#for having the blood of two opposing families

[devnmon]

to be loved is to be changed.

Summary: Cutting Daryl's hair and his uncertainty around the idea of a walled community that's survived thus far.

a/n: back to writing daryl like i never left! i wanted this to be mostly soft but i realized thats unrealistic for him during the first days in alexandria. twd rewatches really do it in for me huh. wrote this in two days cause it was an idea i really liked and wanted to put it out there. enjoy <3

no warnings except suggestive at the end! | wc: 2k

Daryl was not amused. By any of it.

Exhausted, covered in sweat, on edge, sure.

But amused? No. Far from it.

Absurd. That's what it was. To walk into metal walls of a community and trust it's exactly how it looks... that was the furthest thing from happening.

So when everyone else was taking advantage of the running water and toiletries, Daryl sat in protest. He would never fit in here, no matter how long they stayed. If this place lasted that long.

He sat in the filth and sweat and grease that coated his skin, sweat painted forehead and hair stuck to the back of his neck. Dark bangs covered his eyes, peeking through the hair as if it were to shield him from the darting eyes of people around him.

Though nothing would compare to how terribly out of place he felt. It took him a lot to feel included in Rick's group, to utter family in a world he thought he'd spend with his brother.

But now, they all were his family; Rick, Maggie, Glenn, you. Picking him back up by the knowledge that he can try to start over every single day.

He wouldn't-- no, couldn't conform to the pristine, blind-eyed disposition he saw in all the people living so wonderfully in this place.

Not being how he was out there didn't feel like him. Felt the farthest thing from it when he knew everyone else just felt grateful to not be out there. At least, almost all of them did.

Those people hadn't seen what you'd all seen. What you experienced, who you'd lost on the road. They didn't know.

Seeing you and Carol and the others refresh yourselves with soap and clean clothes that weren't stained by sweat or blood made him scoff.

How could you let down your guards so quickly? Give up the weapons you slept next to and gripped tightly to like they were merely objects and not a part of you.

His bow was like a second skin. What made you all indifferent?

You, once terrified of the outside, became a strengthened version of yourself. No longer shying away of everything that went bump in the night, too timid to move.

Then, you were safe inside yourself. Now, you were edged and cautious, backed by those you trusted.

To be invited back to a walled community with running water and actual houses? It sounded unreal.

But you were almost out there for too long.

Refreshing yourself from all that covered you on the outside only made you hopeful for what was to come. What could come. Optimism and hopefulness radiated from Deanna the minute you saw her face.

It was bizarre, seeing a bunch of people without the same hardened looks and dirtied clothes you all adorned. Strolling down the streets, going about their day like they were unaware of what the world was. Of what it had come to.

By the way they ogled as you passed by, dropping your weapons to be stored and trudging down the lane to be interviewed, they had not seen what you had.

They were the lucky ones. Lucky enough to hide behind steel walls and barbecues like the world hadn't stopped turning.

But you weren't as opposed to cleaning yourself up as much as Daryl was. A little nervous to be as vulnerable washing alone for the first time in months, but excited to see it all wash down the drain.

You knew Carol would be begging him soon enough. Not even a full day had passed and you had all jumped at the chance to have warm water rush over your skin. So your clothes wouldn't stick to your skin from the sweat and grime built up there.

If you could have stayed under the shower for the rest of your life without getting pruned fingers, you would have chose so in a heartbeat.

But spotting Daryl with the same dirt on his arms broke you a little. You knew how far he'd come since the quarry, how he was used to being on the outside.

You always knew he leaned into that part of him, the archer who never needed to rely on anyone for anything before. Watching him protect all of you though, that was the kicker.

"I'm gonna hose you down in your sleep." Said one Carol Peletier as she walked down the sidewalk, other members of your group further exploring as they'd been told to do so.

"You know she's serious about that hose." You began, walking out the front door to greet him.

Daryl scoffed and went back to playing with his bow.

"And I'd help her, if I didn't know how you are." You could see his blues peeking through the hair stuck to his forehead, almost poking into his eyes.

Standing next to him now, you reached out a hand to brush some of the hair out of his eyes, before cupping his cheek softly. He flinched at first, but welcomed your warm contact.

Daryl knew you cared for him, though being on the road had made him retreat inside himself again. Just before the prison fell, you saw that golden heart of his peek through his chest. But after Hershel, after Beth, he was overcome with a need to harden his exterior.

Any physical affection he was warming up to was all because of you, how your words disarmed him and tied a string around his lungs. Even if the road challenged him and your whole group, it was something familiar that you all knew like the back of your hand.

Walkers, people, the elements. The lot of you felt prepared to handle anything that was thrown at you.

But meeting Aaron, making it to his community and seeing how life could be from now on, instead of just making it-- that was something none of you had seen before.

"Could I be the one to convince you then?"

His eyes met yours, darting back and forth across your face and the background with uncertainty.

"Dunno." He shrugged, looking away off into the distance now.

"It's okay if it takes you a while, Dar. I know out there is where you feel the most you, but we don't have to just make it anymore. We can live. Feel some semblance of normalcy. But if it takes you longer than some of us, I get it."

"Y'think this is normal?"

"No... but we have to start somewhere. It started for me when I turned in my gun, precious as she is to me..." he glanced your way again, "And washing the outside off. Feeling how it was without all of that on my skin."

"Don't matter. Just gonna get dirty again."

You sighed, "Fine. If you won't take a shower, will you at least let me trim your bangs? They're covering your pretty eyes and you know how much I love to look at them."

One of the corners of his mouth twitched upwards, a semblance of a smile?

"Nothing crazy, Dixon, just a trim so they don't get in your way."

A gruff sound came from him before standing from the railing and letting his fingers brush against your shirt. He went to grab his bow before you reached for his wrist.

"You don't need it. We're just goin' inside, okay? We'll be more comfortable in there."

His stern look faltered, blinking a few times before nodding and leaving it to follow you inside, your hand in his.

Daryl spotted the comb and pair of scissors on the counter before he even got close to them, trusting you enough to go near his brown locks with something that sharp. He knew your steady hand was careful, having stitched multiple people up over the time you'd been with the group.

Clearing his throat as he sat, you picked up the scissors and comb and sat in front of him.

"Let me get all the knots out first, okay? Even though I'm just trimming your bangs, you deserve to be pampered a little. Are you okay with that?"

His eyes met the floor before looking to you, heart in your hands as you spoke. Silently he nodded, and you grinned before standing back up and moving behind him.

Your hands planted softly on his shoulders, feeling him fidget in his seat as you slowly rubbed his shoulders ever so slightly.

Fortunately for you, Daryl's hair was thinner and therefore less prone to knotting, but still had a few you took a minute to get through. The teeth of the comb scratched his scalp in such a way that was foreign to him, sending goosebumps down his spine.

The little sounds of content and enjoyment made you smile to know he was finding some comfort in what you were doing. It almost brought tears to your eyes at how much he trusted you.

Placing a kiss on the crown of his head, you walked back around to his front.

He grunted again, "Why'd ya stop?"

"I haven't even cut your bangs yet, Dar." You chuckled lightly, knowing a proper hair brushing would put him to sleep from how relaxing it was.

To be the only individual he'd ever let touch, let alone cut his hair, filled your chest with joy.

"Okay, now close your eyes and hold your head steady, here." Your soothing voice had him smitten, willing to be at your beck and call whenever you asked. This time was no different. He'd not known what he did to deserve you, much less anyone willing to get to know and trust him as he did you.

Two of your fingers lifted his chin and spotted those blues once again looking your way.

"You've got eyes like the ocean, Daryl. Wonder when I get to swim in them." He saw the stars in your eyes, something he hadn't seen since you all arrived at the prison.

Slowly you combed through the hair framing his face, separating it from the rest to begin trimming. His eyes fluttered shut as you lifted the scissors up.

The first snip was the most nerve wracking for him, hearing the scissors open and close. While a soft powdery aroma from the soap wafted from your skin, he realized that maybe it wasn’t the worst idea.

He's not sure the last time he's had his hair cut, if ever. Daryl decided it wasn't worth it to remember the past, and to just live in the moment now with you.

"Thanks," he mumbled, clear enough for you to hear. Your movements slowed a bit as you realized this was a big moment for him. Even bigger than when you admitted your feelings to him.

There was something about how easy it was for Daryl to unfold around you, not completely, but a bit more every day he got through with you by his side.

Little hairs floated to the floor as you trimmed, shedding them like he did the makings of his former self. It was mandatory, or else he wouldn't be where he is today.

"Of course. You do so much for everyone else, I'm lucky I get to do this for you. I'm happy to do this for you." Your hand grasped his, interlocking your fingers.

"Means a lot t'me." Slowly he lifted your hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to it ever so lightly.

A whiff of that soap you smelled so nicely of made his head spin, realizing that if you smelled like it, he wanted to as well. There would be more dirt and sweat to come in the future, if this is where they were going to be from now on.

"Don't be getting all sappy on me now, D."

Scoffing, he replies, "Stop."

"Just let me know when you're ready to take that shower. Or I'll let Carol know she can hose you down instead..." You joke, standing up before combing his bangs through once more.

"Nah, I'll take the shower." Daryl shook out his hair from the left over snipped pieces of hair and stood up.

"Oh yeah?" You turned and crossed your arms at him with disbelief.

"On one condition."

"And what's that?"

"You come and join me."

You smiled, uncrossing your arms and holding out a hand to him.

"Deal."

[epickiya722]

I'll be honest, I'm going to sound probably all over the place with this, but I tried my best!

Okay, so going back to chapter 252, I see that Yuta was indeed sliced by Sukuna, but what I wasn't expecting that would resort to him being sliced in half just as Gojo was back in 236.

This is where it got confusing to me. How was Yuta sliced in half? Why was he sliced in half? Before this, just like Yuji, he was tanking Sukuna's cuts and using RCT. Just before this moment, Sukuna was also hit with Jacob's Ladder and his guard is at his lowest.

Did Sukuna manage to actually execute a slash that could completely cut through at that specific, odd moment and Yuta couldn't stop it? Or... did Yuta let it happen?

What if Yuta is just... tired?

I know, I know!

Like, I don't know, it just seemed odd to me.

It gets me that in 262, they state that their plan is that if Satoru loses and dies, his body will be taken over by Yuta, but... that was it. No one said anything that in order for Yuta to take over Satoru's body that he (Yuta) had to be mortally injured.

He could have switched his brain without being on the verge of dying, right? Which makes me question when Kenjaku uses the technique, does Kenjaku have to be close to dying to body hop?

That's for another day!

I recently (last week) rewatched JJK 0 and watching the beginning of that movie reminded me just how depressed he was and how little of himself he cared for. Yuta tried to off himself.

Also take note that he is constantly amazed by whatever his friends do. Evident enough against his fight against Geto. In 261, he shifts the attention back onto the topic of Gojo when Maki remarks how he's important to him, too. His reaction is highly negative.

He gets angry, and thinking about what Maki said, I feel like that has a double meaning. Yuta is important because he is a friend. But he is important because he is also a weapon. He is the best player after Gojo that they got, he's the strongest after him.

It's almost feels like this is the moment Yuta decided to just throw it all out the window and take that risk because he was tired, but at the same time he wasn't just going to leave the others hanging.

This chapter does feel a little like the ending half of Shibuya. Yuji is once more unable to finish off the enemy that has been constantly terrorizing him because of an interruption by someone with a technique that allows them to use other techniques and just so happen to arrive possessing the body of a Special Grade sorcerer.

But let's go deeper into this, because when you think about it... Yuta is the Yuji in 261.

There are people dying around him after Gojo is out of commission in some way because of a dark haired villain who again uses the techniques of someone else! Both Yuta and Yuji had Gojo on the mind, but disregarded themselves, however there is a difference. Yuji's main goal was to save Gojo, Yuta has to use Gojo's body.

Here's something else about 261. Yuta is also like Kenjaku here. Both choose to possess a body because the technique engraved in the body is useful.

However, in opposition, Kenjaku willingly seeks out to do this. Kenjaku wants to do this because it benefits Kenjaku. Yuta doesn't want to possess Gojo's body, it's not something he is at all happy about. It's not something he ever dreamed of doing.

While this chapter is similar to the Shibuya Incident, there's bits where it mirrors Shibuya but distortedly. Kenjaku gets away with Gojo at the end of that arc. Here? It's not looking too good for Yuta. (I do believe in him though. I do feel like he will indeed accomplish something here.)

It's reminded that Yuta's technique allows him to copy a technique for five minutes. When Mei Mei points out the three possible outcomes of Yuta's technique timer running out, two of them has a result that may lead to death. Only one doesn't, and that's living on in Gojo's body.

So Yuta knows that he has a possible higher chance of dying possessing Gojo's body.

There's also the case of taking over Gojo's body to use his techniques was a last resort when everyone else was wiped out. When Yuta arrives back on the battlefield, Yuji had his claws right in Sukuna's chest. Yuji probably would have easily ripped Sukuna's heart at that moment had not Yuta showed up.

And I know, I know some Yuji's fans wanted that, I definitely would have loved to have seen that (payback), but I think back to Yuta's words in this chapter and overall what has happened.

Everyone, at some point, had to shed that bit of their humanity to win their fight.

It takes a curse to kill a curse. This is literal and figurative to the story. To be a jujutsu sorcerer you have to shed some bit of yourself to kill a curse.

This whole time, Yuji, probably the most human character (how ironic) has little by little shed his humanity as the story progresses. He's losing himself.

What if Yuta caught that? While we know Yuji didn't know some of the plans doing on, we can guess it wasn't the case vice versa. What if Yuta knew about everything or most of what Yuji had to do to get to where he is?

What if Yuta coming in right as Yuji was about to rip out Sukuna's heart was him saving Yuji from losing that last bit of humanity he has? Keep in mind that Yuji and Sukuna mirror each other, so ripping out his (Sukuna's) heart would make Yuji no better than Sukuna.

Shibuya was the start of Yuji truly believing himself to be less of a human. Chapter 261 mirrors Shibuya in some regards and I feel like the next couple of chapters may be Yuji seeing himself as a human, not a cog, again.

What if for the next chapters during Yuta's second confrontation with Sukuna, Yuji may get that hit of morality back when he learns what Yuta has done, he'll reflect on it and think about himself? What if once he learns what Yuta has done he gets a "do I want to be like that" moment?

I don't know, I don't know. But I feel like this...

Yuta is tired. He has those dark shadows under his eyes that make him look physical tired, but what if that is also a connotation/visual way of saying that Yuta is tired of how his life is now?

He acts like he's in a better state than how he really is and maybe this whole time, he just wanted to let go. He puts on this show though because he doesn't want the others to fret over him and snapped when Maki said he was important to them. He no longer felt like a human. Just a monster, a cog to the system... a curse, if you will. He accepted death when he knew there wasn't a high chance of escaping it.

However, he chose a moment that was "Hey, I'm going to die and I accept that, but you (Yuji) I'm giving a chance". I'm sure he knew about Gojo's plan to wanting a better future for the next generation. He's continuing to pave a way for that generation. Yuta's giving Yuji that chance to still be human, something he feels he can no longer be. He's been in Yuji's shoes, so he certainly know the path Yuji may be heading. Yuta may have the intentions to stop him heading in the same direction he and Gojo were steered into.

This may be Yuta's way of helping Yuji break that cycle.

[mamorigami]

here to once again complain about ft and just the. existence of irene & being the mother of erza, which subsequently didn't matter at all after that arc ended. im scratching my head still at the prospect of giving erza an on-page mother, especially so late in the story with no build up outside the arc. idk if im making this up but i remember reading that it wasn't intentional at first, but irene ended up looking so much like erza that it was implemented in the story. i think thats dumb and stupid and boring and dumb!! fair warning that i barely acknowledge irene and erza's familial relation, any development is going be heavily canon-divergent & full of my own tweaks in regards to irene and her story..

[starry-bi-sky]

Danielle and Danyal's meeting... very, very quickly goes very sour from, basically, the moment Danny steps into his room and finds Ellie sitting on his bed (strike one) and reading the comic books Tucker introduced him to (strike two). By the time she's looked up to address him, Danny has the door locked, and a hand hovering near the knife hidden under his shirt.

She gets her third strike when Danny, in a voice that could make the mountains tremble, demands to know how she got into his room, and she lies (with uncertainty of her decision growing in her chest) that Jazz let her in. Danny's hand shifts closer to his weapon, and he turns towards her fully, and says that Jazz would never let someone he didn’t know into his room, and who was she.

(Vlad Masters had underprepared Danielle for her meeting with Danny -- not out of any completely direct malicious intent, but he failed to mention just how... 'touchy' Daniel could be -- he failed to mention the scars littering up his arms, unhidden by the hoodie tee he meets Ellie in. He failed to mention that along with those scars, that Danny was visibly lean, capable of doing very real damage without the use of his powers.)

(He tells Ellie that he’s adopted, and that he is observant and clever, but ungrateful and has a bad attitude.)

Her final strike occurs when Ellie, trying to keep her facade of cheeriness, tells him that she’s his third cousin once removed. Immediately, Danny has his dagger pulled out, and Ellie finds herself with the cold metal of a blade pressing against her throat.

Danyal 'A.G' Fenton hasn’t killed since he arrived in Amity Park. At first it was because mother told him to keep a low profile, and killing would do the opposite of that. But, he's been slowly learning from his sister and friends over the years the value of human life. So it's become a combination of keeping his head down, and also that life has value to it.

But. That doesn’t mean he can’t kill, nor is he opposed to doing it if the situation calls for it. It just means that he doesn't do it. And ‘Danielle’ is an unknown in his room, claiming to be family to him, and appearing uncannily similar to him and his family. Either someone hired her and she was trying to pass herself off as a relative to him because that someone realized Danny was the biggest threat, or, his false death has been compromised, his mother was unable to tell him, and the league was aware he was alive.

No matter how he looks at it, this Danielle was a threat to him, his sister, his friends, to Damian, and to the Drs. Fenton. Danyal Fenton doesn't kill, but he has no problems doing so.

(Ellie, pinned under Danny’s knee and the blade to her neck, is too terrified to think of phasing out of his hold. Not that it would help, he would just chase after her.)

“You have broken into my home, dared to lie to my face, and when I demanded to know the truth, you dared lie to me again." Danny's scowl could cower even Skulker, his glacier blue eyes burning. "Your continual breath has been a favor from me, that I have graciously allowed, from the moment you entered my room, dahkil."

"So I will ask one more time," he hisses, "who. are. you."

Danielle, only a few months old, unprepared for the ice storm that is "Daniel" Fenton, and his clone in only flesh and blood, and not memories, immediately breaks. And tells him that she was his clone, that Vlad sent her to come capture him, and to please not kill her.

Danny's face twists with anger, Ellie thinks he's going to kill her anyways. Instead, he withdraws his knife and gets off her, stringing out curses in Arabic as he sheathes his weapon back into its hiding place faster than Ellie can blink.

He switches to English as she is collecting her bearings (and contemplating fleeing), and Danny paces the room like a tiger in a cage. "--of course that wretched, arrogant, peacocking little ingrate would do something so infuriating. I should have driven my sword into the shrivel of his heart when I had the chance--"

Ellie, for a moment, thinks of leaving while he is distracted. And starts to slowly creep away. But Danny notices instantly, and whirls on her. His too-bright eyes bore into her head: "Where do you think you're going."

"...I'm leaving."

And Danny scoffs at her, "Why? So you can fly back to Masters and tell him that you failed to capture me, and that I know that he cloned me?" He says, and Ellie remains silent -- that's exactly what she was going to do. "He will destroy you within seconds."

Of course, Ellie rears back in offense, and she finds the footing to glare at him. "He would not! He's my dad, he loves me!"

Danny gets in her face, glowering back with an equal intensity. "He does not." He snaps, "Vlad Masters has not a soul in his body nor a heart in his chest. He would sooner cut off the hand that helps him stand, than to take it along with him."

"If you're really made of my blood, then I will teach you only this: we bow not our heads nor our hearts to anyone." Danny's too-blue eyes narrow, and his voice dips into a hiss, "Especially not to a conniving snake like Masters. Your heart: cut it off, or cut it out. He will sooner leave you to bleed."

Then, he unlocks the door and drags her out before she has much time to act. And as he drags her down the hall he shoots Sam and Tucker a text, and they meet up at Nasty Burger. Ellie is a spitfire, but Danny has her too intimidated to leave.

"This is Danielle," he tells them bluntly as he corners her into the booth, "she's my clone. Masters created her."

Ellie is with them for a week, and somehow throughout that time, Danny manages to actually get her to like him throughout that time. He's callous, blunt, and full of sharp edges that you can cut yourself on. But when he's not spitting venom, he's fretting.

When he drags her back to the house after being with Sam and Tucker, he pulls her to Jazz's room and opens the door to tell her the same thing. "This is Danielle." He says upon abruptly opening the door, interrupting Jazz's studying as he pulls Ellie inside. "She is my clone, Masters created her. She needs clothes."

Then he turns and leaves, shutting the door behind him. Ellie, in that moment, thinks that now's her chance to flee. But Jazz then squeals, and she is trapped in new arms, shaken around by Jazz Fenton, excited for a sister.

(Ellie finds herself complaining to Jazz that night, shoved into old pajamas. She's in utter disbelief that Jazz could care about a jerk like Danny.)

("He's rough around the edges, but Danny does care." Jazz tells her, combing through her hair with her fingers. "We've been working on it ever since he joined the family, but Danny warms up slowly. He's usually less stoney; I think your arrival spooked him.")

("Spooked him?" Ellie repeats, she doesn't believe it at all. "He has a funny way of showing it, he threatened to kill me!" And she turns around just in time to see Jazz's press her lips into a line.)

("He's... very protective. He'll deny if you ask him, but he worries a lot." Jazz's fingers find her hair again. "What I do know for certain though, is that he wouldn't have kept you here if he wasn't worried about you at least a little bit.")

(Ellie doubts it.)

But Ellie is indeed there for a week, and the day after her initially rocky introduction with Danny, he is a little bit kinder to her. Still kinda a bitch, but he's less harsh to her, if... almost uncomfortable around her. Flighty, kinda.

Whenever she gets mouthy at him though, he looks oddly smug about it and, infuriatingly enough, praises her attitude. He is very, very annoying. And still kinda terrifying. But hearing him shout insults via puns at someone during a ghost fight that happens that week lessens the intimidating factor,,, a little bit.

Things go about,,,, relatively,,,, similar to canon. In the sense that it ends with Ellie defecting from Vlad because she finds out that Danny was right and that Vlad didn't actually care about her. (And that Jazz had been right too; Danny, in his weird, mean way, had been worried about her as well)

Danny looks out of his depth as she talks about how he was right, and he cuts her off with a vaguely uncomfortable clearing of his throat. And gives her the most awkward, but genuine apology he can muster.

"I should've used more tact when telling you about Masters, and I... apologize for threatening you when we met. I was..." he makes a face like he's sucked on a particularly sour lemon, "worried. First about my family, and then later about you."

(Ellie will be damned: Jazz was right)

Before Ellie leaves, Danny puts a hand on her shoulder and tells her: "I wasn't kidding about what I said to you when we first met: you are of my blood, and as such, you do not bow your head nor your heart to anyone."

Ellie looks at him, thinks about the last week, and smiles like she's caught him in a trap. "What about Sam and Tucker then? And Jazz?"

Danny smiles, it's awkward and tilted, like his face isn't used to the gesture. "We bow not our hearts, but that doesn't mean we can't share."

[altruisticalastor]

↳˗ˏˋAlastor x Readerˊˎ˗ ↴

☒ Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five Part Six

☒ Summary: Your heart felt full as Alastor continued his lead. You both danced to the melodic sounds, relishing in the shared embrace. That night was one that you cherished for months to come. But on the contrary, your blossoming relationship with Alastor solidified the beginning of the end. 

☒ Warnings: fem!reader, she/her pronouns used, prequel to the first two parts, alastor and reader are human in this part, 1930's period typical misogyny (NOT from alastor), fluff, falling in love, obsessive!alastor, reader is in hell for a reason, murder, gunshot wound, major character death, one suggestive scene involving finger sucking *giggles*, domestic!alastor, reader and alastor being an absloute power couple, blood, alcohol consumption, dancing

☒ Word Count: 6,276

You often dreamt of trading places with your dear old friend, Elaine. She had it all; money, family, respect.

You, on the other hand, had none of those things.

When your parents left without notice on your eleventh birthday— you ended up homeless in a matter of weeks. Elaine’s family took you in out of pity, and they made it very known throughout your childhood that they only cared for you to make themselves out to be saints. It didn't take a fool to see that they treated their own flesh and blood better than the rubble they picked up off the streets.

Elaine was often condescending toward you, but you put up with the brunt of it. It's not like you had any other choice- and when her father offered you a typist gig at his local radio broadcasting studio- you had no other option but to accept.

Your treatment from others at the studio was no better than the one you received at home. 

If you could even call that loveless place a home.

The broadcasting biz was male-dominated, as most jobs were in your day. So, of course your counterparts looked down upon you as a woman. You were less than to them, and the constant berating about how you should be wed by now with kids to dote on ticked you off even further.

That was not on the itinerary for you. 

The plan was to save enough of the slim earnings you made being a typist to run far away from this place. To be free of these people, from this town. You dreamt about how lovely it would be not to bite your tongue and endure all the nasty things people spat at you just to have a roof over your head.

Soon, just a little bit longer. 

Grin and bear it. Don't let them know what you hide behind the façade.

"My, my! What a lovely smile!" A smooth voice pulled you from your stupor. You flinched back from your desk as the man standing before you ducked low- extending his hand.

"What's your name, little darling? I'm Alastor! It's a pleasure to be meeting you, quite a pleasure!" You took the man's hand, shaking it slowly sharing your name, and offering the same pleasantries, before peering up to get a good look at this Alastor fellow.

Based on first impressions, you thought he was a well-put-together fellow. His crimson vest hugged his slender frame well, you noted. His white dress shirt underneath contrasted beautifully with the seamless leather gloves adorning his large hands. The black bowtie was simply the cherry on top of his polished look. His features were handsome, and that darling smile of his caused your face to grow hot. His chestnut eyes peered at you behind his round-framed glasses, gazing at you as if you hung the stars in the night sky. 

You had never been captivated by a man until this very instant. You always believed romance was a waste of time. But now... you weren't feeling as opposed.

"Say, what brings a fella like you to a place like this?" You stood from your seat as his hand released yours. His gloved fingertips lingered on your palm for a moment- but it was long enough for you to notice.

"Why a job, of course! You're looking at the new host of the biggest radio broadcast in all of Louisiana!" Alastor's grin widened as he puffed out his chest proudly, bringing his hands up to straighten out his bowtie.

"Oh, my! Congratulations, Mister. I look forward to working with you." Your voice was as lively as ever, putting in your best effort to come off as friendly. Alastor's deep chestnut eyes studied yours. It was almost intimidating. 

Almost.

"Just call me Alastor, my dear! A beauty such as yourself is more than qualified to be on a first-name basis with me." His flirtatious nature had your heart rate accelerating at an alarming gait. Plus, the wink he shot your way to emphasize his statement only added fuel to the fire.

You were at a loss for words, simply nodding in agreement at his terms. Your gaze averted from Alastor's as you rubbed at your arm nervously. You had never been this flustered before. It was... uncharacteristically exciting for you. "Excuse my fowardness darling, but would you allow me to take you dancing tonight? It is a cause for celebration, after all!"

His offer left you stammering as you clutched your arm tightly, your sweaty palm bleeding through your vermilion dress sleeve. "Are you positive you want to celebrate with a woman you only just met?" You chuckled nervously, meeting his gaze once more.

"It would be my pleasure, little darling." You swore your heart skipped a beat as those words left his lips. Alastor was an enigma of a man, and he left you needing to know more about him. "If you insist! I'm flattered, truly."

Alastor chuckled lowly at your words as he took ahold of your hand once more. This time, he turned your palm downward before pulling the back of your hand up to his lips. Alastor's eyes bored into yours as he placed a chaste kiss atop your knuckles. His lips lingered on your skin for a few beats longer until he inevitability abjured from you.

"Lovely! I'll be waiting in the lobby once the workload is finished for the day. Meet me there?" You could only nod in agreement as your heartbeat resounded in your ears. Alastor bid you farewell, leaving you alone with your thoughts.

He just asked you on a date- didn't he? 

Shit, shit- shit! A relationship was not on your to-do list.

The workday trickled on slowly. You were beside yourself— too focused on your plans with Alastor tonight.

Was your dress formal enough? It’s not like you could go home and change now— and you didn’t have the proper heels on. The pair that you usually switched into before you went dancing.

It would be fine— why were you even stressing over the little details?

More importantly… what were Alastor’s intentions with this— date?

You mulled it over the whole trip to the lobby of your workplace. You felt your nerves prickle your skin when your eyes met Alastor’s. 

He was already waiting patiently for you near the exit. Alastor had a blazer on now, you noted— and he was smiling wider than ever. “Ah, there you are! Ready to head out, dear?”

Alastor’s voice was equivalent to a smooth amaretto. Silky and delightful, with a little bit of an edge to it. Your mouth felt like it was full of cotton from the nerves— and all you could muster was a quick nod.

“Wonderful! We better get going while the night is still young— ha!” Alastor opened the door, tilting his head; gesturing toward the exit. You got the hint, wobbly legs guiding you out of the building and to the dimly lit street.

You knew a speakeasy just up the other street, so you figured that was the spot Alastor intended on taking you. As your feet led you in the direction of the bar, Alastor let out an amused hum. “My, my… am I correct to assume you know your way around these parts of town?” You giggled nervously, as you felt Alastor’s arm brush up against yours as he walked beside you.

“You’re spot on. I’ve lived here all my life, and for a brief period, I was living on these streets.” Your voice was quiet as those words left your lips. Perhaps you should have kept that detail to yourself. You kept your eyes forward as you walked along the sidewalk. But you could feel Alastor’s eyes on you— without peeking over.

“Might I ask why, darling?” You swallowed harshly, not expecting a follow-up question. You secretly hoped Alastor would have skirted past that little detail about your past. “Ah well, my parents moved out of town on my eleventh birthday. I think they forgot what day it was, truthfully. They were too hopped up on pills and booze,” You laughed bitterly at the memory before continuing. “My parents owed the bank a lot of money, you see, so the first thing those brokers collected was the house I still lived in at the time.”

You shook your head in disbelief, scoffing as you continued the recollection of your youth. “Those money-hungry sharks didn’t even give me a month to collect my things or find somewhere to shack up. When the cops arrived, I told them I’d be staying with a relative— but that was a bold-faced lie!” The speakeasy was in your sights, so you tried to get to the end of this pitiful little tail. “Long story short— I lived on the streets for a couple of weeks until my friend’s parents took me in.”

Alastor swiftly opened the bar door for you, gesturing you in. You were met by the smooth sound of jazz the moment you stepped foot in the joint. The smell of cigarettes and liquor saturated the space. Alastor interlocked your arm with his as he led you to a nearby table. You felt heat rush to your face from the unexpected touch. “I’m truly sorry you had to experience such hardships at such a young age, my dear. That must have been very difficult for you to process.” Alastor’s voice was soft as he offered his sympathy. He pulled the wooden chair out, allowing you to sit comfortably. Alastor gently pushed your seat in before taking his across from you.

“Thanks for saying so. You’re the first person to actually consider my feelings.” You chuckled, raising your hand and gesturing your fingers in a come hither motion to grab the waiter's attention. “What ever do you mean?” Alastor propped his elbows on the table, cupping his face with his hands as he leaned forward. His eyes swirled with curiosity. Alastor was genuinely curious to know you better— your heart skipped a beat from the notion.

“Well— most people just praise Elaine— that’s my friend… if you could even call her that— anyway, as I was saying! Most folks boast about how heavenly Elaine’s parents are for taking in a poor old nobody like me.” The waitress knew you well, so he kindly placed your usual atop the creaky table. One for you and one for your date. You offered the fellow a warm thanks before taking a sip.

“Praise? Those folks did the bare minimum! Tell me more about your friendship with Elaine, hm?” Alastor didn’t bother downing the liquor just yet. He was too enthralled by you and your musings. You felt nervous under his curious eyes— so you took another sip of the saccharine quencher before continuing. “You sure—? I feel like I’ve been talking an awful lot, and where are my manners? I haven’t asked you a single thing!” You shook your head in disbelief, feeling embarrassed with yourself for your rude display.

Alastor’s gloved fingers wrapped around your hand in the blink of an eye. Your eyes flickered down to where the two of you were now connected before his voice tore your gaze back to his face. “Nonsense, my dearest! Please, I insist. I’d be delighted to know more about you.” His words were so earnest, and he spoke with much confidence. All you could focus on was the feeling of his gloved fingertips caressing the back of your palm and the echo of your heartbeat resounding in your ears.

“Alright— if you insist… but if I ramble too much, just tell me to shut it, will ya?” You downed the last of your drink as a laugh escaped Alastor. “I would never silence you, darling. Don’t ever allow a single soul to treat you that way for that matter, understood? Now, carry on!” You felt your blood pressure spike from his kindness, and your hand twitched under his grasp from the giddiness you felt before you continued on. “U-Understood. Anyway, um, Elaine is an old-school buddy of mine. But we grew apart the older we got… so, by the time we reached junior high, she practically hated my guts!” You laughed at the recollection as the alcohol buzz began to kick in.

“Elaine would make up nasty rumors about me and then deny the fact that she did. Any other friend I tried to make, Elaine would somehow do or say something to make them dislike me. I couldn’t do anything about it— I had to play nice because of the living conditions. I still do!” Alastor’s eyes never left yours, and neither did his hand. He continued to rub the back of your palm soothingly as you rambled on.

“Even my job at the radio station… it wasn’t my choice. But Elaine’s father owns the company, so he offered me the typist position. Not like it was really an offer, though— I had no choice but to accept the opportunity. Otherwise, I would have been ungrateful. Christ, I really hate those folks… they look at me as if I’m—“

“—Scum?” Alastor chimed in. His voice was low as he leaned in closer. Your head was a bit fuzzy from the alcohol as you felt his breath fan across your cheeks. “Yeah… like scum.” You felt his hand tighten around yours. His smile was smaller than before, a bit more rigid, for that matter. 

“I knew you and I were the same. The moment laid eyes on you, I knew,” Alastor paused, bringing his free hand up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

“You see, I was treated that same way my entire life, my dear. Until I decided I was quite the opposite of what those disrespectful wretches deemed me as.” His hand lingered by your face, daring to cup your cheek. 

Alastor's breath had a hint of coffee and spice to it— you noted— as his face inched even closer to yours. “And you are too, my dear. Those fools don’t hold a candle to your magnificence.” Your body felt light, and all you could focus on was Alastor’s chestnut eyes— every breath you took fogged up his glasses a little.

“You really think so?” You muttered, a lazy grin stretching across your face as Alastor finally allowed his gloved palm to rest against your cheek. 

"I know so, my sweet girl.” He caressed your burning face with much tenderness. Your heart was beating a mile a minute, and your thoughts were all out of sorts as you tried to articulate a proper sentence in your drunken stupor. 

“What did you mean before when you said— that you and I are one and the same?”

Alastor let out a soft chuckle, causing your eyes to flutter shut for a moment. He leaned over the table, invading your personal space. Dipping his face low— lips lingering next to your ear. “You use your smile as a tool. Hiding how you truly feel behind that pretty little mask of yours.” Your breath hitched from his words— was it that obvious? Could everyone tell that your welcoming smile was nothing but a lie? Before you could spiral further— and as if Alastor could sense your worries— he eased your mind with his words. “Worry not, my dear. Only I can see through your façade. One should recognize themselves when looking into a mirror, yes?”

Alastor slowly pulled his head back. Allowing his face to come into your line of sight. “So you… and I… are alike in that way, huh?” You mumbled out, letting an airy chuckle escape you. Alastor squeezed your hand once more before he leaned back in his chair. You watched as the man sitting before you picked up his untouched glass of liquor. He downed his drink in the blink of an eye slamming his glass against the table before standing up from his seat.

“I take pride in keeping my promises, and I have intention to dance with you tonight, my dear. So, shall we?” Alastor outstretched his hands toward you, his toothy grin cascading across his features. You took hold of him without hesitation, giggling youthfully when he pulled you to your feet with ease. “I’d be delighted!” Alastor wasted no time pulling you to the open floor. The music was as vibrant as ever now that you were closer to the live band. The vibrations of the music reverberated through your sternum; as did the butterflies when you felt Alastor’s large palm drape around the small of your back.

His other hand took ahold of yours, and instinctively, you placed your other palm flat against his shoulder. Alastor began leading you to the melody of the song. Your cheeks hurt from how wide your grin was. You couldn’t remember the last time you smiled and meant it before tonight— all thanks to this mysterious man you met today. “Alastor, I know we only just met, but I feel like I’ve known you all my life!” You shouted loud enough for only Alastor to hear beyond the music. His chestnut eyes swirled with an emotion you couldn’t quite put your finger on as his eyebrows lifted in shock.

“You took the words right out of my mouth, my dearest! The moment I saw you, I knew you would be truly magnificent.” Alastor dipped you low, his grasp on you tightening to support you. He was slow when he dragged your upper half back up, allowing your chest to slot against his own. 

“Well, did I meet your expectations?” You joked. Alastor ducked his head low, allowing his face to invade your personal space. This time, his nose brushed against yours, lips mere centimeters from colliding. 

“You exceeded them.” Alastor’s voice was quiet, but you heard him. Loud and clear. 

This moment felt too good to be true, and the longer you gazed into his captivating eyes, the more lost you became in Alastor. Your lips trembled in anticipation— and your hand at his shoulder clenched and unclenched— a small habit to help ease the nerves. 

“Would it be foolish of me to say that I… feel like I’m falling for you.” Your voice was barely above a whisper as you searched for any displeasure that dared to cross his face from your confession— but you found none.

“And if I admitted to reciprocating those feelings… would that make me outlandish as well?” Alastor’s hand released yours, now opting to slide up between your bodies to cup your chin beneath his gloved fingertips. He tilted your head up just a touch more. 

Alastor finally closed the gap between your lips and his. Your eyes widened in shock from the chaste kiss he gave you. You caught Alastor’s intense stare on you while he pressed further into you before your eyelids fluttered shut. The grip you had on his shoulder tightened as his lips danced along yours. They were warm and cracked slightly from his incessant smiling. But you didn’t mind it one bit. He tasted of your favorite liquor and conviction. 

Your mind went fuzzy from the mix of alcohol running through your bloodstream and the feeling of sharing your very first kiss with a man you met only earlier today.

It’s strange. Even though you only crossed paths with Alastor this morning— he was the first person in your life to ever see you; the real you. The woman you kept hidden behind a plethora of masks and musings. You prided yourself on your foolproof façade, so when Alastor just waltzed past your guarded walls, it threw you for a loop. But this change of pace was the best thing that could have ever happened to you. For the first time in your life, you felt a sense of control over your own life— over your own freedom. Alastor believed in you, so why shouldn’t you believe in yourself?

Alastor parted his lips from yours slowly, savoring the moment with you for as long as he could. Your eyelids peeled open, taking in Alastor's pleased countenance. "Oh, my darling. There's no way I'm letting you out of my sight now."

Your heart felt full as Alastor continued his lead. You both danced to the melodic sounds, relishing in the shared embrace. That night was one that you cherished for months to come. But on the contrary, your blossoming relationship with Alastor solidified the beginning of the end. 

You could hardly stay away from Alastor after your first date. It was as if a magnetic force was pulling you to him. He walked you home from the radio station each night and met you at your doorstep each morning. He even told you one time that he memorized absloutely every part of your day so you could always have time for each other. It was the little things that made you fall even harder for him. Alastor would leave a bouquet of roses atop your desk every Friday when you took your lunch break so that when you arrived back, you would be pleasantly surprised by his gesture.

Alastor was a proper gentleman, and his kindness and care toward you almost made you forget about the rotten things in your life— almost.

Elaine grew jealous of your new beau. She noticed you were livelier than ever, and that just wouldn't cut it. Misery loves company, after all.

She had her father triple your workload, forcing you to stay after hours. It took a toll on you and made it harder to keep time for Alastor. 

But that wasn’t all— your room would be trashed by the time you came home. And somehow, your very few belongings started going missing. 

The last of your patience went out the window when you noticed the locket Alastor gifted you for your one-month anniversary was nowhere to be found. 

It didn’t take a genius to realize Elaine was behind your sudden stroke of bad luck. You put up with the torment all your life, but not anymore. You were at your wits end with Elaine and her arrogant family. 

“Christ, I hate that wicked woman!” You groaned in frustration as you barged into Alastor’s apartment. The lanky man whipped his head in your direction from where he sat at the piano. His fingers stilled against the keys, ending his song with a dull note. “What did she do this time, my dear?” You stormed over to him before slotting yourself beside Alastor on the piano bench. 

“The locket you gave me for our one-month anniversary is missing! She stole it— I just know it!” You gritted through bared teeth. Alastor wrapped an arm around your shoulder, hugging you close to his side as he cooed at you. “You know, the offer to move in with me still stands.” His voice was gentle as he placed a kiss atop your head. His large palm smoothed over your arm; in an attempt to ease your nerves. 

Heat rose to your face from the mention of his proposition. Sure, you thought about it countlessly. But you and Alastor were only approaching that six-month mark of your flourishing relationship. You always believed in the notion of waiting to live with a partner until after marriage. That’s what you conveyed Alastor. “You know we can’t… unless you are willing to get hitched tomorrow,” You joked, turning your head slightly to peer up at him. 

“Darling, you know I would marry you in a heartbeat. But one of us is not ready for marriage quite yet!” He quipped, dipping low and nuzzling his nose into yours. Your heart did a flip from his unyielding confession. 

You knew Alastor would do anything for you at this point— this man was like no other. He worshipped the ground you walked on, yet you still were on the fence about marriage. You still had your personal goals you wanted to achieve before tying the knot, and Alastor respected your wishes. But you knew deep down he was aching to put a ring on your finger and claim you as his for good. 

“Hey— don’t tease! I just… It’s becoming harder to put up with their nonsense. I wish they would all disappear! Elaine, her father, and her mother.” You let out a long sigh as your body slumped forward. You rested your head atop Alastor’s broad shoulder, smiling softly at his familiar scent. 

“Well, I could make that a reality for you, my sweet girl.” Alastor’s voice was low and dripping with mystery. You laughed at his cryptic utterance. “Yeah, by doing what? Throwing them in a ditch?” You joked, raising a brow as his hand halted against your arm. The air became thick with tension as the silence grew louder. 

“…Well yes, my dear! But the ditch part would be after all the fun.” You quickly turned to face him, your frantic eyes scanning his features for any semblance of falsehood. You found nothing of the sort. 

Alastor’s features were as relaxed as ever. As if he asked you something as mundane as 'what day was it?’

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Your voice was level as your eyes locked with his chestnut ones. You nervously anticipated his response. “Quite so! Have you noticed the lack of journalists around the radio station lately?" His question threw you for a loop. 

Now that you thought about it- yeah, there has been a lack of jerks around the office. The same fellows that undermined you just for existing. 

“Well now that you mention it— yeah, I have. What does that have to do with anything?” You tilted your head slightly, still not following where your boyfriend was going with this. Alastor’s grin sharpened as his eyes flickered to your lips. “My, dearest, you are too pure for your own good. It drives me crazy.” Alastor’s other hand drifted from the piano keys. His thumb and forefinger came up to grasp your chin. He pulled you in close as his eyes flickered back to yours. 

“Well, I took care of those nasty good-for-nothings! They are resting comfortably in a ditch deep within the preserve. So, no need to worry your pretty little head over it!” Your eyes widened from his confession— his even tone and frenzied stare proved that what he said was factual. 

“They had it coming! Speaking down to you in such a way. I could hardly stand it any longer, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.” Alastor sounded pleased with himself as he confessed to murder so casually. Your eyebrows rose in shock as he tugged you closer. Your lips ghosted over his. “You killed those men for my sake?” 

You could smell the whiskey on his breath from this proximity. Alastor’s hand— that rested on your arm— now found purchase around your waist. “Indeed, and I would do it again in a heartbeat for your sake.” You could sense his anticipation to kiss you at that moment. 

His love for you was suffocating in the best way possible. You didn’t know you were capable of drowning until you sank into his touch. “And I would take pleasure in ending Elaine and her parents’ lives. If it meant your precious mind would be at ease.” 

Your heart fluttered as you closed the gap. Your lips molded against his, moving in tandem. You turned your body toward him through your shared embrace, sliding a leg up and over the piano bench— now straddling the seat. Alastor’s grip on your waist tightened. His fingertips twitched with need as they danced further along your side. You reached out for him, desperately carding your hands through his chestnut locks. Alastor’s chest pressed tightly into yours as his lips moved against yours with a searing desire. You only dared to pull back when your lungs started burning. Alastor rested his forehead against yours as you shared the same air. 

“You really mean it?” You asked breathlessly, allowing your hands to cup his cheeks. 

“My dear, I would die for you,” Alastor paused, the pad of his thumb swiping across your bottom lip sensually. 

“I would lie for you,” His thumb pushed past your parted lips, and your tongue instinctively swirled around his deft digit. 

“I would happily follow you to hell if you asked me to.” You gave his finger a playful suck, reveling in the sight of Alastor’s deep blush. 

His chestnut gaze fixated on your mouth as you pulled off of his thumb with a wet pop. Alastor shuddered at your sultry display. His grip on your waist was firm. 

“Please, Alastor. I want to be a part of it this time. We will be unstoppable together.” 

Alastor swore he fell in love with you a thousand times over the moment those words left your lips. You couldn’t be any more perfect for him. 

Alastor wanted to tell the whole world about the colors he saw in your eyes; the colors a man out of love could never recognize. He truthfully would have married you the first day you met. It was fixation at first sight. 

He was overjoyed to commit murder alongside you— one of the many memorable first times you would come to share. Alastor saw the pieces fall into place before his very eyes the moment he witnessed you take someone’s life. 

The frenzied stare you harbored; the blood spattering over your perfect face, decorating your smile in a picturesque way. Alastor swore meeting you was his life purpose, and assisting you on your first kill solidified that sentiment for him. 

Alastor could not suppress the urge to touch you at that moment. He pulled you close, taking the lead like many times before. You danced around the dead bodies, laughter filling the barren space as the record player skipped from the other room. 

He always knew red was your color. The first time you met, you were wearing a vermillion dress. But the deep crimson blood covering you from head to toe was your best look yet— he thought. 

After you both hid the evidence and any proof of life— fabricating notes on Elaine and her parents' behalf to make it seem like they went abroad— you celebrated. 

Celebrated the past no longer having you in its clutches. 

Celebrated the freedom of never having to grin and bear it to survive; ever again. 

Celebrated the ever-growing love you held for Alastor— as he did you. 

Celebrated the new beginnings and the best that was yet to come. 

You saw life in a new light from that day forward, seizing each day with delight. 

With Elaine’s father out of the picture, Alastor became the man in charge at the radio station. He had full creative freedom to take his radio show in any direction he pleased. If folks dared to disagree, Alastor would promptly take care of them. 

Business was booming for Alastor at the radio station, and you were finally out pursuing hobbies and careers that inspired you. 

Alastor ended up popping the question a couple of months later as things began to settle down for you both. It was romantic, really. His gesture was over the top and grand in the best way possible but still entirely authentic to Alastor. You finally felt ready to take the next step in your relationship. And so, you said yes. 

Alastor was over the moon when you agreed. You could have sworn you saw a single tear roll down his cheek— but he denies it vehemently. 

You didn’t have any friends or family, and neither did Alastor— with his mom having passed years prior, so you truthfully had no need for a grand ceremony. Alastor sorted out the date for you to be wed. The anticipation only elevated your excitement by the day. And when the date finally approached, you could hardly contain your joy. 

You took on the day like any other— you made breakfast, hung the laundry on the clotheslines, participated in your favorite pastimes, and met up with Alastor in the preserve to assist him in burying his most recent victim. 

You didn’t know the dead fellow, but you were sure Alastor had a fair reason for killing him. The man probably took the last jar of special spice from the store that Alastor used to recreate his mother’s jambalaya— and in that case, the prick had it coming. 

It was dusk. The sky was a mesmerizing red and orange ombré as you walked hand in hand through the woods with Alastor. Your free hand held a shovel, and his free hand gripped the ankle of the deceased man whom he dragged from behind along the rocky path. Now and then, the dead man’s clothing would cling to a stubborn stone, making Alastor halt in his stride. You would share a chuckle before he tugged the man free, continuing down the path with you by his side. 

You were so excited to get this over with, so you could head to the courthouse with your beloved Alastor. As you recited your vows in your head, you suddenly heard a loud boom before your hearing failed you entirely. Everything was motionless after that. 

Your mind scarcely processed what had happened until you turned to face Alastor. The sight before you had your stomach in knots. Your beloved was bleeding from his forehead, and as if you were in slow motion— your arms reached up to him as his legs buckled beneath him. You knew you were screaming by the burning sensation in your throat, but your ears were still ringing in a deafening manner. The last thing your conscious mind ever saw was the grim view of all light leaving Alastor’s eyes. 

Those same eyes that grounded you. That brought you purpose and offered you nothing but love and devotion.

All of that was gone in a split second.

After that, you felt a searing pain in your head before your vision went dark. 

It was as if you were underwater. You felt lighter than air as you sunk deeper into uncharted waters. You could hear muffled voices and flashing lights shining from the surface— but it was all out of reach. You just sunk peacefully. Enjoying the enshrouding darkness. 

However, your peace was torn from you as quickly as it was obtained. 

“She’s a Jane Doe. Poor girl got caught in the crossfire. I bet she didn’t even know the guy she was walking with was a serial killer!” Your eyes burned from the bright lights and the nauseating white ceiling that took up your line of sight as the distant people continued to chatter. “I bet he tricked her into thinking he was a good guy— bet he led her out in those woods just so he could kill her like that poor fellow he was dragging out there!” 

The rhythmic beeping increased as all your focus shifted to the intense shooting pain coming from your head. “Oh— she’s awake! Miss, can you hear me?” You groaned softly as an older woman came into your line of sight. She was peering over you. You must have been lying down— you thought. 

“Loud and clear.” You mumbled, trying to sit up only to be pushed back down by the stranger. “Miss you can’t do that! You’re in the hospital. You suffered from a severe injury. Please, don’t make any sudden movements.” Her words took a moment to process through your semi-conscious mind. 

“What happened to me?” You managed to mutter as you closed your eyes. The intense lights were causing your head to ache even worse. “Miss, you were shot in the head. It was a hunting accident gone wrong,” The nurse paused, giving you a moment to digest her words before continuing. 

“Turns out the man you were out in those woods with was a wanted serial killer. That Alastor fellow was an active murderer for decades! The papers say he was good at steering clear of the cops for all these years. The hunter wasn’t even aiming for you both. His target was a nearby deer,” Your mind was struggling to piece things together as the nurse rambled along. 

“The bullet you took probably was the exact reason you’re still alive! Who knows what that maniac would have done to you? Which reminds me, do you remember your name, sweetheart? You didn’t have identification on your person. We asked around the area to see if anyone recognizes you, but we've had no luck with that.” 

You were surely dreaming, right? 

Everything this woman was saying sounded outlandish. How did you even end up in a situation like that, and more importantly— 

Wait… what is your name? 

“I… I don’t know. I can’t… remember a thing.” You shook your head, which only caused you more pain as your eyes shot open. You were still met by the sight of the noisy nurse, and the white hospital walls. 

Nope, not a dream.

The nurse looked at you with a horrified look. “Oh geez… the doctor said your injury could cause memory loss, but it was a slim chance. Let me go fetch him. This is way out of my pay grade.” The sound of her footsteps echoed through your head before they slowly dissipated. You gaped up at the blank wall. 

A clean slate, nothing to give the surface any character. 

Ironic. 

You had no clue who you were and no memories of your life before this accident. 

You were left with more questions than answers. 

The only thing you knew about yourself was that you were one of many Jane Doe's. 

Fuck.

tags; @danveration @celestial-vomit @jyoongim @stygianoir @polytheatrix @mmik3yy @littlebullofblythe @cxrsedwxrlds @lillithhearts @nogiggleonlybitter @minniemumbles @chewbrry @lbcreations-blog @nonetheartist @call-me-nyxx @zombiesnips-blog @stawberrypimpsimp @wonderlandangelsposts @villxinmiixx @persephoneblck @maxlynn17 @littledolly2345 @karolinda007-blog @falling-endlessly @greekyoghurtwithberries @bladeismine @aloraaaxcrystalzx @doctorswife221b @scaramoochiie @fairyv-ice @chirikoheina @veroneverleft @tired-of-life-86 @saccharine-nectarine @c-thegingergirl @tsunaki @geminixbunny @softangxlicss @alleystore @sirens-and-moonflowers @fairyv-ice @honey132 @alastorsaries @zenix108 @michi-keinz

[prettyfastcars]

As sweet as blood-red jam | Mob!Lando

Summary: Lando could be many things given the nature of his job. Mean, commandeering, a control freak. But when he came home to you and the kids, he was the sweetest man you’d ever met. Your marriage to him was arranged of course, because that’s how things worked in the world you were both from. But love eventually grew between the two of you, and it did not stop growing. 

Themes: dad!Lando, fluff, smut, arranged marriage, domestic!mob!Lando, mild mommy/daddy kink (nicknames only), praise kink, housewife!reader, breeding kink

“They’re sleeping.” 

He announced cheerfully, shutting the door behind him as he walked into your library where you had been reading in silence for the past half an hour. 

You were a stay-at-home mom so the twins, your son and daughter, were under your care all day. And so Lando insisted that you get the evening off the moment he got home. He read to them and tucked them in for the night each night. It was part of his routine and he loved it. 

You placed your wine glass down and picked up the drink you made for him, handing it to him as he came over to sit down next to you on the large sofa. 

His eyes lit up at the sight of the well-deserved drink. “Oh you’re perfect, baby.” He kissed your forehead before getting comfortable next to you, sighing as he leaned his head back, closing his eyes for a brief moment. 

“They’ve been running around all day, they went to see the horses,” You said, thinking about how energetic your kids had been during the day, “I thought they would pass out after dinner but they wanted to wait for daddy.” 

Your husband smiled, looking a little tired as he took a sip of his drink. You caressed his cheek with a gentle hand as he turned to give you a soft look with those gorgeous eyes of his. 

He looked more relaxed and comfortable like this, wearing nothing but dark sweatpants. As opposed to the authoritative figure he is during the day in his expensive, dark suits. Him in casual clothing like this made you realise that he was in fact just a young man, barely 25, who shouldered a lot of weight alone. 

Responsibilities, expectations, risks, reputation, legacy, and now his own family. You’d come a long way, the two of you. Only a couple years ago you were just strangers being introduced at a gala. And now you were young parents. 

You still remember the night you met him for the first time. How gently he held your hand and danced with you. How your engagement was announced only a few months after and the wedding happened quicker than you thought. 

You always thought that you would forever be strangers living under the same roof. Especially given his reputation of being a workaholic which made him such an influential figure in his line of work. 

But Lando proved you wrong. He actually took the time to get to know you early on in your marriage, he cared, he listened. He was good to you. Then a year later, you had the twins and Lando had been perfect. Perfect partner, perfect dad. 

“What are you thinking about, mama?” He asked softly, his hand leisurely caressing your exposed thigh. That golden chain on his neck shining in the dimmed lights of the library. No shirt so you shamelessly ogled his defined abs and muscles. He let you, with a smirk on his handsome face. 

You put the book aside and leaned a little closer to him, cupping his rough chin in your hand. He’d been growing facial hair lately and you liked it. “You work too hard,” You said softly. 

He smiled, leaning into the warmth of your hand as he said, “Just wanna give you and the kids everything you want and need. You deserve it.” 

He had given you everything. Houses, cars, chauffeurs, chefs, private planes, private trainers, cards with no spending limits, vacations. You and the kids were well taken care of. 

You sighed, sliding over and ending up perfectly on his lap. Lando finished his drink, placed the glass aside and grabbed you by the waist to pull you closer. “But we have everything we could ever want or need.” You suggested, “Take a day off. Or two. I’m taking the kids shopping tomorrow, come spend the day with us.” 

Lando gave you a faint smile, “Can’t right now, baby. Some important shipments are about to come in. I can’t afford a day off until it gets here.” 

You rolled your eyes, making him chuckle and pull you closer. “But I barely see you.” You murmured. “The last time we had a date night was like, weeks ago.” 

Your face got really hot just thinking about it. Not just the date, but what happened after in the car on the way home… 

Lando smirked, surely also thinking about the same thing, grabbing you by the hips and gently moving you on his lap, rubbing you against his growing erection. You hissed in pleasure as he did. The soft, silky night dress you were wearing bunched up around your upper thighs, allowing you to feel everything. The shape of him, the warmth. 

“If you wanted a lovesick romeo who writes you love notes every morning then you shouldn’t have agreed to marry a man like me.” He taunted, teasing you and pinching your thigh. 

You reached out and grabbed his gold chain, tugging on it playfully, knowing how much he liked it when you did. “Unfortunately I like my men a little more corrupted,” You whispered, “Bonus points if they work all the time and don’t have time for me.” You sassed. 

Lando chuckled, leaning in to kiss along your jaw. “Aww, what is it?” He cooed, “You miss daddy? Hmm? Does mommy need some extra love from daddy tonight?” 

You nodded. 

“Come here, baby,” He pressed his mouth to yours as his hands caressed your inner thighs. He kissed you like he was starving, while your hands reached down in between your bodies and eagerly lowered his sweatpants to free his cock. 

You whimpered into the kiss, against his lips as you wrapped your hand around him, stroking his hard cock, making him groan into the kiss before he pulled away and said, “Daddy missed you too.” He murmured, looking down to watch how your hand touched him just how he liked it. “Fuck,” He sighed, “That feels good, baby…” 

His praise gave you enough confidence to stroke him harder, making him groan and moan. You loved the sounds he made. And you wanted to keep hearing those moans so you carefully lifted your lower body off his, pulled your underwear to the side and slowly lowered yourself down on his cock, earning louder moans out of his sinful mouth as you sank down on him. 

You were wet enough for his cock to slide in, but your body still resisted just a little bit, enough for him to have to thrust up the tiniest bit to fully fill you up. You cried out as he did. 

His soft lips parted just a little, and you couldn’t resist leaning in and sliding your tongue into his mouth. You whimpered against his lips, stroking the top of his mouth as you lifted up and sank back down on his cock, making him growl into the messy kiss. 

“That’s it, baby… fuck yourself on daddy’s cock…” Lando’s hands rubbed up and down your thighs again as he gently thrust his hips up each time, setting a pace that had you both moaning and wanting more of each other. 

Your fingers slid into his hair, scratching his scalp and down his neck as the tip of his cock reached sensitive places inside you. 

Lando chuckled when he felt you clench around him. “We’re not using protection again, mama…” He spoke against your open mouth, breathless as you were, “You’re gonna give me another kid, huh?” He sounded cocky as he said it, like it filled him with pride. “Gonna let me fill you up again till you walk around all nice and swollen with my baby in you, hmm?” 

You whined, feeling him stretch you out each time you moved up and down his cock. “Lando… please,” You gasped as his hand slipped between the two of you and found your clit, he rubbed it lazily. 

“Answer me,” He demanded, “You’re gonna carry another one for me?” His voice sent chills down your back. 

“Yes,” You whimpered, moving faster, impaling yourself down on his cock and whimpering shamelessly as you felt him filling you up completely each time, feeling him reach deeper into you with each thrust. Your lips brushed against his each time you moved up and down his cock, feeling him stretch you out as you stared into his ridiculously pretty eyes. You couldn’t help but speak the thoughts of your lust-drunk mind, “I want you to fill me up again,” You mumbled, feeling yourself getting high up there gradually. 

Lando laughed, also lust-drunk, “I can’t wait…” He said, “Can’t wait to come home and find you dripping wet for me.” His voice gave away that he was thinking back to how needy you were for him all throughout your previous pregnancy. 

You whimpered, thinking about it as well. Some evenings he’d come home and you dragged him to the bedroom immediately. Some days you even called him and asked him if he could come home for an hour or two. Lando happily agreed each time of course. 

“Remember how sensitive you’d get? How needy?” He teased, holding you close. “How you almost cried each time I made you come?” He smirked, male pride all over his face. “Some of the best months of my life those were.” 

You whined, “Please…” You stared into his pretty eyes. 

“Come for me.” He growled in that cold, menacing, erotic voice. “Come for daddy…” 

And you did. Whimpering, squirming and whining. You didn’t slow down as you felt your orgasm wash over you, and Lando kept thrusting his hips up into you as your eyes rolled back and you moaned out loud as you came hard, feeling your walls squeezing and clenching around him.

Lando came right after you, moaning and spilling inside of you, filling you up as you trembled and squirmed on his lap. You leaned forward, pushing your face into his neck to catch your breath while he held you against him, kissing the side of your face softly. 

“You okay, baby?” He asked after a few minutes of you two just cuddling there on the sofa. 

You nodded, “Mhmm, don’t wanna get up.” You murmured, sighing in bliss as you snuggled into his warm chest. 

He chuckled, “Okay.” He kissed the stop of your head. “I love you,” He whispered.

[suckerforblondeathletes]

Head Injuries and kisses - Alexia Putellas

Alexia Putellas x Fem!Reader

Part 1 of 2

Summary: During the championships you go down with a head injury, worrying Alexia, her family, and everyone in the stadium.

Warnings: MENTIONS OF BLOOD AND INJURY!!!

Authors Note: Another championship fic guys, I hope you enjoy part 1!

You had nerves before being subbed on the pitch. Not scared about the game, well kind of. But mostly scared to play bad in front of Alexias family.

Alexia the night before said they would be in attendance, and would like to meet you in the end, making your nerves and fear of not being enough go insanely high.

She reassured you that they had watched you play multiple time on barcelona, telling you how they complemented your goals and skills.

The nerves followed you to now, being subbed on at 34 minute mark.

The crowd when your face was on the subsitution board. Everyone cheering to watch their favorite player do what she does best.

Running on the pitch, you take your position, you glance over at Alexia and she gives you a reassuring smile. One that eases your nerves for a split second.

Now at 48 minutes, you have been running back and forth, getting more frustrated when you notice how the opposing team are being very aggressive.

You spot an open position near the goal, running full force, waiting for a ball to be kicked your way. When it comes, so does a player, crashing into like a brick wall.

Sending you down, moving to clutch your forehead when you feel a sharp sting of a football boot collide with your head on your way down.

Without your knowledge, two player were running at you. When the first one took you down, the other was running too fast and trying to slow down she put her foot out in front of her, which wasn't grass, but your head.

You sit there for a couple seconds until you feel the warm hands of your girlfriend touch your back. Coming around to wonder why you haven't gotten up yet.

You feel warm liquid pool in your hand quickly, running down your face and covering your hand and neck. But from your position, on your knees with you head towards the ground and in your hands, the blood was unseen.

You feel Alexia slowly pull you up from your position, and the look on her face when she sees the blood is gut wrenching. She looked scared and worried at the same time, not knowing what happened completely, but the amount of blood which is now seen by everyone in the stadium is not healthy.

You see the medics run over immediately, you being close to the side lines when you collided helping them get there quicker.

"Alexia what's going on?" You have a shake in your voice as her hands come up to your forehead, trying to lessen the amount of blood spilling from your head, coating her hands as well.

"Shh bebita the medics are coming, you just cut your head, it will be okay." She did seem sure in her sentence, trying to keep calm for you. Patri behind her, rubbing her back which helped her keep her composure.

When the medics arrive they lay you down on your back, and usher your teammates and the opposing teammate who collided with you away to give them space.

Alexia stared daggers into the Lyons head, silently telling them that they fucked up, and if there weren't hundreds if not thousands of people here right now, they would be in a bigger situation then just a stare.

Pina noticing that, walked over, handing her a wet towel to wash the blood off her hand and pulling her away from the opposing woman.

The medics go and grab more bandages, leaving you lying on the pitch with two other medics, they just sit there making sure you don't pass out or walk away.

You start to look around, still feeling blood coating your face which isn't a good feeling but what can you do at the moment?

You heart drops out of your ass and runs away to score a goal when you make eye contact with two women in the sidelines who look like copies of Alexia 100%.

They have worry etched on their face, when you make eye contact with Alba, she waves at you. Well this is just wonderful.

You smile at the sweet women and and lightly lift your hand, feeling too tired to do anything else.

It was a sweet moment, you felt like everything else just shut out, and it was a bonding moment between the two of you, as awkward as it sounds.

The medics come back over and finish up their process. When they tell you that you shouldn't come back on the pitch, you feel overwhelmed.

You worked so hard to get here, and can't even play. You feel tears prickle your eyes as they help you stand up, earning you a round of cheering and claps through out the stadium.

You start crying when you notice you can walk, you lost too much blood, and are too tired to walk.

Your sure the two women can see you crying. But your so overwhelmed that you cancel the thought out.

They medics lay you back down, earning confused faces from everyone.

"We need to carry you off okay-"

"I want Alexia to carry me off" You don't let the man finish before interrupting, you not wanting anyone else in that moment.

They nod before one of them signals to a worried Alexia who was already close and watching while biting her nails.

She runs over full speed and crouches down, listening to them talk while she brushes hair from your tear coated face.

"She has lost too much blood and is unable to walk off, would you carry her?" They ask and worry fills her eyes even more hearing that you cant walk.

Nodding, she kisses the crown of your head before picking you up bridal style.

She carries you with ease, making eye contact with her mother and sister before exiting the pitch entirely.

She walks into the medical room, laying your down on a bed making sure your comfortable.

"Okay amor, I have to go back out and play okay? Te amo mucho." (I love you so much). You nod with tears in your eyes, kissing her on the lips before she walks out.

You look up, trying to keep your tears in but failing, breaking down in the room, full of devastation and disappointment.

Likes and Reblogs are appreciated!

[heartpascal]

is it freedom?

▹— spiderverse (future) found family x platonic!reader

▹— summary: after losing everything, you struggle to accept the one thing you needed all along.

▹— a/n: ok i have been enabled by exactly two (2!) people. (thank you both) SO dare i start a spiderverse series??? IF YALL WANT MORE OF THIS… I WILL DO IT. this is really just a set up thing idk but i feel like arachnid has potential for further parts and ACTUAL found family!! also haven’t tagged people on my general taglist bc idk if you guys want to be tagged in ALL works or just all pedro works :(

▹— warnings: slight across the spiderverse spoilers, not really found family yet, injuries, blood, treating own injuries, stitches, fighting (canon-typical violence yall), dead parents (mentioned a LOT), a whole lot of angst (it’s a spider-person so what do we expect), reader has a whole lot of bad thoughts, loneliness, isolation

masterlist PART TWO

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

Had you known what this, this thing, would lead to, you would have never started it. Not that you had done so purposely, at least to begin with, more so happening as an event of pure chance. You were in the right place at the right time, and since then, you had been addicted.

But if you could go back, look at yourself just a year younger than you are now, tell that kid what would come if you went through with saving a life for the first time, you wondered. It was a question that scratched deep in your brain, sending you off balance the more you thought about it; would you have still done it? Would you have saved that person’s life, knowing it would lead to your own falling apart?

You would like to think yes. In fact, you know that back then, when your eyes were bright at the prospect of helping people, when you still marvelled at the world like it was good, you would have been certain that it would be worth it. Why should that person die, just to save you? It’s a harrowing realisation. A conclusion that makes your fingers tremble, your voice shake. Now, you’re not sure you would do it. You don’t think you could bear to face that decision knowing what you know of the world around you now.

It’s something cruel, really, that the spider that bit you gave you these powers, and nothing to go back and fix your mistakes. Your perceived victories. Your losses.

But the worst has already happened, and the only one left to die is you, so you carry on. You don the suit every day, you sew up your own injuries on the top floor of the abandoned offices that you’ve claimed as your own. Each day, you wake when you choose, you sleep when you want to, and you work yourself down to your very bones with nobody to object.

The hollow feeling in your gut is a pain you have no choice to ignore, to smother with assurances that this is freedom. What else could it be? You do whatever you so please, you spend your time swinging through the streets of New York rather than doing schoolwork at home, you eat all the junk you could ever have wanted.

It’s freedom. It has to be.

You tell yourself that you don’t miss the home part of having to do schoolwork, promise your heart that you don’t miss home-cooked meals as opposed to greasy food that leaves you unsatisfied. You swear that you like having nobody to tell you what to do. There’s no other choice, after all.

And each day, when you spend a little bit longer out on the streets, getting yourself into needless fights that the police could certainly handle, you tell yourself it’s because you’re protecting the city. You convince yourself that it’s not because of having an unending rage to satiate, or a permanent feeling of breathlessness when you leave police to handle anything, as if you could relive the moment your father, the captain, was left to handle something he couldn’t.

So, you’re almost relieved by the appearance of something… strange. Something dangerous. This is what you live for — this is your job.

You crouch against the wall, fingers splayed and suit itching where you had crudely sewn it back together across your ribs at an almost too-close call. You hold your breath, you watch. The lenses over your eyes shield your sensitive sight from the harshest colours of this new opponent, who looks almost… unreal. Too different to be a part of reality. He yells out, seemingly glitching? A distorted scream of what is apparently pain, accompanied by flashes of colour that are unfamiliar to you.

“Well, that doesn’t look good.” You comment, eyebrows raised beneath your mask, and the strange looking guy snaps his head towards you, long hair slapping across the goggles over his eyes. He bares his teeth at you, something almost resembling a grin marring his face.

“Spider-man!” He yells triumphantly, cackling as he wipes the hair away from his face, tendrils unfurling from behind his back and lifting him into the air.

“Not quite!” You call back, dodging below the metallic arm that shoots towards where your head was, crumbling through the wall. You try to think back to the jokes you used to tell to rile up whoever you were facing, but find your mind is blank. Instead, all you can think of is questions. “Where the hell did you come from, anyway?”

The man follows you as you spring from wall to wall, heading towards the center of the building where it tunnels up for about forty floors, balconies overlooking the fountain below. “A new spider, eh? Well I’ll take you down just as easily as I have the other!” He tells you, though you’re immediately suspicious of his statement. You’re the only Spider-related hero around, and even if you weren’t, you doubt this guy could squash a worm, let alone you.

“Sure thing, man.” You say, sighing, already exhausted by the repetitiveness that comes with every fight. Your opponents always say they’ll beat you, kill you, squish you, take you down, and yet you always get back up at the end of the fight, and they always remain defeated. When you started doing this, you never would have thought you’d get so tired from winning all the time.

And yet here you are, slipping further and further up the building with the octopus-looking guy chasing after you, metal arms crumbling walls and bannisters on his way up. He falters once more, another one of those glitch-like movements sending him down a few floors, but he’s quick to recover. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.

You crouch down on one balcony, somewhere around the thirty mark floor-wise, peering down at the guy as he shakes lingering pain from his body. He charges upwards, aiming to reach you quickly with an almost predatory smirk on his face. Before he can even get close to you, however, you’re back on the move, setting a trap for him that he doesn’t even seem to notice.

It’s only when a group of late workers emerge on what you’re pretty sure is the twenty-first floor that you become more anxious about this fight. You don’t like when civilians are involved.

There’s about a dozen of them crowding the balcony, looking up to where you’re facing off with octopus-man above, some having begun to descend the stairs to the next floor before catching on to your presence. You try not to draw attention to them, but their pointing and whispering sets the Spidey-sense off, ringing loudly between your ears, almost deafening in its intensity. Maybe you underestimated this guy. The flash of a camera sends the last hope of him not noticing down the drain, and he grins at you as he switches targets, climbing down towards them with some semblance of caution.

You’re much faster than he is, dropping down and using a web to catch yourself rather than having to climb. It’s hard to stop yourself from yelling at them, cursing them out for being so damn foolish — who in their right mind would stick around a very dangerous fight to take pictures?

Instead, you choose to yell, “Get out! Go, go, go.” And usher them down the stairs, but it’s not difficult to realise that this guy is going to get to them before they manage to descend to the bottom. You shouldn’t be surprised, really. Nothing is ever as simple as it could be, not for you.

The split second decision to drop down and form a net-like web low enough to catch the workers worked out for you in the end, as you swung back up and pushed the workers off of the balcony and stairway just as the octopus man was reaching them. He cursed at you, refocusing his efforts on you as you vaguely noted the workers clambering down after their screaming had stopped. Honestly — did people really have so little faith in you? Had you ever sent anybody to their death before?

“You are just as pesky of an insect as Spider-man!” He growled out, teeth gritted, and came after you with renewed force. He kind of reminded you of that doctor you faced not long after getting your powers, but this guy looked completely different. The doctor you faced — aptly named Doc Ock — had turned himself into some form of a mutant, he had reinforced tentacles which sprouted from his back. Was this guy some kind of copy cat? Maybe he was just delusional.

“I don’t know who Spider-man is, man!” You shout to him as you ascend the building again, trying to figure out the best way to take this guy down. His tentacles seem electronic, so surely you could disable whatever machinery resides on his back?

“That’d be me.” A voice came from above you, two floors ahead of your position. Your head snapped towards it, seeing a man in a blue and red suit, framed by a burst of orange behind him. He didn’t linger up there long, instead moving to leap down to the guy who had turned his attention to the new guy. The closer you looked at this new guy, the more similarities you saw to yourself — his webs looked remarkably similar to your own, the pattern that went across his suit matched your own, even the wide white lenses that shielded your eyes on your mask. Who the hell was this guy?

The octopus man grinned widely, shaking greasy hair from his face. “Ah, finally! The real Spider-man. Got yourself a new protégé, I see.” He drawled, dodging this new guy’s hit straight off of the bat. You tried not to get annoyed at being referred to as a protégé, considering as far as you were aware, you were the only Spider-person around. Where was this guy when you were holding a bridge full of civilians together? Where was he when you took down villain after villain, never once failing to get the guy? No — you were the real Spider-man, if anyone.

“I don’t know who you are, man, but I’m handling this just fine.” You call to the guy, swinging down to rejoin the fight, webbing the villain’s metal tentacles to the wall behind him, before dropping down to kick him towards the wall.

“Oh, so you know how to send this guy back to his own dimension?” Spider-man asks you, eyebrows raised beneath his mask, and as if on cue, the guy glitches once more, ripping his arms away from the wall and just about catching himself on a balcony below before he could fall into your net.

You gape at the new guy, glancing back up to where the burst of orange remains opened, and is that a portal? Is this Spider-man from another dimension? Is that why you’ve never heard of him before? God, if your mother was alive, she’d kill to find out about this. Inter-dimensional travel was something she had spent her life researching. If you didn’t remain so bitter toward her even after her death, you might’ve been sad she wasn’t alive to see this.

But you were bitter, and it made the experience all the worse.

Because you’re pretty sure that that bitterness takes the place of grief within you. It’s hard to understand why you crave to feel that pain, that grief, as opposed to the aching resentment that floods you with the thought of her. It’s such a sharp contrast to thinking of your father, your kind father, the man who threw himself into a battle he couldn’t have hoped to survive, just on the off chance he could save somebody. You hope you take after him.

“Wait— you’re from another dimension?” You question anyway, eyes flickering between the battle and the looming portal above. In fact, you’re so distracted by finding out about that tidbit of information that you miss octopus man aim a tentacle for you, and it snatches you around the ankle. “Oh, you gotta be kidding me—!”

The man waves you around like some kind of rag doll, and you try not to be too bitter about being caught off guard. You should probably learn that getting caught up in your little pity party always ends up badly, always distracts you from that renowned Spidey-sense. You formulate a plan in your mind when the drip of blood around your ankle draws your attention back to the battle at hand.

You web the wall opposite and hold on tight, pausing the movements and letting the dizziness that had come over you fade away. The man growls out in annoyance, and gets closer to cut the webs with another tentacle, which is exactly what you planned for. The tension from the webs launches you towards him when you let go, and in his surprise, the metal tentacle releases you. You wrap around him, and start webbing up the machinery embedded in his back as Spider-man distracts most of the tentacles, keeping them from pulling you off.

His tentacles start faltering, clearly not obeying his movements, and you wrap them up where they emerge from his back, continuing along until the movement is so limited that he has to use them all to clutch onto the nearest balcony.

You crawl up the tentacles in the very same spidery manner that you’re known for, and crouch, watching the octopus man struggle as Spider-man observes from the balcony opposite. “You wanna finish this one off, Spider-man?” You ask, unable to hide any bitterness from your tone at his mostly unhelpful actions throughout the battle.

“Hey, not bad!” He praises, and it annoys you. You’re good at what you do — for the most part. You manage without help constantly, and that’s the way you prefer it. “You’d make a good addition to the Spider Society!”

Now, you don’t know what the Spider Society is. But honestly? You don’t care. You don’t need help, and you prefer working alone, and you certainly don’t like feeling patronised.

“Whatever, man. Just send him back to whatever dimension he came from.” You tell the guy, and drop down as you hear sirens outside, landing on your injured ankle and just about stopping yourself from cursing. Through all the adrenaline and fighting, you’d forgotten about the way the metal had ripped into your skin, drawn blood. It’s just be another place you’d have to sew up your suit with itchy, uneven stitching. “Officers,” You greet as they open the doors, guns drawn, radios murmuring. “All taken care of. Civilians okay?”

“Shaken up, but fine.” The leading police officer says, immediately relaxing and holstering his weapon. You wish it reassured you that the police trusted you now, but it didn’t. Nonetheless, the other officers follow suit. “Thank you, Arachnid.”

The name your world has bestowed upon you has yet to grow on you, but you nod your head regardless, and salute them as you make your way out, swinging across the city, trying to put the existence of the multiverse and inter-dimensional travel out of your mind. Surprisingly, it’s pretty easy when you have a busted ankle to fix up.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

You’re halfway through stitching up your suit, having already sewn your skin back together with as much skill as you possessed in the matter — which was, not much. But the bleeding has stopped, and your stupidly slow healing will take care of it within a few days. You know that the itchy stitches on your suit will just irritate the injury, and though you wouldn’t lose anything if your identity was revealed, it doesn’t feel right to go out into the city with any part of you on show.

No, you wear the suit for a reason. You keep every part of yourself covered because nobody can know it’s you underneath the suit. Not because you had anything to lose, no, you had already lost everything. It was because then you could never make a mistake, you would have to be absolutely perfect, flawless, to make up for the fact that it was you underneath the layer.

So, you settle with a sewn suit that will itch and make the stitches on your ankle sting.

However, when there’s a burst of orange across the room, you have no choice but to forgo the suit, to simply drop the needle and thread and hover your fingers over your web shooters. You wait, nervously, for some other villain to appear. You’re not sure if Spider-man appearing would be better or worse.

But when a foot steps through the portal, it’s nobody familiar. In fact, it’s a suit you have never seen before, made up of dark blues and bright reds, sharp edges and long claws. It’s… unnerving, and considering the silence coming from the person wearing it, you’re not entirely certain of what they’re here for.

A moment later and another person steps through, a woman, with bright yellow lenses across her eyes that filter her irises into an amber. She steps forward, standing beside the person who had stepped through first, and if she hadn’t showed up, you would’ve been tempted to attack. With that being said, you remain on edge, but there’s something… comforting about her presence. Like her presence softens the man’s jagged edges.

She says your name, and then adds, “Arachnid.”

You furrow your brows and curse as you glance back at the suit so crudely laid out on the floor. Still, it doesn’t explain how she knows your name. Was it an inter-dimensional thing?

“Spider-man told us about your work in capturing Doc Ock earlier.” She tells you, as if that explains their presence. You did what you were supposed to do, which was take out the bad guys. “We’re here to offer you a place in the Spider Society.”

You can’t help but wonder if this is some kind of good cop, bad cop thing. She presents an offer which doesn’t sound too bad, and then her sharp-edged companion presents all the drawbacks and the catches. They don’t seem like the type to take no for an answer, either way. You still don’t even know what this Spider Society was! Was it some kind of multi-dimensional cult?

“I already told Spider-man that I wasn’t interested in joining whatever cult you’ve got going on.” You practically hiss, though you didn’t exactly tell him in such blatant words. You were more dismissive earlier, so you’d have to be clear now.

“It’s not a cult,” The man speaks, voice harsh and sharp much like the blades that branch from his forearms. “We work to protect the multiverse from anomalies that threaten to destroy it.”

The woman glances at him in a way that you translate as being vaguely annoyed, like he wasn’t approaching you in the way she had wanted him to. “He means to say that it’s a big job, and we need all the help we can get.” She says, softer, but only in comparison to the man’s harshness. “Listen, kid, you’re good at what you do. We need that kind of talent.”

“You’ll have to find it somewhere else.” You say firmly, because why would you want to leave your universe? This was a lot to think about when you had only learned of the multiverse existing mere hours ago. Regardless, you weren’t about to abandon your city just to go across the multiverse to help other heroes who couldn’t keep a leash on their own villains.

The two of them shared a look, a mere glance, before the woman heaved a sigh. “Look,” She sighed, heavily, like whatever she was about to say was something she didn’t want to be voicing. “Before you make your choice, you should know, your Green Goblin is currently terrorising another universe.”

You couldn’t work out if this was some kind of recruitment tactic, or something. That just wasn’t possible. You had put Gwen Stacy in the highest security prison after all antidotes to her goblin-tech failed. She was stuck in there — permanently. There was no way she had gotten out, let alone gotten out to another universe.

…Right?

It’s hard not to think of the memories at the mention of her—Green Goblin, not Gwen Stacy. Never Gwen Stacy. You wonder if this is where your fear comes from, the terrifying fact that you are remembered only for your mistakes. Because before she was the Green Goblin, she was Gwen. She was everything to you. She was the sun you orbited, the stars that charted your path. And it hurts, it hurts that you can only remember the blood and the dust and the destruction when you think of her.

People aren’t born as monsters, are they?

Like the spider that bit you, that invertebrate that so many fear, it was born the way it was. It was born with those fang-lined maws, with those eight legs and dozens of eyes. It was made into the monster it became, artificially crafted to deliver a venom that changed you forever. But it wasn’t born that way.

Surely, Gwen wasn’t either. She was kind. You remember that about her. You can remember her soft hands that used to hold your own, the loud laughter that always ended in a snort when she laughed at her own jokes, the gentle eyes that stared into your very soul. But those eyes are the very same ones that let her see through your mask, let her see exactly where to hit you to make it hurt. Was that what she was born as? Or is that what she was made into? A killer. A monster.

“Show me.” You say, because what else could you possibly respond? If what they’re saying is true, if the Green Goblin is loose once more, then people will die.

You can’t let her get fresh blood on her hands. Not when somewhere, deep inside your chest, so far down it’s almost unreachable, you have hope for her. You have an innate desire to look for the best in her, even when the Gwen you knew was the first life that the Green Goblin took.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

If there’s one thing you’ve taken from being Arachnid, it’s to expect the unexpected. And you go through the orange portal after Jessica Drew and Miguel O’Hara with that exact mindset about you, staring at where an orange watch-like device is wrapped around your wrist.

It’s in your nature to be suspicious, and these people weren’t an exception to that.

In fact, their presence only heightened that behaviour. After all, what were you to expect from two Spider people, who supposedly came to you for your help?

You weren’t blind, you saw the aged lines of their faces the moment you got close enough to see them clearly, away from the dim lighting of the building. They were adults, adults who had clearly been doing this type of thing a lot longer than you had. You, who was barely bordering on adult, who had fought enough battles already to last a lifetime — so why would they need you?

It didn’t feel right.

And when this Miguel person summoned Lyla the moment you walked through the portal, it felt all the more wrong. She was a hologram of some kind, much higher tech than the kind of thing you saw on your earth. But then again, you had never really been in high tech labs back in your earth. Still, it unsettled you. “Lyla, get me the location of Green Goblin, Earth 5011.” He commanded, and they argued in hushed voices for a moment, before a wider hologram appeared, stamped at Earth 3899.

“How did she get to another universe?” You ask, then, because it doesn’t make sense, and you’re shaking underneath the thin material of your suit. You’re hyper aware of each drag of stitching against the wound on your leg, each patch of fabric you had sewn on in hopes of the suit lasting you just a little longer, because you didn’t have the resource to produce a new one.

“It’s an anomaly.” Jessica Drew tells you, her tone softer than you’d heard it, as if she was attempting to reassure you in some way.

It didn’t help. But how could it? The last time you had faced Gwen Stacy—Green Goblin— you had lost so much. It had been the beginning of the end of everything good in your life. The explosion she had caused at your mother’s laboratory was the very same one that killed her, the very same explosion that sent you and your dad miles apart all while living in the same home. And still, you found a way to hope that there was something to salvage within Gwen.

But not only had you lost your mother, and not long after — your father, you had also lost your closest friend. The one person you had confided in, who knew you from your surface to the deepest level, and she had used that against you the moment the Goblin had taken over.

It had taken everything in you to beat her, back then.

And that was on home turf! How did these people expect you to do that a second time, in a completely unfamiliar place?

“Specifics aren’t important right now. Jessica, you take Arachnid. Lyla, send another one of the teams.” Miguel instructed, dismissing your questions right off the bat. It was frustrating. They were leaving you completely in the dark, and sending you to fight the worst enemy you had ever faced, and they were sending you alongside others like you from different universes. It was like asking you to bare your soul in front of them, to reveal your secrets, your deepest regrets, everything that you wanted to stay buried.

You knew Green Goblin. You knew that’s exactly what she would do. She would undermine you, she would lay your life out in front of you like tiles on a scrabble board. In the end, none of it amounted to much.

Jessica Drew made her way out, glancing at you and nodding for you to follow along. Your moment of hesitation had drawn Miguel’s attention, and he called out to you after a moment of hesitation. “We’ve all faced one like it, kid. It’s easier with others.” He told you, though he held a pained expression on his face all the while. Instead of admitting to the way he had hit the nail right on the head, you simply nodded and followed after Spider-woman.

It was a whirlwind from there.

Meeting up with others. Travelling the length of the so-called Lobby to wherever it was that Jessica was taking you. When you finally arrived, she offered an empty glass box with a mannequin inside, bare. She gestured towards it like it should’ve been self explanatory, but soon realised she’d have to spell it out for you.

You shouldn’t have been so upset by the offer of a new suit.

But you were.

This suit was your life. You had nothing outside of it, not anymore. You couldn’t just throw it away, as if it meant nothing, as if every rip and patch and wonky stitch didn’t mean anything. These were proof that what you were doing was real, that it was worth something. Each stitch proved you had value. You weren’t about to throw all of that away, especially for whatever overly technical suit these people would provide.

You had everything you needed.

And so Jessica led you to the next destination: Earth 3899.

The moment you stepped through the portal, it was like you were hit with a wave of familiarity. And not in a positive, slightly nostalgic way, no— this was chaos. This was the state your world had been in when Green Goblin ran riot, unchecked. She had torn apart buildings, blown up parks, she had set New York City aflame. And she was doing exactly the same here.

It was more contained here than it had been on your earth, and you had to assume that was thanks to the Spider-man already on site, coordinating police, ambulance and fire responses to douse the fires as quickly as she set them. If only the police in your city had trusted you so much, back then.

“Where is she?” You ask, the moment you get close enough to speak to the resident Spider-man of the universe. He looks at you as if you’re familiar, but doesn’t comment, instead just pointing a finger toward a skyscraper just a short way ahead. You’re gone the moment he tells you where to go.

She had the uncanny ability to stay quiet. It had freaked you own back on your own earth, but it was even more terrifying here, where things were ever so slightly different.

“Arachnid.” Gwen’s voice called, and for a moment, you could forget. You could forget every horrible thing the Goblin had done, and you could remember your friend, your Gwen, who had called out to Arachnid more than once without knowing it was you behind the mask. Whether it was for a story or to provide information on your most recent opponent, the voice calling your alias was familiar. But then there was that crackle of laughter, an unnatural gurgle in the way it left her throat, and you turned to see the green-tinged pallor of her skin. “I was so hoping you’d show up.”

You didn’t know how much her appearance would effect you, until you were stuck to the side of the building, staring at what had once been your best friend. You’re so choked up that you can’t even formulate a response, because you want that to be Gwen so badly, but you know it isn’t. The more you look at her, the more Goblin you see, the more you know that the Gwen you love is never coming back.

“Nothing to say?” She asks, and then says your real name, the name she used to say down the crackle of a phone line, or across the school hallway, and she smiles. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“You should’ve stayed in prison, Gwen.” You say, your voice unsteady as you say her name aloud for the first time in what must be forever. She seems to relish in the tremble of your voice, and you have to curse yourself for being so stupid, for already showing the vulnerability she was so easily able to pick out.

The Green Goblin tutted at you, stood atop her glider, but the smile you saw didn’t belong to Gwen. “You’re pathetically predictable, you know. You’re like a moth to the flame.” She tells you, and you fear that she’s right, that you’re the same person you were back when you fought her, back when she almost won. She sighs, like something heavy is weighing upon her, but it turns wistful in the blink of an eye. “I’m just glad your dad isn’t here to see this. He’d be so disappointed.”

“Arachnid, focus.” Jessica’s voice interrupts, before you can spiral down that rabbit hole. How did Gwen even know about your father? She was in prison long before he died. It didn’t make sense.

“Maybe,” You say, that familiar tremble around your words. “He did always hope for the best for you.”

She bares her teeth at your words, the only visible reaction before her mask is slipping over the bottom of her face, stretching out up to pointed ears, all metallic and tinted a murky green. Then, she’s attacking.

It’s muscle memory, mostly, you think.

If you don’t think too hard about it, it could be like playing a game with a longtime friend from your childhood. You know the moves to make, you know how she’ll respond. It’s a constant push and pull, a balance which leaves only destruction behind, the path of the Green Goblin’s wrath tangible in each battle scene the two of you leave behind. You can’t beat her like this.

It’s her glitching that gives you a slight upper hand — and you send her careening off of her glider to the ground below.

Your heart squeezes suddenly in your chest as you watch her fall, her eyes wide in what could almost be perceived as fear. If you didn’t intervene, would she die? Would you have put an end to her story, once and for all, when you secretly hope there’s a cure out there for her? You can’t bear the thought of finding out, of watching her die, and so you foolishly dive after her.

A web to her midsection allows you to grip her before she hits the ground, and you set her down with a far more gentle hand than you would ever admit.

She says your name, then, a whispered version of it that sounds like Gwen. You think you can see her in those wide blue eyes, in that stare, and you approach with some caution. “Gwen,” You say, more of a question, “You with me?”

“I’m with you,” She answers, as you reach her side, as you resist the urge to pull off your mask. You’re so preoccupied staring at her expression that you don’t see the blade until it’s too late, your Spidey-sense failing you as you wallowed in your search for someone who was gone. “You sweet, predictable bug.” She spits then, twisting the blade she had sunk deep into your side, and you writhe, trying to move away from her.

“Arachnid!” Jessica Drew calls out, drawing the Green Goblin’s attention, allowing you to pull away from her slackened grasp. You leave the blade where it is, knowing your only slightly enhanced healing wouldn’t make up for the onslaught of blood that would pour from the wound. “I think that’s enough, Green Goblin.” Jessica says, riding a motorbike that you swore she didn’t have earlier. Nonetheless, she uses it to put even more space between you and your villain.

“You need a hand, kid?” A new voice asks, and a gloved hand reaches out for you where you had knelt against the tarmac. You look up, seeing a new Spider-man, but this one has his mask up, showing off his aged face and the bags underneath his eyes. You wave him off, staggering up to your feet, and clench your jaw as you stare at Green Goblin, watch as she pulls bombs from her waistband, barely the size of a chocolate bar, but capable of causing irreparable damage. “Get back to HQ, Arachnid, we can handle this.” Spider-man tells you, in what you suspect to be a fatherly voice, but you ignore him.

Time flies, slips out of your grasp, and you don’t know how long you and the others spend fighting Green Goblin, but she proves to be just as difficult of a foe for them to face as she was for you. Each time the three of you manage to get the drop on her, she slips away before she could be caught. It’s frustrating, and you can even see the way irritation thickens in the air, tangible.

Spider-man, or Peter, as Jessica had called him, is with you, focusing on trying to take Green Goblin down, whilst Jessica Drew is focused on damage control, blowing up Gwen’s bombs before they could hit their intended targets. You’re pretty sure the resident Spider-man is around here, too, pulling any lingering citizens out of harms way before Green Goblin could end them. You’d admit, it works better than you had done alone back on your own earth.

But it doesn’t work well enough, and more than one building is damaged almost beyond repair, and in the dust and rubble, Peter was distracted by the few citizens poking their heads out of the gaping hole in the side of their apartments. He didn’t see Green Goblin coming until it was too late, until she had thrown two of her bombs, one towards him, and one towards the already wrecked building.

Your throat dries up as you try to figure out what to do, who to go for, but in the end, you don’t have to choose.

Beams of glowing orange webs shoot into the bombs where they arc towards their victims, blowing them up and leaving both Peter and the civilians in the apartments without a scratch on any of them. Well, nothing that wasn’t already there before. You see him then, running alongside Jessica Drew, none other than Miguel O’Hara — who clearly didn’t think that the three of you were capable of handling Green Goblin.

“We’ve gotta end this.” Peter tells the three of you, glaring over at Green Goblin after coming so close to one of her bombs.

“You distract, I’ll go in.” You say, the only plan that makes sense. The only plan that’ll work. You wouldn’t be much use as a distraction, not with the blood still pooling around the blade hanging from your side, but you could beat her. You knew you could.

Peter nodded, and he, Jessica and Miguel went in one after another, landing hits on Green Goblin before she could even think to withdraw another bomb, or land a hit of her own, whilst you made your way behind her, swinging as high as you dared to go in your state. She was getting angry, you could tell, a distinct flush rushing up the back of her neck, a tell that Green Goblin shared with Gwen.

It was only when she was starting to turn the tide that you jumped down from your spot against the side of a building, looking for your opening.

She sent Jessica Drew tumbling off of her motorbike, which was your chance.

Green Goblin heard you only a moment before you were on her, not giving her a chance to make a countermove. Instead, you were curling your arms around her, as tight as you could, holding her hands away from her waistband. You gripped the blade in your side and yanked it out, holding it to her chest, breathing heavily through the pain as you bared your teeth at her, her face beside your own.

“Don’t make me kill you.” You say, and try not to hear the pleading in your own voice, the distinctive tone of a beg. You may have the upper hand on her, but as always, she had the power. “Don’t.” You repeat, because you can feel it in your bones that you would do it. If it was the choice between her or the hundreds that she would kill on this world, it would be those hundreds. There was no doubt about it, no questions to be asked.

You may have resented your mother, but she wasn’t the only one who died because of the Green Goblin. You wouldn’t let that happen again.

Perhaps she heard the plea in your voice, the giveaway that you weren’t bluffing, because she went still in your arms, still enough for the other Spiders to approach with some caution, eyes on her hands where you held them away from any weapons, using your forearm connected to the hand holding the blade to her chest to keep her left hand from grasping anything.

“I won’t be asking again.” You tell her, which is as much of a threat as you can muster. Or, more so, a promise.

As Miguel pushed you back with a firm hand, throwing a machine at Gwen’s feet, you think she understands. If the two of you are ever in that position again, there will be no hesitation about it. You will kill her.

“Good work, kid.” Peter says as Miguel and Jessica get to work with getting your Green Goblin through a portal to the HQ. He glanced down at where your hand is now pressing into your side, blood pouring steadily. In your other hand, you still hold the blade that had pierced your own skin, that would have killed Gwen Stacy had she not surrendered. He winces as if it’s him who got hurt, and guides you through the portal after the others. “C’mon, we’ll get you checked out. You not got enhanced healing?” He asks, though you suspect he doesn’t expect you to answer, and you’re glad.

∘₊✧───── ───── ───── ─────✧₊∘

“I can do this myself, you know.” You sigh, wincing as a Spider-man — who apparently is also a doctor and works in the Spider Society’s infirmary — stitches up the wound on your midsection. It’s uncomfortable, though less painful that when you do it yourself. Still, it’s uncomfortable to accept help from these strangers.

“Ooh, shouldn’t say that to him.” Peter B. Parker laughs, one of the many Peter Parkers of the Society, but the same one who had fought Green Goblin with you. “He’ll lecture you on proper healthcare for days if you give him the opportunity!”

The Spider-doctor glares at Peter, or you assume he does, from the slight squint of the lenses of his mask. He kisses his teeth under the mask, tutting, muttering about “Spiders and their complete disregard for their health. Lucky you haven’t died ten times over from infections.” But he doesn’t say anything that requires a response from you, and he soon finished up the stitches. He goes to offer to fix up the injury on your ankle, but you’re up on your feet before he can even get the words out.

“Now, I gotta get back home to the wife, but Miguel wants to see you. He’ll take you home,” Peter tells you as he walks out of the infirmary by your side, but he stops you in the hallway with a hand on your shoulder, surprisingly gentle. “If that’s what you want.”

Your eyebrows furrowed before you could stop them, and the confusion over his words must’ve been written all over your face.

“Why wouldn’t I want that?” You ask, defensively.

Peter opens his mouth, but nothing escapes. Instead, it’s his expression that tells you everything he’s thinking. The crease between his brows screams pitying, or sympathetic. He’s talking about the way you live back on your earth, about the life you lead, Arachnid by day, and by night. With no room for you, no room for your secret identity. He’s thinking of the way you’ll be returning to a world with nobody awaiting you, with not a soul to look out for you, to stitch you up after a battle. Nobody but yourself, anyway.

You pull away from him, brows furrowing further, into an almost angered expression, and you don’t watch the way his hand falls away from your shoulder back to his side. He sighs when you turn away, scoffing as you make your way through the hallways of the Lobby towards where you think Miguel will be.

It’s overwhelming, all of these people. They all believe that they know you, that they know your circumstances, your story, but the truth is that they don’t. Nobody does, and that’s the way you prefer it. You don’t need a Society of Spiders surrounding you, breathing down your neck, telling you they’re sorry, or not trusting you to handle yourself in your own fights, because you can handle yourself. You’ve spent the last year of your life trying to prove that, trying to prove that you can do good things, that you’re worthy of the title Arachnid. You certainly shouldn’t need to prove that to a whole Society of people like you, most of which had been doing the job a lot longer.

You’re capable and you’re content.

You don’t need a life as your secret identity to be content, in fact, it’s better without one. You don’t have to tell so many lies, don’t have to worry about hurting the people you love, because there are none of them left. There’s nobody to hurt, and there’s nobody to lie to. Why would you want to change that?

The hallway ahead looks familiar, and you follow it until you enter a room where Miguel stands, looking at orange tinted screens on a platform halfway up the room. You enter with the absolute certainty that you want to return to your own earth, and you’re not going to let anybody stop you.

“I’m ready.” You tell him, expectantly.

He scoffs, saying nothing, still staring at the screens in front of him. For whatever reason, the reaction makes you angry — inexplicably so. You’re slinging up to the platform before you can have a second thought about it, and you’re pushing his shoulder so he’ll face you, so he’ll acknowledge you.

He stares at you, unimpressed.

“Send me back to my earth.” You press, brows furrowed beneath your mask, but you’re sure he can see the anger in the way your shoulders tense up.

“Sure,” Miguel said blankly, staring at you as if you’d suddenly change your mind or something. “But you know, there’s a lot more like her.” He added on when you said nothing, waiting for him to send you back to your world so you could give him back the stupid watch still wrapped around your wrist.

You stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language. “There are no more like her.” You respond, feeling that hot press on your chest. You don’t want to talk about Gwen Stacy anymore than you’re sure he’d like to talk about whatever he had gone through in his life. Hell, you don’t even want to think about her, but you know that nobody else you would ever have to face would hurt you in the way that she did. In the way that having to see her as an enemy, rather than your friend, had hurt. So, yeah, there was nobody like her, not for you.

Miguel seems ready to let you go for a moment, but then he’s shaking his head at you. “You have a place here. You can be with people like you. You don’t have to do this alone, anymore.” He says, and you think that is ironic, because you don’t see anybody else in here. To you, it seems like he is doing exactly that; doing the job alone. You can practically see the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“I prefer being alone.” You tell him, and it has to be true. It has to be.

His jaw sets, acceptance, you think, and he nods. He glances past you, to where a portal was open on the floor below. Considering that you hadn’t seen him set up the portal, you’d wager that his AI Lyla must’ve listened in and done it for him. You pull the watch off of your wrist, relishing in the way your very atoms seem to sag with the weight of being in another dimension.

“Thanks.” You say, and drop down, landing on your sore ankle but not murmuring a word about the pain. You walk back to your world with your head held high, despite your tattered suit and multitude of wounds that would take days to stop hurting.

Miguel stares after you as the portal closes, eyebrows furrowed. He barely acknowledges Jessica Drew’s arrival in the room, already having known she had been lingering in the hallway, listening in. “Well, that went well.” She comments, glancing between where the portal had been and where Miguel stands, brooding. She knows how much pressure he puts on himself, and she knows that he cares about each and every Spider-person in the multiverse. It doesn’t take a Spider-sense to see the way in which you struggle. It’s a familiar struggle, sure, but there were so many Spiders across the multiverse who had a shoulder to lean on in their hardest times. Who did you have? There was no Aunt May for Arachnid, or Gwen Stacy, or Harry Osborne, or, well, anybody.

Jessica thinks that if anybody were to know exactly how that felt, it would be Miguel.

[writtenbymoonflower]

Hi there I was wondering if you would be comfortable writing a poly!maurauders x reader where the reader struggles with an eating disorder. Like she is from a pure blood family and it was a bad habit she picked up. I totally understand if you wouldn’t want to write something like that however!

hi lovely! thank you for requesting, i hope this is okay

cw: general discussion of ed struggles and thoughts (including restriction, binging, and purging, not detailed), swearing, sexual joke implying rough play (towards the end)

1k words

You weren’t sure how long you had been in the kitchen for, but it started to feel like an excessive amount of time. You stared into the cupboards, scanning the shelves for something to eat. Both everything and nothing was appetizing. You would then give up, sighing in disdain before repeating the same process with the fridge, then the freezer, then back to the cupboards, then the freezer again to make sure-

The door opened, a bag dropped, shoes squeaked against the hardwood floors. 

“Hey, angel!” James barrelled into the kitchen. You turned towards him so he could embrace you. 

“Hey, Jamie. You’re back early.” He looked at you questioningly, cutting his eyes to the oven clock. 

Shit! It had been that long? 

“Oh wow!” You laughed uncomfortably. “I must’ve lost track of time.” You shrugged as Sirius slid into the kitchen, patting your ass as he walked past. You turned your now-warm face in his direction. He opened the cupboard, immediately finding a snack and eating with ease. It made you jealous to see the boys eat with so much levity. They never denied their cravings in favor of something smaller, or even nothing at all. They never stared a hole into every nutrition label, wondering how days of food would have to be restricted to compensate, or how many steps would have to be taken to burn every bite off, or how easy it would come back up. They never wallowed in hunger for hours, or ate to the point of pain. Their moral value had never been questioned based off of the food they chose to eat (or not eat). You must’ve been staring in wonder for a long time, because Sirius had quirked a dark brow at you. 

“You checking me out, babydoll?” He teased. You shook your flaming face, looking away from him and mumbling an apology. The quick motion had you seeing spots though, and you brought a hand to your head in hopes of steadying yourself. 

“Shit, sweetheart.” James grabbed your face, looking you over for any visible injuries. 

“Sorry, I just got a bit lightheaded.” This called the two boys to alert fast. 

“Yeah, baby?” Sirius asked carefully. He crooked a finger at you, beckoning you over while James quickly went to get you some water. He felt your face, which was now cold, he scrunched his brows in concern. He moved his hands to your hips, hoping that would keep you steady. You took the water from James, noticing the pinkish hue.

“It’s electrolytes. It will taste good I promise.” He reassured. The taste wasn’t what you were worried about. “When did you last eat, angel?” That was the dreaded question. You struggled through the dense fog of memory. 

“Umm, me and Remus ate together earlier. I’m not sure when, though.” You did remember exactly what you had eaten, though. With a little too much clarity for comfort. Like magic, Remus appeared, holding three empty mugs of tea. 

“What are you gossiping about me for?” His voice would seem monotone to most, but you could hear the humor in it. 

“Remus, love,” James asked gently. “When did you and Y/N eat?” 

“We had a late breakfast after you two left today.” He responded suspiciously. You winced. It hadn’t felt like that long ago. The time it took for Remus to understand the situation was very little. 

“Did you forget to eat today, honey?” James’ anxiety was evident. You could tell he was hoping it was forgetfulness, as opposed to the other possibility. 

“Yeah. I tried to find something a while ago but nothing looked good.” They knew you got like this. Too much choice, nothing made the voice inside your head happy. 

“That’s okay.” James’ hand was rubbing a soothing path up and down your arm. “I haven’t had dinner yet, we can find something together.” He pressed his lips to your forehead before turning to the other two in the room. “Have you two eaten yet?” 

“Not since lunch, no.” Remus slipped back out of the room. 

“I mean, I could always eat.” Sirius said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Remus returned, carrying upwards of ten bars of chocolate. 

“Have some of this, dovey.” Remus picked out your favorite, starting to break it into chunks for you. 

“Rem, it’s okay.” You panicked. Your brain was screaming, both in want for food and in rejection. “I don’t need it.” 

“Sure you do.” He said, nonchalant. You picked up a bar of chocolate, flipping the package over. You didn’t have a chance to look before James took it from you. 

“Baby!” He laughed in disbelief. “I can’t believe you thought we would let you do that.” He was right. Since the boys picked up on your issues, they always tried to hide these things from you. Bottles would be handed with the label facing away from you, they would read items off of the menu at restaurants, hoping you wouldn’t look yourself, and the scale in the bathroom had strangely disappeared. Something that apparently Sirius ‘didn’t even notice, dolly, that’s funny.’

“Here, open up.” Sirius grabbed a square of chocolate from Remus’ stash. “Say, ahh.” He teased. 

“Siri,” You laughed. “I don’t need you to feed me.” 

“So? I want to. Stop being so selfish.” You let him place the chocolate in your mouth, rolling your eyes at him. He apparently took great offense to your attitude, deciding to worm his fingers into your waist in revenge. You tried desperately to bat his hands away. 

“Careful, pads.” James tried to scold, obvious humor and affection slipping into his tone. “You’ll make her choke.” Sirius grunted in disdain. 

“I guess you’re right.” Sirius kissed you, mouth still full of chocolate. You pulled away, dizzied to chug water.

“Thought that choking was my job.” Remus said casually. You nearly spit your water out.

[dragons-and-handcuffs]

Maegor Targaryen x reader

It was not your choice or decision to marry Maegor the cruel. In fact you had already given your heart to another. A son of a lord. But in the seven kingdom everything is about power. Maegor needed the strength and support of your house, and your father wanted the cruel king to marry one of his daughters.

You along with your sisters were presented before the king. Your sisters dressed to attract the king, to get his attention and to tempt him. You, however, choose to dress modestly, thinking Maegor would not even look at you. Praying that he picks one of your sisters so that your path is clear to marry the man you love.

However, Maegor's eyes only remained on you. The girl who is clearly trying to not catch his attention. The girl who is longing to marry someone else. No matter how much your sisters tried they didn't manage to catch the King's eyes.

There was no way your father was going to oppose the marriage, not when he tried so hard to have his blood and name associated with the Targaryen.

Everything was happening fast. The man you love disappeared, probably killed or ran away to save himself from the cruel king. You had to move into the palace. The wedding preparations were happening. Your father started treating you as if you are the most precious and delicate jewel. Your sisters were taking every chance they got to insult you and express their jealousy. And then there is Maegor, your husband to be.

Maegor is pretty sure you have captured his heart. Whenever he can he would insist you join him for dinner or lunch. Just you two. He wants to know you better but you remain cold. He couldn't help but chuckle or smile in amusement whenever he sees you in your modest clothes, while your sisters and his other wives try to show as much skin as possible to gain his attention.

Most of his wives were jealous and felt threatened, while the rest felt relieved that Maegor's cruel eyes are not on them.

In a matter of short time you have witnessed Maegor's cruelty several times, not towards you but to those who tried to defy him or betray him. You even saw him cut a man in half right in the court room. You were scared. You were shaking.

And then came the wedding. Your father made you wear your house sigil on the wedding dress, embroidered in gold to show everyone how powerful his house is. He gave your hand to Maegor who then put his heavy Targaryen cloak on you. Throughout the ceremony your heart was beating like crazy.

Maegor had his arm around you throughout the feast. He could sense your anxiousness. Everyone showering you with gifts, gold, jewels, but none of them mattered, not when you felt like you are getting trapped in a cage with a cruel dragon.

For the bedding ceremony everyone was certain Maegor would do his absolute worst, just like he did to his other wives. Nobody cared though. And your family certainly didn't care. Your father told, no, ordered you to do your best to satisfy the beast of man. Your sisters eagerly waiting for you to get your "punishment" for taking the king away from them. Maegor however surprised everyone. Usually he prefers breaking the will of his wives and taming them, but not with you. He ordered everyone to leave, taking you by surprise. No one had the courage to say a word against it.

Maegor held you close, your back pressed against his chest as he felt you up, whispering how he can't wait to claim you. You want to push him away but you can't, and also your body has started to betray you. Maegor knows it. He soon learned how your body likes to be touched. You almost stopped breathing when he took off your dress. Normally he would have ripped it, but not this time. You both remembered all the you covered yourself completely hoping Maegor would not choose you, but here you are now, naked and soon to be claimed by him.

Tears rolled down your face when Maegor slowly claimed you. You felt like you were getting ripped and torn. You wanted to scream but only soft moans left your lips. Maegor pinning you down to the bed and kissing you while he thrust in and out of you. He looked so proud when you reached your climax, showing you, telling you how it was just the beginning.

The next morning you woke up feeling sore and exhausted. Maegor was not there but he did order the maid to take good care of you before he left. You were barely out of the bed when your father barged in with a maester. He was really happy to see the blood on the bedsheet, the proof that the bedding ceremony was a success and Maegor has claimed you.

For a moment you thought your father brought the maester to check if you were okay after what happened the previous night. But you were wrong. The maester was there to check if Maegor has properly "claimed" you and see if everything with you is okay to survive a pregnancy, to give Maegor the heir he so desperately wants and to ensure your father's blood gets to sit on the iron throne.

It's the first time in your life you have said "no" to your father. You refuse to go through that humiliation. At first your father was in disbelief, tried to laugh it off and ordered you to lay on the bed for the maester. Something inside you snapped. You called the guards standing outside the door and ordered them to take away your father and lock him in his room, and throw the maester in a cell. The guards obeyed you without any questions. The first time in your life you stood up for yourself. You felt the weight on your shoulders slightly lifting.

The news instantly reached Maegor. He was surprised and proud, but also angry. Your father had no right over you after your wedding, and what he did or was about to do not only insults you but also insults the king.

Maegor didn't visit you that night, in fact you didn't see him the entire day. But the next morning he asked you to go for a walk with him. You were surprised when he took you to his dragon, Balerion. Your first time seeing a dragon so close. Maegor grabbed your hand and took you closer, telling you the black dread won't hurt you. And he was right. The dragon didn't show any sign of anger or annoyance when Maegor put your hand on him. Even Maegor was surprised. You were amazed how something so big and scary was just resting so peacefully. But the dragon soon sat up when the guards dragged the maester to him.

Maegor holding you close, telling you he will protect you and punish anyone who hurt you in any way. The maester begged for his life but couldn't even finish two sentences before Balerion set him on fire.

You knew exactly what was coming next. Your family. The cruel look in Maegor's eyes told you he had something planned for your father and the rest of the family as well. You can't beg. You won't beg. But you can't just let them die.

That night Maegor visited you. You hate to admit how your body betrays you every time he touches you.

Once Maegor was asleep right next to you you pulled out a dagger from under your pillow. Your heart beating fast as you saddled him carefully pressed the dagger against his throat. You have never taken a life. You have never even killed a life. But you were certain that killing Maegor would spare hundreds of innocent lives.

You almost gathered up all your courage to slit his throat, about to apply pressure when Maegor gave you a small crooked smile which turned into an evil one when he opened his eyes. "Do it. Kill me," He smiled at you. He grabbed your hand and applied pressure against his neck, causing the dagger to slightly cut the skin. "If you don't kill me now then I will never let you go. I will claim you every night. And I will kill anyone who dares to even look at you in the wrong way."

You were at a loss for words. You don't want your family to die but also you can't kill Maegor.

He felt your grip on the dagger loosen. He quickly flipped you, and now you are the one pinned on the beg and he was on top of you. He snatched the dagger and pressed it against your neck and his other hand pinning both your arms above your head.

He let out a soft but cruel laugh before kissing you. You don't know why but you kissed him back. Maybe you were lying to yourself. Maybe you can see yourself being his wife. Maybe you could see yourself loving this cruel dragon one day.

Maegor never felt so satisfied before then he did when he fucked you with the dagger pressed against your neck. He knew you were the one for him when you cum while he teased you with the dagger. He knew behind all your modesty and innocence there was a part who craved the mad dragon.

Maegor was there when you woke up the next morning. You felt his arm wrap around you and pull you closer to him. Both of you naked, your back pressed against his chest. He put the dagger in your hand, taking you by surprise. After last night you were certain he would remove everything from your reach which you could use as a weapon.

"One day you will decide to punish your family for all their crimes against you, and that day you will need this," Maegor kissed you as he made you hold the dagger. "And I won't stop you...my queen"

Part 2? Idk

[one-piece-aus]

What would marriage life would be like with the seven warlords?

This is an old anon request, I do apologize for not getting to it sooner but here we go

What Marriage Life Would Be Like With the Seven Warlords (Headcanons)

It's pretty chill being married to Mihawk

Y'all just vibe in a mansion on an isolated island

I imagine Mihawk is a person of quality time and acts of service so the two of you would often spend time together

Whether it's reading in your library or cooking dinner for each other, every moment you do together and action you do for him is cherished in Mihawk's heart, even if he doesn't mention it

He makes sure you're healthy and well (eating properly, making sure you get your sleep)

This man will be able to instantly tell if your state is the slightest bit off and will not hesitate to voice his concern

He is not opposed to having children, the idea might amuse him

In fact, after Zoro and Perona had made their appearance, Mihawk grew fond of the idea taking care of his own child, even if they would be irritating at times

Btw, Zoro and Perona think you two act like an old married couple ❤

Only way this would be possible is if you are someone like Luffy

She might not understand exactly what marriage life means but she will do her best to make you happy

She is going to cook for you and feed you

She will bathe you and make sure you have the best clothes to wear

And she will order the best doctors to bring you back to your best health if you get sick

She is taking ✨amazing✨ care of you

The two of you are just living the life of luxury regardless of where you choose to live because you two are together and happy

You will not have kids (for a number of reasons that I will not get into because this is supposed to be a fun post)

Alright, I had no idea what to do for Moria so I asked @ask-the-night-crowl for these headcanons, thank you again Snugs

In a marriage, Moria would totally rely on his partner to fulfill all the duties he has/ should be responsible for. Granted, the other mysterious four already take over most of those, but someone has to keep them all in check.

His spouse better not be aversed by his crew, because for as much as he says he doesn't care about these idiots, he would also face death to protect them.

Unless him and his s/o have known eachother for a pretty long time, he'll try to keep them at an arm's length. Not necessarily because they don't have good enough of a connection, but the idea of loss is always on his mind.

He doesn't mind affection. In fact, he'll back-handedly seek it out by annoying his s/o until they give him attention if he so desires. He's pretty much like an oversized cat.

On the other hand, you'll also have to be prepared not to see him for days on end, because of his sleeping habits (Again, like a cat).

But in that time, cuddling with him is totally fine, because once that man is out, he sleeps like a rock.

His frequent nightmares might lead to the conclusion that comforting him would be the answer. But he hates the idea of being treated as weak as that and would much rather appreaciate the mere presence of his s/o when he wakes up next to them.

In contrast, he'll offer the same to his s/o when they feel down and would have an immediate (even petty) grudge against anyone harming them.

Staying in with him at a fireplace, drinking fancy wines and making fun of the other warlords would be his favorite way to spend time when he's awake for once.

If the spouse is good at cooking, you can bet they'll become his personal chef - after all, love goes through the stomach amirite.

If you're marrying Doffy, his family comes as a package deal, you can't have him without it, that being said, he expects you to get along with them (you can tolerate them instead but just don't let him notice)

Of course, he will expect you to take care of Baby 5, Buffalo, and Dellinger as if they were your children, he is open to making blood offsprings, but never put them before him

Doffy is your number 1 priority, whatever he says goes

But just because he's demanding doesn't mean he won't show you affection, in fact, most of his demands is just him wanting to give or receive affection

You are showed in gifts and luxury, he is the king of Dressrosa afterall, your word has every weight as his own since your are his queen

He is proud to show off his spouse, you are his most prized possession after all

However, you are more than just a trophy, after the loss of his dear mother and brother, he holds you close and tells you how dear you are to him every night

You are often woken up in the middle of the night due to his rustling from nightmares, just hold him to calm him down

Crocodile keeps you in the dark about his work, for all you know, he is a casino owner in Alabasta that keeps the people safe from pirates since he's a warlord

He takes you out for a stroll around in the evening, outside to admire the stars, or in the casino where your every need is met

He doesn't show affection in public but his gestures do show you belong to him and no one else

He keeps you company in bed at night until you fall asleep but when you wake up, he is not there, he's working as always

When see him next, he'll have a gift for you, an apology for not being able to always be around as he is a very busy man, but he'll make it up to you

I imagine it would be comfortable, like little cottage in nature kind of comfy

You both would wake up in the morning with a nice cup of tea

Your place would be clean and organized

You'd receive lots of comforting hugs and cuddles

Life would be peaceful

Until strawhat crew comes knocking on your door

Don't quite have any ideas for Kuma so... This is end, I hope you enjoy anon, and thank you for requesting

[darylsfavoritegirl]

Hi i love how you write! could you please write some headcanons about daryl and reader being enemies to lovers?? like if they hated eachother in the beginning like at the quarry and by the end they are utterly in love and they would do anything for eachother

hey anon, first of all thank you :))

+ i think daryl would have biases towards you for things so little, maybe the way you carry yourself and he thought you were too bougie and a show-off -considering how much of a cranky person he was in the first few seasons, i doubt it would take much to annoy him-

+ he'd try to shrug it off, hating how much you take space in his mind because "who even r' yea?"

+ you'd eventually -wouldn't take much of a time- catch on that this man is irked by you for whatever reason and you'd stand your ground -which would mess things up even further-

+ i mean, after all, it's the apocalpyse, you don't know half of the people you're surrounded with at all times, even having to share tents with some of them occasionally. there is no sense of being discreet. so having a redneck talk over you, him not even acknowledging your existence in a group of people when your planning a scavenge/run is eventually... ridiculously vexing...

+ "can you shut the fuck up for a second?

so i was saying..." you'd turn to Shane, explaining your point of view on the run that's to come in a week.

Shane's ear would be on alert listening to you but he wouldn't skip exchanging subtle, cautious glances with the rest of the group. everyone tried to avoid getting into any dixon brothers trouble. they'd take guard against them if really needed but out of all them, you were the one to mess up with him, next to his brother.

+ and well... there is merle dixon. he'd sometimes talk off daryl infront of everyone in mockery but in a more frowning way in discreet saying "Darlenaaa" he'd click his tongue. "what the hell are yea doin' lettin' that woman run her mouth to ma' little brother like that infront of them worthless pricks?"

"shut up" he'd bark to merle.

safe to say, the times he snapped at you would be the aftermaths of merle's mockery.

+ two of you would get close after sophia got lost, by then you and the group had become familiar and you worried for the little girl.

he'd still snap at you and so would you, ruining the nights of y'alls and hershel's family together at dinner tables that were so rare to occur.

"yea ain't no damn tracker." he'd mutter under his breath when it was like the group had sworn to say a last word about sophia's dissapperance for the night, as you all sat down on the dinner table.

"i'm helping." you'd try to prevent your blood boiling and in time, bursting out your rage.

"yea'd be more of a use 'round here"

"excuse me?" you'd look at him in disbelief, dropping your fork and spoon to the table infront of you like a theatre kid.

it would take 5 minutes of heated yellings, veins throbbing on the side of people's necks, faces starting to turn red and for it all to stop, it would take hershel's smacking the table making you all shut your mouths for the rest of the evening.

+ you'd grow even closer when he fell off a horse and as much as you hated to admit it, a part of you that was looking for that girl and knowing that at the other side of the woods, he was also looking... that would make you feel at ease, even daring to think of it as a companionship, if not a partnership that neither of you had signed figuretively. there was no point in looking without him. the woods were too big to cover.

+ you'd be assigned to take care of him time to time. when you opposed the idea, no one listened to you and it wasn't like you could leave him to fend for himself as a bedbound.

his brain would be too numb thanks to the painkillers and antibiotics. he had fever. there were a few nights you sitting on a rocking chair, your eyelids betraying you and daring to shut down but you'd flinch to his mumbles, him tossing and turning on the bed, his incoherent words to whatever nightmare he was having. you'd wonder. what was he seeing in those nightmares that sweat droplets would slide down his temples to the pillows.

the first night you'd sigh, why were you the one wiping his sweaty forehead? why were you the one whispering soothing words that were half silent so that he'd atleast get a good nights sleep, when all he has done was to humiliate you, look down on you, not even concealing his despise towards you?

the second night, you took a deep breath and appreciated how a spine-chilling redneck could be defenseless like this. hell, you even took a joy at the idea, the ends of your lips curling upwards with a wicked smile.

+ after hershel's farm was overrun and you unfortunately found out the hard way that sophia had gotten bitten, you found solace at eachother's existence. in the end, it was the two of you, looking for her day and night.

+ merle dying had benefits for daryl as much as one hates to say. that's when he, after a lost, again, found solace at your presence.

you'd be at the watchtower this time, smoking a cigarette, looking at the sunset. you didn't need words, maybe it was because you still weren't that close or because what would even one say? funny to think, you found out about his brother dying after 3 days. you hated yourself for not noticing something being off. as much as you were desperate for merle to get lost somehow, this would've never been what you'd wish for.

"i'm sorry, you know?"

you wouldn't risk to look at his way, you'd hear a "mmmhm" sound coming from deep of his lungs and his head sagging between his shoulders a second later. and a deep breath he would inhale.

+ you'd definitely get intimate during the last few months when you still had the prison.

doubt there would be much emotion involved, mostly a way of you both releasing stress in the cellblock you had cleared up just for this reason.

you'd both hate yourself for the things you do behind closed doors at nights. thinking you're so stealthy with it, when everyone obviously knows yet no one says a word to another soul about it.

what would else be the reason that you don't know what to do with your hands or your body or your words when your next to eachother?

what would else be the reason one of you chuckling awkwardly to a not-even-slightly-funny joke uttered by the other one?

+ you'd call it love in hidden parts of your mind after losing the prison and settling in alexandria.

you couldn't explain it with anything else.

why was he looking at you the way he was -so penetrating with glossy eyes- when he thought that you weren't aware?

why was he watching you like that, when you opened your eyes for the first time in alexandria when all of you decided to crash in one living room for safety?

with half-lidded eyes, his body resting on the wall against his back.

so deep, his gaze robbed you of any privacy. you felt naked.

so intense, his gaze was sucking you into him.

"mornin' " he'd mutter and make his way to the doorstep.

you'd mutter "mornin' " to yourself, arms wrapped around below your knees, you wouldn't turn around to look at him.

was he watching you like that all night? or was it a coincidence he happened to be staring right at your soul when you opened your eyes?

footnote

ok im loving this. screaming.

[vexwerewolf]

I always figured the Imperials were the good guys.

Nnnnnngh… no. Imperials are the better of two bad options, and it's really muddied because Bethesda lost its good writers years before Skyrim came out. I can feel a hyperfixation coming on, so a quick TL;DR: the Empire is an Empire so it's still bad, the Stormcloaks are just racist saboteurs led by a Manchurian agent and Tiber Septim is a gigantic piece of shit who ruined everything.

Okay, so the Empire functionally lost its equivalent of the Mandate of Heaven when Martin Septim died heirless at the end of Oblivion. His sacrifice forged a new compact to end the Daedric incursions, but by that point Imperial infrastructure throughout Tamriel had been so badly damaged that it could no longer maintain order. By the time the Mede dynasty got its feet under it, several provinces had either risen in revolt against the Empire or and were busy violently settling bitter generational rivalries with each other.

Most notably, this included the Thalmor, who are openly and proudly an Altmer supremacist movement. Their primary goal is to end the dominion of Men on Tamriel and institute a second Merethic Era dominated by them. This is the most obvious reason for why they want to ban Talos worship - the idea that a Man could become Divine is grossly incompatible with their worldview. (I must note that there's also a much-discussed fan theory stating that they intend to unmake creation in its current form and destroying Talos worship is part of that, but it's partially based on sources whose canonicity is in doubt, so I'm not going to discuss it further at this time.) The Thalmor are pretty much explicitly Elf Nazis, right down to invading foreign countries and rounding up their religious minorities.

It should be considered, however, that Tiber Septim was an UNBELIEVABLY MASSIVE PIECE OF SHIT. There's credible evidence that during his mortal life he assassinated the Cyrodillian monarch to whom he had sworn fealty and then seized his throne. He had a dalliance with Berenziah that ended up getting her pregnant, then forcibly abducted her and had the child aborted without her consent. After gaining Numidium from a treaty with the Tribunal of Morrowind, he discovered that they hadn't given them its power source (Lorkhan's Heart - understandable, since it was the source of their false divinity), and so he created a new one, the Mantella, by tearing the souls out of Ysmir and Zurin Arctus, two of his most loyal companions. He used Numidium to brutally conquer the rest of Tamriel and then turned it on all the noble families in Cyrodil who hadn't supported him. His empire - as all empires are - was built entirely on murder, pillage and rape. And - as all emperors do - he rewrote his own history because nobody dared openly oppose it. If the Aedra truly did award him a seat amongst them after this (and the fact that his bloody armor counts as "the blood of a divine" in Oblivion suggests that they did), it's questionable whether any of them are worthy of worship.

Nonetheless, worship of Talos was of extreme cultural importance to the Nords, because he was considered by history to have been a Nord, and indeed born in Atmora, the mythic first homeland of the Nords (although, again, it's likely he was just fucking lying - heterodox historical accounts suggest he was born in High Rock and never saw Atmora in his life). The White-Gold Concordat was formulated specifically to provoke division between the remaining provinces of the Empire - the Thalmor correctly predicted that the Nords would never tolerate being stripped of their right to worship Talos, and would rise in revolt against an Empire that mandated it.

The specific cause of the Stormcloak Rebellion is also… dubious. During the war with the Thalmor, the Imperial Legion had all but pulled out of Skyrim. This allowed an uprising by the Reachmen, an ethnic minority within southwestern Skyrim who, notably, had been brutally disenfranchised and stripped of their land by… Tiber Septim! Thanks, Talos, you continue to be a gigantic piece of shit! Anyway, they seized control of Markarth and held it for two years, during which by most accounts they ruled it as an independent kingdom that was making overtures towards being recognised by the Empire. After the signing of the White-Gold Concordat, Ulfric Stormcloak raised an army to retake it, and was promised by the Jarl of the Reach (and, allegedly, the Empire itself) that worship of Talos would be freely allowed in Markarth. Ulfric Stormcloak then proceeded to lay siege to the city and butcher it, ethnically cleansing the city of every last Reachman down to the women and children, slaughtering any Nord who had collaborated with them and allegedly even killing those citizens of Markarth who hadn't answered his call to arms.

Inevitably, the Thalmor found out about the Talos worship anyway and the Jarl was forced to sell out Ulfric and his men. This is generally considered to be the betrayal that sparked the civil war, but at this point we must examine who Ulfric is.

Ulfric was trained in the Thu'um from an early age by the Greybeards, but abandoned his tutelage to fight in the Great War. We know little of his performance other than that he was captured by the Thalmor, tortured extensively, and falsely made to believe that the information he had given under torture was instrumental in the fall of the Imperial City. His father, the Jarl of Windhelm, died while he was in prison, and he was forced to deliver a eulogy via a letter that he had smuggled out of the prison. He claims he escaped from captivity, while Thalmor records claim that they let him go intentionally; neither source is particularly reliable.

From a sociopolitical standpoint, Ulfric is a staunch Nordic traditionalist who openly states that he doesn't believe Skyrim has had a "true" High King for centuries, considering recent monarchs to simply be puppets installed by the Empire. He also seems to be deeply racist: in contrast to his father, he banned Argonians from entering Windhelm proper, confining them to the Assemblage on the docks, and he's allowed racist sentiments towards the Dunmer residents of the Grey Quarter to worsen. Even citizens of Windhelm who support the rebellion comment that isn't doing very much governing, since the civil war eats up most of his attention.

One point I will give to Ulfric is that establishing Skyrim as an independent kingdom that can actively resist the Thalmor isn't actually as far-fetched as it seems. After the White-Gold Concordat ceded half of Hammerfell to the Thalmor, Hammefell said "how about fuck you," broke from the Empire entirely, and smacked the Thalmor down so hard they had to sign the Second Treaty of Stros M'Kai and retreat from Hammerfell entirely. This rendered the nation a haven for those opposed to the Thalmor, and they're in such a strong position that the Alik'r can actively hunt Thalmor collaborators like Saadia in other nations. Hammerfell is in a better position than Skyrim, and it did it without any Imperial aid.

(A hilarious fact about the Hammerfell situation is that the Thalmor tried the exact same thing there - inciting a civil war between the Crowns and the Forebears, two factions that have hated one another for generations. Unfortunately, they fucked it up so badly that it actually managed to end the rivalry and unite both of them against the Thalmor.)

But this is where Bethesda's inability to actually capitalize on the good parts of their writing really gets to me.

The Empire in Skyrim… sucks. Like, from your perspective as a player, the first experience you have of the Empire is "okay, so you were at the border alongside this guy and we're executing him today so I guess you get to die too." The only decent Imperial you meet is Hadvar, who makes a lukewarm plea for your life but doesn't press the issue.

All of the Imperial Jarls except for Balgruuf and Idgrod Ravencrone are dogshit. Elisif is a naive, incompetent teenager. Siddgeir is an arrogant, incompetent ponce. Igmund is a spineless Thalmor toady reigning over stolen land, having broken a promise he made to Ulfric and thus being partially responsible for the civil war. The replacement Jarls you get if you side with the Empire and conquer territories the Stormcloaks hold at the start of the game fall into two categories: "who?" and "oh fuck not you." If I say the names Brina Merilis or Kraldar, I bet you won't even remember who I'm talking about. Brunwulf Free-Winter, the replacement for Ulfric Stormcloak, has ONE personality feature and it's "I'm slightly less racist than Ulfric." But when you capture Riften for the Empire, the new Jarl is MAVEN FUCKING BLACK-BRIAR, THE SECOND-WORST PERSON IN SKYRIM.

But the Stormcloaks suck worse. Laila-Law Giver is a puppet for the Black-Briar crime family. Skald the Elder is a grumpy, hidebound old man. Korir might as well not be ruling anything at all. If you side with them, you have to sell out Balgruuf when the matter of Whiterun comes up - a man who has never been anything but helpful, supportive, trusting and forthright with you. Oh, and let's not forget that if you take the Reach for the Stormcloaks, the new Jarl is THONGVOR SILVER-BLOOD, LITERAL SLAVEOWNER AND WORST PERSON IN SKYRIM.

(There is an absolutely cursed timeline wherein during the "territory trade" at the peace talks you can hold during the main quest if you haven't finished the civil war quest yet where Maven gets the Rift and Thongor gets the Reach, meaning you have just installed the two most powerful crime families in the country into positions of executive power.)

This isn't just a case of "of course both sides aren't perfect and have issues." This is just "both sides fucking suck." A better game would allow you to make some headway in resolving the massive issues that face Skyrim, but I've already written like nine billion words here so maybe I should go into that at a different time.

[colourstreakgryffin]

Yo sup! I love your blog soooooo much!!! Your writing style is great in my opinion ^^. I'd like a yandere! Rui (platonic) with sister reader. She actually puts effort into making "family bonds" and while she is nice to the other "family" members, she never questions Rui's methods and actions and genuinely loves him despite the behaviours he displays. He is really overprotective over her and he likes her attention. I'd love a scenario like that

Hmmm! Okaaay! I have never written for Rui yet so let’s try it out, I’m optimistic! Been getting a lot of Platonic Yanderes lately tbh!

Yandere! Platonic! KNY Lower Moon Scenarios: Ayaki Rui

Rui, on the inside, is a lonely miserable child that is so desperate to feel nearest and dearest love for once in his new life that he does truly cruel and twisted means to get what carves so badly

Rui finds weak, pathetic demons and transfers his strength to them so they become infused by blood, cementing them as his family for good. He has done this too many to count… but most go against him and end up fried

Rui figured you’d be the same. Another sister who dares to try run away from him and will become his next toasted spider but no. You’re nothing like the ones who came before you and he is very shocked at first

Rui, needing to know if this behaviour is genuine, begins to keep a close eye on you and is very pleased everytime with the answers. You’re sweet and considerate to the other family members he brings home, you never argue with his methods nor measures and you even ask him how he is

Rui suspected you’d be angry at him for his drastic punishments to your siblings and parents, but no. You never once go against him, you just smile and proclaim you understand if he must hurt you. But in that moment, he won’t lay a single thread on you, he gently pats your head and orders you return to your room

Rui becomes favouritistic towards you, to the point it becomes obvious to everybody in the house. You’re a real sister and he needs to keep you as his, at all causes. No demon slayer can take you away from him and no demon can try trick you into abandoning him, he grows a intense sense of overprotectiveness over you, his one true sibling

Rui never really gets the love he wants with this makeshift family he has forcibly created. You’re the rare diamond of the pebble pile, you give him love and affection with no fear nor opposing intent. He is very tense and tries to push back but once he realises you’re just kissing away the blood on his cheek, he lets you. His obsession over you growing in the process

His obsession over keeping you as his sister at all means. Must he kill all those other failures? None of them please him at all and none has true worth to him, Rui is tempted to just kill them all and keep you. Sure, two siblings aren’t necessarily a family but the risk of losing you, who actually loves him, over a family who doesn’t love him. He is going to pick you everytime

Rui eventually moves you out of the attic you were in with your surrogate siblings. You don’t deserve to be around those pieces of filth and he ends up giving you the room, right next to his. So he can come to you very easily and demand your affection without needing anybody else around

He wants you nearby 24/7, his one and only beloved. He wants you close so he knows you’re still here and you haven’t been twisted by anything else that can twist your views

Rui is very desperate for attention so he wants it from you all the time. He’ll just sit down before you as you read/other and wait for you to acknowledge him. He doesn’t get hissy nor attack like he usually would if you take a little while, since he knows you’ll apologise and give him hugs or kisses as extra sorries

Rui will never let you out of the house nor out of the forest. You can go outside when he is with you, just to make sure no slayer can hurt you nor a demon can intervene. It’s all from his anxiety that makes him step in and take those extra precautions to keep you with him

At all causes, he doesn’t care how big the bill is he must pay to have you

Rui holds your hand as often as he possibly can, loving the feel of your warmth. He summons you to stand besides him as he deals out punishment, he sends you to the safety of the household when he finds threats he must dispose off. He is loving, he is favouritistic, he is possessive, he is overprotective; he is all of the above and so much more

“My dear sister. Come here, I am exhausted from taking care of such useless humans, may I get some affection to ease all my tense nerves? I don’t suspect you’d refuse, here now. You know I don’t bite you”

[unholyhelbig]

https://www.tumblr.com/unholyhelbig/748001277238181888/ive-reread-the-entirety-of-oversight-again-and

i’ve done this as well. i think u should 😌😏😉☺️🥰

Title: Rose Colored Glasses [An Oversight Oneshot]

Ship: Female!Reader x Natasha Romanoff

Summary: Reader gets word that Natasha is hurt and rushes home to assess the situation.

Warnings(PLEASE READ): injury to nose & foot, slight blood, and shrimp

[a/n: Did someone request more oversight? Because I've got you covered. This is pure fluff, sorry for the lack of angst! It's short, and sweet, and not proof read because I don't have time :( ]

Check out the full Oversight universe

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven

A quiet house was never a good sign. Growing up in the foster care system teeming with other wards of the state had taught you that. Often, you were three or four to a room. There were bunk beds with sheets slotted against the ceiling or stuffed under the mattress above your own, just for some type of barrier. It was an illusion of privacy, most of the time. Because houses like that were never quiet.

When you’d moved in across from Darcy after your 18th birthday, things weren’t quiet. Above you was a Latin-American couple that would wait until just past midnight to turn on a slow, rhythmic song and dance. Their steps were soft, and calculated. They carved out time for one another every single night between shifts. Just for the two of them. You often let the thumping base lull you to sleep.

The city was just outside your window. In the summer, you could prop it open with a brick and let the sounds of cars become a backdrop. There were sirens, and when the fire hydrant on the corner was loosened, the world welcomed a cold blast of water, sprinkling into the street. That was the opposite of quiet. That made your chest feel light, and warm.

After marrying Natasha Romanoff, you settled into the loudness of her home. Your home. Veronica was constantly running around the twists and turns of the bottom floor, Clint or Kate or Darcy galloping after her with a big smile on their face. They slowed themselves to make sure they didn’t break anything, but they wanted her to win, too.

Yelena often came with the muffled sounds of Russian techno bands coming from the headphones around her neck. It was a staple to find her in the kitchen with her head down, slicing into an apple from the backyard with precision unknown. Natasha would tug the headphones off to get her attention, or to send her into annoyance.

The night that Natasha got hurt was stifled with the sound of rain. It had soaked you to the bone, dripping onto the linoleum floor and then the carpet as you ascended the stairs two at a time. You’d been at the docks later than usual, the storm that had plagued the side of the harbor was relentless and delayed shipments.

The captain of the shipping boat your family had utilized for decades wanted to discuss something over whatever crap coffee you could beat out of the machine in your office. He spoke with a thick southern drawl, his mustache was encrusted with salt and sand. You had shed your coat and tried to warm yourself up by hugging your mug to your chest. Nothing seemed to work.

While you weren’t opposed to giving the man a raise, you were not the final say. Natasha was, and you figured he could use the company more than anything. The captain flicked through books that were on the shelf, taking two or three for his next journey out to sea. It was like clockwork with him, and you indulged his need for quiet companionship each time.

When your phone rang, you never looked at the caller ID. Those who were privileged enough to get your number knew to talk without any of the pleasantries that they were used to. Clint’s voice came through the receiver in a smooth, hushed tone that made you believe he wasn’t supposed to be calling you in the first place.

“Look, y/n, there’s been an… incident.”

“What kind of incident?”

He was meant to escort her to one of the many cocktail parties that Carlos LaMuerto was throwing at his mansion that bordered the same body of water that you resided on now. They were lovely get-togethers that you often attended with your wife. This, however, was the fourth one this month and your stomach was turning at the idea of another cocktail shrimp and lamb pate.

Clint had offered, seeing the desperation in your eyes. And while Natasha was reluctant, she ultimately agreed. No news of a bust had reached you yet, nor had a gun blazing argument. While the Captain licked his dry lips and scanned the books in front of him, you continued in hushed tones.

“Nat’s hurt. It’s not a big deal, you can finish up your business. She’s just being stubborn is all.”

An escaped sigh “I’ll be there.”

No shit, she was being stubborn. Your wife was bull-headed and wouldn’t admit to the smallest defeat. It eased your nerves slightly, and only slightly, that Clint said it wasn’t a big deal. No gunshot to the back, or knife to the throat. It wasn’t good enough, however.

Natasha would be upset that you tracked mud into the house and left your boots sloshing by the door. You were panting by the time you reached the double doors that led to your bedroom. They were, of course, blocked by Clint and Kate. Yelena was leaning lazily against the railing that was parallel. She regarded you with an uninterested stare.

“You did not have to come here.” She said, “We’ve got it handled.”

“She kicked all of you out, didn’t she?”

“What? She certainly did not!”

Yelena’s voice pitched with her lie. Kate’s cheeks turned an off-shade of pink and Clint just rthe hallway, that was a good sign. Still, neither of the two moved to let you into your own room.

“If you’re not going to get out of the way, can you at least tell me what happened?”

There was a muffled reply from behind the door. With the way that the voice flitted, you knew that she was trapped on the bed. Otherwise, she would have leveled you with a glare right here and now. The words were simple “Do it, you die.”

“Oh, come on,” You whispered harshly, turning your attention to Kate instead. She was the easiest to break. “Katie, what is the harm in letting me through? I’m going to catch my death if I stay in these clothes.”

“Catch your death?” Clint scoffed “What are you? A poet from the 1800’s?”

“I’m about to be breaking your fingers if you don’t-“

“You can’t even break wind,”

The two of your voices combined as you kept at it. You didn’t’ miss the wary look that Kate shot Yelena. One way or another, you’d get into your room. You refused to be banished to the couch again, especially in wet clothes. If you had to threaten ruining the rugs with your muddy footprints, so be it.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” You held up both of your hands, silencing the chaos of the corridor. “Nat, you are my wife, you’re hurt. Whether you like it or not, I’m coming in. Does anyone have any objections?”

Kate went to raise her hand, but Yelena yanked it back down and shook her head no. You tore into Clint with a look that could drop him dead. He relented and stepped away from the door. While you had a moment of peace, you walked into the dark of the room. She’d turned out the lights, save for the half-moon that showed a pale pattern against the carpet.

When you reached for the light switch on the wall, Natasha let out a noise that was similar to a wounded animal. You halted, your actions and made out her form on the bed. She was folded in on herself, her silhouette rigid.

“Baby,” you cooed, closing the distance between you and the bed. She grunted again, this time in pain. She attempted to turn away from you. You lowered yourself onto the sliver of bed, approaching the situation softly. “Can I turn on a light?”

“No, I’m hideous.”

You chuckled softly “I highly doubt that, my love. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

Natasha had never liked being vulnerable around you. It had taken a full weekend of you nursing her back to her feet after the incident on the pier for her to let herself cry. You held her for hours, her nose pressed against the small of your neck. She’d gripped onto you, as if you’d leave. But you never would.

Eventually, you saw her shadow nod. Before she could change her mind, you flicked on the lamp on the side table. It didn’t’ have a far reach, but the light was less harsh on the both of you. It was impossible not to notice the blood that had dried against Natasha’s nose, a split right down the middle.

You’d seen her with broken bones before, bruises that wrapped around her midsection. You’d put ace bandage around her ribs after drawing her a bath. This was nothing to be ashamed about. In fact, she often saw them as battle scars that would heal in a pink gash.

Her foot was wrapped up with a bag of peas and one of frozen carrots that Clint, or even Yelena had situated. There was bruising around her ankle, it looked painful and you internally winced at the coloring. She groaned into the small of her elbow.

“I want to die”

“Natty, it’s okay. This is nothing a cozy weekend inside can’t fix.”

She said something that was quiet and muffled by her arm. You didn’t understand her one bit, but she squeezed a single tear from her eye that you wiped away dutifully before it could reach the silk of sheets.

“What was that, baby?” You asked gently.

She threw both of her hands down and glared at the ceiling. Her fingers eventually found yours, squeezing your palm in reflex. Her words came out in a quick breath, “I tripped over a carpet at the stupid dinner party and hit my face on the catering table.”

You were effectively silenced. That was very un-Natasha. But lately, you and Clint had been pestering her about her eyesight, especially at night. It wasn’t something she wanted to hear. In fact, each time you brought up the idea of glasses, she would effectively silence you with a glare, or even a kick to the shin under the kitchen table if you had company.

You bit the inside of your cheek and ran your thumb over her hand. She clutched your hand tighter. Now was certainly not the time to laugh, and while you fought back the initial giggle, you were more concerned about your wife.

“I’m so embarrassed.”

“I bet you got right back up.” You said, pressing your palm against her cheek. “None of those fancy party types would dare question your influence on this city.”

“Shrimp went flying everywhere.” Natasha pouted.

“Everyone was tired of shrimp anyway, even the shrimp.”

She grasped at the collar of your jacket and pulled you closer to her, pressing her lips against your own. They were warm, the warmest thing that you’ve felt since getting caught in the passing storm. You were careful not to lean on her ribs, breathing in the rosewater scent of her.

Natasha pressed her forehead against yours, running a hand up your spine. She grimaced. “You’re all wet.”

“Well now I am,” You smirked against her jawline, leaving a little nip in your wake. “You need to get glasses.”

“Don’t change the subject. You’re getting the sheets all damp, and you smell like fish.”

“I smell like fish?” You giggled, pressing a kiss to the exposed part of her neck. You felt Natasha laugh too, using her hands to cover her face from the blush that was blooming against her cheeks. “We’re talking about me?”

She laughed harder, attempting to shove you off but you let your body go slack against her, not using your arms to hold yourself up anymore. “Yes! Go shower!”

“Mm, but you’re so warm.”

“You’re not going to be warm if I make you sleep on the couch.”

You gasped dramatically, pulling your head off her stomach and meeting her dark green stare. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me. After the day I’ve had, I refuse to sleep next to my wife when she smells like a marina.”

Even while she said it, her voice was gentle, her fingers working over your scalp to brush the wet hair from your eyes. You pulled yourself up to give her another peck on the lips, careful to avoid the split nose and busted ankle.

“Fine, but only because you need more aspirin.”

She grunted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Can’t believe I let you through my defenses.”

“Uh-huh. Get some rest. I’m going to go talk to your defenses about getting you an appointment with an optometrist.”

You turned to move towards the bathroom, already craving the warmth of a shower and some clean pajamas. Two steps from the doorway and you felt a plush throw pillow hit you directly on the back of the head. Natasha had amazing aim, always had, and always would.

You bent down and picked up the gold upholstered pillow, giving her a faux glare. “You’re not getting this back.”

“Oh, come on, baby.” She stuck out her lower lip “I have to prop up my foot.”

“You should have thought of that before you launched it at my head.”

 [Taglist🕷♡: @dumbasslesbi, @lostremind, @toouncreativeforausername @autorasexy @eringranola @mikookaaaaaao @marvelwoman-simp @pacmanmiles @mostlymarvelsstuff, @mrsrushman, @milfsandtittyenthusiast, @random-raccoon4, @ravenromanova, @mysticalmoonlight7, @ahintofchaos@cowboyboots236 @lissaaaa145, @natsxwife@a-spes, @kyleeservopoulos]

[shadowed-dancer]

Villains and Their Fates - A Tragedy Would Have Been Fine By Me

I've seen a lot of people who try to write off frustration with the league's fates by saying "you just wanted them to survive" or "you're just upset your favourite character died". And while that may be true for a few people, I know that it's at least not true for myself (which must mean there are others who feel the same way). So today I'm here to share my thoughts. Despite liking the villains and wanting them to be redeemed, I was also willing to accept a well written ending if they died. I just wanted to ramble a bit about the three main villains (mostly Toga) and how I felt a tragic ending could have been improved.

The only villain I felt should have lived is Dabi, but that's more because of the awkwardness his unconfirmed death caused for Shoto (read this beautifully written analysis for more). If Dabi had to die, he should have died on the battle field OR in the hospital surrounded by family where he gets a few last words in. Leaving his fate unconfirmed leads to the ruined Shoto arc, but is also just weird for a character who has existed for so long. You're telling me that even Overhaul gets a confirmed ending but DABI doesn't?

I've also talked a bit about how Endeavor's survival ruins the subplot, and in 426 he continues by making Touya's final appearance about him (rather than the two brothers) but that's something I've talked about too much. If Endeavor has to be alive and hogging screen time, the least Hori could do is imply Touya will survive rather than die, so at least Enji isn't literally stealing time from his other family members to have some interaction with Touya.

If Touya has to end up in that machine, an ideal ending would have been the doctor saying "it will be a gruelling and near-impossible uphill climb to recovery" and then Shoto can smile and say "he's done it before". Boom. Simple as that. Leave it open, but at least on a positive note so we can assume that the family will have plenty of time to reconcile, as opposed to an unknown (but limited) amount of time that Enji vows to use to talk to him (yeah I know it's supposed to be a sweet gesture but even Touya calls bullshit on it). Let Shoto and Touya eat their soba, damn it!

For Shigaraki, my grievances extend to the writing of the entire final battle between him and Deku. As such, I don't have much to say aside from that because it really is just a product of poor writing. Neither were really allowed to talk before the big moment (hell, the vestiges were narrating Deku's emotions half the time like "he must be upset, this quirk meant so much to him". Why not let him tell us???) and the back-and-forth of Shigaraki being destroyed and then not only to be destroyed again was too much. It felt sloppy and hard to follow, and once you figured it out it just felt dumb. It's as if each chapter needed some massive reveal, but the story had done it so much at this point that it just felt tired and like it was happening "because Hori said so", and that should never be what drives a story.

Speaking of "because Hori said so"...

Oh Toga. Out of all the villains, I actually liked her confrontation the most. (Lies. If Dabi vs Shoto was the end of Dabi's fight, THAT would have been the best. But the Endeavor fight ruins it). Despite having limited screen time, Toga and Uraraka had a surprisingly well-built dynamic. Their few interactions were actually meaningful and created a strong foundation for a fight, and at the very least they had more of a personal connection than Deku and Shigaraki ever did. I think that Toga giving her blood to someone she loves (as opposed to drinking/taking their blood like she had said the whole series) is a beautifully tragic end to her character, but still something that could have fit.

To me, the problem comes with how she died. Let me replay the scene for you: Toga stabs Uraraka in the stomach and Uraraka bleeds too much because she keeps moving around. Toga then realizes she doesn't want Uraraka to die. To save her life, Toga has to do a blood transfusion with herself as a donor and she dies because she has to give ALL her blood.

Now... sure. Ok. Fine. Yeah. Maybe by real-world logic this makes sense. I guess. Whatever. But within the world of MHA, this setup is laughable.

Here's a list of things characters survived (or at least, they survived LONG ENOUGH to get to a hospital rather than dying on the battlefield): Deku shattering his bones with 1 million percent, whatever happened to Best Jeanist when AFO attacked him, Nighteye getting a massive spike through the torso, All Might with "his entrails strewn across the ground", Bakugo becoming Swiss cheese, Grand Torino being punched so hard a crater forms beneath him, Touya being a literal flaming skeleton, Bakugo's heart exploding, Edgeshot becoming a worm. Mirko getting a limb ripped off and then running full speed at Shigaraki. That's just off the top of my head, I know there's probably more.

But you want to tell me that Uraraka getting stabbed and then moving was a fatal wound that required ALL TOGA'S BLOOD? ALL OF IT? The reason Toga's death bothers me is that the setup cheapens the actual moment of sacrifice. It feels preventable, so when she tells us that Uraraka is going to die without her blood, all I could do is roll my eyes because I'm not allowed to use critical thinking skills, I have to just accept what Hori says and take it at face value.

If the author wants you to live as Edgeworm despite saying you were gonna die, you can. But if the author needs a stab wound to be fatal and require ALL of someone's blood? Well tough luck bud, that's just how it goes. Mirko can run and move all she wants after having a limb ripped off, but moving a bit after one stab wound is fatal. Why? Because I say so.

If Uraraka's wound was actually serious then this ending would have been a beautiful tragedy. But as it stands now, the ridiculousness of her wound makes it all feel preventable.

Oh, there's also the fact that Toga switching blood types when she transforms was never established, but I've rambled enough.

That's it. Thanks for reading!