"Perfect .." she muttered

"I don't quite understand-" you said, still confused, and watched her pull the curtains over the window.

"You sleep here today, you idiot .."

You stared at her in amazement. Were you serious?

"You really don't have to-"

"You think, I would do this for you? ", she laughed. "Do you think it would be nice for me to send you to your room, knowing that you couldn't sleep for the rest of the night? "

You didn't answer and watched her go to the other side of the bed. "In your first week here when you were sick, you wanted me to stay with you until you fell asleep, because then they would leave you alone .." she said, pulling off her coat to reveal a nightgown bring to. You still didn't know what she was getting at.

"And because I don't feel like watching you fall asleep, because I'm also tired, that should work too .." she finished, lifted the covers and climbed into the bed.

You were still sitting lost on the edge of the bed.

"Honey, you shouldn't watch me sleeping, you should sleep yourself, so move your pretty little ass now into my bed ...", she said with closed eyes.

You blushed at her words, but did what she said and lay down next to her under the sheet before she turned off the light.

Now you both lay stiffly next to each other in the dark and stared at the ceiling.

"I'm sorry that I was just so angry ..." Cordelia began, her voice finally back to normal. "It's just ..-", she paused and looked for the right words. "Why didn't you come to me? I thought you trust me .." Her voice was full of regret and disappointment, and when you heard her that way, you couldn't help but feel bad.

"It's not that I don't trust you .." you whispered.

"But?" She asked before sitting up and leaning over you. The blond curls tickled your face.

"You've done so much for me and I'm really grateful for it, but I didn't mean to worry you any more than I already do .. I know I shouldn't say that, but you shouldn't waste your affection on me, Delia .. ". If it had been light, Cordelia would have seen the tears running down your face. Why were you just so emotional?

"God Y / N, you're so stupid .." she sighed, before leaning down and gently pressing her lips to yours.

To say you were surprised would have been an understatement and to say you didn't want it would be a lie.

It just seemed so impossible.

She was like an angel of God with broken wings, but so beautiful. And you were just that little heap of misery that knocked on her door in the pouring rain.

"Was that just something to get me to sleep?" You smiled softly as she pulled back.

"No .." she laughed and pushed your hair back from your face. "Definitely not.."

From then on, things finally got better. You would still hear the pleading cries of the dead, but Cordelia would always be there to ground you.

love of my life google translate

#cordelia goode #cordelia goode x reader #american horror story #sarah paulson x reader #sarah paulson

118 notes · View notes

banrionceallach · 4 years

Text

Reverse AU Crowley/Harry Omens Short

This will only make sense if you’ve read both my main fic and my scraps on AO3. Posting it anyway.

Raphael is still here.

He is still here and he keeps smiling at Aziraphale all the time.

Aziraphale keeps smiling back.

Crowley hates it.

He is not jealous, he tells himself, as he watches Raphael sit on a couch in the back of the bookshop. Raphael is currently pouring over an arcane text that Aziraphale thinks might solve the ‘angel from an alternate universe’ problem.

Crowley has known Aziraphale for six thousand years. He has argued and dined with and gotten drunk with the angel innumerable times. They’re best friends. Aziraphale walked into hell for him and sassed Michael into the bargain. He knows Aziraphale loves him. They are raising (another) child together, for Someone’s sake. Some alternate universe angel is not going to change that.

Even if he is basically a better version of Crowley.

Stupid angelic tosser. With his stupid round pupils and his stupid white wings and his stupid long braided hair that Aziraphale spent a whole minute complimenting after lunch.

( It is just possible that Crowley is trying to grow his hair out as quickly and discreetly as possible.)

Currently Crowley is alone with the Archangel Bloody Raphael, because the aforementioned child that Crowley and his angel are raising together had a sleepover with the former antichrist and Aziraphale has gone to Tadfield to pick him up and also consult the local witch on their Alternate Universe Angel problem. Normally picking up Harry from a friend’s house is something Crowley does in the Bentley, but today the knowledge that that would have left Aziraphale alone with Raphael for over an hour had made him strongly suggest that Aziraphale should go, and use the opportunity to consult the witch.

Crowley really hopes Book Girl has something. He doesn’t know how much more of the archangel’s presence he can take without jumping across the room and trying to claw his stupid perfect eyes out.

He notices the other red-head has put down his book and is looking at him with narrowed eyes.

“What are you looking at?” he demands.

Raphael shrugs innocently. “I was just surprised you didn’t go to Tadfield instead of Aziraphale.” He waves a hand at the piles of esoteric text cluttered around the room. “It would have been more efficient for you to bring Anathema here while we continued to research, wouldn’t it?”

“Leaving Aziraphale alone with you?” Crowley snaps, with rather more honesty than he prefers. “Not likely!”

Raphael arches a fine auburn eyebrow. “Are you always this possessive?” he asks and damn him, there is actual genuine concern in his tone. Who is he to be concerned about Aziraphale? He has his own version, yes? That he should be wanting to get back to? A tiny part of Crowley still doubts that. He can’t imagine a demon Aziraphale, can’t imagine Aziraphale Falling.

It hurts to think about.

“Possessive?” Crowley sputters, wrenching his mind away from the possibility of a horrified spiral into guilt. “I am not!”

And the thing is, he isn’t. Not usually. But of course, it occurs to him, it’s been rather easy to not be possessive when he can be safe in the knowledge that no one else on the planet has a hope of competing for Aziraphale’s affection. Not humans, not other demons, definitely not other angels.

Except now, there is another angel. An angel who never fell, still bathing in Her favour. With Crowley’s face. And, key point, without the more demonic attributes caused by the Fall.

He is polite and gentle and exudes a puppy-like bouncy enthusiasm and he keeps smiling at Aziraphale and Crowley hates everything about him.

“Really?”

“Really,” Crowley snaps back, baring his fangs. “I am concerned for his safety. For all I know, this could still be some trick by Above and Below to attack us. You could be in on it.”

“You really are very suspicious, aren’t you?” Raphael says, grinning like Crowley has just said something amusing.

“Demon,” Crowley snaps. “Goes with the job description. Suspicious, sly, evil demon.” He notes with satisfaction that his blunt reference to his status makes Raphael go pale and twitch slightly. Good.

“You’re not that demonic,” Raphael says softly after a moment, giving him a considering look. “I think Azirafell is worse. Better, I mean. At demoning.”

This is too much.

Crowley snarls and surges to his feet. “I,” he hisses, “am the Serpent in the Garden. The Fall of Man? Humanity exiled from Eden never to return? That was me. For six-thousand years I was Hell’s favourite demon. Don’t go thinking I am soft!”

Of course, it’s at this moment that Harry runs into the room, having just got back from Tadfield. “Dad! Dad! Is it true?”

Crowley draws his fangs back in so fast there’s an almost audible click. “Is what true?”

Harry is about to reply when he spots Raphael. Raphael stares at him, wide-eyed. Harry stares back, fascinated.

“Wow,” the nearly-thirteen-year-old breathes. “You really do look just like Dad! Weird!” Then Harry frowns. “Why don’t you have the cool eyes, though?”

Crowley flips from cursing Harry’s sense of timing to grinning widely. He and his angel have the Best Son. Objectively. It is fact.

Raphael makes a strangled noise. “Dad?” he manages to wheeze, still staring at Harry.

They had not mentioned Harry up until now as a precaution. Just in case Raphael was part of a plot against them. Watching Raphael almost choke in shock, Crowley is extra glad they’d not mentioned the young wizard.

He still has to squash the urge to snap ‘yes, this is our son’ in his most smug tone of voice. Crowley loves Harry and is not under any circumstances going to use him to score against the annoying stupid archangel who will be punted back to his own universe as soon as possible.

So instead he just waves, wiggling his fingers insouciantly at the Archangel. “That’s me.”

(It’s also Aziraphale, as well as James Potter, sadly deceased. People who start talking to Harry when he mentions his father soon learn to be alert for context clues.)

Raphael coughs, clearing his throat. “You’ve . . . adopted a child?” he says weakly.

“That’s right,” beams Aziraphale, who has just walked into the room behind Harry.

“Stole,” Crowley corrects. “We stole him. Evil, remember.”

“More like rescued,” says Harry, the little traitor. Raphael gives him a watery smile.

It turns out that (to Crowley’s great relief) Aziraphale has brought back a way to get Raphael home. Unfortunately, the ritual to do it takes hours to set up.

Raphael spends most of that time trying not to stare at Harry. He doesn’t really succeed.

Eventually, since they are now guaranteed to be archangel-free very soon, Crowley grudgingly explains how Harry came to be living with them.

Raphael is appalled.

“What do you mean, this headmaster knew and just left him with those people for ten years?” he hisses, his golden eyes narrow with outrage.

“He’d convinced himself that the blood ward was the only resort,” Aziraphale explains.

“Bullshit,” snaps Raphael and for a second Crowley almost likes him.

“Quite,” Aziraphale says. “We were less than happy with the state of affairs ourselves.”

“No kidding,” the archangel mutters. Right,” he says decisively. “Is that circle ready to get me home? I need to take a quick trip to Surrey. Just to check on something.”

It is possible, Crowley thinks, as Raphael steps into the circle and disappears in a flash, that the archangel will find that there is no alternate Harry. Or perhaps there’s no alternate Voldemort. Or Dumbledore. Who knows?

***

Harry Potter, aged almost thirteen, ran from Number 4 Privet Drive, his suitcase and his owl’s travelling cage thumping beside him. His could feel his heart jumping in his chest. He had never been so angry in his life. Why had he listened to Aunt Marge? Why hadn’t he done the smart thing and excused himself to the loo when she’d started to talk?

What was he going to do now?

A noise and sudden light, caught his attention. It was a car, approaching fast. When it reached Harry, it skidded to a stop. He backed away, fumbling for his wand.

Then the passenger’s window rolled down, and a man’s head emerged. “Hello,” the man said in a cheerful voice. “Harry, isn’t it?”

Harry gasped and backed away further.

“Look,” said the man, “I don’t normally get involved in these things, but my friend here” – he waved vaguely towards the driver, a man with long waves of red hair- “seems to think you need help.” The man squinted at Harry. “And from the looks of it, he’s right.”

An enraged roar, familiar to Harry, echoed out of the night.

Uncle Vernon, furious and getting closer.

“Alright,” said the driver, speaking for the first time, “that’s enough of that.”

Harry heard the sound of clicking fingers and suddenly found himself in the car’s back seat with Hedwig’s cage next to him. His seatbelt had already fastened itself. The big black dog, which he’d almost tripped over earlier, was sitting on the car floor and looking extremely puzzled.

“Really dear,” said the man in the passenger seat to the driver as the car sped off, Vernon Dursley’s furious shouts receding into the distance “Did you have to bring the dog too?”

“Yep. He’s a good dog.”

Harry swallowed and finally managed to speak. “People will come looking for me,” he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

The man in the passenger seat smiled at him. “Well I do hope so, my boy.” He nodded towards his friend. “Raf here is quite keen to give Albus Dumbledore a piece of his mind.”

#Good Omens #Harry Potter #Reverse Omens #Crossover crossover #because it makes me happy

191 notes · View notes

dwellordream · 3 years

Text

“...It stands to reason that a society which is ruled by its male senior citizens through the control of younger and less powerful men would instill reverence for the wisdom of advancing age in its male youth. The Romans, we might observe, referred to previous generations as maiores, greater individuals, and employed the adjective magnus, great, in the kinship terms for parents' close male and female ascendants (a practice the English language has adopted with its use of the adjective "great" for kin of earlier generations); such a practice testifies to the Roman equation of seniority with superiority, and to the inclusion of women among its superior seniors.

Thus it should come as no surprise that older women seem to command more respect, inspire more awe, and have (or be perceived as having) greater social and political influence than do younger ones. In addition, Roman women along in years were more likely to have young male relatives who were eager to prove themselves worthy of and to their elders, and who were mindful of the nurturance they had recently received from mothers and older kinswomen; such young men were under special pressure to manifest their respect and awe for their female maiores through publicly visible gestures.

We have already examined the idealization in Tacitus' Dialogus of the moral instruction and intellectual sustenance provided for an eternally indebted Roman male youth committed to a life of public service by his upstanding female relatives; this picture is far from unique in Roman writings. Such a vision of an older Roman matron's function, and of Roman mother-son relations, seems the parodic point of Plautus' Casina. The play, composed immediately before the playwright's death in 184 B.C., was popular enough to be revived in the next generation. In it, the materfamilias Cleostrata intimidates her elderly and socially powerful husband both through proving herself his moral superior and, as her son's ally and abettor, by ingeniously securing for this son the sexual favors of a slave girl his father also covets.

By cleverly rendering her presumably grateful son such services, attracting admiration for her capable handling of this complex affair, but nonetheless setting herself up as a moral example in the process, she evidently travesties the Roman concept of a wise, righteous, and exemplary mother. This same vision, however, is reproduced as part of a serious moral and political exemplum in Livy's narrative on the Bacchanalian scandal, an episode which profoundly shook Roman society shortly before the Casina was first performed. Livy's young male protagonist Aebutius and his reluctantly influential courtesan mistress Hispala Fecinia manage to bring the matter to the consul Postumius' attention, and Postumius proceeds to bring the malefactors to justice, solely through the aid of Aebutia, amita (father's sister), to Aebutius, and Postumius' venerable mother-in-law Sulpicia.

These two older women—depicted as virtuous, beneficent, sagacious, deserving of male reverence and hence, by Livy's implication, truly "maternal"—are contrasted with two, far less admirable, matronly counterparts: Aebutius' own mother Duronia, whose devotion to both her second husband and his interest in depriving Aebutius of his patrimony led her to seek her son's undoing by having him initiated into Bacchic worship; the Campanian priestess Paculla Annia, who began the Bacchic cult's corrupting influence by initiating its first men, her own sons.

Livy's account, at 39.nff., of Postumius' efforts to ascertain, through Sulpicia, the character of Aebutia, warrants special notice since here he treats these two nurturant and publicly influential mother figures in a sympathetic and sentimentalizing fashion: he refers to the former woman as dignified, a gravis (and later a gravissima) femina, to the latter as morally upright and of old-fashioned ways, probam et antiqui moris; he even describes Aebutia as moved to tears by, the dreadful treatment of her brother's son (filius eius fiatris), also morally upright (probus), by those who should have been the last to do so.

Another, doubtlessly romanticized, moralizing tale also attests to both the esteem in which a young Roman male was to hold his elder kinswomen's judgment and moral authority and to the public display and political impact of such esteem, namely the story of Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus. Set in the mid-fifth century B.C., the story achieved great popularity in the classical period: a lost book by Cicero's closest friend Titus Pomponius Atticus featured Coriolanus prominently; Livy, Valerius Maximus, and Plutarch all treat his tragedy. Coriolanus has recently been called the "Roman archetype" of the "perpetual mama's boy" in a provocative psychoanalytic study of the Roman mother-son relationship, and for good reason: he allegedly valued his widowed mother so highly that he abandoned a traitorous march on Rome at the head of an enemy force only after she demanded that he desist.

There are less dramatic, and probably somewhat more reliable, pieces of ancient Roman testimony to the reverential regard of young Roman men for the older, maternal female members of their families, to their—and others'—experience of these women as significant and influential individuals, and to the frequent exhibition of both this regard and this experience in a larger sociopolitical context. Several laudationes Junebres, orations delivered by aristocratic Roman men (and usually youthful ones) to honor a deceased relative of political distinction, belong in this category.

Cicero reports that the first such speech in commemoration of a woman was given in 102 B.C. by the consul Quintus Lutatius Catulus to honor his mother Popilia; no young woman received this same recognition until over thirty years later, when Julius Caesar's second wife, Cornelia, was buried amid her husband's public praises. That same year, however, Caesar made a more memorable, or at least better remembered, contribution to funeral oratory with his laudation of his father's sister Julia, wife of the military and political leader Marius. Caesar's words first proclaimed the glory of this aunt's, and hence his own father's, maternal ancestry: The maternal lineage of my paternal aunt Julia descended from kings, the paternal is connected with the immortal gods.

For the Marcii Reges go back to Ancus Marcius, Marcia being the name of her mother, and the Julii, to which clan our family belongs, are offspring of Venus. There is, therefore, in her lineage both the holiness of kings, who have the greatest power among humans, and the religious quality of gods, in whose power are the kings themselves. Perhaps not insignificantly, Ancus Marcius, the early king from whom Julia's maternal Marcii traced their lineage, supposedly inherited Rome's throne through his maternal grandfather; so, too, the divinity from whom her (and her nephew's) paternal Julii avowed their descent was Venus, mother of the Trojan hero Aeneas.

A later, and also elderly, Julia, Caesar's sister, was hailed in the funeral laudatio upon her death in 51 B.C. by the twelve-year-old Octavius, whose mother Atia was Julia's daughter; through this maternal grandmother Octavius, later the emperor Augustus, could claim descent by blood, as well as adoption, from Venus and the Julian clan. The laudatio delivered in 42 B.C. to honor the nonagenarian Caecilia by her son Atticus, a man whose attraction to the Coriolanus legend we have already noted, stirred comment as providing proof of Atticus' familial devotion (pietas): said to be sixty-seven at the time, he pointed out that he had never once needed to apologize to his mother, nor quarreled with his sister, who was almost the same age as he.

One might also consider in this context an inscription generally dated to the early empire, the laudatio of a noble matron Murdia. It is dedicated by a son of the woman's first marriage, despite the fact that her second husband seems to have been numbered among her survivors. She is, moreover, identified only with the words Murdiae L(ucii) F(iliae) Matris, "Murdia, Lucius' daughter and my mother"; she is acclaimed by this son as "most precious to me" (carissima mihi), although he says nothing about affection between her and either husband.

Along with citing her modesty (modestia), upright character (probitas, an attribute we have seen noted in Livy's Aebutia and Aebutius), chastity (pudicitia), compliant nature (opsequium), wool-spinning (lanificium), conscientiousness, and trustworthiness (diligentia and fides), he cites her wisdom (.sapientia); what is more, he accords her special praise for treating all of her sons equally in her will. Both mater and amita also figure prominently in another, fairly early and important source for the public reverence awarded and sociopolitical significance clearly and justifiably ascribed to older Roman women of the upper classes by their younger male relatives.

…It may help further to elucidate why other young Roman men of the upper classes regarded their elder female relations, their own and other men's mothers, so seriously, looking upon them as socially and politically powerful figures deserving publicly visible homage. Atticus' sister of sixty-odd, Aemilia, the dowager sister of Lucius Aemilius Paullus, and the matrons who were sisters of Aemilia's son Publius Cornelius Scipio (and hence enjoyed the magnanimity of his adoptive son) obviously rank among older women, whether by age or by relation to their devoted male kin. But the concern publicly evinced for other, younger, women of high birth by their brothers, such as that displayed by Scipio in his munificence to his sisters, indicates that sisters in Roman elite society were also highly, and publicly, esteemed by their brothers.

Evidence from Roman comedy merits special note in this context. A lengthy passage from Plautus' Aulularia generalizes on the feelings and duties of brothers and sisters to one another: it depicts Roman brothers and sisters as partaking of a close relationship, sharing the same concerns, and looking to one another for advice; it depicts one particular sister, moreover, as expecting her advice to be followed. At lines i2off. Eunomia speaks of her sincere commitment to her brother Megadorus' best interests as "befitting a sister of the same parents" While acknowledging that brothers find sisters bothersome, she points out their mutual obligation to counsel and admonish one another, and even demands that Megadorus do what she orders; she justifies these demands on the grounds that she is closest to him and he to her.

More importantly, both Roman legend and Roman historical writing concur in their depiction of this fraternal esteem for sisters, and fraternal compliance with sisters' wishes, as having a substantial public impact among the Roman elite. They suggest that a Roman sister, though likely to be regarded with respect rather than veneration, and subtly complimented rather than eulogized, by her brother, often exerted influence of a political nature both on and through him; they indicate that various sisters publicly reflected in—and often actually benefited from—their brothers' social and political prestige.”

- Judith P. Hallett, “Women of Elite Families and Roman Society.” in Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society: Women and the Elite Family

#judith p. hallett #history #ancient #roman #fathers and daughters in roman society

9 notes · View notes

hiddendreamer67 · 4 years

Text

A Slippery Slope pt. 1

Summary: Logan, a graduate student studying the local ecosystem, discovers that the mystical creature populations are dwindling. He proposes a new theory, of a creature larger than life hiding out in the forest. Logan searches the forest for the beast, forgetting one important detail- in order to find a dangerous apex predator, the predator has to find you.

(Also quick credit- I’ve been brainstorming this world with the wonderful @delimeful who suggested the initial idea. :D )

Check out more of my work at @hiddendreamerwriting!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Logan stared at his notes, running a hand through his hair distractedly as he looked over the numbers he had practically memorized. “It doesn’t make sense.” He murmured, blinking suddenly as a thought occurred to him. “Or perhaps… it makes perfect sense.”

“What are you on about, Sanders?” His mentor asked, glancing up from his own research work.

“Sir, I’ve been going over the numbers of harpy populations again.” Logan explained, looking up as he tried to work out the logistics of his new theory. “It doesn’t add up. Based on the observations of subjects in captivity, their lifespan is averaged to be fifty years. With the birth expectancy rate being what it is, and conditions being optimal the past few decades, the population should be twice its actual size, if not more.”

“So I take it the Chimeras have been busy.” His mentor shrugged, both of them sharing a brief grim look. Chimeras were awful beasts that dominated the surrounding forests, giant monsters with a lion’s head, goat’s body, and snake tail. They were known for breathing fire and decimating clearings, feasting on whatever creature was foolish enough to cross its path.

“That’s where the anomaly occurs.” Logan adjusted his glasses, pulling together his papers. “The evidence of Chimeras in the area has… decreased.”

“Migrated elsewhere?”

Logan shook his head at the suggestion. “No, evidence has not appeared in any of the surrounding areas. In fact, based on the reports from various rangers, there’s even evidence of deceased Chimeras, in the form of discarded partial remains.”

His mentor hummed, considering this new information. “So then, what, the Chimeras are growing territorial? Beating each other up?”

“The chances of such behavior being the case are infinitesimal.” Logan negated. “Chimeras are known to welcome pack tactics. Even with the decrease in harpy populations there are plenty of other sources of food in the area so as not to necessitate violence over resources, and certainly no reason to resort to cannibalism.”

“Cannibalism?” The mentor’s eyebrows raised.

“Why else would a whole corpse not be discarded?” Logan supported his statement. “These reports indicate only small portions of the Chimera’s structure being left behind. In several accounts the horns were discovered, as well as the snake tail looking as though it were severed.”

“Hmm.” His mentor slowly turned in his chair, facing Logan head on. “So you have a theory then?”

“I do.” Logan nodded, taking a moment to straighten up. He took a deep breath. “I believe there’s a larger apex predator hunting them.”

Unsurprisingly, his mentor looked at him in disbelief. “What? What do ya mean, you think there’s something bigger than a Chimera? How the hell would we miss something like that?”

“I have no idea.” Logan admitted. “Perhaps it is new to the area, or especially skilled at camouflage. It’s exceptionally possible that there have been previous fatal encounters chalked up to be caused by one of the other several dangers of the forest. But regardless, all the evidence points to-”

“To a disease.” His mentor cut him off. “The Chimera’s likely developed some virus that’s working through their system and driving ‘em all mad. It would explain their behavior and is more plausible than a giant man eating beast nobody’s seen.”

Logan pursed his lips, never a fan of being told he was wrong.

“Look, Logan, you’re a smart kid.” His mentor explained gently, hitting another one of Logan’s buttons by calling him a child. “I think this research of yours is really admirable, it’ll make a fine thesis. You’re really onto something here. But don’t go blowing it by hypothesizing outside the realm of reality.”

Logan did not deign him with a response, appearing a bit huffy as he began to pack up his papers. It almost appeared he was a pouting child, if not for his business attire indicating his seriousness.

“I don’t want to discourage you.” His mentor continued. “This is truly remarkable! If you could discover the disease that’s infecting the Chimera population, your research would be published for certain. I can help you gain the necessary resources, it may be difficult to gain access to live samples but until then I have some friends down in the lab-”

“Thank you.” Logan cut him off with a curt nod. “I… appreciate the assistance. But I want to re-investigate my own claims before I pursue this route.”

His mentor sighed knowingly. “I know, your first discovery is always difficult. Take your time, if you want to look into this ‘apex predator’ thing by all means don’t let me stop you, but remember that your thesis needs to be built on hard evidence- not just theories.”

“Yes, I understand.” Logan gave him a soft smile. He gathered up the last of his belongings, bidding his mentor farewell before heading out the door. As soon as he left the room, Logan’s smile faded. Evidence. How was he supposed to gain evidence of a creature thought to not exist?

Well, there was only one thing to it, Logan supposed- Logan would just have to find the apex predator himself.

Now Logan was no fool, he’d grown up in the town of Sireville and knew the dangers as well as any inhabitant. It was a risky business, traversing into the forest, but Logan also knew that numbers would attract unwanted attention. He knew these woods well enough to recognize signs of danger as well as any anomalies that would prove he was on the right track. Logan was also intelligent enough to wait until the following morning, not venturing out at a time when night could befall him. To be caught in the woods at night never ended well.

It would be perhaps wise to let someone know where he was going, but if something went wrong to the point where Logan couldn’t handle himself the only thing a rescued party would discover would be his remains. Logan shuddered briefly at the thought as he entered his kitchen, giving his mother a wave before gathering the necessary supplies for his trip.

“What’s got you all dressed up?” His mother asked, peering over the counter at his attire. Logan had changed from his usual business casual into something more fitting for the forest, equipping a sturdy set of boots over his hiking pants and throwing on his tactical long sleeved shirt.

“Field study.” Logan explained, purposefully being vague as he finished packing his backpack.

“Alright, be safe.” She frowned lightly at him. “Don’t wander too far, alright? And stay on the paths.”

“I’ll be alright.” Logan reassured her, purposefully avoiding making any promises as he stepped out the door. This certainly wasn’t the first time he went out to gather evidence, having done it on several occasions throughout his studies, but it would certainly be the furthest journey yet if his expedition proved successful. Logan had taken the necessary precautions, packing extra rations should the day grow long. He didn’t pack anything for camping through the night, intending on hiking back before nightfall. At the very least he wouldn’t be foolish enough to fall asleep in the middle of the woods with so many creatures patrolling.

Logan took a deep breath, stepping in amongst the trees that had grown so familiar. He made a quick pace, wanting to get as deep as possible before the light faded. The college student took note of his surroundings, waiting for any sign of the extraordinary that he had not viewed before. The further he traveled the less familiar the trees became, growing further apart- a sure sign that larger beings had pushed them aside and nature adapted to the creature’s whims. It was truly terrifying the things that some beasts could accomplish, the impact they could have on the world around them possibly without even noticing it.

What sort of beast was Logan tracking, anyhow? He began to ponder this, growing tense as the background chattering of birds became accompanied with the low shifting of some great beasts far off. Logan paused, observing his surroundings and trying to pinpoint the noise. Could that be his target? Surely not, it wouldn’t be so easy. And yet Logan hardly recognized this clearing, and the markings upon the trees were different from any left by a harpy taking flight. Instead the limbs seemed… weary, as if something of great weight had been draped across them.

Observing further, Logan grabbed his journal and began to take diligent notes of his surroundings, adding accompanying drawings when necessary for illustration purposes. Now keeping a keen eye out for details, Logan spotted a familiar slithering track upon the forest floor. A lesser field scientist might have dismissed it for that of a Chimera’s tail, but Logan noticed there were no accompanying footprints. Furthermore, the track was far too thick to belong to a Chimera snake.

No, whatever creature laid these tracks was larger than a Chimera. Logan was practically giddy with excitement, scribbling frantically into his notebook. He was right! Some disease, indeed. Curiosity overtaking him, Logan wasn’t thinking clearly as he blindly followed the tracks deeper into the forest. The trees began to twist and curl in unnatural patterns, bent out of shape to make shade or revealing clearings of sunlight in others. Logan leapt over a fallen decaying trunk, pondering what other evidence he might discover. Perhaps some of the Chimera pieces? A discarded scale or feather? Or perhaps…

Logan froze, hearing a soft whistling noise coming from further up the path. It had a familiar pattern to it, slowly Logan recognizing the sound as faint snoring. He crept closer, now incredibly mindful of where his feet were placed. Logan peeked through the underbrush, barely holding in his gasp at the sight that awaited him.

Or perhaps the creature itself.

Logan couldn’t comprehend what was before him. At first, all Logan could process was the gigantic, ever so slightly shifting wall of red scales before him, aligned in the familiar pattern of a reptile. Before he even made an initial hypothesis Logan’s head snapped up at the sound of another snore, a hand going to his mouth at the sight. It seemed that this giant reptilian beast had a homo sapien upper half, not unlike a harpy or the merfolk. A naga.

Logan had only heard tales of them, always assumed to be mere legends or perhaps having gone extinct ages ago. But looking at the sight before him the notion of going extinct seemed ridiculous. What could possibly wipe out such a gargantuan creature, clearly bred to dominate the ecosystem? Certainly nothing less than another meteor shower.

Entranced, Logan was ever cautious as he raised his pencil to his notepad, giving one practice skritch across the paper. He flinched at the noise, but the clearing remained undisturbed. Logan gave the tiniest sigh of relief, knowing that at any moment he could be in very imminent danger.

But what was the harm in staying one moment longer to observe? If the beast were to wake this moment, Logan would certainly be unable to outrun it should the naga pursue. He would be in harm’s way anywhere, so Logan took advantage of this opportunity and began to expertly sketch the creature. He had come this far after all. Best not to waste it.

Logan stuck his tongue out in concentration, not wanting to miss a detail even in his haste to finish and get out before the creature woke. His eyes glanced up every few moments, taking in the monster’s posture. It’s position was languid, relaxed back upon its own tail as if using it as a bean bag chair. It appeared to be quite pleased, likely taking pleasure from soaking in the sun that poured through. One arm lay across its forehead, the other straight back so its fingers just grazed the ground. Logan took careful note of these appendages, aware of the sharp claws on each one and how they twitched every so often in sleep.

His drawing was beginning to take form, having captured most details he could from this angle. Logan was debating the pros and cons of attempting to move to get another angle when the naga let out a large yawn, briefly displaying its fangs. Eagerly Logan flipped to a new page, jotting down a new sketch before the sight disappeared entirely. Why, by his estimations one of those fangs could easily dwarf his entire arm in length.

So enraptured in his work was he that Logan failed to notice the yawn was only the beginning of a chain of events. The creature’s claws left the ground, coming up to stretch above its head with a creaking of bones that got Logan’s attention. He froze, watching the intimidating beast stretch skyward as it lifted its torso and basked in the sun for a moment more.

Slowly it dawned on Logan what a precarious situation he was in; his research would all be for naught if he died before presenting his findings. Logan clutched his journal to his chest, heart pounding as he watched the naga sniff the air. It didn’t take a student fluent in animal behaviors to know exactly what scent the creature had picked up as it frowned, tongue stuck out to sniff the air again.

Under normal circumstances, Logan would hope estimate that, being so small in comparison, a naga would pay a human no mind. There were much larger creatures in the forest that would make more filling prey. However, half-humans always seemed to have a dangerous curiosity about their counterparts, and Logan had trespassed into this being’s territory.

Logan gulped, all color draining from his face as those piercing red eyes bore directly down onto him. Immediately Logan turned to run (a fruitless effort), but before he had even fully turned Logan felt himself yanked backwards and into the air, eliciting a cry from the startled human who frantically tried to keep a grip on both his glasses and his book as he found himself dangling painfully upside-down, only the grip of those claws on his left leg keeping him from falling to a quick demise.

Logan found himself feeling a bit dizzy as he was brought before the naga’s face. Those fangs were perhaps a bit less intriguing as they cruelly smiled at him, the naga’s eyes boring into his soul as he was turned this way and that like a curious bauble.

“Why hello there, my little morsel.” The naga’s statement rumbled with dangerous curiosity, sending a wave of warm breath over Logan that made the human shudder. If he were not so entranced with those perilous teeth (was that a venomous sac below the rearmost fangs?) Logan might have noticed the alarming glint in its eyes. “I don’t think one of you has ever wandered this far, not without my rancid brother getting a hand on them first at least.”

Oh good lord there’s two of them. Logan jolted at this newest realization. Two? No wonder the populations were dwindling so drastically.

“So what makes you so special?” The naga tilted its head, poking Logan with a single claw, eliciting a startled breath in from the human who was very surprised he hadn’t just been torn to shreds. For now the naga seemed amused enough to watch as Logan slowly began to rotate, clearly toying with him in its ‘playful’ demeanor. “Well? Go on then, does the meager human speak?”

“I-I-” Logan cringed, loathing the sound of his own voice as it had raised an octave. It didn’t help that all the blood was rushing to his head. He cleared his throat, holding on to the minuscule hope that such a beast could be reasoned with. “Yes, I can speak.”

With a flick of its wrist Logan once again found himself airborne, letting out a high pitched noise of protest before finding himself one skipped heartbeat later once again within the monster’s clutches, this time right side up.

“‘Squeak’ is more like it.” The naga chuckled, prodding Logan’s side. The human winced away from the touch, though it was difficult with how tightly the claws were curled around him. Logan could feel his journal digging into his side.

Still, Logan couldn’t help but frown, feeling that he was being mocked.

The naga hummed, seeming to debate with itself for a moment. “So what were you doing spying on me anyhow?” It asked, its expression betraying a hint of confusion. “I heard your heart racing a mile a minute in that bush.”

Logan cringed. “You… you did?”

“Why I would have expected to find a hummingbird, I could hardly have missed it!” The naga scoffed. “And yet for all your jitters you didn’t move a muscle. Did fear make you freeze? Are you simply stupid?”

“No.” Logan answered, perhaps a bit too petulantly for dealing with a gigantic predator. He coughed, checking his temper. “I mean, ah, I was perhaps too absorbed in my own jubilation, as I had been looking for you.”

“For me?” The creature seemed to almost purr, its smile returning as Logan felt the grip around him loosen ever so slightly. “Oh, how you flatter me. Then of course you must have appreciated what you found?”

“Well...yes?” Logan turned a bit red, unaccustomed to this line of socialization. T’was a true pity his life was resting on his perilous social skills. “That is to say, you’re certainly extraordinary, surpassing all my initial expectations.”

“Hmm.” Pleased with this response, the naga settled to lay stomach down on its own scales, holding Logan out before it. The claws shifted again, now forming a sort of basin so that Logan could sit freely. “How so?”

By all of Logan’s calculations, this was going well. The creature seemed entertained enough to spare his life, for now. Logan just needed to keep the conversation going until… well, Logan preferred to focus on the present even as those perilous jaws loomed so casually above him.

“I suppose, firstly, your very existence was an unexpected surprise.” Logan adjusted his glasses, the frames having become skewed in all the excitement. “Very rarely are my assumptions incorrect, so I knew there was some manner of apex predator roaming these woods, but as to your exact classification I admit that was a mystery. There is a common understanding that nagas are creatures of legend, or perhaps long extinct. Certainly…” Logan paused, realizing perhaps this wasn’t the most logical point to bring up. “Certainly if others have discovered you, none have returned to tell the tale.”

The naga gave a scoff. “That’d be my brother’s doing, no doubt. Did you know we used to be worshiped apparently? Back in the golden days we were like gods. That was before people like him started experimenting with other uses for humans. Wasteful, if you ask me, disposing of such large numbers so quickly-”

“I wholly agree.” Logan spoke up too soon.

The naga snorted, clearly amused by the human’s timing. “I, on the other hand, prefer to play with my food.”

“...ah.” Well, that was a less than ideal response. Logan cleared his throat, trying to hide his nerves as he curled a bit in on himself, readjusting the grip on his journal. “So, ah, you mentioned a brother twice now, as well as hinting at others. How many of you are there?”

The monster frowned slightly, and Logan immediately regretted his question. “...Well I hardly think it matters, we nagas keep to ourselves well enough. Lucky you for stumbling upon the best naga of them all.” This last statement was accompanied by a very cocky smile.

“Hmm.” Logan wasn’t certain he agreed, but naturally he had no subjects to compare. “I was merely curious as I conduct research on local wildlife and wanted to compare behavioral traits between your kind and the Coachwhip species, of which your scale pattern most resembles.”

The naga blinked, glancing down at its tail as if for the first time. “It does?”

“As far as I can tell, yes.” Logan turned to his journal, flipping back through the pages. He cursed, realizing his reptile notes were in a different book. “Alright, my apologies, I forgot my scale reference sketches back home, but see?” Logan pulled up the sketch of the naga himself instead, pointing at the tail pattern. “The pattern of your scales represents a braided whip-”

“Is that me?” The naga cut him off excitedly, Logan’s stomach lurching as he was raised higher.

Logan blinked, glancing between his drawing and its inspiration. “...yes?”

He watched the naga’s reaction very carefully, hoping the monster was pleased with what it observed. At first Logan worried that the beast would be enraged at the fact Logan had been spying for an extended period, or worse yet perhaps it would feel the need to destroy his notebook to remove any evidence of its existence. To his relief, the creature seemed to be almost pleased as it took in the intricacies of the drawing.

“You made this?” A careful pair of claws pinched at the journal. Logan tightened his grip, before realizing that in a strength contest either the naga would win or his book would be shredded. With this in mind he reluctantly released, watching the massive being lift the journal ever higher to view it above its head as if to shine light through counterfeit currency.

“Yes, I have always been known for my attention to detail, and illustrations have been proven to assist in comprehension of reports-”

“Can you do it again?” The naga cut him off, handing Logan back his notebook.

“I, yes, I suppose.” Logan furrowed his brow, confused. “Right now?”

“Well it hardly appears as if you’re doing much else at the moment.” The naga gave a loud, purposeful yawn, displaying its fangs. “Of course, I’m certain I can find other, tastier ways to spend our time together…”

“Understood.” Logan grimaced, the monster’s subtlety lacking. “Very well then, is there a- particular feature you want me to illustrate?”

“Don’t go cutting any of my gorgeous figure off!” The naga scoffed. “I best be seeing my beauty tip to tail, you hear me?”

“It would be impossible not to.” Logan tried to hide his growing irritation. “But to create such a piece, I’ll need to be placed on the ground so as to have an appropriate vantage point.”

His request was considered. “Very well.” The naga agreed, setting him once again down on the ground.

Logan stumbled, surprised to once again feel solid ground under his feet. It was astounding- just moments ago, Logan would have doubted his ability to experience this ever again.

“Tick tock, come now with your tiny talents.” The naga poked him with an impatient claw. Quickly regaining his composure, Logan pulled out his writing utensil and opened to a clean page.

“Is there a particular angle you’d prefer?” Logan asked.

“I am a priceless gem, I sparkle from all angles.” The creature purred, striking a pose where it was once again draped over its own tail as if lounging on a fainting couch.

Logan huffed, fighting the urge to rant about how light reflection actually works. He glanced around, taking a few steps back and debating only for a moment if he should turn tail and leave.

“I hope you’re not thinking of running off on me.” The naga seemed to read his thoughts, raising a taunting eyebrow.

Logan jumped, focusing back to the task at hand. “I’m not.” He lied, finally putting his pencil to the pad. “Just finding the best setup location.”

The naga hummed, clearly not believing a word, but seemed satisfied to watch Logan work. A bit too satisfied, as it leaned up and attempted to watch over Logan’s shoulder.

“Stop looming, you’ll cast shadows.” Logan huffed. “And if you keep moving about I’ll never finish, sit still.”

“You’ll never finish regardless.” The naga pouted, but flopped back amongst its coils. “You’re taking forever.”

“It has hardly been a minute.” Logan debated in his head how slowly he could draw without generating suspicion. He wanted to drag this event out as long as possible, having full knowledge that if the naga was satisfied with Logan’s work he might deem Logan’s task- and thus his life- as finished. Logan shuddered at the thought.

Clearly bored, the naga’s attention was once again focused solely on Logan, preventing any escape attempts. It was quite distracting, having those piercing eyes staring down at him so intently. It was especially infuriating that Logan couldn’t guess as to what it was thinking.

Why make him draw the creature again? Surely one drawing would be enough? Perhaps it merely wanted an illustration where it could be alert and poised. But what would come next? Would the naga request more illustrations, or would the monster be satisfied? What would occur if Logan’s pencil broke? Or perhaps the creature grew hungry before Logan was even finished? Would it bother to wait around long enough for Logan to complete his depiction, or would Logan be sent down its ravenous throat at the first sign of an appetite?

“What’s your name?”

Logan blinked, stumbling out of his thought process. “...pardon?” The question felt far too mundane considering the circumstances.

“Humans have names, don’t they?” The naga tilted its head. “What’s yours?”

Logan was still perplexed that it had thought to ask. “Logan. Logan Sanders.”

The naga nodded, giving him a smile that might have been intended to be encouraging.

“...and what is your name?” Logan asked finally, realizing that’s what it wanted.

“You may call me Roman.” The naga- er, Roman- introduced himself, accompanying the statement with a little wave of his hand and a half bow.

Under normal circumstances, Logan might be expected to say it was a pleasure to meet Roman. “Stop moving.” Logan reminded him instead.

“Well aren’t you a barrel of fun, Logan.” Roman paused, rolling the name around on his tongue as he tried it out. “Logan. Looooogan. Logan! You know, once you get used to it it’s not all that terrible.”

Logan paused, once again feeling utterly perplexed as he peered up at Roman. “My name differs from yours in only three letters.”

“And what difference those three letters make.” Roman breathed an imaginary sigh of relief. He teasingly grinned at Logan. “Oh come now, I jest, live a little, Lo!”

“My name is Logan, not Lo.” Logan corrected immediately, loathing when individuals shortened his name. Roman snorted. “What’s so amusing?”

“I just realized my choice of phrasing.” Roman’s grin turned sly. “‘Live a little,’ and you are also yourself little- should be quite easy then, eh?”

Logan refused to acknowledge the jab for several moments, eventually caving with the urge to defend himself. “I am above average height for a human being, actually.” Logan felt the need to inform him.

“Well good for you.” Roman teased, and all of a sudden one of his knuckles was ruffling Logan’s hair. It startled the human enough to make him take a step back, pausing his work to readjust his appearance. The naga seemed to be finished toying with him, for now, and allowed Logan to fall back into the quiet lapse of his work. Unfortunately, with the naga’s round of questioning, Logan found his thoughts drifting elsewhere until he felt compelled to ask a few questions of his own.

“Why did you inquire about my name?” Logan asked, knowing he was venturing down a dangerous topic bringing up his own future. “It seems a bit sadistic to ask if you intend to… if you have ill intentions for myself.”

It was a bold risk, but Logan was curious if perhaps this was similar to the phenomenon of humans becoming attached to animals after naming them. If Logan could market himself in just the right way, perhaps the naga would be more taken with the novelty of his artistic talents and find he was a valuable enough individual to not end his days within Roman’s stomach.

“Hmm, I like to know.” The naga’s noncommittal shrug squashed the hopes right out of Logan. “Speaking of, are you done yet?”

Logan’s blood ran cold. “Ah, no, not quite yet.”

“Hurry up, I’m growing famished.” Roman groaned, not encouraging Logan to hurry up in the slightest. “You take much longer and I’ll just have to settle for you.”

“Settle?” Logan refused to let himself perk up too much at the peculiar word choice. “So you’re...not going to….?”

Roman laughed as if Logan was a fool. “Oh please, you’d hardly be filling. I feast on Chimeras, you’re nothing.”

Logan had never felt more elated to be told he was nothing.

“A snack, perhaps.” Roman gave him a pointed look. “A tasty one at that, if you don’t get a move on. So chip-chop, Mini Muse.”

“A muse is a source of inspiration, not the craftsman.” Logan corrected, hurrying up all the same. His heart had begun to pound with a mixture of excitement and nerves. “There, it’s finished.”

“Oh do let me see.” With a great amount of slithering the massive tail began to unravel, curling around Logan as it stretched out. Before Logan could be constricted amongst the coils Roman reached down and once again scooped up the human. Logan lost his balance briefly, settling into a safe sitting position before presenting the journal to be viewed. “Why, it’s gorgeous!”

“I’m certainly grateful it’s to your liking.” Logan conceded. He never looked at his drawings with an artistic eye, focused solely on being anatomically correct for his diagrams.

“Oh indeed, it’s amazing you can make out all my tiny features.” Roman squinted down at the paper. “A shame your works are so small, I wish to appreciate them more. You’re so fortunate to be graced with the real thing.”

“Indeed.” Logan deadpanned. He glanced at the sky, noticing the sun beginning to sink lower in the horizon. “It appears to be getting late, and I’ve likely wasted enough of your precious time. I’m certain you have several tasks which you must complete, so if you’ll just set me down-”

“Set you down?” Roman raised an eyebrow. “Why Logan, I think you and I have different ideas of how this evening will go.”

This was all the warning Logan got before Roman lunged, and a sharp pain shooting up Logan’s side. Logan hissed, completely in shock as his tense form attempted to process what just happened. His mouth gaped open, stuttering as he tried to react to the situation even as his mind clogged up.

“Shh.” Roman’s rumbling voice was right in his ear, the sound all encompassing as Logan’s vision blurred. The last thing he was aware of was Roman murmuring for him to “-just give in.”

#g/t #sanders sides #roman #logan #human!logan #naga!roman #naga #giant naga #giant/tiny #me? writing fanfic again?#...maybe

477 notes · View notes