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freshlyrage · 3 months

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Running Like Water

Chapter 21

pairing: Javier Peña x OFC (written as xReader)

fic warnings: NSFW Explicit Smut (18+ MDNI) language, strained family relationships, mentions of drug abuse, discussions of insecurities and body image issues, daddy and mommy issues

fic tags: Best friends younger sister, Life-long crush, Friends to lovers, Unrequited love, slow burn, Push and Pull, Small Town Dynamics, Secret Relationships, latina MC, Fluff and Angst, OFC!Jessica Alba face claim, sorry Lorraine I’m bringing you into this, Time jumps, 2 year age gap, pre-canon

word count: 9.4k

a/n: Whoa haven't seen you guys since last year... LOL. This is very angst filled, sadly its our last vacation chapter. Back to reality but Javier and Andrea try some new... stuff... this chapter 🍑. If it isn't your thing thats okay!

But (no pun intended) on a less sexy note, Andrea meets some family this chapter.

Sorry for the wait was busy this month having a winter break fling (that's so like me) but back to reality.

Thank you for being so patient with me always.

This is for @angelofsmalldeath-codeine

The two of you leave the studio shortly after Edmond threatened to wring Javier’s neck for the first date joke, well it is our first date. Before that though you were honestly eager to get out of the place, you needed him back in the hotel room, you needed to thank him with your mouth, with the warmth pooling on the tiny thong under your skirt. While Javi explains to Edmond that you are indeed the girl he had vented about when they first met, usually this would have made you a blushing mess but you were practically squirming in the stool. Your earrings catching the light casting a red reflection against the wall. Your eyes follow the light around the room as the two spoke, your mind drifting in places that could only be described as filthy. Edmond jokes that it had all worked out in the end, it took you a moment to catch up with their jokes. You had disassociated but Javier picked up on it and ushered the two of you out of the studio and back out into the Louisiana heat.

“I have dinner reservations so behave.” He whispers before grabbing your hand in a sweet possessive hold. Your brows quirk slightly before leaning into him completely. He seemed to be hyper focused on getting the two of you to the proper place at the right time because his eyes went all squinted while he walked you through the busy sidewalks.

“I am behaving.” You were, sure, maybe it was a bit rude of you to look around the room aimlessly while Javier caught up with his old pal, but you truly didn't mean to. There was something about girls like you, girls who craved to be wanted–once you get a taste–insatiable is the only word to describe you. So insatiable that you couldnt give a fuck about a dinner date with Javier Peña, it was so like you. So like you to feel so overwhelmed with love, a feeling so foreign, so strong that now you can't think of anything else but the thought of him inside of you. Good lord you were soaking.

His cheeks were still red, either from tears or the high sun. Regardless he looks down at you with a teasing smirk that quickly hardens and turns into a disapproving head shake. “I saw you out of the corner of my eye, querida. Wiggling around in that stool.” He says in hush tones, you break eye contact in slight embarrassment. You know that annoys him, when you shy away because you feel his body stiffen. Poor Javi, you think. One day he’ll understand you fully, he knows you better than anyone else but he still isn't used to your self-destructive tendencies of self-manipulation and constantly wondering whether he truly likes you. And despite today being the greatest testament of his devotion for you there was still that part of you that was a girl without a father. How humiliating? You also know he is never truly upset with you, even when he stands up straight and huffs a breath, it's always followed by silence, his space to try to figure you out.

There's a lot to learn, six years apart is too much for anyone. You've become four different people in these six years.

By the time the two of you entered the warmly lit restaurant you've given your brain some time to think of meeting your grandmother tomorrow, now thats a thought to have you quit squirming. The desire you felt so heavily only half an hour before left in an instant at the thought of what's to come tomorrow. As you settle in your seat the thought of your father not being alive crosses your mind, instinctively you touch the bee earrings softly.

You feel Javi watching you with intent, a small frown on his lips as he adjusts his belt buckle while he sits. If your stomach wasn't doing turns from impending doom you would have made a big dick joke, you suddenly didn’t have it in you. You quit touching the earrings and let out a shaky breath before grabbing the menu.

“What’s wrong Andrea?” He asks, stern, almost like it's a statement. Like nothing is not an answer he’ll accept. He knows something is wrong.

“I’m really nervous for tomorrow.” You admit without any tooth pulling. Uncrossing your legs beneath the table, Javi nods firmly he knew how to react to you when you admitted things like this. There's nothing you hated more than someone screwing their brows in concern and pity, he never did that. He just nodded, solid, dependable and able to listen. He doesn't respond so you continue. Brushing a piece of hair from your face you sip the water given. “I also don’t want this weekend to end. I don’t want to go back. I especially don’t want to go back if tomorrow goes bad, I don’t have it in me to explain that to my mother.” There it was, that other part. The sheer embarrassment that could be awaiting you, the possibility of being humiliated by your paternal family and coming home to a mother that will look at your tear stained cheeks and say, I told you so.

Javi clenches his jaw at the slight shake in your voice, and it’s so like him. He puts his large hand palm up at the small table between you two. Your heart grows in your chest and without hesitation you place your own small hand over his. Manicured nails circling the dry lines there, his thumb rises and wedges between two fingers tickling you a spot you never knew tickled. You choke out a giggle and dug your nails into his palm, he winces in fake pain. Ow, he grumbles. You take his hand entirely and lifts it to your face, pressing a kiss to his palm. He smiles, his dimples deepening and his eyes crinkling. “Sorry.” You say and kiss his palm again, “Sorry for attacking you with my nails even though you’ve made me the happiest girl in the world today.”

He shakes his head in a shy little act, wow, you wanted to jump his bones again. “It’s okay I like it when you’re rough.”

“Oh shut up.” You laugh, pressing his palm to your cheek before placing it back down on the table. “And I’m sorry for ruining the mood with my sulking.”

“Don’t apologize to me.” Javier furrowed his brow in disapproval, “If tomorrow doesn’t go the way you plan I’ll extend our weekend, give you time to recover here. Don’t care if it’ll be obvious to everyone that we’re together, we’ll figure it out.”

Your lips quirk in a satisfied smile, you’ll take it. You were minutes away from suggesting the two of you stay in New Orleans until the damn wedding Saturday. The two of you were so in love it was hard to be logical. Hiding your face a smidge as you lift the menu to cover your crimson cheeks. “Okay, that's fine with me.”

“God I wish I knew she was that mean to you–I’m like regretting being her friend a little bit.” You were slurping down pasta with a frown, hearing stories from high school about Lorraine. The more he uncovered, the more you regret giving her grace. Every new piece of information was followed with Javier’s attempt to excuse it. You suppose the both of you have some things to learn, you wanted to tell him that her actions and his faults were not in the slightest bit comparable. Like;

On valentine's day she got drunk and purposefully poured wine on my favorite sweater in front of all my friends. But she was mad because I skipped sunday mass with her family the week before.

Or,

I was really upset with her cheating, but she blamed it on the time I called you pretty in front of her. I guess to her that was emotionally cheating.

You sat in front of him with your mouth agape, or you cursed under your breath before shutting yourself up with carbs. “None of that is normal, you shouldn't make excuses for that sort of behavior. I doubt she does when she complains about you to other people.” You say while dabbing the corners of your lips free of marinara.

He laughs and nods in agreement, “You're right, I want to be the bigger person though. No need to be upset on my behalf querida.”

The 2nd glass of wine gets to you slightly as you roll your eyes aggressively, feeling awfully protective of your boyfriend. You remember which sweater it was, it was the white knitted one he wore to his last christmas at home, he would wear that thing to every holiday. “Whatever, god forbid I feel defensive over my man.” You whisper and bring your glass to your tinted lips. Javier’s lips quirk at its corners, you know he loved hearing that come from your mouth. You noticed it just thirty minutes prior when you told the waiter, my boyfriend would like the same. You picked up on the way he shifted in his seat when you called him baby. For the past 10 minutes you had been slipping the pet names slowly and scattered, he was getting worked up. Look who needs to behave now.

“Hmm.” He huffs, annoyed, turned on, grumpy and everything else.

You bite back a tipsy smile, slipping your pointed heel up his calf slowly, until the outsole skated his inner thigh. He shakes his head and looks to you through a half lidded gaze. “Relax.” His voice deep and striking, loud enough for the other patrons to hear. You nod in agreement and attempt to move your foot back down but before you could make the effort his hand falls between his spread legs and holds your delicate foot in place on his lap. Your breath hitches in your throat, your leg pulled so still your skirt rides up. Saving yourself from the breeze, your left leg tightens to cover the soaked fabric now exposed.

With his right hand holding your heeled foot and his left hand on the table, he grabs his glass and continues at his drink. Your breath is hitched in your throat, you feel his stare. His eyes glued to your chest, your nipples pebbled under the fabric. You don’t listen to his demand, incorrigibly you lean forward releasing some tension with the press of your legs and the hip movement required for you to move closer. “Why are you being so mean?”

His eyes narrow, “Mean? A weekend getaway, museum date and those pretty earrings.” He teases and you nearly laugh, nearly, truthfully you were so turned on you couldn’t care to play these games. You’ve had years to do that. You survey the restaurant, there had only been about ten tables and each paired with a couple or a group of men in suits. Your eyes dart to the family bathroom, Javier follows your line of sight with a smirk. No families, you note. Less guilt for what you’re about to do.

You drop your heel from his hold and wipe the corners of your mouth, “Well, you’ve spoiled me Javi.” You shrug, adjusting your small cardigan to cover your pointed nipples. He laughs a hearty chuckle. Your face falls to straight seriousness, hair readjusted. His nostrils flare at your hardened look.

“Rotten.”

Your eyes shrink with a slight hint of petulance. Like a little girl not getting her way, absolutely not. Eyes scanning the room once more, “Well if you’ll excuse me. I’m going to take care of myself in the bathroom.” You huff before rising to your feet. Feeling the table to your right shooting a glance at your figure. With a strut of false confidence, your knees were buckling with fear he won’t follow you and just think you’re upset with him. It’s the last message you want to get across after he poured his aching soul to you at the gallery.

Javier watches you walk to the bathroom and close the door behind you. Well he watches to make sure no one else was watching because the pencil skirt you decided to wear curved perfectly below your ass, making it apparent to everyone that your behind was a tight little thing. Rolling his tongue against his cheek he waits a few seconds before pinching the bridge of his nose.

He knows you, he knows you’ve been pent up since the gallery, since he put those earrings on you. How could he not know, you practically screwed your brows in bliss every time he took a look at you. Truthfully on their walk to the restaurant he was still reeling from the entire first date thing, he had never lost his composure like that—to cry in front of someone— to cry in front of you. He’d be a lying dog if it didn’t scare the living shit out of him. So scared that he nearly thought about just saying fuck it and getting down on one knee and proposing to you with some fucking earrings.

He knew it before. He knows it now that what you too have is forever, beyond time and circumstance, there was no way you two could live a life with other people. What a discovery to make on a first date.

Anyway those feelings of sheer terror and love, they’re the same in his head, were quickly replaced with every tiny possessive nickname you let leave your red bitten lips. He was fully hard by the time you decided to play footsie with him, he wondered if you felt the strain against his pants through your heels. He decided he was going to fuck you into the mattress when the two of you got back to the hotel but he supposes you had different plans.

His eyes glued to his glass he picks it up and downs it. “Fuck it.” He murmurs before wiping his mustache, adjusting his shirt and heading for a straight bee line for the bathroom.

You smile softly at him through the mirror, “I was starting to think you didn’t get the memo.” Javi nods, his mind set. Silent and brooding behind you. Your confidence seemed to have faded with each passing minute he contemplated whether to follow you or not. “I was afraid you thought I was really upset-Oh Javi.” You shriek the second he tosses your skirt over your ass. Instinctually bending a bit over the sink. Dropping to his knees, his dirty thoughts win as he slightly sinks his teeth into your tan behind. You giggle at the absurdity of it all, but he doesn’t care what it would look like to anyone else. He was a man utterly in love with his girlfriend, and with how soft her ass was.

Javier kisses each cheek of hers and laces each kiss with a bite then a firm tug. Kneading and kisses, his large palms have finally found something that he didn’t completely engulf. Why was it so sexy when his hand covered your entire breast yet even sexier that your ass finally dwarfs him? He’s never been a man above worship, above religion, still he had never believed in a god so clear, so real until he came home and had you. Was it normal to be this enthralled by a partner? Was it just the honeymoon? He really couldn't care anymore about those questions because god, Andrea, he murmurs like a prayer.

With your skirt piled at your hips, the tiny little red thong was fair game for his needy kisses. His teeth graze the string that just barely covered the one part of you that’s untouched, you buck as his fingers spread you open, the loose string falling to the side to expose you there. “Anyone ever touch you here?” He asks with his left hand holding you open, and his right thumb skimming so close. He knows the answer. He wants to hear it. You screw your eyes shut, a small whimper escapes your parted lip. Your heels slip on the tile, he lets up his left hand to hold you steady.

Tossing your hair over one shoulder and attempting to look back at him you whisper, “Never—I want to try but-”

But I’m not sure I want that sort of first time to be in a restaurant bathroom. You think.

He knows exactly what you mean, he knows how delicate this part of sex could be, he knew it's a lot more than a heat of the moment decision. He’d never, not in a place like this. Though, he had other ideas, “Another time, can I taste you here at least.” He taps at your cunt and you eagerly reach behind and slide your panties to the side. Javi smiles when he’s met with his girlfriend’s swollen cunt just for him. Good lord, he did not want to think about having to sneak around again. For the two of you to be limited beyond your control the second you step home. He wondered why he couldn’t just rent a home out here just for the two of you, just until he leaves. Will they be reduced once again to just twice a week, all pent up and hand-covering mouth sex in his bed. He tried not to think, tried.

One thing the two of you have grown fond of is him eating you out from behind. This position was just like the second time, in his room on memorial day. You look over your shoulder, the cardigan slipped low to expose the tan shoulder of yours. With lidded eyes you stare into Javier’s soul as you reach your hand between his face and your bent form. With a shy blush your delicate fingers run across the seam of your cunt and slowly up to skim the tight hole that's been the object of Javier’s deepest fantasies.

“You can taste here too.” You quip, you weren’t sure if people even did that. You could be making a fool out of yourself but you knew after his fingers got close to your asshole, you felt a new pit in your belly. Javier’s eyes raised and he suddenly felt like a kid in a candy store. Never in a million years did he ever imagine a world where you agreed to something like this. He mumbles deeply, Jesus Christ. You didn’t have to tell him twice.

He plunged his face into your cunt first, quicker and less teasing this time, they were in a public bathroom for crying out loud. His licks and sucks are wet and aggressive. His head shaking in between. You drop your head into your chest and the slow build of release. If he kept up this pace you’ll be writhing in climax in thirty more seconds. You're not sure you were ready for the moment he proceeds to eat you out just there. For a moment you wonder if this is really something people do during sex, you’ve had girl friends who have tried anal but none of them ever mentioned their boyfriends eating them out there. You wonder if you're the first people to ever do this- or it’ll feel good at all. You surely weren’t ready, the second his heavy tongue slid up to your place untouched, and you weren’t expecting such a feeling.

You shrieked loud enough for the guests to hear. Javier’s heart sank and paused for a second while you covered your mouth.

“I’m sorry-I’m sorry.”

Javier’s brows tensed, “Is it too much?” He asks lowly, looking up at the back of your head. You screw your eyes shut, and nod.

“No-I just didn’t expect for it to feel so good.” You whisper as if to do damage control for the shriek you let out, with your head dropped in shame you feel his chuckle between your cheeks. Okay, he laughs and continues again. You’re more prepared this time–yeah you two definitely aren't the firsts to discover eating ass. This has got to be popular.

His head moving skillfully, his chin skimming your cunt along with it. Shaking his head and devouring you whole. And oh, it was a feeling so good you were afraid to know what it would feel like if he applied more pressure than a tongue back there. You never saw the appeal in anything to do with anal—suddenly—you suppose it takes the right person. You always told yourself you’d never try any of that unless you were married or something— well close enough. Your knuckles go white gripping the porcelain tops. He parts for a second and spits directly on your ass, parting you to watch it slide down onto your cunt.

“You like being a dirty girl? Yeah, Andrea?” he gets close again to clean up his mess and good gracious you were close. “Letting me eat your ass like this? Used to think you were so shy—now look at what you’re letting me do to you.” He dives in again, this time reaching his entire body leans with it. His hands gripping the tops of your thighs while he moves from your cunt to your ass and back-and back again.

Your forehead presses against the mirror and you catch your own eyes for a moment and you’re absolutely disgusted by the sight. Disgusted in the best way possible. You are filthy, you love it—you loved this. You bend further to give him better access to your clit and you’re a goner. Your ears ring and you fall limp but like always he never lets you fall. He’s at his feet again, pressing your knees together. He unbuckles himself and relieves his aching cock from their confinement. You open your mouth to tell him to put it in but he speaks first.

“I’m gonna come, just let me—fuck.” He grabs himself and fists himself over your bent body. “Let me fuck your thighs really quick—please princesa, let me—” He grits and you bite your lips at the thought. Your heart skips a beat or a few, so many firsts. Why is the thought so enticing?

Okay—please, you murmur and without hesitation he drags his cock between your folds, collecting slip before thrusting. He wipes his eye as an attempt to readjust his blurry mind. The post orgasm clarity will hit him soon, it didn’t matter now he was too pent up to care. He humps you from behind, his length squeezed by your thighs and his tip nudging your overstimulated clit. There was something depraved about the action, being used in this way. Being used and loving the way it feels.

And he’s driving fast, pre-cum spreading at the tops of your thighs. How he made sex so enjoyable was beyond you, all you could do is softly sigh and moan, nearly drooling from your mouth falling open. “Javi please– I-” Perhaps your moans were a bit too loud because his hand snakes up to your mouth, effectively muzzling you. You babble incoherent begs and moans into his dry palm, while his other hand death gripped your hips for stability. It didn’t take many thrusts for you to be coming again, his hand on your hip quickly snaked to hold your thighs tighter against him and with that he finished over the tops of your thighs, painting you perfectly. His own little art piece.

There’s a ringing silence for a moment as he slips out from behind you. You catch your breath, wiping your tears away. Head heavy, too frazzled to adjust to the situation. Javier just ate your ass out in a restaurant bathroom and fucked your thighs. And you came twice in ten minutes. Jesus take the fucking wheel.

“I-I’m sorry I’ve never done anything like that before.” You almost expect for those words to come from your mouth but it aches all the same coming from his. You turn around to him, knowing the sight is probably ridiculous, tear stained cheeks, a wrap skirt hiked up your legs and his come spread at the tops of your thighs.

Your eyes soften watching him fumble to tuck himself away. You could see his jaw clenched, you knew when his mind was on overdrive. This is one of those moments. Like he’s drafting ways to apologize to you.

“I liked it.” You admit in a whisper.

His brows shoot up and he looks up to you. The color in his face returning, as he fastened his belt. “You did?”

You blush, your eyes falling to your thighs. “I did, we should try more stuff like that… it was… really hot.” You admit, looking up at him through your brow bone. His nostrils flare and he’s nodding.

“Okay.” He nods sternly in the same old grumpy Javi way.

Your lips twist at the silliness of it all. “Okay…”

“Alright.” He’s still staring at your thighs.

You giggle, “Jesus christ Javi! Clean me up!”

He jumps in place, “Right sorry.”

It’s safe to say that the two of you were quite full after the whole restaurant debacle. Frankly your last night should’ve been filled with endless love making but Javier could sense your nerves. After tipsy kisses and stumbling into the room the reality began to set in. You struggled to sleep that night, afraid of waking up to a packed room and a car ride to your grandmother's home. He slipped into the shower with you without any advances, you wouldn't mind it all but he reads you, he washes you without lingering touches and only a few kisses. The two of you find a rhythm, drying off, getting into his shirt and some panties. The two of you exchange stories before bed, who knew he was such a softy like you.

“I’m always nervous before meeting old people.” You admit. Its a stupid quirk of yours but man do the elderly intimidate you. You chose teaching because you knew that dealing with the elderly would be far from that area. “They can be so judgemental and old fashioned, its painful– every conversation.”

Javier strokes his hand against your arm, “You're rambling. It's time for bed baby.”

He was right, you had no need to bring that up, you just really didn't want the day to end. Why is that you were so afraid of the thing you yearned for your entire life?

The morning is quiet and gloomy, it rained the entire night so the sky was all gray clouds with peaking sun. The entire room was packed by the time you sat up to rub your eyes. Your stomach is so uneasy you could only take four bites of the waffles he called in for you, no syrup, just butter and powdered sugar how you like it. He’s quiet too as he folds your clothes. You check out at twelve and load his car again. He kisses your temple before opening the car door for you. You nod a silent thanks before you settle into the car seat. Head leaned against the window. Reaching into the dash board for the map, finger tracing until it stops at the road circled labeled, Andrea’s Grandma, you smile to yourself thinking about Javier at his desk circling and routing a way to her grandmother's home the night before their trip.

With fear of rejection you fiddle with the bee earrings in your ears, grounding yourself with the reminder of Javier even when he's right next to you.

The home was fairly close, only an hour away from the hotel. Javi smokes two cigarettes with the low sound of the road below the tires and slow soul music filling the car. It was then when you realized Javier was nervous too. You think of what he told you at La Belle Forme, about his panic attack. It was rare for silence to exist between them not like this. You kiss his knuckles, a few kisses, you suppose you found solace in comforting him.

When the car slowed down you weren't expecting to be approached with large estates with rolling grass and bald cypress trees casting down like curtains. When Lorena called you pictured an elderly woman in a small home, you never envisioned a large white home attached to other small homes. You looked down at the map. 4289 Coventy Court, “Its the small house, the big one is 4287.” You point, it all seemed to be on the same estate though, you'll still have to walk through this strangers beautiful front lawn in order to get to your grandmothers. Javi nods, shutting the car off. Your hands drop to play with the ripped ends of the map.

His palm comes over to your lap and grabs at your fidgeting hands, his hands always cold and dry and large. “¿Estás segura de que estás lista?” He asks so softly, he did that often, reassuring you in spanish. You inhale deeply, looking at your connected hands and then to the house peeking behind the large trees. You nod.

And there it is, right In front of you— a physical manifestation of the answers you’ve prayed to hear. Everything you've ever wanted to know. It could split you completely, could kill you, but it could free you. A small part of you hopes it splits your heart in two so that you're prepared for heartache in November at the hands of the DEA. Who knew Javier could hurt you more than your father? When did you give him that power, you suppose it’s when you realized it was love.

The two of you climb out of the truck and make your way through the cobblestone path, “I’m not going to get shot out here right?” Javi whispers and you cant even itch out a giggle from the coil of nerves in your chest, he doesn’t joke anymore. He trails behind you while you lead the way, like you know where to go— you haven’t had a fucking clue. With every tap of your sneakers on the ground you felt panic rise higher in your throat.

You could feel Javier behind you, keeping his steps slower than your own. Giving you space you weren’t sure you wanted. You appreciated it nonetheless. Like he was ready to run and get the car if anything hurts you. He’s 3 steps behind you once you close your eyes shut before knocking on the light blue door. Your eyes surveying the plants lining the white porch. “¡entra!” A distant voice calls from beyond the door and its the same voice from the phone. Something in you bursts, your eyes dart to Javier in fit of panic. Fuck it. You open the door to the home.

The astounding amount of pastels blind you. An entire rolling carpet of white at your feet, Javier holds his arm out before you nervously put your outside shoes inside this museum piece of a home. You saw her too, out of the corner of your eye. Sat in a wheelchair with hair pressed straight down to her hips, with a book in her lap – the sound of birds chirping splitting your ears as you unlace your shoes with shaky hands. Javier seemed to have slipped his shoes in record time because his socked foot took a step inside before he bent down again to grab your shoes and tossed them outside.

Standing up straight the woman in front of you widens her eyes at the sight of you, her smile splitting her face in two and you arent sure if anyone had ever looked at you with such melancholy before. She was a beautiful woman, well kept from what you can see it seemed like she had a lot of help. For once in your life you feel strong, chin up and nearly smiling. Lorena fully smiles and there it is–You can finally pin point where your bright grin comes from. "Ven aquí! Get over here before I try to walk to you!." She shouts with that same accent you remember over the phone and with that you're padding over to your grandmother. Embracing her for the first time. Receiving kisses to the side of your head, and caresses and you don’t feel sad anymore–or nervous. You sat in front of her and Javier stayed in his lane, quiet and observing. His hand on your while she explained how she found your number.

“My greatest friend Griselda moved to Laredo about a year ago. I had been pushing the poor woman to look through the phonebook for your name– I didn't know if you had our last name or hers. Whatever I found it and tried calling but your mother– you already know.”

You sure did, the conversation was what you expected it to be. She attempts to understand what your life has been like this whole time. You tell her your mother owned a boutique and that your brother was on his last week of being a bachelor, she teared up at that. You almost forgot she was around when your brother was just two years old, she laughs when explaining his biting problem. Her eyes fall between the two of you a few times, you and Javier and your joined hands. The way his were in your lap and how your nail grazed the strong tendons of your lovers hands. She kept the questions Andrea central.

Did you end up going to college?

Yes, University of Miami. I’m a middle school teacher.

She laughs and claps her hands together, she tells you taught for thirty six years. Your heart nearly bursts in your chest.

So are you living at home?

For now, yes. I’m looking to move soon.

Do you like your brother's wife to be?

Oh–yeah. She’s been my close friend since I was in middle school.

She nods, turning to her left to grab her cup of tea. There had been two cups left out. She let you in on how she kept the place so tidy, her home nurse Ms. Cristina, who worked for her every day. She points to her bird cage at the corner of the living room which shows the only non-tidy part of the house full of bird seeds on the floor, They also take of me.

“And this–.” She smiled, waving her finger in between you two. “How did you two meet.”

“Oh!” You laugh, Javier cracks a smile. “We-”

“Uh-No. I want to hear his story. Ha estado sentado ahí en completo silencio, habla, hijo.” She cuts you off in the only way elderly people know how, gracefully and silly all at once. Your cheeks burn red. Absolutely intrigued to hear his explanation. His face softens for a moment before he breaks into a deep chuckle. Rubbing his eye in that same nervous tick that he always does.

“Oh–We were just kids when we met.” He was instantly interrupted by a yelp from your grandmother.

“¡Ay, por Dios! Qué romántico. So you two have been together since then?” Perhaps it was rude but immediately you and Javier look at each other and let out a cackle in unison. Leaning into his shoulder as you giggle while your grandma sits confused, wondering what was so funny about her question. “What-What’s so funny?” She says with a hint of humor in her own tone.

Javier shakes his head and replies, “It took us close to a decade to get here.” His eyes flash to yours, soft and gleaming. He looks at you like this often—always, but there’s a different look, something close to pride. Truthfully, he was overjoyed to talk about you to someone, especially to someone who by some crazy phone call and last minute trip—is your family.

Lorena smiles, sipping her tea with a nod. Her eyes floating to something behind you, above your head. You don’t turn to see what has made her eyes misty and youthful for a moment. “Ah.. one of those. I’m familiar, promise you. What is it that you do Javier?”

He straightens up at the question like it shattered the small world he’s created with you. “I’m a DEA agent, I’m assigned in Colombia starting this November.” It was firm, devoid of laughter and pride. Like a soldier being questioned about deployment. Your grandmothers brows screw in sympathy the second he mentions being away, her eyes falling to your own. You tried to be strong but the reminder chips away at your spirit each time. Five months away. Your eyes drop to your knees.

“Ah… I see.” Softly she points her chin high, a necklace falling out of her cashmere sweater with the movement. She nudges behind you, where her eyes fell previously, you and Javier turn slightly. The image of a man in black and white, eyes light and a stern look. Clad in military attire, and a nose so similar to your own. You into the eyes of your grandfather for the first time. How could you have forgotten? You haven't even asked about him, his name–anything. You notice then that the entire hour you have spent in your grandmother's home you hadn't once thought of your father. Something about the eyes in the photo seared you, What if my fathers dead? “Your grandfather was also named Lucas. He was my high school sweetheart but we broke up after he decided to leave me for the war. Listen, I respect our military but–not for him–absolutely not. He was always leaving, estúpido, estúpido. We split when he was apart, it wasn't very easy to be in contact like it is now. But… I didn't wait, I found someone else but mija… the second he stepped foot on american soil we were married and I was pregnant with your father 3 years later.”

Javier placed his hand on your lower back at some point during her story, thumb softly rubbing into your thin t-shirt. Your eyes threatened to betray you. You know why she chooses to tell you this story, you suppose this sort of thing runs in the family. Leaving and watching the ones who leave. “He died before me, that absolute idiot.” She sniffles and shakes her head. You turn back around, facing her–she had already wiped her tears away. And she does it just like you, palm first and hurried. Who knew the sight of your grandmother crying could fill you with such warmth, you suppose you were never emotional in the same way your mother was. You wondered where it came from, you guess you can say you've got it from your grandmother.

“Oh, I'm so sorry.” You choke on your own words and she waves her hand in a its alright but it isn't motion. She grabs her teacup once more, her eyes stuck to yours until her brows shoot up in shock.

“Oh–your father. It's so like me to get wrapped up in myself, I’m sure you have a million questions. I can settle your nerves and tell you that he is very much alive.” She laughs, she really was a kookie old lady. “He also knows that you’re here.”

“What?” You and Javier blurt simultaneously, the two of you leaning in on your knees. For a split second your cheeks heat at the thought of Javier being this invested but that completely flies out the window while your grandmother nods with a smile.

“This is his estate, you think a school teacher could afford all this? His home was the big one right next door. He’s nervous but he is expecting you. I thought I’d give him time to… speak for himself.” She nods and settles her cup down once more. “I’m not trying to kick you out but he’s probably bouncing his knee for the thousandth time over there”

“You’ve gone non-verbal Andrea.” The two of you kissed your grandmother goodbye with promises of a second visit in the next few months, Javier was micro analyzing your every move. How after the bomb was dropped you had frozen in fear and only muttered 4 more words. Her brows furrowed as the two of them approached the back door of her fathers home. Javier knew what this meant, what this all means. He sees what its doing inside of you, your body is rejecting the truth that, A. your father is alive and B. He seems to be doing quite well for himself. Your grandmother gave the two of you instructions like you were on a secret mission.

Go through the back door

Javi, it's best you wait in the hall.

He will most likely be sat in his office, first door on your right.

You just nodded with a knot in your throat. Javier watches you lead the way in silence and it's killing him to know how much this is taking a toll on you already.

You have eaten in on yourself already, absent in the eyes.

He remembered fathers day being a particularly rough day for you during your summers. How you would call Javier’s house but he’d have to explain that he was on his way out fishing with Chucho. He can't think too hard about all of that, he might crumble himself and he had to be strong, he had to be that for you. You step up and look over your shoulder, nearly tripping–Javier catches you at your elbow and you are trembling.

“Sorry, I’m trying to catalog all the questions I have.” You chuckle and there isn't a bit of humor behind it, just nerves and all. “His house is way too nice. This door knob looks like pure gold.” You attempt a joke but Javier can't seem to laugh either. And like the brave girl you are, you don't hesitate this time, you twist the doorknob pushing the door open. Ahead of you was a grandiose hallway, white paneled walls with tiny intricate floral designs.

The door to his office is already in your view, a long ottoman right outside the door like a waiting room. It felt nothing like a home, like a sterile office or a Homes and Gardens spread. Javier selfishly thinks of how their home will look one day, it will never feel this cold, not in the Louisiana heat. He’d settle down with you in Louisiana. He decided this weekend, he’d like to watch you bask in under the cajun sun with a belly.

The two of you stand side by side in front of a door with no imperfections but a carving of the letter L on the wood. Your brows furrow, “Okay.” You exhale, turning to Javier knowing this is where you part, knowing that whatever goes on behind those doors could hurt you in a way he fears he can never fix. So maybe he’s just as scared, he nods silently and firm. Still putting his act up for your sense of security, he knows you can read right through it, he also knows you love that he does this for you.

He can see it on your lips, see the 3 words, the words he knows you tried to spill out twice on this trip. He shakes his head and grabs your face in a chaste kiss. Your hands hold at his shoulders as you rise on your tiptoes to return it deeper. He doesn’t let you stall, he steps away. “I’ll be right here.” Javier juts his chin toward the ottoman, and he watches you disappear into the room.

Sitting down with a strain in his lower back from the drive and his body's reaction to the thought of the ride they have to take once this is all over. Javier leans his head back, his eyes facing the ceiling. Touched with a heavy weight and the lingering thought of maybe one day having one of these moments with his own mother, if she’s out there. He busies himself with an attempt of remembering her face, drawing her in white lights behind his closed eyes that he was too damn scared to open, scared to be present. Scared of not being strong enough for you. Afraid of opening his eyes and seeing a blackhole ready to swallow him whole, engulfing himself in his own grief that he’s shoved down trying to be a man for you.

He sees your face at first, angled cheeks he first sees you now, a longer face–lips full, a nose with a tiny slope and teeth always threatening to split your lips in a smile. He also sees what you looked like in 1980, rounder cheeks, the face of a shy girl. He remembers your cheeks always being pink. His chest constricts when he pictures that same young face full of tears at fault of his own fears. That's when he makes out his mothers face, eyebrows a light-light brown, so light they always seemed barely there. Her freckle below her eye, her eyes clad with glasses and quirk between her brow. Of disapproval for all things involving their life as a family.

Javier snaps his eyes open at the thought. Straightening up, attempting to now hear what was being said behind the door. His eyes adjust to the bright light of the hall, it really felt like a waiting room. Javier blinks away the floaters.

In front of him is a single picture hung on the wall.

It's an image of your father, he sees the resemblance immediately. But that isn't what catches his eye. Javier's heart drops nauseatingly fast at the sight of two young girls-twins, in the photograph. And in cursive in the far corner,

Best Dad Ever

He’s up and hugging you before you could take in that this is really happening. The hug is tight, it's unfamiliar, it's strangling and you attempt to hug back to make it feel loving but it just isn't there yet. You want to pinch yourself, you've dreamt up this moment. You hugged your own aching body to sleep countless nights wishing for a hug from your father and now that it’s here, you can't even register the difference between him and a stranger.

He holds your face for a moment with his eyes misty, your chin quivers then. He was a splitting image of your grandfather. Eyes a hazel, his hair shaggy and long. Like he doesn't belong in a home this large, you close your eyes for a moment. Overstimulated with the situation, your father cradles your face for the first time since you were a premature newborn. He even calls you beautiful a few times and you’ve never felt stronger for not melting into a puddle of tears. Perhaps you were just too happy.

It was the happiest moment.

You sit in front of him and he has a sheet in front of him. You couldn't be bothered talking about yourself again but you do anyway, he leaned in with every small fact. He beams with a laugh when you tell him that little Frankie was expecting a baby and wedding. He claims that these past years he wondered what you were doing with your life, once your eighteenth birthday approached he says he stayed up the entire night wondering what this next step would look like for you.

“It seems like you've done well for yourself–I'm sorry Andrea, I’m sorry I wasn't there.” You were the only person in tears in the room but you couldn't be bothered to be embarrassed. The tears were only joyful, those sorts came rarely for you. You allowed them to flow without shame.

It’s okay dad, it's okay. You whisper, “My mom–she says she left because you were–”

“An addict.” He cuts. “I was, I got clean the second she fled with you. I called my mom and she sent me to a rehabilitation facility in New York. It’s where I lived most of my life, where I built my business. Where I met my wife.” He smiles to himself and you smile too. What a privilege it is to be loved by someone else. “She isn't home today, told her we would be meeting today and she decided to not overwhelm you so she’s out. I hope you don’t mind.”

You reach out for the box of tissues at his desk, dabbing your eyes. “It's okay–I'm sorry that my mom did that– leaving without notice, it-it kills me when I think of it.” You wipe again as more tears fall, god why was it so difficult to talk when crying. You think of the day after your birth often, you think of your father asleep in a hospital chair, you think of him waking up in an empty room. Your heart chips away slowly but then you look at his face again and he looks just as confused.

He straightened up and his jaw clenched. You were to oblivious to notice the change in his demeanor.

“Andrea– I knew she was going to leave– I- I encouraged her to… I was too sick. I wasn't ready then– I waited six years until I had kids.”

You swear the feeling was akin to being cut by the sharpest blade, sliced slowly down your sternum and the weight of the world on your shoulders. There you are, in front of your father, bleeding out, being drained in front of him. Your head feels light as everything you thought you knew turns on its head. Your eyes fall to your knees, staring into the denim of your pants, trying to register if any of this is real.

What? You whisper.

“Oh Andrea–Melissa–your mother. She sat in that hospital bed and cried, she begged me to get clean for you, but she didn't know how all of that worked. I had to do it for myself, and I did. I asked her to leave. I wasn’t ready, sweetheart.”

The name stung, you sat there, you were an open wound in front of your father as he explains that he made the choice to reject you.

Your chin quivered in a new way, no longer happy. No longer tears between teeth, “I’m really confused.”

“I forgave myself for that decision in rehab. I found god and I absolve myself from that guilt through years of healing, Adalina and Adare’s birth helped me free myself from that decision. I knew you were taken care of I had to–”

“I-I wasn't taken care of. I wasn't loved. I was ignored–I-I spent the holidays alone. I was raised by a nanny–When-when I fell off my bike I relied on my brother's best friend to take care of me. I needed you but I was never angry at you for not looking because I thought you were left completely in the dark.” Each word came with a sob so deep, you weren't sure your body could handle a heartbreak like this. His lips thinned and his brows creased in sympathy that didn't feel genuine. You had sisters, sisters with names awfully close to your own. "Did-did you know where I was?"

"I had you address for several years, yes." Cooly he says it. “Andrea–I'm really upset to hear that. I had assumed you were okay, you never looked for me.”

You shook your head with closed eyes, tears staining your neck. “I shouldn't have to–I’m the child…” You whined, regressing to a little girl, you couldn't help it. This was the worst pain you've felt. “I needed you– I needed a dad.”

“I understand, I understand the importance of a father in a young woman's life–I've got two of my own–But I cannot be sorry for the decision I made twenty two years ago.” How could he be so cold, so analytical. How is it that he talks about the situation like he’s just an observer?

“Three, you have three daughters.” Your voice sobers, its anger this time. You were so upset that he couldn't see this the way you do. Your eyes burn into his and there isn't anything, there's nothing. You began to wonder how he could be the product of a woman like Lorena. “You had me on January 14th 1964, you watched my mom carry me for 7 months before she couldn’t– I’m your daughter too.” You spit without a shaking breath.

His face tightens and he nods, “Technically speaking yes-”

“Oh give me a fucking break!” You cuss, jumping to your feet and he jumps in his seat.

“Please do not cuss in my home.”

You were red hot, fuming as your eyes finally took in the catholic iconography throughout the office. And the many, many pictures of your sisters. Wiping your tears with your palms, fast like you want to hide from him that he even made you cry in the first place. “You are a pathetic person. I feel so ridiculous having wasted so many years wanting you. I’ll see my way out.” You turn and he’s following you, repeating your name but no apologies. You swing the door open and Javier is there at his feet already, with a tense face. You see it, he heard it all and he’s angry.

“Please Andrea, let's just pray together.”

You cackle and glance at your boyfriend. “Let's go Javi.” You storm past him, swinging the backdoor open.

The second the rolling front yard and southern sun hits your skin you begin to sob. Chest wracking yet silent as you walk away from your fathers home. As you walk away from someone else's father. You chest hiccuping as you blurily lead yourself down the path, Javier's steps quickening behind you. Your cheeks hot and stung with tears, head pounding you knew you looked like a swollen hot mess. You hug your own shaking body all the way to the car. Climbing in the passenger's seat with more tears.

You aren't sure if you could ever be okay.

Javier circles the car with his heart in his throat, hearing each word and feeling the cuts deep. He sits and thinks, she won't be able to handle this. He knows you, he knows you enough to love you. He knows you are strong, he also knows no child is strong enough to face rejection from a parent. So he stares at your father before you have walked out the home, he contemplates killing him there. He wants to hurt the man for making you ache so badly. Call him crazy or irrational, but he thought it for a split second. Thought of hurting him.

Javier decides taking care of you was far more important than his anger.

He walks behind you,

It felt like a huge joke, like a fuck you. The beautiful scenery of the estate, the birds chirping and the world still spinning, and you're there, hugging your own body while you silently weep ahead of him.

He doesn't start the car when he gets in. He stares ahead, sick to his stomach at the sound of your cries. His eyes glued to the steering wheel, his peripheral catches you shifting to lean your temple against the window. The car was hot, sitting out in this sun. Hot enough to burn you once your elbow touches a belt buckle but the heat felt trivial. Javier glances at the map, prepared to drive back into New Orleans and extend their weekend, take you away for more days. Allow you to be detached for some more time, this was far too much for you.

“I want to go home Javi.” You whisper between tears, “It was…dumb of me to look for a family out here.”

There it was again, your eagerness for a complete family. For someone to see you, understand your pain, he heard you beyond that door. He heard you talk about being left alone, celebrating holidays with only yourself. He heard you begging for sympathy from your own blood from your own family. He heard your voice so small when you begged him to see you as his own child, as his own family.

Javier panics, he’s so overcome with emotion he isn't sure he has the words to comfort you. He can't get out what he's tried to tell you all weekend. You will always have a family with him, you no longer have to search. But it doesn't come out from his mouth.

Instead, he reaches his hand over to you and between his thumb and his pointer he rubs the earring he gifted you. The earring, the reminder. Without words he tells you, I’ve got you. He watched you the past two days rub the thing as a nervous tick, he sees your brows furrow and your chin quiver once more before you cave and lean your head against his hand. Your cries regulate and calm with each pass of his thumb against the delicate little bee in your ear. Javier watches you with blurred eyes and he remembers meeting you for the first time. He remembers putting bandages on your knees and peeling oranges for you and diving into lakes and biking, and blushing and kissing and leaving. And And And,

“Andrea, I really, really love you.”

#javier peña #javier peña x ofc #javier pena fanfiction #javier pena x you #javier peña smut #ao3 #fanfic #javier peña narcos #javier pena x reader

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apostleofthreedimensions · 5 months

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Timeline

A timeline of every time a Spacelander has visited Flatland! Starting with...

Flatland's Year 0!

My friend @frau-line had the idea of a messiah and an apostle that fell in love and lived in Spaceland together. I also saw an idea for a god myth that included a picture of a sphere with a line orbiting around it and thought that that was a banger design for a god(s). Though I cant for the life of me find it now... its a small fandom I'll see it eventually.

With that out of the way, heres these two nameless but lovely ladies. I think at this point Flatland would be in like, caveman times or something, but the line is a fast learner and quickly absorbed all information that the sphere gave her.

As for Spacelands society, theyre far ahead of Flatland, but still not nearly as technologically advanced as they are in the film. Maybe like aztec times...?

Theyve just found Flatland and know exactly nothing about it. They sent the sphere to go check it out, and when she came back a month later they had a Flatlander with them.

They study the line and Flatland and they find out... something... that makes it so they set a concrete rule to only ever visit once every thousand years to impart knowledge upon the primitive Flatlanders.

I have no idea why they decide to do this every 1000 years. Perhaps the line dies shortly after her ascension to Spaceland (due to gravitational forces) and the sphere is heartbroken and bitter and shes like "Flatland is extremely fragile we must only interact with it rarely or we will FUCK UP and KILL things"

Year 1000

frau-line fuels this scenario and the next as well. Her ideas are some of the most interesting and compelling I've seen so its hard not to steal :P

The messiah of the Year 1000 wasnt exactly thrilled to do this job, but the first official visit was something highly anticipated and that he was specifically taught to do, so he studied hard and practiced well. He thought it easy and simple until, well...

Unfortunately, the year 1000 apostle must have been at least a little unhinged before enlightenment, so this messiahs mission went wildly off the rails. As soon as he finished his geometry homework, he started a massive country-wide riot, and martyred himself before anyone could ask what he was rioting for.

As for his shape I think he was either a hexagon or an octagon i cant remember im so sorry frau line 😖😖😖

Any fucking ways the messiah is like

And he has some like. Idk not trauma, but he is a little fucked up by it and thinks he should have taken it more seriously or whatever. Who cares though

Year 2000

Saturnius and Areia. Thanking frau-line every day for creating these guys, their plot is so captivating and I have a huge soft spot for Ariea specifically.

Saturnius is a noble sphere prince that takes his job deathly seriously, and Areia is a low class line determined to spread the gospel no matter the cost. The cost ends up being a holy war that is far more destructive than the year 1000 apostle could have even imagined...

Nothing I could say about them could live up to Suovetaurilia, so please give it a read!

Year 3000

You know who these guys are.

Year 4000

Finally, my home grown boys!

Xerxes is very lacking in the self confidence department and is trying to be the best most effective messiah to date to prove himself. His hopes are shattered when he happens to pick Claude, an average pentagon working an average 9-5 job, who doesn't give a singular shit about the third dimension at all. Xerxes doesn't give up easily, and secretly interacts with Claude even after the millennial visit in order to convince Claude to become an apostle. Unfortunately, it turns out Claude is just as stubborn.

...And thats all I have! This is all just my personal headcanon, so I'd really love to hear what you all think the timeline looks like!!

#flatland #flatland 2007 #Xerxes #Claude #<- my oc

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reynaxbautista · 3 months

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✦ KYLIE VERZOSA, CISFEMALE, SHE/HER ✦ 𝐑𝐄𝐘𝐍𝐀 𝐁𝐀𝐔𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐀 the THIRTY-TWO year old has been in willow’s edge for HER ENTIRE LIFE and was a FRIENDS WITH BENIFITS to TOBY WILLOW, the deceased family. whispers on the streets are that the STRIPPER AT THE PLAY PEN who lives in WILLOUGHBY COMPLEX are said to be CHARMING and SELF-DESTRUCTIVE but i guess we’ll find out for ourselves. WRITTEN BY MEL.

𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒.

name: reyna jasmine bautista. nicknames/alias: rey.

faceclaim: kylie verzosa.

age: thirty-two. gender: cisfemale - she/her. sexuality: bisexual. date/place of birth: april 15th. currently: willow's edge.

positive traits: charming, independent, confident. negative traits: self-destructive, vain, self-serving. astrological sign: aries. archetype: the femme fatale.

𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘.

TRIGGER WARNING: divorce, poverty, cancer, hospitals

you are born to be the final piece of the puzzle, or that is the assumption. in reality, however, as bitter as the truth was to swallow -- you spent the next eighteen years being blamed for the broken pieces. when you are not the target -- you are the white flag waving between the two of them not just to get them to stop fighting, but to pay the electric bill. school is an escape for you and you try, of course you try, but your efforts more often than not lead you to falling in the middle of the pack. you have little room to know what you're going to do with your life, but the only thing you know is that you want out. out of this place where all hope goes to die.

your parents finally stop attempting to nurture their dying relationship shortly after you turn fourteen and while you have dreamed of this moment since before you could verbalize your emotions, it leaves very little room for relief. you stay with your mother in your childhood home, one that a waitress' salary could only pay so much of. thus, your childhood ends the very moment you turn sixteen -- already exposed to the harsh reality of one thing and one thing only: this world only loves those that can pay for its favor.

you finish high school, but have been working yourself like a dog. burnout has crept in by now, but survival waits for no one. turning to stripping was never in the plan -- but neither was staying in willows edge in the first place. you've just approached a decade on the pole, something you quietly celebrated in silence.

your mother's cancer diagnosis comes like a slap to the face, perhaps the biggest reason being that your father clearly doesn't care. with very little to her name and no health insurance to speak of, it is you who has to fight to keep her alive -- even if you wonder if she would have ever done the same for you. at least she dies peacefully, no longer in pain as you're holding her hand.

you throw yourself into work even more so than usual, sorting through your mother's little affairs in your off time. you spend your working hours becoming a fantasy, and become completely well-versed with the language. you are a siren -- something that they can look at but cannot touch. life has hardened you enough where overtime, you begin to take this image of yourself into everyday life. while the left side of your bed is never cold, it comes from different heat sources. you have begun to stand away from the rest of the crowd, the ice queen reigning from her throne.

you meet toby willow after after one of the first ( ? ) times aspen and toby finally called it quits. he appears like every other mark, another wallet to drain. he initially pays for your time -- and you soon realize that the two of you went to high school together ( you spent very little time acknowledging anyone in high school, as you were more there by obligation ). what was once another customer became a multiple year long booty call, one you can't seem to muster a little self-respect to ignore.

while you once dreamed of escaping willow's edge, you find yourself in the same complex you grew up again in a different unit -- still living paycheck to paycheck. but this time, you're all alone.

𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒.

adores fashion, but has no means for affording luxury. it's all about the performance of it all. most of her clothing comes from thrift stores and while she appears to be dripping in jewels when she's dancing at the club -- she's often seen in a uniform of baggy jeans and a t-shirt when she's amongst the "real world."

is a bit unsure what to do with herself when she isn't at the club. she finds herself wandering a bit aimlessly through life -- ending up more often than not either at the sunrise diner indulging in a cup of coffee and an omlet or at nite life ( the irony of it being another club she finds solace in is certainly not lost on her ), dancing the night away.

the harder shell she wears is occasionally a bit much, but comes from a need for protection. when no one else took care of her, she took care of herself.

MORE TO COME.

𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒.

click here.

𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒.

playlist.

pinterest.

#𝚁𝙴𝚈𝙽𝙰 | about.#willowsedgeintro

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divinekangaroo · 7 months

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gonna lose it all anyway - pettiot - Peaky Blinders (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

Shortly after the S4-S6 election, there's both a marriage and a swearing in to get through.

Tommy has some vowing and renouncing and that sort of thing to get through. Simple. Just words. Just process. That's all.

Tommy Shelby/Lizzie Stark, Arthur Shelby/Linda Shelby, Polly Gray, Finn Shelby, Charles Shelby, Billy Shelby, Ruby Shelby | Internal Conflict, Moral Conflict, The Lasting Legacy of Catholicism, Unreliable Narrator, Dysfunctional Family, Class Issues, Imperialism, English-Led Eurocentricism, Allusions to European-Wide Ethnic Marriage Traditions, Ghost in the Narrative, Traditional Gender Roles, 1300 Word Flash Fiction

In the interests of a micro-meta, given ppl were interested:

The theory behind this one is of those attacks on a sense of self (in other words, Tommy's choices continue to lead to an ongoing and intensifying moral trauma). This ficlet tries to bridge between Tommy's sharp traumatic breakdown at the end of S4, his apparent pulling himself together, and the S5 self destruction. The particular moral traumas I was considering here:

- swearing into parliament as a rejection of class of origin, and (by its essential absence) a forced renunciation of his Romani origin, which has been critical to his surviving and thriving to date

- swearing into parliament even though he knows it's full of hypocrites and how much he doesn't want to think of himself as a hypocrite

- saying marriage vows even though he still feels (irrationally, he knows) married to Grace

- attempting to apply various marriage traditions to overcome that (bride-gifts, blue/borrowed/old/new, wear all your wealth) because he's all about action and symbol, not words, but in that state of conflict, not being able to bring himself to do more like actually have a celebration

- Lizzie purposely picking and memorising a marriage vow which involved the word cherish, ie, cherish him??, striking at him hard because of this self-perception he's not worth that, and he'll let her down - he's off to see Jessie and the Communists that late that night, and while Jessie has no intention of sleeping with him again he doesn't know that yet, so he's almost immediately prepared to break his vows

- family (mostly Polly's) mockery/criticism/misreading of his signalling as scorning the things which are important to family (to Polly) because he's better than that

- his undercurrent ongoing hurt at Polly bringing up anything to do with religion because he's internalised everything about knowing it was her confession that nearly got him killed in S3

- this conflicted lapsed/non practicing/renounced Catholic issue of having grown up with every single milestone and marker carried by a Church ceremony, which, as a rhythm and a familiarity, does carry a sense of community connection and comfort and acknowledgment even if the whole sense of Church and God is one tainted with pain, and now he's consciously going through those milestones and markers with an outright lack of that traditional ceremony and lack of community / connection

- by now, he's acknowledged if not articulated that when he tries to do good things, bad things happen, so even Arthur's naive commentary is cutting him deep

- Polly's engrossed in Michael's issues and never really got over S3's imprisonment and the consequence, is only pushing it all down in a similar way to Tommy is; she is using every opportunity she can to slice at him (if in socially acceptable ways)

- and Linda felt important to include here, in this space between S4 and S5, because she's well into her own downward slide, and let's not forget Linda's mother was "a Catholic slut" and Linda's gone on about her mum's hypocrisy before, and will again (by allusion regarding her own sexual desire) in S5. Tommy feels Linda calling him out for hypocrisy (hypocrisy such a marker of Catholic practice, too) very deeply, because Linda's in the middle of her own hypocrite's crisis. Her insult is basically: you're a bloody Catholic even if you're not swearing under God because everyone knows Catholics say vows they don't mean. It's this thing that sometimes you don't realise someone is drunk unless you're drunk too - Linda and Tommy are broadly in the same space right now regarding collapse of self and weird resurgences of Catholic scars.

- The Bible quote from Tommy is one line of many, many lines in Matthew about the badness of hypocrisy. The allusion being that he threw that quote at his father while his dad was sitting back drinking and telling them they were lazy and slow in unloading, and now that quote's recoiling back at him even though he feels like he's working insanely hard, that work is getting him dirtier not cleaner.

#my writing #peaky blinders fanfic #peaky blinders #tommy x lizzie #polly gray #arthur x linda #as much as i like the little metas #i can't bring myself to spend longer writing an explanation for my fic than i spent on the fic itself XD #the guts: i thought getting through two such significant formal vowing events would hit tommy very hard and unexpectedly #arthur loves his little brother

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earth-ambassador-jim · 3 years

Text

Parent/Mentor Swap AU

The swaps:

Aaarrrgghh – Bular

Blinky – Nomura

Barbara – Strickler

Yeah so this was meant to just be a short explanation but it’s not so please enjoy my 2500ish word backstory for this AU. (Jim will still be the Trollhunter.)

Bular

Shortly before the Battle of Killahead Bridge Bular is talking with his father about their plans for their future kingdom. In the course of the discussion Gunmar reveals that he wants to eliminate all humans and bring about a literal Eternal Night. (Gunmar has talked about the Eternal Night before but Bular assumed it was a metaphor.)

Bular doesn’t like humans per say. He definitely agrees that their numbers need to be reduced. He certainly wants them to be cast down into the dust and subjected to the rule of trollkind…

But he doesn’t want them gone.

The thought has frankly never occurred to him.

Humans are pests but they are tasty and create useful things. The world will be worse off without them.

The second point is even worse. Bular may be rash at times but he is not a fool. Trolls may not survive under the sun but they won’t survive without it either. Bular has traveled far and wide recruiting trolls for Gunmar’s cause. He’s seen what the Northern Lands become during the winter when for a time the sun ceases to rise.

Based of off that he has a fairly good idea of what the surface will become like under the Eternal Night and it is not desirable. There is no point in taking over the surface only to decimate it.

He tries to argue these points but his father will not listen. Eventually shutting the conversation down entirely with a warning snarl.

Bular is left uneasy. He wonders if it is wise for Gunmar to be the ruler anymore. He wonders if there might be more substance to the rumors of his father’s madness then he thought.

As the War comes to a head and the Battle of Killahead Bridge draws near, Bular tries to convince his father to change his mind. He receives only growls, sneers and a couple beat downs for his trouble.

Eventually he decides that other measures must be taken.

He considers starting an uprising but he doesn’t want to kill his father. Eventually he learns of Deya’s plan to banish Gunmar into the Darklands and decides to assist her. He thinks that spending some time in a world without humans or the sun might bring Gunmar to his senses.

Unfortunately Gunmar learns of this.

Bular, not wanting to fight his father, flees. Gunmar can’t leave to pursue his son, so he sends a detachment of soldiers lead by his most trusted general Aaarrrgghh after him.

Centuries later he comes to Arcadia. He is not accepted by the local troll population for a very long time. They don’t believe he’s really changed sides. It also doesn’t help that unlike Cannon!Aaarrrgghh he is not a pacifist. (He has sworn off eating humans however.) He eventually wins them over by helping the Kanjigar protect Trollmarket. He’s brought into the market for the first time because his energy drops to dangerously low levels (he’s completely catatonic when Kanjigar finds him) because he hasn’t been near a heartstone for centuries and doesn’t eat humans anymore. (I headcannon that eating humans allows for trolls to live away from a heartstone because humans produce a similar energy but in very small amounts).

Aaarrrgghh

Aaarrrgghh’s origin story is the same as in cannon: he was given to Gunmar by Usurna to be his champion.

In this story he doesn’t switch sides at the battle of Killahead. Seeing the destruction wrought by humans on uninvolved trolls leads him to believe that Gunmar is in the right about wiping them out. When the battle of Kilahead happens, he and his detachment of soldiers become the only Gum Gums outside of the Darklands (or rather the only known Gumm-Gumms) because they were hunting for Bular at the time.

Aaarrrgghh works rather loosely with the changelings as well as doing “recruiting” of more trolls to the Gumm-Gumm cause. (More like threatening into obedience).

Aaarrrgghh comes to Arcadia when he learns of the Trollmarket and Trollhunter’s presence there.

Aaarrrgghh’s presence combined with his small battalion results in more skirmishes with Trollmarket than in cannon. Bular and Draal work with Kanjigar to protect trolls that go out to scavenge against the Gumm-Gumms. The Janus Order has their hands full keeping the constant fighting secret.

Aaarrrgghh generally stays in Barbara’s basement which has a tunnel connecting it to the sewer system. (Disguised with magic so Trollmarket trolls and maintenance workers don’t find it.)

He often leaves the window open and tries to lure cats in for him to eat. This is how he meets Toby.

Toby happens to be looking for one of their missing cats. He finds paw prints leading to the open basement window. He attempts to get in the window but is shoved back by a pole. (Aaarrrgghh has been told repeatedly to not eat the neighbors since this will draw to much scrutiny and they will have to find him a new den if he does.) This distracts him from the cat as he is now more interested in learning about the strange something living in the basement of what he thought was an unoccupied house. He starts asking Aaarrrgghh (who he can’t see) questions about himself and Aaarrrgghh (who isn’t quite sure what to do in this situation) awkwardly responds.

Eventually Toby falls into the habit of visiting Aaarrrgghh’s basement window in the evening and jabbering to him about his day. He brings him little treats and will occasionally ask him questions.

Aaarrrgghh ends up growing fond of him and decides that while he doesn’t like humans in general this one is okay and he starts making plans to keep Toby alive after Gunmar returns.

Blinky (Bartholomew Georgiou)

Blinky is given as a whelp to the Gum-Gumms by his brother Dictacious (who was working as a spy for Gunmar at the time) and made into a changeling. He’s slightly older than Barbara.

Blinky works at the Arcadia museum. He is in the habit of swapping out old, rare books with exact replicas so he can horde the originals in his secret library.

He has an incredible collection of books from many ages and places. He guards them zealously. Entering his library without permission is suicide and generally ends in the offender being blown to pieces by one of Blinky’s booby traps.

He has very few books of Trollish origin and would do just about anything for more.

Nomura

Nomura was stolen by the Gumm-Gumm’s when she was a child but her parents survived the initial raid and several decades later they are able to rescue her. Her time with the Gumm-Gumm’s have left its mark, however, and she no longer fit the other trolls in her clan. Her family eventually moves to Dwoza Trollmarket.

She doesn’t really fit in with the younglings her age there either but she makes friends with the archivist. He eventually takes her on as his apprentice and when he passes she takes over as the Trollmarket librarian. She takes her job very seriously and does not tolerate loss or abuse of books.

She becomes friends with Draal (due to having similar temperaments) and later she becomes the first troll to truly accept Bular in the Arcadia Trollmarket.

Barbara

Barbara is a 700(ish) year old changeling (equivalent of 40-50 human years) and the head of the Janus Order. She’s still a doctor and has the most knowledge of how troll and human bodies work of any one person on the planet. This is partially due to how long she’s been alive but also to the large number of often highly unethical experiments she’s carried out on both species.

Barbara meets James Sturges when she’s working on retrieving a piece of the Killahead Bridge in Maine (officially she’s just a nurse at the hospital named Janet). They hit it off and start dating. Barbara finds his expectations for how she’s supposed to act a little annoying but it suits the role she’s currently playing so she goes along with them.

Then James makes the mistake of breaking one of Barbara’s rules and goes through some of her off-limits stuff, so she kills him and disposes of the body.

She assumes that’s the end of that but about 4 months later when she tries to shift into troll form she can’t. Aside from a curse, there is one thing that will prevent a changeling from shifting back into a troll. A trip to the local pharmacy confirms it: she’s pregnant.

This is certainly a dilemma.

Until she’s done with the pregnancy (one way or another) she’s trapped in her human form.

In the past she would have had an abortion without a second thought, but with Gunmar’s release and the destruction of the human race drawing closer and closer this will probably be her last real opportunity to experience pregnancy. So out of pure scientific curiosity she decides to go through with it.

Quite a few arrangements have to be made but soon she’s on her way to her hidden cabin out in a remote area of Alaska.

The pregnancy and birth go well and soon she is the mother to a little boy. She names him James after his father, figuring that will keep her from getting attached. She plans to keep him for two or three years to observe his growth and see if any changeling traits manifest after which point she’ll drop him off at an orphanage or something. As far as the Janus Order can tell human-changeling unions produce completely human children, but one can never beat first hand observation and experience.

She initially chalks up the warm and mushy feelings she’s getting to hormones. It isn’t until Jim is about two and a half that she’s tucking him into bed one night and Jim gives her a sleepy smile and leans into her hand that she realizes that she really truly loves him.

This was not in the plan.

After Jim is asleep, Barbara calmly goes outside and devotes an hour to cursing. (One of the perks of living centuries is that she’s had ample opportunity to amass an extensive collection of swear words.) After that she feels a lot calmer and more ready to look at the situation in a rational manner.

The fact of the matter is that she genuinely cares about Jim. She’s developed feelings for people in the past but it’s always been something she’s been able to pass off as part of her cover. (She still misses her pirate crew sometimes). Jim however is not. Barbara has a lot of enemies. If Jim’s relationship to Barbara is discovered he will never know peace and if Barbara keeps Jim around it will be discovered.

So it’s with a strangely heavy heart that Barbara realizes that this changes nothing: the best thing for Jim is for her to give him up.

On his third birthday she gives him some tea that will make sure he stays soundly asleep. Barbara can’t go through the legal process of giving up a child because: A. Jim does not exist in any legal manner and B. As changelings are everywhere and Barbara is well known (infamous really) there is a very real possibility that someone would find out. So she leaves him on the doorstep of a foster family she has carefully vetted out as responsible and trustworthy and keeps watch from some hidden cameras until she knows he has been found and is going to be taken care of. With him are a note with his date of birth and first name and a necklace with a pendant carved from Barbara’s own stone (Barbara isn’t very good at magic but she was able to enchant it with a simple protection and luck spell.).

Once she’s satisfied that Jim will be cared for she goes on her way and forces herself to not look back.

Nine years later she moves to Arcadia and three years after that she is very shocked to find a found add describing the Amulet of Daylight of all things. She calls the number but is told that the amulet was already claimed. Further investigation reveals that the amulet has chosen its first human bearer (or so everyone thinks). Barbara feels a bit of a twinge in her heart when she learns that the new Trollhunter is about the same age her son would be and that his name is Jim but doesn’t think too much of it. There are a lot of Jims in the world after all and she left hers in Alaska.

She immediately arranges a very minor “accident” as an excuse to make contact with his father in order to keep an eye on him.

Walter

Walter Strickler is a history teacher at University of Alaska Anchorage. He enjoys his life and his job but there’s one thing lacking: he’s always wanted a child.

He’s had a few relationships over the years but none have ever stuck. He’s also of the opinion that he shouldn’t go into a relationship specifically with the end goal of having a kid.

He weighs his options and decides that he’s financially very stable at the moment. His work hours are consistent and he can afford to cut back a little; especially since his stock investments have been doing well in the recent years. All things considered: he decides he’s in a place that he can be a single parent.

He begins looking into adoption.

Eventually he finds Jim. As Jim has no parents or relations on record, the adoption is relatively simple.

Jim is very shy at first (having spent his life so far out in the woods with only his Mom for company). Eventually he warms up to Walter and then becomes very clingy. Living with only one other person for his early years and then being left behind has left Jim with some attachment issues.

Walter ends up taking him to his classes where he sits in the back and doodles while Walter lectures. He’s a rather quiet kid (most of the time) so this works out well. Walter’s students adopt him as the class mascot.

When Jim is five, right before he’s ready to start Kindergarten, Walter’s mom falls ill. Walter is an only child, so after some debate he ends up moving back to his hometown of Arcadia, California to care for her.

He meets Nancy Domzalski through the chest club and through her Jim meets Toby. The two boys become fast friends.

When Walter’s mother passes away four years later, he decides to stay in Arcadia. Jim is well settled and Walter enjoys his job teaching history at Arcadia High School.

Things are going well.

Then his son finds a strange blue amulet in the canal. It looks fairly expensive so Walter puts a found add up and assumes the owner will give him a call. Then settles down to work on grading papers.

He is definitely not prepared when his son, sitting across the table from him, reads an incantation off the amulet and starts floating.

He is even less prepared when a large stony monster the size of a large grizzly barges into their house.

Bular attempts to explain the situation to the father-son duo but they both faint from terror.

Not quite sure what else to do he wraps them up in a tarp and takes them to Trollmarket. He figures Vendal can sort it out.

#Trollhunters #Tales of Arcadia #Bular #walter strickler #Barbara Lake #Blinky #blinkous galadrigal #Aaarrrgghh #Nomura #jim lake jr #James Lake Jr #my posts #my writing #my AUs #Parent/Mentor Swap AU #Parent Swap AU #Mentor Swap AU #I need a better name for this #feel free to make suggestions

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the-witty-pen-name · 3 years

Text

Can’t Help Falling in Love

Loki x Reader (f)

Valentine’s Day with the God of Mischief

Based on suggestion by: @squadleaderchase

A/N: Thank you so much for the suggestion! I loved writing this, it was so much fun!

Happy Valentine’s Day y’all!

There is also a gender neutral version of this fic, and will be posted shortly after this one! Read it here!

I recommend to putting on Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis towards the end just for that finishing touch!

Summary: When Loki learns about the traditions of Valentine’s Day, he asks you to be his Valentine- and reluctantly takes advice from Steve Rogers.

Word Count: 2.9k

Warnings: none; just fluff

“Can’t Midgardians have a holiday that doesn’t involve such a grotesque display of… red?” Loki asks walking into the living room of the Avengers compound. Loki arrived at the compound a few weeks before Christmas and so far, he’s experienced two Earth holidays: Christmas and New Year’s. Of course, Tony had picked the theme for both parties to be elaborately red and gold- he claimed the fact that it matched his suit was merely a coincidence.

“Just wait until next month,” you reply casually, your eyes not leaving the brief you were reading while you sat cozied up in one of the large armchairs. “I think you’ll like St. Patrick’s Day much more… color scheme wise at least.”

Loki looked up curiously at the hearts of all shades of red and pink Natasha had hung up to decorate the Avengers’ living quarters. She had gone to visit Clint’s family and his kids spent hours making Valentines and decorations out of construction paper and glitter. Loki looked almost puzzled at the lopsided hearts that hung from the ceiling on transparent line so they looked like they floated mid-air.

“Perhaps I might,” he mumbled to himself, the lovesick aura of his surroundings making him slightly disgusted. “Though I suppose I find your rituals as bizarre as you’d find on Asgard.”

“Mhmm,” you mumbled in response to his thinking out loud. It was rare that the compound would be this quiet. It was a Friday evening and in the middle of a team meeting earlier today, Tony declared exhaustedly that everyone needs to start the weekend early and dismissed everyone despite Steve’s protests. You weren’t sure where everyone else went and you didn’t particularly care- enjoying the rare peace and quiet.

You didn’t mind Loki’s company. He was a little aloof but overall, you found him more to be misunderstood than anything else. He wasn’t like Thor and sure, he had a very trouble ridden past to downplay it- but he’s confided in you all it wasn’t entirely his doing. Out of everyone living at the compound, he probably had grown the closest to you, or as close as Loki would allow himself to be to someone.

“What even is this holiday?” Loki asked, pulling his attention from the decorations to where you sat, binder in your lap. You looked up and closed the brief, tossing it onto the coffee table in front of where you sat.

“Sunday is Valentine’s Day,” you say looking back over to him, meeting his eyes. “I mean overtime the traditions and how we celebrate have changed but it’s originally the day meant to honor St. Valentine and commemorate his death. There’s a lot more to it than that and there’s all different of different origins, but now it’s more like a day where you celebrate love, because he was the patron Saint of Love.”

Loki nods, liking the idea of this holiday much more than New Years already. He didn’t mind Christmas, but the elaborate parties made everything not very appealing to him. You can’t blame the god for not having a good time at parties where every guest fears him or hates him. He walks over and takes a seat on the couch and crosses his legs. He was intrigued enough to continue the conversation and ask you more questions. “What are the traditions?” He asks curiously.

“Traditionally, you would ask someone to be your Valentine, and that’s the person you want to spend the day with,” you answer with a small shrug, trying to explain a holiday you’ve never had to explain before. “Some people have it easy and they ask their significant other, and if you don’t have one, you ask someone you’re romantically interested in to be your Valentine. Then you give each other gifts, like chocolates or flowers, anything really that’s romantic and you go out on a date, like a nice dinner but it doesn’t have to be. That’s the basic gist.”

“Thank you, (y/n),” Loki said, mulling over your explanation. “You’ve been helpful, as always. Tell me, who’s your Valentine?”

“I don’t have one,” you answered honestly. The only time you really celebrated was when you had been with someone. You’d never really participated otherwise. You planned to just spend the night alone or with Nat if she also didn’t have plans and probably watch a movie- most definitely Pride and Prejudice.

“Shame,” Loki said with a tsk. “Perhaps, if you would be interested, you could be my Valentine?”

“Really?” you ask, honestly surprised.

“I actually like the idea of the day,” Loki shrugged. “And I don’t know many people, people seem to hate me on this planet- no idea as to why. You’ve always been kind to me, and you are the most tolerable person I’ve encountered on this planet.”

“That’s oddly very kind of you,” you say with a chuckle. “I appreciate the sentiments. Um, yes. I’d be happy to be your Valentine.”

“Excellent,” he grinned. He clapped his hands together and stood up. “Splendid. I’ll ask Thor to help me plan something.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” you smile, picking up your paperwork again as Loki heads off to find his brother.

***

“Brother,” Thor’s voice echoed in the training room. “Spar with me?”

“As much as I would love to,” Loki said sarcastically, “I need your help with something I need to plan.” Loki walked over to the side of the mat where Thor had been training with Captain Rogers.

“Plan what?” Captain Rogers asked curiously. It was an innocent enough question but Loki took it as Rogers insinuating his distrust in him. Of course, Loki can’t blame the man but it did rub him the wrong way.

“If you must know Captain Rogers, I’m making plans for this upcoming Valentine’s Day,” Loki said matter-of-factly. “I’m sure since you have quite the active love life recently, your words of wisdom are probably of infinite value.”

“You can learn a thing or two from me,” Steve retorted as he put the punching bag beck into place. “But I don’t like your attitude.”

“I don’t know how I’ll ever manage without you,” Loki scoffed. He turned his attention back to his brother. “I need help to determine where I should take (y/n) and what I should get her.”

“(y/n) agreed to this?” Thor asks, his eyebrows raised in confusion. Rogers kept his mouth shut, deciding to see where this conversation will go before

“Yes, brother. I asked her to be my Valentine as stated by tradition and she said yes.”

“Ah! Good for you, brother!” Thor exclaimed, happily. “I’m glad you’re immersing yourself in the Midgard culture.”

“Yes, yes,” Loki waved him off, “Now, please, tell me what I should do.”

“I’ve never celebrated Valentine’s Day,” Thor says with a shrug and a sympathetic look. “I haven’t had much opportunity to explore the culture. Every time I’m on this planet I’m a little busy preventing its destruction. Perhaps Rogers can help you?”

Loki let out an exasperated sigh. He avoided Rogers as he knew the man had such a smug look on his face. Loki refused to give him the satisfaction. However, he realized that wouldn’t be fair to you. Rogers not only knew what to do, but he was also close friends with you. He quickly realized if he wanted to celebrate with you properly, he’d need to rely on the infamous super soldier.

“Captain Rogers,” Loki said with a charismatic smile, turning back to the man. “I wholeheartedly apologize for my lack of… social niceties. If you’d be willing to help me, to ensure your dear friend enjoys her holiday, I would be sincerely grateful.”

“Only because of (y/n),” Rogers says skeptically, waving a finger at Loki. “She deserves to enjoy her time and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I let you screw up her evening.”

“What a loyal friend.”

Years later, the Avengers would still talk about the fact Loki cared about you so much, he sought out advice from Captain America and Thor. And as Captain America said, he helped Loki with every last detail and Steve never let Loki forget it.

***

Loki had told you that he’d come to your room to get you at 6 o’clock Sunday evening. He wore clothes he had picked out, black dress pants, a white button-down shirt and shiny, black dress shoes. He had kept the last button of the shirt unbuttoned and he had rolled the sleeves up, a styling tip he had gotten from Thor. He had his long hair gelled back and tamed, ignoring Captain Roger’s horrible suggestion for a haircut. He felt very weird not wearing any green, but he took the advice he was given on his ensemble.

You were just putting on your heels when he knocked at your door Sunday promptly at 6pm. Of course, Loki would be very punctual. You gave yourself one more quick once more in the mirror in your room before heading to answer the door.

You had on a pair of dark green heels that perfectly matched your dress. You also layered over the outfit a suede brown jacket, that complimented the jewel tone of the dress and shoes nicely. You kept your appearance simple, sticking to how you usually styled your hair. Not wanting to keep him waiting, you quickly opened the door, your jacket and bag both in hand.

“Wow,” you say with a grin, when you take in Loki’s appearance. “You look very nice.”

“You look stunning,” Loki said, his eyes widening, taking in your appearance. The compliment made you have butterflies.

“Thank you,” you said with false confidence. Underneath, you were a nervous wreck as you took the arm that he extended to you.

“So,” Loki began to walk down the hallway with you. “Apparently, this planet has something called reservations, and anyone who tries to get one a few days before Valentine’s Day is a “moron,” according to a very rude young man I had the pleasure of speaking with- the first time using a phone too on top of that. So, I hope you don’t mind if the evening is a little… makeshift.”

“I’m sure it’ll be great,” you reassure him. You feel him relax slightly. You found how hard he was trying so endearing.

Where else did he bring you but just down the hall to the living room. At night with the lights dimmed, combined with Natasha’s homemade decorations, it actually looked quite beautiful. He had decorated with an eclectic array of candles as well that covered most surfaces of the room. It also looked like he had swiped every throw pillow in the whole compound and had them arranged the coffee table in the center of the room.

“Did you do all of this?” You ask in awe.

“Yes,” he replied, just watching you. “Do you like it?”

“It’s perfect.”

“I had to make my own version of advice I received,” he disclosed to you. You sat opposite each other on either side of the coffee table, you kicked off your heels and he did the same with his shoes. “Captain Rogers said- and I’m trying my best to quote verbatim, ‘You need to show a girl a good time. You gotta take her to dinner and dancing.’” He even mimicked Steve’s voice perfectly. It made you laugh.

“I can’t believe you subjected yourself to Steve for me, I’m touched,” you smiled. “I mean I love Steve,” you continue, “But I can’t imagine you too being best friends anytime soon.”

“No, I suppose we probably won’t be,” Loki chuckles.

“I hate to point it out,” you continue, “but I think you missed both the dinner part and the dancing part of that plan.” Loki smirked and when you blinked, he transformed the whole room.

“Did I?” he asks, with an eyebrow raised. You gasp, looking around the room you were now in. You knew it was an illusion, but it felt very real. The atmosphere, the breeze coming in from the large bay windows that weren’t there before. The coffee table now a table now one of many dining tables in an incredibly high-end restaurant. The table had food, and a bottle of wine. You were stunned. There was a live band and other couples in other tables and out on the dancefloor.

“Loki?” You exclaimed, looking around at your new surroundings. It was amazing. You couldn’t believe the magic right before your eyes. Of course, you knew it was just one of his tricks, but it felt so incredibly real. You picked up your fork and took a bite of the food in front of you. It was incredible, you questioned if you were even eating.

“It’s real,” Loki said, like he could read your mind. Honestly, he had only just anticipated your next question. “I made it. Well, I made it with Friday’s supervision.”

“It’s fantastic! I can’t believe you went through all this trouble just for me.”

“Sweetheart, you are very much worth it- worth much more than this,” he responded casually, throwing in the term of endearment to see how you’d react. He caught the way it made you smile.

You continued to talk for a little while, and shared stories. You were worried that compared to his life on Asgard, he’d find your stories incredibly boring and mundane. It seemed to be the opposite. His attention was only on you and he held on to every word you said. He created this elaborate setting just to keep you the center of his attention.

“Should we dance?” He asks suddenly, a glimmer in his eye. You looked down apprehensively.

“I’m not really a dancer,” you tried to insist.

“Do you actually not want to dance, darling? Because if so, I will not bring it up again,” he says earnestly, “But, if you’re saying no because you’re afraid I’m going to judge you, I honestly can promise you I would never dream of doing so.”

You give it another moment to ponder over his words. You were taken aback at how well he seemed to know how you were thinking. You let out a sigh of defeat, and smile. “I’d love to,” you reply.

He stands up and offers you his hand. His smile is enough to make you weak at the knees. You take his hand and he leads you over to the dancefloor as the band starts playing its next song. “Does that singer sound like Elvis?” You ask, the small glitch in the illusion throwing you off for only a moment.

“I don’t know who that is,” Loki says with a laugh. He pulls you in close and rests one hand on the small of your back and the other grasps your hand close. You wrap your other arm around his shoulder. You are both pressed up incredibly close to one another. You rest your head on his chest comfortably, and you can’t see how much the action makes his whole face go red. Guiding your movements together, it mostly just swaying in place. The steps were small, and with the music playing for the two of you.

“This place is incredible,” you sigh happily looking up at him. “But I think I liked the first place a little better.”

He nodded in agreement and you got to watch a green hue encompass the walls of the restaurant as they almost melted away, and everything around the two of you just fade away. The sconces on the walls, revealed themselves to be the candles that cluttered the living room and the couples evaporated with the green mist. The table you had both sat at, turned back to the coffee table but the empty plates remained. The elaborate statues that surrounded the room turned into the furniture you knew well, and then the live band faded away to reveal Steve’s record player indeed playing a 45 of Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley.

When the room finished revealing its true appearance to you, you laid your head back on Loki’s chest and mumbled that now it was perfect. He smiled to himself, thinking about how without a doubt in his mind, Valentine’s Day is his absolute favorite holiday on Midgard. He now couldn’t believe this reality was real. If he wasn’t holding you, he’d pinch himself. You were here, with him, in his arms, dancing in the middle of the living room on this godforsaken planet.

“(y/n)?” he whispered softly as the song was coming to an end.

“Mhmm?” You responded, your eyes closed, really just basking in the feeling of being so close to him and the smell of his cologne.

“Will be mine?” He asks carefully, remembering the phrase from Captain Roger’s advice. That phrase apparently being very important if today went well and he wanted to ask you to “go steady.” You chuckled softly, hearing Steve’s influence in the phrase.

“I would love to,” you say with a shy smile looking back up to him. He beams, incredibly happy you said yes. Swept up in his emotions, he swiftly leans down and presses his lips to yours capturing them in a passionate first kiss.

“Oh gross!” You hear someone exclaim, making you both pull away. It’s Tony- who was currently holding his side in pain as Pepper elbowed him in the side.

“You really had to do that?” she chastised him, rolling her eyes and giving an apologetic look to you and Loki before pushing Tony down the hallway to give you both your moment back, as sullied as it had become thanks to Tony.

“I’m so sorry,” she said embarrassed by his outburst, ushering him out as quickly as possible.

Loki turns his head back to you, immediately after they are out of view. “Where were we, darling?” He smirks, pulling you in for another kiss.

#loki laufeyson #loki x reader #loki x you #loki x y/n #valentines day imagine #marvel imagine #mcu loki #loki imagine #loki fluff #fluff imagine #tom hiddleston x reader #tom hiddelston imagine #tom hiddleston x y/n

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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Do you think you would enjoy writing a fairytale-esque Nielan story? Except, instead of being the scary beast or the fearsome dragon like he usually is, it's Nie Mingjue who gets to be in the heroine/damsel's role. :D

Toxicity - part 1 - ao3

When Nie Mingjue turned sixteen years old, he was alone.

He had taken nothing with him but his saber, Baxia. He had hugged his brother maybe-goodbye, and then he had gone down into the saber tombs to wait to see if this was the year he was going to go insane.

He hoped it wasn’t, of course. They’d lost his father only the year before, murdered by one of their political enemies – poisoned with his own saber, secretly weakened so that it’d shatter in the middle of a night-hunt and coated with some sort of toxin that ate away his brain within a few months. If Nie Mingjue went insane this year, his little brother, Nie Huaisang, would need to step up as the leader of their sect, and he was only eight years old.

(He didn’t have to spend his eighth birthday shivering in the saber tombs that he hadn’t even known existed before that day, clutching a saber he barely knew, in pain and wondering if he was about to die, but then again, Nie Huaisang wasn’t the one who’d been cursed with a body that cultivated three times as well as everybody else but would eventually cause him to lose his mind when he turned some multiple of eight.)

If he didn’t go insane this year, Nie Mingjue would finally accept the role of sect leader officially, and he’d devote himself to making his sect as powerful as he could in the short time he had left to him. He’d been refusing the role so far, purportedly on account of his grief at his father’s death, and everyone had been very understanding – only those closest to him knew the truth. He would have preferred that Nie Huaisang not know, maybe not ever but definitely not so young, but if Nie Mingjue really did go insane this year then Nie Huaisang would have to be sect leader, or at least sect-leader-to-be with their uncle twice removed acting as sect leader until he was old enough to take charge, so he had to know.

He’d cried a lot before Nie Mingjue left, and there wasn’t anything Nie Mingjue could do about it other than spend a bit of his time in the cold saber tomb mentally cursing the ones that did this to him.

It was, he’d been informed, originally meant as a gift.

His parents had had trouble conceiving shortly after their marriage, all their pregnancies ending up as miscarriages, and rather than marry in a concubine his father, hotheaded and reckless, had taken his bride to the mountains to request help from the dragons that sometimes stayed there as they passed through Qinghe on their mysterious business.

There’d been two of them, apparently. One was a celestial dragon, blue and white as a sky at noon and just as noble, five-clawed and smooth-scaled; the other a lowly flood dragon, yellow-bellied and scuttling and stinking of earth – while the ways of dragons were mysterious, Nie Mingjue’s father had confidently asserted that the two of them were sworn brothers in the same way as men, the latter having once saved the life of the former, and that their brotherhood had once included as its chief the proud azure dragon of the east, green of scale and mightier than either of the others.

The celestial dragon had heard their plea and had been delighted to be asked. He had sung them a song of overwhelming might, filling their ears to the point that Nie Mingjue’s mother became half-deaf, and promised them that they would not only bear a child, but that it would be blessed with the strength of the heroes of the ancient days, so as to serve with honor his parents, his sect, his land, his world. He shall be righteous and unyielding, straightforward and upright, the celestial dragon had declared, and then, having exhausted himself in his exertions, had retreated to the top of the mountain to sleep.

The flood dragon had watched the whole proceeding with a pleasant smile on its face, nodding along in interest, but the very moment the celestial dragon had closed its eyes he had said, Let me give you something too and breathed out poisonous fumes that had choked them both nearly to death. With that pleasant smile still firmly on its lips, it had told them a secret: that the celestial dragon had given them a gift, but that all gifts had a price. Their child would be just like the heroes of old, a candle burning too fiercely – doomed to madness that would turn all his strength into destruction, rendered blind and unable to tell apart those he loved from those he hated, turned into a beast that knew nothing but slaughter.

But not to worry, the flood dragon said. While he did not have the strength of the celestial dragon, he had taken a little bit of their life energy and used it and his own poison to lock away the prophesied madness into one year in every eight, so that their child would be able to live free and carefree the rest of the time.

At the time, they had thanked him, but – Nie Mingjue’s mother had been so weakened by the poison that she had not survived his birth, his father rendered vulnerable to his neighbor’s underhanded attack, and far from living free and carefree Nie Mingjue lived instead in terror of his eventual fate, knowing that one day he would go mad in the worst sort of way.

Some gift!

Nie Mingjue spent his sixteenth birthday meditating in the saber tombs, his saber unsheathed on his lap in the likely vain hope that if he really did go insane, he would turn it against himself out of lack of any other enemy to butcher as his ancestors had once done to animals for trade. He remained there for two days and two nights, wracked with terrible gripping pain from the remnants of the flood dragon’s palliative poison, and emerged only once there was no trace of the date left and he had answered all the questions posed to him by the guards set at the door to the tombs to their satisfaction, proving that he hadn’t gone mad and didn’t need to be left inside to either kill himself or slowly starve to death.

His brother was waiting for him by the gate of their home and had thrown himself into his arms, weeping, and Nie Mingjue vowed to himself that he would use the next eight years of his life to let Nie Huaisang live the best life he could give him.

He did the best he could.

Nie Mingjue devoted himself to strengthening his sect, recruiting steadily and devoting all his time to sect matters, putting aside any frivolity; to each one who rose to a level of sufficient strength and trust, Nie Mingjue entrusted the duty of guarding Nie Huaisang, pleading with them that when he died they would put themselves into his shoes, care for him as any elder brother would. He made sure his borders were well-defended and well-stocked, layer after layer of protections in place in the event of external attack, building it so that it could shut tight like a turtle in its shell, hidden behind an implacable wall of iron. To deal with internal threats, he promoted people on the basis of talent, careful not to have either too many old retainers or too many new faces, wanting each group to watch the other to try to forestall the other.

He tried to strengthen Nie Huaisang himself, but he had much less success with that. Terrified as he was of lashing out against his loved ones, Nie Mingjue found himself yielding time and time again to all of Nie Huaisang’s requests, forgiving all his faults and mistakes, the only educational tools left to him being scolding and appeals to Nie Huaisang’s own good sense.

Still, Nie Huaisang grew up clever, if lazy and a mediocre cultivator, and there was darkness in his eyes when he spoke of dragons, a common artistic motif that never appeared in any of his art.

When Nie Mingjue was twenty three and Nie Huaisang fifteen, he sent letters to the reclusive Cloud Recesses, a sect hidden away in the mountains of Gusu that was renowned for its artistic achievements in music and painting as well as swordsmanship, asking for permission for Nie Huaisang to attend lessons that summer. They agreed, leading to a flock of other sects seeking similar permission lest the Nie sect use the opportunity to form an alliance without including them.

Nie Mingjue had only been trying to find a place where Nie Huaisang could learn skills that would suit him well, and also to keep him out of the growing tensions developing with the Wen sect that had killed his father and had made several attempts to kill him, too, that only failed on account of underestimating his cultivation and martial skills – an easy mistake to make, if you didn’t know his story – but having Nie Huaisang befriend the other sect heirs and shining talents of his generation could only help increase his security, so he approved.

When he came to drop Nie Huaisang off, though, he insisted, as regretfully and politely as he could, on hearing about the defenses they had in place.

“If you do not trust us to protect your brother, perhaps you should rethink sending him to us at all,” Lan Qiren said, voice sharp and querulous. He was the sect’s representative – not actually sect leader, but the one who left their reclusive abode to do the external parts of the job normally associated with leadership – and the teacher in charge of the visiting students, and Nie Mingjue did not want to offend him, but he also knew how insidious the Wen sect could be when they wanted. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, unwilling to retract the demand but also not wanting to spoil Nie Huaisang’s visit before it had even begun.

“It is a reasonable request,” said a calm voice that nevertheless carried with it a hint of laughter from behind his back, and Nie Mingjue tensed, not having heard someone approach. “Let me show Sect Leader Nie around, uncle.”

Lan Qiren’s face softened at once, something Nie Mingjue had never seen happen on his face before; he stroked his beard and cleared his throat before nodding, saving face by allowing himself to be persuaded.

Nie Mingjue saluted and bowed deeply, murmuring, “My sincere thanks for your indulgence,” before turning to look at – the most beautiful young man he’d ever seen in his life, actually. Tall and slender, dressed in the Lan sect’s white and blue, with a xiao tucked into his belt and a gentle smile on his face and warmth in his eyes...

Nie Mingjue had to clear his throat himself before saluting him as well, although the young man hummed immediately in disapproval and caught him before he could bow. “Nie Mingjue,” he said. “Of Qinghe Nie. And you are…?”

“Lan Xichen,” the young man said, omitting even his sect affiliation – though that was obvious enough. “Come with me, I’ll show you the main defenses we have set in place, although not all of them, of course.”

“Naturally,” Nie Mingjue hurried to say. “I would never want to pry into your sect’s secrets, Lan-gongzi! It’s only – my younger brother…”

“You’re worried about him,” Lan Xichen said, his smile deepening. “I understand.”

Normally, Nie Mingjue would leave it at that – he was not overly given to speaking with people, but he couldn’t help himself in this case. “He’s all I have in the world,” he admitted. “And I know I can’t protect him forever, or even for very much longer, but…what I can do, I would do.”

“You don’t need to explain, Sect Leader Nie –”

“Please,” Nie Mingjue said gruffly. “Call me by name.”

“Then I insist you call me by mine,” Lan Xichen said.

Nie Mingjue nodded, and they walked in comfortable silence. After a while, he, again uncharacteristically, initiated conversation: “You called Teacher Lan uncle, and he seems especially fond of you, much more than most. Are you directly related?”

“Oh, yes,” Lan Xichen said. “I’m his – ah, his nephew.”

Nie Mingjue frowned. “Really? I thought that was Lan Wangji…?”

“My younger brother,” Lan Xichen said, and he looked so pleased that Nie Mingjue didn’t have it in him to question any further, even though he’d really thought that Lan Wangji was the sole sect heir.

Still, when they came across Lan Wangji himself a little later, he saluted them both and referred to Lan Xichen as ‘xiongzhang’ – formal, but then again, Lan Wangji was very formal in all things – with a minute change of expression that suggested adoration, even awe, and so Nie Mingjue told himself that perhaps he had been mistaken. Or perhaps he had simply misunderstood, perhaps Lan Wangji was only the acting sect heir for external affairs, in the same way that Lan Qiren was, or maybe Lan Xichen had simply been exempted from the line of inheritance for whatever reason…

Either way, it wasn’t really his business.

He certainly wasn’t going to bring it up in front of Lan Xichen, with whom he unexpectedly got along splendidly – the conversation flowed easily, ranging over all sorts of subjects, and Nie Mingjue felt comfortable as if he’d known the other man for years.

“We must have been brothers in a past life,” he told Lan Xichen, and noticed the way Lan Xichen’s eyes grew briefly distant and dim, a little sad.

“We must have been,” he agreed, and clasped Nie Mingjue’s hands in his. “Regardless, I do not have words to express how much joy it brings me to meet you again in this life, my friend.”

Nie Mingjue went home feeling as light as air.

He clung onto that feeling throughout his twenty-fourth birthday, when the pangs of the poison wracked his body into horrific spasms, his back arching and arms and legs thrashing and every vein and meridian in his body aching fit to burst; it hurt so much that he thought he really would go insane, but just when he thought it was too much the pain began to fade and he survived.

Still, the experience was a bitter reminder that no matter how much Nie Mingjue’s heart sang and mood brightened at every letter from Lan Xichen, no matter how much he looked forward to discussion conferences as much as he had previously despised them only for the chance to see him, they could never be anything more than friends.

Distant friends, even. Bad enough that he would cause Nie Huaisang so much pain when he died too young – it didn’t seem right to impose friendship on someone else who did not know.

Of course, thinking was one thing and enacting another, and Lan Xichen ignored every attempt he made to try away and put distance between them, visiting whenever he didn’t answer letters and refusing to be dissuaded when he tried to keep his responses curt and uninviting.

“Xichen, please,” Nie Mingjue said one evening, when they had been walking the ramparts in the Unclean Realm, he in his familial green and Lan Xichen in blue but both cast into equal shades of grey in the light of the moon, and he thought he’d never been happier in his life. “You don’t understand – I’m going to die, and you’ll be left behind. How can I do that to you?”

“Even if you died tomorrow, I would be happy to have been your friend today,” Lan Xichen declared, and Nie Mingjue wanted to kiss him more than anything. “Don’t push me away, Mingjue-xiong. Please.”

Nie Mingjue always yielded to those he loved most.

“All right,” he said with a sigh. “All right. Only promise me that you’ll stay safe, and that if – if I ever turn on you, or threaten you –”

“Remember that I can defend myself,” Lan Xichen said with a laugh. “Better than you might think. You aren’t nearly as bad at controlling your temper as you think, Mingjue-xiong.”

Nie Mingjue couldn’t explain more without explaining it all, and he didn’t want Lan Xichen to pity him, so he didn’t. They parted on good terms, with Nie Mingjue promising to return each correspondence as soon as he received them this time, and to let Lan Xichen know if he got any more “stupid ideas” from which he needed to be dissuaded.

The next letter arrived in the hands of a young man with a pleasant smile who introduced himself as Meng Yao.

“Xichen-xiong said that you valued talent and recognized merit,” he said. “I thought I might prevail on his recommendation, if you have room…?”

Nie Mingjue thought to himself with a smile that Lan Xichen had sent him a babysitter, and agreed to accept Meng Yao as a guest disciple. It didn’t take long to realize that Lan Xichen had sent him a treasure, brilliant at organizing and personnel management, wise beyond his years, and while he didn’t want to embarrass his friend by thanking him directly, he made sure to speak very highly of Meng Yao in all his letters. Lan Xichen responded warmly, saying how happy he was that Nie Mingjue was surrounded by people he trusted who supported him, and Nie Mingjue thought to himself with satisfaction that his message had been understood.

#mdzs #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #lan xichen #jin guangyao #my fic #my fics #toxicity #wantonlywindswept

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hauntedbythefanficsofmypast · 4 years

Text

Roma Marinette pt. 1

Marinette's parents joined a traveling circus a year before Marinette was born. They make all the food that's sold as well as food for their fellow travelers.

Marinette is born in the circus. She is one of three kids. Only one year younger than Dick Grayson, Dickie as she grows up calling him, and five years younger than Johnny Grayson. Dick's nickname for Marinette is Marigold. Marinette takes to the Graysons she and Dick adore each other and all the Graysons love little Mari. With Tom and Sabine's permission they start training her along with Dick. Both kids fast learners with what seems like an ability to completely defy gravity and break its rules.

Dick and Marinette are stuck at the hip learning everything their circus family can teach them. Marinette is the one that decides that they should learn knife throwing and fire spinning. While Dick decides they are going to work out with the strong men and learn how to handle the animals.

While they are still too young to join in on the trapeze they are allowed in the show. Together they wow crowds doing cartwheels, flips, and complicated floor routines together. Once they are 6 they are allowed to fly with the rest of them. Their shows garner more and more attention, everyone wanting to see the two youngest aerialists in the world.

Everything is perfect in their lives, until they go to Gotham for a show. Dick parents begin acting weirdly, hugging Dick more and more, while looking at him in a resigned manner. This causes both to worry a bit but they don't let it show. When Dick sees people messing with the trapeze both of them brush it off. Before the show they meet the young Drake family and take a picture together. Marinette and Dick are on one knee together with Tim sitting on their bent knees.

When the lines snap Marinette and Dick stand on the boards opposite of each other watching in horror as the lines snap. In minutes both are on the ground near the bodies, Dick crying silently holding his mother's bracelet while Marinette holds him tightly crying herself.

Bruce walks up and talks to the two and is slightly surprised to find that Marinette wasn't their daughter. Marinette smiles weakly telling them she was pretty damn close. Bruce comforts Dick before going to talk with the Commissioner and a Social Worker.

Before the end of the night Dick is packing up his stuff and getting ready to leave with the social worker. Bruce never leaves their sides. Marinette stops Dick from leaving and hands him her stuffed tiger named Sikhaya. Dick hugs it tightly before pulling out his elephant Zitka and giving it to her.

Marinette pulls him into a tight hug sniffling into his shoulder.

Mari- Don't you dare forget me Richard Grayson. We'll find each other again someday Dickie. So until then don't you dare forget me.

Dick- I could never forget you Bluejay.

Two months later Marinette and her parents leave the circus and settle down in Paris. It breaks their hearts but after the Grayson's tragedy Tom and Sabine find it the best option.

Dick and Marinette don't see each other for a very long time, but they never forget the other.

Zitka is well loved and taken care of. The stuffed animal has a special place on Marinette's bed even when she is an adult. While Dick takes to putting Sikhaya on a shelf when his brothers come into the mix, not wanting it to be destroyed if they become destructive.

Dick grows up as Bruce's son becoming Robin when he turns nine. At thirteen he joins a team of young superheroes, at fifthteen he leaves behind Robin giving the mantle to his new brother Jason. He also begins dating Barbara. They break up a year later when Dick realizes he is continually comparing Barbara to Marinette. When he becomes seventeen he mourns the loss of his brother and nearly kills the Joker, only stopped by Batman. He takes a year break, taking counseling sessions with a reformed Harley Quinn. During his break he meets Tim Drake once again, he doesn't remember him however. He begins training Tim to find solace in acting as a brother again, he also digs up evidence on why the Drakes are terrible parents. Dick encourages Tim to become Robin, his first night out as Robin is Nightwing's return. When he turns 18 he goes to the police academy, and once he graduates he becomes part time and goes to college for business. He is 20 when Red Hood begins targeting the entire family. Jason was not prepared for how vicious Dick got when he shot Tim. Batman once again stops Dick in his anger, telling him once again that neither of his brothers would want him to kill. Jason uses this time to escape from the family and drops into hiding. He hacks into the Batcave and watches the caves videos and reading reports of what's happened since his death. When Jason finally comes back he is ashamed and is surprised when Dick simply hugs him crying. Things are tense between Bruce and Jason, but a few counseling sessions with Harley and their relationship is slowly rebuilding. Shortly after Damian comes into their lives. Dick is quick to knock Damian down when he attacks Tim. He tells Damian that he doesn't care who his mother is, or that he is Bruce's blood son. He slowly brings Damian into the family. While the boy is still distant and mean to the family they all notice he doesn't mean his insults anymore. When Dick is twenty-two he graduates college with a degree in business. He begins working at Wayne Enterprises as well, he mainly works from home and behind the scenes with Mr. Fox. No one outside the company knows he also works there, the entirety of Gotham believes he is just Officer Grayson.

Marinette grows up in Paris with absent parents. They love her but now that they have their own business they only have time for dinner with Marinette. While she is upset she joins gymnastics and aerial arts classes, quickly rising to the position of top student. She also begins going to regular school during her first day. She is so nervous she keeps tripping. The entire class soon begins to view her as clumsy, something that sticks. Even though Marinette only trips afterwards when someone does it on purpose, they choose to ignore the fact she catches herself quickly. While everyone believes she is just clumsy Marinette no one realizes that she is Paris's national champion in Gymnastics. Marinette is so good that they want her on Paris's Olympic team once she turns 16. When she turns ten she realizes she can sell her designs online. She pulls out all her notebooks pulling out her favorite designs and begins to make them all. Once done she creates a website under the name Marigold. On each outfit she hand stitches Mari in gold thread, for a signature marking. Marinette slowly makes friends outside her classmates, while they are nice they all stand by when Chloe attempts to bully Marinette and she doesn't like that. Especially when she sticks up for a few of them, she remains civil and polite to them although in her eyes she is clearly distant. When she is thirteen she becomes friends with Alya, the two girls slowly growing closer. She also develops a crush on Adrien that Alya blows way out of proportion wanting to help her new bestie. While Marinette likes Alya, Dick still holds the spot of best friend in her heart. Marinette also becomes Ladybug, she struggles at first but her years of training in flying helps her greatly and her aim has not deteriorated since leaving the circus. Marinette begins making less clothes and takes up karate classes as well four days go to gymnastics, two go to aerial arts and one to karate. Her three main instructors make the connection to her being Ladybug after a year, when Ladybug uses an aerial move that only she has ever used in front of them.

Aerial Arts- Madeline Saint Cloud

Gymnastics- Tasha Buchanan

Karate- Abraham Lebanon

Instead of confronting her the three get together and come up with a way to help Marinette. They start by deciding that Chat Noir either needs to get serious or get lost. One month later they all have solid examples of. why Marinette needs to bench him if he doesn't. It's at that time they confront her. Marinette attempts to lie saying that she isn't but stops when Madeline speaks up.

Madeline- My dear bird, you've never liked lying. You've rarely done it, and because of that you are truly terrible at lying

Marinette is dejected and apologizes to Tikki, but the Kwami just smiles telling Marinette that it wasn't the first time a Ladybug's mentor had found out.

Tikki- It's just never been three before!!

Marinette listens to her instructors carefully before telling them that she agrees. She tells them her partner looks through life with rose colored glasses. That while she does find him kind and silly she doesn't have a crush on him. That she doesn't find him as kind, caring, or as funny as Dick. She pauses after saying this, surprised that she hadn't said Adrien. Her instructors watch her as she closes in on herself taking a moment to sort through her thoughts. Once she is done a stray tear falls from her left eye.

Marinette- After all this time my thoughts still drift back to him…Chaton will never measure up to the person I truly love. His insistence and pushing do nothing more than cause stress on our partnership. I will look into having him either replaced or given one last chance.

That night she lays in bed hugging Zitka close to her chest as she stares out her open trap door at the stars. A few minutes go by and Marinette gets out of bed gently setting Zitka down. She walks over pulling the pictures of Adrien down, as well as his schedule tossing them all in the trash. Once done she climbs out onto her rooftop garden Tikki following her and sitting on Marinette's knee once the girl sits down.

Marinette- Adrien...Adrien Im sorry. I took your act of kindness and compared it to the kindness I use to have daily. Instead of seeing you, I saw Dickie. I thought I loved you, but I loved the kindness you showed me, that reminded me so much of him. I don't love you like that Adrien, instead of wanting to be your girlfriend. I just want to be your friend, so from this day on I will try harder to be that.

Two days later Ladybug tells Chat Noir to meet her on the Eiffel Tower that night after patrol. She tells him that she isn't in love with him and that she never will be. She knows she is coming off harsh and she tells him that, then explains that she needs to because after a year he is still acting like this. Chat is clearly saddened, this causes Ladybug to sigh and hug him.

Ladybug- I know it hurts, but you need to come to terms with this Chaton. You are my partner and you're like a brother to me. My heart is already taken, Chaton I have loved him since I was a child. Even if I was to date another right now I would just continue to compare them to my Robin.

Chat agrees to take things more seriously telling her that he still loves her, but he understands. He promises her that he will not let his feelings get in the way anymore. As the months pass the two become closer and closer. When Lila arrives Adrien already knows that she is lying and takes to avoiding her. When he spots Marinette getting put down by Alya and Nino for telling them Lila was lying he is quick to stand up for her. This causes a split among their classmates they don't want to be mean to Adrien, but he is always with Marinette. Lila is constantly telling the class that Marinette is bullying her and they want to do something but Adrien gets in their way. While Adrien and Marinette get closer they both realize one day that their partner in suits and civies is the same person. After them the two are rarely separate from each other. Gabriel finds Marinette very respectable despite Marinette being Roma, which would caused him to turn up his nose at first. He allows Adrien to spend more time with her, giving him permission to attend her gymnastics competitions. She is fifthteen when she becomes the new Guardian. By the time both are sixteen they have been outcast by their class and forced to the back. However they did not allow this to way down on them. Adrien had gained permission to model for Marinette along with their friends Luka and Kagami, and Jagged and Clara, two of Marinette's most famous clientele. Marigold was a very well known designer however no one knew what she looked like. Marinette never stepped out in public so the media didn't know the designer was a high school student. Marinette was also old enough to try for a spot on the Olympic team. She is sent an email the day of her birthday and Tasha laughs at the subtle begging in the email. Marinette is quick to agree and the four friends go out for dinner to celebrate. Only for it to be ruined when Lila shows up with Alya, Rose, and Alix claiming that they stole the table she reserved. Adrien was going to snap until Marinette placed a hand on his arm. She wiped her mouth standing up gracefully. She smiled politely at the four telling them not to worry the table was open now. The four walk away together not acknowledging Lila's glare. Marinette is seventeen when she participates in the Tokyo Olympics Adrien going with both her and Tasha. She uses Kaalki to get her and Adrien back to Paris for Akuma attacks. She loves her entire time in the Olympic Village. Marinette takes the gold for all four events. She is crying as she stands with her teammates four medals around her neck. Returning to Paris had been wonderful, she was greeted by the President and the Mayor and many fans. Adrien teased her relentlessly over the amount of fans she had. Once they returned to school the entire class demanded to know why Marinette never told them. Marinette simply sighs telling them she never kept it a secret. That she'd told them plenty of time she couldn't do something because of training. The class is really upset and they try to get Bustier on their side and the teacher just sighs softly wishing she never agreed with the Principal to teach Lila Rossi. Bustier knew she wasn't the best teacher but that girl destroyed her reputation by turning her class into the worst in the school. They are eighteen when they begin attending college Marinette for fashion and Adrien business. Marinette is nineteen when she and Adrien take down Hawkmoth only to discover Gabriel Agreste underneath. They hand him over to the cops before heading to the Eiffel tower together. Once there Adrien and Marinette de-transform and Adrien breaks down, Marinette pulls him into a tight hug tear of her own falling. Two months later Adrien sold off his father's company and the mansion. Moving into a cosy apartment with Marinette. Adrien takes the last name Dupain-Cheng and the announce it together on their way to the next Olympics when Marinette is twenty-one. She once again takes home all four gold medals, keeping her title for another four years. They graduate college together at twenty-two, and decide its time for the world to meet Marigold. Marinette reveals herself to the world as Marigold, and everyone in the fashion industry is talking about the young women who built her fashion empire before she was even 18. Adrien takes a job in her company head of PR. When they fully introduce themselves they become known as Marinette and Adrien D.C. The world is talking about the D.C. siblings, most of the conversations being around Adrien no longer going by Agreste. Together they travel the world, nothing changing in their lives until they visit Gotham, and Marigold receives an invitation to the Wayne Charity Event.

Marinette's first stop in Gotham is the place where the Graysons fell. Adrien goes with her hugging her gently as she softly cries. The next day she visits their graves alone, saying hello to the cold stone and asking if they remember her. She leaves flowers on the graves and a letter to each of them, including one to Dick.

Marinette- Thank you for all you taught me and encouraged me to learn. I never thought I'd use my flying to save peoples lives when I returned to Paris. Please continue watching over me and Dickie. I'm going to find him, I promise.

She leaves the graves feeling a lighter happy to have visited them once again

When the Charity Event arrived Marinette and Adrien D.C. couldn't wait to leave their mark on Gotham high society. Unknown to both of them that Dick Grayson had become Richard Grayson-Wayne.

@blackmagicforever

@chocolateherringtacofan

@mythogaychic

#maribat #miraculous ladybug #miraculous fandom #miraculous marinette #miraculoustalesofladybugandcatnoir #miraculous au #dinette #batfam dick grayson #dick grayson #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #lila salt #circus #class salt #batman #batfamily #BatFam

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girlactionfigure · 3 years

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Just Another Terrorist

I remember well the day in early June of 1968 when Robert F. Kennedy was murdered. I was a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, teaching several courses while supposedly working on a dissertation that I never wrote. I awoke in the morning to the news that he had been shot in California, shortly after the primary victory that instantly established him as, in his unintentionally ironic words, “a viable candidate” for the presidency.

I went to my classes in the morning. The students were stunned. I said, stupidly, that I thought he would pull through. I didn’t know what else to do, so I started teaching my logic class. Some of the students left, and nobody, including me, paid attention to the material.

Counterfactual speculation in history has a deservedly bad reputation. It’s hard to predict how things would have been different if Kennedy had lived to run, and – quite likely – to be elected President. Would he have withdrawn the US from Vietnam more quickly, or, alternatively, presided over a military victory? Would he have improved race relations in the country? Would he have been quicker than Richard Nixon to help Israel in 1973? He was a great supporter of Israel, and indeed that was the motive of the man convicted of murdering him, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.

Sirhan is a Christian Arab who was born in Jerusalem. In 1948, his family moved from the western to the eastern part, “for fear of what life would be like under Jewish rule.” In 1956, when he was 12, they moved to the US. Immediately after the murder, he claimed that he had done it because of Kennedy’s pro-Israel sympathies:

Sirhan told his captors that he had made the decision to kill Kennedy only three weeks earlier. On the radio, he had heard a speech delivered by the candidate during a visit to a synagogue, in which Kennedy promised to arm Israel with dozens of warplanes, calling it the lesson he’d learned from the Six-Day War a year earlier …

Sirhan explained that the date of the assassination was not accidental, that he had chosen it because it was the first anniversary of the start of the Six-Day War.

Later he reinforced his earlier statement:

“To me he [Kennedy] was my hero, he was my champion,” Sirhan told British journalist David Frost during an interview at the state prison in Soledad, California, in 1989, one of only two television interviews he has given over the years. “He was the protector of the downtrodden and the disadvantaged, and I felt that I was one [of those]. And to have him say that he was going to send 50 Phantom jets to Israel to deliver nothing but death and destruction on my countrymen, that seemed as though it were a betrayal, and it was sad for me to accept and it was hard for me to accept.”

At the time, Sirhan was identified in the American media as a “Jordanian.” A pastor that knew his mother called him a “Jordanian nationalist” and that was how he was described by the LA Times. Today he is more likely to be identified as a “Palestinian,” driven to do what he did by the horrors of the nakba and “the occupation” (only one year old at the time), but I suspect the earlier conception is closer to the truth. Either way, it is irrelevant. He is just another violent Arab terrorist. Unfortunately we know the type well. A nobody who wants to become somebody by an act of outrage that will give him a place as a hero of his people.

Sirhan was convicted and was sentenced to death. But in 1972, California’s Supreme Court declared the death penalty “cruel and unusual punishment” and all death row prisoners including Sirhan were re-sentenced to life imprisonment. Capital punishment was re-instituted a few months later by a constitutional amendment, but death sentences were not re-imposed.

Interestingly, there are somewhat credible arguments that can be made for the presence of a second shooter, and even that the fatal bullet came from that shooter’s gun and not Sirhan’s. Kennedy certainly had enemies other than Jordanian/Palestinian nationalists, having led a take-no-prisoners war against organized crime in the early 60s. But legally and morally it doesn’t matter: Sirhan deliberately and with premeditation opened fire on Kennedy and is guilty of murder regardless of whose bullet killed him.

This week, the California parole board voted to recommend his release, on the condition that he join an alcohol abuse program and get therapy. The parole board has up to 120 days to review the decision, and then the governor, Gavin Newsom, will have to approve it. Since Sirhan never obtained US citizenship, he could be deported to Jordan (where he would join Ahlam Tamimi as a terrorist celebrity). Would the Palestinian Authority pay him the usual stipend for imprisoned terrorists? Given his long prison term, the retroactive payment would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Robert F. Kennedy was intensely anti-communist – he served as an assistant counsel to the McCarthy committee in 1953 – and outspokenly pro-Israel, characteristics that would not endear him to today’s American Left. On the other hand, he was very popular in the black community during the 1960s because of his actions on behalf of racial justice as Attorney General and advisor to his brother, President John F. Kennedy. He was loved by liberal students, who believed that he would quickly end the Vietnam war.

Kennedy, in fact, was precisely the opposite of today’s left, with its self-imposed ideological straitjacket. Tough and pragmatic, but also (perhaps a bit later on) compassionate toward those he saw as disadvantaged. It’s tragic that he was assassinated before he had realized his potential as a leader. The contrast between his greatness and the smallness of his despicable murderer is palpable.

Which makes me wonder: how will the American Left relate to Sirhan’s release, if it occurs. Will Rashida Tlaib praise him as a hero of the Palestinian Cause? How will BLM relate to the murderer of the man who probably did more to end Jim Crow in the South than any other white man?

For my part, I hope the parole board or the governor will come to their senses and keep him locked up, until he rots.

Abu Yehuda

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warrioreowynofrohan · 3 years

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Timeline of Middle-Earth

To develop a clearer sense of the sheer scale of the timelines we’re dealing with in Middle-earth’s Ages of the Sun, I thought I would put it in perspective by comparing it to real-world history. This can be done comparatively simply because the main events of The Lord of the Ring occur in 3018-3019 BC. (3020 in Middle-earth is a very good year, conspicuously unlike our 2020.)

So if we analogize T.A. 3019 to our 2019, we can get a sense in our terms of how long ago various Middle-earth events were to (mortal) characters in The Lord of the Rings. The beginning of the Third Age, for example, would line up with 1000 BC (approximately the time of Solomon). The beginning of the Second Age would be 4441 BC, and the beginning of the (much shorter) First Age a little before 5000 BC. A lot of my dates will be from the history of the Ancient Near East and Europe, simply because those are the periods of ancient history I’m most familiar with.

Using this comparison, the beginning of the Second Age and the foundation of Númenor is roughly contemporary with the earliest development of the wheel (~4500 BC, Wikipedia tells me) and the earliest forms of writing. So if you want a timescale for just how old any elf who saw the First Age was, that’s a helpful starting point (Maglor and Galadriel are, of course, much older).

The forging of the One Ring (c. S.A. 1600) corresponds to a little before the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The imperialist era of Númenor, under Tar-Ciryatan, begins at about the same time as the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza (~2500 BC) and lasts until roughly the end of the New Kingdom of Egypt (that’s the one that included Hatshepsut and Ramses II) a little before 1000 BC. That makes ancient Egypt really quite helpful for envisioning the span of Númenor’s history, except that Númenor also had about 1900 years of being non-terrible prior to that.

The Last Alliance of Elves and Men corresponds to around 1000 BC, around the tine of the start of the Chinese Zhou dynasty (for context, this is still well before Qin Shi Huang and the Terra-Cotta Army) and the time of David and Solomon in ancient Israel.

Arwen is born in the year 241 of the Third Age. This roughly corresponds to the time of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer. So when Elrond tells Aragorn that Arwen is far, far older than him, he is, if anything, understating the point.

The breakup of Arnor into three realms occurs in T.A. 861. We have now skipped over a quite considerable period of time (past the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Alexander the Great in the ancient near east, andpast Qin Shi Huang in China) to the time of the Roman Republic and of the Han dynasty. So that gives some perspective on what Aragorn re-founding the kindom of Arnor means - the the people of, say, Bree, this is a kingdom from ancient history.

Around T.A. 1000 - corresponding to the time of the New Testament and the early Roman Empire - the Istari arrive in Middle-earth and the first hobbits come to Eriador (i.e. the land west of the Misty Mountains). However, the hobbits don’t cross the Brandywine and found the Shire until a long time later (T.A. 1600).

The centuries around T.A. 1300s-1400s see civil war in Arnor (incited by the Witch-king of Angmar) and Gondor, and in invasion of Arnor by the Witch-king. This corresponds to around A.D. 300s-400s in our time, and the fall of the Roman Empire.

The Shire is founded in T.A. 1601, corresponding to around our A.D. 600. This is roughly equivalent the time of the founding of Islam in our world. So the Shire’s got a very considerable history behind it!

The fall of the north-kingdom of Arnor to the Witch-king occurred in T.A. 1974. Also in the late 1900s of the Third Age, the Witch-king returns to Mordor; a Balrog appears in Moria and drives out the dwarves; and Thrain I founds the Kingdom Under the Mountain in Erebor. A little after (T.A. 2050) the line of the kings in Gondor ends and the time of the Stewards begins. This is equivalent, in our terms, to around the time of the Norman Conquest of England, and of Cahokia in North America. When Boromir asks his father why the Stewards of Gondor are not considered kings yet, he has a point.

In 2463, the White Council is formed; this is also around the same time that Gollum obtains the Ring. Roughly speaking, this is equivalent to the time of the Renaissance in Europe for us. Gollum had the Ring for a really freaking long time.

The arrival of the Rohirrim, and the granting of Calenardhon to them as the realm of Rohan (irrespective of its actual inhabitants) occurs in 2510 of the Third Age, or close to equivalent with the beginning of the Reformation for us.

The Bagginses, Tooks, and Brandybucks can trace their ancestry back to the years 1000s to 1100s in Shure-reckoning (2600s-2700s of the Third Age), equivalent to a family in our time being able to trace its lineage to the 1600s-1700s A.D.

Smaug’s destruction of the Kingdom under the Mountain is in T.A. 2770, shortly followed by the War of the Dwarves and Orcs when Thror (Thorin’s grandfather) is killed by an orc in Moria. In our terms, corresponding to 1770, around the time of the American Revolution. Thorin dies in T.A. 2941 (equiv. A.D. 1941), to to get a perspective on dwarf ages, Thorin’s lifespan is equivalent to someone being able to fight in both the American Revolution and World War II.

Bilbo is born in T.A. 2890, equivalent to 1890 (the Gilded Age) in our time. The Fell Winter, when wolves attack the Shire over the frozen Brandywine, happens when he is 10 years old.

Aragorn and Denethor are born at almost the same time, Denethor in T.A. 2930 and Aragorn in T.A. 2931. Huh, hadn’t realized that. How mich does Denethor resent that he’s an old man while Aragorn is still in the prime of his life. Anyway, this is around the 1930s in our terms.

The events of the Hobbit take place in T.A. 2941, equivalent to our 1941 - a happier year for Middle-earth than for us, certainly.

Frodo is born in 2968, equivalent to our 1968.

Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday, and the events of The Lord of the Rings, occurs in T.A. 3001, equivalent to our 2001.

So, hopefully that gives some perspective on how long ago the various events of Middle-earth’s history would feel to the mortal - or at least, human and hobbit - characters of The Lord of the Rings. The major difference is that the existence of elves mean that both written records and living memory go back far, far further for Middle-earth than they do for us.

#tolkien #the silmarillion #the lord of the rings #bilbo #frodo #aragorn #denethor #númenor #second age

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anything-goes-my-friends · 3 years

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A New Beginning

The ending of ROTT broke me and I was left very disappointed in the ending of the show. I loved the movie, but the last 10 minutes didn’t sit well with me. I needed a fix-it fic with the ending I think the series deserves, so don’t be mad at me if you don’t like it. This is just what I think it needs, obviously not what everyone else thinks it needs.

In this fic Jim goes back to the day he got the amulet, but instead of giving it to Toby he takes it himself, and relives his journey with the knowledge and experience to save everyone he lost.

A New Beginning When he said goodbye to Blinky, Claire, and the others, Jim knew the journey ahead would be the most difficult thing he’d ever have to do. He needed to find a good time to jump back to, but whenever he settled on a date he thought of someone else he could save, and the date was pushed forward.

So he settled on the day it all began.

When his alarm buzzed, there were no words to explain the emotions swirling through him. With the deaths he witnessed still raw, and the destruction fresh in his mind, being in his old room seemed foreign. He remembered one of the last times he was there, recently half troll and struggling to adapt. But now, none of that had happened, but it had to him. He thought of everything ahead and smiled. But first, Toby.

He hastily prepared the meals for himself, his mom, and Toby, but nothing as fancy as the meatloaf he made the first time around. His head was buzzing and he struggled to focus on the simple task of making the sandwiches. But soon enough it was time.

The garage door opened and he gripped the handlebars of his bike until his knuckles turned white. This would prove that everything he did was worth it. Just to see Toby’s smile once more. The innocence in his eyes. He would never take it for granted again.

And there he was, his best friend. Jim let out a sound that was a mixture of a laugh and a sob and rammed into his friend to engulf him in a hug. It was worth it. All the pain he’ll endure again, and the burdens he has to bear were worth it for this moment.

“Come on Tobes, let’s take the canals today, I have a good feeling about it.” Jim took off on his bike, Toby hollering nonsense to pass the time and it was music to Jim’s ears.

And when they reached the bottom of the canal, and he heard the amulet speaking his name in Kanjigar’s voice, Jim smiled.

“Hello again, old friend.” He whispered as he ran his finger over the familiar metal of the amulet.

<><>Time Skip to the end of ROTT with the new ending Jim created<><>

Jim read the text on his phone from Claire, asking him when he was on his way to Trollmarket. He hastily typed out ‘be there in 10’ before shoving the phone back in his pocket. He could feel the amulet buzzing in his bag, and grinned to himself. He knew what today was, he had it marked on his calendar for years. Today was the day the Titans were defeated in the old timeline. The day Toby died, and Strickler, and Nomura, and countless others. He thought of how different things had become as he rummaged in his bag for his horngazel. The door opened easily under the bridge and he started to descend the stairs.

“There you are, Trollhunter, cutting it close aren’t we?” Claire teased as she met him at the bottom of the stairs. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and she threaded her fingers through his. They began to walk through Trollmarket, all the familiar buzz that had been lost the first time. Jim had learned from his mistakes, but also knew there were some events that had to happen. Losing Trollmarket was not one he could bring himself to do. His gaze shifted to Claire, who’s white streak in her hair, the ponytail, and purple armor was the same as the day the titans attacked. But she was smiling, and there was still a light in her eyes.

“Romeo and Juliet? I would love to try out...Your brother was taken by goblins into the Darklands, I’m sorry, but I’ll get him back I promise. For now, try to get to know NotEnrique, he might surprise you...Everything we’ve done, we’ve done together, I love you Claire, and I always will.”

He had dreaded letting Enrique get taken into the Darklands, but Claire had once remarked that she was glad NotEnrique came into her life, and thought of him as a brother. He didn’t want her to lose that relationship. And saving Enrique pushed Claire to become the sorceress and warrior she was destined to be, bringing the two of them closer together in the process.

The two of them waved to Barbara and Strickler, as Barbara showed off her new ring to a group of changelings. Strickler gave Jim a nod, and he returned it with a smile.

“Strickler, I would like you to meet my mom...The Janus Order has fallen, you’ll be safe in Trollmarket...Yes, I would be honored to be your best man.”

The fall of Gunmar had been a shock to troll kind. Jim had arrived in Trollmarket knowing where the Janus Order had hid the bridge, and used that knowledge to secure it early on. Toby, Claire, and Jim had trained for months as Trollhunters, answering calls and building strength to enter the Darklands. Jim had made the mistake of going alone once, and didn’t want to do that again. So when they were ready, they entered together. Blinky and Aaarrrgghh had rescued Gunmar’s prisoners, even though they got distracted by Blinky’s brother. Claire and Toby had gone off with NotEnrique to free all of the babies, while Draal and Jim faced Gunmar. And at the end of the day, and with a battle that lived in infamy, they emerged victorious.

Gunmar, eager to avenge his son that Jim had slain, and his ego clouding his judgement, had agreed to a fight to the death with Jim. A fight that Jim won. The Trollhunters exited the Darklands with refugees and freed Gum Gums, and babies that were taken care of by Barbara and Strickler until they could find loving homes for them all. And with the fall of Gunmar, the troll world was left without direction. The Janus Order struggled to adapt now that they couldn’t take form as human, but Jim made sure they were welcomed into Trollmarket with open arms. Gunmar’s spies and allies were hunted down by the Trollhunters if they made a mess of things, and after months of struggling, peace was nearing. When Strickler was brought into Trollmarket, he drifted closer to the Lakes, and when he got down on one knee, Barbara didn’t even hesitate to say yes. He had even given Jim the ring to Angor Rot’s soul, and Jim was able to return it to its rightful owner, and set the Trollhunter Hunter free. And Claire, reunited with the real Enrique, gained a brother in NotEnrique, and her family became a little bit bigger.

Jim never slept better after the Darklands. He was proud of his decision to go in together once they were ready, as was the original plan the first time around. Jim knew the importance of seeking help from friends, and he was able to live without that particular trauma twice.

Gunmar was defeated, Trollmarket wasn’t lost, Angor Rot became an ally, and his friends were alive and happy. Jim smiled as he and Claire walked past the forge, where Draal and Nomura were sparing, swapping insults that bordered on flirting, although both would deny it. Jim was most proud of saving Draal, although he would never tell anyone that. After defeating him in battle in the forge and gaining the respect of Trollmarket, Draal moved into his basement and the two of them renewed the bond that had been ripped away by Gunmar. Draal never lost his arm, was never under the control of Gunmar, and never died saving Jim’s life. He fought beside Jim as equals throughout his battles, and remained one of his closest allies and friends.

Vendel entered the forge to yell something at Nomura and Draal, but it wasn’t long before the three of them erupted in laughter. Vendel looked around and noticed Jim smiling at them, and gave a curt nod with his staff to signal a hello and his continued respect.

“Vendell, Queen Usurna is working for Gunmar, she wants to take over Trollmarket and steal the Hearthstone.”

When it had come the time of the Eternal Night, there was no Morgana to rage war, and no Gunmar to destroy Arcadia. Jim stayed human, and stayed in Arcadia where he belonged. Blinky shortly became Vendel’s right hand, and the two of them set out on a mission to organize trollkind in the wake of Gunmar’s defeat. Dictatious had wanted to go along with his brother, but knew he was needed in Trollmarket to help the Changelings and Gum Gums adjust to a life post-war. He was joined by Aaarrrgghh in his endevor, who was happy to help others the way Blinky helped him.

After the day the Eternal Night was supposed to be, Jim found himself wandering into the cafe Douxie worked at.

“Douxie, we need to find Merlin.”

Teaming up with Archie and Claire, the four of them set off to the tomb, where Merlin was resurrected and the next steps were taken. While they prepared for the war with the Arcane Order, Toby had stayed back in Arcadia as it’s one Trollhunter. He had formed bonds with Aja and Krel, and protected Arcadia from the threats better than Jim would’ve. He came into his own as WarHammer, and had accepted the role he chose himself.

“Claire, let’s free Morgana. She isn’t a bad woman, and she can help us in the days to come.”

With Douxie and Merlin at her side, Claire had freed Morgana and managed to settle her down enough to talk. And with her help the plan was made. The Wizards and Trollhunters traveled in time to determine the identity of the Green Knight, where Douxie was named a Master Wizard and the Trollhunter amulet was made. Deya was named the first Trollhunter, and the past was secured. And when they returned, it was Morgana that saved them from the Green Knight. She gave Arthur the rest he deserved, and when the battle was over, she left with Merlin to grieve and find themselves in the new world. Nari had stayed behind with Douxie, who had accepted his role as protector.

“There’s Douxie!” Claire briefly let go of Jim’s hand to wave, and Douxie beamed and returned it. Archie was sitting on his shoulder while Nari padded along after the two of them. Archie was mentioning something about going to visit his dad, and Douxie agreed to go along for moral support. Nari looked at Jim with a knowing look in her eyes, the way she always looked at him. He could never tell if she knew what he did, and all that he had changed, but he decided he didn’t care. She was alive, and Douxie had succeeded in protecting her, and that was all that mattered.

“We need to find the seals Nari...Do you know where the rest of the Arcane Order might have gone?...It’s over now, you’re safe.”

The Genesis Seals had been found and rehidden by Douxie, who didn’t tell anyone where he hid them. Not even Jim or Nari. They had all agreed it was for the best. When Douxie died the secret would die with him. Unable to find and open the seals, Skrael and Bellroc scrambled to find Nari and finish what they started. And with the help of Krel and Aja, the Trollhunters, and the Wizards, the two had their magic stripped away by Akiridian tech, and Jim was able to deliver the finishing blows.

Now today, the day the Titans were supposed to have risen, there was nothing but blue skies. School happened like normal, and the world was at peace. Claire and Jim finished their stroll through Trollmarket as they arrived at Blinky’s study. He was ready for them, and complained that they were the last to arrive.

Inside sat Toby and Aaarrrgghh, who were shoving their faces with the feast that Blinky had prepared. Jim and Claire sat down at the large table and Blinky looked at him expecting him to speak. Jim chuckled and rose to make a toast.

“We have overcome a lot. The defeat of Bular, Gunmar, and the Arcane Order. Merlin and Morgana are off on their own. Douxie and Archie are protecting Arcadia from mystical threats. Aja, Krel, Steve, and Eli are off on Akiridion-5 to rule together. The Darklands liberated, our families reunited, and our loved ones close. This was all I ever wanted for all of you, and I couldn’t be happier.” Jim looked around at the smiling faces surrounding him. This was his family, the ones that had been with him since the start. Blinky, his mentor and father figure, Aaarrrgghh his loyal friend, Claire the love of his life and powerful sorceress, and Toby, the friend who had been with him since the beginning. From a time before trolls and aliens and wizards. When he had wanted more excitement in life.

There were days the burden of the what-could’ve-beens plagued Jim’s mind and he struggled to carry on with the weight of his mistakes. But then days like this happened, where he knew he had changed things for the better, and the world was better off because of his sacrifice. He wouldn’t change a thing, and given the choice to have the time stone again, he would toss it aside. This was the happy ending they all deserved, the ending he worked hard to give them all. There had been changes that brought new threats to face, new calls to answer. But he faced them all with the friends and family he chose and surrounded himself with, and he used his experience to do what he could. He was a hero, the Trollhunter, the champion of Trollmarket. He was Jim the Bular Slayer, the Gunmar Slayer, but most importantly he was Jim Lake. The first Human Trollhunter. And he didn’t think, he became.

#rott spoilers #trollhunters #trollhunters claire nunez #trollhunters jim lake #trollhunters toby #jim lake #rise of the titans #trollhunters spoilers #trollhunters fix-it fic #I like my ending better #rise of the titans spoilers

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birdiefw · 4 years

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JJ MAYBANK | NOT MY CHOICE PT. 1

Part Two — Here

Requested by: @maybebanks

Summary: You’ve always been a Pogue despite your wealth and had been friends with John B. and his crew for as long as you could remember. However, you were also dating Rafe Cameron but your friend didn’t know, and worst of all, it wasn’t your decision. But one day Rafe sees you and JJ together and decides to show you and JJ who you belong to.

Warnings: swearing, anxiety, sexual assault, groping, ANGST (IF ANY OF THESE MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE PLEASE DON’T READ)

Y/ND/N = Your Next-door Neighbor

A/N: Thank you so much for requesting! I’ve been trying to come up with another idea for a JJ imagine and I’m so glad you sent me this! I’ve decided to make this into two parts, so I hope you don’t mind that I saved a few details of the request for the next part! I hope you enjoy, too!

[not my gif!!!]

You were three weeks into your relationship with Rafe Cameron and you hated it.

Around your parents he was kind, thoughtful, and gentle — which is why they forced you into a relationship with him against your wishes by filling Rafe’s head with the idea that you were just playing hard to get — and you were unable to tell him no. But when your parents weren’t around, he someone else completely, and it terrified you.

He was erratic, controlling, and manipulative. You knew part of it was because of the drugs he took as often as he could, but that didn’t excuse his ruthless actions. His own relationships with his family was rocky at best, and you could see it was taking a bigger toll on him than he would’ve cared to admit. You knew better than to question it and went along with whatever he wanted in order to keep him happy and feeling in control; you’d seen him lose himself once and you didn’t want that to happen again. You didn’t think he’d physically hurt you with as much as he claimed to care about you, but you were never too sure with him.

Anytime you managed to get some free time away from him and your family, you found yourself with the Pogues down in the Cut. They knew you were wealthy, but that didn’t stop them from welcoming you in once they got to know you and saw how kind and caring you were — which you thanked Kie for as she was the one you’d befriended first. You were close with the rest of John B.’s group — especially JJ which was a surprise to both of you.

You didn’t expect to be so drawn to the most reckless and destructive one of them all, but you saw how kind and gentle he could be. He didn’t think he’d find you as enticing as he did either, but he wasn’t complaining. You treated him better than most and accepted him for who he was even with all of his flaws.

He didn’t show his soft side a lot, but you’d seen it more than the others had as if fate was trying to tell you two something you were failing to see for yourself; perhaps that was why you two wound up spending the day together.

With John B. job hunting, Kiara waitressing at The Wreck, and Pope delivering groceries, you and JJ were the only ones with some free time. JJ was supposed to work later, but until then the two of you decided to go surfing wfilr the sun was still shining brightly in the sky and the waves were nearly perfect. Rafe was apparently working out with Topper and Kelc, and knowing them, you’d figured it wouldn’t be a while until they were done. They often ended up at one of their houses afterwards, so you didn’t think Rafe would want to spend anytime with you.

“You comin’ or what, Y/N?” JJ laughed, catching your attention. “We ain’t got all day!”

You suddenly blinked back to reality, gaping as the blond boy was already out in the water and his heart racing with excitement. You scoffed offensively, hurrying after him with your surfboard in tow. “What the fuck, JJ?” You whined, quickly getting on the board and paddling towards him. He loudly laughed, water splattering onto your faces as you moved closer and closer to the gushing waves. “I can’t believe you left me behind!”

“It’s not my fault you weren’t paying attention,” he replied shortly.

You huffed, playfully rolling your eyes. “You’re a shithead, Maybank.”

“Yeah, but you like it.”

Rather than answering him or giving him an even bigger ego boost, you just splashed him and made your way towards the rolling waves with him right behind you. There were only a few other people lounging at the beach, the annual Fourth of July parade more interesting to the town than the waves that never left. Your parents were helping out with the Red Cross float, but you knew they wouldn’t realize you weren’t there in the crowd. JJ could’ve cared less, and as you got to your feet on your board and gliding across the water, you didn’t regret skipping out on it and going to the beach with your favorite Pogue.

———

It wasn’t until a few hours later when you and JJ conquered as many waves as you could that you two decided to call it quits and go and get some food. You’d fallen off your boards more times than you would’ve cared to admit, but you didn’t mind it. The water comforted you every time you fell into it, cooling off your warm skin that the sun was harshly beating down on. JJ came to your aid every time your body tumbled off your board, helping you back onto it with ease, and you did the same with him.

Surfing was dangerous, but it didn’t feel like it when you were with JJ.

When you were with him, you didn’t have to constantly worry about your parents, Rafe, or all of the responsibilities you were currently neglecting to do. All of your worries washed away with the sea and were pushed down to depths of the ocean where only the seaweed would feel the tension. You’d bickered on and off the entire time, trying to one up each other with each wave that came to tower over you two. There were a few times you almost fell face first when you saw JJ doing a trick you’d never seen before, but you caught yourself almost every time. Almost.

Saltwater harshly clung to your hair, the water trickling down your skin as you made your way out of the water. Your board was lazily tucked under your arm once more, a smile adorning your lips while your feet pushed into the wet sand. JJ was right beside you, his hair dripping and looking a little more dark than normal. He was heavily breathing and his shoulders were a little red — as were yours — but his smile never deterred nor did the joyful shine in his eyes that simply couldn’t be missed.

“I don’t know which one of us did worse today,” you laughed, stopping in the sand a little ways away from the water. You pushed your board down into the ground, slightly leaning against it with yours lips pulled up into a genuine grin.

JJ did the same, lightly wiping at his wet faces when a few drops trickled past his eyes. “Really? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure you wiped out more than I did.”

You huffed and shoved his arm. “I did not!”

“Did too!”

You scoffed and shook your head. You were too hungry to continue with this. “You know what? I’m gonna let you have this one, but just this once.”

“Wow, how thoughtful of you, Y/N,” he chuckled.

You laughed along with him and began to walk ahead with JJ a little ways behind you. “I am very thoughtful, thank you very much.”

“Sure, whatever you—”

“Y/N?” Your entire body froze when you saw Rafe making his way towards you and JJ. He wore a yellow tank top and black shorts, a few pieces of his hair falling in his face like he hadn’t used enough gel to keep its kicked back. His features were stern, eyes narrowed and locked in JJ. Your breath hitched in your throat the closer he got to you, unsure as to how he knew where you were.

“H-Hey, Rafe,” you stammered nervously, unable for bring yourself to face JJ. You couldn’t imagine what must’ve been going through his head. Since when did you become friends with Rafe? “W-What’re you doing here?”

Rafe clenched his jaw, his gaze swiveling from JJ to you. He was only inches away from you, and JJ had his fist clenching and unclenching. “Y/ND/N said you were at the beach,” he answered, looking back to JJ. “I finished early with the boys and I thought we could catch some waves.”

“Sorry, man, you’re too late,” JJ said, smugly smirking.

“Oh, am I?” Rafe taunted darkly. You gulped, your head slowly turning to face JJ. His eyes locked with yours, brows furrowing together at the unreadable look on your features. “I think that’s up to me and Y/N, Pogue. Isn’t that right, babe?”

“Babe?” JJ repeated in disbelief, eyes widening like a deer stuck in a set of headlights. Your heart sank into the lowest pit of your stomach, seeing JJ’s face fall. He didn’t want to believe it, and you didn’t want to either. “You’re joking.”

“What’s it to you?” Rafe scoffed, coming to stand beside you. He was a little too close for comfort, most certainly pushing his boundaries more than he ever had before. But you were almost paralyzed, your brain trying to piece together a way for this to go better than how you feared it would.

“Rafe, let’s just go—”

“No, hold on,” Rafe denied. He came up partially behind you, raising his brows towards a seething JJ. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Why should I?” JJ snapped. His eyes widened when he saw Rafe lean in close, gingerly pressing his lips to your neck. One of his hands touched your hip, going around and squeezing your ass like he was marking you to show JJ you belonged to him.

Your mind screamed at you to tell him to stop, to shove him away and make a run for it, but you couldn’t. Instead you held a poker face, doing your best to keep your breathing even so you didn’t alert either boys of your discomfort. You could’ve sworn JJ was trying to kill Rafe with his darkened eyes, but you weren’t showing any signs that you didn’t like it. You harshly bit your tongue, not wanting your urge to cry to take over and anger Rafe.

That was the last thing you needed.

“You like that, don’t you, Y/N?” Rafe murmured against your skin, making sure JJ heard him.

You meekly nodded, forcing a faint smile on your lips. “Yes,” you managed to breath out.

Rafe seemed pleased with your answer and stopped. He pressed a kiss to your cheek and took your hand in his, tugging you away from JJ. “Let’s get outta here,” he said, shooting JJ a nasty glare. “Kelc is throwing a party and we can’t miss it.”

“Okay,” you squeaked out. You allowed him to pull you along and in the direction of his bike, biting your bottom lip. You stole a glance back at JJ, and for the first time, he was left completely speechless.

———

A/N: I hope y’all liked this! Feel free to send me some more requests!!

#outer banks #jj maybank #jj maybank imagine #rafe cameron #rafe #obx #obx imagine #topper #sarah cameron #kiara outer banks #kie #pope heyward #rudy pankow #jj maybank smut #madelyn cline #madison bailey #john b #john b routledge #john b imagine

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ecofinisher · 3 years

Text

Stuff I noticed at Snow Queen Fire & Ice and Miraculous Ladybug 😀

I just had to. Even if it is a waste of time. 😅I've done one a long while ago between Miraculous and Monster Buster Club. This one had to be done as well, all just because of those small, little spirits 🥺😥

To be clear, I’m not comparing it to what is better and whatnot. I’m comparing the similarities between the two. The spirits there made me think of the kwamis? Funny I didn't pay attention to it at first xD But then the fun part came......Three times I have watched the movie and I suddenly began to think......Hmm Gerda has the creation powers like Ladybug and Rollan destruction......Holy brick! They could be the lovesquare as well if they had added more romance into it 😂 How did I not see? (It's because you saw Kristanna mixed with Hansanna you nut)

So where do I start? Well just to summarize the shows for those who don’t know one/both of them:

Short info about both, if unfamiliar:

Miraculous Ladybug is a French animated TV show, that debuted in 2015 and is set in the modern metropole Paris and is focused on the lives of the clumsy Marinette Dupain-Cheng and the famous teeny-model Adrien Agreste. Both wield special magical jewelry, which is called a “Miraculous” which they use to transform into the superheroes “Ladybug and Cat Noir” The two don’t know each other’s identity, but funnily Adrien has a huge crush on Ladybug and in the civilian life he sees her as just a friend, while Marinette is obsessed with Adrien and sees Cat Noir only as his trustful crime-fight partner. Both students are around 14 years old in the show.

As superheroes they fight villains, that were akumatized by Hawk Moth. (He owns the butterfly miraculous, with which he can create supervillains by sending an akuma (Butterfly jinxed by Hawk Moth’s magic) and Hawk Moth’s miraculous sends people’s negative feelings such as anger, sadness and disappointment and uses his akumas to follow them and akumatize them and they’re transformed by Hawk Moth into a specific-themed supervillain.

Snow Queen 3: Fire and Ice (Release year: 2016)

Snow Queen 3: Fire and Ice is the third installment of the Russian franchise "The Snow Queen" It consisted currently out of 4 movies, an upcoming 5th installment, and a pre-school TV show. The first movie came out in 2012 and was also the studio's very first movie.

Resume from the first two movies is the young girl Gerda, which lost her parents to the Snow Queen makes her way through the entire snow lands to find her younger brother Kai, which was kidnapped y the north wind. With help of Orm, Snow Queen's servant she makes her way up to the Palast and defeats her, saving her brother and waking up Orm's eyes to a "better world" The sequel is focused on Orm's continuation, which makes a promise to never lie again and this promise made a reflection of himself come to life and appear near him, when he had no idea, what to do with life issues. The more he began to create white lies and bigger lies, the more life his reflection gained until he was able to get out to the real world. The reflection, which calls itself "The Snow King" tricks Orm and leads a fight against Troll warriors by sending his ice-made minions. Gerda was the last warrior to enter and make it to the main hall of the palace to miss Orm, which was fading away due to Snow King's existence and he pretends to be an injured Orm, which is warmly embraced by the girl, but then gets frozen by him, not realizing she had fallen into a trap. When things were over for everyone and the bad guys had won, Orm figured out how he would make everything okay by confessing his mistakes, which erased Snow King from existence and unfroze all warriors and friends again, which were angered at the naive troll.

This is lowkey spoiler-free. I didn't want to go into much detail here, but I would suggest you watch these movies, mostly no. 2 and 3, which are really worth seeing. As well you can see the first and see how much the studio had improved since the first up to the 2 and 3 one.

The Fire and Ice one, I'm supposed to be talking about happens a few years later, Gerda and Kai left the orphanage to go live on their own and make money to be able to at least be able to eat. Their last visit didn't make any profit and they took a ride with an old friend of theirs Alfida (The Robber girl) to pass the night by Orm, their troll friend, which had matured and was responsible to babysit the triplets of his cousin. On said night, a Spanish boy named Rollan shows up by his doorstep and is introduced to the visitors as a friend he met shortly. After the dinner ended in a disaster Kai and Gerda split and Rollan followed Gerda to give her rights, then bonded with her from being looking for his mother as well and introduces her to a map with an artifact called "The Wishing Stone" which grants any wish. Gerda agrees in tagging along and together they make it to survive the dangerous tomb encountering the wishing stone. Fact is the wishing stone was something else and this is where the powers of the Snow Queen and the Fire Demon were kept and due to Gerda and Rollan's touch on the stone, it had awakened the spirits, getting the two infected with the powers of said villains. Soon as they find out with Orm what happened, they need to get back to the tomb to retrieve the powers before the north star rises and makes their transformation complete, which means both would lose their soul/bodies to the villain. .

Random info:

1. The most popular franchise of the studio aka knowns for:

Miraculous is mostly know to be addressed as a ZAG animation product, but other known studios have worked on it as well such as SAMG Animation, TOEI and Method Animation.

Currently, the most popular series produced in France.

The Snow Queen 3 is the overall fifth movie released by Wizart Animation and was on its release the studio's best-grossing movie so far. Currently, the studio's filmography contains about 8 released movies (Counting with Secret Magic Control Agency in 2021), Two televisions shows and at the moment three movies are announced to be released.

Currently, the franchise is the most popular one in Russia, which is also where it was produced.

The similarities I noticed:

The spirits

Coal (Up) and Snowflake (Down) (Left Side)

Plagg (Up) and Tikki (Down)(Right Side)

Tikki and Snowflake have female pronouns. Both are shown to be "feminine", kind, lovable, and correct. They're a spirit of creation.

Plagg and Coal have male pronouns. Both are shown to be "male". cunning and curious. They're a spirit of destruction.

All four are able to use their powers on their own. They don't need to be with their holder to be capable of.

Differences:

- Plagg and Tikki are able to communicate verbally with each other and with humans.

-Coal and Snowflake can't speak, they usually use body language and mimic. Also, they do noises like laughing, groaning, speaking, and such.

- According to Tikki, her species (Kwami) don't fall in love/can't fall in love.

- Snowflake and Coal are shown to be romantically interested in each other. They're shown flirting and having little date-like moments, as they're away from their "owners"

- Coal is able to multiplicate. It's unknown if he's able to do it in command or only if he falls or is hit.

The "Alter egos"

Marinette is the face behind Ladybug and Adrien wears the mask of Cat Noir.

Gerda is possessed with the ice-powers of the Snow Queen and Rollan wields the fire-power of the Fire Demon.

Gerda and Marinette share the creation ability, while Adrien and Rollan are responsible for the destruction. They're each other's opposites.

Differences: Gerda and Rollan are aware of each other's identity and recognize each other's faces, despite small differences. Adrien and Marinette don't know each other's hero identity and weirdly have minor differences in their looks.

Marinette and Adrien's personality as heroes is quite different from their civilian ones, while Gerda and Rollan's don't seem any different.

It's unknown if, during the time Rollan and Gerda are under possession, their personalities are slightly altered by the villains or not. Rollan is shown to get quickly tempered with Gerda's friend, when it comes to their mishap, which usually turns into arguments.

The Yin-Yang effect

Power of creation and destruction

Marinette = Ladybug miraculous, the red earrings / Power of Luck (Creation)

Adrien = Black Cat Miraculous, the black ring / Power of Misfortune (Destruction)

Gerda = Ice (Creation) (The ice-blue shape on the crystal)

Rollan = Fire (Destruction) (The red shape on the crystal)

Character A bickers often with character B.

Ladybug with Cat Noir. Most of the moments Ladybug feels annoyed at Cat Noir's puns and flirt attempts during their missions. She had her rude moments, but deep inside her, she adores him. With Adrien's she's currently befriended, but has a huge crush, nearly an obsession with the blonde, which sometimes makes her double life harder and under pressure, she has taken choices, which led to ungood consequences.

Gerda with Rollan. Rollan's seems more relaxed with pressuring into retrieving the powers back, unlike Gerda. Rollan's easy tempter with Orm, when he's blamed for his issues annoys her as well. Gerda has shown interest in Rollan since the night she has met him and they bonded over the night when heading to the forbidden Tomb. Rollan has shown interest in her as well, but not as much as her.

"Buttmonkey Sidekick"

Cat Noir and Rollan.

Cat Noir - Thrown around by villains at billboards, yeeted by his own dad at the fricking Eiffel tower, sometimes risked his life to protect Ladybug and get wrapped up into odd situations.

Rollan suffered a few nutshots (One by himself as well), survived a very dangerous tomb, had his head frozen by Gerda accidentally, managed to step-dance in the middle of a shoot-out without getting hit by a bullet, accidentally (Or not) uses firepower with help of his butt. (Sounds ridiculous? There' the picture 😂) Press R for respect.

Naturally handsome boys.

Cat Noir and Rollan.

With and without "masks".

Don't think before acting

Cat Noir and Rollan.

Characters look the same

Gerda and Ladybug

Gerda has additional makeup on her face.

Characters look differently with their alter egos

Cat Noir and Rollan

Cat Noir has a wilder hairstyle and has cat-like eyes.

Rollan has a different skin tone, a fire-like shaped hairstyle, which he can put on fire and his eyes are slightly red-brownish.

The brains

Ladybug and Gerda.

The muscle

Cat Noir and Rollan.

Falling into the darkness

Cat Noir and Rollan

Cat Noir lets an akuma take over him and turn him into Chat Blanc, which destroys the entire world in an alternate universe.

Rollan lets the Fire Demon take over his body at the retrieval of the power and nearly commits genocide of entire kingdom.

Tall boy, smoll girl

Cat Noir to Ladybug

Rollan to Gerda

"Lovesquare"

Cat Noir has a crush on Ladybug. Ladybug doesn't. She has a crush on Adrien, which is Cat Noir's alter ego, which she's not aware of. Adrien sees Marinette as a friend only and has no idea, she and Ladybug are the same person although they look the same.

Gerda is attracted to Rollan since the first time she saw him. Rollan begins to feel attracted to Gerda with the time she's around him.

Rollan and Gerda are aware of each other because they were given the powers in the same place.

Marinette and Adrien were confirmed to be canon and should end up in the 5th season, eventually.

Rollan and Gerda should be considered canon at the end of the 4th part, due to the ending credits showing them share a kiss.

Power font:

Ladybug & Cat Noir: "Magic jewelry" (Miraculouses)

Rollan & Gerda: The wishing stone

Difference:

The wishing stone takes away after 24 hours of control over the power wielders and turns them into the slave of Snow Queen and the Fire Demon. The characters' real person is gone for good.

#how to waste your time #random thoughts #miraculousladybug #miraculous #ladybug and chat noir #chat noir #miraculous season 4 #snow queen #snow queen 3 #the snow queen #снᴇжнᴀя коᴘолᴇвᴀ #снᴇжнᴀя коᴘолᴇвᴀ 3 #снᴇжнᴀя коᴘолᴇвᴀ 3 огонь и лед #snow queen 3 fire and ice

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