#eclipse repair mission!

[ane-doodles]

Hey come here!

Do you want to help me fix it?

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Eclipse repair mission!

Coming soon

[tsaomengde]

“The Mission”

A short story about love, time travel, healing, spaceplanes, and making the world a better place, even when no one will ever know.

---

After the TAG forces shot me out of my cockpit in low orbit, I floated there for about six hours.  Something – probably debris from my fighter – had hit me in the back, hard, and I couldn’t feel anything below my waist.  My suit’s maneuvering jets let me correct the initial nauseating spin I was thrown into, but they didn’t have sufficient thrust to get me out of my unstable, highly eccentric orbit.  

My suit told me I had about eight or nine trips around Titan before my periapsis wobbled low enough into the atmosphere that drag would bring me down below escape velocity.  At that point, gravity would catch up with me, I would fall, and I would crash into the surface and die.  The suit had an emergency beacon, but no built-in communications beyond that.  I was alone in the silent dark.

I sped around the moon at a little less than ten thousand kilometers per hour.  The view of Saturn, for the parts of the orbit where it wasn’t eclipsed by Titan, was gorgeous.  That was a small comfort, as my brain endlessly analyzed the ways I could go.  A bit of debris from the battle could kill me outright at these speeds, or it could puncture the suit on a glancing hit and it would be a toss-up whether I would die of suffocation or extreme cold.  My oxygen meter also claimed I had about three hours of air left, which meant I would probably be unconscious or dead by the time I actually hit the ground.  And, of course, there was the matter of my probably-broken spine.  I suspected I was bleeding internally from that.

Later, when I woke up in a hospital bed on the Agamemnon, they told me that the TAG brass had transmitted a formal surrender eighty-seven seconds after my fighter had exploded.  I was officially the last casualty of the Earth-Titan war.

They fitted me with prosthetics so I could still walk, but as the physical therapist with the cute dimples explained to me, there was some kind of incompatibility with my chromosomal something-or-other that meant I couldn’t use them at a hundred percent, which meant I didn’t qualify for combat.  My spine, which had indeed been broken, was too damaged to repair with conventional methods.  That left experimental regenerative genetic surgery, which was more expensive than the navy was willing to shell out for.

So, at thirty-one, after thirteen years in the navy, I got out with an honorable discharge, a pension that was decent enough but far from what it would take to fix my spine, a chromium heart for my injury, and enough PTSD to fuck me over for the rest of my life.

--- 

“I don’t care about my legs,” I said to Kate, the first time we ever met.  We picked a bar about halfway between us for our first meeting. She had a gin gimlet with cucumber simple syrup.  I had an old fashioned.  “They get me from point A to point B just fine.  I just miss flying.”

“Were you good at it?” she asked, blue eyes very wide.

“I certainly thought so. But then some TAG dipshit blew me out of my fighter above Titan and ended my career, so maybe I was less good than I thought.”

“You can’t fly for one of the intrasolar shipping companies?” she asked.  “Or transport?”

I gave her a patient smile. “Do you know what a pilot actually does aboard one of those big fusion torchships?”

“No, actually.”

“They point the nose where the destination is going to be, fire the engine for half the trip, then flip the ship around and fire the engine for the other half.  There’s nothing to that.  I miss flying.”

She nodded sympathetically. “I understand.”  I could tell she didn’t, not really, but that she wanted to.

I moved in with her a few months later.  Part of me wondered if it was a good idea, moving so fast, but I was two years from Titan and still waking up screaming in the middle of the night, convinced I was back in my suit, in the dark above the moon.  The greater part of me, the selfish part, was happy that someone was there to touch me, to talk to me, to root me back in myself and pull me back to earth from up there in the black.

In that sense, Kate could have been anyone.  I never thought of her as replaceable, but there was always a vague sense of guilt, of knowing that I was definitely getting more from the relationship than she was.  I voiced this to her once, and she told me I was being silly, and that she loved me, and that was all she needed.

So when she first approached me with her idea for the Mission, I like to think it was that part of me, the part that wanted to be more for her, that moved me to say yes to what was honestly an idiotic idea.  Not the part that missed flying.  Just selfless altruism and desire to help the woman I loved.

I like to think that a lot.

---

We cracked time travel about a decade after I was born.  Much to our collective disappointment as a species, it was not the fun kind of time travel that lets you go back in time and kill Hitler.  

Kate, as she told me once we were living together, was part of a DOD think tank tasked with finding some kind of use for the technology.  After a lot of experimentation, they came up with what Kate called the Four Rules.

1.      It’s time travel, not space travel.  If you want to meet Julius Caesar, you had best make sure you’re in Europe when you travel back.

2.      It only works by going back.  There is no forward travel because the future hasn’t happened yet. The only exception is returning to your point of origin.

3.      If you actually do meet Julius Caesar, it’s because your meeting him will not change history in any measurable way.  If you try to go back in time to change something significant, it simply doesn’t work.  The little box makes the noise, it uses up a lot of energy, and then nothing happens.

4.      The corollary rule to number three, then, is that when you travel back in time, whatever you do end up doing has already happened.

I asked Kate what this meant about determinism versus free will, and she primly replied that she was a theoretical physicist, not a philosopher.  The DOD was not known for employing philosophers and paying them the kind of money they were paying her.

---

The Mission’s personnel consisted of four people.  Myself, the heroic pilot.  Kate, the brains behind the time travel stuff and the one who came up with the Mission to begin with.  Leon, the aerospace engineer slash DOD contractor.  And Ash, the director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. We would go over to Ash’s place, have dinner, and conspire.

Over one such dinner – mac and cheese with broccoli, I remember it vividly for no adequate reason – we discussed the logistical difficulties involved.

“We can’t use anything from the last century,” Leon was saying around a mouthful of mac.  “All the guidance systems on those ships are keyed into the orbital satellite network.  There’s nothing like that at the target time.  We need a craft that can achieve orbit, rendezvous, and de-orbit in a single stage, without remote guidance.”

I nodded.  “That means we need a spaceplane.  Not just a fighter, but an actual spaceplane.”

Ash chewed over the problem as well as their food.  “There might be an SR-75 in decent enough shape we could appropriate from the displays at the museum.  The hardest part will be bribing the transport operators to take it to home base instead of, you know, a navy cache where highly dangerous military surplus equipment is supposed to go.”

I raised an eyebrow at them. “That’s going to be the hardest part? What about getting the parts to get it into decent working condition, or the fuel?”

Leon waved a hand dismissively.  “Do you know how many spare parts I have lying around at work?  How many millions of tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen are stored in poorly-guarded places that I have access to?”

“No.  I’m guessing the answer to both is ‘more than the general public would be comfortable knowing about.’”

“Exactly.”

I looked at Kate.  “Is the magic box going to be able to send a whole spaceplane back, kitty?”

She wrinkled her nose at me for using her pet name in front of our friends, but let it go for the moment. “The magic box can send anything back given enough juice.”

“Okay, but is the shitty little battery at home base going to be able to give it enough?”

“Probably.  If we strip everything nonessential out of the spaceplane, get the mass down as much as possible.  I need to know the exact mass of the plane, plus us, when it’s ready for travel.”  Kate shrugged.  “If it won’t be enough, we can always add to our list of capital offenses and steal a torchship, then use its fusion reactor for the power.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed.  “Last resort.”

---

“I don’t really understand why we’re doing this,” I told her one night, in the silence following her helping me out of another flashback.

She shifted a little in bed so she could look me in the eye.  “You said you were on board.”

“I am.  I’d do anything you asked, kitty, you know that. And obviously I’m excited to get to fly again.  But nothing we’re going to do is actually going to matter.  That’s one of the four rules, right?”

With a little shrug, she began running her fingers through my hair, which I’d stopped bothering to keep short after I was discharged years ago.  It was pretty long by now.  “It’ll matter to us, won’t it?  And to her?”

“I mean, sure, but the risk-reward ratio is way off.  You and Leon and Ash could all lose your jobs, we could get prosecuted by the Justice Department –”

“Vee, why did you sign up to be a pilot?”

I stopped.  “I mean, I always wanted to fly.”

“Yes, but what was the reason you put on your application?  And the reason you told me on our first date when we were still trying to look really good and put together for one another?”

That took me back, and I snorted gently.  “To make the world a better place.”

“Exactly.  Does there have to be a minimum threshold of goodness increase in order for an altruistic act to be worthwhile?”

I weighed that particular bit of moral utilitarianism in my mind before I committed to an answer.  “No.”

“So, that’s why we’re doing this.  To make the world a better place, even by the tiniest, slimmest margin.”

I gently snaked a hand out from under the comforter to lightly boop her on the nose.  “And the real reason, since we’re not on our first date and this isn’t an application you’re filling out?”

She stuck her tongue out at me.  “I know how much you want to fly again.  And I want to see my magic box used for something other than letting rich assholes reenact Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’ without any of the nuance or lessons learned.”

“Dinosaur leather shoes is not the outcome you probably had in mind,” I agreed.  The time-travel hunting industry generated billions for the government every year now.

We fell asleep that night, and the next morning, we took a magtrain to Vegas, and from there we went to home base.

---

Home base was an abandoned aircraft hangar in the middle of the Nevada desert.  Leon had said something about centuries-old top-secret aircraft testing, when we first conceived of the Mission, and lo and behold, there was a facility with room for a spaceplane.  We spent far too much money on the highest-capacity quantum battery civilians could buy, hooked it into the Vegas grid, and watched it take eight weeks to charge.

It had also cost far too much money to bribe the transport operators to bring the SR-75 here, but the deed was done and they hadn’t sold us out so far.  They probably assumed we were aviation junkies.  What domestic terrorists would bother stealing a hundred-year-old spaceplane when there were far cheaper and more effective ways to kill people, these days?

Kate, Leon, Ash, and I sat at a small table in a corner of the hangar, drinking coffee and going over the ascent profile.  Ash’s part was done, having delivered the goods, but they wanted to be here for everything, and I certainly respected that.  The spaceplane took up the majority of the hangar space, a sleek black dagger with barely a suggestion of wings to either side.  The underside was dominated by a pair of huge jet intakes, and the rear of the plane sported three engine nozzles, the center much larger than either of the ones flanking it.  A gracefully curved tail fin slightly forward of the engines completed the vessel’s profile.

“The plane looks like it’s in good condition,” Leon was saying.  “I’ve sourced the fuels we need.  The main problem is going to be the timing, not the equipment.”

“How so?” Kate asked.

I spoke up.  “The SR-75 should theoretically be able to hit escape velocity just on the air-breathing engine mode, but the target has an extremely elliptical orbit, and we’re launching much closer to the equator, so we’ll have to adjust our inclination, too.  That means either a lot of burns with the rocket fuel mode once we’re in vacuum, or a very steep climb to orbit.  That pronounced an angle of attack might affect the engines’ ability to get enough air to achieve escape velocity.”

Kate blinked.  “Still not seeing how that affects the timing.”

I pulled out my personal comm, laid it on the table, and put it in draw mode, so I could trace pictures on its screen with the tip of my finger.  I drew a little ball, the Earth, and traced a messy, elliptical orbit around it. I indicated the very top of the orbit, where the line peaked like a mountain summit.  “We have about a thirty-minute window to achieve rendezvous with the target.  We need to rendezvous at or near its apoapsis, here, where its orbital speed is lowest and matching relative velocity will be easiest.”

I loved Kate, but it was endlessly amusing to me how she could understand quantum and temporal physics and articulate mathematical concepts I could never grasp in a million years, yet still not understand basic orbital mechanics.  She gave me a blank look, then just said, “And that’s hard?”

“Yes.  It is very hard, kitty.  We are trying to hit a target the size of, roughly, a bullet train car, except the target is going twenty-eight thousand kilometers per hour.  We need to come alongside it, match velocity with it, perform our docking maneuver, and then decouple.  And the parameters of the Mission mean that there is exactly one half-hour window we can do this in if we’re going to avoid violating rule three.”

“I think the best solution is going to be adding some external rocket fuel tanks,” Leon said.  “Not much, since we have to think about flight performance and transit mass for the magic box, but even a few hundred extra meters per second of delta-vee might make the difference in your ability to match orbits with the target.”

“Agreed.  Just make sure the Goddamn things aren’t going to come loose at Mach fuck-you.”

Leon grinned at me.  “I love your optimism, Vee.”

---

Unlike with most modern fighters, and indeed with even-older jet aircraft, the SR-75 did not have a fully enclosed cockpit.  The pilot sat in a big swiveling chair in front of the instrument panel, and the main cabin of the craft was accessible from there.  It was a spaceplane, and therefore supposed to be able to perform orbital docking maneuvers exactly like the one we were about to attempt, which necessitated the crew being able to actually get up and access the docking port without going fully extravehicular.

Kate sat behind me in a second chair that Leon bolted in there for her.  She had the magic box in her lap, hooked up by a pair of very fat and long yellow wires to the bulk of the quantum battery, which squatted heavily just slightly off-center in the SR-75’s main cabin.  (“Gotta keep that center of mass where it’s supposed to be,” Leon had said.)  She was doing something with the box’s controls, squinting at the small readout which displayed some kind of complicated waveform.

“I’ll initiate the breach when we get to fifteen thousand meters,” she told me.  “It wouldn’t do for anyone to actually see us at the target time, because then it just wouldn’t work, but I would rather not get shot down by our modern-day autonomous airspace defenses.”

“Sounds good,” I told her. “Hey.  Kate.”

“Yes, Vee?”

I craned my neck around as best I could while strapped into the pilot’s seat.  “I love you, kitty.”

Her cheeks darkened a little and she smiled.  “I love you too.”

I keyed in the ignition sequence and the SR-75 roared to life.  Leon and Ash, both standing a safe distance away outside the hangar so their eardrums didn’t rupture, started waving and giving us thumbs-ups.  I gave them a thumbs-up in return, projecting more confidence than I actually felt, and brought the throttle up just a little.

The spaceplane practically leapt out of the hangar.  Ruggedized, smart landing gear wheels hit the Nevada desert ground like it was perfectly maintained asphalt.  Within twenty seconds I pulled back on the yoke and the SR-75 was in the air, starting a steep climb.  I opened the throttle up the entire way and was slammed into my seat with the gee-force.

“JESUS CHRIST WE ARE GOING TO FUCKING DIE!” Kate screamed.

I glanced over my shoulder at her.  “You okay, kitty?”

She was clutching at her chest, magic box forgotten, and for a long, terrible moment I thought she was having some kind of heart attack.  But then she nodded, looking pasty.  “I just got taken by surprise,” she shouted over the roar of the engines.  “Sorry!”

“Okay!”  I returned my attention to the instrument panel.  We were already moving at a good clip, and the altimeter was increasing fast enough that even the digital display was having trouble keeping up.  For a long, pure moment, I just relaxed into my seat, hands on the yoke, feeling the currents of air spiraling around the ship.  Now, more than ever before my prosthetics, it felt like an extension of myself.  I was flying again.

“We’re at fifteen thousand meters!” I told her.

Kate pressed a button on the magic box.  Everything blurred like someone just messed with the focus on a camera, except the camera was my brain.  When it re-focused, we were still in the plane, climbing toward space at an impressive clip, but all of the global positioning systems were dead.  There were no satellites to receive data from, not in this era.  However, we had accounted for this; the SR-75 had its own onboard suite of computers dedicated specifically to calculating orbital information.

It was at this point that things began to go wrong.  I felt a sharp tug on the yoke.  Swearing to myself, I corrected, keeping the plane on course, and keyed a status readout. The SR-75’s onboard systems insisted that nothing was wrong, but that the plane was experiencing significant and unexpected drag.

It hit me.  “Fuck me!” I snarled.  “Leon’s fucking external fuel tanks!  I told him they needed to be secure!”

“What’s going on?” Kate asked.

“One of the external fuel tanks Leon spit-soldered onto this Goddamn thing has come loose, and the drag is killing our velocity,” I told her.  “I need to get it off of us, now.”

My gaze was fixed on my instruments, so I couldn’t see the horror in her big blue eyes, but I could hear it loud and clear in her voice.  “How?”

“Shearing force.  Hold on, this is going to fucking suck.”

I stomped down on one of the SR-75’s rudder pedals with my right foot, the motion almost as smooth as it used to be even with the prosthetic, and spun the plane in a sharp, hard three-hundred-sixty-degree roll.  I nearly blacked out, and I know Kate did for a few seconds, since she didn’t go through flight training.  But there was a sudden, violent wrenching feeling that went through the yoke into my arms, and afterward the drag was gone.

“Did it work?” Kate asked blearily.

“Yup.  And apparently an external fuel canister from several hundred years in the future crashing in the Nevada desert doesn’t fuck up the timeline, since we’re here at all.”

“Are we still going to be able to make it?”

I eyeballed the delta-vee readouts on the navigation display.  The lost fuel tank didn’t exactly have a ton in it, and of course, the reduced mass of the ship now that it was gone meant the net loss was slightly ameliorated. But even so, the situation was grim.

“Well, yes and no,” I told her.

“That is never the answer anybody wants to hear, Vee.”

“I should, should, still be able to match velocity with the target and achieve rendezvous. But our margins are basically nil now. If I don’t do this perfectly, we’re going to miss completely.”

I felt her reach out and place a hand on my shoulder, give it a squeeze.  “You can do this, Vee.  I know you can.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” I told her, and was surprised to hear that it didn’t come out sarcastic.

The ascent became a delicate balance.  I was trying to hit escape velocity while still using the air-breathing mode of the engines, which was incredibly efficient compared to the rocket fuel.  But as I got higher, the engines needed to work harder to ram enough air in to function, which meant my thrust decreased.  Without the global positioning system to feed me flight info, I needed to do it all by feel and eyeballing the orbital information given to me by the onboard computers.

I trimmed a couple degrees off my angle of attack, trying to find the sweet spot between still gaining altitude and not starving the engines of air in the increasingly-barren stratosphere. The SR-75 shuddered, engines straining, and began to threaten me with a stall.  I swept my gaze across my instruments.  “Fuck,” I muttered, and switched the engines to rocket mode.

Instantly, we were slammed back into our seats again as our thrust suddenly increased dramatically. I glanced at our projected apoapsis, counted to three, then shut the engines down.

In the sudden silence in the absence of the engines’ roar, Kate asked, “Did we do it?”

“Yes and no.”

“Goddammit, Vee!”

I looked over my shoulder at her and gave her my most reassuring grin.  “Sorry, couldn’t help it.  The drag from the fuel tank breaking loose meant that we lost velocity, which meant we took longer to get to the speed we were needing, and the spin I had to put the plane through shifted our course a little bit.  Our inclination is about five degrees off of where it should be.”

“Okay.  What does all that mean?”

“We are going as fast as we need to be, but we’re not in the place we need to be going that fast.  I’m going to need to do correction burns at certain points in our ascent.  We can still make our rendezvous, but we won’t have the fuel to do a proper deceleration burn. I’m going to have to perform emergency aerobraking.”

“In English, Vee!”

“On our way back down I am going to use the atmosphere to slow us down the old-fashioned way.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Is this plane designed for that?”

“Probably.”  I shrugged.  “Assuming we don’t burn up, I’ll be able to switch the engines back to air-breathing at a certain altitude and land without the need for lithobraking.”

I could see her trace the Latin roots of litho and arrive at the gallows-humor definition of the word.  She went even paler than before.  “Certainly hope so.”

I let my grin fade as we continued to coast on our momentum, rising inexorably up through the mesosphere into the thermosphere, our speed gradually slowing as we crested toward the very top of our parabolic arc.  At key points, I reoriented the SR-75’s nose, now using chemical thrusters to maneuver the craft in the absence of air for the control surfaces to manipulate, and fired the engines in rocket mode, tweaking our orbital inclination until it matched that of the target.

The computers suggested to me, at that point, that we would be able to achieve equal relative velocity, and it would leave us with enough delta-vee to then de-orbit ourselves. We would not be stuck in orbit forever until we died.  I blinked hard, banishing the memory of Titan as it suddenly threatened to overwhelm me, and repeated the affirmations Kate taught me.  I am not there anymore.  I am here, now.  I am safe.

Safe was, of course, a relative term in the vacuum of space, going tens of thousands of kilometers per hour.  But Kate took my hand from behind and gave it a squeeze, and I was good again.

“We’re going to do a long burn once we’re within ten kilometers,” I told Kate.  “That’ll bring our relative velocity to zero.  From there we just point our nose at the target, fire the engines for half a second, get as close as we can until we’re either about to hit or miss, fire them again to bring ourselves back to zero relative velocity, and then we do that over and over until we’re close enough to dock.”

“I don’t need to know all the mechanics,” Kate replied, and I could see she was fighting to keep her teeth from chattering.  The environmental controls were working just fine, so it was fear she was dealing with, not cold.  “I just trust you, Vee.  Make it happen.”

I suited action to words. It took ten long, arduous minutes, and by the end of it we were very short on time to actually execute the retrieval, but I successfully brought the SR-75’s docking port, which sat on the dorsal surface of the spaceplane, in contact with the target’s own.

Not that they were remotely designed to be compatible, being hundreds of years apart in origin, but fortunately the SR-75 had the advantage of smart materials incorporated into its construction.  Its port sealed itself tight around the target’s, flashing a green light and hissing open to reveal the shiny metal surface of the target.

Kate was already out of her seat, plasma torch in hand, and the acrid smell of it hit my nostrils as she ignited it and started cutting through the ancient hull like butter.  It was joined less than a minute later by new smells: faint traces of iodine and ethanol, urine, feces, and a wet, animal musk.

And, of course, I heard barking.

“Got her!” Kate called to me.  “She’s in pretty rough shape, but she’s alive!”

“Strap back in, and get her secured too,” I told her.  “We’ve passed apoapsis and I need to fire the engines right now for the Oberth effect or we’re going to be stuck in orbit forever.”

I keyed in the command for the docking port to close on our end and release.  The leftover atmosphere inside the target puffed out of it in sudden decompression, pushing our two crafts apart, but not hard enough to seriously perturb either of our orbits.  That was the engines’ job, and I brought them to life as soon as we were clear.

They sputtered out as they burned the last of the rocket fuel.  I looked at our orbital readout.  “Ah, shit,” I muttered.  “This is going to be a bumpy ride.”

---

We all but rammed into the atmosphere with the entire length of the plane.  The yoke bucked in my hand and the instrumentation suggested to me that I was a fucking moron that had doomed us all, but with polite numbers instead of those exact words.  I kept an iron grip on the yoke, worked the rudders with both my leaden feet to keep us perpendicular to our approach vector so we would generate more drag and thus lose more speed, and prayed to every God I could think of.  Behind me, Kate’s teeth were audibly chattering, but she managed to avoid screaming again, and the dog was remarkably quiet.

The interior of the SR-75 got incredibly hot, naturally.  The instrument panel helpfully informed me that it was almost fifty-five degrees Celsius inside, and that was with the life-support system working as hard as it possibly could to cool it.  The one saving grace we had was that the spaceplane’s designers had anticipated the need for this kind of extreme aerobraking, and the skin of the craft was designed to tolerate it – in theory.  I sweated, and I panted, and I watched our velocity slowly decrease until we were no longer going to boomerang back up out of the atmosphere.

Then I pointed the plane’s nose down, let gravity take over, and switched the engines back into air-breathing mode.

They decided they did not want to start.

“Well, we’re fucked,” I laughed.

“This is a plane, right?” Kate asked through clenched teeth.  “Aerodynamic?  You can fly it without the engines, right?”

“Well, glide, yes. Fall slowly, yes.  Land… maybe.”

I let us half-glide, half-fall until we were back in the troposphere.  “Magic box time,” I told Kate.

Everything unfocused again, and when I was able to see once more, my global positioning displays were back online.  They told me that, if I did nothing, we were going to crash into the ocean just off the coast of Hokkaido.

I tried the engines again. Still nothing.  The reentry had fried them, as far as I could tell.

I started the plane’s nose trending up again, trying to bring us out of the dive and into a climb. The control surfaces bucked and the plane fought me.

“I’m sorry, Vee,” Kate said.

“Don’t start,” I told her. “We’re not dead yet.”

“I couldn’t go back and save you from what happened at Titan.  I thought, if I could save Laika, maybe –”

“I know exactly what you were thinking, kitty.”  I looked back at her, and the scared-looking mutt buckled into her lap.  “It’s okay.”

“I just – when I read about how she died, all alone, in that terrible little capsule –”

“I said don’t start, Kate. I said it’s okay and I meant it.”

She kept going like she hadn’t heard me.  “She was supposed to have enough food and oxygen for a week.  But the satellite was rushed, and the temperature control system failed.  So when she was –”

“FUCK me!” I shouted.

That finally got through to her.  “What?!”

“Temperature control.” I quickly hit a series of switches. “The jet intakes were superheated by our reentry.  When you switch the engines to rocket fuel mode, they have shutters at the front that close so you don’t get trace amounts of gaseous oxygen mixing with the liquid fuel. Those shutters are probably half-melted shut.”

“And?”

“There’s an emergency release that just drops them completely.”  I pressed the button, felt the SR-75 shudder as explosive bolts fired and it shed hundreds of pounds of metal.  “Okay. Now –”

I was cut off as the sudden force of the engines firing slammed me hard into my seat.  The plane began to corkscrew wildly as the engines put out differing amounts of thrust for the first few moments until the oxygen feeds equalized.  Clearly one of the intakes had had less of its shutters blown off than the other, and the plane had needed some time to adjust.

Kate coughed.  “The engines?  They’re working?  We’re not going to die?”

“Oh, we’re still going to die,” I told her.  “Eventually, of old age.  But probably not today.”

She smacked the back of my head.  “Jackass.”

---

The vet gave us a very suspicious stare as we paid our bill and accepted Laika’s carrier back from his nurse.  “I have never seen an animal in that kind of shape before,” he said.  “Malnourished, half-dead from heat exhaustion, matted shit in her fur, and primitive bio-monitoring equipment surgically grafted into parts of her. I assume you didn’t do this, since it would be colossally stupid to come into my office and ask me to fix her up if you did.”

Kate shakes her head. “No, it wasn’t us.  She’s a stray.  Found her while we were out on a trip.  We felt so bad for the poor thing that we brought her back with us.”

Somewhat mollified, the vet nodded.  “Well, make sure to give her the antibiotics for the rest of the week, and call me if there’s anything else she needs.”

We stepped outside, and I opened the carrier to let Laika out.  She staggered out, still a little loopy from the anesthesia, and I got her leash onto her without too much trouble.

“You know,” I said to Kate, “when we first shacked up, I said I didn’t want any pets.”

She grinned at me.  “For someone who was so against the idea, you went very far out of your way to get me one anyway.”

---

About six months after we brought Laika home, a very humorless man in a snazzy uniform, accompanied by many more humorless men in uniform with large guns, came and visited our house. The humorless man in charge sat and chatted with us for a while, and Laika sat in his lap and let him give her pets.

Nothing else ever came of the visit.

There is no neat bow to tie on this story, unfortunately.  I still wake up screaming in the middle of the night, though not quite as often. That probably has more to do with the passage of time and a lot of therapy than pulling a time-travel dog rescue, though.  The only point to any of it is that we spent a lot of taxpayer money (since Kate, Leon, and Ash are all paid by the government) and risked our lives to make the world a better place, even by the tiniest, slimmest possible margin.  

And perhaps having read about it will have made your world a little better too.

[lavenoon]

Worst case scenario, angst ramble, ~1.4K words

CW: Major Character Death (:

Their line of work isn’t the safest, and given the scares Y/N gave their boy(s) you might think they’d be the first to slip. 

But what if, one day, it’s Dusk who doesn’t make it home from a mission? Pre-reveal, and Robin was busy with their own, one of those rare cases where they didn’t make a point out of showing up at each other’s mission. Maybe a busy time at the agency, and they get a reprimand not to double-staff missions for a while - in any case, he’s alone, and Robin only hears about the incident too late. Nothing salvageable, broken beyond repair - their rival, dead. 

They keep it together (i.e. they dissociate and thus don’t break down crying) long enough to make it home. But there they really, really can't stand being alone - it's breaching what they have, of course, overstepping lines they were so mindful of before, but Y/N just craves that comfort and just. Knock on Sun's door.

No response.

They knock again, even try the bell.

No response.

They're already crying then, just barely not making a scene in the early hours of the morning, barely make it behind their own door where they collapse and weep. The guilt, the loss, and all of that they don't even know how to process - they never had to, before. Dusk was the first person they cared about like that in their line of work, and they never thought he'd die.

And, of course, they never catch a break - because HQ is about as sensitive as sandpaper as a towel. When an agent dies on the job, it's their job to clean up any loose threads in that agent's civilian life, including their living situation, if necessary.

In this case, they deem it acceptable to posthumously reveal Dusk's (and Dawn's) identities, and tell their uniquely involved landlord to pack up their belongings.

The memo takes a bit to process.

The neighbors in surrounding houses may assume there's a wraith living in their duplex, that day, because the wailing won't stop.

They stay home, that night, without even calling out. They forget almost everything - food, water, work, why would any of that be a priority when they lost everyone they care about?

And they barely accepted that. Barely started admitting it to themself, and it's too late. They'll never get to tell Sun and Moon - they're gone. They'll never get to tell the boys, never get to actually know them both, so many opportunities missed that they now see, and the future just seems so bleak without them.

They try going over the next morning, but have to break down and cry just past the front door, again. They've never been in their home before, and they never wanted it to be like this. Looking at all the evidence of their boys' existence - a dark blue shirt, thrown over the back of the couch, definitely not Sun's but surrounded by all the craft projects strewn around.

Upstairs is the worst. They cry until their eyes are swollen and their cheeks are a blotted mess, their voice so gone by then they don't know if they'll ever speak again. They know their rival's outfits and they know that his sneakers and nightcap will never make it back, so they cling to the few items they can cling to and weep. The workshop isn't easier, when they spot a harmless decorative DIY project right next to the pushed aside equipment for work gadgets, and that clicks into place, too.

In the end, they have to give up. They can't do it. They crawl back into their home, and hide out, hoping it's all just a bad dream they'll wake up from any minute now, even as a small part of them knows that's denial speaking and it won't help them in the long run.

Their duplex is on its best way to become a home of ghosts. One empty shell of a person going through the motions, and the other half waiting for the return of its two tenants that will never cross that threshold again.

But then there's Eclipse.

Y/N may have missed the "When can the surviving family come by to pick up the belongings left behind?" memo, but Eclipse refuses to just wait. It takes a few days - him processing the initial shock takes some time, he can't drive, and any car ride isn't really an option for him, just a tad too uncomfortable to fold himself into a car like that for hours. If not for the risk of running out of charge he would've just walked, but as it is, he's forced to arrange a train ride. Doesn't have to wait for HQ to release Y/N's address - he knows where his brothers lived.

So just a few days after everything, there's a knock on Y/N's door, and they scramble to open it - the hope is delusional, but they don't care. And they do know the face greeting them, if not the person it's attached to.

Eclipse may be smiling for the world to see, but Y/N spent months at this point carefully watching Dusk's and Sun's expression, they know there's more to it. They're just reeling from the hard crash with reality that of course it's not their boys.

And Eclipse... He was so ready to just be angry at being shut out, that he had to wait any time at all to come here, that he wasn't there for his brothers, and that Y/N dared to just not give HQ the okay to bring him in.

But the human in front of him looks dead on their feet, and about one second away from breaking down again. He knows a bit about this landlord - Sun mentioned them before.

HQ did not care to share the information that the landlord is an agent, too.

When they don't say anything, he manages in as neutral of a tone as he can muster that he's there for his brothers' stuff. Y/N confirms - "of course", and just with two little words their voice breaks and their lip starts quivering again. The loss hits them again, because not only won't they ever hear their voices again or see them grin again or hear any of their thoughts again, and not only are two whole people gone, all their memories and thoughts, all the things they shared. But now they won't even get to keep what is still there, and then they feel so selfish because of course their brother mourns them, too.

Without really asking, they tag along after unlocking the door for him, still so deep in denial that nothing feels real when their place still looks so lived in.

Desperate for a distraction, they ask his name, and he answers, if a little harshly.

"Eclipse. Or Horizon. I don't actually know which one I'm supposed to use, just pick either."

They give their name, too, and with a chuckle that neither of them believes in, add "Or Robin. You can pick, too."

And Eclipse freezes for a second before whipping around to them, immediately making the connection, because Moon also had a little human he liked talking about.

"You were -"

Whatever accusation they expect, they don't want to hear, and interrupt him immediately.

"I'm sorry. I should have been there. I should've - should've -"

Hugging their arms close isn't enough, not really. They tremble, and sink to their knees, not even sure what they could have done but so stuck in this mindset that they could've changed things, because it has to be their fault, there's no way something like this would just happen.

"You knew them."

They shake their head, insist that no, they didn't even know that Sun was an agent, too, they were stupid and never realized, and maybe if they had, things would have gone differently -

"No, you knew them."

The strange, tense static crackle in his voice makes them stop their frustrated ramble, and they look up. He's sitting just a few feet away, eyes locked onto them, but his pupils are fuzzy around the edges and flickering as he struggles, too.

And they don't know each other, never got to the point where Sun and Moon would have introduced them, but they're the closest to the boys either of them has, and they both just crave that connection so badly.

They don't know each other, but they hold each other, both shaking and crying in any way available to them as they mourn the people they loved the most.

[screaming-for-eternally]

Another Cayde AU I cooked in the Content Box with @luna-light-eclipse

Hive Zombie Cayde AU

Basically Cayde gets hit with a Hive curse that doesn’t seem to do anything. He goes on with his life, flash coward a couple years. Cayde is dead, they’re having the funeral.

And then he gets up. And people start freaking the fuck out for a bit. Cayde himself included.

Physically he looks like a damn mess. While he’s tried to get some repairs in, his face still looks all scuffed to hell, he still has the wound that killed him, his limbs keep falling off on occasions, especially when they’re in disrepair, and sometimes his eyes will go out. The only ‘upside’ is that he effcitevly can’t die, so he can be in pieces and still be put back together.

Mentally, he’s also a damn mess. Thanks to some slight brain damage and deterioration from being dead, he has trouble remembering things or getting his thoughts together-not as bad as what Banshee has to go through (though Cayde definitely appreciates the advice on how to deal with memory issues) it’s likely bad enough that he gets taken off strike duty, at least until he gets better. Not to mention Cayde’s usual self loathing is gonna be worse-feeling like a freak, feeling useless, thinking his friends think of him as an abomination that needs to be put out of its misery. All that fun stuff.

As for Eris. Well she ends up putting some spells on him in case Cayde suddenly goes evil or gets taken over by the Hive. Him and Eris actually get along somewhat better, owing to them both getting screwed by the Hive.

In combat, Cayde is just…absolutely feral. Grows claws and literally tears through enemies like tissue paper. Has chomped down on enough bad guys that he has bits of guts stuck in his mouth. He tends to black out for a lack of a better term, coming to having just wiped out a whole group of enemies. It’s not uncommon for Cayde to return from a mission covered in gore. Eventually the Vanguard bans him combat baring emergencies, since he keeps traumatizing the Guardians he’s sent along with

And finally there’s ‘Osiris’. Hoh boy. His memory tends to blank out more around him, and people keep saying he’s been talking to him when he doesn’t remember. Meanwhile, Savathun is taking great pleasure in extracting every iota of information she can from Cayde-who, by virtue of being Hunter Vanguard, knows a lot.

[reubyocs]

I've been thinking so much about my MG S oc lore recently. I'm just gonna put things in bullet points because I just need to jot my thoughts down somewhere

They're just general!!! I want to think about this all a bit more before I cement things in stone. If an of y'all are interested to learn more about my MG S guys, let me know!!

There's lots of banter between Echo and Eclipse over the codec, but Eclipse often snaps back at Echo

Eclipse was super good, never k-worded anyone other than targets. He also looked neat, not scarred m

Eclipse and Codebreak are absolute besties. No one can come between them. Both tease each other and so on. Many think they're dating but they're not!

Once Codebreak and Eclipse discover the reason that Metal Gear Nyx was developed, both recognise they both need to escape. Echo is completely oblivious to this

Eclipse "dies" on mission. This is actually a plan made by Codebreak to release him from the military. Echo is devastated by his death

Soon afterwards, Echo is given a new soldier to handle, a new and promising recruit codenamed Eros

Eros is chosen by the military to learn how to pilot Nyx.

Codebreak, despite knowing he should leave as well, remains in the military. He knows that the military can't k-word him yet as he is the only person who can pilot Nyx and organise repairs to it. He relays as much information as he can to Eclipse

Codebreak is also the person training Eros on how to pilot Nyx. He's very grumbly when talking to Eros

Eclipse and Codebreak attempt to find a way to destroy Nyx. Eclipse infiltrates the facility while Codebreak develops some malware to deliver to Nyx.

And at some point in time, they manage to succeed!

6 years later after Nyx has been destroyed by Eclipse and Codebreak. Eclipse organises a meeting with Echo via Codebreak

While being incredibly pissed off, Echo is over the moon with knowing that Eclipse is alive. However, he is mortified seeing the state in which Eclipse has returned (scars, damaged eye, acid burn)

[mangowavves]

i rewatched the owl house; here's why hunter is my top kin

so like... as a preface to this entire thing, hunter was my top kin when i first watched the series back in 2022, and upon rewatch, he was one of two members of my kinlist who wasn't booted. what i was curious of though, beyond remembering that the show not only existed, is why exactly i connected with the character of hunter so much back then.

did i find the answer? absolutely. like a little unnervingly, yes.

warning: spoilers for like... the entire plot of hunter in s2 and s3 but it's just off the top of my head. i'm fucking yapping. this is just very disorganized and me talking about a character im incredibly passionate about.

part i; first impressions of hunter

hunter is first teased at the end of season one in a small still frame where he is next to belos. he isn't really discussed as a character at this point, but he will be very soon.

we first properly meet him, name and all, in s2e1, separate tides, where he is on one of the emperor's ships, and as he is his nephew, it makes sense, but is still generally off-putting for the crew. he follows luz and eda to the island where the selkidomus is residing with its' baby. hunter is threatening king as well as attempting to intimidate eda and luz into killing the creature. they don't get the prize from the mission but don't die and get king back before hunter flies off.

we don't see much more of him besides for comments from other members of the emperor's coven describing him as annoying. we get another good amount of character from him just a few episodes later.

part ii; understunding hunter

hunter is next given a larger appearance in s2e6, hunting palisman. hunter is trying to do his uncle the favor of getting more palisman for him, seeing as they help keep his wild magic curse under control. this is where we start to learn more about hunter as a person.

he runs to steal palisman from hexside and the bat queen, but his plan is foiled by luz, who had fallen asleep among the palisman while trying to connect with one. they both crash from the airship due to interference from kikimora and the two are forced to have a temporary truce. we see hunter's face here, a tired, scrawny young guy with a scar on his face from an unknown incident.

he's interested in wild magic, reserved, and hesitant to open up to luz as she pressures him to talk to her. he even refuses to say his name until they're about to depart.

we see hunter next in s2e9, eclipse lake, where he is in pursuit of titan's blood to help belos create a portal door to the human realm. he forms an uneasy alliance with amity, eda and king this time, as luz is at the owl house with willow and gus with a witch's cold.

he is combative and fearful in this episode, going out on a mission in secret away from belos to try and redeem himself in the eyes of his uncle. he doesn't prove his worth in the way he initially desired to, which was to bring back more blood, but instead, he brought back the key to activate the door, which is hardly enough to pacify belos.

during the time he's with amity in the lake, the two fight, but beyond that, they also relate to each other, seeing that they both refuse to fail those they love, even if it is within two entirely different contexts. amity is afraid of failing luz, an idea that hunter seemingly instills in her head as a projection of his own fear and knowledge that he is failing belos.

the next stop of major hunter moments is s2e14, any sport in a storm. hunter is trying to repair the golden guard cape and is put in charge of the covenhead meeting. he tries to prove himself to darius, who was close to his predecessor. darius tells him to find more recruits to prove himself, and he does within the hexside flyer derby team.

he goes undercover as caleb jasper bloodwilliams and begins playing flyer derby with viney, willow, gus and skara. he names the team before revealing that he's the golden guard and he was hoping to recruit them into the emperor's coven, which they're disturbed by.

they're locked up where they each yell at hunter, with gus stating friend's don't stab each other in the back. hunter dejects by saying that they do, and he would know because the covenheads do it all the time to each other.

eventually they're let out to be picked up by darius, but hunter says to let them go, calling them insolent agitators. darius is proud hunter let them go and gives him back the golden guard cape and a scroll so hunter may contact people outside of the castle.

part iii; hollow mind and its' consequences

the biggest episode for hunter within season two is s2e16, hollow mind. hunter and luz are sent to belos' mind, something neither is exactly happy about. eda learns that they're in there through a walky-talky that king has. they work on freeing luz and hunter from belos' mind while the two explore inside.

hunter tries to run through his mind, proving that belos is, in fact, not evil, something which luz knows is incorrect. they hop from belos' fake mindscape to his real one, seeing the past golden guards and learning the true intentions of belos, the truth about the golden guard position in general, and the biggest part of it all; hunter is a clone of belos' brother.

when they emerge from belos' mind, hunter is rightfully panicked. he throws the golden guard cape onto the ground as if it were suffocating him and runs away from the owl house, hiding out at hexside, too afraid to return to the castle. he then returns in labyrinth runners and helps protect hunter, willow, and hexside as a whole from the emperor's coven as well as spill the beans about the true intentions of the day of unity.

when it comes to hunter's character, s2 is generally out of relevant moments for him as a person beyond acting as an escort, pretending to be a guard/luz, and arguing with alador. he once again returns to high relevancy in s3.

part iv; what did they do to my boy D:

within the three episodes of s3, he finds ground in all of them. due to the length of each episode, they will be given lengthy discussion for hunter as a character.

starting with s3e1, thanks to them, we pick up right where season two ended; the gang in the human world meeting camila. he is hiding the fact he is a grimwalker and resides temporarily in the basement with gus. the hexside gang all begin conspiring a way to get back to the boiling isles as seen within a montage.

hunter's highlight within the montage is being in the bathroom at night. he closes a cabinet with a mirror on it, and within his reflection, he sees caleb and belos, immediately causing him to panic and cut his hair. willow helps him with it, waking up and seeing his hair on the floor.

as the episode progresses, hunter and the rest of the gang prepare ideas on how to return to the demon realm after finding the rebus to take them to some titans blood. the gang prepares to go and find solutions while hunter hangs behind and finds that belos somehow managed to follow them back into the human realm, although him and the other witches are unaware that belos rode on his shoulder through the portal.

hunter and luz make the effort to confront belos, but hunter finds it much harder than when he was the golden guard due to not having a mask to protect himself and hide behind. two costume masks blow their way, and after masking up, hunter is far more confident like the early season one hunter. they find an opossum instead of belos, and he expresses wanting to keep the others safe. luz promises to keep him safe as well, causing him to cry. unknown to them, belos has begun to dig his roots into hunter.

i skipped it earlier, but gus specifically notes that hunter seems happier now than he was in the boiling isles, and asks hunter about his time as the golden guard. he fidgets while answering the question.

during the halloween event within town, the gang goes on a hayride and hears the story of phillip and caleb, now belos and hunter back when they were in the human realm. hunter confesses that they have clues for titan's blood and that he is confident that belos is nearby. he orders flapjack to grab the rebus, but the bird refuses at first before being scolded. luz reprimands hunter for yelling at flapjack, who apologizes. he's confused about why he did it as well, but the audience knows it was belos.

flapjack grabs the rebus and hunter and luz set off to find the titan blood, where belos fully reveals he has possessed hunter. belos, taking the body of hunter, begins to fight luz, and then the gang as a whole before flapjack makes an attempt to stop him. belos grabs flapjack and pierces him, causing the bird to retreat to luz. this manages to let hunter somewhat take control of himself and try to end belos and himself once and for all, throwing the titan blood into the lake. belos follows him but also can't swim, causing the two to almost drown.

hunter is pulled from the water by camila, belos exits his body, reopens the portal, and enters it, hunter still unconcious and far more scarred than he was previously. the areas in which belos was most visible on hunter seemed to have rotted away and caused a permanent consequence. the gang learns that hunter is a grimwalker before flapjack lays on hunter's lap before sacrificing himself to revive hunter.

they return to the boiling isles, with hunter stating it's time for flapjack to go home.

in s2e2, for the future, hunter is agitated and mourning the loss of flapjack. he's far more closed off within this episode, not saying too much. he paces outside of the owl house where everyone else is inside, preparing their next move. hunter sees king fly overhead and the gang heads to bonesborough, where hunter warns the gang of the collector coming their way.

skipping ahead to hexside, hunter is given a photo by willow of him and flapjack ready for flyer derby. he shuts down a little before willow gets upset, thinking she made something worse and runs off. gus and hunter follow, not before gus confirms he knew hunter was a grimwalker, and the three are trapped together trying to get willow out of her head. he learns then he has officially gotten magic from flapjack reviving him, now having the powers flapjack did. he also gets to confess he genuinely cares for willow, which helps snap her out of her being upset. things don't really pick up for him after this beyond luz being confused he can teleport and willow thanking him for what he said to her.

in the finale, watching and dreaming, he has even less to do with words. his largest moment is frustratedly expressing his "grief" over flapjack and envy of luz for having a palisman. this is not him however, this is the collector trying to warp luz's perception of hunter to make her believe he hates her. she is eventually able to speak to the real hunter, who tells her how to get out of her nightmare using a light glyph.

for almost the entire rest of the episode, hunter is absent. he's a puppet for the collector and helps with freeing the other puppets but generally says nothing else.

we do know however he has a happy future.

hunter, a few years into the future, is carving palismen with eda's father, dell, and seems to be in a relationship with willow. he also now has a new palisman, a blue jay named waffle. he has a tattoo for flapjack where his coven sigil used to be, and it's matching with the rest of the hexside gang also all having tattoos of flapjack.

part v; how i relate to this bisexual twerp

if you're somehow still reading this, i have to applaud you. you're cool. and probably cori. lol. love you cori <3

anyway;

hunter's story is one of growth from a time in which you are put into a position of harshities and struggles. hunter is forced to age far quicker than anyone else within his age range. he feels isolated from those around him because he is isolated from those around him. he initially lacks the confidence to ever fully believe he'd ever make friends, be a witch, have success or survive on the isles because he is told that by someone he trusts and he is working with. he believes the mouth who tells him of what he is worth, and he has to learn on his own accord what he truly needs and believes in life.

he has to make his way through social situations not knowing truly how people his age are. he feels so disconnected yet so close to the people around him because he genuinely wants that connection but isn't sure how to cross that bridge himself. his closest bond and friend is not a person like him, but a pet that found him before he found it.

he is so relatable to me because of my struggles i've always had to make friends. i can make them, but i always had issues with making them want to stay. i knew that i could, but then i would just no longer be myself. i feel often that i come off as callous, something i know is sometimes with intention, but i want to be understood. i want those connections, and though i don't always deserve the forgiveness i am granted, i want to be there to extend the branch of forgiveness. i want to be close to others. i hate having to face the issues alone. i cannot be perceived while being brave, for then the fear i have from knowing i cannot fully connect with others fully wraps its arms around me.

i desire, crave, and practically beg to be happy and fufilled within myself, my life, and my relationships, but none of those are consistent. i cannot confidently face the world and be perceived, for if i am to be seen, i am to be weakened. with a covered face, i become unstoppable. the mask needed to survive is the only way i can be within social situations without the ill feeling that i will fail.

despite that, i have recovered from hurdles. loss upon loss, change after change, i have learned, i have grown, and i have changed. i have survived my worst moments and have become a better person. from harsh and pointed like stones to reserved and calm, although i have given opening to feelings of self doubt, i have grown. i can be nice and understanding. the first plants of friendship.

we're all human. and the humanistic desire for connection is hard, especially when you aren't sure on connecting, when you aren't sure you can trust. you can. but it takes time. and it takes effort. and it takes care. and it takes respect. it takes humanity. and it's hard, but it can be done.

it really solidifies for me how much i genuinely relate to hunter. struggling to be close to others has always been hard, and though i'm not perfect, i'm learning these connections as i grow. the need to hide is forever a setback, but i am growing. the ability to heal from loss and hardship is one of the most important skills to learn, and coping has been a massive boost to my esteem.

tl;dr: he's literally me

[miss-midnightt]

Hear me out, an interaction between Sera and Eclipse (Eclipse had somehow managed to pass through the void separating Storybrooke and the real world thanks to her magic and she's kind of just, been a lone soul wandering until Sera finds her one night while on a mission and decides to take her to safety because, well, that's the right thing to do.)

So, basically, Eclipse is struggling to even accept help and is damaged beyond repair, Sera recognizes this right away because she's went through the exact same thing before and let the darkness consume her (and then Lock came along<3) just like Eclipse is doing right now. Sera then decides to take it upon herself and help guide the 17 year old back into the light and away from the darkness, even if it takes a full year or so. Sera is fucking determined to help Eclipse out of this seemingly neverending torment she trapped herself in. Reason? Sera doesn't want to see Eclipse suffer the same way she did. In a way, Sera sees a lot of herself in Eclipse when she was her age and she believes that Eclipse is in fact, not beyond repair and can be fixed with enough guidance, Sera knows that Eclipse just has to take the help that's being offered to her, even if she doesn't want to. Sera knows that Eclipse just needs someone who understands what she's going through exactly and to help her out if the rut she's in. Eventually, Eclipse finally opens up about her past, her brother who's dead, her mom who's also dead, her dad who's still searching for her brother even if he knows that he's dead and gone, and herself who's been alone for over 500 years and stuck at 17 due to a curse that was placed upon her all those years ago. She explains how her father had been trying to help her but all she does is run away, she explains how hopeless and stuck she feels, she explains how her family is broken, she even explains why she kept kept darkness consume her and how the darkness comforts her. She's so very broken and damaged and Sera can see this so damn well and she just wants to help her in any way she can.

YESYESYES SERA IS VERY. Yes. This is so in character for sera, she just wants to help everyone and she cares everyone very much <333

[writerfromtheshore]

Possible Greater Purpose of the Vahi

Forgive me if this has already been covered, but I have been thinking about the true purpose of the Vahi. The Ignika was created to save Mata Nui, the Mask of Creation was created to help inventions in the MU/the brothers repair the Matoran (It probably should have gone to Karz to help him with that, but I think that one is my speculation), but what about the third legendary mask?

I think Mata Nui was the intended user for the Mask of Time, to use it to stop the planetary rotation from passing. I also think that the Great Beings knew that in case the timing somehow got screwed up, the Great Spirit— and somehow the robot— would need to use some sort of time altering device to stop the flow of time and rotation of Bara, Aqua, and Bota Magna from going past the points that would allow the rejoining to happen in a safe way.

What we know:

Biosector claims that the mask “allows its user to filter this sheer power to speed up or slow down time around a target”

It has been used to slow down the Bohrok Kal from unleashing the swarms again, and by Toa Vakama to slow down a shadow hand by Makuta Teridax and passed hands by Vorporak, Metru Nui safekeeping, all that jazz. Makuta Teridax intended to use the power of the mask to speed up time with the Matoran pods in Metru Nui, in order to speed up the memory loss process so they would forget him.

Unless it has been stated elsewhere, I think that a mask so powerful and “Legendary” would be intended for more than just that.

Elsewhere:

Mata Nui was supposed to make his journey in X amount of time (I think it was 100k years, and was on fact back to Bara Magne when the Great Cataclysm/Teridax’s plan was put into large scale play (this ended up putting the journey at 101,000 years and change I believe) The journey was supposed to be made in 100k years because the Great Beings calculated that year being the next time the 3 planetoids were in perfect alignment. However, 101k years— if you take our time scale and how our planets in the Milky way align— are different in a year’s time (hence certain eclipses happening once in a certain 100 years or blue moon or whenever. @rahiwatching, I feel like you would be better versed in talking about this)

Around the time that Mata Nui fell to the Aqua Magna floorbed, Vakama completed and used the Vahi.

On the surface, 1000 years later, Tahu used the Vahi to stop the Bohrok Kal.

I am thinking that the use of that mask, and the energies it contained, somehow leaked past the robot, spread to the other planetoids out in outer space, and somehow either corrected the flow of time or slowed it down so Mata Nui could complete his mission.

Other notes: 

Mata Nui purposely intervened with destiny in order to make sure Vakama became a Toa. 

We do not know how old Vakama actually is. 

Vakama as a Toa within the Toa Metru has a destiny of the Great Rescue, but I think he has individual destiny being to create the Vahi. Perhaps knowing that either something was going to delay him from his mission, or that the Great Being’s timetables might get screwed up, Mata Nui created Vakama as a failsafe in order to stop the timetable or speed it up in case the timing of his mission went awry. 

Flaws/Holes in the theory:

—How could the robot— a 40 million foot behemoth— use a mask that is —compared to us— a speck of dust? That one I am still working on. But I think that for some reason, the robot itself didn’t need to use the mask

> Tahu using outside the robot could have been enough

> The mask’s energy is so powerful that it can permeate through the robot, as stated earlier

>It could have somehow been linked up to the core processor

>Depending on how canon certain scenes of the Legend Reborn are canon, when Makuta shoots off the Ignika into space— could that hole have been where Mata Nui was supposed to project time energy?

—This theory would also mean— as my rudimentary knowledge of science and physics works— that gravitational pull and rotation and the power of gravity would be simply the same as time power. Not sure how to pull myself out of this one.

Welp, that is all I’ve got. This has been sitting in my brain all day, and I just wanted to get it out to you.

[l-lend]

A fic of Hunter x OC, Natalia again with number 40 of 50 date ideas and comfort prompts number 4 please

50 More Date Ideas

40. doing stand-up paddling

105 Comfort Prompts

4. “Are you all right?” 

Let me just put on some inspiration *checks Spotify* this'll do:

Came up with a tropical planet name. Aphros meaning 'sea foam' in Greek, so there we go

Warning(s): none

Downtime. This was music to the Batch as they took some time to allow wounds to heal, repairs to be made, and perhaps some fun to be had.

Wrecker had commandeered the smallest squad member. The planet's lush jungle offering to be a perfect environment for spotting and diffusing anti-personnel mines. Tech and Echo busied themselves with delving into the metal bowels of the Marauder seeing to recent wounds she had received from a recent mission. This left the sergeant and their former bounty hunter, and a more leisurely approach to biding their time.

The pair had taken to the beaches near a small village. Their armor still with the ship in exchange for civilian attire. To the locals' untrained eyes, the couple appeared to be mere tourists. This means of lying by omission allowed for the rental of paddle boards.

The sea's mirror surface only disturbed by the paddles pushing the pair forward. The exotic flora and fauna as visible to the pair as if they were viewing them through glass.

“This is...” she trailed off before a yelp came from her.

A beast resting amongst the sand and silt began to stir. The unfurling of its massive wings had breached the surface brushing the board. The sudden jolt knocked the former bounty hunter's feet out from under her. The salty tang of the sea flooding her senses before she came up for breath.

As she broke the surface, a shadow eclipsed her form.

“Are you alright, mesh'la?”

Taking in his concerned expression left the feeling of embarrassment to sink beneath the waves.

“I am now.” She smiled.

[sweethoneyrose83]

Can you do Moondrop writing prompts?

Writing prompts inspired by Moondrop :

1. The Mysterious Lunar Transmission: A team of astronauts discovers a hidden transmission originating from the dark side of the moon. As they investigate further, they uncover a connection between the transmission and the infamous Fazbear pizzeria. What secrets does the moon hold about the animatronics' origin?

2. Lunar Outpost: FNAF Edition: A group of scientists establishes a research base on the moon to study its resources. However, strange and eerie occurrences start happening as they uncover remnants of an ancient lunar civilization intertwined with the haunting memories of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. How do these unearthed mysteries threaten the safety of the researchers?

3. The Haunted Moon Base: A crew of astronauts embarks on a mission to repair a malfunctioning moon base originally designed for lunar mining. Unbeknownst to them, remnants of animatronic characters from Fazbears are lurking within the base, their malfunctioning AI seeking to ensure no one leaves alive. Can the crew survive the night and escape the haunted moon base?

4. FNAF: Lunar Eclipse: During a rare lunar eclipse, strange occurrences begin on Earth, with reports of animatronic sightings coinciding with the eclipse. Unraveling the connection between the lunar phenomenon and the Fazbear animatronics becomes crucial to prevent a global catastrophe. How do the moon and these characters intertwine, and what's their ultimate goal during this celestial event?

Feel free to mix and match elements or alter the prompts to suit your preferences!

[errorleafeon]

CHARACTER INFO POST

// info about the main characters of this blog! All are currently available for asks, except for ???. Interactions with characters from other blogs are allowed and encouraged with all open characters! \\

ERROR

Name: Error (last name not found) Gender: Agender (She/They) Species: ...Leafeon..? Nature: Lax

A glitchy Leafeon with way too much time on her paws. Being glitched beyond "repair", Error can't die and is constantly glitching out. She's a dimension hopper too, able to open glitchy portals to get to her next destination and teleport around via glitching. She's a friendly and lax fellow most of the time, but has a huge interest in watching other's lives play out and messing with them occasionally.

GLITCH

Name: Glitch (last name not found) Gender: Male (He/Him) Species: ...Eevee?? Nature: Naughty

Glitch often can be seen playing around with random things he finds, be it someone's personal belongings or a butterfly flying around outside. He finds it fun to explore and wander, especially if he can find somebody to bother along the way. Glitch has grown to tolerate being yelled at and just responds with a giggle and running off to cause trouble elsewhere before returning back to Error's dimension (oftentimes getting dragged back by Error before he makes a situation worse.)

???

This character is a mystery...

PC PROBLEM

Name: :( Your PC ran into a problem Gender: Nonbinary (They/Them) Species: ...Eevee. Probably. Nature: Mild

A silent, rarely moving let alone talking- They're probably mute. They seem to just let others do the talking for them, their expression rarely changing- It seems to be stuck in a permanent sideways frown.

SOLUNIN

Name: Solunin Eclipsa Gender: Male (He/Him) Species: Umbreon Nature: Serious

An Astronaut who was part of the SS Eclipse with his sister Hatysa, an Espeon, alongside an Umbreon he doesn't remember the name of. The three were on a mission to find intelligent life on a planet, when suddenly Solunin and Hatysa got into an argument; And after an unfortunate fight, found himself in Error's realm with his arm frozen over. He's still adjusting to everything, and is very close to Error- Being one of the few who can calm her down when she gets into her destructive moods. He might have even found himself close

[ane-doodles]

Eclipse Repair Mission!! (presentation)

Your vacation has just started, you are relaxing at home resting while having a cup of your favorite drink. Out of nowhere you hear the doorbell ring, who could it be at this hour?

When you open the door, you only see a box at the entrance, it has a label with the name of that amusement company of which you were a fan, but that a couple of years ago one of its most impressive complexes had been consumed by fire. Perhaps your friend who used to work there had sent you more salvaged merchandise, you were excited to think that they could be more clothes or toys of the curious daycare attendant that you liked to visit so much.

You lift the box and hear noises inside, you get scared and end up dropping it noisily. You hear more noises, like scratches and blows coming from the inside of the box... what joke was that silly friend of yours trying to play on you?

You carefully opened both lids of the box, only to find a pair of shimmering bright eyes fixed on you.

That was definitely not what you had in mind

..........

Phew! Finally, after several inconveniences, I have been able to introduce you to the introduction of this little game/comic.

Here are brief explanations:

• Have you seen those posts where it is necessary to reach a certain number of likes and reblogs to reach an update or second part? Well this is something similar

• I don't plan on setting exorbitant interaction goals because the reason for this is to have fun. But I would really appreciate if you share this little series of mine

• Each publication will have a specific dynamic. Sometimes they will be likes, other times comments, questions, polls, reblogs, etc...

• Decision making will affect the telling of the story, but not the ending.

• At a certain point you will be able to interact with Eclipse! wait for that moment and give him lots of pampering! (poor baby needs them)

• This series is a kind of storytelling mixed with illustrations and comics. Sometimes in sketches and on special occasions complete illustrations

• If you have ideas of situations for the story you can leave it here in the comments!

• Please be patient with me. I haven't written a fanfic in more than 10 years, and English is not my native language (actually I depend on a translator for my posts). Sometimes work and studies make me draw slow, but I plan to do weekly posts

• This series isn't going to be toooooo long, but I do plan on having a little fun with everyone.

And that would be the main thing! I'm so excited to share this little project with such a warm and welcoming community, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

As I said before, if you have ideas or suggestions you can leave them in the comments (or in my question box if you prefer to do it privately).

Btw if anyone is interested in a version of the cover image as a wallpaper (no text) let me know and I'll share it

See you soon new friend!✨

[robot-kitten09]

My FNAF Story

Chapter 2:

Addy was levitating in midair, when she laughed it sounded like a demon child. Addy flew outside to a nearby forest where she met Eclipse and Galaxy. “Who are you?” “My name’s Addy, Addy Bunny.” Eclipse grabbed her hand and kissed it, “Eclipse~. And this animatronic behind me is Galaxy.” “Well why are you guys in a forest by the pizzaplex?” “Oh, it’s not even a real forest. It’s just a cover up.” Eclipse took out a remote and pressed a button and the ground below them disappeared as they fell down a slide into a little room. Eclipse put in a 6-digit code and a door opened as they went inside, Galaxy dashed inside, “home sweet home” they walked down a hall that led them into a humongous room with multiple doors. “What is this place” “My home”  Addy opened a door, and it was filled with weapons, Galaxy opened another door, and it was filled with spy gear. “Galaxy, stop touching things. You know your body is…more special than others” “Hey Eclipse, you still didn’t explain why you’re here.” “I used to be working in the pizzaplex before I got here, I was the first daycare attendant before Sun and Moon…” “Alright bro I didn’t ask for your whole life story” “But then one day There was an accident. As I was jumping from the balcony as always I missed the ball pit, that happened all the time but S.T.A.F.F would just fix me in Parts & Service. But that day I was…pretty messed up from the fall and I heard a conversation outside of the repair room. “This happens like every week! Is he getting damaged on purpose!?” “The cost to fix him this time will be…$500.” “$500! I’m not paying $500 to fix an animatronic who’s just going to get damaged again!” “But…the kids love him, and he loves the kids and his job” “Forget that! Y’know what? Scrap him, I’ll make some different animatronics who HOPEFULLY won’t get damaged every second!” “they were planning on putting me out to the junk yard and getting me replaced, but I didn’t just sit there and let them scrap me. I locked myself in an abandoned room and managed to fix up myself at least decently. While I was at it, I gave myself a few new upgrades along with a paint job.” “ so, your life was ruined by Sun and Moon too?” “ I guess so” “ Hey Clipse, I’ve got a proposal, we can work together. I get my revenge, and you take back what’s yours.” Addy took out a cigarette and lit it, “so, do we have a deal?” Addy reached her hand out for a handshake. As she and Eclipse were shaking hand Addy put her hand behind her and crossed her fingers with an evil smirk. “Well, we can come up with a plan tomorrow, I have business to take care of.” She went back into the pizzaplex, Eclipses tail made a heart. “ohhhhhhhh! Someone has a little crush~” “I don’t have a crush, okay?” Addy was in her room in front of a mirror, Abby appeared in the mirror. “Who are you?” “How rude of me, let me introduce myself~. I’m Addy.” “My name’s Abby. So are we like sisters…?” “Well, I guess we are~. And sis?” “Yeah?” “I’m on a little mission so don’t get in my way…understand?” Abby tried to speak before getting cut off. "I know that stupid Eclipse likes me so I might as well use it to my advantage, and might as well take care of the Galaxy too." Addy let out a hysterical laugh "Addy, wait!" Addy smashing the mirror with her skates while still laughing. When she stopped you could hear a little whisper under her breath, "help me..."

[lavenoon]

Okay okay, so blorbo thought involving Eclipse because of course it does—

But my brain went “what if his battery was good and he was interested in the Field Agent job? And what if Sun and Moon were in the lab instead?” :o dunno if that would work but that’s quite the switcheroo if so!!

So this is interesting to think about because I want to give you the simp answer you deserve but Eclipse in the field is just. (:

Okay so, we imagine Eclipse has a good battery - his lack of awareness for social cues and general bluntness keep him from undercover work (unless the agency is desperate) but he can now finally follow in his brothers footsteps and learn parkour <3

So sneaky secret agent Eclipse stealing information! He'd have a blast and very much mirror the way Robin feels about their job - absolute glee at being a secret agent. The type of goober sneaking around an empty building humming the mission impossible or pink panther theme. Probably more pink panther actually.

A little bummed out maybe, because he's doing most missions alone still, other field agents not quite agreeing with his work ethic and being bitter how he still is a damn good agent somehow. Time for a new agent to maybe join the agency >:3c

Researchers Dusk/ Dawn would still be good at their jobs, but significantly more bored with it compared to the field. It was the condition to join the agency though, at least until they can guarantee three celestial animatronics in the field will not cause issues, even with the distance between locations.

They get visited by field agent Robin (break in vs undercover agent depending on timeline - for the sake of everyone's dashboard I'll try to be concise) coming by the lab for some upgrades or repairs. Robin is much less harsh with lab workers (because they aren't competition), so Dusk/ Dawn get a much easier time talking to them and a much more socially awkward Robin because not competition > means they can be nice > how tf do they interact then?

Boys quicker to flirt, at first just to get this field agent to stay longer and to get a taste of the field agent life, but soon realize how delightful it is to actually have them around and have them warm up to the respective him, much easier to fluster and convince to stick around for shenanigans. Basically Saros but with Dusk or Dawn! And the shenanigans of their civilian life with the totally unrelated to their coworker neighbor (: No great difference between main and reverse this time, as Dawn has really no reason to be a dick here, and a reveal would also go a little smoother in general, because without all three of them in the field, none of them would freak out quite as much lmao

[hypermo0n]

Main character Guide for my Main AU: Shade and Depth.

Shadow the Hedgehog- Ultimate Lifeform. Eclipse's older brother and one of the top agents of G.U.N. After hunting down Eclipse and talking with him (thanks to Silver), he becomes a mentor to Eclipse once the darkling joins GUN. The eldest prince of the Black Arms. Romantically interested in Silver.

Eclipse the Darkling- Ultimate Alien. Shortly after where the Archie comics left off, he was found by Silver and after a talk, agreed to talk with his brother. Currently redeemed and working as a GUN agent alongside Team Dark. The second prince of the Black Arms. Romantically interested in Zero.

Rouge the Bat- Member of Team Dark. Was the one who helped Silver track down Eclipse. Looks after him and always gives him advice.

Omega- Guard dog for Team Dark. Has a soft spot for Eclipse and is seen to be often patting his head. Eclipse treasures his dry humor.

Silver the Hedgehog- While not an agent of GUN, he is often called by them for his help and insight. When he heard about Shadow and Eclipse, it was he who asked for Rouge to help him track down the darkling.  Upon a small fight and a lengthy talk, Silver was able to get Eclipse and Shadow to talk. Silver adores Eclipse, and is fairly protective of him. Runs a tea shop/floral. Romantically interested in Shadow.

Zero the Jackal- Formerly Infinite, Zero was able to survive the final War and went into hiding. He runs a small bar in the criminal side of the city. Has a deep hatred for Shadow still. He met Eclipse when the darkling was on an intel mission and was cornered. Zero helped him out and thus, their friendship was born. Knowing that Eclipse is Shadow's little brother, he vows to keep his and Shadow's past hidden from him, in order to not cause more pain for Eclipse. Currently has the Phantom Ruby still in his chest, though he avoids using it, as it could kill him. Romantically interested in Eclipse.

Jasmine Rue (0c)- An human agent for GUN. She and her twin brother, Jasper, were abducted by the Black Arms and used as test subjects by Black Doom. During the First Invasion (Events of Shadow the Hedgehog game), she and Jasper were found by Shadow and freed. Though her brother sacrificed himself to make sure Jaz and Shadow got out. Jaz honors him every day and joined GUN in order to protect others. Everything she knows, she learned from Shadow. She was highly skeptical and nervous about Eclipse but soon warmed up to him and trusts him. Has a slight crush on Elise.

Hope Kintober- GUN's best mechanic and tech wiz. Adopted younger sister of Jaz. She was mentored by Jaz and sees her as an older sister. Very close to Eclipse and they often have movie marathons. Wants to figure out a way to remove the Phantom Ruby from Zero's chest without killing him, to help the jackal. Is also close to Zero and Zero is fairly protective of her.

Andrews- Leader of the Spider Troupe and Eclipse's "caretaker". He and the darkling had a rough start and was quite annoyed to know he would be a handler for the alien. However, upon learning about him and what he went through, plus the darkling apologizing to him, he warmed up to him. Pretty chaotic and its often ECLIPSE that has to reign him in. Despite his carefree attitude outside of missions, he is able to pick up on the darkling's emotions pretty quickly, even just by body language and tone. Eclipse is extremely close to him.

Metal Sonic (Neo)- Omega's "brother" and one of Eclipse's best friends. Not an agent of GUN, but works more with Silver. Silver is his mentor in some regards. He was actually the first one Eclipse helped. The darkling had found the robot damaged on a beach and brought him to Hope, who repaired him. Neo and Eclipse became close after that. Unsure what to do, Neo was stressed. Silver stepped forward and offered to mentor him. Their bond is strong, and Neo has referred to Silver as "older brother" several times. To which Silver becomes overjoyed and calls him "little brother."

Scourge the Hedgehog- Another one of Eclipse's best friends. And the second person he helped. After becoming trapped in Mobius and arrested by GUN (Eclipse specifically), Scourge was very snappish towards anyone. Eclipse never gave up and kept visiting his cell. Soon enough, Scourge was willing to answer the questions and was redeemed.

Commander Towers- Head honcho. The one who oversees GUN and Team Dark. And the one who vouched for Eclipse to be given a chance. While stoic at times, he has a big heart. Eclipse and him develop a father-son bond later on.

Black Doom- Not much to say, except that he's alive and looking for blood, especially towards his two sons.

[wistfulrat]

a 4-part rec list of my fave drarry fics - the thrillers, dramas, soft bois, and wankbanks getting me through 2020′s shitstorm

[the soft boi list is here and truly i’m not surprised this rec is going to be the longest bc if there’s one thing a bitch is going to do, it’s yearn.

as always! if you love a fic, follow the authors, leave kudos & comments, send them nice msgs bc free art is still labor xoxo]

part 3: soft bois

mood: for when I need respite, a balm to the all-consuming shittiness of life

includes: fluff, comfort, low-stakes, slow-burn fics. a wistful look, a rainy morning, an unexpected grace, a stupidly disarming joke. i could live inside these fics. the smallness of human lives removed from the site of that which hurts & irreparably changes. the story-equivalent of a deep breath after a long day. pregnant silences & pensive mundanity & shy smiles. banter with bite but without the cruelty. the color lavender. weirdly whimsical. soft fics are not necessarily conflict-averse (no drarry fic rly can be, considering the context) but, they offer the reader a generous distance from the initial harm. they’re the quiet cleaning up after a storm. sometimes healing is an exacting surgical knife and other times it’s a slow scabbing. you read these fics to be reassured that the way forward is not always ruthless. and honestly?? they deserve a semblance of peace godDAMmit.

The Way Down by @letteredlettered - 65k - T “and I thought that if someone talked to you as though you were a human being you might—maybe you could act like one” --the way i think about this line daily. the characterization of draco in this fic is one my favorites bc he’s earnest and neurotic and tired of harry’s shit. which is to say, he cares so so much. and harry doesn’t know what to do with that bc he’s got a monster in his chest and lives as a recluse. but they both humanize each other in ways no one else can. “you’re just a person” has to be some kind of drarry ethics of belonging and it makes me CRY. -

Little Deaths and How to Avoid Them by @greaseonmymouth and dustmouth - 96k - T “Maybe it’s not about deserving it? Maybe you just get to have it anyway. . .I’m allowing myself to want something and to let myself have it and to fight for it.” --harry runs a daycare and also works at a library. draco spends a lot of time in said library. they bond over sci-fi books and therapy anecdotes and quiet philosophical conversations held over cafeteria soup. and harry’s struggling to understand his asexuality. draco’s learning how to live with anxiety and depression. they both want to be deserving of love. incredible fic with beautiful art by dustmouth. - 

Open for Repairs by @drarrytrash - 35k - T “A few leaves rustle in the gutter and the muggle world pays no mind to them, to two lost boys holding on for dear life.” --all of their fics feel exactly like this. like you’ve been allowed to look at something private, tender, unexpected. draco, known abba fan, is a repairman in the muggle world & harry can’t stop breaking thrifted things in order to see him? say less, i'm thERE. also “I think I have a crush on you” goddddd  - other faves by them: Counting Down By Ten - 2k - T: draco’s stepped outside of the party for a smoke. harry follows him bc of course he does. i could read this 100 times and not get tired of it. - Clouds That Veil the Midnight Moon - 36k - E: FUCKING HILARIOUS I CACKLED THROUGH THE WHOLE THING. draco’s wolfy problem and harry helping him and harry being flustered by how much he likes draco and draco’s hot heroic moment. shutup it’s perfect. “He almost asks if Draco ever gets tired of being a miserable complaining shit all the time, but he knows that he, personally, never ever gets tired of being a miserable complaining shit.” and “It’s the traumas,” Harry says gravely” --lines that live rent free in my head -

Harry Potter and the Future He Doesn't Really Want, Thanks by seefin - 70k - E “That was the only logical thing to do here, wasn’t it? It was the next step, it was the end of hurting each other and the beginning of the exact opposite.” --harry lives with luna and neville and also he dreams about the future sometimes? and he keeps running into draco. draco thinks this is sus as hell, until he doesn’t. feat. taxi rides, museums, cinemas, rooftop conversations beneath a lunar eclipse, mid-sex innocuous banter, draco and harry discussing nicki minaj. this fic charmed my ass off. seefin writes the most effortlessly hilarious dialogues. i smiled at my phone like an idiot at least 7 times. -  other faves by them: Wild - 93k - E: “he liked feeling needed, for the things that he was needed for back at the house in Ireland. For cooking and gardening and driving. Easy things.” --this shit makes me cry it’s so good. harry lives in Ireland with these three brilliant, hilarious, wandless witches and draco’s a potions student who's come to study under one of the housemates and the boys have so much shit to work through but their love becomes so tender and honest. draco yells at harry a lot and harry lets him and they both keep each other grounded in something real and fuCK.  - Divination for Dickheads - 7k - G: “I’m terrible at having crushes. I’ve never played anything cool a day in my life.” -- oh harry, we knOW. a bus ride, a fortune teller, an aquarium birthday party. god i love this fic. -

Modern Love by @tackytigerfic​ - 61k - E “But we’ve worked so hard at this, haven’t we? Yeah, I know it’s a horror to have to talk about it, but fuck it. We’re friends now, but it took so long to get here. Have you ever had to work so hard at something before?" --the steady blossoming of their friendship in this fic is so goddamn beautiful i want to yell. it’s draco and harry learning to trust each other and the whole thing unfolds so slowly, in this whimsical mix of london streets, wizarding politics, church halls feat. a Hot vicar, and a magical antique shop owner who’s married to literal poseidon?? goD the environment of this fic. immaculate. [also there’s a tender shower scene that makes me cry every single fucking time so if you read this fic pls dm me so we can be embarrassing about it together tbh] -

Nice Things by aideomai - 22k - M “He kept waiting for the weird shock of touch to not knock him clean out of his head, leave him quiet and warm and happy.” --8th year. harry forms an unlikely friendship with draco that begins with smoking weed on a windowsill. harry is touch-starved and draco touches him like he touches all his close friends - like it’s easy. the quiet affection in this fic, the way harry burrows himself into touch bc he’s been without it for his entire life. reading this is like being held. -

Running On Air by @tinyhistory​ - 74k - T “do you remember when we were eleven?” --alexa play coldplay’s the scientist it’s sad girl hours and we’re about to fucking yearn. you’ve seen this fic rec on every drarry list under the sun and i'm here to be redundant. the hype is so goddamn real. this story is a lyrical masterpiece held together by lines that act as refrains that will rattle around your brain until you die, probably. draco’s been missing for 3yrs. harry goes to find him. it’s their odyssey of homecoming. -

Title of Their Sex Tape by @cibeewastaken - 12k - T “But Draco, Draco was everything but boring. Draco made sitting in the rain watching an empty house fun.” --auror partners pining and draco being eccentric and harry being very earnestly gay about draco’s eccentricities!! god this fic is so genuinely fun skskd feat. undercover missions, murderous faeries, a book heist, a stunning navy dress, harry’s eyelashes. -

How We Throw Our Shadows Down by @thistle-verse - 14k - T “Draco is about to say something else— to thank Potter for what he’d done, however poorly— but Harry is smiling at him again, and it’s so soft and perfect that Draco holds in any inadequate words, lest he spoil it.” --draco collects tea cozies and of course harry has the one he wants. the sad and tender gays are at it again feat. conversations in the rain at a train station, melancholy Blaise, muggle photos, wizarding e-bay, the Dursleys.  -

Helix by Saras_Girl - 92k - E “Draco sighs in his sleep and Harry clings on to consciousness, needing to hold on, to give this tiny, insignificant moment the attention it deserves” --I think maybe you can describe every soft Saras_Girl story as giving tiny, insignificant moments the attention they deserve. like, this is an 8th year fic about snails and it’s full of whimsy, grief, compassion, and easy humor. an absolute must-read author in this genre if you want languorous, episodic fics full of distinct OCs and affectionate creatures. - other faves by them: Light up the Night Sky - 98k - M “Draco, sometimes you make my head feel like soup” --the one where harry is a fireworks artist and has a pet chameleon named ken. draco is on the wizarding arts council. they both pine like hell. - Headlights in the Snow - 71k - M “they stare at each other in silence, Harry’s heart beating so loud in his chest that he thinks the biddies must be able to hear it over the sound of their card game.” --the one where draco drives the knight bus and carts around the biddy club, a group of rambunctious old ladies who knit and drink tea and gossip. harry can’t help but fall in love with the everything about this. -

Follow the Water by @xanthippe74 - 38k - T “Harry’s heavy thoughts lift at the sight, like dark clouds blown away from the sun by the wind. The tent doesn’t feel so cramped and stifling now. It feels cozy. And safe. It’s the same feeling that Harry gets when he’s at the Burrow for Sunday roasts, when a group of people who care for each other deeply are crammed into too-small a space.” --harry wanders to the lovegood house on a sunday afternoon. he’s baffled to see that luna’s taken pansy, greg, and draco under her wing. what follows is a summer of forest walks, scavenger hunts, gardening, water fights, odd cakes, faerie rings, and picnics. so many picnics. i love the pace of this fic, the innocent return to childhood things, the way luna brings out the best in all her friends. reluctantly soft slytherins are just *chefs kiss*!! -

Going Postal (A 125pg comic) by dustmouth - T what. a. beautiful. ass. comic. the wizarding fashion, the textures, the character design!! harry travels a lot for his job as a resourcer. draco works in the regulations dept. they pine like a bunch of lovesick idiots via field report notes. god i love dustmouth’s art. -

All the Earnest Young Men by @tepre​ - 29k - E “Draco is twenty-seven layers of personality wrapped up in drama and humour, and a wit so sharp it still stings when he doesn’t see it coming. But there is something below that, too. Something that makes Harry ache just looking at him.” --the way i would lay down my little life for tepre’s characterization of draco, whom invented the word earnest. he’s a magical art theory expert and portraits are disappearing all over London and harry’s the auror assigned to this case. and well. they’re both so very avoidant about how gay they are for each other and it’s like!! shutup and kiss!! which they do in fact, shutup and kiss.  -

Trenches by sara_holmes - 3k - M “Somewhere in the distant part of his mind that hasn't frozen solid, he thinks that maybe he and Draco are about to become more than auror partners, smoking buddies, wine-mates and co-inhabitants of a snow filled trench somewhere in western Scotland.” --the plot line here is literally “it’s cold and i need a fucking cigarette” but let me tell you how I never tire of the shared loaded-silences of two emotionally repressed gays. -

The Years Before Love by lomonaaeren - 13k - M “That’s one of the meanings of peace, he thinks, as Hermione hugs him...That he can do things slowly, softly, without worrying that they won’t be there tomorrow.” --andromeda taking harry under her wing and harry finding solace in teddy. narcissa and draco showing up and the tentative relationships that slowly develop in the quiet calm of andromeda’s house. found families and kisses in the snow and special xmas gifts ugh what’s not to love -

The Moon Looks Lovely Tonight by Omi_Ohmy - 35k - M “I want this to be a house where people are welcome, where they don’t have to be any one way or another” --in which harry collects lost things--owls, best friends, inept bakers, potions experimenters--and turns the mausoleum that is grimmauld place into a home. feat. your fave drarry tropes like shared-beds and reluctant waltzing partners. -

[part 1: thrillers | part 2: dramas | part 3: soft bois | part 4: wankbanks]