#ever since that one time she disappeared in my save file

[olsenmyolsen]

Feeling Used

master list

dark master list

MCU AU (Vampire Reader X Wanda Maximoff)

Summary: When you are rescued by The Avengers you find it hard to do anything else but be lost in your thoughts.

Word Count: 2.5K

TW: Mentions of Hydra, Nightmares, Fluff

Reader POV

It wasn't always like this.

I wasn't always like this.

I had a life before I was bitten. Just like I had a life after the bite. Don't get me wrong, it was worse. But Hydra kept me alive. Only after they had their fun when they knew I couldn't fight back. Over and over again.

But that was a life.

My life.

Until a group of uniform-wearing people picked me up. The Avengers was their name. Or at least that's what the guard screamed outside my cell before a stream of red mist threw him like a pebble.

She was the first person I saw when the doors opened. Wanda. Wanda Maximoff. I remember as her powers disappeared into thin air before she greeted me slowly as the others ran by to free the rest.

Knowing her now, I could've made myself look stronger back then, but I cowered myself in the corner, afraid she was just like anyone else who entered my cell.

But she persisted even after I swung at her and flew myself across the room. She came forward. Strong and confident. Although once my pointed teeth shined in the swinging light above us, I saw the switch in her eyes. It was something new. It wasn't the same old scared look I had been used to in the past.

Once again. Knowing her now, I could've explained the whole teeth situation better.

The last thing I remember happening in that cell was Wanda's green eyes looking into my black ones. Her telling me her name in an accent I couldn't place, and then, like magic, a memory I had long forgotten about was in my mind before I was out like a light.

_

According to the star-spangled man, I was the last "enhanced" Hydra had left. Switch out that word for monster, and he would've been right. But that's not what I wanted to be.

I never wanted that.

Time wore on once the Avengers found a spot for me. After tests, a meeting with a scary one-eyed man, a holding period in a newly furnished cell, and training, I was moved to the benchwarmers. At least, that's what The Black Widow calls me.

I was given a room. Bland but a place I could make my own. The room was on the same floor as Natasha and Wanda. The latter was the only one ever to try and speak to me as if I didn't have these.. what was the word speedster used.. abilities. She was one of the very few so far who chose to spend time with me no matter how little once the test and training was done.

She talked to me. Really talked to me. Maybe it was because we both came from Hydra. Or perhaps because she felt like she had an obligation, what with rescuing me and all. I don't know. May..maybe she just wanted to know she wouldn't... Wanda wouldn't use me. Right?

Oh, come on, freak.

Why not? You read the files. She used the deepest fears against her teammates before. What would stop her now from doing the same to you?? She probably knows them already.

That's why she's been so nice to you since you arrived. That's why you're not even on the team. You'll never be good enough for them. Or her. You're only here so they can pick you apart and throw you away. She's just here to make sure you don't go.

No, Wanda wouldn't do that. She wouldn't.. she.. she saved me. Wanda saved me!

Knock

Knock

Knock

"Y/N!" I jolt up from the floor, covered in sweat, at the sound of Wanda's voice outside my door. I quickly take in my surroundings before realizing I'm in my room. My room. Avengers compound. Second floor. I'm safe.

I touch my face and feel the tear tracks that are left behind. "Y/N?" Wanda calls out again before another series of knocks land. "One second!" I yell back in a less than put-together manner. With a deep breath out and take a moment to collect myself. Running a hand through my hair before pushing it and those dark thoughts to the back of my mind.

"It's okay. It wasn't real." I silently remind myself before attempting to stand on my legs before falling onto the bed. "Y/N?" Wanda gently calls out again. "Are you okay?" I don't want to lie, so I don't respond. Instead, I pull a new shirt towards me and quickly change before making my way to the door to see a worried-looking witch.

I open my mouth, but no words come out as Wanda's hands land on the sides of my face. "Oh Detka.." I still don't know what that means, but hearing it this tone hurts me. "What's wrong?" I lift my hands to hers slowly bring them down.

She's using you!

No, she isn't.

Wanda quickly looks up into my eyes, but I look away from the stare to down the hall to her open bedroom door.

Most people in this building wouldn't be able to hear it, but I do. The outro to a show I've heard numerous times called The Dick Van Dyke Show playing on low from Wanda's TV. The bag of chips sitting on her bed, slowly crumbling down. Or even Wanda's breathing slightly increases when she follows my gaze before looking back at me. Wanda clears her throat before asking. "Would you like to join me?"

"No- I-"

"No, Y/N. Come on, it'll be fun." Wanda excitedly pulls a smile and looks up at me. "Please?" Her lips form into a pout that I see right through, but I give in. "Okay." In an instant, the witch is pulling me to her room and using her powers to shut the door behind us.

Once the door closes, I take in the surroundings. The only quarters I've seen the inside of is my own. Wanda's is drastically different from mine. She has color and a specific pop that mine lacks. Her identity is all over the room. In fact, it's as bright as she is.

Although, thank goodness she isn't any brighter than the sun, or I wouldn't be able to see her.

Little vampire joke.

Hmm? I move my head to see Wanda looking at me, holding her lip between her teeth. Her heartbeat has picked up once again. "Everything okay?" I ask. Wanda nods her head at me before waving me over to the edge of the bed. "Come sit." I take one step before: "Oh no, no, wait!" Wanda stands and stops my movement with her hand. "Wasn't I supposed to invite you in?!" Wanda lowers her hand but looks at me with such intensity, but I have no idea what she means. "Huh?"

"Vampires, aren't they- like- you uh, vampires can only be allowed to places if they're invited. Right?" Everything I was thinking before this moment is melting away the more I look at the witch's face. "Where did you hear that from?" I manage to ask without laughing.

"Well, Pietro said that you- oh my God, never mind!" Wanda puts her head into her hands and laughs, letting me break as well. "Don't listen to my brother!"

"Well, I wasn't going to start now." I take a seat next to Wanda. Close enough to be comfortable and not touching. This seems to satisfy Wanda as she starts the episode of the show over. "Have you seen this?" I shake my head no as the introduction with a tune begins to play. "Um.. before.. Well, before, this wasn't something that existed, and then it's not like Hydra had time for enhanced like me (monsters) to be watching.. whatever this is called." I smile and force a chuckle at the end of my sentence as I look at Wanda. She has a frown on her face that confuses me, but before I can comment on it, she looks away from me and to the screen as the show begins.

I'm Weak.

"Hmm?" Wanda looks over at me. "I didn't say anything."

"Oh." Wanda's eyes stay on me before she once again looks at the man on screen. "It's called Bewitched. The show we're watching." I look over to Wanda, who holds her hands together. "Before Hydra and the bombings.. these shows. These American shows were what my family had. Whatever Papa didn't sell, we got to watch and learn for one more night. This." Wanda gestures to the screen. "This was always one of my favorites." Wanda rubs her hands on her thighs. "It's why I always have them on. So I don't forget them."

Wanda turns to face me, and I see the tears in her eyes. "I never told anyone that." I scoot closer and, wrap my arms around the sad witch and hold her close.

"Thank you for sharing that with me, Wanda," I say into the top of her head, knowing she'll hear me.

Seconds of holding her turn into minutes, not that I mind beca- "Y/N?" Wanda pulls out of the hug and looks up at me. "Yeah?"

"Can I ask you something?" I hesitate. Questions at Hydra were always a trick. "Sure." Wanda nods and wipes her eyes. "Do you like being here? At the compound." I nod almost immediately. "Anything better than Hydra, huh," Wanda says, making me smile and nod again. "Yeah."

"Can I ask another question?" The first didn't hurt, so why not? "Okay." Wanda turns her body more towards me now. "Do you trust me?" I hear Wanda's heartbeat pick up as she waits for my answer. But why do I wait? Of course, I trust Wanda. She helped me. She saved me. It's Wanda!

She's using you.

"I'm not!" Wanda speaks up with a wide-eyed look, slightly startling me. "Oh my God, Y/N, I'm sorry!"

What?? Did she just read my thoughts?

"No, Y/N! I didn't mean to. I normally don't. It's just your thoughts are so loud sometimes! Oh my god, I'm so sorry!"

I slowly move myself off the bed and start backing away from Wanda, who looks at me with a destroyed look. "I promise." She pleads. "Y/N, please." Wanda stands up and walks to me. For a second, when I blink, I see us back in Hydra's cell after she arrived with the rest of the team. "Y/N?" I close my eyes and focus on the one thing that matters right now.

"Repeat it," I ask. "What? I-" "The apology.. I believe you, Wanda, but please.."

I sense Wanda nod, and I listen to her as she voices her sorrows once again—every word she says with conviction and truth.

Especially when she says: "And you're not weak. Or a monster. I've fought monsters. They don't look like you." Wanda quickly smiles. "No matter what you think or what Hydra made you think. You're stronger than most people I've met in this line of work. Because of what you had before them. Before the bite. Is you. It's you, Y/N. I'll always remind you of that."

I open my eyes and run back into her arms. "Can I, uh, ask you something," I ask into the air floating around us. "Anything."

"You never have... or ever will use me, right?" I hold onto Wanda tighter because I know if I look into her eyes, I'll break down. "Never Y/N. I never have, and I never will." Truth. "Thank you." I hold her close and let the few happy thoughts I have fly around my brain.

"Read my thoughts, Wanda."

Wanda giggles at one of my favorite memories before her. "I know you didn't mean to read my thoughts before. It's okay, Witchy."

"Sometimes they just get too loud, and I can't help it. It happens to the others as well. But tonight, your nightmare- I just wanted to ensure you were okay."

I swallow the lump in my throat. Not because she saw my nightmare. I had a feeling. But because she cared enough to check on me.

"Thank you for waking me."

"Now Y/N. Can I ask you something?" I let out a shaky breath with a smile as my grip around Wanda loosens. "Sure."

"This isn't my question, but can you look at me?" I look down to see a smile on the witch's face. She pulls the ends of her sleeves down and wipes below my eyes. "Better." She says with another shining smile before it morphs into a soft, compassionate face. "This is a serious question. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Pietro says vampires can't have garlic. Is this true?" Wanda's lips crack into a smile just as mine do the same. The air in the room becomes lighter as her angelic laughs fly around. "No, it's not true."

"Stakes? True or false?" She asks as we find ourselves planting our butts in the middle of the bed. The complicated conversation and the show playing in the background become something we can look back on. "Wooden stakes. Yes. True." Wanda makes a hmm noise before offering me the Garlic and Herb bag of chips that's been sitting there since I got here. "The team. Do they trust me?"

"Bucky no. Natasha maybe. The rest, yes. But that's because you scare two of them." I tilt my head, confused. "Who do I scare? I've barely talked to them."

"Sam and Peter."

That makes sense. Wanda hums in agreement before taking some chips and placing them in her hand. "Besides flying, strength and powers. What else can you do?" Wanda innocently asks.

"I can turn into a bat."

"Shut up!! Really?!" I shake my head no and laugh to let her know I was joking. "Aww Y/N! That would've been so cool. And cute!!"

Cute!?

"Do your fangs hurt?" Wanda asks before eating her last chip. "Not me," I respond with a wide grin, showing off the fangs that, for some reason, I hear Wanda's heartbeat growing faster..?

"Wow." Wanda breaths out before she looks away from me and to the room around us. "Let's get more comfortable," Wanda suggests as she gets up and grabs the remote for her string lights, dimming them before moving to the top of her bed. Leaning her back against the headboard. "Come on." Wanda waves me over again.

Just like before, I get comfortable next to Wanda; however, where there was space between our bodies before it is now gone. As her thigh touches my own. "Is this okay?" Wanda asks me. I don't know whether she's referring to us touching or the new show she's putting on, but I nod.

I smile at the thought that this won't be the last time I watch TV with Wanda in her room. "It won't be." She smiles at me.

"Thank you, Wanda."

"You're welcome, Detka."

dividers by @/benkeibear

[randomfoggytiger]

X-Files IWTB: First Time React (Part II)

Okay everyone, back for Part II! Hopefully I’ll make quicker progress because all the BIG problems were parsed over in the Part I, right? …They were parsed over in Part I, right? 

To catch up: IWTB is broken 10 minutes into the movie-- the FBI’s helicopter flying TO Mulder’s house destroyed that hiding place; and if he were to back out of the case at Scully’s say-so, he’d likely have been captured within days or weeks and been forced to broker a deal to help, anyway-- and further broken not even 20 minutes in-- destroying new characters in seconds, out-of-place dialogue, and skewering both Mulder and Scully by placing their in-character reactions in wrong scenes and scenarios. 

Reaction below the cut~

Not even two seconds into my watch we have Mulder avoiding the “Your sister’s dead, isn’t she?”-- which is fine-- only for Whitney to be featured prominently, sympathetically watching him gaze at the missing agent’s picture. I'm. Annoyed. 

The writers are setting up Agent Drummond? to be a Samantha replacement, that Mulder is so driven on this case because he wants to save a lost girl, etc., etc. But… that was put behind him in Closure; and it tears away the nuances and layers of Mulder’s character leaving only a simple “I help people ‘cuz my sis disappeared once” to motivate him. Mulder has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help people from monsters and men countless times; and the only cases that made him lose his objectivity were when the victims' stories exactly mirrored Samantha's circumstances, i.e. a little girl was abducted (Conduit, Oubliette, Paper Hearts, etc.) Furthermore, Mulder only ever lost himself "in the darkness" ONCE on a case, and that wasn't even about a little girl: Grotesque. Losing himself in the darkness is not Mulder's norm or even, really, in his wheelhouse (which was the entire point of the Bill Patterson storyline.) To make this a problem NOW in order to create a nonsensical wedge between he and Scully is... not laughable, but snortable.

The obvious cracks in the writing shine through again. Mulder only rode in the car without Scully so Father Joe could be there to open old wounds, the male agent could be there to poke them, and Whitney could be there to observe his silent, bleeding heart and fall more in crush with him. In order for this scene to happen, we have to think that: A. Scully would rather ride with random FBI people than with her partner (despite her natural suspicion of them-- though that’s missing in the movie and breaks her character, discussed in previous part) and B. Mulder, despite stipulating that she join him on the case, was just fine and dandy riding beside and playing nice with a pedophile rather than sticking by Scully’s side even though they’re going to the same place, not splitting up to look for clues. 

Whitney hasn’t been given focal characterization yet, which is fine for now since she’s displayed character trait specific responses (her reactions to Mulder, to male agent, to Scully in the FBI building and at Father Joe’s and here.) It’s obvious she’s being set up as a person more-than-interested in Mulder; but that would require an explanation as to WHY. If that’s not given… then what’s the point of her crush in the narrative? It, like Father Joe’s pedophilia, would serve no purpose other than a footnote or perhaps an implication (i.e. her expressions remain intact but are not given their own camera focus as if it’s plot relevant, etc.) 

It’s… not good. 

The music’s still really good; and the shots are gorgeous. And that’s it. Oh, wait, the acting is good, too. 

The FBI taking Father Joe to a false house is a good idea… except there’s no warning tape wrapped around one house but IS decorated all over its neighbor’s house. How is that important? Father Joe would have been facing the neighbor house covered in yellow warning tape when the vehicle drove past it and up the drive. The characters-- trained FBI agents-- don't notice or comment on this.

Screenshots in order:

You see, kids? This is why locations and camera angles and shots are so important-- they cut you off at the knees if the movie isn’t shot in a logical way. 

WAIT. CHARACTER BREAKING MOMENT. 

Whitney brought Mulder on the case because of the paranormal aspect, Whitney sent a helicopter out to fetch him, Whitney has been crushing on him this entire time (silently), Whitney is being set up as a powerful woman who can tell people what to do and when-- Mulder’s exact type ala Phoebe Green, Detective White, Diana Fowley, etc.-- and… now she’s denying the paranormal angle???? AGAIN WITH THE MILLISECOND CHANGES: awed that Father Joe sensed their fake out house was a trick, then denied his intuitions with a bogus excuse the next second….

Wait. Chris (and the writers.) Did you set her up to be a powerful, skeptical woman who’s into Mulder (ala Scully) ON PURPOSE. CHRIS (and the writers.) We need to talk.

This movie’s going to kill me: I’m only 23:07 into the watch time. 

Wait. WHERE’S SCULLY?? IS SHE JUST SITTING BACK THERE IN THE OTHER TRUCK?? WHERE’S SCULLY??

ALSO, WHY ARE WHITNEY AND MULDER BACK-AND-FORTHING “IS HE OR ISN’T HE”S ABOUT FATHER JOE WHILE FATHER JOE IS IN HEARING DISTANCE.

I’m now 23:34 into the movie and it’s going to kill me. Very pretty, lethal poison. 

Also, Father Joe still wants to work with the Church? FAT. CHANCE.

YAY, GERALD SCHNAUZ MENTIONED. 

Also, finally getting some backstory on Whitney (even if she’s not 'fessing up to having more than a professional interest in Mulder, ala Diana Fowley’s close-to-the-chest-but-overt-with-her-intentions style.) 

“Yeah, well, I’m only half the team.” YEAH, AND WHERE IS THE OTHER HALF OF THE TEAM, MULDER? WRITERS??

I don’t have complaints about Mulder not batting back Whitney’s “But it’s your insights I need” because flattery gets him everywhere, always, and he’s not leaning into it, BUT, again, where’s Scully. This would be a great time to establish that Scully isn’t the type to sulk in the truck by showing off her chops as a professional while she and he banter back and forth about this information. Mulder could be telling it to her, filling her in on the relevant details she missed during the interrogation and truck ride. Meanwhile, we can establish Whitney as an individual by showing how she deals with Father Joe rather than letting her male agent nanny the old pedo around. 

WHITNEY’S YELLING AT FATHER JOE FOR NO REASON WHILE HE’S IN THE MIDST OF A VISION-- THAT'S SO STUPID. 

He’s already giving her the information; and her heightened aggression will probably stress him out and lose whatever he’s telling her. I know they were meaning to establish her as a ruthless skeptic who thinks Father-- you know what, I’m calling him Joe from now on-- who thinks that Joe’s faking it and is pressing, pressing, pressing for him to crack because he’s “vulnerable” right now… but this is just stupid, and likely against a ton of FBI regulations. 

I'm torn about Mulder not telling her to stop because he's put immense pressure on psychics or other suffering victims in the past if they had time-sensitive information (ala Space)... so, I think? it could be in-character. ...EXCEPT he's soft on Joey, Whitney is not, and that dynamic would make him advocate for the pedo more (wow, what a sentence.)

Wait, now male agent disbelieves??? WHAT. BUT YOU ESTABLISHED BACK IN THE FBI… uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh. 

WAIT, SO SCULLY WASN’T OUT IN THE CAR??? SHE JUST DITCHED ANYWAY???? SHE’S BACK IN THE HOSPITAL??

Wait, wait, so: 

Last night, she and Mulder are flown into the FBI.

She decides to ditch the case because she doesn’t believe in Joe.

That’s stupid because it puts Mulder’s safety on the line and breaks her half of the deal-- that she come with him. 

As she’s leaving, Mulder convinces her not to go. She sighs and heads for the trucks. 

It’s daylight and there’s two FBI trucks. Mulder is with the two agents and Joe in one truck, and we’re not shown who’s in the other (likely Scully and some escorts.)

Scully doesn’t follow Mulder onto the crime scene. 

BUT SHE’S NOT IN THE TRUCK ANYWAY BECAUSE SHE’S BACK AT THE HOSPITAL EVEN THOUGH THE ENTIRE ESTABLISHING SCENE PRIOR WAS ADDRESSING THE FACT SHE WAS LEAVING THE CASE.

BUT SHE STILL LEFT THE CASE. Yes, she has a patient to worry over; yes, that is important to her; but NO, she did not discuss this with Mulder when he stipulated he needed her WITH him on the case.  

Mulder asked her to stay, she implicitly agreed, took his documents, seemed to be going with him… but nope, went home, went to sleep, went to work without discussing things further. What. 

I feel like there were rewrites and it was just… never addressed on screen.

So, Scully agreed to help the case, took Mulder’s papers, walked to one of the trucks and… teleported back to her clinic? Went home? Never went to begin with? …Why did she need the file if she’s just going to take it home?? She’s not FBI anymore, the FBI wouldn’t let her do that. She can’t take the papers home as a civilian especially because-- okay, here’s another list:

Scully is a civilian who was not asked on the case. She’s only there because Mulder stipulated he wanted her to work on it with him. 

She ditched THAT part of the bargain, but regardless--

Scully went home (WHY) and took FBI documents with her because…?

The FBI would never let that happen: they didn’t seek her out, she’s a civilian, they have other medical experts to consult with about their cases. 

I do like Scully’s interactions with Christian, probably because it smacks of her old self (disguising the world-weary attitude of an adult for a child’s sake…) and was more in-character with her regular pre-S9 character, which is… weird for me. I’ll take it, I guess. 

I’m only 25:33 minutes in.  

ANOTHER TERRIBLE FATHER??? WHY???????????

“We are here to heal the sick, not prolong the dying” ummmmmmmmmmmm what. This is a Catholic hospital, is it not? Isn’t that strictly against Catholic dogma? …What is this mafia low beat and why is everyone in this hospital bent on the kid dying and being taken off their hands?

I know, I know: Chris is a Catholic of sorts with his own criticisms and stories to tell, etc…. And here it comes, BUT two overheads trying to pry this dying child off of Scully’s hands because he’s “incurable” doesn’t make sense here. It wouldn’t be to their benefit, would probably cause quite a scandal, and, overall, would probably result in a report and a lawsuit. Perhaps this is a big issue in private hospitals; and humans are humans and full of corruption, etc. etc. BUT I assume the boy’s parents are paying the bills on time sooooo… it would be against the hospital's? clinic's? best interest to want to kick Christian from the facility. Again, it’s stupid and makes no sense. 

26:27. 

Scully crying in her office was the best scene of this movie, hands down. It’s perfect for this moment, perfect for her character…

BUT. It comes after she walked out on a case of a missing-possibly-dead FBI agent, so it makes her look like a woman who only hands out sympathy or empathy to those people SHE deems worthy of it. Yes, a child dying is tragic; yes, he reminds her of William; yes, she lived through this with Emily… all of that is tragic and heartrending (and her Emily arc could have been mentioned in the movie to give her dynamic with Christian more weight), BUT it ends up hurting her character in the long run. Why? Because she sacrifices Mulder’s chance for freedom AND separates from him because she wants to save this child while ALSO accusing him of doing the exact same thing. 

So, while it’s one of the best scenes in context, it’s also one of the worst overall. 

People are swimming now. Ohhhhh, noooooo, run off the road, dead. 

30:35.

Here’s the thinking scene between Mulder and Scully. 

The delivery from DD and GA is top-notch-- did not imagine Mulder’s “thank you” to be as upbeat and humorous, expected it to be more drawn out and monotone. I like it better this way. And Gillian is doing a fantastic job with the scripts she’s given: thus far, she’s selling this version of Scully (MINUS THE ENORMOUS MISCHARACTERIZATIONS)... but her performance (and DD’s) is constantly undersold by the script. It’s sad, man… well, it’s not sad because I’m not invested in canon post S8; but it’s something. 

“Rare brain disease” great acting on both their parts, excellent and in-character, nice. 

Also: child, boy, sick child, brain disease-- I see what you did there, Chris Carter and writers, and it would have been very cool except. To be fair, I don’t mind the Christian side-plot: it gives Scully a chance to be in her element, and the boy actor is nice. Again, BUT, it also has hokily evil villains and destroys other likable aspects of Scully’s personality, soooooooooooooo yeah. 

“Why haven’t you told me about this before?” / “I thought there was something I could do.” 

BINGO, I’LL GIVE IWTB THIS ONE THING, THIS MOVIE WAS WORTH THE WATCH FOR THAT LINE. Here’s why: because that’s always been Scully’s M.O.: she hides her problems under the surface hoping to solve them herself, not wanting to be a bother (ex. Irresistible, Memento Mori, Elegy, Gethsemane, A Christmas Carol, etc. etc.) At least I have it said in black-and-white to reference. 

ALSO, this is why Mulder’s brain disease makes no sense: Mulder is a secret keeper but only about his past, not his present or future. Example: he never mentions former partners but will yell to the sky about current crises or injustices against himself and others. If Mulder had a bad scan, he’d draw Scully into it IMMEDIATELY because he believes their unconventional ways would be able to cure anything-- ala Demons and Biogenesis; and would make a mission out of it to try to take down what’s left of the Syndicate. If he’s given a death sentence, it would then become a struggle or fight between his desire to keep crusading and her insistence that it's only killing him faster (again, ala Demons.)  

Mulder’s quip about God not losing any sleep is so Mulder, that’s great. 

Scully’s “Why bring a kid into the world just to make him suffer?” is another symptom of her leanings away from strict Catholicism; BUT, more importantly, it’s not God making him suffer in this case, it’s her private medical system who won’t even TRY because of the bottom line? I guess? Though that’d make them more money?? Seems rather weird that Scully wants to cure this boy and she’s not really that Catholic whereas the Catholic facility just wants him dead for no explicable reason other than he’s going to die, YOLO. 

Also… we’re just going to skip right over Emily and the fact you two already had this conversation before, aren’t we? Yep. 

“I don’t know, Mulder, I’ve got such a connection to this boy.” 

ANOTHER great piece of dialogue, because this plugs into Scully’s biases in past cases and Mulder’s twitchiness when he senses said biases. BUT IN THIS CASE IT’S GOOD: it highlights how far they’ve come, that Scully discloses this detail and their further conversation to Mulder without batting an eye and he has the learned patience and understanding in order to gently peel back her layers and get to the root of the issue.

“I think our son left us both with an emptiness that can’t be filled” and that’s GOOD, that’s a GOOD piece of writing, GOOD FOR YOU. 

HOWEVER, like everything else in this movie it gets lost in the ridiculous drama coming up; but further, it’s undercut because of the stupid choices that they made in the past that led them to this moment. So… sympathy low. 

Acting’s excellent as always, though. 

And look at that crazy comforter-- that’s a Scully thing if I’ve ever seen one. 

Despite the staggering flaws of the script, I like how the writers wrote Mulder and Scully's domestic dynamic, specifically that Mulder let Scully completely decorate the house (everything's in her style) and even snuggled up with her under a blue, swirly comforter (that she very obviously picked out) without a fuss. And maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I believe that came straight from Chris Carter's brain; and I also believe it's something he likes about Scully, that she puts Mulder (i.e. her thoughts in the Pilot script while batting back and forth with Mulder) or Mulder's stuff in his place (his office pre-and post Ghost in the Machine, her hints about his shoelaces in Bad Blood, and the house now.) There's a give and take, of course; but Mulder's chaos is delegated to specific areas of the basement (and their house); and the compromise between the two people in their partnership and relationship comes together perfectly here... in moments. 

I’m stopping after Scully’s pouty “Scratchy beard” and Mulder’s playful response and Scully’s GIGGLE since it’s nice and I don’t have to think about the plot--

“Oh! There’s something weird on the toxicology--”

LALALALALALLLALALALAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Also…

Sigh……………………….. one last rant:

ALSO, you’re telling me that the dastardly Catholic overlords at the private clinic WANT TO TOSS A DYING CHILD OUT BUT THEY’LL JUST LET SCULLY DO A WILL NILLY RANDOM TOX SCREEN THAT HASN’T BEEN AUTHORIZED BY THE FBI TO DO IN THE FIRST PLACE OR IF SO ONLY OFF-SCREEN??????????????

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy???

I’m out, I’m done, will finish the next parts sometime later. 

…Ugggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

My whole renewed dive into trying to save all the John Oliver files I can get my hands on, which within a week escalated to me buying a new 1TB hard drive just to see how big a John Oliver folder I can make, started when it was noticed that this video was taken off YouTube:

I was glad I’d saved a copy of it, because I don’t trust anything to stay anywhere on the internet, if there’s something I like I immediately put it on my hard drive so it can’t disappear. I'm making this post mainly for anyone else who might not have saved this before YouTube took it down, here's where you can download it. Because no one should be denied the really fucking weird 25 minutes with baby comedians from 1997.

A few years ago I read this quote from Richard Ayoade, which I annoyingly can't find now, where he said he doesn't like this documentary, that they were just students and obviously didn't know what they were doing and some film people came in and said they wouldn't look bad in it but of course they do look bad. It was something like that, I can't find the exact quote. But I remember finding it odd, because surely no one is judging these people's actual comedic skill based on a few clips from a 25-minute video of when they were students. People just share it because it's funny to adorable little baby versions of the comedians who are famous now. Obviously they weren't doing high-quality comedy, they were like 19, no one cares.

Since then, I have learned that this is not quite true, and Richard Ayoade did, in fact, have reason to object to his weird student sketches being out there. Because apparently, some people are judging their comedic skill based on the time in 1997 when he and John Oliver did a weird sketch on a fence. My deep rabbit hole dives of about 18 months ago led me through a lot of old comedy message board threads, including one from 2006 of people absolutely ripping that video apart as a sign that comedy is well past its peak and this newfangled crop of comedians are all shit and the once-great institution of Cambridge Footlights has fallen. By 2006.

I normally don't link to things things directly from a message board on here, seems too close to that horrible thing where you take screenshots from one social media and post it on a different social media to make fun of it (so instead, I just occasionally see something I disagree with on a message board, and then write a post on here refuting it without posting the original context, to people who don't know what I'm talking about), but it feels more acceptable if it was from 2006, I think. It's not like the person who posted that in 2006 is likely to still be hanging around Britcom social media seeing who's quoting them. So I think... I think I need to quote just a little bit of it, because there was this one really long aggressive rant from this one 2006 post that was the funniest fucking thing (I won't like but it's not hard to find on Google):

I mean, I can't really communicate how bad it was, to be honest. But it was just the fact that you saw the two cunts writing the thing, sitting in a daylight-filled bar, giggling into their lager. You got the picture? Ugh. And John Oliver, who is the spitting image of David Baddiel (intentionally of course), is there with his pencil and notepad suggesting the lines with a grandiose smugness that made me really ill, and his mate (the blandest man ever) is there, with his jumper and his shoes, salivating over the comic genius he sees before him. Cunt, cunt, CUNT! They also have three girl-ones with them, all of whom have no talent whatsoever. You see one of them auditioning, where she has to do some improv, and she's shit... but the president (who looks like a fifteen year-old John Lloyd) can be heard wheezily guffawing at everything she says. And this serves only to make her improv even worse. And John Oliver is the worst. Or the one that got to me the most. With his hair.

That is, in case anyone's wondering, why my current Tumblr bio ends with the line: "John Oliver is the worst. Or the one that got to me the most. With his hair." It's a quote from a guy in 2006 who was really really mad about a 25-minute Footlights documentary.

So I would like to state, for the record, that by sharing this video, I am not endorsing the actual quality of the comedy in the few little sketches we see. I am also not endorsing the class system, the hold that a few elite institutions have over entire industries, Richard Ayoade's views on transgender people, or trivia in pubs. I just think they're adorable baby comedians as well as an interesting snapshot of comedy history. I'm pretty sure that's all it's supposed to be.

I am also not endorsing the class-based dominance of elite institutions when I say I still want that sitcom between two student comedians, Kim Tey and Wark Atson, who have to band together to get through their year-long university comedy play while hiding from everyone but each other their respective secrets of not really being a student there, and not really being Welsh. Madcap farcical hi-jinks ensue. People would watch it. I do not endorse the class-based dominance of elite institutions but I do quite enjoy Footlights stories, so I'm glad they made a really weird documentary with some of them. Also when I go to the UK this summer I've booked off one entire day to take the train to Cambridge and run around feeling like I'm in Harry Potter (Disclaimer: I also do not endorse JK Rowling's views on trans people, or at this point, on most things. Why can't we have nice things?).

I do not endorse the class-based dominance of elite institutions, but also,

And that probably the only time you'll hear someone compare John Oliver to John Robins (very different comedians, really), especially on a post that started out just being a way to share a video that's been taken off YouTube. Download the Google Drive link if you want to keep it, everyone. That was supposed to be the point of this post. It's a good video. It features Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness and either that woman from Peep Show or her sister, I get them mixed up. And also it features John Oliver with, to be fair for one moment to that guy in 2006, quite Baddiel-like hair.

[descendantofthesparrow]

Days in the sun - Walter Deville x Reader -OUAD alt fic!

=

Will I tremble again, To my dear one's gorgeous refrain? Will you now forever remain Out of reach of my arms? -

“(Y/N)-NO-(Y/N)!!!!” I screamed out her name, her hand having just slipped from mine-her ring now sitting in the palm of my hand as her form crumbled to the ground-her head hitting something hard-I flinched as I heard her skull crack. I called her name over and over again, my castle staff holding me back from leaping off the cart and going back to save her-I would be no use to her or them dead from the townsfolk.

She wasn’t there when we came back after everything calmed down-I desperately searched for her throughout the forest-calling for her-her ring clutched to my chest, tears streaming down my face. “(y/n)!!!” I screamed and screamed and screamed.

She never responded.

All I found was the rock that was stained with her blood-where her head had been cracked open. I collapsed over it, curling into myself as I cried my heart out, my throat getting sore and dry with how much I cried.

I think I cried out all my emotions that day-because-after that-I felt…nothing. just-emptiness.

Things stayed that way for the next 900 years.

-

There's not a day that goes by that I don’t miss her. My beloved.

My (y/n).

It had been over 900 years since she disappeared, since I last held her hand, since I last heard her voice. At some point-you’d think I lose count of the days, the months, the years since that fateful day. But I hadn’t, my brain constantly reminded me of her, of how long it’s been.

328,777 days. 900 years, two months, three days. That’s how long it had been since I lost my heart-my soulmate. I sighed, leaning back from my current paperwork, reaching up and taking the thin silver chain from around my neck, bringing (y/n)’s wedding ring out to rest in my palm.

To this day-I had, no clue-to where she had gone. She wasn’t dead-I knew that, if she had been killed I would’ve become human again-maybe even died with her. But instead, it was almost as if my heart was taken and locked away, only to be released when I thought of her.

I sighed again, bringing her ring to my lips and closing my eyes; wondering what the villagers had done with my beloved so many centuries ago. Had they buried her? Locked her away? Was she chained to the bottom of a lake-wasting away, waiting for me to find her?

I hated the thought, hated the thought that she might still be waiting for me; waiting to be rescued by her beloved. I covered my eyes at the thought, biting the inside of my cheek as my chest felt heavy all of a sudden. I forced that feeling away as my butler knocked on my study door and I sat up in my chair, taking a deep breath before calling him to come in, hiding her ring behind my shirt.

“yes?” I asked him, a bit tiredly, the current week had been a bit exhausting-with the news of a suddenly appearing Alexander female that was of marital age, there was a shortage of something within the town that apparently needed my attention, Viktoria was being oddly clingy in way that wasn’t exactly-endurable, and the sudden waves of paining guilt that were piercing my chest before, during, and after each meal I ate.

That had happened more often-first starting 10 years ago now. I couldn’t quite place why-for the last 900 years-after she disappeared-it felt like my emotions were locked behind my own heart. I never had time to dwell on why it was happening.

My mind was brought back to the present as Mr. Field stood in front of my desk, handing me a file with Ms. Evelyn ‘Alexander’ Jackson’s information in it. “oh, good” I muttered, taking the file and opening it, pulling out a printed version of Evelyn’s Facebook profile. She was quite the specimen, dark curling hair with piercing brown eyes, a nose ring complimenting her facial structure and lips. She was beautiful-though no-one would ever match my darling (y/n). I looked up, seeing Mr. Field still standing there. “Anything else?”

“Oliver Alexander called, he said Ms. Alexander did agree to fly in for the wedding, she thinks it’s a wedding for their cousin and your niece at the moment” I chuckled, sipping at the scotch that sat on my right-hand side. Niece, I was the only Deville left-neither of my sisters wished for children and I never had the opportunity to…well, I did-but the person I wanted kids with wasn’t around anymore. “but, she requests to bring a friend of hers along”

I nearly choked on my drink, looking up at my butler in shock. “really?” I asked, calming myself and setting my drink down, licking my lips as he nodded “and-who is this friend?” maybe this friend of Evelyn could be her first meal as a vampire-as a proper goodbye to her human life(I felt a sharp pain in my chest at that idea, what was this feeling?!)

“Oliver says her name is (y/n).”

My heart skipped a beat.

No….no it-it couldn't be-it couldn’t.

It would be impossible.

There were millions of (y/n)’s in the world-there had to be-it-it couldn't be my (y/n). It would be impossible.

Her ring sitting on my chest suddenly felt so present-even more so than usual. I didn’t realize I was zoning out, Mr. Field looking down at me concerned, tilting his head slightly “Sir? Master Deville?” I looked up at him, clearing my throat, waving my hand in dismissal. “yes-of course. This, (y/n)-” my mouth felt dry at the name-and my body felt warm-but I forced myself to believe that it wasn’t my (y/n).

It couldn’t be.

She was gone. I had to accept that.

My mind went to the pocket watch that sat in my bedroom desk drawer, our song sitting locked within its gears. “-is welcomed to come along with Evelyn.” Mr. Field nodded, a bit-concerned-at my current reactions to this friend of Evelyn. But he bowed out with a wave of my hand, leaving me to practically sink to the floor out of my chair, my heart suddenly beating out of my chest-something it hadn’t done in decades. Centuries even.

Just her name sent me into a whirlwind like this.

“it’s not her, it’s not” I whispered to myself, covering my face with both hands and taking a slow sobbing breath. “it’s not. She’s gone.” I bit the inside of my lip-I hated admitting that to myself, but-the man who she loved was gone, so reasonably-she was gone too. The man who clung to her had been left behind in the abandoned castle-I needed to let her go.

I touched my cheek-it was blazing warm-my eyes burning with tears. “fuck” I cursed, tipping my head back and taking several deep breaths; i needed to gain control of myself-all while wondering where all this had come from.

Guilt for feeding on innocent people, pain when I remembered my dear (y/n), and all this-blubbering-over her name.

What had happened? What had happened to the emotionless Walter Deville?

-

Mr. Field stopped as he made his way through the halls, feeling as if he had forgotten to ask the master something about the new Alexander brides friend. He brushed the thought off-he was sure it wasn’t important.

-

In the next three weeks-the household of new Carfax abbey got ready for the arrival of the new lady Alexander, and her friend. An extra guest room was made up, and the Alexander suite was readied for a new generation-fitted for a young woman like Evelyn. Soon came the day of her arrival-only five days before the wedding. Only she didn’t know it was hers just yet.

I brushed my shirt clean-running my hands through my lightly gelled hair to smooth it back. My eyes caught onto the painting that hung above the doors that led into my room-(y/n)’s ever-kind eyes staring back at me. I sighed, feeling her ring press warmly against my chest-I blew her painting a kiss and exited my room-it was around the time Evelyn would arrive along with her friend so I should get going. I frowned at the odd-tugging sensation that pulled at my chest-a wisping wind at my back-pushing me towards the front yard.

I shook the feeling off, doing one last check of the house before I began making my way downstairs, huffing to myself as I read through the report Mr. Field had given me for the wedding. “of course, the flowers are all messed up-and then her dress won’t be here till Saturday-only a day before the wedding.” It was Wednesday now, and I hated cutting things close-I preferred everything to be on time-maybe even early.

“You’re going to give yourself grey hairs worrying like that” I sighed, turning to see Viktoria, her dark hair pulled halfway back into a bun-the rest of her hair framing her face. “and you’re supposed to be in your room” I muttered back, looking down at the papers and signing a few with a pen I had taken along for the ride. “Evelyn has no idea about all this-so technically-you shouldn't exist quite yet, not till the cocktail party.”

Viktoria clicked her tongue, making her way down to me-meeting me halfway on the staircase “oh don’t worry, I’ll be away from your blushing bride in just a moment, I was just wondering if the food had arrived?”

The maids, she meant the maids-but Viktoria had always been easygoing about what we fed on-even if I was beginning to feel queasy about it. I cursed at the feeling, not 10 years ago I could ravage several women within a day and feel nothing for them-yet now I could hardly kill a mouse and not feel guilt. I-I didn’t necessarily mind feeling this way-it…it made me feel like (y/n) was around again. But it was useless for the life I lived now.

“They should be out front,” I muttered instead of revealing my inner thoughts to my eldest bride, folding away the papers and going to put them inside my study “now go. Evelyn should be here any minute.” Viktoria huffed at the mention of the new bride, she was jealous-of course she was- but she obeyed and stalked away. But I knew later there would be some complaints from her.

I made my way outside to check with the gardener-when a voice caught my attention-a new one. And she sounded quite perturbed with my butler, I sighed, having a feeling he had gotten a bit cruel with the maid staff that had arrived-if I recall-I heard one of them drop a case of champagne glasses.

I began to make my way over-hoping to smooth over Evelyn’s first interaction with my staff and make sure her initial impression with the manor wasn’t on such a sour note. “Did I stutter?” Evelyn snapped, holding an intricately made vase to her chest, glaring at my butler who seemed ready to spout some words that neither I nor Evelyn would have liked to hear.

He was a good butler-but gods he was a bit of an asshole. “At ease Mr. Field” I quickly called out, hands in my pockets as I approached my new bride, her dark brown eyes turning over to me-the thinly laced anger in her eyes not disappearing at the sight of me. Though I didn’t expect it to-from her files-she was a bit of a spitfire. “I believe this is one of our important guests” I ended with a soft smile aimed at Evelyn-though something-I didn’t know what-was screaming at me to look just behind my new bride.

I only glanced, holding back a frown as I felt my heart skip a beat as I looked at the new person that had arrived with Evelyn, she was holding her finger in her mouth-her back turned to me. I looked back at Evelyn, smelling blood from this new person-she must’ve been Evelyn’s friend; (y/n). My heart skipped another beat at the thought of her name.

“And that makes a difference?” Evelyn muttered, glaring at me a bit-at the notion that her new connections to the Alexander family made a difference in how she was treated by my staff. Mr. Fields bowed-all but confirmed Evelyn had made a correct assumption “my sincerest apologies ma’am.” Evelyn just glared, and I glanced at my butler-who quickly bowed off, realizing he wasn’t welcome anymore.

Why was my heart going crazy-what the hell was happening? I could feel it beating out of my chest like I was alive again-the last time this happened was-was when I saw (y/n) in her wedding dress. “Apologies,” I said instead of focusing on my odd feelings, turning to watch as my butler walked away “he can be a bit demanding.”

Evie grumbled to herself, glaring after my butler “More like an asshole,” I couldn’t help but chuckle, smirking at my new bride-she was quite amusing “Ah, so you must be Evelyn~” she furrowed her brows at me, moving her hair out of the way as squared her shoulders slightly. “Evie. And you are?” I was about to introduce myself, my eyes flickering back over to Evie’s friend, something kept drawing me to her-and I couldn’t figure out why.

I felt like I knew her.

“Walter!” Evie’s friend’s shoulders dropped slightly, as if disappointed by my name, slightly glancing at me as she continued to nurse her finger-I couldn't see her eyes just yet but I could feel them on me-and my heart continued to beat like a hummingbird's wings. What was going on with me? Oliver jogged over to stand next to Evie’s friend, taking my hand and smiling at Evie “You beat me to the punch,” Oliver joked, pulling back and putting his hands in his pockets. “you’ve been introduced?”

Evie gave a very disappointed sounding “Yes.” while I said no, so I just grinned in that way I knew made every girl melt and tilted my head slightly “Well, not formally” I muttered, I watched as Evie clicked her jaw and stepped back towards her friend-who finally turned to look at me. And I locked eyes with her-and

And-

And-

Oh, oh my gods.

No-it-it-

It was impossible-it couldn’t be?....

(y/n)?

That-this was my (y/n), my darling (y/n), it had to be-no one could ever match her beauty so well as this woman did-she had the same eyes-the same lips-the same face, the same shining hair-this…

How-how was she here?

What had I done to earn her presence again?

I felt my heart stop again-my hands shaking in my pockets-my lungs unable to function as I took my long-lost beloved in. It-had to be her, it had to be-this had been what my body was pushing me towards-begging me to reunite with my beloved, to be with my darling (y/n). every part of me screamed to take her in my arms, to hold her, and never let her go again.

I forced myself to look back at Evie, trying to convince myself that this wasn’t (y/n), that I was forcing her visage upon Evie’s friend. But every time I looked at her-that visage never faded, and that pull I felt never left. Oliver introduced Evie and her friend; (y/n), and I could only try to keep my eyes on Evie while my hands trembled, unable to focus as my mind speed-ran the stages of grief and disbelief.

This had to be a-a dream of some sorts-a trick-a nightmare-(y/n)-my darling, my dearest-couldn’t have just-shown up suddenly. I was going to wake up in my bed-and restart the day-and this (y/n) wouldn’t be my (y/n). Oliver introduced me, and when (y/n) heard my last name-she perked up, and-and that gave me just a bit of hope.

Did she recognize me? Maybe this was my (y/n). I kept switching up on myself, telling myself it wasn’t my (y/n), and then the next moment I believed it truly was my darling.

Then It hit me- I should probably talk again, and so I told Evie she could just call me Walt-teasing her for telling me I could call her Evie instead of her full name. (y/n) licked her lips at that, pulling out her sliced finger from her mouth, frowning down at it as Evie finally noticed the injury-as did i-and pulled (y/n)s hand into her face “(y/n)! when did that happen?!” (y/n) was about to answer but I stepped forward and took her hand-and the moment I touched her skin-it was like lightning went down my spine.

Her eyes met mine-and I felt my body come alive again, my mind a flurry of emotions I hadn’t felt for years.

It was truly her-this was my (y/n), my beloved. My lady. I could hear the blood rushing to her cheeks as I examined her cut, frowning at the blood that began to pour from it again “glass-shard-cut” (y/n) stuttered out, her cheeks flaring to life as I held her hand gently.

Oh gods-how I had missed the sound of her voice-like soft snow bells on a winter evening, calm waves on the shore, songbirds in spring-oh how I could listen to her for hours on end, wishing to bury myself within her voice. I blinked back to reality as I realized I should get her taken care of quickly and started tugging her into the manor, leading her towards the kitchens-she resisted for only a moment, glancing back at Evie-who shrugged, looking just as confused as Oliver did-wondering why I had taken a shine to this ‘random’ girl.

I wondered when (y/n) would drop the act, and smirk at me like she used to when she played teasing tricks on me-like she always did when she helped my little sister prank me. Probably once we were alone-then that look in her eyes that she reserved for only me would return-and I would shower her in the affection I had missed giving her these last 900 years.

But as I cleaned her wound, and placed a Band-Aid on it-that look never appeared, instead, there was only confusion. There was no spark of familiarity-and I realized-I hadn’t seen it once from her. Why was she acting as if she didn’t know me? “There we go,” I muttered as I finished dressing her wound, stepping back to give her some space-watching carefully as she curled her hands into her chest-looking up at me through her lashes. “All better” she thanked me quietly, bowing her head as she did.

“you didn’t have to do that” she muttered, and I nearly scoffed, shaking my head-how could she say that? I would do anything for her. “no worries,” I said instead, my eyes drawn down to the leather chord that laced around her neck, her fingers fiddling with it-could that be? “so how do you know Evie?” I asked, genuinely curious on how my beloved had come to know my new bride…okay that sentence was very weird to me now that (y/n) was back.

Might have to make a major change of plans.

As (y/n) explained how she had met Evie-and became friends-my mind was stuck on the fact that she had been homeless for six years. I could only imagine her scared and alone-shivering as the night chill settled in. my gaze settled back on her as she tucked her chin into her chest-something she always did when she felt shy or uncomfortable.

“Why were you homeless, if-if that’s not an invasive question?” I needed to know, why had she been alone? Lost in a world she had been missing from for 900 years-when had she appeared? How long had she been just out of reach? (y/n) laughed awkwardly, fiddling with her necklace as she glanced to the side, shrugging a bit. “oh! Uh, this is-going to sound strange but uh,” she bit her lip, as if unsure she should tell me something “I woke up about ten years ago, with no memories.”

She…..she didn’t remember anything?

She-she didn’t remember me?

I felt the brimming hope in my body die out at that, my shoulders dropping as I looked at my beloved, who had finally returned to me after 900 years…only to not know who I was, and who she was to me. “I barely knew my name, I really only remember it thanks to this-voice,” I perked up at that, a voice? “I remember calling for me but uh-yeah, I was just-wandering around by a town and this-old couple brought me in and gave me a place to recuperate for a week, and then…I was in New York.”

She shrugged after she finished her sentence, as if it wasn’t a big deal-but all I could feel was a resounding ache in my chest, (y/n) didn’t remember me, or our past-or what she had done. And-and I didn’t know if she would ever remember me. I licked my lips, glancing down at my feet before she caught my attention again, bringing out the necklace that was hidden by her shirt.

“But,” and there it was, the necklace-the blood red gem held by silver and leather hanging from her neck, my first initial and last name carved into the side. Our eternal bond, her spell, my soul.

This was truly my (y/n).

“I do have one clue, and that’s H. Deville….” She looked up at me, biting the inside of her lip, as if unsure she should ask me something. “i-I was wondering if you knew him? or her?...them?” I couldn’t help but just stare, my tight grip on the kitchen counter about to break the marble-wishing to just-take her in my arms and hold her tight, wishing for the universe to never take her away again. Half of me expected to wake up, as if this was just a dream-that I would wake up to her missing from my life again.

But it wasn’t, she was here-my darling was here-I just had to find a way to get her memories back. “You really are her,” I whispered instead, running my hands through my hair, my bangs falling into my face “Holy shit, I thought you died.” (y/n)’s entire face lit up and she stepped towards me, our faces about a foot apart-I didn’t move, just staring into her wonderful eyes. “You know me!? You actually know me?!” she nearly squealed, and I felt awful for what I was about to do-I couldn't just-tell her I was Harrison-her beloved-her husband-for that was who I was-or who I used to be.

Everyone in the manor knew an entirely different person-and If I told her the truth-it would could break her-I didn’t know if she could handle it all right now. She only just got here-assuming H. Deville was someone other than i. “Yes, H.Deville” I nodded at her question, pointing at her necklace that meant so much more than she realized “Harrison Deville” it felt so odd to talk about myself as if Harrison was a completely different person-as if he wasn’t me. “he uh, was a close family member, my uh” quick what was he to me? What could I use that would be close enough to him so I could keep close to her? “my brother in fact”

Perfect-and if she asked-we were twins. I would apologize later if she regained her memories but for now-this story would have to do-I could only hope no-one got in her face about it because I had never had a brother-only sisters-and not even my wives knew that fact. I smiled through the pain of lying to her-watching as she took a breath and covered her smile with her hands-her eyes so full of hope and life.

Oh my beloved (y/n), if only you remembered.

“Harrison” she whispered my name so sweetly, and I wanted to cry, I hadn’t heard my name since before…all of this, since she disappeared. Oh, gods I wanted to hear it from her over and over again. I wanted to take her and run away, live as we used to, I-I wanted to love her again, as she deserved. “Is-is he here? can I see him?” she asked, looking so excited to see the name behind her necklace.

‘You’re looking at him’ I wanted to say, I wanted to tell the truth, to tell her I was her beloved, and she was mine. But I didn’t, holding the pain behind my heart and shaking my head-biting the inside of my lip as her shoulders dropped, looking so disappointed-a look I wanted to throw into an inferno. “why not?” she asked, furrowing her brows. I had already cornered myself, telling her the name of the man she had been looking for and then telling her she couldn’t see him.

I didn’t want to lie to her again, so I told her a half-truth-since he had died 900 years ago-when she disappeared. “he’s uh…” I sighed, tipping my head down “he died a long time ago, just after you disappeared” I whispered, watching as her entire demeanor dropped-looking so…disappointed, and sad-like her heart had been repaired only for it to be shattered…by me.

Oh my darling-I’m so sorry, how I wish I could tuck you away in my arms, and keep you safe, like I couldn’t 900 years ago.

“Who was I to him?” she asked, voice soft and unsure, those gleaming eyes looking into mine-eyes I had missed so much. Who was she to Harrison? Oh, darling;

She was sweet cream on a bitter day, a spring breeze in a cruel winter, a rose in a garden of thorns, the full moon in a blanket of stars, sweet rum on a snowy night, snowflakes in a sweet snowfall, songbirds on a battleground, warm blankets on a rainy night, sweet kisses through heartbreak.

My beloved, my true love-my soulmate. My savior.

“You were his beloved, his first and last true love,” I said instead, forcing away the crack in my voice as (y/n) flushed at the thought of her being someone’s beloved, I held back a smile as she bit her lip, fiddling with the necklace. “Come,” I said, holding out my hand to her “there's something I have to show you”

She tilted her head at me, then took my hand-lightning going down my spine again as I led her out of the kitchens and upstairs, taking a right at the hallway split and towards the master suites-where my room was.

And a room I had hoped to be used one day-but never thought it would be. Her room.

-end of p1-

Well-hope yall enjoyed p1~~~~ be prepared for a whole lotta angst-longing inner monologues, simpness, and Walter/harry being a sweetheart/protective asshole. More to come soon!!!

taglist! (so far, if u want to be added just ask~!)

@sessediz @reallystressedhoneybee @reallysparklychaos

[andydrysdalerogers]

The Type You Save ~ F I V E

Detective James Barnes hasn't seen the love of his life in three years. Since the night she was almost caught stealing a painting. He knows it was her and she disappeared leaving him confused and heart broken.

Alexandra Richards never expected to be pulled back into her old life two years after she left it. She had found love and a home and was happy. Until a note blackmailed her to take one last job. Three years later she walked into the last person she expected to see in San Francisco. Because he lived in New York right?

They always put family before everything. And he would do anything to get his family back. Because she's the type you save.

TW: mob, death, smut, rape intentions, angst, guns, family abandonment, dub-con, manipulation

I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site, even if you give me credit. DO NOT REPOST MY FICS. Reblogs, comments, likes, and feedback ALWAYS appreciated

Divider by @firefly-graphics

Previous : F O U R

Series Masterlist ~ Main Masterlist

Three years earlier… a week after the wedding… 

“So, we never talked about stuff.” 

“Your eloquence is lovely my darling husband but I’m going to need you to be more specific.” James rolled his eyes as he continued to stroke Alex’s hair.  “I know you just rolled your eyes at me.”  

“I hate that you can do that.”  

“I hate that you still look at MY painting but here we are.”  

“Will you let the painting thing go? Please?” 

“You didn’t want it.”  

“I didn’t say that.  I said we could see art in a gallery.” He could feel her frown against his chest. “Allie, please.  I’m sorry ok.  The painting is lovely.  Just not as beautiful as the girl who bought it.”  Now he could feel her smile and he knew he had her.  “She’s the most beautiful thing in the world.”  

“Dammit,” she whispered as his chest rumbled with laughter. “Fine.  I forgive you.” She kissed his chest.  “What did you want to talk about?” 

“Where are we going to live?”  

“What?” 

“Yeah, where are we going to live? How many kids are we going to have? Do you even want kids?  Is Steve going to live with us? Can we have a dog? A cat? Do we want a house?  In Brooklyn, Queens?” 

“Whoa! Baby, slow down.  Jamie, take a breath.”  Alex leaned up to her elbows.  “Jamie, are you ok?” 

“Yeah, I’m sorry.  It’s just, when I went to the file the paperwork to have you as my emergency contact and benefactor and stuff, it just hit me.  We always talked about dreams but here we are, a week later and reality is finally hitting me.”  

Alex smiled as stroked his cheek.  She kissed him softly.  “Of course, I want to have kids.  I want at least two if not three.  I want our first to be a boy and then a girl.  Andrew James and Delilah Rose.  I want a house for us with a dog and a cat, where ever it makes it easier for you to come home from work to be with us.”  

James frowned. “You’ve thought about this.”  

“For a long time.  You have been my dream for so long.  And I want all of this with you.”  

“I love you Allie.”  

“Love you too Jamie.  Are you ok with my dreams?”  

James smiled. “I want a German Sheppard and then a white kitten.  We’ll get them after the kids.  Three of them.”  

“Its sounds perfect to me, Detective.”  

Present day… 

“About that,” Alex swallowed. “We may have to slow down on just going after him.   I don’t want him to know that I’m here with you.”  

“It doesn’t matter.  I’ll protect you,” James said.  

“No seriously, there is a really big reason I was trying to stay off radar.” Alex played with her fingers.  James took them in his own hands to try and calm her.  

“You can tell me anything.  I’ll be here.”  He kissed her knuckles.  

“Maybe I should tell you this alone.” Alex glanced at Steve.  

“Oh no.  The last time I left you alone with him, you jumped out of a window,” Steve said crossing his arms. “I’m staying right here.”  Alex shot him a glare that could have melted skin. “Or, I could go get us some lunch.”  There was only one thing Steve was scared of: the wrath of one Alexandra Richards. Steve grabbed his keys and left.  

James rolled his eyes. “Did you have to scare him doll?” 

“What did I say about calling me doll?” 

“You lost that right by leaving.”  

“Wow, this is the whole painting thing again.  You kept looking at it even when I said you couldn’t.” 

James rolled his eyes.  “Then you shouldn’t have put it on the wall behind you.”  He pulled Alex for a kiss.  “How else could I kiss you goodnight, Allie?” 

“Fine,” she smiled.  When she pulled away, she looked sad.  “Do you think we could go somewhere and talk?  I just need to get out for a moment.”  

“Sure.”  They left the apartment and James took her hand again.  

“I promise I’m not going to run.”  

“Yeah, you lost that privilege doll.”  James smirked at her.  “So where are we headed?”  

“Ten blocks down.”  They started to walk.  Alex chewed her lip.  “Can I run something by you?”  

“Sure.”  

“Ok but I need to ask something first.” Alex didn’t know how to ask, how to phrase without giving James a heart attack.  She finally found the right words. “What would be the one reason to stay hidden?” 

“To protect you.”  The answer was automatic.  

“No other reason? Hypothetically.” 

“Hypothetically?” James looked at his wife, unsure as to why she would ask these questions.  “I don’t know.”  

“Ok that’s fair.  So, let’s say you had a kid.” James quirked an eyebrow. “Would that be the one thing you would protect more than anything in the world?” 

“If it was our kid, I would do everything in my power to protect the both of you.” 

“Even if it means never seeing me again?” 

James stopped. “Why do I have to choose?  I would choose my family over everything.”  

“Yeah, that’s fair.  Won’t make this any easier but its fair.” Alex took a moment.  “I found out something else about two weeks after I left.  And it devastated me.  I knew right then I couldn’t come back.  I found the one reason I couldn’t put you into danger.”  

“What could possibly be bigger than our family?” 

“It’s not bigger than our family.  It is our family.”  

James furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand.”  

The couple stopped walking in front of a cheery house, painting in bright colors.  A few children played in the front on a jungle gym, a brunette with long hair watching over.  When she looked up, she waved at Alex, who smiled and waved back.  

“Alex, do you know her?” 

“Her name is Wanda.  She runs this daycare.”  

“Why did you bring me to meet her?” 

Alex smiled sadly. “Not her.”  

“Mama!!” A little boy screamed and ran to clutch Alex’s legs.  A boy with hazelnut hair and bright blue eyes.  

“Hi baby.”  Alex scooped him up into a hug.  After a moment she set him down.  “Can you stay with Wanda?” 

“Okays.”  He ran off.  Alex turned to James with tears in her eyes.  

“He’s the one reason I couldn’t come back.”  

Three years earlier.  

“How are you settling in Ale?”  Natasha fluffed a pillow on the couch.  

“Fine, I guess.  Wish I could go back or reach out to him.  Let him know I’m ok.” Alex drew up her knees to her chest, trying to hold herself together.  

“I told you not to mess with Grey.  Finally got to say that after 10 years.”  

“Yeah, I know Nat. I know.”  Alex leaned with her head in her hands. “He finally broke me.  Threatening my husband and my best friend. Good strategy.” She sighed. “He knew I would fall in line.”  

“Bastard.” Nat sat next to her and rubbed her back.  “What’s the plan? You know you can’t go back right now.”  

“I know that. I’m going to start over and work my way back to them, I guess.  I-“ Alex stopped and covered her mouth.  She ran to the bathroom and threw up, not the first time that day.  

“Fuck! Why won’t this anxiety go away,” she moaned, leaning her head against the porcelain. She could handle just about anything but the constant nausea.   

“That’s the third time in the last two days.  C’mon, let’s go to the clinic.  I don’t know James, but he’ll kill me if I let something happen to you.” Nat helped Alex up and took her to the local clinic.  

Hours later, Alex sat stunned, her mind racing. This couldn’t be happening.  “Pregnant?” 

“Yes,” the doctor smiled.  “About six weeks.  Very early.”  

“Th-thank you.  Umm, what’s the next step?” 

“If you decide to keep it, need to start prenatal vitamins and keep hydrated.  You can schedule an ultrasound for 12 weeks to check progress.  Congratulations.”  The doctor left the room.  

Nat held Alex as she sobbed.  “Why?  Why did this have to happen?”  

“Are you going to get rid of it?” 

“NO!” Nat jumped. “I’m sorry.  No, I can’t.  It’s the last part of Jamie I have now. I have to hope we can come back together again if only for him to meet his kid.  A kid!  We dreamed about this and now he won’t get to be there.”  

“I found out two weeks after… after…” she couldn’t say it.  

“What’s his name?”  James kept a stiff upper lip.  

“Andrew.  Drew or AJ depending on his mood.”  Alex looked at him.  A single tear slipped, and James wiped it away.  “Andrew James Richards-Barnes.”  

“Ok, wow, ok.  Can we sit?” James motioned to the bench.  They sat and James kept her hand in his.  “The one thing you would protect before anyone else. Yeah, I get that now.”  

“Yeah.” Alex looked at her feet for a moment before studying his face. “I can’t tell anymore.”  

“Tell what?” 

“What you’re feeling. What you’re thinking.  I lost it. I used to be able to tell.”  

“I’m trying not to reach out for my son. I can’t believe it.  My son.  We have a son.”  

“You have a son.  I wanted to protect him from everything.  And I couldn’t go back while Grey was still watching.  He would have more leverage.  I knew you would want me to protect our little one.”  

James studied his wife’s face.  Seeing how broken she was at the choices she was forced to make. “Doll, I’m not mad at you.  I’m mad, but not at you.”  He leaned back and sighed.  “I’m a dad.  I missed it.”  

Alex cried harder. “I’m sorry,” she wailed. “I wanted you there. I wanted you to be there for us and for him.  I show him your picture, I tell him the stories, but I know its not the same.”  

“Oh Allie, its ok.” His tears fell.  “Can I meet him?”  

“Yes, of course.”  She got up and wiped her face and went to talk to Wanda.  The woman went to get the little boy and brought him to Alex.  “Hi baby.  I want you to meet someone ok?” 

“Okays.” Drew took his mother’s hand and she walked him back to the bench.  

“Drew, this is Jamie.”  

“Hi Jamie.” Drew stood shyly next to his mom.  

“Hi Drew.”  James studied him. He looked just like himself as a child.  Undeniably his son.  “How old are you?” 

“Umm,” he showed his hand and tried to put up fingers.  He got three to stay up.  “This many!” 

Alex moved to hold one of the fingers down.  “More like this many but almost three.”  She kissed her son’s hand.  

James ran a hand through his hair, not sure what to say to an almost three-year-old. “Do you like policemen?” 

“Yea! My mama says my daddy is a police man and that he’s going to come back to get us.”  Drew smiled.  

“Really? That’s great.  I’m a policeman too.”  He took out his badge for Drew to see.  He handed it to the little boy, who took it with great interest.  

“Wow! Its heavy.” Drew looked closely at the man.  “You’re crying.” More of a statement of fact than a question.  

“A little, buddy. Your mama just gave me some news.”  

“Mama, why did you make Jamie cry?  That’s not nice.”  

Alex laughed gently. “You’re right baby.  But they are happy tears, I promise.”  

Drew turned back to James.  “Happy tears?” 

“Yeah buddy. Happy tears.  Because I got to meet you.  Can I give you a hug?” 

Drew looked at his mom and she nodded.  Drew extended his arms around James’s neck for the hug and James picked him up, holding him close.  Drew pulled back slightly and studied James’s face again.  “You look like someone.”  

“I do?” 

“Yeah.”  He wiggled to be put down and went to his backpack.  James looked up at Alex and she shrugged.  Drew came back and handed a photo to him.  “You look like him.”  James and Alex looked at the photo and Alex gasped.  

“Andrew, where did you get that?” 

“I took from the table for show and tell.  I wanted to show them my daddy.”  Drew turned back to Jamie.  “Are you my daddy?” 

NEXT

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[amplifyme]

Shift (aka The Lost Fanfic)

The X-Files. MSR. Teen and up. WC: 4261. Post-Fight the Future. Read on AO3.

Notes:

This was written sometime in the summer of 1998 after Fight the Future was released and before Season 6 began. It was archived exclusively on my website and was the only piece I didn't have backed up on my computer. When the site went down a few years later, it disappeared into the ether. I've been looking for it off and on ever since. Truth be told, I couldn't even remember what I'd written. But thanks to the resourceful and forward-thinking Lilydalexf over on Tumblr, I received an email with a text file of the fic, which she'd saved way back in the day. I've cleaned it up a bit and have included the original author's notes and disclaimer.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Classification: VAH... all right, all right, it's MSR, too.

Rating: PG-13 for content

Spoilers: Fight the Future

Author's notes: Yeah, okay, so it's not smut. I'm sorry (say it like Eddie Van Blundht). The muse looked down her nose at me and implied that I'd forgotten how to write anything clean. This'll show her.

I'm so sorry, Mel. Can you ever forgive me? ;->

Disclaimer: Aw, jeez, do I have to? You all know the drill; just repeat it to yourselves and that'll be good enough for me.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Let me see if I'm understanding you, Mulder." Scully silently offered to swap her container of shrimp fried rice for his Mongolian beef. "You're saying that our work on the X-Files should be considered the norm, as opposed to the typical white-collar worker with the house in the suburbs and the two point five kids?'

"And the Range Rover," Mulder added as they traded off. He took a bite of the rice and talked around it, his typical enthusiasm overriding any need for manners. "What I'm saying is that we're hardwired to seek out new experiences, blaze new trails. The human intellect demands new and different challenges, and if we ignore that basic need we run the risk of becoming complacent; the perfect target for any organization with enough power to literally take over our lives."

He set the container on the coffee table and tore open a packet of hot mustard with his teeth, liberally dousing an egg roll with the runny yellow substance before inhaling half of it in one bite. Scully watched with bemusement. A grazing Mulder was a sight to behold.

"So, if everyone was hunting down fat sucking vampires instead of sitting behind a desk or flipping burgers, the world would be a better place?" She waited as he furiously waved a hand in front of his open mouth and grabbed his beer, draining the last couple inches from the bottle. Pushing forty and he still hadn't figured out how much hot mustard was enough.

"That's kind of simplistic," he declared when he could talk again, "but yeah. Just think about it, Scully. What if the majority of the population could see just a fraction of the things we have? Think of how much more open-minded people would be to extreme possibilities. The idea of a race of aliens bent on colonizing the planet with not so benign intentions would be much more easily accepted."

Mulder held his hand out for the beef, giving her some time to consider what he'd said. Night had fallen and his living room was bathed in shadows. Light spilled from the kitchen doorway. Aside from the cool blue cast by the muted and ignored TV and the soft glow from the newly stocked fish tank, it was the only illumination in the apartment.

"But, Mulder, you're assuming that the majority of the world's population would even want to know the things we know. Contrary to what you might think, most people are perfectly happy living a life of order and routine. I dare say most of them would go out of their way to avoid the changes that kind of knowledge would inevitably bring."

"Ignorance is bliss?"

"That's kind of simplistic," she remarked, catching his faint smile as she echoed his earlier jab, "but yes. Most people just want to be left alone to live their lives as they see fit. Change isn't always a good thing, Mulder."

"But it's inevitable," he argued. "Chaos is the norm. I can't believe I'm the only one who realizes that." He chewed and swallowed another bite, staring off into space. And then he looked in her direction, aiming the full force of his gaze squarely at her. His eyes were suddenly darker and more soulful. More aware. In a split second his entire focus had changed, and now everything in him was intent on nothing but her. It was a look she'd seen in his hallway just a few weeks ago, and one not easily forgotten.

"What about you, Scully? Is ignorance bliss?"

It was a question fraught with many different meanings - and they both knew it. That he felt comfortable enough to ask anyway was a sign of how much things had changed. It wasn't just one event out of all the events of the last month: it was the sum total of them that had led to this new and still tentative honesty; the constant awareness that they were standing on the brink of something brand new and yet older than time.

It was an electrifying feeling that had her thoughts careening wildly. She was smart enough to realize that what was blossoming between them was a strange and beautiful thing, but it was also a double-edged sword, and she wasn't entirely certain she was emotionally prepared to deal with the risks it entailed.

She held his eye, determined not to flinch, and chose to answer the easier version of his question. "No, of course not. It would be foolish of me to try to pretend that none of these things have happened." She glanced away and then back at him. The fact that his attention had shifted to the food and off of her allowed her to elaborate more than she might've otherwise.

"I guess I'm uneasy with the inherent changes that certain kinds of knowledge bring. I've always been a creature of habit, Mulder. I like routine. I like knowing what to expect. And despite the rather bizarre lifestyle I seem to have established, I've been able to adapt fairly well. It's just that sometimes it gets a little overwhelming."

"There's nothing wrong with routine, Scully. You're taking me too literally." Apparently, her deflection had worked. At least for the time being. He went on in his slightly professorial monotone. "The daily grind is a natural outgrowth of living in a civilized society. All I'm saying is that it tends to make us lazy and stupid. And that leaves us vulnerable to anyone or anything who cares to take advantage of the situation."

Mulder scrubbed his newly cropped hair and slouched back against the couch, one hand unconsciously and contentedly rubbing his stomach. "I probably don't have to tell you this," he continued, "but I thrive on change. I like chaos. It keeps me sharp. The best thing about not knowing what might happen next is that you're prepared for anything."

She pushed away from the food and settled back next to him, their shoulders barely brushing. "But, Mulder, we all need some kind of stability, a constant we can depend on. Otherwise, we'd spend our lives wandering aimlessly from one experience to another, without any kind of cohesiveness. I hear what you're saying, but there's nothing that prevents us from living an ordered life except our own inability to make sense of the very chaos you seem to cherish."

He rewarded her with a low chuckle. "Is this a kinder, gentler way of telling me I'm crazy?"

She shot him a dismissive look. "No. I'm just baffled by your attitude. Don't you ever find yourself wishing for a simpler life; one where you knew what to expect from day to day?"

"You make it sound like I don't have that already."

She gaped at him and then recovered. "Okay, now you've completely lost me. You wanna explain to me how you can possibly describe your life as simple?"

"Well, using the criteria you've established, it is simple. I have the stability you spoke of. I have that constant."

She snorted softly. "And that would be… what? That your stability is the fact that you have none? That your only constant is change?"

He turned his head and pinned her with a look, his words echoing the gentle rebuke she saw in the mossy green of his eyes. "You haven't been paying attention, Scully."

Still sprawled on the couch, his face bland, the only clue to Mulder's anxiety was the almost imperceptible bouncing of one leg. "I realize that the aftermath might be a little foggy to you, but I find it hard to believe you don't remember what was said just outside that door." He tilted his head toward the front of his apartment. He made no attempt to elaborate. His words lay solid and heavy between them, offered up like a gift she couldn't refuse, even if she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to accept it just then.

She'd been anticipating this. She'd thought about it enough that she'd even come to think of it as The Moment of Truth because of its potential to shift a large portion of her life in an unknown direction. Formulating possible responses to Mulder's probable remarks about what had happened and what'd been said had been uppermost in her mind lately. When he’d jokingly accused her of daydreaming just the day before, she hadn't been able to argue the point. He'd been right: she'd been far too distracted the last few weeks. Maybe it was best just to get things out in the open - for her continued sanity, if nothing else.

But before she could say anything he beat her to it, apparently misconstruing her long silence as refusal to take his bait. "Well," he rasped, sitting up and pulling a hand down his face, "this is an awkward moment. Look, Scully, forget I said anything."

"No," she quickly assured him, laying her hand on his back. "No, it's okay. I was just… I'm just not sure what to say, Mulder."  

He glanced back over his shoulder at her. "Well, I think I made my feelings pretty clear."

She certainly wouldn't argue with that. While she couldn't claim to remember much after she'd been stung in the hallway outside his apartment, the memory of Mulder's strangled words and the thrill of realization as he'd moved in to kiss her were etched into her brain. And now it was obvious that he was expecting her to come clean about her feelings. Yet another version of their well-established “I showed you mine, now you show me yours” game. Only this time it wasn't theories they were trading.

If Scully'd had a list, she could've checked off the symptoms of reticence she was experiencing, one by one. First came the dry mouth, followed closely by the leaden feeling in her stomach. Then the reeling in her head as she began to contemplate all she could say wrong despite her best efforts to put the correct spin on things. If discussing emotions were as simple as analyzing facts and figures, debating hypothetical situations, she'd be in the clear. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

She'd never been very big on flowery declarations; the words had always stuck in her throat every time she'd attempted it. She was a woman of action, and if forced to 'fess up, would much rather show than tell. And so that's what she did: sitting up and perching on the edge of the couch next to him, she gently turned his face toward hers and leaned in to kiss him. She was aware as her lips brushed his that he had gone completely still. She didn't linger, choosing instead to make it a chaste but tender kiss, pulling away after just a few seconds. Her hand stayed at his jaw a little longer though, as her fingers memorized the slight abrasiveness of his evening stubble. His eyes, when she raised hers to meet them, were both amused and a little shocked.

"There," she whispered. "I hate leaving things unfinished."

Mulder's eyebrows crept up and he gave an infinitesimal shake of his head. "That's it?" he asked. "You mean we're done?"

Now it was her turn to be taken aback. "What were you expecting?"

As his hands lifted to cup her cheeks he murmured, "C'mere and I'll show you."

Chaste was clearly not what Mulder had in mind. Not that she was complaining. She was too busy admiring the way his bottom lip was expertly nudging hers apart, opening her mouth to admit just the tip of his tongue. He briefly touched it to hers before sweeping it across her upper lip and withdrawing, pulling back just enough to be able to look her in the eye. Permission was asked and granted in the few moments it took her to curl a hand around the nape of his neck and bring his mouth back to hers.

Scully decided that his idea of what constituted finishing business was much more comprehensive than hers. She also decided that kissing him was something she really enjoyed doing and vaguely wondered what had taken them so long.

Good little investigator that he was, Mulder was busy making a thorough exploration of her mouth. It occurred to her, in some distant, foggy place in the back of her mind, that the shift she'd predicted was indeed inevitable. Funny thing was that the reality of it didn't scare her nearly as much as she'd thought it would. She allowed herself to completely relax into their kiss, with Mulder sensing her acquiescence and slowly easing her down onto the couch, his arms cradling her. They ended up with Scully lying against one of the throw pillows, his upper body draped across hers, their legs tangled.

It took her a few seconds to force her eyes open after Mulder finally broke for air. She found him looking down at her, his expression a wickedly potent mixture of affection and good old-fashioned lust. One corner of his mouth drew up just the tiniest bit.

"That was more what I had in mind," he informed her. And then he dipped his head and began to plant small, wet kisses down the line of her jaw. His hand slid up her back and gathered a fistful of hair, gently but determinedly drawing her head back and exposing the tender skin of her neck to his mouth. The soft cotton of his dress shirt rubbed against her stiffening nipples through the silk of her blouse and bra, setting off sparks of heat traveling swiftly through her body.

Hoo-boy.

It'd been a very long time since she'd felt the weight of a man's body on hers, the delicious friction it created. Forever since her hands had roamed over corded muscle and curve of spine. Too long since she'd felt the heat pooling deep within her and someone there to share it, add to it, eventually douse it. What made the cottony thickness of her arousal even more enjoyable was that it was the real thing this time - not some fantasy Mulder who came to her only in the relative safety of her dreams. And there was only a little part of her that wondered if perhaps they should slow down and think about this some more.

She didn't know whether to laugh or cry when Mulder muttered against her neck, "You're gonna have to tell me when to stop, Scully, 'cause if you leave it up to me, I won't."

God bless his considerate, gentlemanly little heart.

Damn it.

"Then maybe," she managed to utter even while threading her fingers through his hair and urging his mouth to points south, "we should stop and think about this."

Deft fingers began working the buttons on her blouse. "Okay. Just say the word and I'll stop."

Oh, she didn't want to do this. She didn't want to stop him. She had a sudden urge to strangle the life out of the sensible little voice in her head. If such a thing were possible, that is.

"Mulder."

"Hmm?"

"Stop."

He groaned in noisy protest but did as she asked. Resting his chin between her breasts, he peered up at her. Hair askew, eyes warm but a little wary, he was the most gorgeous man she'd ever had the pleasure of lying beneath. He was content to wait quietly while she pronounced sentence on him, trusting her to do what was best for both of them. That particular trust was a heavy burden he'd placed on her long ago, and one she'd struggled to throw off more than once. But here and now, she was beginning to realize that it was also a precious gift. And it gave her far more power over him than she even dared contemplate.

"Is this what you had in mind in the hallway?" Her voice was intentionally rich with humor. It was important that he know she wasn't upset by his attempted seduction. Getting their wires crossed about this was the last thing they needed.

She watched as his eyes lost their wariness. The hint of a boyish grin crossed his face before disappearing behind his trademark deadpan expression. "Actually," he quipped, "I was kind of hoping to make it to second base." And with that, he deliberately began to refasten the buttons he'd managed to undo. His knuckles unintentionally brushed fire along her breasts.

"Don't give up, Slugger," she told him as he finished, her voice gone slow and husky. "You haven't struck out yet."

The look on his face was priceless. She couldn't help but grin at him. His answering smile was enough to light up the room. He sat up and pulled her along with him, waiting until she was settled before he twisted around and sat down on the coffee table across from her, his long legs caging hers. Mulder reached out and caught one of her hands in his. He took in a breath and let it out slowly. "The truth is, Scully, I accomplished everything I set out to do that night. The rest of it… just icing on the cake." There was a beat of silence. "Well, except for the bee sting. That kind of put a damper on things."

"Mulder…"

"No, let me finish. I'm sorry it took me so long, but I want you to know I meant every word I said."

"I know." She squeezed his hand and ducked her head, not wanting him to see the sudden tears that threatened to spill over.

"Do you? Because that's all that really matters to me. I don't ever want you to think that I don't value you, or that you're not the most important thing in my -"

She cut him off with her fingers pressed against his mouth. If he kept it up, she'd lose her struggle to hold off her tears. She didn't want to turn into a blubbering idiot, not now. Not when smiling had felt so good.

"I know," she repeated.

His eyes flicked over her face, reading it like a map only he could decipher. Long seconds passed before he nodded slowly, satisfied by what he'd seen.

"Good," he said. "That's good."

She took a few moments to study his familiar features, softened by emotions he rarely let show. She took in the relaxed line of his jaw, the warmth of his eyes, the hair that stood up in tiny spikes on the top of his head. And the seductive fullness of his mouth, still moist from their kisses. She could drown there, she realized, and not give two hoots about anything else. It was a dangerous and compelling prospect.

She reached up and smoothed her hand over his unruly hair. "I guess this begs the question of what we do now."

He looked aside for a minute and then back at her, shrugging. "We keep on keepin' on. We see where this thing takes us. We fight the good fight. We start scheduling regular make-out sessions."

"Just thought you'd sneak that last one in there, huh?"

"Nothing gets past you, Scully."

She was trying to focus on the issue at hand. He wasn't going to make it easy. She knew this Mulder well. And she could tell he wanted to play, revert to his habit of joking about the most serious of subjects. All the nervous energy he'd suppressed just minutes ago had broken free. Both legs had taken up a gentle bouncing, his hands moving like moths around a flame: glancing off her knees, her hands, her arms, before flying away, only to return again.

Sometimes it was a pain in the ass always being the grown-up.

She grabbed one of his hands and held it tightly in both of hers. He went still almost at once, his keen sense of her innate composure helping to ground him. She vaguely wondered what would become of him if something happened to her. She could picture him floating off into space like an errant helium balloon, with no one to pull him back. She was his safety line; a fragile string that was nonetheless durable enough to keep them both anchored to the ground - even if Mulder was always looking up into the sky, wondering what he might be missing.

"This is going to have an impact on everything," she told him as she caught his eye. "It's going to change everything."

He pursed his lips and jerked an eyebrow. "Maybe. But it's impossible that you'll ever be more important to me than you are right now, so that won't change."

"What if it does, Mulder?"

"That's not gonna happen." She opened her mouth to protest but he cut her off, grasping her shoulders and gazing at her with single-minded intensity. "I won't let it. I'm one relentless sonofabitch, Scully. It's gonna take a nuclear explosion to pry me away from you now. And I won't risk the only thing that matters to me unless I'm absolutely certain it's the right thing. How could it, how could we, be anything short of incredible?"

Five years with Mulder had programmed her to automatically begin formulating an argument to counteract his latest bizarre theory, and this time was no different. While her brain shifted into overdrive, spitting out a dozen reasons why they couldn't afford to be so blasé about the whole situation, her heart was busy tugging her in a different direction. One that whispered to her that he might have a point. Not every decision had to be based in logic - she'd slowly begun to realize that. Sometimes you just had to go with your gut.

"And besides," Mulder suddenly blurted into the silence, "who else would put up with my sorry ass?"

Strange how the simplest phrase could be the deciding factor in such a life-altering decision. He wasn't being facetious, despite the joking tone of his voice. He honestly believed that she was the only one who'd ever understand him, who'd willingly accept him for all that he was. Who'd see that what he did made a difference. And though there were times when she'd wondered if someone more open to extreme possibilities might be better for him, she knew in her heart that no one could ever feel about him the way she did. And no one could ever challenge, respect, trust, and complete her the way Mulder did.

“You made me a whole person.”

Isn't that what it came down to in the end? Wasn't that all that really mattered? Suddenly, nothing was more important to her than that he know what was in her heart.

"I want you to know something," she told him. "And I want you to listen to me very carefully." Mulder gazed at her with cautious chameleon eyes. "I want you to know that no matter what happens now, one thing will never change. What you do makes a difference. I know it doesn't seem like it most of the time, but it does. You have to believe that. And I want you to know how proud I am to be a part of that. You're an honorable man, Mulder, and you lead an honorable life. And I want you to know I'd be proud to be a part of that, too. In whatever form it takes."

She watched his face carefully as she spoke, cataloguing every emotion that passed over it. There were many things to see there, as he nervously chewed his lip and took in her words. But what she was left with was a mixture of tenderness and pride that nearly made her dizzy.

Mulder opened his mouth a few times before he finally got anything to come out. "Can I…" His brow furrowed and he cleared his throat and tried again. "Can I just hold you, Scully? For a minute?"

She reached for him, and they both stood, knowing that the limited contact they'd have otherwise wouldn't satisfy either of them. She went easily into his embrace, her head tucked under his chin, her arms wrapped around his waist. He held her loosely for a moment before tightening his arms and drawing her even closer. They stood toe to toe, touching everywhere it was possible to touch, the contact sweet and heavy with the promise of things to come.

Mulder dipped his head until it rested against hers. His chest expanded as he took in a deep breath and then released it with a ragged sigh. "God, you feel so good. So good."

She tightened her arms around him, wanting nothing more than to be enveloped by him, held in his warm and welcoming embrace for as long as he'd let her. Judging by his remark, that could end up being a good long while.

And that was okay. It was better than okay.

"You know what, Scully?" he murmured against her hair.

"What’s that, Mulder?"

"Someday soon we're gonna have really phenomenal sex."

Maybe even sooner than he thought.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The End

Nope, no sequel planned. Live with it.

[penumbraphantasm]

I really want to know more about Mr. Incognito since they aren't that much talked about like Bruno. Like why are they in the tower (suppose they're hired by the noise to watch her and that's why they always run away?) Plus who's the person in the trenchcoat. Take as long as you want to answer this

you can still probably guess who mr incognito is from one pose and some of the items. it both is and isn't who you think it is.

i think its fun when theres a bit of mystery left to things. part of me wants to tell about whoever's incognito and why but also part of me wants to keep it a secret, even though i'm not planning to actualize my ideas like, ever.

so i'll put the long answer under a read more and you decide if you wanna know lol

ITS THE NOISE!!!!

but also maybe not the noise we know. it's the other noise.

it was a rough idea but pretty much, this one is from an alt file where crumbling tower wasn't the victory lap it was supposed to be. noisette didnt make it out and theo noise didn't take it well. he feels regret abt not letting her know how much he cared abt her and treasuring their time together more. sad! anyways stuff happened and he's found his way into the file you play.

his default colors would be reminiscent of missing source textures and have noisette's pink but those parts could also change to match whatever color/pattern she's wearing. internal file names for sprites would be like spr_player (noisette replacing peppino, otherwise it'd be playerB for 🐇 lol), spr_playerN (noise) and spr_playerO (other noise, O is after N). the title screen would show 3 tvs but the last one is broken and inaccessible, leaving you with only 2 save slots.

The O. Noise, taking inspiration from ol' Noisette, disguises himself as Mr. N to the cognitO and tries to make sure this noisette will be fine on her adventure without messing with things too much. he'd lack access to his usual gear and maybe utilize scrapped stuff like the demolition button and grappling hook to help noisette clear obstacles in certain sections.

after you clear a file the first time, theo noise would disappear and you'd be sent back to the title screen and see the 3rd tv's been restored like nothing happened. if you select it, you'd then be able to play through the tower as noise (like kirby's meta knightmare time attack style)

ridiculous ambitious idea. unfitting for funny pizza game. also feels like noise overload, theres already so fucking many variations of this dude lol. did not pursue this any further but now you know if you read on ooouuugghh

(also im sure noisette, peshino, snick, etc came out of the tower just fine in the actual game. all those enemies in the credits made it out after all lol)

[mortalityplays]

I worked for an accountant for a while and it largely wasn’t a terrible job, except for every constituent thing I had to do and the people I worked with and the location. I had to take two buses to reach the office, which was situated in an office park sandwiched between a highway and a very muddy riverbank, and my boss was always mildly annoyed by my lateness no matter how early I arrived, because my job was to do her job and she couldn’t leave until I got there. She didn’t trust me with the key (even though she would disappear for the rest of the day the moment I arrived), so she would get up at the crack of dawn to unlock the office, then sit there drinking coffee and sending me pissy texts asking what time I would be in. I was contracted to start at 11am, which within the first two days became 9am. I was contracted to be her apprentice, which translated to watching her work for a few days and then doing it all myself while she ‘took meetings’ in town.

Anyway.

I didn’t mind the actual accounting because. as the previous poster accurately described, it was basically the world’s worst ugliest stickiest most unsolveable sudoku. It was a game of putting numbers in spreadsheets until they looked close enough to accurate that the government wouldn’t get mad. Our best client would save invoices, cheque stubs and receipts in random envelopes, in no particular order, and then deliver them in bundles every few months when they realised tax season would eventually happen. They ran a successful construction firm and used local suppliers, and most of the time with a wish and a prayer it was possible to triangulate the numbers. The worst client ran an organic café, and would come into the office once a week and empty her pockets for us. Her paperwork was mostly handwritten, always sticky, and often either inaccurate or incomplete. It was always, always in a completely random order so that I had to create a kind of manual sorting algorithm for her drawer in the filing cabinet where I could cross-reference date order and what collection of papers did this arrive with, which were somehow always unrelated but also necessary to make sense of her vendor relationships. Once I asked her if she had any knowledge of a sizeable outgoing that had no associated invoice, and she said ‘no but I remember what that was, I can write one’.

We shared that office with another woman who ran her own civil engineering consultancy. Since my boss generally left at 9am and reappeared around 4 or 5pm, I spent most days working in quiet companionship with her. Just kidding, every day was a fucking gauntlet. She was ‘spiritual’ in the sense that her belief system was arcane and completely unmappable. For instance, she believed that she was a direct descendant of the wizard Merlin, and had a complex timetable of work that took into account the phases of the moon so that every client project she took on would be as efficiently auspicious as possible. Anything important that she had to do during the day had to be done at 1pm exactly (according to the battery operated office wall clock), and she had to remove her shoes to work  ‘so that energy could flow through her’. She was absolutely fascinated by the video game World of Warcraft, and would ask me very involved questions about the lore and cultures of the various factions. I think at some point she’d heard that the game had ‘shamans’ in it and accordingly became very taken by the idea that the whole thing was a veiled allegory to secret systems of energy and spirit communication in the real world. She also really, really, really liked Neil Diamond, which put me in the daily position of having to decide whether to put on one of the two Neil Diamond CDs for the 49th time or listen to seven  uninterrupted hours of whatever she had going on.

I quit when college started. Overall not the worst job I ever had.

[zivazivc]

Oooh! I'm very curious about the 'MLffic acrocat začetek.'

okay okay, I made this file back when I actually thought I was going to turn the acrocat AU into a proper fanfic.

But aside from a very rough large chunk of the first chapter and some random bits, this story is pretty much up in the air. I might publish some random scenes in the future but that's as close as I'm willing to get to writing a proper multichapter story because writing takes a lot out of me, and for me it's much more of a leisurely hobby than drawing.

That's why I'm posting the whole start of the fic that I have written out since I doubt it'll ever see the day otherwise. especially since i don't like it that much anymore.

I have to repeat tho, it's very rough with lots of grammatical mistakes - even for me whose writing isn't exactly up there... but i’m not a native english speaker and this is a "wip game" so you probably already expect that...

“Pound it!”

The butterfly had been purified, the victim saved, and all the destruction had been restored to the Stravinsky Fountain and its surrounding buildings.

Police had already arrived on the scene minutes ago, worrying over the de-akumatized soaking wet man in his early twenties, whose friends were still being hurried over, and over the few Parisians who got caught in his final outburst around the monument. 

Headlights of a news van, that seemed to operate an emergency night shift, were visible getting closer driving down the street along the Pompidou Centre, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Paris super heroes on camera and possibly get a comment on the event.

Chat Noir had detached himself from the comotion happening on the other end of the playful, colorful fountain as he stared at his partner’s smile behind their fist bump of a job well done.

“We’re getting good, M'Lady. We didn’t even need to use my Cataclysm for this one,” he said confidently and leaned his cocky grin closer to her. Water dripped from his wet bangs and chin, which was sadly ruining the irresistibly charming look he was trying to pull off.

Ladybug to his surprise didn’t even react with her usual smirk. Her unfocused eyes showed no reaction if she heard his remark or not, seemingly lost in thought. As if on autopilot, she took a step back onto the pool ledge and immediately threw her yoyo over Chat’s head, which hooked around the top of the Church of Saint-Merri behind him.

Chat almost got upset for a second that Ladybug was in such a hurry to get away. Was she actually mad about the lighthearted funny comments he’d made earlier? 

But the way the girl glanced over her shoulder and blinked focus into her eyes told him that wasn't it and she just wanted to get out of there before they could get flooded with reporters again.

Her eyes finally sharpened on him, proving to him that she had been listening. “Massage your ego all you want, kitty, but this Akuma just wasn’t all that strong,” she smirked at him teasingly, as if she had only now let his words register in her mind.

Before Chat could react she already pulled herself to the roof, away from the bright lights and curious onlookers, and Chat Noir was quick to follow her with his elongated staff, not giving her a chance to swing out of his sight.

“My claws are a little too sharp for massages. Maybe you could give me a hand?” he said as they ran over the church roof.

Ladybug laughed but didn’t spare him a glance as she jumped across the street on the other side and zipped onto the closest building and onward. Her costume kept disappearing out of sight behind chimneys or trees for only seconds at a time but Chat held his breath each time, anticipating to see her reappear on the other end.

Jumping, swinging and vaulting over the roofs, with their hair and faces against the still night air felt almost like an adrenaline high game of cat and mouse. So once they stopped a few hundred meters away behind a wide wall of chimney pots and Ladybug spoke up with an unusually serious tone it caught Chat Noir off guard.

His ears perked up. He hadn’t heard her sound so thoughtful and troubled in a while but her expression was the same as the one back at the fountain. It wasn’t her usual sharp eyes and concentrated frown like during their battles when she needed to figure out her lucky charm. Her gaze was far away on something intangible.

“I wonder what Hawk Moth’s up to…”

Chat hadn’t given too much thought to the villain lately. Fighting the akumas had become such a routine that sometimes he almost forgot they had a source.

He was quiet as he followed the girl and sat down beside her on the cold metal roofing, their legs splayed down the sloping roof in front of them.

“What did he think he’d achieve with akumatizing someone who’s nearly blind drunk? The only tough thing about this akuma was trying to judge if moving out of the way of his swings was necessary or not.”

Chat snorted quietly. That was how the fight had moved from the exterior of the Pompidou Centre, where they were trying to get him bound with Ladybug’s yoyo to one of the pillars, all the way down to the Stravinsky Fountain. Ladybug had jumped out of the way of the Akuma’s swing—the swing that missed and then hit her dead center because she moved. She was sent flying directly into the sculpture of plum bright red lips that she knocked over, spraying water everywhere. The sight hadn’t exactly been funny as it happened but once he reached her and was assured that she was fine, Chat couldn’t help but grin at her sitting comfortably on giant lips, soaking wet. He asked if she was trying to make him jealous. Ladybug rolled her eyes and whacked his shoulder for that one.

Honestly the whole fight in the fountain was absurdly hilarious in hindsight, Chat now thought.

“I’m just glad neither of us got barfed on.”

This time he saw Ladybug’s shoulders shake in a chuckle but no sound came.

A silence fell between them and Chat used it to tussle his hair with his hand, trying to get rid of the last remains of fountain water he had gotten splashed in his face right after Ladybug called her restoring power which dried both of them up along with fixing all the damage the akuma and the battle caused. He had kind of asked for it—jokingly commenting that the magically restored mermaid statue in the fountain next to which Ladybug stood had nothing on her aqua form. Ladybug’s face had turned red from the remark and Chat’s grin, and she kicked water at him that thankfully couldn’t soak through his magical suit but got his face and bangs wet again nonetheless.

Chat Noir was brought out of his thoughts when Ladybug spoke up again.

“This whole week, it’s like Hawk Moth decided to switch to quantity over quality...”

Chat’s green eyes glowed bright for just a second when he turned his head and light from a nearby street lamp got reflected in them. The dark of the night and the extra shadow from the chimney behind them made even Ladybug’s bright red costume next to him almost invisible to any prying eyes in the street below them. But his cat vision allowed him to fully take in her expression. The slight frown and the shadow of her wrinkled brows under the mask, her eyes still lost in thought.

He still wanted to joke about the recent battle shenanigans but dropped it when the serious mood finally set in with him. His smile disappeared.

Ladybug’s earrings beeped for the first time and she lifted her hand to gently touch one. Her mouth parted with a low exhale but she didn’t get up to leave. She continued staring into the distance until she finally sensed Chat Noir’s gaze on her. Her big blue eyes looked directly at him and she raised her brows questionably.

Chat straightened up. He should say something instead of dragging Ladybug’s bad mood with his silence.

“That might be a good thing!” he flipped his wrist encouragingly. “Maybe he’s getting impatient. Which means he’ll get sloppy.”

Ladybug hummed. She didn’t sound assured.

The two had to deal with six of Hawk Moth’s Akumas in the last five days. It was true that they hadn't been very powerful or strong-willed but Chat Noir understood that didn’t mean they weren’t supposed to be taken any less seriously. If anything, the frequency of them was putting a serious toll on Adrien’s life. As if intentionally planned, all the Akuma emergencies this week had to have taken place while he was busy with one of his scheduled unpostponable responsibilities. It made Chat wonder if he had the worst luck ever or if his schedule had really been that packed for this week. At least tonight he had been free in his room doing homework when the Akuma alert showed up on his phone and he didn’t have to blurt out ‘stomachache’ or something even more embarrassing before running off from one responsibility to the next one.

Chat Noir didn’t want to dwell on the fact that Adrien’s life was a mess at the moment. But from what he could guess, Ladybug’s was too if her current mood happened to have more than one source… 

“Maybe…” the girl exhaled tiredly beside him, and proved his suspicion correct with her next words, “but my civilian life’s going to become harder and harder to keep up with if this goes on. And I can’t afford to get careless there! I have a miracle box to keep safe! If anyone finds out my-”

Chat Noir laid a hand on hers to stop her from over-stressing herself. “No one’s going to find out your identity.” 

Her shoulders fell and she finally smiled back.—Gratefully, and Chat’s heart soared. 

Ladybug turned her hand over to intertwine their fingers and turned to stare up at the night sky.

A dozen butterflies decided to come to life in Chat Noir’s stomach in that one second. They were holding hands! Should he point it out? Should he say anything? No, this wasn’t the time for one of his flirtatious comments. Ladybug needed reassurance. And it would just ruin the moment even if it was only his.

He could feel his face heating up but he tried to ignore it. He bit his tongue and tore his eyes from the small hand in his clawed one and followed the girl’s gaze.

It had still been somewhat light outside when the Akuma showed up but now white stars dotted the black sky above the orange haze.

Ladybug’s earrings beeped a second time and Chat felt the girl squeeze his hand as if to suck out some of the confidence and reassurance he had tried to offer to her before letting go of him and laying her hands in her lap, starting to fidget with her fingers nervously.

Chat Noir didn’t know what to do with his empty hand either and once he laid it back on the roof he was disappointed to feel the cold metal suck all the warmth right out of it.

“Aren’t you a bit too confident about that? Don’t your friends and family wonder where you disappear to all the time?” Ladybug asked carefully.

They tried to avoid any conversations about their civilian lives but Chat was sympathetic of her need to bring that up, although he himself didn’t like to think about it. At least not about his life. Not while he was Chat Noir. It was bad enough when such thoughts crept up on him, but starting them actively was almost like a punishment. Like thinking about homework while at an amusement park.

Ladybug wanted this conversation and his mental wall caved in quickly.

Regarding his friends, they weren't so difficult to dodge. Being allowed to hang out with them had often been a new battle to be won against his father or Nathalie. And that was no longer news to them. So they no longer questioned his flakiness if he canceled their plans at the last minute or had to cut a hangout short. Sudden photo shoots, fittings, meetings and whatnot were handy excuses to blurt out before changing into Chat Noir behind the nearest corner. A stinging conscience was a side effect he had learned to ignore through the years of his upbringing. 

His home was a different story however. Despite the fact that his father rarely found the time to be in the same room as him he was still smothered by him in some sense of the word. Adrien had a strict schedule he had to follow. Everywhere he went he was monitored by Nathalie or his bodyguard, and Father's rules. Finding loopholes in the curriculum was practically an art form he'd been perfecting for a while. Although he had come to realize it wasn't handy for spontaneous Akuma missions that often came at the worst of times.—Example: this whole week.—School, fencing, basketball, karate, photo shoots, runways, social events, evening tutoring, Chinese lessons, and the new Japanese course he had recently had dumped on him weren't exactly things he could postpone for an hour and then come back to like at least homework and studying were. He had to come up with most excuses on the spot for why he would or had disappeared, and hope that Nathalie would wrap them up with a nice bow before passing them to his father. 

Chat Noir’s mind was rambling and his silence forced Ladybug to redirect her gaze from the starry sky back at him. Silence from him was unusual and the girl didn’t hide the concern that shifted onto him. 

“Kitty?”

Chat Noir realized he had been unresponsively staring at his boots this whole time. He clicked the paw-shaped toe caps together a couple of times, as if to wrap up his thoughts and store them away, before turning to his troubled partner and grinning toothily. 

"It's a good thing everyone knows that cats do as they please and don't do well on leashes," is what he ended up telling Ladybug. Adrien’s problems were not Chat Noir’s.

Ladybug’s expression went from concerned to surprised to unimpressed in the span of a second. “I’m being serious, you know?”

He smoothed out his smile into a softer one. “I guess I did skip on a lot of ‘somethings’ this week. I’ll have to think of some really good excuses this time.”

“‘Somethings’?” Ladybug quoted, sounding as amused as exasperated. Them keeping their identities from each other meant that a lot of the things they did or had got described as simply ‘something’. “Well I’m glad to know you aren’t a stray with no responsibilities. I almost got worried there for a second that I’ll have to adopt you.”

Chat laughed at the mental image. “I wouldn’t mind being yours, M'Lady.”

Ladybug rolled her eyes. She should have expected he’d say something like that. She was practically asking for it. “An unfaithful alley cat doesn’t sound very appealing,” she poked at his side just as her earrings beeped a third time.

“Well, gotta go, kitty, if I want to get home in time.” She stood up. “You should go home, too. You wouldn’t want your owners to start putting up missing posters.”

This time Chat Noir rolled his eyes as he waved her off and Ladybug swung away in the direction of the Seine.

The boy watched her until she was out of sight, then he laid down on the roofing to stare at the sky, allowing the last of the butterflies to linger hopefully. 

He’d been out a while by that point but he still didn’t feel like going home. After a few more minutes he got up to head there anyway. He still had to write a conclusion to his biology assignment that they were handing in tomorrow.

As he jumped and vaulted over the roofs he let the feeling of freedom consume him a little longer. Rising and falling through the air was exhilarating and rewarding. Homework be damned, he could do this all night.

His elongated staff eventually vaulted him over the Agreste mansion’s wall directly towards the shelf of his open window. At Least it had been opened. Because instead of easily jumping into his room, like he'd done many times before, he banged his front on the glass and bruised his nose.

“Ow! Oh… Oh no…” Oh no no no no no! This was bad. This was very very bad!

He gave the window frame an extra push hoping that it was just closed and not also locked but his eyes quickly noticed the position of the handle on the other side. It was definitely locked. Wide eyes stared at it with a sinking feeling and a sudden dread gripped Chat by the throat. 

He stood frozen to the spot for a good twenty seconds before he finally pulled himself together barely enough to turn around and jump into the nearby tree where he could hide before anyone could spot him. Crouching down on the closest branch with his back on the trunk, he stared at his nice bright inaccessible room. 

He was locked out. Well he wasn't locked out out because the back and front doors were still possible options but the idea of getting caught sneaking into the house at this hour when he had supposedly been in his room all this time was a scary one. Adrien tried to visualize in his head how his father and Nathalie might react based on his similar past misbehaviors but he was sure this would be the worst one yet.

He tried to keep himself in line most of the time. He didn’t sneak out late as Adrien and he’d never been caught as Chat Noir.

The boy eventually figured he couldn't stay on the branch forever. He dropped to the base of the tree before quietly calling out to detransform.

He felt his kwami’s warm laid-back presence leave him, making his anxiety that much more intense. Chill air surrounded his bare forearms and crept through the thin layers of fabric. Adrien shuddered.

He wasn’t even dressed like he’d just been outside… Father and Nathalie would have questions. Could he, from the fact that he was at least wearing shoes, call himself ‘lucky’? He suddenly started feeling queasy on top of everything.

When the costume disappeared Plagg immediately zipped into Adrien’s hair to hide. But now he had taken in their surroundings of the Agreste back garden and the locked tall windows above them.

His head rose from the blonde’s locks, ears perking up. “So this is what this last minute panic is about. And here I thought we were being confronted by Hawk Moth of all humans.” The kwami’s voice had the usual whine to it until he shifted his attention back to Adrien and the cause of the boy’s genuine alarm sunk in.

Ears lowering sympathetically, he grunted, “Tough luck, kid.”

“Hope not. Maybe I can still get in undetected…” Adrien tried to keep his voice sounding positive but he couldn’t fool his kwami.

It was cold outside and the shivering boy decided it would be best to just deal with the problem as soon as possible. Before he'd be too numb to think properly.

He headed up the steps to the back door. The lights inside were switched off and he couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or not. He was just praying silently that by some miracle the door was unlocked and he wouldn’t need to go ring the front door which was always locked even when it wasn’t the middle of the night.

But even if it was unlocked and everything went smoothly, he would be lying to himself if he thought he could get away with sneaking out. Someone had closed the window in his room which meant they had noticed he wasn’t there.

Had his father freaked out? Were they looking for him? Had the police been involved?

He stilled in front of the door, subconsciously worrying his lower lip.

Plagg had moved to his shirt’s collar where Adrien could feel his warm body against his collarbone.

“If you get caught, I’ll have your back. In the literal sense.”

Adrien chuckled.

“And I’ll share my comfort food with you. Camembert.”

“Oh no, please, you don’t have to do that.”

Plagg perked up. “Well, if you insist.”

Adrien smiled down at him, appreciating the small distraction.

He pushed down on the door handle and his body almost toppled over his unresponsive feet when the door moved under his weight. Honestly, despite hoping, he hadn’t been expecting to get even this far.

The back door opened to the unlit black and white dining room. The air was still and silent as Adrien carefully silently closed the door behind him. He noted the room was unusually warm. Normally his father kept the heating in the mansion lower than this aside from in their bedrooms and his office.

He moved across the room on the balls of his feet, glancing down the long empty dining table, and scurried to the door to the hall. He pressed himself to the frame to slowly open it and peek through when a pale orange glow on the polish of the door caught his attention. His eyes stared at it for a moment.

It was a muted reflection.

Curiously he turned his head around and his body froze almost immediately. 

The fireplace across from him was weakly glowing with dying embers. But his gaze was trapped on one of the armchairs on the left where, reclined, was his father.

They stared at each other through the darkness—Adrien now wide-eyed and silently panicking; Gabriel with his usual stern mask.

“Adrien.”

Adrien had expected the steely edge to his voice. What he wasn’t expecting was the exhaustion and weariness. He had heard it before. During Father’s important projects and nearing deadlines, financial problems in the company. But never this unequivocal and obvious. Not since more than two years ago… 

His father was staring at him and Adrien wondered if he'd been watching him since he had come through the back door. 

Why did he have to turn around at the reflection, he berated himself miserably. It didn't seem like his father even intended to get his attention if Adrien didn't notice him himself.

He wondered if he was allowed to just leave for his room. He knew he wasn’t. But he still thought about it. He’d be in more trouble later but would his father have stopped him from getting a few minutes of alone time to collect his thoughts?

He felt cornered.

“Father, I- I…”

“Come here.”

Adrien realized he hadn’t moved a muscle since he had spotted Gabriel. He slowly straightened and made to move around the table toward the fireplace. He felt Plagg shift in his shirt and give out a soft reassuring purr that Adrien didn’t hear but he felt it against his back.

What was it going to be now? Grounded? More piano lessons to fill up his free time? Not allowed to hang with friends? Threatened to get pulled out of school?

His eyes stared at the black and white tiles moving beneath his feet until he reached an armchair and he sat in it.

His eyes hesitantly lifted up to meet his father’s.

Up close the man looked as weary as he sounded and that fact was just then catching up with Adrien.

On the small round table beside his father’s armchair he spotted a wine glass with a drop of red at the bottom, and a dark bottle that even in the dark Adrien could make out was half emptied. Gabriel Agreste didn’t drink aside from occasional toasts he couldn’t pass up. 

The boy looked at him questionably. Worried. In the back of his head sickening thoughts that something horrible must have happened started to surface. Because this couldn’t have been because of him sneaking out. Was everything okay with Gabriel’s company? Had something happened to Amelie or Félix? … Had his… Had they finally found his mother’s b-

"Where have you been?"

"I uh…” What little excuse he had started to come up with before was gone now under his father’s strange stare and Adrien’s irrational fears, so he grabbed for a backup he kept with him in case. 

“I was... hanging with my friends from photo shoots."

This excuse wouldn’t get him out of trouble but it would clear any suspicion of what he was actually up to. He didn't really want to ever use it because it was seriously risking his friendships with the few okay models around his age that he talked to but Adrien's head was empty at the moment and he felt this was an emergency. He just wanted to keep his school friends after tonight if he could and this was an easy lie to believe.

So why did Adrien feel like his father knew he wasn’t telling the truth.

Gabriel gave no outward reaction but his gray eyes that looked pitch black in the dark seemed almost depressed. He stood up and stepped to stand over his son, and Adrien prepared for the tongue-lashing. He welcomed it over the eerie silence.

Instead his father took a knee in front of him and grabbed his shoulders, eyes searching across his son's face. 

“Father?”

Gabriel grabbed his chin with his right hand and began turning his head at different angles. It unsettled the boy because he was much more well prepared to handle anger and disappointment. This almost felt like he was being angled by a new photographer who wanted to study which sides were his best.

Wide-eyed and confused he allowed his father to tousle his styled blond hair over his forehead.

The depressed look in Gabriel’s eyes was solidifying the more he stared, and Adrien would be lying if he said he wasn't becoming a little bit uncomfortable.

He was completely lost as to what was going on until a thought crossed his mind. Was he searching for hickeys? A blush crept over his nose. “Um, Father, I wasn’t- I promise I didn’t do anything inappropriate to hurt your brand. It wasn't anything like that.” 

After a silent moment of his father staring off into space and Adrien wondering if he had said something stupid again, he felt Father's hand grabbing him by the right one.

"Did they hurt you?"

"No, of course not!" 

"That's what matters most."

Adrien could feel his father's fingers slowly finding his ring, and beginning to fidget with it slowly. He followed his gaze to stare at it too. 

Gabriel's eyes were focused on the design on the front. "But don't think I'll tolerate this, Adrien."

Adrien knew he was talking about his disobedience and not the ring but he couldn't help but get nervous. Carefully pulling his hand away and into his lap, he hid it under the other one. 

"I know. I'm sorry." 

“We’ll talk about your disobedience tomorrow. Right now I want to be alone.”

Adrien was perplexed by his sudden dismissal, sitting in the armchair and watching his father stand up with his back to him, watching the dying embers.

He was allowed to leave. A few minutes ago he’d be running up the stairs to his room already. But he couldn’t move.

“Father, is everything okay?”

[funky-gobbo-art]

Donolinc/Cringe!AU

Disclaimer and CW: Okay so I'm a sap and I like corny sweet endings for ships I like. It's been really therapeutic making this cause it makes me happy, minus the internal cringe feeling I got. Okay so this AU has trans male pregnancy and themes related. I will tag this as both "mpreg" and "tmpreg" so it can be blacklisted from those who do not want to see. Past references to a toxic relationship, the Vietnam war, bigoted views of the time period and everything that Mafia 3 and the game series already has. Okay so that's the warning I'm gonna go into it now!

So, my previous post went into my trans headcanon for John Donovan and explaining how it works. Now I'm gonna go into shipping stuff and fan-kids/love children (whatever that trope is called).

Lincoln and Donovan met in 1966 in Vietnam under the same circumstances like in canon, they got along well and became close friends. Donovan thought Lincoln was trustworthy enough and decided to come out to him, Lincoln took it well, had some questions but he adjusted with no problems.

Since they worked one-on-one a lot, they decided to have a "stress relief" arrangement only when they're working alone together. (You know what I'm talking about lol).

Never got caught, used protection and other methods. Were able to focus on their tasks as they were ordered. Worked out for the most part. Kind of started to catch some feelings but nothing was ever acted on but it only hit when Lincoln was sent back home Feb. 1968.

Lincoln got swept up in everything when he was back in New Bordeaux, reconnecting with his family and friends. This part still plays out like in canon, dealing with the Haitian mob on Sammy's behalf, the Federal Reserve heist, and finally the betrayal that same night.

Lincoln lost his family, friends, and was left for dead. Father James saved him from the burning bar and he was in a coma for a few months.

Before Lincoln went unconscious, he told FJ to call Donovan

Wherever John was and was doing, he dropped everything and went to Louisiana.

During Lincoln's time recovering, John got files on the Marcano's and anyone affiliated, stole from the F.B.I, etc.

By the time Lincoln's conscious and walking again, he starts his revenge plan to take out the people that took out his family and build his own criminal organization ontop of the ashes.

John promises to help anyway he can , despite not really being C.I.A business.

Shortly after all that, Lincoln and John go back to the "stress relief" thing. Lincoln's other excuse for it is wanting to feel another person close, kind of coping with loss.

Game plays out, Lincoln is able to recruit Cassandra, Vito and Burke as his underbosses. Lincoln takes over territories that the Marcano's had control over.

The DLC stories play out in between the main events of the game, starting with Sign of the Times, Faster Baby!, and Stones Unturned. Lincoln still has a thing with Roxy, but nothing more comes between them, she leaves Sinclair Parish and the state and her and Lincoln just end as "just friends".

Stones Unturned is mostly the same but near the end of the storyline, Lincoln becomes fed up with John being so secretive and wasn't satisfied with what John told him earlier.

John finally reveals that him and Aldridge used to have a relationship years back and it wasn't the best, got worse actually when Connor started working for the NVA, he really messed with John's head during the time. Once he started catching a whiff that Aldridge might be working as a double agent, Aldridge "distracted" him and afterwards disappeared shortly after. Lincoln can tell John's holding back on some more details but is satisfied for now that John opened up that much to him.

Once Aldridge was dead and the warhead was secured, on the boat ride back to New Bordeaux, John finally tells Lincoln that him and Connor had an illegitimate child that Connor didn't know about.

The kid, a boy, was born a bit before Donovan and Aldridge's confrontation in that alley in Saigon. John had the kid in secret while working in his own to track down what Aldridge was really doing.

John contacted Jackie back in the states so he can send the kid to her and she can find the baby a good home. She'll occasionally give updates with how he's doing these days, like when he got in contact with her in New Bordeaux, she told him how the boy, now named Jesse, is doing with his adopted family, before Lincoln comes to her for help in Frisco Fields.

After Lincoln left the submarine and before Aldridge is officially finished off, John drops the bombshell on Connor telling him finally he has a son and then leaving it there.

Understandably this was a lot for Lincoln to take in, since earlier him and John were talking about this penpal girlfriend John had for a short time. Lincoln was just finally relieved that John was fully honest and vulnerable with him while telling him all this and Lincoln did his best to comfort him.

They get back to New Bordeaux and Lincoln finally makes to the Hotel Paradiso to finish off the Marcano's and complete his revenge.

Lincoln meets Donovan and Father James at the church, FJ tells him to leave, Donovan tells him to take out his underbosses. Donovan leaves first to leave Lincoln and Father James alone.

Eventually Lincoln decides to go to the Eaglehurst plantation to meet the underbosses, he spares them and they all celebrate their newfound success and their new crime family becoming official, the underbosses leave and Lincoln stays behind to think on things late into the night. Donovan drove past the plantation and noticed Lincoln's car was still parked in front and being as nosey as he is, he goes into the driveway to poke around to see if there's anyone alive in there.

Lincoln's pleased to see Donovan again, they talk, have a little argument about Lincoln sparing the underbosses but settled it cause Donovan ultimately trusts Lincoln's final decision and drops it. Lincoln tells him to stay awhile to celebrate since he still has some liquor left over and he knows John has more in his care. They can have a proper send off and goodbye without the place burning around them or Father James' prying eyes.

They drink throughout the night, get into their feelings, and....you know... get into it. Since it was kind of not planned and messy, there wasn't any protection or precautions. It was very much in the moment.

They wake up later hung over but Donovan finally says goodbye because he really wants to go back to Virginia to finally separate from the C.I.A, and they don't know honestly when they'll see each other again.

Lincoln goes back to The Hollow to get settled into his new life as the crime boss of New Bordeaux.

Since leaving the C.I.A takes a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy, John had some time to clean out his old living space and tuing up loose ends, he did start feeling sick during this and figured since he's not out yet, he might as well see the special doctors there before it's to late. One doctor he knows who knows about him being a trangendered man was the only one he trusted with full check ups. John thought he had some weird sickness he caught from the Louisiana swamp and did a few tests. After some time the doctor called him back to the office with some news.

John knew it was Lincoln's because he hasn't been with anyone else and the timeline just makes sense. He had a lot of thoughts, whether or not he should keep it, or put it up for adoption, etc.

He was finally separated with the C.I.A in 1969, and gave Lincoln a call to tell him he's coming back down to New Bordeaux, he didn't say much else because he doesn't want Lincoln to worry but he'd rather also tell Lincoln in person, he feels he has a right to know.

Lincoln's still living in the basement of the now renovated Sammy's Bar, living relatively comfortably all things considered, all the bosses deliver on their kickback, Burke passed away and his daughter Nicki takes over the Irish Mob, which Lincoln likes cause now he actually has a FRIEND he likes as one of his underbosses. He has a lot of plans for New Bordeaux, he wants to use his ill gotten gains for some good. Of course after he gets the call from Donovan, he's happy he's going to see him again and he really wants to to ask him if he'll stick around to officially be his long term advisor since he helped so much.

John comes back and decides to stay in another motel, since he set fire to the last one and calls Lincoln again telling him to meet him there. Lincoln shows up happy to see Donovan again but he can tell John's a bit uneasy. They have a quick catch up and John finally cracks and tells Lincoln the news.

Despite what John was anxious about, Lincoln was surprisingly happy with this news, he's always wanted his own kids someday and despite having a Crime Family now, he still wants to have an actual family as well, he just wasn't sure when it was going to happen. Since John wasn't sure what to do with this, seeing Lincoln's reaction gave him some relief and they both talked things out on what to do and how to handle this.

John also said he was going to come back to Louisiana anyways since he had some leads pointing back to the state for his side project he's been working on. Lincoln convinces John to live with him in Sammy's and tells him it's not a problem since John doesn't really have a lot of personal things to move in with. He just wants John close by so he can keep an eye on him and help him if he needs anything.

John becomes a shut in once he starts obviously showing, which works for him cause he usually likes working behind the scenes, and also he doesn't want to be outside when it's hot out. Lincoln gets really protective and even smacks cigarettes out of John's hands if he catches him trying to smoke. John calls back on getting help from Robert Marshall on his side project and any time Lincoln isn't around to help him with errands and stuff. Marshall pokes fun at him, making some comments that annoy John a lot but he is used to it cause he's known Marshall for awhile. He'll tolerate being called a "cranky mom" if it means he can get drive through food.

Lincoln also eventually introduces John to Nicki Burke, making her the only underboss that knows about the gangs advisor, but Lincoln just wanted to introduce a friend to his partner and knowing she'll be understanding and supportive of the situation. They withhold the information that he's now an ex g-man though, maybe later.

During the whole pregnancy, Donovan was very moody/cranky and was forced to switch from cigarettes to chewing gum, drove Lincoln nuts with all the popping. But when it got closer to the time, Lincoln knew it would be safer if he just got one of his doctors to come to his house for the delivery. He was very anxious and kept telling the doctor if he makes any out of pocket comments about any of this, he will make him regret it.

Their baby girl was born September 1st 1969. Her name is Danielle Clay, not named after anyone, John just thought it sounded nice. They call her "Dani" for short.

After she's born, John sleeps in for a bit and once he's feeling normal, he stretches his legs out by going on walks around the Hollow. If anyone gives him weird looks and asks questions, he'll either say he's a single father or lie and say Dani is his niece he's watching for his nonexistent twin sister. If Lincoln goes out with her, he'll proudly say that she's his daughter but then gets quiet when people ask who her mom is. Lincoln could use his newfound power to tell the truth and not let anyone try to attack him about it but he wants to do more good things for the community first before he does that, also him and John need to get their stories straight.

Despite how scary her parents are, Dani is a pretty happy little girl, she stares at people and smiles and once she can talk she says hi to a lot of people.

Even though Lincoln is happy he has a family now, he knows a lot of people wouldn't approve of them, and ofc since he's a powerful crime boss now, he knows he has enemies and if they find out about this, they will target them. He's not that worried about Donovan on his own since he can handle himself, he saw all he did in Vietnam, he knows what he's capable of, but if people set their sights on his baby.... it's something that stresses him out, he doesn't want to lose his new family. He will not let that happen again.

Donovan on the other hand has a lot of mixed feelings, he feels weird feeling settled and comfortable for once, he's happy he can keep this kid, but he also thinks back to his childhood, he wants to be the opposite of how his parents were, but he also keeps having things his mom said to him play on repeat over and over. Which flairs up his identity issues. For now he keeps trying to keep Dani from getting into his files while he works and he picked smoking back up but goes outside so it's not in Dani's face.

Lincoln, despite being told by the Father that they are done when he last saw him, goes back to FJ's house to ask for help. James refuses to talk to him until he hears Lincoln tell him he has a baby now and needs help with caring for her. FJ begrudgingly hears him out. Lincoln kind of helped with the younger kids back when he was in the orphanage but hasn't had much experience with babies before, he knows FJ is a good person to go for this since he's good with kids. Of course he wants to know who the "mother" is but Lincoln is apprehensive to tell him right away.

FJ does agree to ONLY be involved in Lincoln's life again just for the kids sake. Donovan loudly announces his presence by going "HAHA I GUESS WERE ALL FAMILY NOW PADRE!" and it's like FJ ages 20 years right there as soon as he hears Donovan's voice again. FJ has no problems with Lincoln being in a relationship with another man and that man being transgender, it's just....why did it have to be him??

Those 2 will never get along but FJ gets attached to Dani right away. He talks Lincoln into sending her to Catholic school when she's older because he knows people there that will keep and eye on her. Donovan hates that but allows it to happen.

During all this, Donovan keeps working on his side project and getting closer to discovering more about Senator Blake.

Will add more about Dani's childhood and what happens after the senate hearing.

[kara-knuckles]

The Phantom Cat AU

The... less gruesome... parts of the latest Strange Fake update reminded me of a certain other “sharing body” scenario I have been entertaining ever since I watched the Case Files anime. I guess, I may as well write it down now that it crossed my mind again.

Lord El-Melloi II Case Files opens with a story about a stray cat that was hit by a car. Personally, I think the novel version, where the cat is just an ordinary cat, works better thematically, but since the anime decided to give it its own spin, I may as well expand on the idea. So, behold!

Because the cat was used as a part of a curse, it gained magical properties. So, after the curse was lifted, it had enough of an existence left to decide it didn't want to leave and stayed. Since Case Files is big on the mind-body-soul thing, I'd say that the cat's body died, its soul was used in the curse, while its mind remained. Now it lives in Waver's mental world and acts as a dream familiar.

As most of the cat's essence disappeared, it's not quite the same being as before. It doesn't have a set form and instead looks like a shadow-y cat-shaped thing. However, as it grows more stable, it learns to take a more solid form.

Waver doesn't want to bind it to himself, so he doesn't name it. He doesn't even check if it is male or female in an attempt to raise its Mystery. There are lots of legends and superstitions about cats in general and black cats in particular, and he wouldn't even know if any of them do or don't apply to his new neighbour unless he checks, would he? ;)

We know from Zero that Waver at least used to have mice as familiars. Waver being Waver, I wouldn't be surprised if they were attacked by stray animals all the time, but now that there is a cat living in his head, it gives them a degree of protection.

Since it's not technically a ghost, Gray doesn't detect it, though she has a vague feeling it exists. Svin can smell it though. And Flat can probably outright communicate with it, but most of his attempts get him in trouble because his ideas of saying “hello” include stuff like giving Waver a cake with catnip or switching his shampoo with the one for cats.

In FGO, the cat shares its living space with Zhuge Liang. At first, it wasn't happy with the company, but Zhuge eventually won it over. He considers it a fierce warrior, especially as it attempts to snatch his fan at every opportunity.

It can also visit Master's dreams. Being a rather ill-mannered street-raised cat, it likes to cause problems for Dantes, who sees it as some kind of sitcom rival. It's pretty chill around the Master, though.

From there, it occasionally visits other Servants’ dreams, particularly Alexander/Iskandar's, since they have connections to both Waver and the Master, so it is easier to move there. Because Servants don't normally see dreams, it enjoys showing them some, since it allows the cat to use its mind powers in whatever ways it pleases. It never does anything dangerous, though. Sometimes it just wants to people-watch in others memories, sometimes it wants to play or be petted. Save for Alexander, no one knows where these “cat dreams” come from, but the most popular culprit guesses are Nursery Rhyme and Abby.

[sanssouci-sims]

The Don x Malcolm Saga

As y’all may or may not have heard, I decided to start a new save file because my original save (which I’ve had ever since I started playing TS4 last October) was frankly getting too convoluted and boring. I also got several expansion packs so I wanted to have a fresh new file for all the new content!!

Unfortunately, this means that a lot of the families my original townies started have now been wiped. One of these happened to be the crazy Caliente-Landgraab dynasty that came about mostly because Malcolm Landgraab and Katrina Caliente decided to get together. After she died, though, Malcolm decided to move onto her old “boy toy”, Don Lothario!

Here’s what happened to their family before I wiped my original save file!

Yeah, Malcolm got pregnant.

Believe it or not, Malcolm was actually set to become pregnant within CAS! Since hooking up with Don, his romantic orientation had even been set for men only. He might have had the noncommittal trait, but MAN was he gay for Don.

Don seemed pretty excited to be having another child with his beloved Malcolm, considering they’d already adopted Malcolm’s older kids from his marriage to Katrina Caliente and had two of their own.

Jayme, the older of Malcolm and Katrina’s kids, seemed to support her father’s new marriage and thought it was kind of cute how Don tended to be quite affectionate with Malcolm.

However, Jayme could not stand her two younger half-sisters, probably because they took a lot of her dad’s attention away from her.

Can’t really blame her when one of her half-sisters, Jodi (who aged up from a toddler to a child), made her way into her bedroom at one point to do her homework... WHILE SHE WAS SLEEPING.

And while Don tolerated his older stepchildren, he tended to focus more on his own biological children, especially his youngest daughter, Alisa (who aged up from a newborn to a toddler - this was before the infant update dropped a few months ago). Clearly, Don enjoyed being a father very much, and as he was an elder at this point, it seemed perfect that he’d be able to enjoy his last golden years with his happy little family.

Soon enough, Malcolm was ready to give birth. But then..............

DON BIT THE DUST!!!

Okay, it didn’t happen randomly (I have autonomy turned off, after all). I decided to pull a sneaky and shift-click-kill Don by ultimate mortification. No reason why, I just thought it’d be funny. (lol I’m a sadist)

Malcolm didn’t seem to take notice at first, as he was busy rocking his new baby boy (unfortunately, I don’t remember his name). The Grim Reaper showed up, and Jayme and Jodi quickly came down to mourn their dad’s death (I don’t exactly remember where Alisa was, but thank goodness she wasn’t here to witness what would happen next).

Then came Malcolm and Katrina’s younger child (and Jayme’s brother), Dusty! He had an angry moodlet for whatever reason (I like to think he was trying to get some sleep and was woken up by the commotion) so I decided to make him (with the help of the Extreme Violence mod, which I have since deleted) kill the Grim Reaper.

YES, HE KILLED THE MANIFESTATION OF DEATH ITSELF.

Malcolm finally realized what was happening and starting freaking out alongside his daughters. How could his only son do such a thing!?

But there was no time to continue pondering that question, as ANOTHER Grim Reaper showed up.

Dusty’s family begged him to plead for the dead reaper’s life, lest one of them call the police on him (no really, a notification popped up saying the police were called... but they never showed up for some reason??). He reluctantly did (see how annoyed he is here?), and luck must have been on his side because the other reaper was brought back to life, and the two harbingers of death soon disappeared.

And that, my friends, was the beginning of the end of the Caliente-Landgraab dynasty. A distraught Malcolm moved out to grieve on his own, leaving his oldest daughter Jayme in charge of the home. Who knows what happened to them afterwards, but as of now, there’s a new blank slate in their place. Malcolm and Don haven’t met (yet), and their kids have been wiped from existence. Until... (hush hush i’m planning something ooooooo)

[agentwhalesong]

Not Ready Yet

Fandom: The X-Files | Rating: Mature | Posted on ao3

Summary: After an entire day of celebration in honor of Scully's good health, she and Mulder get locked out of one of her family members' house and have to share a bed. Based on the prompt provided by @agentstarbucklover for the @xfilesfanficexchange: One Bed (2022).

Enjoy =)

It is more comfortable than she thought it would be, what they are doing. He is telling her about something fun that happened to him when he was a child, and she can’t help smiling, wondering why they never do this, never just talk about their lives and behave like the friends they are. The only time she can recall is when Mulder wasn’t actually Mulder, and the images of what could have happened and what should have happened – were Van Blundth actually Mulder – have been muddled up in her mind ever since. 

He reaches the end of his tale, takes the last sip of his beer and then puts the bottle down. His eyes remain on the bottle, though, as if the words he is about to say – and she just knows he is about to say something – need to be pondered for a while before he lets them out.

“Thanks for inviting me to be here today,” he murmurs then, looking at her with eyes that reflect his heart, in that way that has become more frequent lately, that moves all her insides and makes her lungs falter for a while. 

It has happened before, this feeling, but she saves a space for it next to all the supernatural things that she has experienced over the years, in that department of her brain called Not ready yet.

She shakes her head a little, averting her gaze sheepishly.

“It would make no sense not to have you here,” she murmurs back, clearing her throat right after to find words that won’t compromise her in any way. “I mean, you’ve been there for me during my illness, it’s only natural that you’d be here to celebrate my health.”

She looks at him again only to find a cute smile, one of those she is sure he saves only for her. She’s gotta stop thinking of him this way; nothing has changed, after all – except for the fact that she is not dead when she should have been. 

An owl hoots somewhere, taking her out of her own head. She looks around, just to make sure she understands what the bird has pronounced – it is indeed very late and everyone else in her family has disappeared inside the house. From the lack of sound, she safely assumes everybody is already sleeping too. 

That means that, on purpose or not – and she will have to talk to her mom about it later –, she and Mulder have been left alone and didn’t even realize there was no one else around. Has this ever happened before?

“Maybe we should head to bed,” she says, patting Mulder’s knee and using it as support to stand up.

He just nods and follows her, but he has barely reached the door she is trying to open and she is on the move again.

“Scully? What 's wrong?”

“Aunt Mary always locks the house before they go to bed every night,” she says over her shoulder, already walking towards the third – and last – door.

She runs her hands through her hair and face, sighing, when she realizes there is nothing else she can do.

“Let me guess…,” Mulder catches up at last, “we are locked out,” he says, but he doesn’t sound frustrated. If anything, he sounds almost happy.

“I didn’t know you liked sleeping outdoors so much, Mulder,” she jokes.

He shrugs.

“I don’t. It’s just that… We were having such a good time that… you know.”

She wants to say that no, she doesn’t know, that he should speak his mind to confirm that she isn’t the only one feeling things she shouldn’t. Instead, she just nods and lets silence do its job.

“Do you think your family will be mad if we just start banging away at the doors until they let us in?,” he proposes jokingly.

She shakes her head and laughs quietly.

“Well, we are three hours away from our respective homes, so that is not an option either…” she scrunches up her face a little before saying the last part of her sentence, “but there is a third alternative.”

She points at the hammock between the trees she used to love climbing as a child, and he turns around to look at it. There is a smile in his voice when he speaks.

“You take the hammock, I’ll take the grass.”

I was hoping we could share it, she thinks, but what leaves her mouth is “Come on, let’s test it.”

They sit side by side in the middle and, although it’s slightly uncomfortable due to their combined weight in one single spot, it seems just perfect. Maybe it is due to the beers she had or the late hour, but this simple scene strangely makes her think about her and Mulder’s connection, how the unevenness of their weights, heights, beliefs, opinions and many other aspects of their personalities all have a common ground, right in the middle. It’s the friendship and loyalty that glue them together. It’s also love.

She wants to say this aloud, but will he understand what she means or will he think she’s coming onto him? On the other hand, it seems silly to keep it all in when she herself has recently understood the real meaning of running out of time to do and say and feel.

She sighs and lies back on the hammock, closing her eyes to clear the clouds in her head.

“Hey,” Mulder whispers, in an obvious misinterpretation of her actions, “we don’t need to keep talking if you don’t feel like it. It’s been a long day and you’re tired. I’ll just make my bed, ok?”

She chuckles at his last comment, and when he’s about to get up, she reaches for his hand and touches it faintly.

“I have a better idea, actually, if you don’t mind.”

There is a smirk on his face when he nods, and she wonders what kind of joke he has just thought of and hasn’t said aloud.

“Let’s share the hammock,” she finally completes.

It takes him a couple of seconds to respond, but he doesn’t seem surprised by her proposal.

“Just promise you won’t take advantage of me,” he replies, making her laugh.

He huffs out a quick laugh himself and proceeds to lie in the hammock, putting one of his hands on the floor to prevent it from rocking too much so that she can get in safely. It’s no use, though, for one of her feet gets stuck in on one of the fringes and she falls almost on top of him, laughing so hard at the whole situation she doesn’t even think of moving away for a while.

When she finally raises her head from his chest and lies on her side, he is gazing at her so adoringly that butterflies start fluttering not only in her stomach, but in other parts of her body that should know better.

They just stare at each other, eyes scrutinizing everything they see, smiles matching as if they were face to face with a mirror.

“Thank you,” she mouths without any sound.

“Always here to catch you when you fall,” he is quick to reply, unaware that he is making her resident butterflies flap their wings even faster.

To hell with it, she thinks.

There is no hesitation when she wraps one of her arms around him and rests her head under his chin.

“What I meant is that I’m thankful that you never gave up on me. Your relentlessness is what helped me stay on my feet during my treatment, even though the earth was crumbling under me.”

“I could never – ever – give up on you,” he utters.

It takes a while for him to continue, so she isn’t expecting his voice when it comes in almost a whisper. 

“Truth is, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Scully. I just can’t imagine my life without you anymore.”

There are tears puddling inside her eyes, her heart is racing, but she doesn’t try to trick herself into believing it is only the friend in her speaking. This inner voice is too loud for her to ignore that it is, in fact, that part she has archived in her brain as Not ready yet. She wonders what part of him said those words to her. Does he even have that department in his mind? It really is hard to tell.

“Just for the record,” she replies, “you’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, too.”

His arms tighten around her and he kisses the top of her head, lingering there so much that she feels her eyes heavy with sleep before he can pull away.

They don’t talk any further, for they know all the words that needed to be out have been said. What they are still holding inside – and there is an infinity of feelings kept in silence both in him and her – will have to stay for later, for the time when the Not ready yet department in their minds is so full that it has no choice but to evolve into Cannot deny anymore.

—-----------------

IN THE MORNING

Margaret Scully walks slowly towards the hammock, for fear that her feet on the fallen leaves will wake them up. It’s heartwarming, watching them like this – Dana’s head resting on Fox’s shoulder, one of her arms sprawled across his chest, their legs tangled just enough to show respect while also communicating they are more intimate than two friends could ever be.

She covers them with a blanket and is relieved to see her actions didn’t do a thing to bother their sleep. She stays there for a while, wondering why neither of them takes a step forward. It’s so obvious – she has lost count of how many people have asked her about Dana and Fox since he arrived the previous day – that she can’t fathom what’s stopping them. They must have their reasons, she thinks, and it’s not up to her to decide or to interfere in any way. She just knows in her heart that in the future – no matter how near or distant – she will be able to call Fox her son as well. Until then, she will be pleased to just keep putting blankets over them when it’s too chilly outside – hopefully more often than not.

[farfromstrange]

Foreigner's God | m.m

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Chapter Forty-Five: Bird Set Free

Summary: Nelson & Murdock try to strike a deal with the District Attorney over the future of Viktor Volkov's imprisonment and Eliza's freedom that is on the line

Warnings: ANGST, talk about child molestation, kidnapping, sterilization, human experiments, bad lawyer talk

A/n: I tried my best y'all, but I really made a lot of stuff up because I just can't understand the justice system. So just ignore any mistakes in the way I portrayed this meeting, thank you. Also, this stands at a tame 6,000 words so I thought, why not give this to you now. It connects directly to the previous chapter so just have at it.

18+ MINORS DNI

A wise man in her life once said, “For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to do the right thing.” And she never truly understood it because, for the most significant portion of her life, she was doing the opposite of the right thing. When she was found battered and bruised and scared beyond compare, she still only did what she was told, a rendition of what others thought to be the right thing. 

She never understood what Steve meant with the statement until she stood before the door of the New York District Attorney and realized that even though she had been led by commands, Eliza tried her hardest to do right by everyone, and by dedicating her life to saving other people, she did the right thing. She continued to do so by not listening to Tony and stopping Hydra - she didn’t do it just for herself, she did it to rid the world of injustice and the threat of something bigger coming to ruin what freedom they had left.

She fought for the lives lost in the White Room while she grew up there, all the children that disappeared until she was alone, and she fought for the people Hydra kidnapped to recreate what they had lost when she escaped. She fought for her mother and her father and her personal world views - she continuously did what she thought to be the right thing and she saved the world in the process, or at least she saved the city Hydra was operating out of, which also meant she saved millions of lives. She did the right thing, and she has been doing so ever since she joined the Avengers. 

In history, every great hero fell eventually. It became the norm. There is a point in every hero’s life where the scale tips and they fall to their demise, but they often die a heroic death on the battlefield or sacrifice themselves for their loved ones. Eliza fathomed a different ending for herself than the one she faced now. She thought she would die, but then she didn’t, and she was fine with that. Her ending was steered off for a later time. In her mind, she figured she would die someday, and it would be a heroic death. It would be her end as a hero. The world would mourn, but they would be safe in the end. 

To be fair, she did expect to go to jail too, eventually, but she didn’t think it would be her end. She thought she would end up in a cell for a couple of days and then be out again. With the Hydra files splayed out before her now though, the possibility of a heroic death moved far into the background and jail shamelessly knocked on her door. 

“If you want the entirety of the information we have, which we suspect you do,” Matt had fallen into the role of the hot-shot lawyer completely and as they sat in th District Attorney’s office, he showed no mercy when it came to arguing the people before him into the ground, “I mean, you’ve been handed the Russian spy Viktor Volkov by an unknown party, and the many government secrets he stole and also traded, plus the possibility that he is responsible for mass murder, so it would definitely be of the state’s interest to get him off the streets.”

The District Attorney and her assistant were present at the meeting, but so was a representative of the FBI. So many law officials were more than ready to get their hands on the infamous mutant Avenger of Team Iron Man that stayed true to the Sokovia Accords until she didn’t, and then was miraculously pardoned once again because of ‘mistakes made’. She came out of captivity seven years ago and the court ruled her innocent of her crimes due to what she went through. It was common knowledge at this point, but after the Accords were put in place, every law enforcement in the country would lick their fingers at a chance to ruin what broken pieces were left of the Avengers Initiative. 

When Viktor Volkov landed on the front steps of the FBI field office in Manhattan, together with a file reporting the government secrets he stole and traded, and whatever else SHIELD found at the White Room that proved Hydra’s involvement, including planned assassinations and death certificates.

Nick Fury kept Eliza’s name purposely blacked out after a lengthy talk with Matt so that they could approach the ones in charge personally, with the leftover information in hand that would run Viktor into the ground and be a win for the entire country, but also put the District Attorney into the spotlight, and get Eliza immunity before they could even think about putting her in prison for something that was done to her rather than something she did. 

“Let’s say you’re correct and the FBI is in possession of that person,” the Agent leaned forward, the silver pen in his hands projecting the sunlight from the window onto the wall behind them, “And you have evidence that this person committed worse crimes,” he said, “not sharing them would be obstruction of justice, Mister Murdock. As a lawyer, you must be aware of that.”

Foggy cleared his throat. “We weren’t done yet,” he said. 

“I’m aware, I just wanted to state, for the record, that an involvement in these crimes would be fatal for your client because that would put her into violation of the Sokovia Accords, but it would also make her an accessory and if she kept this evidence from us purposefully, the DA right here can already sign the list of charges over to the judge because she is not getting out of jail anytime soon.”

“May we remind you that Eliza Bennett is a victim? She was pardoned seven years ago and she has been a model citizen since. What happened four weeks ago is on the press and the court of public opinion, not on her. It was self-defense. Now, I’ve read the Accords, and defending yourself isn’t stated as a viable offense. If, and only if, her name is in these long-lost Hydra files, that makes her no less a victim, and if you read her file from seven years ago, you would know the kind of torture she went through before SHIELD rescued her.”

“And,” said Matt, “our client is and will always be an Avenger, which, in the eyes of the law, doesn’t really mean anything, but if we look at the good she has done over the years, you can’t say she hasn’t been doing the right thing since.”

The District Attorney whispered something to her assistant before she turned back to the group. “We can’t say if there are possible charges to be pressed if we don’t know the kind of information you have to offer,” she said. 

Foggy looked at Matt, pointed at the file, then at Reyes, and when he received a nod of approval, he shoved it toward her. “We suggest you read carefully and not make any rash decisions,” he said. “So far, we are only here to talk and without a proper conversation, you will not receive this file, and if you don’t have it, you can’t prove anything, so I’d be careful.”

Eliza had never seen Foggy so serious and out for blood, and it was honestly a refreshing sight. They were fighting for her as if she was more than just a single person. They were fighting as if her life depended on it. But the evidence was stronger and she had already accepted her fate. If they didn’t find a way to move mountains, she wouldn’t leave this room without handcuffs or a straight jacket.

The room fell into deafening silence as the three law officials bent over the file and read every last given detail. Her face remained blank. She swore to fight, and if her getting arrested would get the people who suffered at Viktor’s hand the necessary justice, she would gladly go to jail for them. She deserved it for what did. She killed innocent human beings and she felt no remorse back then. If anything, she should be put into lifelong containment. 

She was a bird that was let out of its cage, and perhaps it was time for her to retreat again. 

She hadn’t realized her leg started bouncing from the underlying monster of anxiety that she forced down until Matt’s hand reached for her thigh under the table. He gave it a comforting squeeze. She looked at him and he smiled, but not even that could conjure up positive thoughts. She felt like crying, though at the same time, she was empty in a way that rendered her numb. Fear could either be a wave threatening to drown her or a silent monster keeping her on edge until it eventually broke free. 

Subconsciously, she reached for his hand and he took it. Matt held her hand with a grip that said, I won’t let you go. She wished it could be true. She wished the situation wasn’t so dire and she could see herself going home with him, but she didn’t. She had no hope left. She could only hold his hand and hope the tears wouldn’t fall. It was a hard task and a confusing one, at that, because why was she tearing up when her chest was void of any emotions?

Reyes looked at her partner, then at the Agent whose name she had long forgotten. She closed the file slowly. “What you just gave us,” she began, her voice hanging low and barely breaking the tension that lay in the silence of the room, “is an entire book of criminal offenses ranging from espionage, kidnapping, illegal drug trade, and human trafficking over mass and serial murder to illegal human experimentations and the possession of weapons of mass destruction. We have names in here of men both dead and alive, who are responsible alongside Viktor Volkov, but this clearly proves that he is the man behind all of these crimes. This file portrays him as one of the most dangerous men in America–“

“How long have you known?” the Agent asked. “And where on earth did you get all that?”

Foggy challenged, “Does it matter? You’ve been handed the suspect and now you are being offered a whole file on an organization that cost the life of many innocent people. Legally,” he said, “we don’t owe you the source because we simply do not know. In this case, what matters is the information, don’t you think so, Agent Danford?”

So that was his name.

“It’s Special Agent.”

“Same difference.”

There was a reason Foggy became a lawyer instead of a butcher — he had an incredible way with words, and he could argue until the sun came back up.

“I wasn’t done,” Reyes said, giving him the most poisonous side-eye a human could give. “It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been holding onto this, what matters is that your client-” she looked at Eliza, “is responsible for half of these crimes, mostly the ones involving violent murder and espionage. Her pardon only covered a quarter of these crimes, and ever since then, she’s done a lot of things that should have gotten her arrested. And the accounts of what happened four weeks ago? A facility we never knew about? Her involvement in all of it? That is enough for me to call the DODC and get them to incarcerate her until we can arrange a trial for violation of the Sokovia Accords.”

Matt cocked his head. His jaw was set in stone and if it hadn’t been for the red of his glasses, he would have pulverized Reyes and everyone else in her vicinity with his eyes alone. He squeezed Eliza’s hand harder, telling her not to worry with a simple action, but he was also scared. He was scared of failing because God knows, he couldn’t lose her. Not again.

“Legally, until we officially hand you that file, you have nothing and we can pull our client out anytime we want,” he said. 

Her eyes pointed straight forward and she met Reyes’ eyes halfway. Matt and Foggy told her not to speak until absolutely necessary, and not without consulting them first. She had one job, be present and keep quiet until her immunity was settled. She knew she wouldn’t get it, so she might as well give them everything she had. It wasn’t to persuade them, it was to get the weight off her chest that was violently suffocating her. She couldn’t bear it anymore. 

“Mister Murdock, with all due respect-” Agent Danford was cut off by the rough voice of the person that brought them all into the room together. 

“Juniper Hart, Daisy Madden, Tim Baron, Leo Schmidt, Louis Damiano, Inez Clyde,” Eliza said, and in her head for each name, a picture went off the wall of faces she remembered vividly as the life drained from them. “Marjorie Laurier,” she continued, “Bobby Caddel, Eloise Elrod–“ her breath got caught in her throat halfway through, but she wasn’t done. “Tonya Vasiliev, Katrina Orlov, Danny Jillian, and Peter Nikolai.”

Matt squeezed her hand again, begging for her to stop incriminating herself, but she simply tore her hand from him as she straightened up and told them, “Those are twelve of the people I’ve killed. The real number of lives taken by my hand is around sixty-five, and another thirteen that I was indirectly responsible for. I remember all of their names and they’re all in the file, but I will spare you the time and myself the breath of naming them all,” she said. 

The District Attorney looked at her absolutely bewildered, and she sorted the expression as one of surprise rather than conviction to have her locked away in the following seconds. 

“Eva Stevanov, Dinara Ilyin, Irina Leonid, Mariah Gusev and Alina Petrova. Those were the five girls in the White Room that were tortured at the hands of Frank Mueller as he conducted experiments on them to shape powers they were unfortunately born with, and Viktor Volkov raised them, but only one of them made it out. You might recognize the last name because it’s me. I’m the only girl that survived. Those four died with the hands of a strange man being the last memory they ever had, and they never got to see the light of day again.”

“Jesus,” Foggy cursed next to her. 

“I remember all of the names, but to understand Viktor Volkov’s character, the girls are the only names that matter because the man liked his girls young and obedient,” Eliza trailed off with a chuckle. She was done sugarcoating what he had done. “He liked to touch them. He liked to punish them, twist religious views however he liked them, and then made them dance to his beat, figuratively and literally. He wasn’t just a spy, he was a pedophile and the molester of every female in what he liked to call the White Room,” she said. “Since I was the only one who survived, I got most of his attention if not all of it. But of course, he never killed anyone himself, he brainwashed and tortured me to the point I only responded to him, I did what he wanted and I did it well. I was the best for a reason because I was the final experiment.”

Agent Danford sighed wearily. He leaned forward, searching for her eyes, but they were empty when she stared into his. “Listen, you’re not on trial here, we are just questioning the intent of your–“

“He used me for his own enjoyment,” she cut him off, “and I did everything for him just the way he liked it. Now, the thing is, I only remembered four weeks ago what he truly did to me after I almost died at the hands of Ivan, who used to be like my brother but not really, and he tragically passed away that day. I almost died, or I was dead for thirty minutes, and only then did I remember everything he did to me. And I remember all the lives that I took and that he took and those that were lost in the White Room itself. Trust me, I remember,” she said. “I remember his hands on my body, I remember being strapped to a chair and electrocuted and told what to do, and somehow I did it because I had no other choice. I remember that he sterilized me to take away my right to ever have children because they could pose a distraction for a female assassin just like me, and he didn’t want to deal with my femininity to such an extent anyway, he only wanted me to give him the pleasure he wanted.”

It was the last part of her speech that made Matt’s head snap around. He heard those words for the first time that day, the secret she had kept to herself because she was scared of telling him, scared of telling him the truth about herself and what had been done to her. She had been scared of his reaction when he would find out she could never have kids, and as she said it, she still was scared. What would she be like to him now? Useless, maybe. But if she went to jail, that didn’t matter anyway. 

Eliza leaned forward. “My point is that I do remember my actions and I do know my pardon doesn’t cover all the details in this file. What would a judge give me, fifty years to life for every life I took premeditated? That would leave me in jail, or in this case a chamber of the DODC for the rest of my life until I drop dead. I’m not scared of that,” she stated. “I’m not scared of jail or death, the only thing that matters to me are the names I mentioned. They deserve justice. Their families deserve justice. Because in the end, if we look at the file and everything we know, Viktor Volkov was the center of the illegal human experiments conducted on gifted children and therefore all of the deaths that followed in his wake, including what he made of me. It’s Viktor’s fault, and maybe the espionage charges are important to the state and the government, and maybe my breaking the Sokovia Accords while I was being kidnapped and tortured four weeks ago is important to the government too because they can finally portray me as the villain you all wanted me to be from the beginning, but what really matters are those names.”

Her finger poked the now closed file on the table, the faces of all of the names she mentioned buried deep inside. She wanted them out. She wanted people to remember them. 

“The people matter. They deserve justice, so lock me away, I don’t care, but take the information in this file and completely destroy him because that is the reason we are even here today,” Eliza told them, her eyes locked on every of the law officials in the room. “I want him to get locked away in a prison somewhere in the Atlantic ocean where he can never hurt anyone again, and I want you to make sure of it, no matter what I have to do for it.”

The room fell silent again. She awaited being taken away this instant or attacked with rotten tomatoes for her crimes, but her fear of imminent jail never came true. 

The hushed whispers of Reyes and her partner and the FBI Agent that seemingly felt he had all the control in the world subsided and turned into thick air hanging between them until the District Attorney finally relieved them. 

“What do you want?” she asked the two lawyers on either side of her. “I’m sure you have… conditions.”

Matt and Foggy shared a look. “We- we do, we have conditions,” the latter stammered, scrambling for the notes the pair had prepared beforehand. Eliza’s interruption hadn’t been planned and so it took them off guard and threw their entire approach out of the window. 

“We want you to grant our client full immunity for the crimes she committed,” Matt stated. He didn’t have to scramble for his notes, he knew what he wanted, “on the grounds of psychological torture and manipulation which made it impossible for her to have control over her own actions when she committed those crimes, and she is a key witness if this case goes to trial because she is the only surviving victim and she knows all of what Viktor Volkov did to her.”

“And she knows what he did outside of torturing innocent kids,” Foggy added. 

“With this information, the defense could claim this case to be circumstantial. He’s never physically murdered another human being and the dead don’t speak, so using the names mentioned as evidence would not go over well with a jury. In fact, the case might be thrown out at the first hearing. My client, however-”

“Plays a key part in this and she could blow this case wide open to a point no defense could argue against the guilt of their client, and the people would win because, in front of a jury, a victim of molestation and her knowledge of this operation speak louder than words. Or, she can speak words and those speak louder than- well, you get the gist.”

If she hadn’t been so tightly wound, she would have laughed. They certainly didn’t do this often. If it went to trial, they would have a high-profile case with the biggest media presence since the Sokovia Accords, and she would be the key witness. 

Matt cleared his throat, “If you want this man to be prosecuted, which I hope you do, your entire case rests on her shoulders. Without her,” he said and pointed at Eliza, “you have nothing and without the file, you would have to let this dangerous man go and after what you heard, is that really what you want?” He directed the question at the Agent who only looked down guiltily, staring at his pen that now lay on the tabletop. 

Reyes met Eliza’s eyes again. She seemed less judgmental now and more… civilized, understanding, perhaps a little pitiful. She hated that glance. 

“We can offer you full immunity in exchange for all she knows,” she said, and all of a sudden, jail moved into the background. “And with all, I mean everything, no holes no nothing. She has to tell us everything. In return, she will not be prosecuted for the crimes in the file, the pardon will continue persisting and we will strike the violation of the Sokovia Accords off the record.”

“Make the immunity independent from how the case ends and we have a deal,” said Matt. 

She bit her cheek, contemplating, but one look at Eliza was everything the District Attorney needed to agree. “Deal,” she said. 

Her assistant stared at her in a state of shock. He leaned over to her, “Maybe we should–“

She cut him off, “My decision is final. Eliza Bennett has full immunity in exchange for her help in this case. There is nothing to be changed.”

Did she really just say that? Jail was removed from the equation and she was suddenly free. Her fears had been for naught. The door shut with her still inside and void of any handcuffs on her wrists and she was free. She had immunity. She didn’t have to worry about anything other than getting Viktor where he belonged, and she would do so, she promised as much.

Eliza was free. She couldn’t quite believe it. Foggy breathed a sigh of relief and it almost resembled a cheer. Matt exhaled too, but it sounded more broken and as if he had been holding his breath for months. 

“We did it,” said Foggy. He grinned, the golden boy he was, and patted her shoulder. “You’re gonna be fine. We won!”

Matt took off his glasses, dropping them on the table and rubbing them over his face before he turned to his girlfriend, his hand moving to hers again and he said, “For a second there I thought I was gonna lose you.” 

She appreciated his honesty because she, too, thought he was going to lose her to the infinity black hole that was a cell at the DODC. 

“I know I should be mad at you but I really can’t.”

“Yeah, ‘cause she saved her own ass. C’mon, Matt, we were losing. Her vulnerable confession appealed to Reyes’ humanity, which I didn’t think she had, and that got her a ‘get out of jail’ free card.”

“Well, either way, I am not going to jail. Yay me,” she said. The tears once again clogged her throat and caused her eyes to burn terribly. 

Matt squeezed her hand. “You’re going to cry now, aren’t you?”

“Yup.” 

“Okay.”

He caught her with his arms around her. Her head dropped to his shoulder and she cried. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry before, not even after she spoke to Viktor, and not when she and Matt spent the night in bed just talking. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry because she had been scared to. Now, she was simply tired. She was tired and she was sad and everything was in so much pain, she couldn’t help it. All the fear and stress fell off her shoulder and for a moment, she could breathe again, and it was enough to trigger the wave of tears that crashed into her harder than a brick across the face. 

Kissing her hair repeatedly, Matt rocked her like a baby, his hands continuously rubbing over her arms and back, but the gentle action only made her cry harder. That was his intention, after all, to get her to cry it all out, everything she needed to. 

She wasn’t sure how long she cried, but eventually, there weren’t many tears left to cry and his gentle words of affirmation in her ear brought her back down from the precipice of losing her mind completely. 

She sniffled, slowly sitting back up again - the position hurt her back and her side that was throbbing with the remains of the stab wound that somehow got infected after she tore it open, and it was no fun. 

Foggy awkwardly opened his arms. “Group hug?” he asked. 

She wiped at her burning eyes. “No,” it was a hiccup. 

“Bring it in!”

“Foggy, no, please, you’re gonna-” his arms engulfed her and the warmth and kindness he offered triggered what little her tear ducts had left to give, “make me cry again,” she finished with a broken sob. 

“I’m sorry for making you cry, but also crying is healthy because if you don’t, your tear ducts will get blocked up, and then when you get old, you won’t be able to cry.”

“What?!” And that made her stop crying. 

“Oh, nothing.”

“Foggy,” Matt warned, “Would you stop with the useless advice? You’re scaring the poor thing.”

“It isn’t useless,” he argued. “It’s the truth, and Eliza doesn’t get scared.”

“Where did you read that, Wikipedia?”

“Maybe, I don’t know.”

“Guys,” Eliza chuckled.

“You always spread false medical information. You have been since college.”

“That is not true!”

They didn’t pay attention to her.

“You kind of did. Remember the time you thought I had a tumor because I got a headache that went on for two days? You were convinced I was dying.”

“That came from a place of friendly love!”

“Guys!” she said, louder this time. Her chuckle turned into something resembling actual laughter and they looked surprised to hear it. “Would you stop bickering? You sound like an old married couple.”

Foggy shook her in his arms. “She smiles!” he cheered. 

“I’ll stop if you keep shaking me like that.”

“My bad,” he let go of her, “continue.”

Matt’s hand found the back of her neck. “Should we get home?” he said. 

She smiled back at him, “Sure.”

Home sounded like a good idea after the ordeal she went through. 

She was banned to bed after they got home. She heard him rummaging around the kitchen, then the tea kettle sizzled and the mugs clanked against the counter.

Staring out of the window, Eliza watched the colors dance over the glass and the billboard outside. It engulfed her in a soft purple glow, almost reminding her of the lavender she saw reflecting off the water when they danced in the park on their first date. 

She wasn't going to jail but Viktor was. Finally, she would win and he would suffer for what he did in a way that was worse than death. Death would have been merciful, and he didn’t deserve mercy. Getting locked away was pure torture for a man like him and it gave her the greatest thrill to know he was going to be locked away forever. As soon as she got up on that stand, she would take what he took from her and turn the tables, and then it was she who would play him like a muppet until he was shaking. He had to fear her. She was the key witness and she would absolutely destroy him, no matter what it would take. 

Matt slid the door open and closed it with his foot behind him. He carried two mugs, approaching the bed still dressed in his dress shirt and pants while she had changed into a set of his clothes. His smell was comforting to both her and him.

He set the tea down. “You smell like me,” he said. 

“I’m wearing your clothes,” she said.

“I like it when you do that.”

“I know.”

He handed her one of the mugs. She blew into the hot liquid. Chamomile. He knew the calming effect it had on her. With a little milk and honey, she was in heaven. The past couple of days drained her and she couldn’t wait to sleep, although the fear of another vivid nightmare lived rent-free in her head. 

She pushed it away, watching Matt move gracefully where he sat at the edge of the bed, rolling up his sleeves with quite an unusual concentration. She only then realized he wasn't concentrating on his actions but rather his thoughts that soared wildly around in his head. She hadn’t stopped to question what the past couple of days did to him. She forgot to take care of him.

Her hand reached for his thigh. He did an unusual thing, he flinched. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He swallowed. How was he supposed to approach the subject? She hadn’t told him for a reason, surely, not because she wanted to lie to him. There was a reason she hadn’t mentioned it to him before. Matt couldn’t explain it any other way, but the thought bothered him ever since she proved to the District Attorney that she was the victim, not the perpetrator. She would never lie about her past just to get out of facing the consequences of her actions. She had been brutally honest with everyone present, laying out the whole truth and only the truth, and he heard it in her heartbeat even now. 

He turned to her slowly, fidgeting with his fingers. She was still touching his thigh and he didn't stop her. Instead, he took her hand to assure her he only flinched because he got startled. 

He traced his thumb over her knuckles. With a deep breath, he chose to break the silence that crept up his spine like a cold trail of water.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

She tilted her head curiously. “Tell you what?” she questioned.

“About you,” he said. “About what he did to you.”

“I don’t understand. You know what he did, I told you.” She went into defensive mode without realizing it. 

He kept her hand sternly in his. “I know some things, I thought the most crucial things, but you didn’t tell me everything. I thought— well, I thought you felt comfortable enough around me to confide in me, but I’m starting to worry that might not be the case.” 

“I’m comfortable around you, Matt, you know that. I would never lie to you. I love you. You’re my life.”

That was a blatant lie, but she wanted to believe it so badly, her heartbeat didn’t show that she was lying about never lying. She lied to him about his mother. She kept the truth from him. She omitted. She was no better than Tony in that regard.

“Then why didn’t you tell me about–“ he swallowed, “how he violated you by taking away your right to choose?”

“What do you–“

Oh.

“Oh. Oh, God. Okay, I should probably go.”

She scrambled to get to the edge of the bed, getting up on her feet. Eliza wasn’t sure why she ran, maybe it was the fear of losing him, but her first instinct was to get out.

“I’ll sleep on the couch tonight,” she said.

Matt caught her wrist though and pulled her back in. “Don’t run away,” he told her.

She sniffled. She didn’t know what else to do. She hated to pay thought to that part of her. 

“And especially, don’t run away from me. If you don’t want to talk, that’s fine, but please don’t run away from me. I can’t take it when you’re hurting and you won’t let me be there for you.”

She slumped next to him, her head hanging low in defeat, and she looked down at her hands — they were interesting, smaller than his, too.

“I didn’t tell you because–“ she sighed. “You kept talking about the future a-and kids and I just… I couldn’t tell you because I thought you’d see me as less of a woman and–“ her chest heaved with a broken breath, “break up with me.”

His eyes softened. He looked like a puppy whenever he did that, but he also looked the most loving in situations like these. He always understood. No matter what she said or did, he put in the effort to at least try to understand, and usually, he ended up doing it. His devotion would be the death of her one day because she felt useless when it came to giving back. She tried, but compared to him she was a terrible girlfriend.

“Oh, baby,” he cooed.

She shrugged again when he traced a strand of hair behind her ear. “I thought you figured I was on birth control when we had sex. The- the pill or something, that’s why neither of us thought about using a condom, which is bad even when you’re not trying to prevent pregnancy, but we went at it and I thought that after the first time, you figured I was on the pill and we didn’t have to worry about me getting pregnant so I was safe with my secret. But then you started talking about children and I– I think you noticed how I never answered when you mentioned it and how I act around children. I hoped you wouldn’t find out until you actually expressed to me you want kids, but I could tell for a long time now and I think– no, I know that you’re probably going to end this, so I should probably leave.”

“God, no!” He stopped her again. “Don’t ever think that. I’m not breaking up with you. Not over something like this. God forbid, that is the last reason I would do it.”

“Tell me why,” she begged.

“Because they sterilized you against your will and it’s okay that you didn’t mention it because it is your body and you’re obviously not comfortable. I don’t care about you not being able to have children, really, because I love you and I can deal with that. I would have been okay even if you said you never wanted them, but this… he stole so much from you, don’t ever think I would see you as less for something that has been forced on you or taken away without your consent. It’s not fair and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what he did to you. He’s gonna burn in hell for his actions. God wouldn’t forgive him. And if I could put him there myself, I would. I should. But I won’t because death would be too kind for a man like him.”

A tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it with her shoulder. “You’re not mad at me?” she asked.

“No,” he chuckled softly, “far from it.”

“You still love me?”

“Of course.”

“Am I still… attractive to you?”

“God, you need to stop questioning everything,” he said. He held her face with both of his hands, tracing her cheeks and the tear that spilled, and he kissed her. “You have never been more attractive to me,” he told her, “and nothing in the world could change that.”

Their forehead pressed together as they often did. It became a routine when one was feeling down or needed to express feelings they couldn’t pinpoint. The other always understood.

“Did you ever–“ he nuzzled closer, “Did you ever get it checked out?” 

“I’m afraid of the truth,” she admitted.

“But what if what you remember has been twisted? What if not all hope is lost?”

“I wish that were true, but I saw it in the memories that flashed by me when I died.”

He grunted, “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, “I’ve learned to live with it.”

“It doesn’t change anything.” Her forehead fell against his lips and he pressed a kiss to her worry lines. “I still love you. Fertility doesn’t define your worth or what I think of you. It doesn’t make me love you less or less attracted to you. I love you, please believe that.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try a little harder.”

She snorted, “I’ll try to try harder.”

His chuckle vibrated off her skin. He kissed her cheek, “A kiss here,” he hummed, moving onto the other cheek, “A kiss there,” and he kissed her nose. Lastly, his lips pressed to hers, barely touching but breathing her in nonetheless. “And here,” he said. 

Her nose scrunched and she couldn’t help the blush nor the smile that grew on her face. “Ah!” Matt chuckled again. “There’s the smile I’ve been hoping for.” He could feel the corners of her lips moving upward with his thumb tracing over her bottom lip. 

Regaining her composure, Eliza wiped the remaining tears ago. She looked at him tiredly, her eyelids drooping, but the smile remained on her lips even through the exhaustion. “Thank you,” she said with her whole chest. She wasn’t sure how else to express it; she wanted to say more than a simple ‘thank you’ because it didn’t even remotely match up to the gratitude she was filled with. She hoped it would suffice and he could feel how much she loved him, how thankful she was to have him, too. She hoped he could read her mind as he usually did. And she hoped he would never leave her, no matter how badly she struggled with her own feelings. 

“Don’t thank me. It’s my job as your boyfriend to take care of you,” he said. “You take care of me, I take care of you. You’ve been so selfless lately, it was about time I gave back.”

How had she been selfless? She was actively keeping a huge secret from him. The day before she could have still told him. Even with a few hours between the revelation and their alone time, she could have told him. It wouldn’t have looked like purposely lying to him. But now? She was fucked now. She had to push the thought away, had to push the urge to tell him down, and she had to preserve what they had. She had to forget to continue living for him. It was their life together that was at risk if he found out and that was the point where her selflessness stopped - she didn’t want to lose him so she decided to keep her mouth shut, and the guilt would slowly tear all of her walls down, she knew that, but damn Father Lantom and Sister Maggie, there was nothing she could do now that would keep Matt in her life. He would hate her. She wasn’t ready for that. If that made her a person, so be it. She gave up on going to heaven a long time ago.

[anywaymurder]

The Camp and the Cavern

Chapter 30

Following Annori’s directions, they arrive on the island that the -now identified as transmutation- magic seems to be coming from. It seems to have been uninhabited for a long time. As they slowly make their way along the shore, the terrain seems slightly swampy, and Ara has no trouble leading the group safely ahead. They end up at a spot near the water where the source of magic is the strongest, seemingly down under the water or underneath the island itself. Not too eager to go for a swim, they look around for another way down. Kevin casts Detect Thoughts, but finds none but his party members’ closeby. 

Suddenly, they spot a strange rock formation further into the forest, and upon closer inspection they discover an old camp site tucked away beneath the overhanging cliff. Kevin considers casting Detect Thoughts again, but the group suggests he save his spell slots for when trouble arises. Raiden quietly approaches and finds the first tent abandoned, with nothing to point towards a hasty retreat or a specific reason for the campers to have been here. Annori mimics Raidens stealthy moves as best she can, and finds another tent also empty. Ara determines by the state of the camp that the people who lived in it must have abandoned it months ago. Both he and Annori manage to spot footprints: those of bipedal lizard-like creatures. Kevin and Raiden suggest those might be kobolds? (DM: ‘Raiden probably encountered them when he was at sea’ R: ‘lol maybe it’s my dad’). 

Wandering a little further away from the camp, along the cliffside, Raiden ends up discovering a crack in the rock that seems large enough to pass through, and goes back to fetch the others. Kevin isn’t all too eager to go into a dark cavern. Annori offers to give him darkvision, but Kevin just asks if he can hold her hand instead. (A: ‘Hey Raiden do you want me to hold yours?’ R: ‘Don’t you dare touch me’). As they approach the cave entrance, suddenly the bright white silhouette of a lady appears in front. She doesn’t seem to notice the party, and only lifts a hand in front of her and says ‘Please be careful in the cavern. I might be trapped.’ She then disappears and, a couple of seconds later, reappears with the same motion and message. Up close, it becomes clear this apparition doesn’t respond to the party’s presence, only ever repeating herself. Kevin awkwardly puts his arm around the ghost and says ‘Annori, quick, draw my picture!’, which she does. 

The group decides to move ahead into the cavern, be it with caution, and make their way through a dark twisting tunnel in single file. Eventually, they come upon a staircase, hewn out of the stone, leading down. It seems like from this point out they’re entering man-made tunnels rather than natural ones, and Raiden takes the lead to check for traps by the light of Annori’s light stone. Ara, who has been feeling uneasy ever since they set foot on the island, starts feeling increasingly weird as they go further down the stairs. They emerge in a small room that splits the path in two: to the right, a closed door. To the left, an open passage. The air is thick with humidity, the ground dense with vegetation, and they can hear the sound of moving water emerging from the tunnel to the left. Suddenly, Ara -and only Ara- hears a voice. ‘It’s been a long time, friend.’

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[hellsbellschime]

if she's still not back you could always file a missing persons report since it's been over 24hrs. or try calling 211 services and see if they can suggest any options for getting her evaluated. if she is back i wish you strength in cutting ties with her. you clearly grew up in an abusive environment and it's difficult when you feel you're their only option left, but if they love you they wouldn't put that responsibility on you. it's her job to fight for her own life and sanity, not yours. you can't save her if she's unwilling to save herself.

are you sure her doctors were the ones who adjusted her lithium and it wasn't just her deciding to get off it? can you call her doctors and talk to them about options because she's been erratic and she did try to hurt you already?

when you mentioned your mom disappearing for days it triggered my own memories of my step-dad doing the same. and honestly those were the good days because i wasn't worried he would try to do anything to me or my mom. i can't imagine being alone though, may i ask where your dad was during this time?

i know i'm just a faceless anon, but please stay safe. i'm worried if you confront her when/if she returns.

Yeah, I am hoping that she returns my car and just fucks off and lives her manic pixie cryptkeeper dreams, but she told me she would be home in an hour two hours ago so I’m getting the vibe that something happened to the car or she is on the run from the FBI in her own head.

I actually do believe her about the lithium because I didn’t see any red flags at the time and I have been in touch with her psychiatrist because I said I needed to tell them that she was manic. I told the psychiatrist that this was a problem but apparently she didn’t agree or think it was an emergency or something, because they increased the dose for one of her other medications but didn’t put her back on the lithium.

And my dad was not a very active parent at the time, his mantra was quite literally “don’t come crying to me,” so I didn’t. Honestly both of my parents are a train wreck and he was just not someone I would call for help at that time.

I’m not super worried about a confrontation at this point because she’s dodging me like I have Ebola, but for the love of Christ today is not my best day ever.