#for the record they would be VERY indignant about being asked but also unable to give a solid answer for good reason lmao

[mobius-m-mobius]

it's a fair question 🙃 Lokius Incorrect Quotes [12/∞]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Sam Alito’s Deplorable Arguments for Letting Domestic Abusers Keep Their Guns

In the fantasy world of Opus Dei jurisprudence, two justices decide to go to bat for the rights of convicted domestic abusers to continue to have and use firearms as they perpetrate further crimes... because the Founders would approve, apparently...

Dahlia Lithwick: the arguments at 1 First St. on Tuesday morning steered clear of old Zackey Rahimi. Only after Justice Samuel Alito implied that when a woman seeks a protective order in a domestic violence setting, the results tend to be “he said, she said” situations concluding in restraining orders against both parties, and only after Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that there existed only a “very thin record” in the present case did it become necessary for the remaining justices to intervene with actual facts from the actual record. As Justice Amy Coney Barrett was forced to remind her colleagues, who were at that point just parroting gun industry talking points, Rahimi’s girlfriend “did submit a sworn affidavit giving quite a lot of detail about the various threats. It’s not like he just showed up and the judge said ‘Credible finding of violence.’ ”

But why stick to the facts when you can imagine better ones? So, despite the fact that Rahimi was not making a procedural argument about the unfairness of the civil restraining order process, both Alito and Thomas magicked up these objections. Despite the fact that there was a lower court’s finding that Rahimi was in fact a danger to his girlfriend and child, they coughed up hypotheticals that raised the issue of how generally unfair it is for courts to take away guns in a civil proceeding. As Thomas put it, “If this were a criminal proceeding, then you would have a determination of what you’re talking about—someone would be convicted of a crime, a felony assault, or something. But here you have something that’s anticipatory or predictive, where a civil court is making the determination.” Alito—unsurprisingly—fretted more about the rights of the poor beleaguered gun owner than the woman he terrorizes: “If the person [under the restraining order] thinks that he or she is in danger and wants to have a firearm, is that person’s only recourse to possess the firearm and take their chances if they get prosecuted?” In other words, the inversion process is now fully realized. The MAGA justices not only invent records in cases that have no facts. They also ignore the record in the cases that actually have them. Why consider the implications of actual gun violence when you can live in the imaginary world of good guys with guns suffering the indignities of legal restrictions?

Blessedly, at least on this occasion, there was no general agreement from the other conservative justices that pretending Zackey Rahimi right out of existence would yield better results. “You don’t have any doubt that your client is a dangerous person, do you?” Chief Justice John Roberts finally asked J. Matthew Wright, Rahimi’s attorney. Wright mulishly insisted that he would “want to know what dangerous person means.” Roberts, thus unable to ignore the actual facts of the case before him, supplied a plausible definition: “It means ‘someone who is shooting at people.’ … That’s a good start.” There was uneasy laughter in the chamber when Roberts said that, and Wright conceded it. In the current era, uneasy public laughter is often the signaling mechanism that lived reality has pierced a hypothetical John Wayne film festival being screened in D.C. Bruen was an interesting and failed lab experiment about deriving historical analogs from an imagined archive of founding documents. So, always follow the uneasy laughter—that tends to be where the people who end up as mass shooters and domestic abusers reside. “Someone who poses a risk of domestic violence is dangerous,” Barrett pronounced, conclusively, to the immense relief of the reality-based community on Tuesday. The result in the final Rahimi opinion will likely flow from that conclusion, which was shared by the chief justice and Justice Brett Kavanaugh (as well as, of course, the three progressive justices).

But the fact that the bulk of the 90-minute legal debate in Rahimi was untethered both from the established facts of this case and from the gun violence data in the many amicus briefs filed reveals that this is still a conservative supermajority that remains more interested in debating whether and when a justice of the peace can seize a musket from a white dude than considering whether disarming violent abusers is a good idea. It’s critical not to miss the connection between these oral arguments and Tuesday’s other major news event in U.S. political and civil life. Shortly after oral arguments in Rahimi, a whole lot of people showed up at the polls to indicate that they are still absolutely furious that Sam Alito and his tunnel-visioned buddies evinced no interest in the lived economic, emotional, and medical lives of half the population when they reversed Roe v. Wade a year and a half ago.

Democracy, it would seem, is less interested in establishing the correct level of abstraction for determining cunning historical analogs than in continuing to move through the modern world, alive. As embarrassing as the arguments in Rahimi proved to be, they also seem to signal that there are, for the moment at least, no longer five votes for the proposition that voters will shrug away violence and misogyny because, like, #history. From this court, that’s the best you can hope for. For this court, that’s a big retreat from the smug, wrong certainty that was

SLATE.COM

Sam Alito’s Deplorable Arguments for Letting Domestic Abusers Keep Their Guns

[ohheyitsokay]

to date a single father (2/2)

Pairing: Francisco Morales (Catfish, Frankie) x (f) reader

Wordcount: 3.2k

Warnings: low to medium amounts of petting? teenage level make out sesh. A stomachache worth of fluff. A little angst??

Summary: part 2! Please read part 1 before this for context :) Frankie has a little girl in kindergarten and you’re the prettiest schoolteacher he’s ever seen. Being a single dad makes navigating a relationship hard, that’s all. It’s just as daunting for you, but somehow, you’re pretty sure he’s worth it?

>>

“Frankie, I don’t know if I can do this!” your walking slowed, and you clung to his hand. Anxiety was bubbling in your chest the closer you got to the home in front of you.

He stopped, letting go of your hand to wrap his arms around you. It was a warm fall evening, and the two of you had been together a few weeks now.

It was time for you to meet his boys – the daunting equivalent to meeting his family. The little one had already run around the house, chasing the sounds of other kids and the smells of meat and smoke.

His hands ran soothingly over you, and he smiled into your hair.

“Baby, you got this, they’re gonna love you,” he said, with absolute confidence.

You pulled back, shaking yourself and taking a deep breath. “They’re your family Frankie,” you said.

“We don’t have to, if you’re not up for it,” you couldn’t help but meet his safe brown eyes. “But I promise they will love you.”

The boiling inside you settled to a simmer. You both could feel it, already, even though it had only been a few weeks.

They will love you because I love you.

“Okay,” you said, taking his hand again. “Okay, I can do this this.” For you, I can do this.

The breeze was warm and encouraging as it pushed you into the backyard. It was Will’s house, set up for a perfect barbecue and you braced yourself.

“Catfish!” one of the men called, and you smiled, despite the sudden attention.

He ran over to you, introducing himself as Santiago, and saying it was long overdue.

“Nice to meet you,” you said as the other men made their way over. “They actually call you Catfish,” you added to one at your side, half asking half not. Frankie nodded happily and shrugged his broad shoulders, but his eyes were telling you not to ask.

“Yeah we do!” one of the newcomers said excitedly. “Benny,” he said, shaking your hand, before pointing and naming most of the people around the yard. “I’m Fish's coolest friend, for the record,” he added as he was done.

This brought indignant yells from the other guys and you laughed, eyes meeting Frankie’s. He was laughing too, and he tugged you closer to his side.

Santi’s eyes caught the movement and he smiled, despite passionately asserting that he was the coolest. It meant the world to see his best friend hold you like that, after all this time.

You were already feeling much more at ease, enough to slide away from Frankie to join the other partners as the boys energetically caught bit. You scooped his little one into your arms as she clung to her snack, using her as your buffer. The evening was going to be long, and you were happy to observe your sweet pilot from afar for a bit.

Frankie was different around these guys, you were excited to get to know this side of him. There were no parts of himself he had to hide around them – and you were thankful to find that didn’t make you even a little bit jealous. Your excitement overrode your anxiety, and you began to settle into your own skin. You floated around, picking up and putting down his daughter as she ran in between the two of you and playing. It was amazing, learning about the boys, their lives, and more importantly, who they were to Frankie and vice versa. You felt his eyes on you throughout the evening, following you as you talked and listened and ate. You made sure to check in with him, but his friends welcomed you with open arms. They were talking so freely, more often than not you found yourself caught up in conversations for much longer than you anticipated.

As the group finished eating and began to settle into lawn chairs, talking at a slower pace, his little one tucked her head into your neck. You could feel her little puffs of breath even out as the excitement of the evening finally caught up to her. You’d rarely held kids this much, so you were more than grateful to sit down, unused to the extra effort of a tiny person clinging to you.

Frankie settled by your side, pulling his chair as close as he could to his two favorite girls.

“Hey, baby,” he murmured, his voice sliding under the thrum of conversation. “Are you doing okay?”

His hand warmed your shoulder, thumb rubbing gently.

“In regards to what?” You asked, crinkling your eyes so he could see your smile over his child’s curls.

He shrugged, gently moving to stroke her hair.

“You left me,” he said, almost like a question. You understood. Neither of you had planned on it – and it meant he wasn’t able to watch over you.

“I’m good, Frankie,” you said, knowing it was true. “These people… they love you. It’s not as scary as I thought it would be. I feel like I’m getting to know you all over again.”

There was something in his eyes that you couldn’t quiet identify.

“In a good way, Catfish,” you said, and he grinned.

“I don’t know how I feel about you calling me that,” he said, just as Santiago plopped down next to him.

“Your fault, bud,” he said, “you brought her here – she’s part of the family now. No take backs.” He was being childish but his eyes were honest when they met yours. Frankie could feel it too.

They loved you, too.

-

“She drew a picture of you in class today.”

“What?”

You stared at your friend, knowing full well what she had said. She leafed through her stack of papers, pulling out the little crayon drawing to show you. For such a little thing, that girl was remarkable, drawing a big castle with what you could only assume were 6 helicopters and a depiction of the three of you. You all were by the moat - fishing? – and there were little yellow blobs above each of your heads.

“She told me her dad always tells her these stories,” your friend said, the air in the room growing more and more intimate by the moment.

“Wait,” you interrupted. For whatever reason, your heart was racing. You were near panicking. You held up your hand, unable to verbalize what you were afraid of.

Her eyes softened.

“I wont tell you if you don’t want me to. But honey,” she touched you gently, using that soothing teacher-voice on you. “You are doing such wonderful things. I know you weren’t prepared for all of this, but …” her eyes were firm but kind as she searched for the words that wouldn’t scare you away.

“This is one of those things that’s working because it is right. You are where you are meant to be.”

You were overwhelmed as the culmination of the last few months was manifested in front of you. You felt confronted, and had no idea what to do.

“They’ll be back from lunch in just a moment,” she offered you a way out before adding one last thing:

“When you’re ready – and you will be - ask them about it.” And you nodded.

It took you almost two full weeks to gather the courage, but you did it.

“Your teacher told me your dad likes to tell you stories,” you said over your spaghetti, trying to sound casual. Frankie paused mid-bite, eyes questioning. After all these months, of course he knew you well enough to practically read your mind.

The little girl across from you nodded before trying to push on entire meatball into her mouth. You and Frankie both scrambled but she managed it alright, much to your confusion and relief.

“Could you tell me too, please?” you tried again once all three of you were able to breath properly.

Her innocent face pondered for a moment, and then she hopped off her stool and ran into her room. You looked at her father helplessly. You weren’t good at this.

Thankfully, she made it easy on you, returning with a stack of drawings she’d done. She was apparently prepared to give you the full class.

Her adorable little voice explained that a long, long time ago, there was a prince who was not lonely, thank you very much. Because he had her, and that was all he needed. And he also had Bean, their pet unicorn. You were laughing, feeling considerably less nervous as she proudly showed you her drawings.

Frankie’s hand found yours and you held onto it, knowing he was sharing this with you in his own way.

The scars on his hand grounded you as she continued.

With plenty of adorable side trails, the story progressed, as princesses would occasionally try for the prince’s hand and he would always say no. And then she told you about how one princess came to be his best friend instead, and how she was the prettiest princess in all the land. It occurred to you that Frankie’s best friend was Santi? But then she added that the princess was so smart she probably remembered there was an “l" in the word “castle”. You weren’t sure what parts of the stories were Frankie’s, and what she had added, but still your heart was pounding as she got to the part where the prince fell in love with her.

The little one kept talking, her eyelids beginning to droop and her words becoming less and less comprehensible. Frankie let go of your hand before her head fully sunk onto the table, her little hand slowly releasing the precious papers. You watched with surprising affection as he gently coaxed her into his arms to take her to bed.

As they went through her routine, you meditated on her stories, on the weight they held.

You met Frankie as he came back into the dining area. His arms wrapped around you in an all-encompassing hug. There was relief in his shoulders as he murmured into your hair.

“I was worried you would leave,” he confessed. You knew what he meant. The indirect confession of how much he loved you loomed over you both, with the acknowledgement that you were becoming an important part of their lives. Of their family.

Like before, being close to him grounded you.

You didn’t answer – you didn’t have to. Although a small part of you wanted to run away, it wasn't the winning part.

“I love you,” He whispered to the crown of your head, and although maybe you knew already, hearing it was the final piece you need. With him – with them – you would stay.

-

You made sure the door was quiet. The warm light of his home spread mere inches before it was pushed to the ground by the heavy rain. As soon as it was closed, Frankie was scooping you up in his arms, apparently not minding your wet outer layer, planting kisses on your cheeks and forehead and nose.

“Hello, beautiful,” he whispered. He was walking backwards, guiding the two of you into his small living room.

“Hi, Frankie,” you said just as quietly, wiggling in his arms to take off your shoes and set your stuff down on the coffee table.

He sank onto the couch, hands tugging you insistently. “I missed you,” his voice rumbled.

You laughed, still half standing, trying to shake off your coat. “Frankie, I saw you this afternoon!”

He was irresistible, and you finally settled into his lap, straddling him.

It was true, but his point was clear. You had been together months and months now, and had learned you rarely got a decent amount of time for just the two of you. Now, your apartment building was being renovated, so while you could still stay in your room, regular knocks from handymen and construction noises made it impossible to spend any quality time there. Both of you thoroughly enjoyed spending time with his daughter, and you came over to eat dinner with them regularly, but the evenings often ended whenever she went to bed. His room was right next to hers, and he was prone to nervously overthinking – neither of you wanted to cause her any trauma.

But you two were well and truly in love. That’s why tonight you’d come over after she went to bed, instead, eager to have him to yourself for a little while. Francisco Morales had known for a long time that he was done for.

He couldn’t believe his luck. Of course he knew the moment that he laid eyes on you that you were beautiful, and smart and kind and special but… that someone with all that and more could love him back? That there was someone who would learn with him and about him and still adore him? This was all new. And Frankie was hungry for it, for you. He wanted to prove to you that he was worth it, show you he could give you everything you deserved, and selfishly take anything you would return.

With you on his lap as you were, all he wanted in that moment was to warm you up. He wanted to be home for you and there was nothing tonight that was stopping him.

He grabbed a blanket off the side of the couch, tossing it over you both before his hands slid inside to touch you again. The first kisses were slow and insistent, as if he was trying to make sure none of the chill remained. Your hands peeked out of the blanket to hold onto his jaw, and he relished the feeling of your fingers in his stubble.

He pulled you as close as he could, his hands not stopping their moments: broad palms leaving trails of warmth over your back, your side, your neck.

The gasp that left you when his mouth made it’s way down your neck would have been embarrassing if you hadn’t been so distracted.

Frankie heard it, and it sent white hot pride shooting through him. The way your legs righted around him and your fingers clung to him made his chest fill with triumph. He was the one you were grounding yourself to.

As his hand slid under your shirt, yours found their way down, just dipping into the waistband of his jean’s at his hips. He suppressed a groan from rumbling out of his chest when suddenly he heard a door open and tiny footsteps. Both of your eyes flew open and he didn’t even see your hands move you clamp over your mouth.

Almost comically, you began untangling yourself from him, holding your breath in. The little one entered the dark living room sleepily, shuffling to the chair farthest from you until her little hands found her stuffed animal. She clung to it, almost falling asleep standing up now that she had accomplished her task. You and Frankie were completely still, one of your hands over your mouth, the other over his. Still covered in the blanket you hovered to the side of him, one of your legs half over him.

You began to tremble, but to your immense relief she slowly turned away and almost tripped, mostly sleep walking on her way back to her bed.

Both of you were shaking with suppressed laughter, and Frankie kissed your palm. You settled back into his lap, the heated mood fully dissipated in the ridiculousness of the moment.

“What would you have said is she saw us?” you murmured, your breath warm on his neck.

He hummed, arms finding their places and holding you against him.

“The truth, I think,” his voice as quiet as yours, “that I had to rescue my princess from the rain.” He smiled as he felt you subconsciously bury your face a little deeper into him.

“Not that we’re sneaking make out sessions on the couch like teenagers?” the short hairs of his beard messed up your hair when he shook his head. He didn’t say anything for awhile, but you could almost hear him thinking.

“I wish…” Frankie felt almost nervous. “Would you, no wait... it’s just..,” you pulled back, wondering at his struggle.

He has almost never seen you so beautiful, gazing at him in the dim light. Your eyes were as trusting and vulnerable as they were that very first night. He knew then what he was struggling with now. You were his; you belonged in his arms, his home, his family.

Frankie shrugged and shook his head, and went back to kissing you.

His urgency subsided, burrowing back down. Soon, his heart whispered, but not yet.

Soon, he would talk to you about the future, outright. Soon he would explain to you how much he needed you in his life every morning and every night, and as much in between as you’d give him. Soon he would ask you to if you’d stay by his side as he raised his daughter, be her mother, and be his wife.

But for now, he was content to hold you and kiss you, and grow alongside you, separately working towards your futures. As far as Frankie was concerned, with you in his arms, you two were young, in love, and had all the time in the world.

<<

Tag list (?):

@fangirl-316 @scribbledghost

[earliebirb]

it’s a small world after all

This is a fic written for my dear friend Jen ( @ishipallthings​ ) who sent me this prompt. I am making a new text post because Tumblr doesn’t allow me to insert the “Keep reading” link properly when replying to an ask :( 

it’s a small world after all

steve/tony, meet cute, pre-slash, au: no powers, 2054 words 

“Great speech.”

Smiling at the compliment, Tony turns around. “Thank y—”

And nearly drops his champagne flute.

His world comes to a stop. The light chatter of the mingling guests fades away, all of his senses zeroing in on the man standing before him.

They had only spent a night together—one unforgettable night a year ago in London—and didn’t even manage to catch each other’s last names, but Tony would recognize those baby blues anywhere.

It’s Steve.

Steve from Tony’s London business trip. Or, as Rhodey has become accustomed to calling him after months and months of Tony bemoaning his own profound stupidity of letting the perfect London stranger go without giving him so much as a phone number—The Soulmate That Got Away. 

“I— What— Steve?” Tony blinks and shakes his head, just to make sure that this is not some weird hallucination his brain has conjured up out of a severe case of lovesick pining.

No matter how many times he blinks, Steve stays there, standing in front of him, dressed in an elegant navy blue suit that shows off his insane shoulder to waist ratio.

“Tony,” Steve says and maybe Tony is imagining the way Steve sounds a little bit breathless, like maybe this moment is just as overwhelming for him as it is for Tony. How Tony has imagined this scenario happening a thousand times in a thousand different ways—meeting Steve again, hearing Steve call his name.

“What— What are you doing here?” Of all the places he thought he would run into Steve again, his best friend’s wedding is definitely not one of them. Tony sets the glass of champagne down on a nearby table before he actually drops it. His hand is definitely not trembling. 

“Uh, my date is a friend. Of the bride’s.”

“A friend of Carol’s?”

“Yeah. She went to get a drink, but—”

Before Steve can finish his sentence, someone approaches him from behind, hooking her arm through his with the kind of easy affection that only comes from knowing each other for years. 

“Steve, I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” the woman chides, but there is no mistaking the fond note in her voice. Her blonde hair falls just slightly below her shoulders. She is clad in a long dress whose shade of blue matches Steve’s suit. 

“Sorry,” Steve says, squeezing her arm lightly as he turns to her with a soft smile. To his horror, Tony feels his own heart sinking. As much as he wants to, he finds himself unable to tear his eyes away from the sight of them standing side by side in front of him.

Loathe as Tony is to admit it, they look lovely together.

Tony doesn’t know why he is disappointed at all. After all, he is just a stranger with whom Steve has spent a night with. Granted, it was a wonderful night—one that started with them fighting over the last croissant at a coffee shop near Tony’s hotel and ended with pillow talk that was way too deep for someone Tony had just met a few hours prior. 

Just because Tony had maybe—okay, definitely—fallen a little bit in love with him, however, it doesn’t guarantee that Steve would feel the same way about Tony. 

To reiterate once again, they are just strangers. Acquaintances, at best. Acquaintances who spent a night being physically and emotionally intimate with each other on the day of their first meeting. The sex had been more than satisfactory, but if Tony were being honest, the part of that fateful day that had secured Steve a special place in his heart was the part where they spent the rest of the night cuddled up in bed, sharing secrets and stories about their very different lives until the early hours of the morning, pretending that they weren’t sleepy before eventually drifting off in each other’s arms. 

Up until minutes ago, Tony wasn’t even sure he would ever see Steve again. It is beyond ridiculous for him to maintain the foolish hope of Steve returning his feelings, the hope that Steve had somehow also waited for him or tried to look for him all this time. 

There is also the fact that Steve isn’t the one who had woken up in bed cold and alone after a night too well spent. 

“Oh, hey! You’re James’ best friend, right? The best man. I’m Sharon.” The woman offers him her hand, a warm smile on her lips.

“Tony. Nice to meet you.” He shakes her hand, returning her smile.

There is a beat in which Sharon seems to take in the situation, looking back and forth between Steve and Tony.

“You guys know each other?”

“Yes—” Steve says.

“Well, not really—” Tony answers, at the exact same time.

Both of them fall into silence upon realizing their opposing answers. Sharon blinks, eyebrows furrowing.

“We’ve met before,” Tony manages eventually, giving Sharon what he hopes passes for an amicable smile. All the while, he feels Steve’s eyes on him. 

“I see.” Sharon nods, but her smile is disconcertingly knowing. “Well, I think I saw some of my friends over there, so I’m going to leave you boys to catch up. It’s nice to meet you, Tony.”

With that, she leaves them alone again, her heels clicking away. 

An awkward silence settles between them. After a few heartbeats, Tony takes a deep breath and makes a valiant attempt at small talk:

“So, how long have you guys been to—”

“You never called.”

“What?”

“I, uh.” Steve’s eyes flit down to his feet before meeting Tony’s. His smile looks slightly strained at the edges. ”You never contacted me.”

“You— You left without a word. I had no way of contacting you.”

“What?” Steve’s eyebrows crease together.

“You did!” Tony exclaims, extremely confused as to why Steve seems to be confused. “I woke up and you were gone. No goodbye. No nothing. How was I supposed to contact you?”

“I— I had to catch a flight, but I didn’t want to wake you, so I did leave without saying goodbye—”

“That’s literally what I just said—”

“—but I left a note!”

“...Huh?”

Steve stares at him with bewildered eyes. “I left you a note on the nightstand. I tore a piece of paper from the hotel notepad, wrote you a note, folded it, and left it there for you to find. I wrote down my phone number and everything.”

“No, you didn’t,” Tony insists, indignant. “I would’ve found—”

Except Tony now remembers that although when he woke up in bed that day he realized that Steve was nowhere to be found, he was also immediately struck with the realization that he was late for his 10 a.m. meeting with a client—the main reason he had been in London in the first place. He then scrambled to get ready and was out the door in a record time of ten minutes. 

He didn’t even glance at whatever note Steve had supposedly left on the nightstand.

When he came back to the hotel later that night, his room had been cleaned up by the hotel staff.

“What?” Steve blinks at him. 

Tony lets out a sharp exhale in disbelief. He tries to breathe through the wave of disappointment that hits him upon realizing that Steve had wanted him to call, and that both of them are just victims of an unfortunate set of events.

Steve is still staring at him, desperate for an explanation.

“I just realized that— Um. You see, that day, the morning after we… met, I woke up late for my meeting.” Tony smiles at him, sheepish and apologetic. “So I rushed out the door in a hurry. When I came back, the bed was made and the room was all tidy. There was nothing on the nightstand. My guess is that the hotel staff must’ve cleaned it up during the day, while I was gone, so…”

“So you never saw the note,” Steve finishes, a myriad of emotions flitting through his eyes.

“I never saw it,” Tony confirms, gazing wistfully at Steve, his heart constricting at the unfairness of it all. They could have started something, if luck had been on their side. Steve had waited for him to call. Now, however…

Steve clearly belongs to someone else now and whatever chance Tony had back then, it certainly is long gone by now. 

Suddenly, someone calls out Tony’s name. They both turn to see the groom making a beckoning motion from across the room. 

“Tones, let’s take a picture!” Rhodey shouts. He is flanked by Carol and Pepper. All three of them are staring at Tony, expectant smiles on their faces.

Tony nods at them with a grin before turning to Steve. Sweet, beautiful Steve whom Tony never got around to having a proper date with.

“Sorry, I have to go,” Tony says regretfully, heart heavy. “It’s really nice seeing you again, Steve.”

He takes one last look at Steve before turning around to join his friends.

Before he manages to take more than two steps, however, Steve catches his wrist.

“Tony, wait.”

Tony turns to see Steve staring at him with a weirdly intense expression on his face, like he is working up the courage to say something. 

“Yeah?”

“Before you go, can I borrow your phone?”

Tony blinks but complies readily, fishing his phone out of his pocket. Maybe Steve wants to keep in touch, become friends. 

Steve types a phone number into Tony’s phone. When he is done, he hands the phone back to Tony. The new number is saved under the name “Steve Rogers”.

“That’s my phone number. Don’t lose it this time,” Steve says, a sweet and lopsided smile on his face. He then swallows, shoving his hands into his pockets. “And, uh, listen… If it’s all the same to you, I would still very much like to go on that date with you, the one you promised we would go on once we’re both back home in New York. I know it’s long overdue, it’s been a year. But I would still love to go for coffee with you, if you’re willing.”

Tony stares at him, uncomprehending. Steve seems to take Tony’s silence as a sign of rejection, because then he licks his lips nervously and says:

“Only if you want to, of course. Only if you want to, only if you’re comfortable with it, and only if you have time. You really don’t have to if—”

“But,” Tony shakes his head, “I thought you and, uh, Sharon? Aren’t you two…?”

Steve pauses at Tony’s question. The second he registers what Tony is getting at, his eyes widen almost comically.

“Oh. Oh. Oh, no. No. We’re not like that. We’ve never been like that.” Steve breaks into a relieved chuckle. “I don’t think her girlfriend would like that idea very much.”

“Oh,” Tony breathes. He feels a rush of giddy hope, so strong and sudden that it leaves him a bit dizzy. “So, coffee?”

“Yeah.” Steve stares at him, nervous and expectant, light pink dusting his cheeks. “If that offer still stands.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“How does next weekend sound?”

Steve beams at him, smile radiant. “Next weekend sounds amazing.”

“Okay,” Tony says, stepping back slowly. “I’ll call you.”

Steve nods before ducking his head bashfully, biting his lip to suppress the growing grin on his face. 

Turning around to finally walk away, Tony feels the ends of his lips climbing up into a helpless smile, so wide it could split his face in half. 

Later that night, he calls Steve. His heart is pounding in his chest as he waits for Steve to pick up, phone pressed up to his ear. 

“Hello?” Steve’s voice comes from the other end of the line.

“Rogers. It’s Tony. Tony Stark.”

A pause. “The Tony who stole my croissant?”

Tony grins. “I didn’t steal anything. That croissant was rightfully mine.”

“I got there first. I saw it first.”

“But I ordered it first.”

“I rest my case.” Steve laughs, the sound sending warmth running through Tony’s body. “I’m so glad you called. Thank you for calling.”

Tony smiles. It’s only right that he gives Steve a call. 

After all, even though Tony had stolen Steve’s croissant, Steve managed to steal something much more valuable: Tony’s heart. 

[iffeelscouldkill]

this is the place that they pull you to

A/N: I would say “my hand slipped” but this actually took me like a week to write xD

This is a post-season 2 episode 1 fic, so, here be spoilers! Basically I was talking to @dragonsthough101 about how I was expecting more emotional fallout on McCabe’s end from all of the conflict and tensions in episode 1 and the putdowns from Arkady, and while I’m sure we will get that in the podcast, it also occurred to me that I could... write that :D and thus *flourishes hands*

Title is taken from Wires by Savlonic, because I was listening to it and I realised it’s actually a very good song for RJ, both under the Regime and after. And now I earworm myself whenever I work on this fic xD

---

Once the door to RJ’s room on the Iris II has slid shut behind them and the red ‘lock’ light has engaged, they let out a shaky breath.

Then, only then, do they allow their lower lip to tremble.

RJ shuffles over to the bed – more like a cot really, but that’s long-haul space travel for you – and drops down onto it. Park’s words from earlier are looping inside their head. “I hope you’re right. But honestly, in this moment, McCabe? I’m glad we don’t have to find out.”

RJ lets out another shaky breath that’s closer to a sob, and blinks back the tears that are forming in their eyes. It doesn’t completely work, and a couple escape and track down their cheeks. RJ smears them away with the palm of their hand. “Get a grip, McCabe,” they mutter angrily to themself. Sure, they might be alone in their room right now, but they know better than to feel like it’s safe to relax or let go. Someone could be by any minute to check on them, or there might be a situation that requires all crew members to come to the mess hall, or the cockpit, and then how will RJ explain their red eyes and wrung-out demeanour?

It’s not safe to let their guard down. It hasn’t been for weeks. Even around Park, the one person on this vessel RJ knows they can trust, RJ feels – off-kilter, like they’re lagging a step behind everything. RJ is still trying to get used to not addressing him as “Agent”, to figure out what they can and can’t say now, to navigate their new relationship. As friends – but are they friends? Does Park even like RJ, outside of the context of them working together under the Republic?

It seems uncharitable to think, and RJ and Park had always had a good relationship as colleagues – they hadn’t been close, and Park had seemed pretty inscrutable to RJ at first, but then they’d got used to his way of working and communicating. Figured out how to make him crack a smile. Drawn some praise from him, even, and realised that underneath everything he was a caring person, and a good boss.

But RJ had also thought – been sure – that Park was loyal to the Republic, so how well did they really know him? Know this Park? And Park has been treating them… warily, especially these past few days. Not coldly or poorly, but a little bit at arm’s length. Like he isn’t sure what they might do. Like he doesn’t trust them, even though RJ trusts Park totally – to the point where they were willing to throw over their whole career, everything they’d worked so hard for, and follow him onto the Iris II.

Granted, they also hadn’t had a lot of other options at that time, but RJ still isn’t sure they would have made the same decision if Park hadn’t been there.

And yet here they both are, and Park is already a fixture in the cockpit, watching the controls when Tripat- when Sana or Krejjh needs a break, having apparently built up some experience as a co-pilot for long-haul transports after serving in the military (yet another thing that RJ didn’t know about him). And he’s comfortable enough with the crew to be on bantering terms with them, to suggest plans involving decommissioned government satellites. Whereas RJ…

“Cram it, McCabe!”

RJ’s lip trembles again, this time in earnest. And RJ would like to pretend that these are angry tears, or frustrated or indignant tears, but they’re really not. RJ wants to be angry, to stand their ground and fire back and give as good as they get and somehow manage to verbally earn the others’ respect; to be seen as a person instead of a suspect or a liability. But they’ve struck the wrong chord every time. RJ is sick of the awkward tension every time they’re in the room; sick of Arkady’s prickly snappishness and Sana’s increasingly weary peacemaking; sick of the unspoken communication between the crew that they can’t parse.

It doesn’t help to realise that the crew must have got practiced at that during the weeks they spent evading the IGR’s scrutiny before they made landing on New Jupiter. At least Park could say he hadn’t been there by that point. But McCabe had, headphones on, straining to parse something from every off-handed comment, every loaded silence.

Park wasn’t there because he was being tortured in Zone Z, McCabe thinks, and abruptly feels sick. Sick at the thought, and sick of themself for – not thinking, for even considering for a split second that Park might be somehow better off. After being imprisoned, cut off from his friends and family, tortured and maimed by a government he’d spent years of his life serving.

The same government that he believes RJ was thinking of selling them out to.

This realisation steals the breath from RJ’s lungs with a whoosh, and all of a sudden they don’t feel sick, or indignant, or hurt – they just feel cold.

RJ hadn’t been able to explain to Park in the moment exactly what they’d been thinking by withholding the information about the Fowleys being bugged and monitored (because of course they were). When the ‘offer’ from Jay Fowley had first come through, the crew hadn’t been desperate enough to seriously consider it, and by the time they were… well, they’d been on the verge of figuring things out anyway. And RJ had been feeling angry, and vindictive, and not in the mood to volunteer anything that would aid the crew; not when doing that had got them into this mess in the first place.

And maybe in the back of their mind, a voice had been whispering that they should keep their options open. It’s a voice that gets louder in the dark, when RJ is lying awake on their bunk, unable to sleep for replaying those moments in the corridor, the way that it felt like the ground was falling out from under them as Goodman denounced them and Park as defectors. It gets louder whenever RJ clashes with Arkady, whenever they catch uncertain glances from the other crew members, whenever RJ wanders the corridors of this godforsaken claustrophobic ship and realises that this is it now. This is their whole life.

But they never thought about how that might look to Park. It��s like in RJ’s head there are somehow two Republics: the one that would be capable of doing such horrible things to Park – to any person, much less one who hadn’t been demonstrably proven guilty – and the one that RJ had dedicated their career to serving, that they had believed was just and good and right.

RJ wants to find him and apologise, to try and explain, to share some of the fears and secret thoughts that have been curdling on the back of their tongue these past weeks.

But Park told them to get some rest, and RJ has enough awareness to realise that there’s a much higher chance of the conversation turning out well if they sleep a while first. So, reluctantly, RJ toes off their shoes and shrugs off their vest, and wriggles underneath the taut blanket attached to the bunk.

Either they’ve reached some kind of peace with themself or they’re more exhausted than they realised, because sleep overtakes them in minutes.

---

RJ is woken by a knocking at the door: light and tentative at first, and then firmer and louder. As always, it takes a moment for their brain to catch up with their surroundings: the hard bunk beneath them, followed by the bare walls of their room, still unadorned (RJ wasn’t exactly carrying any personal belongings when they fled CUI Headquarters, and the ship hadn’t made any stops since. Not that RJ knows what they would put in their room anyway. There hadn’t been much to leave behind on New Jupiter). RJ sits up and rubs an arm across their eyes, then goes to answer the door.

It’s Violet. RJ clamps down on the reflexive urge to say something like, ‘Did you draw the short straw?’, or maybe, ‘Did they send you to manage me?’ Violet doesn’t look like she’s here under duress, and to RJ’s memory, she’s not a particularly good actor.

“Hi,” they say instead.

“Hi,” Violet replies with a little smile. There’s always a weird dissonance – though RJ would never, ever bring this up – that comes from hearing the voices of the Rumor crew come out of the mouths of actual people instead of a recording. “How did you sleep?”

“Uh…” RJ thinks back, and is surprised to find that the answer is ‘well’. They actually feel… slightly refreshed. “Fine.” Belatedly, they tack on, “Thank you.”

“That’s good to hear.” Violet smiles again. She’s never been unfriendly to RJ, but these past several days, she’s seemed more on edge, more prone to sarcastic retorts, less willing to make peace between them and Patel- Arkady. RJ had believed that her patience was slowly fraying, that like the rest of the crew, she was only willing to put up with the new additions to the ship for a certain amount of time and that she’d stop pretending before long. But now, taking in Violet’s looser posture, the way some of the lines around her eyes and mouth have eased, RJ realises it had never had anything to do with them. Violet had been worried about the supplies. About her… medical emergency.

Speaking of supplies… “Did Park tell you what we wanted to add to the list?” RJ asks, figuring they’d better add a bit of verisimilitude to the excuse that Park had used to speak to RJ alone.

Violet’s smile widens. “He did. I definitely agree about replenishing our coffee supplies – though, I don’t know what kind of quality you’re used to, because I should warn you that the black market kind – the affordable black market kind, anyway – is pretty bad. We get non-freeze-dried coffee whenever we can, but out here…” Violet shrugs as if to say, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’.

RJ manages to suppress a wince at the term “black market”. This is your life, now, RJ, they remind themself for the thousandth time. “That’s okay. The stuff in the IGR breakrooms was basically dreck. I can drink pretty much anything.” RJ is no coffee lover, but they drink it for the caffeine. Pretty much everyone in the Republic has a caffeine addiction or develops one at some point – no way to get through eighteen-hour shifts without it.

Violet chuckles a little. “It was always the same at my lab internships. I guess bad breakroom coffee is pretty universal.”

RJ recognises that she’s trying to bond with them by referencing shared experiences of working for the Republic. It’s not the first time she’s done it. But RJ still has trouble seeing their circumstances as equivalent.

Violet is – had been – a scientist, not an Agent; not one of the IGR’s most loyal, tasked with the defence of the Republic. She’d never had access to classified briefings; hadn’t dedicated her life to tracking down and apprehending insurgent forces. And given that the Rumor crew had deceived her into entering the cryo chamber, she could argue that she’d been duped – and had only co-operated in order to save her own life. Well, the argument would hold water up until Elion, anyway.

It wasn’t the same.

The silence hangs for a few moments, before RJ prompts her, “Did you want to… ask me something?”

“Sorry, yes – I came to tell you that dinner’s ready and uh, we’re about to eat in the mess hall if you’d like to join us.” Violet smiles again, with a touch of nervousness this time. No doubt she’s expecting a caustic brush-off.

“Is it veggie stew?” RJ can’t help asking, with a slight nose wrinkle. They’re expecting a rebuke from Violet, some kind of warning about being grateful for what they have, but instead she laughs.

“Unfortunately. On the bright side, though, it’s only for a couple more days and then we’ll be able to have actual flavourings again.”

RJ almost smiles, and is surprised when they catch themself. And – they were going to decline, make an excuse about continuing their nap, because they’re still feeling off-kilter and they doubt that Arkady will be thrilled to be spending time in close quarters with them so soon, but – they think about Park’s talk with them in the hallway. About how they’ve spent the past few weeks dodging any kind of connection with the rest of the crew, anything that will put them past, in RJ’s mind, the point of no return – and where exactly that’s got them.

“Sure,” says RJ. “Just let me, uh…”

They put a hand up to their hair, realising that it must be sticking up in all directions after their nap. Short hair is gratifyingly easy to take care of, but it sure does have interesting ideas about gravity.

“I have a comb you can borrow, if you need it?” Violet offers.

“It’s fine,” RJ declines automatically. “Park-”

They catch themself, wondering why it feels like such a concession to accept even this tiny piece of help from someone other than Park. They think about their bare room, empty of any personal possessions.

“I’m okay right now,” they say slowly. “But… is it too late to add something to the shopping list?”

Violet blinks, clearly surprised, and then smiles brightly. “Not at all.”

---

Five minutes later, hair tamed and clothes straightened, RJ makes their way towards the mess hall, which adjoins the kitchen. They haven’t spent much time in here so far – there’d been a couple of communal dinners at first, which quickly gave way to the reality of shifts ending at disparate times and the need to simply grab food however and whenever people could, something RJ had been grateful for.

Once, on their way to the kitchen, they’d walked in on Violet and Arkady having what looked like a picnic at the table in the centre of the room, just the two of them. That had been awkward for everyone. Since then, RJ has taken to finding their food and snacks at times when they know most of the crew are otherwise occupied.

Everyone else is already there and making more noise than you would think a group of six people could generate. Brian is in the kitchen, ladling bland servings of stew into the uniform polypropylene bowls that they’d found stacked inside the cupboards. Krejjh stands next to him, loudly enthusing about the virtues of the stew to anyone within earshot. Violet and Sana are waiting to be served, while Arkady – who has just been handed a full bowl by Brian – rolls her eyes and makes sarcastic comments as she carries it through to the mess hall. There, Park is sitting in one of the bolted-down chairs, watching the whole scene with a slightly raised eyebrow and waiting, if RJ had to guess, for the general hubbub to die down before he goes to get his food.

RJ pads over and slides into the chair on the same side as Park’s good eye. Park turns his head slightly, giving them a quick once-over, almost too brief to catch. “Hi,” he says quietly. “How was your nap?”

RJ hesitates over what to say. “It helped,” they reply. “Park, can we… talk? After dinner?”

The tiniest of frowns creases Park’s forehead. “Sure,” he says. “Everything all right?”

RJ nods, drumming their fingers on the tabletop and meeting Violet’s gaze as she comes over to sit next to Arkady, giving RJ a friendly smile. They don’t quite return it, but… it’s not as unwelcome as it would have been, before.

“Yeah,” they say to Park. “It’s fine.”

[waitimcomingtoo]

Can you do actress reader x Tom Holland where the reader has a celebrity crush on Ryan Reynolds and fangirls over him and tom gets jealous?

Reynolds

Pairing: Tom Holland x actress!reader

Synopsis: your obsession with Ryan Reynolds has Tom feeling insecure

Masterlist

Requests are CLOSED

“Where’s Tom?” You read one of the comments on your Instagram live as you played with the strings of Toms Punisher hoodie. “Toms at a meeting but if I timed it correctly he should be eating lunch right about now.”

For the record, you had timed it correctly. Tom was in a quiet cafe, eating the lunch you packed him with a content smile while he watched your Instagram live. Tom continued to eat his food as you answered more innocent questions.

“What are you doing now?” You read another comment.

“Probably reading.” Tom thought to himself.

“I was just reading. Reading and waiting for Tommy to come home. What’s your favorite color?” You read a commenters question.

“Pink.” Tom said out loud as he munched a baby carrot.

“Pink.” You nodded. “I’ve always loved pink. What’s your favorite animal?”

“Dog.” Tom smiled knowingly, feeling like he was acing a test.

“Dogs.” You stated with a happy smile. “Like my baby Tessa. What’s your favorite food?”

“My baby loves ice cream.” Tom said in a sing song voice. He moved back and forth in his chair, blushing at how cute you were in his hoodie. He wished he could be back at home with you, eating your favorite ice cream.

“I love ice cream. I don’t know if that counts as a food but it’s my favorite so.” You shrugged, your eyes darting up and down as you read the comments. “Who’s your favorite actor. That’s easy.”

“Tom Holland.” Tom said, keeping a mental score of all his points for answering questions correctly.

“Ryan Reynolds.” You answered. A sly smile appeared on your face. “Have you guys seen Deadpool?”

Tom sat back in surprise as you got into a discussion with your followers about Deadpool. Since when did you like Ryan Reynolds? And why was he your favorite actor when your own boyfriend was an actor? Tom felt a twinge of jealousy bubble up in his tummy. He had a weird relationship with Ryan Reynolds. They had never met, but were friendly on Instagram and Twitter. Both men liked to feed into the Spider-Man/Deadpool fantasy that fans had created online. There was the back and forth teasing of each other, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Hugh Jackman that Tom always found funny.

Until now.

Until he discovered his girlfriends love for another actor.

Tom pushed it from his mind. He convinced himself he was just being insecure over nothing. He knew you loved his acting. You probably just said Ryan was your favorite actor because saying Tom would be too obvious.

It had completely slipped his mind until a month later, when you and him were doing a couples video for Buzzfeed. It was like The Newlywed Game, despite not being married. You and Tom were tied as the interview started to dwindle down.

“What is Toms go-to activity on a day off?” The interviewer asked. You and Tom immediately got to writing on your white boards.

“Whenever you’re ready.” The interviewer said. You flipped your board around with confidence.

“I said golf.” You said, looking at Tom while you waited for him to flip his board. Toms face lit up as he held his board up to the camera.

“Golf!” He exclaimed, never failing to get excited when you got the right answer. “You got it right.” He high fived you before closing his fingers around yours and kissing your hand. “Good job, love.”

“This is too easy.” You said smugly. You knew your boyfriend too well.

“And, last question, who is Y/n’s celebrity crush?”

“Oh, duh.” Tom scoffed, gesturing to himself with a suave smirk on his face. You didn’t catch his reaction, as you were busy writing down your answer.

“Ready?” The interviewer asked.

“Yep.” Tom said confidently as he held up his board to the camera. “Me” was written on it in his messy handwriting. You peaked at his board and laughed.

“Oh.” You said, flipping your own board around. “I said Ryan Reynolds.”

Tom felt genuinely shocked at your answer, even looking at your board for confirmation.

“What?” He asked, looking between you and the board as you laughed. “I thought I was your celebrity crush.”

“You can’t be my crush if you’re my boyfriend.” You teased, not registering his reaction as serious.

“Yes I can.” Tom defended, feeling uneasy with your answer. “I didn’t even know you liked him like that.”

Him being your favorite actor was one thing. Now you had a crush on him too?

“Are you kidding? I’m crazy about him.” You said as you brushed some hair out of your face. “I thought you knew that.”

“I didn’t.” Tom said through gritted teeth. Crazy about Ryan Reynolds? You didn’t even know the guy.

“I never told you?” You asked and Tom shook his head. He would’ve remembered you confessing your love for the quick witted brunette actor. “That’s surprising. I’ve been obsessed with him for years. My love for Ryan Reynolds is one of the hallmarks of my personality.”

“Obsessed is a strong word.” Tom remarked, feeling that same twinge of jealousy rise in his tummy.

“Not strong enough.” You stated. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for that man.”

You went on to talk about your obsession with Ryan Reynolds as Tom sat, engulfed in his thoughts. This was the second time you’d chosen Ryan over Tom. He couldn’t help the pang of envy that plagued his heart. You were a lot more into the guy than Tom originally thought.

But once again, Tom pushed it from his mind. He didn’t think of it again until you, Tom, and Gwyneth Paltrow appeared on the Graham Norton show together two months later to promote Far From Home.

“Now, Gwyneth, you had a pretty interesting celebrity crush growing up, didn’t you?” Graham said as he read off his cards in his Irish accent. Both you and Tom loved being on his show, especially together. He always got the best stories out of people.

“I did. I was obsessed with Keanu Reeves when I was 15.” Gwyneth answered casually.

“I can see why, he’s a very gorgeous man.” Graham nodded in agreement. “And Y/n I hear you’re quite the Ryan Reynolds fan.”

“Oh yes.” You said immediately. You beamed at the thought of him as the audience laughed. Tom, on the other hand, couldn’t have been less amused. He put on a cheerful face for the camera, but he felt white hot anger bubbling under the surface. Was Ryan going to be brought up in every damn interview?

“Is that true? Do tell.” Graham kicked his crossed leg a little, ready for trouble.

“He’s just”, You shook your hands and balled them in fists, “he just gets me going.” You laughed. Tom rolled his eyes and crossed his legs to mask his indignation.

“Does he?” Graham grinned wickedly, wanting even more out of you.

“Yes!” You leaned back in your chair, taking in the cheerful reaction from the audience. “Can you blame me though? He’s dreamy.” Your face burned bright, like a schoolgirl with a crush, as you discussed the actor.

“He’s very dreamy.” Gwyneth added.

“Back off.” You deadpanned, before bursting into laughter. The audience laughed with you, loving your energy.

“Feisty.” Graham poked fun as he shimmered his shoulder. “Is she this possessive with you, Tom?”

“She better be.” Tom said, more serious than he intended. You were too busy fawning over Ryan to notice Toms indifference.

“I am, I am.” You assured the audience. “But I would cut a bitch for Ryan Reynolds.”

“Would you?” Graham explored. “You’d just knife someone? Right then and there?”

“Absolutely.” You quipped. The audience was loving it, Tom was hating it, and you were having a great time.

“Alright.” Tom spoke up, unable to handle his girlfriend gushing over another man anymore. “I think we get it.”

“Uh Oh. Spider-Mans angry.” Graham teased before looking back at you. “What is it about him that you like?”

“It’s everything. We’ve never met, but I can just tell from his interviews that I watch every night before bed,” You paused as the audience laughed, “that he’s just a great guy. He’s so funny, obviously, and such a talented actor but he still seems like such a genuinely sweet and humble guy. And I mean, how damn cute is he? Those brown eyes? That sexy salt and pepper beard he’s got going on? I die every time he looks at the camera. I love him. I don’t know, I just love him.”

“We can tell.” Tom huffed. So now you loved him? He went from your favorite actor, to being your celebrity crush, and now you loved him too? Toms suit felt tighter and the lights felt hotter. He wanted to get out of the interview and blow off some steam.

“Maybe we’ll see a Spider-Man and Deadpool crossover one day and Y/n can play Deadpool’s girlfriend.” Gwyneth shrugged, only fueling Toms angry fire.

“I wish.” You stated. That set Tom over the edge. He didn’t talk for the rest of the interview unless he had too.

He went to bed that night, barely muttering a goodnight to you before putting his pillow over his head and going to sleep. You were too high on adrenaline to notice his cold shoulder towards you. You went to bed that night with a smile on your face after kissing Toms cheek.

“Tom!” Tom heard your hushed whisper a few hours later. He felt himself being shaken gently. He let out a slight groan and snuggled further into his pillow.

“Tommy wake up!” You said a little louder, shaking him a little more.

“Yes, my love?” Tom said sleepily, with his eyes still closed.

“Look!” You gushed, at full volume now.

And shoved in Toms face at 7:17 in the morning was a fan drawing of Deadpool holding your most popular character in a loving embrace while Spider-Man cried. There was also a little caricature of Graham Norton cheering them on in the corner. Ryan Reynolds had posted the picture on his Instagram story with the caption “Mr. Steal Your Girl.” in bold red letters. Toms face went as red as those letters and shoved your phone out of his face.

“Y/n, it’s too early for this.” Tom grumbled, turning over in bed and pulling the blanket over his face.

“Ryan Reynolds posted a drawing of my character on his story. And she’s in his arms! That means he saw the interview!” You went on, still shaking Tom. He knew he wasn’t going back to bed anytime soon. He threw the blanket off his face and rubbed his tired eyes.

“A lot of people saw the interview.” Tom sighed as he stretched a little. “Go back to bed. Why are you even awake?”

“Because the notification I got that told me Ryan posted something woke me up.” You explained, eyes still glued to your phone.

“You have notifications on for him?” Tom asked, feelings fully awake. “Do you have them on for me?” He wondered out loud.

“I’m usually with you when you post something, silly.” You cooed, giving him a kiss good morning which he accepted graciously. He regretted overreacting last night and not kissing you goodnight. He’s gone too many hours without your touch. “Can you believe this? Ryan Reynolds knows who I am!” You exclaimed, pulling Tom out of his brief happy daze.

“Yippee.” He said sarcastically as he flopped back down onto the bed.

“I’m going to repost his story.” You said decidedly. “Should I write something witty or just put emojis?”

“I don’t care.” Tom mumbled into his pillow.

“You’re right. I’ll put something witty.” Yet again, you were too focused on the task at hand to notice Toms mood. He went back to bed without another word.

Tom woke up three hours later and lazily scrolled through his phone. You weren’t in bed anymore, no doubt too giddy to go back to sleep. Tom saw that ring around your profile picture, signaling that you had posted on your story. Tom clicked it, briefly forgetting the half asleep conversation you’d had just a few hours ago. It was a screenshot of Ryans Instagram story. Under his little “Mr. Steal your girl” comment, you’d written, “all yours, baby. Don’t tell Blake.”

“What the hell?” Tom muttered sleepily. He clicked on where you tagged Ryan and began to stalk his profile. He clicked on his Instagram story, expecting to just see the fan art from before. This time, there was a picture of you and Tom holding hands and walking in the streets of New York with Ryans face poorly photoshopped over Toms. Tom sat up in bed, fully awake. Ryan had only posted it three seconds ago. Tom heard you scream from the kitchen, no doubt meaning you’d just seen it for yourself.

Tom was not happy. That photo of you and him was one of his favorites. In the picture, he was staring at you with a dreamy smile on his face while you pointed at something in the distance. Your eyes were wide like a child and your face was lit up with glee, hence Toms dreamy smile. Tom loved that photo because it was so fitting for your relationship. You admiring the beauty of the world while Tom admired the beauty of his world.

And now freaking Ryan Reynolds slapped his smug, incredibly handsome face right over Toms.

You ran back into the bedroom, phone in hand, with another huge smile.

“Did you-“

“Yeah, I saw.” Tom cut you off. This time, you noticed his indifference.

“Is everything alright, lover?” You asked as you leaned against the doorframe.

“Everything is just peachy.” Tom grouched. He threw the blanket off his body and went into the bathroom, avoiding your confused gaze the entire way there.

After a long shower, Tom felt better. He still felt guilty for snapping at you and knew he had to make things right. He found you on the couch in the living room, half watching an episode of New Girl. Toms tea was on the counter, waiting for him, next to a plate of eggs and toast. You still made him breakfast despite his rudeness towards you all morning and last night. Tom immediately felt his guilt worsen, and he took a seat next to you on the couch.

“You got new lip balm?” Tom asked sweetly, his form of a peace offering.

“Yes.” You said through partially parted lips, never meeting his gaze as you heavily applied your lip balm. “I ran out of my old one.”

So you weren’t mad. You just seemed hurt.

“Is it coconut?” Tom leaned in a little closer, which you let him, and sniffed the air.

“Piña Colada.” You said, warning up to him a little.

“Smells nice.” Tom complimented, seeing how far he could push his luck before you yelled at him for the way he acted. He stroked your hair gently and a forgiving smile tugged at the corners of your mouth.

“Tastes nice too.” You said deviantly.

“I don’t believe you.” Tom said coyly. “I’m gonna need some concert evidence, darling.”

“I think I could help you out with that.” You said, fully forgiving him now as you leaned in.

Just as your lips were about to connect, your phone lit up and went “ding.”

“Op.” You chirped and picked up your phone. “That’s Ryan.”

Tom stayed right where he was, despite you pulling away. He couldn’t hide the irritation he felt. His face twisted in annoyance as he watched your phone screen light up your face.

“What?” He said bluntly, completely unamused. You, however, were busy commenting every compliment you could think of under Ryans post.

“Huh?” You asked, absentmindedly, as your thumbs twiddled away.

“What did you say?” Tom asked you again, restraining himself from completely flipping his lid.

“I said that’s Ryan.” You repeated. You held up your phone in front of Toms face with the biggest smile on your face. Ryan Reynolds annoyingly perfect face looked back at Tom. “He just posted a selfie.”

“And you had to stop kissing me to like his picture?” Tom asked calmly.

“See? You understand.” You patted Toms cheek before diving back into your phone. Tom watched you, more rage building up every second you didn’t look up at him. Finally, Tom had had enough.

“Y/n-“ he began.

“Oh my God.” You interrupted with wide eyes. “Look what he just posted.”

Tom didn’t look down at first. He stared right at you, intense anger behind his usually gentle eyes.

“Are you serious?” He asked you.

“Yes!” You stated, misreading his question. “Look!”

Tom grabbed your phone and looked at what you so desperately had to show him. It was a picture of Ryan, of course, with his big arms wrapped around a cardboard cutout of you. Ryan was leaning in to kiss your cheek. A shirt that said “I love Y/n L/n” in big, bulky black letters was peaking out from behind the cutout. The caption said, “I won’t tell Blake if you don’t tell Tom.” Then he tagged you, along with a million hearts and kissy faces. Tom would’ve found the picture funny on any other day. But now, your love for Ryan Reynolds was impacting his relationship with you and he hated it.

He hated how genuinely excited you were just from him posting a picture.

He hated how Ryan was brought up in every single interviewer, and how you turned into a fangirling mess when he was.

Most of all, he hated feeling like you loved another man more than you loved your own boyfriend.

“Y/n!” Tom yelled, slamming his fist down on the couch. You jumped at his sudden outburst and put your phone down, giving him your full attention. Toms eyes immediately softened. He hadn’t meant to raise his voice, but it was the only way to get through to you.

“Yes?” You asked, confused with his tone of voice.

“I was trying to kiss you and you pulled away to look at some dudes Instagram.” Tom burst out. His tone was assertive, but not mean.

“It’s not some dude.” You dished his words back at him. “It’s Ryan Reynolds, love of my life.”

“I’m the love of your life!” He shouted. You looked at him in surprise.

“What’s gotten into you?” You asked, finally putting it together. Every time Ryan came up, Tom got quiet and weird. “Are you seriously jealous of Ryan Reynolds?”

“Am I jealous of the incredibly handsome that you’re head over heels for?” Tom repeated in exasperation. “Yes, Y/n, I am.”

“Why?” You asked incredulously, not even believing you were having this conversation.

“Because!” Tom exploded. “He’s all you talk about. Like, he’s your favorite actor and not me? He’s your celebrity crush and not me?” Tom listed off, finally getting his feelings off his chest. “And every time he gets brought up in an interview, you get all giggly and blushy. You even told Graham Norton you wished you could play his girlfriend. How am I supposed to feel about that? I’m your boyfriend and you’re so open about being in love with another man that-”

“Tommy, I’m not actually in love with him.” You interrupted. You said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, giggling at your hotheaded boyfriend in the meantime.

“You-You’re not?” Tom stuttered, stunned at your response. He had been expecting you to yell back. He hadn’t expected you to meet his anger with giggles and reassurance.

“No.” You laughed, rubbing Toms heated face with your thumb. “Yes, I love him. He’s funny and cute and a great actor. But I’m not actually in love with him. I’m only in love with you.”

“Then why are you so obsessed with him?” Tom asked, his voice softening.

“Tommy, when I say those things about Ryan, I mean other than you. He’s my celebrity crush, other than you. He’s my favorite actor, other than you. And saying I’m in love with him is just a figure of speech. But when I say I’m in love with you,” you poked his chest as a smile threatened to break out on his face, “I mean it. 100%. I love you. Only you. Not Ryan Reynolds. Not Wade Wilson. Not Chris Brander. Not Will Hayes. Just you.”

“But, sometimes, I can’t help but feel like you like him more than me.” Tom said timidly as he kissed your palm that was resting on his cheek. He was genuinely insecure about your feelings for him, something you hadn’t noticed until now.

“Tom, there is no one in this world I like more than you.” You told him. He gave you a soft smile.

“Are you sure?” He asked, still needing reassurance.

“I’m positive.” You promised him.

“What if he asked you out?” Tom tested.

“I’d tell him I’m kinda seeing someone.” You shrugged, making Tom feel better with every word.

“You’d turn down Ryan Reynolds for me?” He asked in disbelief.

“Without question.” You confirmed, taking his face in your hands. “You are absolutely the one I want. I’m sorry if I made you feel insecure.”

“It’s okay.” Tom told you. “I overreacted. I should’ve trusted you and our relationship.” He felt silly for getting all worked up over something as silly as you liking another actor. He never should’ve doubted you.

“I do have an idea of how we can respond to Ryans post, though.” You grinned mischievously.

“We?” Tom asked with a hopeful smirk.

A few minutes later, Ryan Reynolds got a notification that you tagged him in a photo. He went to his Instagram and clicked on your profile. A rare photo of you and Tom kissing with the caption “Tom knows.” was on your page in response to his “don’t tell Tom” comment from earlier. Ryan laughed to himself and went to comment.

@vancityreynolds: “But I thought I was Mr. steal your girl.” He wrote under your post. Tom was quick to respond.

@tomholland2013: “yeah, but she’s Mrs. Holland.”

“There.” You smiled and put your phone down. “It’s settled.”

A million rumors were already flying around that you and Tom were engaged. Toms comment did nothing to help that fact.

“Finally.” Tom breathed a sigh of relief and tossed his phone onto the other couch. “Can I get that kiss now?”

Tag List 🏷

@maybemona @sunrise-shawn

[dinfeanoriel]

Safeguard

Hey! I’ve been gone awhile, but I’m back with a little something! 

~~~~~~~~~

His face was familiar.

Then again, all of their faces were familiar because they were their own. As strange as it was to say, the resemblance between the nine was uncanny and undeniable. 

But his...His was far more familiar to Time. Something about it nagged at him. It was constantly poking and prodding, urging him to delve deep into his mind and strive to uncover, to find out, why he recognized him more so than the others. 

With Twilight, it had clicked into place they were somehow related. A descendant of his from far down the line. 

Could it be the same with him? 

Remember. 

Remember! 

But he couldn’t. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to remember. Where he’d seen his face? That was a rather pointless endeavor and would undoubtedly lead to a fruitless search. 

He recalled their first meeting vividly and both had experienced an eerie familiarity with one another for reasons they were unsure of. Time could tell from his carefully crafted expressions that Warrior recognized him also but was at a loss as to how and why. 

This further confirmed to Time that they must have met once upon a time. 

But when? How? 

Surely, Time would have been able to recall such an extraordinary event. It wasn’t everyday one met an incarnation of themselves.  

It also wasn’t everyday one met eight incarnations of themselves, and yet, here they were. 

But, Time digressed 

The resemblance between the two was striking. All of the Links had been taken aback and put off by it. 

~~~~

“Are you two related?” Wind once asked. The Sailor was sitting between Warrior and Four, constantly looking between the Knight and the Old Man across from him. 

“Thank you, Wind, for asking!” Legend expelled a breath, “I have been wanting to know for a while now!” 

Wanting but never asking. 

The others appeared to have wondered the same if their sudden interest in the conversation was of any evidence. 

Twilight was certainly curious. While he and Time knew they were related, it was always possible for there to be more relatives. 

Warrior gave a warm chuckle and shook his head, “No. We aren’t.” 

He disheveled Wind’s hair for good measure, ignoring the Sailor’s indignant cry. 

Time couldn’t help but frown at the answer. Something about it bugged him. Was it the forced sincerity behind Warrior’s voice? The frail conviction in his eyes? The bitterness and subtle scowl Warrior skillfully hid from the others? 

He never dared to ask. 

~~~~

Of course, it wasn’t only the Links who recognized the uncanny resemblance between the two. Time’s wife, Malon, had noted it. When Malon had first been introduced to the Links, her eyes were drawn to Warrior and then Twilight almost instinctively. Her eyes shuttered with something unknown, her heart tugging at something foreign yet more than welcome. 

Time had already informed her of having met a descendant of their’s. At first, Malon believed it to be Warrior, then possibly Wind, only to discover later it was Twilight. 

However, Malon appeared to be dissatisfied with something Time couldn’t pinpoint. She was overjoyed and exuberant from having learned they had a descendant. She’d been unable to quell her excitement and contagious, toothy, smiles for several days. She’d gushed to Time in a neverending stream of proud words and happiness about being able to meet Twilight. 

~~~~

“That boy reminds me of you from when you were younger,” Malon once remarked to Time, drying a plate with a hand towel. “Sixteen, I’d have to say.” 

“Warrior?” Funny how he knew exactly who she was referring to. 

Malon hummed with a nod of her head, “He looks so much like you, it’s unbelievable! I was almost convinced I was staring at a younger version of you. As the Hero of Time, I wouldn’t have doubted it was.” 

“You aren’t the first to make such a claim,” He’d informed his wife, instinctively searching for Warrior among the group of Heroes running about outside. They were indulging Wind in one of his favorite games, looking far more relaxed and at ease than Time had ever seen them. 

He found Warrior nearest Twilight and struggled to hold back a laugh when a disgruntled Cucco leaped out from behind them, angrily flapping its wings and clucking furiously. The pure and unadulterated fear that crossed their faces and the comical widening of their eyes was something Time would forever remember. 

To think a Cucco of all things was able to extract such sheer and absolute terror from those possessing the Triforce of Courage...

Wonders never ceased, Time supposed. 

He’d never seen them move so fast before. Twilight and Warrior were gone before he could blink, kicking up a cloud of dust as they bolted across the ranch to safety. Legend, Hyrule, Wind, and Four were quick to drop everything and follow their example, fleeing for their lives and leaving behind an utterly baffled Sky. 

Ever the bold one, Malon snorted, 

“I believe it.” 

Time hadn’t been able to shake those words from his mind ever since. 

~~~~

It frustrated Time to no end that he was no closer to uncovering the answer he’d been seeking. It was so close yet so far away. Almost out of reach. Time wasn’t sure how to cross the distance without alerting Warrior. 

When in the heat of battle, Time more-often-than-not found himself partnering with Warrior. The two made for an unbeatable duo who conquered the battlefield with hardly any effort. 

They worked well together, adapting to one another’s style and technique without trouble and swooping in with a killing blow when the other faltered or stepped aside. 

It pestered him. 

A strange, niggling sensation told him this wasn’t the first they’d fought together. Nor would it be the last. 

How was it possible? 

What really took the cake was what occurred that night. 

The Links were weary from a long day of travelling and exhausted from the three battles they’d partaken in. Setting up camp took longer than usual due to the bone-deep fatigue affecting each Hero. Still, Wild put together a wholesome meal for them to enjoy and the Links slipped into sharing a couple or so stories of their adventures. 

Time merely listened, his stoic gaze slipping towards Warrior every-so-often. The Old Man had noticed something about the Knight. For as much as he loved to talk, his voice filling the silence and becoming something they were accustomed to listening to, they knew next to nothing about him. 

Time mulled on this surprising fact, troubled. He sifted through a list of what he knew about the Knight: 

1. He was a Knight 2. Obtained a nasty scar from the Dragon Knight Volga 3. Fought Ganondorf and a sorceress called Cia 4. Faced Dark Link 5. Fought a war 6. Has several sisters

The more Time thought, the steeper his frown became. He hardly knew anything about Warrior. 

Why was this? 

Warrior skillfully crafted each individual conversation he participated in. He manipulated the subject away from himself and slyly shifted the topic to others. When directly questioned about his adventure, Warrior gave a simple summary, skimmed over details, and wrapped it up promptly. None of them noticed for the way Warrior would speak, how he would draw them into a fascinating tale and keep them on their toes with suspense, distracted them from recognizing how he never directly spoke of himself. 

Tonight, the Heroes were showing a few of their instruments to pass time until Wild finished cooking. 

Legend and Sky compared their harps, Wind whipped out his baton and Spirit Flute, Hyrule revealed his recorder, and Twilight allowed Four to admire his Horse Call. 

“What about you, Time?” Wind curiously asked, drawing the oldest Hero from his thoughts, “Do you have an instrument?” 

Suddenly, Time found himself in the spotlight once more. He supposed it couldn’t hurt to join in just this once. 

“I do,” Time replied, watching the Heroes perk up and look to him expectantly. He smothered a smile and shook his head, “I don’t suppose you would want to see?” 

Wind bounded forward, “Oh yes!” he cried excitedly, “I want to see!” 

Time huffed out a small chuckle, pausing long enough in his rifling through his pack to ruffle Wind’s already disheveled hair. Warrior would undoubtedly fix it later. 

“Very well. It is a rare and incredibly important instrument.” 

“Why is that?” Surprisingly, it was Legend who voiced the question. The snarky Hero drew closer, influencing the others to do the same. Before Time knew it, they had formed a crescent moon around him. Warrior sat across from him, Wind in his lap and arms loosely wrapped around the enthusiastic sailor. Twilight, Wild, and Hyrule were to their left with Legend, Sky, and Four to their right. 

“It was given to me by Princess Zelda,” Time explained, carefully shifting through his pack to find his beloved instrument, “And it helped me greatly on my adventures.” Legend nodded in understanding. 

At long last, Time felt the familiar outline of this beloved instrument and he delicately slipped it out for all to see. It was a tad amusing to see the awe and wonder appear in their eyes. Wind was especially amazed by the blue, peculiarly shaped and unfamiliar instrument. 

“What is it?” Sky asked, briefly meeting Time’s eye. 

“An Ocarina,” 

Time stopped, mouth open but no words having escaped. The answer to Sky’s question lingered on the tip of his tongue, dissipating into nothingness the instant a different voice replied for him. 

His gaze snapped to Warrior immediately. The Knight’s grip on Wind had tightened imperceptibly, his back and shoulders stiff, and disbelieving eyes glued to the Ocarina of Time. There was a strange, unrecognizable intonation to his voice Time told himself to pay close attention to. 

He narrowed his own gaze, wondering at Warrior’s unexpected reaction. There was something more to it. The familiarity in which Warrior stared at the Ocarina of Time and the shock carefully hidden behind deep pools of blue. 

Wind dropped his head back, peering up at Warrior quizzically, 

“You’ve seen one before, Warrior?” 

Upon hearing his voice, Warrior slowly blinked and shook himself from whatever daze had overtaken him. That infamous, charming, smile Warrior was known for stretched his lips and he answered,  “I have, a long while ago,” 

Time frowned at the vague response. 

“They are incredibly rare, however,” 

And there he went, deflecting the attention from himself back to Time. 

“They are indeed,” Time agreed lowly, studying Warrior intently, “To my knowledge, there are only two Ocarinas. There could be more, but I have yet to find another.” 

Before anymore could be said, Wild declared dinner was ready and the Links were up and gone in a flash. 

~~~~

Young Link sat idly on a boulder in Hyrule Field, small legs kicking in the air as he hummed a catchy tune to himself. The battle had long since ended and he took this precious little time to rest and regain his strength before they moved out once more. He knew the call to march would sound soon and sorrow swelled in his heart. Young Link had seen plenty of darkness, death, and despair. He had witnessed the world’s end many times over and struggled to rescue a land threatened by a looming moon and a Mask wielding a great and terrible, ancient, power. He’d traveled through time, back and forth and back and forth, until he’d put an end to the King of Evil, returned the Master Sword, and warned Princess Zelda of the oncoming storm. 

Now, here he was, warped into another world and whisked away on yet another adventure to help beat back the darkness poisoning the lands of this Hyrule. 

In his hands, Link gingerly held the Ocarina of Time. Princess Zelda had given it to him- claimed it might one day help him. A subtle way of telling Link he would need it someday. The thought terrified him. 

Everything was doom and gloom nowadays and it saddened Young Link to know of the evils and horrors people were capable of. Of the atrocities and tragedies many would suffer down the road. 

It was hard accepting not everyone could be saved. 

The quiet shuffling of booted feet drew Young Link from his dark, restless, thoughts and the boy in green turned his head to find a familiar Hylian approaching. His face was blurred, his figure distorted in a way to hide his identity. He could recognize the color green and blue and the blonde hair, but other than that, nothing. 

Hands rose and signed quickly, gesturing to the Ocarina curiously. 

Young Link grinned, a tinge of nostalgia slipping into the gesture, and answered, 

“This is an Ocarina. The Ocarina of Time,” He presented it freely, unafraid. He knew he could trust this stranger implicitly. 

The blurred figure nodded to themselves, and Young Link could imagine an intrigued frown twisting their lips. 

“It’s an instrument!” Young Link brightly elaborated, cradling the Ocarina and bringing it up for the other to get a better look. He knew the knight wouldn’t try to steal from him, “A beautiful one too. It was given to me.” 

“Ocarina...” The ghost of a whisper caressed Young Link’s ear and the child snapped his head up in surprise. This was the first time he’d heard the other’s voice. It was surprisingly warm and soft. Amiable and kind. 

“You should talk more,” Young Link chirped from where he was perched, startling his companion, “You’re voice...it’s...it’s nice to hear.” 

A shy chuckle echoed in his ears before darkness ringed around the edges, closing in...

“Thank you...” 

~~~~

Time blinked his eyes open drowsily, squinting when tendrils of sunlight pierced them for a blinding moment. The remnants of his dream lingered in his mind, troubling the Old Man as he pondered on it. 

It felt...familiar. 

Real. 

Like a distant memory. Lost due to the passage of time and then found again. 

He sat up, his mind foggy and thoughts whirling in confusion. He raked a hand through his golden hair, wondering at the dream. Had it been a simple dream? Or was there more to it? 

The more he mused on it, the pesky sensation in the back of his mind became stronger- telling him this was a memory he’d somehow suppressed and had freshly excavated. 

The voice...

It struck him as eerily familiar and yet unfamiliar. He’d heard it once before. 

“Old Man?” 

Time blinked slowly, raising his head to find Legend standing before him with an eyebrow raised. 

“I’ve been calling to you for a while now,” The red-clad Hero huffed, crossing his arms and inclining his head, “You were staring into oblivion...” 

Time would have smiled at the hidden concern behind Legend’s words. His extremely subtle way of expressing worry and asking whether or not he was okay. 

“I’m alright,” Time said, suppressing a groan when he drew himself to his feet. He must be getting old. His body kept protesting against movement of any kind. He was no longer as agile and nimble as he once was, but he was stronger and wiser. The older Hero clasped Legend’s shoulder and looked to find the seven other Heroes efficiently packing up camp under Warrior’s guidance. The Captain’s scarf fluttered in the strong breeze and Warrior fumbled to keep it from unraveling. 

Warrior...

~~~~

Young Link watched his friend care and wash his blood-stained scarf. He scrutinized every inch of the fabric, checking to make sure there were no rips or tears. 

“You really like your scarf, don’t you?” The small Hero stated with a small smile. His friend reminded him much of himself and how he treated the Ocarina of Time as if it were the most precious item in the world. 

It was to him, and he supposed his friend held similar sentimentality towards his scarf. 

His friend paused momentarily, sparing him a glance. His face was soft and open. There was no harshness or sternness now that the battle was over and they were granted time for respite before they would start again. 

His friend’s eyes glimmered with an unknown emotion as he regarded the scarf he held in his hands. 

“Yes,” He softly murmured with a nod of his head, “I do...It reminds me of him.” 

Whoever ‘he’ was, Young Link never did discover, but he knew whoever they were, they must have been important to his friend. 

~~~~

Time pursed his lips at the Knight. It aggravated him that he couldn’t pinpoint why he found the Captain awfully familiar. 

Legend shuffled in place, gaze flitting from Time to Warrior. The intense look on their leader’s face, the narrowing of his eyes and searching gaze... What could he possibly be looking for? 

Time hummed to himself, uncertain and curious, “I suppose a few questions are in order...” 

Legend quirked an eyebrow at him but Time said nothing more. Instead, he pat Legend’s shoulder and moved away to help Wind untangle himself from the shrubs he’d miraculously caught himself up in. 

The Sailor was a giggling mess, a fondly exasperated Warrior and amused Sky hovering about attempting to tug him out. 

“Of all things, Wind, and I just did your hair-” Warrior halfheartedly scolded the teen, 

“Come now, Warrior,” Time interjected smoothly, slipping beside the Captain, “I recall a certain incident at a particular waterfall-” 

Legend’s curiosity was piqued when Warrior turned a surprising shade of red, stuttering, 

“I-I have absolutely no idea what you’re referring to!” 

Time’s deep laughter encompassed the air, his shoulders shaking from the movement. The Links looked on with interest. It was rare for their leader to laugh so freely and with such unrestrained warmth and mirth. 

“Wait, what incident?” Hyrule wanted to know.  “Yes, do tell!” Four encouraged. 

Warrior floundered desperately. 

“No, don’t!” 

~~~~

It was when they were abruptly transported to Warrior’s world that things took an unexpected turn. 

Twilight’d thought Warrior would be thrilled to return to his home and give them a tour of his Hyrule but his keen senses told him otherwise. Warrior was displeased and reluctant. 

His confident and sure stature had wilted and his booted feet thumped against the ground a little heavier than normal. 

He plastered on a fake smile to fool the others, but Twilight saw right through it. The Knight did not appear at all happy to be here and it baffled Twilight. The forced cheer in Warrior’s voice when he would speak and the faux-prep in his step were a facade he kept tightly wound about himself. A vain attempt to convince the Links he was beyond enthused to be back. 

Twilight ambled a little behind Warrior, off to the side. He caught sight of the dark frown twisting his companion’s features and the contemplative, almost strained and hesitant look on his face. He could practically see the gears turning nonstop in the Hero’s head. His eyes had dimmed, becoming dark and stormy. 

Quickening his pace, Twilight moved to walk alongside the Knight. Warrior snapped out of his thoughts upon catching his movement and shot the Ordonian a questioning look. 

“Something you need, Twilight?” 

Twilight shook his head at the split-second transformation he witnessed steal over his companion. The amiable tone, weak smirk, and glad expression. 

“You aren’t fooling me, Warrior.” 

Warrior faltered. It was slight, not really noticeable, but Twilight noted it. His smirk faded, growing frail and crackly until it vanished completely and the grim expression from before replaced the faux-delighted one. He looked away- another sign that something was bothering him. 

It had to be something serious if it affected Warrior this much. 

“Sorry,” Warrior apologized a little gruffly, staring down the path they were on, “This road brings back some awful memories.” His demeanor visibly darkened, “And what lies at the end is worse.” 

Twilight could understand. While he didn’t know Warrior’s story, he knew how it could be. How a simple object, place, or person could dredge up the worst of memories. 

“Is there a different path we could take?” 

Warrior looked briefly surprised by Twilight’s suggestion, but shook his head.  “Unfortunately, no, or I would have taken one. But I cannot-” Warrior cut off, clenching his fists, “Will not,” He managed to say between clenched teeth, “Run from it. I was bound to face it one day. Might as well be this one.” 

Twilight averted his gaze. He was never one for sentimentality or comforting, but he darn well tried. 

“It might not be much, but we’re here with you.” 

This time, Warrior stopped briefly, lifting his head to stare at Twilight for a moment before a small, genuine, smile curved his lips and he started walking again. 

“That’s more than I could ask for,” He admitted in a quiet murmur. Twilight recognized it for the thanks it was. 

He stayed next to Warrior for the remainder of the trip and never strayed even as the sun began to fall and the moon gradually ascended. 

~~~~

He walked alongside a tall, intimidating, Dragon Knight, swallowed up by his shadow. Volga had surprisingly taken a role as his protector- though Young Link had little need of one. He could hold his own quite well, thank you. 

Their fellow soldiers were grim-faced and determined. 

This tale was drawing to an end. 

At least, he hoped. He didn’t want his friend to suffer more than he already had. He didn’t want him to experience the same horrors he himself had. If he could spare his friend that, Young Link would. It was a vow he kept close to his heart and strove his hardest to achieve. 

The road was long and dark. The roiling clouds above thunderous and ominous, instilling a sense of foreboding in the armies trudging beneath them. Already, Young Link recognized the wavering resolve in some of the soldiers and he scowled. 

Would there be more turncoats? Traitors? Those hurt his friend more than any physical wound ever could. 

Speaking of his friend... 

Cobalt blues scanned the faces of the nearby Knights, searching for one in particular. He spotted him marching up ahead, accompanying the Princess and General Impa discussing strategy. 

Without a word, Young Link bounded away and hopped to his friend’s side. He could see the steely resolve in his face- so alike his own. Young Link had no doubt that his friend would succeed in ridding this world of the Sorceress’s curse and consequently saving Hyrule. 

Hyrule was, in his empirical opinion, useless when it came to times likes these. It always fell upon the shoulders of the Hero to struggle, suffer, and strive to save her. 

There was also a look in his friend’s eyes that Young Link found he didn’t like. Ever since his friend had retrieved the Master Sword, he’d grown reckless and prideful. Never a good combination. 

Young Link feared for his friend. The upcoming battle would no doubt be the most difficult and trying and he knew if his friend didn’t snap out of it, he would wind up getting himself killed. 

Well then, Young Link would just have to stick to his side and make sure he didn’t. It would be easier said than done, but more than worth it. 

Without much thought, Young Link reached and tugged on his friend’s sleeve, drawing his attention from the Princess and the General. Then, grasping his hand, Young Link looked up to him. 

“We’re almost there,” 

His friend, Link, smiled and nodded curtly. His eyes- no longer hidden from sight or blurred- glinted with a strange light and Young Link found he didn’t like it. 

He was far too confident. Far too sure now that he wielded the Master Sword. 

“Cia’s house...” He murmured. 

Once, Young Link celebrated and reveled in the rare moments his friend would speak for himself rather than through his fairy, but now...

He wished Proxi had spoken instead. 

~~~~

“There it is,” 

It was Warrior’s solemn voice that brought Time back to the present. His brow creased from the fickle memory that had come unwarranted to him. He wasn’t sure what had triggered it, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that this road they had taken was known to him. 

The Links took in the sight before them. 

The dark, foreboding Fortress Warrior knew they would have to seek shelter in for the night loomed in the distance. Time wandered closer to where Twilight and Warrior stood on the edge of a cliff. The instant his gaze fell on the building, Time knew where they were before Warrior told them. 

“Cia’s House,” 

The aloof tone unsettled the Links and they discreetly shot looks of concern towards Warrior. From the guarded look on his face, they knew he had some kind of history with this grand and eerie place. 

And not a good one. 

Legend thought he sensed dark magic poisoning the air and the ground and wondered at it. Warrior was strongly opposed to magic- especially dark magic. Had something happened here that served to influence the fierce hatred he bore against it? 

Time frowned deeply. 

Cia’s House...The place from his memory. He’d been here once before. But when? How? Why couldn’t he remember? 

He looked long and hard at the structure as if it held all of the answers he sought. For some reason, he felt a stirring of anger, an odd coiling of fear, and fierce protection well up inside of him. 

Protect...

Protect.

Protect! 

Time winced when the word thundered in his mind, ricocheting off the walls and fading into nothingness. 

Protect? 

Protect what? Who?

A hand settled on his arm and Time turned to find Wild worriedly peerkng at him from beneath his hood. 

“You doing alright, Pops?” He asked upon recognizing the pain and confusion minutely distorting the older Hero’s features. 

“I...yes,” Time nodded slowly, a strong hand giving Wild a couple reassuring pats on his shoulder. 

Wild clearly didn’t believe him but he knew better than to press. Something was frustrating Time yet the teen couldn’t tell what. He’d been watching the Old Man closely. Lately, he’d been absentminded and earlier, when they first started down the path after Warrior, he’d withdrawn into himself, eyes far away and mind distant. 

It was as if he was recalling something- a faint memory of sorts. Wild knew that look well. He’d worn it more times than he cared to count. 

“Look after Warrior,” 

“Huh?” Wild blinked at the sudden words. Time didn’t appear to realize he’d spoken at all, instead starting forward and following the group down the cliffside to Cia’s House. “Look after Warrior..?” He repeated, bewildered. He scratched the back of his head and shrugged to himself. 

Warrior had been acting odd. Perhaps Time was concerned for him? 

~~~~

It was General Impa’s gruff cry that alerted Young Link to the fact that something was severely wrong. The genuine worry she didn’t bother to hide alarmed the small hero. 

“Link, wait- that idiot!” She tripled her efforts, her large, sharp blade viciously swiping enemies and sending them sailing in all directions. 

A sharp pang of pure, unadulterated fear raced through Young Link’s veins. His friend had run on ahead, just as he’d suspected he would do. 

The Dragon Knight Volga slammed his weapon into the ground, flames encompassing his form as fury tinged with concern distorted his masked features. He scowled, fangs flashing in the light, 

“That boy is going to get himself killed!” 

Young Link snapped his head toward the displeased Dragon Knight, eyes wide with unrestrained worry. 

Without waiting for Volga, Young Link shot off, a trail of destruction left in his wake.

“I have to find him!” 

The urge to use the Fierce Deity Mask festered within the young hero, but he valiantly quashed it. He effortlessly destroyed any enemies that got in his way- the need to make sure his friend was safe and sound feeding this newly found strength and sudden rush of adrenaline that kept his legs pumping. 

A burst of hot air slammed into his back and past him as Volga sprinted along side him, 

“You are just as reckless,” Came his guttural growl, flames brilliantly bright. 

“Link is surrounded!” Came the Princess’s powerful, reverberating, voice, and another blast of sheer terror stole Young Link’s very breath away, “There are Dark Links appearing everywhere!”

Young Link willed himself to go faster. Dark Links? As in plural? His friend had no experience facing an evil incarnation of himself! How could he face more than one? 

He desperately clung to the hope he would reach him in time. 

~~~~

When Time next stirred, it was a handful of hours before dawn. Heaving a quiet sigh, the oldest Hero drew himself up into a sitting position and turned his head to appraise the slumbering Links around him. 

Wind was curled into a tight ball underneath his blanket, Four calmly sleeping nearest him with his hands folded on his chest. Hyrule had one arm and leg cast out from underneath his thick cloak, and his head pillowed on his left arm. 

Twilight and Wild were back-to-back, the former of the Heroes having chosen not to transform for the night. They slept near identical to one another, with an arm curled beneath their heads and cushioning them from the unforgiving, stone, ground and blankets drawn past their shoulders. 

Sky was a mess of sprawled limbs. Time huffed out a quiet laugh at the ungainly sight. For such an amiable, kindhearted, and soft-spoken hero, Sky moved an unbelievable amount during the night and often awoke with his arms and legs haphazardly thrown here and there. 

Legend was lying on his stomach, his pack shoved underneath his head and an arm bent close to his face. His face was smoothed over in his sleep, the typical scowl and moody furrow creasing his brow absent. He looked young, untroubled, and unburdened. Sorrow tugged at Time’s heart. He knew Legend had experienced much- more than most of the others combined and he wondered why the Goddess had chosen to send him on one adventure after another. 

Yet, Time also held admiration and respect for the teen. Despite everything he’d gone through, Legend still persevered and pressed on. He had become almost detached to life and did his best to avoid making connections, but little by little, he was starting to open up and establish a strong, unbreakable, bond with the rag-tag group of wayward Heroes. 

A troubled frown pulled at Time’s lips. What would happen after this adventure was over? What would become of the Heroes? Would they still be able to contact one another? Or would they never see one another again, left only with memories they would forever treasure and cherish? 

He stubbornly silenced the thoughts in his mind and looked to the Knight still on watch...

Only to find Warrior gone. 

Time stiffened and turned every-which-way in search of the Captain. 

He was nowhere to be found. 

The Old Man stood immediately, ensuring the make-shift campsite was secure before heading off to find the missing Link. Where could he have gone? Why had he abandoned his post? It was unlike Warrior to do so. Even if he went to investigate something, Warrior knew better than to go alone. 

What had prompted him to leave on his own without waking one of his companions? 

Time didn’t know but he was going to find out. 

He left the campsite and turned down the vast corridor towards the main room of Cia’s House. His feet moved instinctively, knowing exactly where they would find the Knight. 

It might have been ages ago, but he still remembered...

Brief flashes and blurred images flickered across his mind the deeper into the House he went, and Time realized he did know where he was heading. 

He’d been here before...

Long ago. 

In a time long forgotten and newly remembered. 

~~~~

“He’s in trouble!” Young Link cried, bolting down the corridors and racing towards where his friend was trapped. 

Volga chased after him. They were joined by a determined Ruto and seething Midna, both racing to reach Link before anything ill befell him. 

“He’s more of an idiot than my idiot,” He barely overheard Midna hissing in displeasure.

“We can lecture him later,” Ruto peacefully intervened before the Twili could continue, “Right now, we have to reach him before the Dark Links do!” 

~~~~

Time’s lips curled back in a grimace at the paintings decorating the walls. He certainly did not miss the sight of those. 

The Sorceress had been wholly and utterly obsessed with the Bearer of the Triforce of Courage. It was disturbing. 

The Hero of Time continued on his short trek through Cia’s House, slowing to a stop almost instinctively when he reached the room he dreaded to see. 

~~~~

Young Link couldn’t describe the onslaught of emotions and feelings that took him captive when he skidded around the corner to find his friend surrounded by Dark Links. 

His heart leaped into his throat and his eyes went impossibly wide with terror when they lunged at him simultaneously. 

“NO!” The desperate, heart-rending cry ripped from his throat. 

“You IDIOT!” Midna practically screeched. 

“LINK!” 

“We won’t reach him in time-”  It was the Dragon Knight’s terse declaration that shattered Young Link’s world completely and made him understand. 

They had arrived too late. 

~~~~

Time peered into the vast chamber he knew Warrior would be in. 

The Knight stood only a few feet inside, not daring to move any further. His face was a blank canvas, carefully shielded, and eyes dark and stormy as he recalled those terrible days. 

He was silent. Grave and solemn. 

It was a sight Time had never before seen. Not with Warrior. 

He was small. Insignificant compared to the expansiveness of the room they were in. 

“I almost died here...” 

Warrior’s voice was quiet. Steady and collected but his tone shook with an unknown emotion. He swallowed thickly, a fist pressed to his chest. 

“I thought I would...”  

- The unbridled fear. The widening of cobalt blues, swimming with undiluted terror and horrified understanding- 

The Old Man was reminded of a time not too long ago in which Sky allowed Hyrule to wield the Master Sword. The words Warrior had stated so simply and nonchalantly back then lingered in the back of his mind, troubling the Hero...

~~~~~

“Just a beauty, isn’t she?” Warrior remarked as the Links watched Hyrule admire the Master Sword he held in his hands. The beauty and craftsmanship took him aback. They could recognize the awe and wonderment in his dark eyes. 

“I’m at a loss for words,” Hyrule admitted in a respectful whisper, a smile splitting his lips as he pointed the Master Sword forward. She moved with such grace and elegance. A fine blade. No other could hope to surpass her. 

“With that blade, you feel invincible,” Warrior said, wagging a finger in Hyrule’s direction. Twilight’s gaze flicked to him, a slight frown on his face, 

“That’s a dangerous way of thinking,” The Ordonian remarked, voicing Time’s thoughts aloud. 

Warrior said nothing to defend himself. 

“Almost cost me my life,” 

~~~~

“You were reckless,” Time’s low voice quietly broke the silence encompassing the room. 

Warrior didn’t startle. He’d likely sensed Time’s presence before the Hylian had spoken. A self-deprecating laugh fleetly followed. 

“I was overconfident,” The Knight agreed, lowering his head with shame, “If it hadn’t been for the others...For Lana...I wouldn’t be here.” 

Time moved swiftly, coming to stand beside Warrior. 

“Sometimes, I wonder what might have happened,” Warrior continued, lifting his gaze and staring ahead, unable to look Time in the eye, “If I had fallen- if Lana had been a second late and the Darks succeeded... what would have become of Hyrule if I had failed?” 

Time shook his head with a stern frown, grasping Warrior’s shoulder gently but firmly, 

“No one can give you an answer to that, Warrior. There is no way to know and you will never find out. Dwelling on what-ifs is a wasteful endeavor- and one that does more harm than good. Because of Lana, because of your friends and allies, you still live. You are still here.” 

“And for that, I am forever grateful,” Warrior earnestly told Time, clenching his fists, “But that doesn’t change the fact that because of my foolishness and pride, my overconfidence, I could have cost Hyrule everything.” 

Time hummed, “That is a possibility, but that is all it is- a possibility. There are things all of us wish we can go back, erase, and start anew,” The Hero smiled wanly, “But if it weren’t for those experiences, for the lessons we learned, or the struggles we underwent, none of us would be where we are now. There are regrets. There will always be lingering regrets we will never truly rid ourselves of...” Time knew this well. It was and always would be the harsh reality, “You have learned and grown since then, Warrior, and have taken to teaching the others what you yourself have learned.” 

Now Time felt he had an understanding of Warrior. 

“Almost cost me my life,” 

The simple statement that had bugged Time for months now made more sense. He was issuing a warning. It was subtle but it was there. He was telling the others not to allow the power of the Master Sword to go to their heads. He was making sure none of them would take the Blade of Evil’s Bane for granted. A lesson he had learned and taken to heart. 

“I suppose,” Warrior conceded with a slight nod. 

Time appraised him somberly. 

“Forgiving one’s self is the most difficult and arduous task we will all experience in our lifetime,” He squeezed Warrior’s shoulder, “Some will succeed and some will not, but, Warrior, though it may amount to nothing, I never held it against you. Nor did any of the others.” 

Warrior’s head snapped up at record speed. For a second, Time believed he might have given himself whiplash. Stunned cobalt blues bored into Time’s own, confusion mingled with a faint trace of hope easily recognizable. 

“You..?” 

Time released another warm laugh, “I thought I recognized you from somewhere,” He told the Captain, “But for the life of me, I could never pinpoint from where or when. During the past few days, I started to remember. That little boy in green you met on the battlefield? The one wielding the biggoron sword?”

Why on Hylia’s green earth Time had chosen to use that blade was still beyond him. It had been far too big for him then.  

Warrior could have choked, “That was you?!” Then his expression brightened and a brilliant, beaming, smile broke out. It was a most welcome sight for Time to see. The genuine happiness, shock, and relief Warrior sported meant more than the Captain would ever know, “Of course it was you! I thought- I couldn’t bring myself to believe it-” He trailed off, raking his fingers through his hair as he attempted to wrap his mind around this unexpected revelation, “The Ocarina was a dead give away but I thought it was mere coincidence you had one.” 

“That was the first time I heard your voice,” Time found himself saying. Warrior chuckled faintly, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“I can’t believe it...” Still, the smile never left Warrior’s face. “It was you all along.” 

“You would think the title The Hero of Time would have given it away,” Time mused, a hint of teasing in his tone. 

Warrior turned red and floundered pathetically, “Yes- well- I-um...” He deflated, grumbling moodily, “There is nothing I can say in my defense.” 

Time ruffled his hair. Then, without warning, he cuffed the back of Warrior’s head. The Knight cried out indignantly, leaning away from Time and shooting him a mild glare, 

“What was that for?!” 

The Knight rubbed at his head with one eye squeezed shut and the other locked on the Old Man.

“That was for being an idiot,” Time promptly answered, “I was too short to knock you on your head last time.” 

And too relieved.

But as Time listened to Warrior’s unrestrained, if a bit embarrassed, laughter and shaky apologies, the Old Man knew deep down in his heart, that he would have done anything to safeguard the Captain. He would have given anything if it meant saving Warrior.

~~~~

The instant Lana’s barrier fell and the Darks were taken care of, Young Link dropped everything he held and spun around to throw himself at his friend. His poor, frantically beating heat did not slow, unable to handle the terrible scare it had suffered. 

His friend crashed to his knees, catching him in his strong arms and crushing him close. Young Link threw his own around his neck, clutching tightly and he screwed his burning eyes shut against the tears gathering within them. 

Both refused to let one another go. 

Young Link feared if he did, his friend would disappear. What had nearly happened, the close call his friend had experienced, did not release its hold on him. He’d almost lost his dear friend. He’d almost borne witness to his gruesome demise. 

If they had been a millisecond too late...

His small body trembled and Young Link realized his dear friend, Link, was also shaking. His breathing was uneven and hitched every now and then and the boy in green understood his friend was only now realizing what the true cost of his pride and overconfidence could have been. 

“Don’t ever do that again!” Young Link fiercely whispered in one pointed ear, tightening his hold. He might be choking his friend, but he was too relieved to care at the moment. “Ever! I thought-” His voice caught on a sob, droplets of silver rain falling free, “I thought I was going to l-lose you!” 

The blue-scarfed Hero exhaled shakily, burying his face in his hair and murmuring tremulously, 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” 

His hands trembled violently, his body quaking and Young Link pulled back to give his friend a wobbly smile. 

“Don’t be,” He hiccuped, dragging his arm across his eyes and meeting his dear friend’s watery gaze. There was deep regret, heart rending remorse, and unfathomable guilt swimming in them and he shook his head, “I’m just...happy you’re still here.” 

He was given a similar, shaky, smile, 

“Me too.” 

~~~~

[bkwrm523]

Dress Code

Title: Dress Code Rating: Explicit Pairing: Bruce Wayne/reader Word Count: just under 1500 Warnings: smut, oral… Idk man it’s pure smut. Summary: You wear a short dress, Bruce gets some ideas.  That’s about it. Author’s Note: listen, I think we all know that panties magically disappear when they’re inconvenient.  Right?  Also!  One, this is from no particular universe.  Two, you guys have @imoutofmyvulcanmind​ to thank for this

Your mind was everywhere else as Bruce Wayne, your boyfriend, walked you out to his car.

You’d been with him tonight at some high society party tonight.  You’d chosen to wear a miniskirt tonight, and you’d almost felt Bruce’s eyes on you all night.  Well, on your legs.

You thought so, anyway.  He was difficult to read.  

The idea of him checking you out, being distracted by you had you excited, and you’d been breathless and anticipating all night.

You reached the car, and Bruce opened the door for you and helped you into your seat.  You could have sworn you saw a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, and then he was gone, walking over to the driver’s seat.

Your mind wandered as you sat there, Bruce sitting down and starting the car.  You couldn’t wait to get your outfit off when you got home.  It was nice enough, but you’d be happy to put on pajamas.

Your mind wandering, you didn’t notice Bruce was moving until his hand was between your legs.

You squealed and tried to cry his name, but you couldn’t catch your breath.  Your legs kicked at the footwell, and your hand grasped clumsily at his, trying to push it away.

"Insolent," Bruce growled, his voice low and gruff in his Batman voice.  "Wearing that dress.  Teasing me all night."

His fingers were inside you, knowing just where to stroke to turn you into putty.  You tried again to push his hand away from you instinctively, but he was much stronger than you.  It was hopeless.

"You're going to come for me, princess."  Bruce continued, still using his Batman voice.  "As many times as I ask.  Consider it your penance."

You cried out wordlessly and squirmed frantically in your seat, as much as the seatbelt would allow.  You held his wrist, no longer sure if you were still trying to push it away or just seeking contact.  His fingers brushed your gspot and you saw stars.

"Come for me."  Bruce ordered you, his voice stern and tense and almost angry.  You squirmed harder in the seat against his hand, helpless to disobey.  You threw your head back against the seat back and screamed, coming forcefully as his hand continued to stroke your insides.  You tried to babble his name as his fingers brushed your gspot again and again, tried to push his hand away.  Tried to beg him to let you down.  But he was relentless, and you were thrown from one orgasm directly into another.  

You lost count of orgasms.  Three?  Eventually, he let you down and pulled his hand away.  You gave a tired moan as he licked his fingers clean, then put the hand back on the wheel.  You couldn't catch your breath, staring at him and panting as the drive continued in utter silence.

You'd quite lost track of time, but eventually the car pulled into Wayne manor.  The gate closed behind his car, and the car rolled to a stop in front of the house.  You were still breathing hard, unable to take your eyes off of him as he put the car in park in a practiced gesture, and turned it off.  You finally broke your gaze off of him then, unbuckling your seat belt and hurling it back against the car and out of your way.

You reached for the car door, ready to get out, but you didn't quite manage to touch the handle.  You felt his hand on your thigh, gripping it and spinning you sideways until your back was towards the car door.  He pulled you forwards a little, until you were half lying down, and then snarled as he dove between your legs.

You gave a startled screech, fumbling at the seat backs with hands and legs as Bruce's hands framed your hips, moving you just into position as he ravenously ate out the evidence of your desire.  You squeaked and squirmed and tried to escape his tongue, but his grip on your hips was firm and steady as iron, and you weren’t going anywhere until he chose to let you.  He bit your thigh, and you felt his scruff against your sensitive inner thighs.  Your eyes rolled back in your head, and you screamed his name as he catapulted you into the heavens again.  Your leg hooked somehow over the back of his seat, and you couldn't summon the motor control to retrieve it.  Your other leg was somehow stuck in the footwell, forcing your legs to spread wide for him.  You tried to push against the seat, to sit up, but his grip on you was too strong and you still couldn’t escape from the position he’d put you in.  Oversensitive as you were, you were quickly coming again, crying his name.

He finally let you down, releasing his grip on your hips and sitting up.  He reached over his seat, helping you pull your leg down and sit back up.  You sat there for a moment, dazed and leaning against the back of your seat.  You distantly registered Bruce’s door opening and shutting as you tried to catch your breath.  

Your door opened, and Bruce leaned down, grasping your hand gently and helping you from the car.  He had a smug smirk on his face, and you knew you should say something about it, tease him or something.  But you still couldn’t catch your breath and you brain was quite simply fried.  You settled for grumbling wordlessly, delighting in the warm, genuine laugh that it drew from him.  Bruce helped you stand, and wrapped an arm around your waist.  You weren’t quite sure if you’d be able to walk straight without his help, not after the incident in the car.

His warm arm left your waist suddenly, and you stumbled a little.  For a moment, at least.  Bruce bent in front of you, putting his shoulder in your midsection, throwing you over it and standing up.  You gave an indignant squack, squirming a little.  One of his arms covered your legs, holding them steady.  The other one smacked your ass, making it sting a little as he walked inside.

“Enough.”  Bruce ordered you.  You grumbled a little, but obeyed.

Until, that is, the hand that spanked you went under your skirt.  The arm holding your legs, his hand rested on your calf, stroking and enjoying the smooth skin at his disposal.  His fingers were inside your poor oversensitive possy again, and you panted and whined desperately as he pushed you closer to climax again.  

“Bruce,” you whined, ignoring the mansion passing around you as he carried you to who knew where.  “Please.  Let me rest.”

“Sleep is for the weak. ��And I’m not finished with you yet, princess.”  Bruce replied.  He pushed another finger inside you, making you cry his name.  Your legs tried to move, pushing against his fondling hand, but he didn’t let you move anywhere.

You came again, weakly crying out.  Mid orgasm, he decided to set you down.  It felt for a moment like you’d been thrown, until your back hit the bed.  You had time for a single confused wordless noise, before he was kneeling at the edge of the bed and eating you out through the rest of your orgasm.

Bruce let you come down after this one, standing up and stepping back from the bed.  One of your legs was hanging off the bed, and you panted hard.  You knew you should try to scootch backwards on the bed, make yourself more comfortable, but you didn’t have enough control over your muscles.

“Are you gonna undress, princess?”  Bruce asked, amused.  You let your head loll to the side, looking over at him just in time to see him discard his suit jacket and roll up his sleeves.

“I can’t move.”  You whined, giving him pathetic puppy eyes.  He chuckled smugly, finishing with his sleeves before he moved back over to you.

Gently, he removed your dress and moved you to the middle of the bed, lying your head comfortably on the pillows there.

“Bruce,” you moaned softly.  You had no request or agenda with the word, simply a desire for him to be close, to hear his name.  He smiled down at you, soft and a little predatory all at once.

“You’ve been a very good girl tonight, sweetheart.”  Bruce praised you, making you preen a little.  “Are you ready for more?  We’re going to break your record for orgasms tonight.”

You meeped pathetically, looking like a deer in the headlights.  It was going to be a long night.

[shiny-procrastinates]

(re)Watching Magia Record S1 - part 12

part 11 here

Hello and welcome back everyone to this kinda watch-along of Magia Record s1. Last time, Mifuyu invited our girls to a lecture about the "salvation" her cult is preaching and took the opportunity to make a psychological attack on Yachiyo, who's now avoiding her team. Oh, and also Momoko was going to tell the truth to Rena. How will the girls react to learning the truth about magical girls? Why did Yachiyo suddenly start distancing herself from the others? We can only find that out by watching, so let's get on to this penultimate episode!

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story: Magia Record S1 episode 12

Yachiyo's seriously not having a good time since she saw Mifuyu. After talking briefly with what I guess are the illusions of old companions of hers and denying that the girls are her friends, Yachiyo decides to follow after Iroha and co. with the excuse of being unable to ignore other magical girls being fooled.

pft, what a callback, I can't believe she's still tracking Felicia. Yachiyo, please, you look like a stalker lol

Back at Memory Museum, Iroha's having a not very pleasant reunion with one of her best friends (also Felicia's growling at her haha). Iroha refuses to accept the reality that Touka's a Magius, since she thinks that the Touka she knows would never do that, but Touka really doesn't remember either her or Ui.

While Touka Mary Poppins around, Mifuyu steps in on their little argument, reminding Touka that she's supposed to be giving them a lecture, and Iroha also pulls herself together to do what she actually went there for.

Oh, that's a nice transition to the op, I forgot that happened. I forgot this ep had the opening at all.

Back at the bridge, Momoko's about to let Rena in on the truth about magical girls, when a certain person joins them.

Kaede! Long time no see. Normally, I'd be glad to see her back, but there's just something very ominous about her showing up now of all times, with a black umbrella and smiling, after what happened to her.

While that's going on, Iroha's team is getting a very handy educational slideshow on Magical Girls, courtesy of Touka. First, she proposes the scenario of a Soul Gem breaking, asking our girls what would happen in that case. After Sana and Tsuruno get it not wrong but not exactly right either, Touka gives them the answer: The Magical Girl dies.

Alas, that's a very Touka slideshow indeed, condescendingly giving a lot of synonyms for "death" just to make sure you get it. Thanks, Touka.

Back at the bridge, I wasn't imagining it, there really must be something weird going on with Kaede. Did popping a witch really break her this much? Rena hugs Kaede, who apologizes and promises they’ll be together forever now... in any other situation, I'd say that's really sweet, but right now it's really disturbing. Then, Kaede-

Kaede? KAEDE? Why and how do you know about that already?! Did Momoko tell you? Momoko's also acting suspicious. Just what the heck is going on here?

Thanks for this shot anime. Yes, Touka does very much sound like the white weasel here.

In Memory Museum, Touka explains what exactly a Soul Gem is, to the very understandable shock of Iroha and the others. After complaining about their inability to keep up, Touka urges them to move on to the next part of the lecture: "Magical Girl Theory: About Witches". Ohh man here we go.

Exactly what part of being a magical girl is exciting escapes my understanding. Maybe "scary" or "hopeless" would be a better descriptor. That aside, no wonder the rumor says you'd be affected by the memory you saw. Vicariously experiencing it is a whole 'nother deal...

Except that they don't. Unlike the game, they only get to watch the memories, not take part in them. One has to wonder why the script even bothered having Mifuyu say that if they weren't going to do it after all.

In Mifuyu's memory, just like Touka had described earlier, Yachiyo's group, who at the time was her, Mifuyu and one of the girls Yachiyo had hallucinated earlier, Kanae, are having a hard time against a powerful witch. When taking an attack from the witch head on, Kanae's Soul Gem ends up cracking and breaking so, although she managed to reflect the attack and kill the witch, she dies.

So that's how Yachiyo and Mifuyu learnt the truth about the Soul Gems, and now the Mikadzuki girls were proved that through their memories (though it's specifically Mifuyu's memory).

Back at the entrance, Yachiyo has finally caught up with the group (kinda). Touka tries to talk to her, maybe to buy some time, but Yachiyo gives absolutely zero cares and just slides down the rope like she's in some video game. Girl has no chill huh, didn't even wait to hear Touka's name, which means she has no idea that that’s one of the people Iroha was looking for.

Continuing the "practical part" of the lecture, Iroha's now seeing Mifuyu's memories from some time (years, I think) later. By this time, she and Yachiyo already had a new team with Tsuruno, Momoko and Mel, one of the other girls Yachiyo had seen the illusion of earlier, and Mikadzuki Villa was basically back to normal.

That day, when Tsuruno was busy, Yachiyo and team went to hunt a witch who had moved all the way from the east to their own ward. Like in the previous memory, the witch was powerful and her team was having a hard time, so Yachiyo told them to run away while she distracted it (remember Seance Shrine?). However, Yachiyo ends up in a pinch and Mel, the day's lucky girl, ignores Yachiyo's order and comes in to save her.

The result, too, is very much like Seance Shrine. Mel used up all her magic on saving Yachiyo and, before they can go find a Grief Seed to purify her Gem, Mel ends up witching out.

I have to say though, even though it's her own memories, Mifuyu's being pretty damn cold about this. Man, how can you watch this smiling? Are you alright? (from the point she's a magical girl, probably not.)

Rena, who probably just heard this very same story, is having the expected reaction.

Back then, Momoko was indignant to learn this truth, pressing Kyuubei for answers. The stupid cat-rabbit, however, gives the very same explanation he had given on the og about magical girls and saving the universe.

With this, Iroha's team has also learnt the truth behind Witches, whether they wanted to or not. I feel Kyuubei would like to complain about that statement saying that he's fooling someone, considering his stance is "no one asked".

That was the end to that part, but it seems there was still more to be learned here, since the lecture is not over and we continue seeing Mifuyu's memories from after that.

Mifuyu felt pretty damn miserable after what happened to Mel and couldn't get over it even after half a year had passed. Momoko tells her to just forget it already, but Mifuyu just can't. Momoko also says they shouldn't tell Tsuruno, which explains why she didn't know.

Unable to forget and unable to tell anyone about it, Mifuyu ends up witching out... or, that's what should happen normally, but instead of witching out for real Mifuyu releases her impurities to an outside form, just like Iroha, Kaede, the Amane twins and Alina all did throughout the series.

At this point, Touka cuts in to continue her lecture, now on exactly what is this event that we had been wondering the whole series about. Thanks, Touka.

According to Touka, these crystallizations of a magical girl's impurities is called a Doppel and she's the one that created the system that makes them possible. That, itself, is the proof of "salvation" that the Magius are preaching, and their goal is to reject Kyuubei's system, releasing all magical girls. Well... that's fine and all, but 1: how are you doing this; and 2: why do you need Rumors and witches for that? Still fishy.

Poor magical girls indeed.

Oh, oh no Kaede also entered the cult, she's now repeating the salvation spiel!

At the same time, Iroha and co. are also at their last stop.

I really, really like how this last scene fells like Mifuyu is inviting us, the viewers, to join the cult too. Almost makes you want to root for them... almost.

Because being meguka is suffering.

- x - (if you have been reading this as a hamster face, you're right)

Aaand that's it for episode 12! Finally, FINALLY I can call doppeling out by what it is without it being a spoiler, thank god... but now it doesn't matter because there's only one episode left, dammit >:v

So yeah, there's the explanation, kinda. It's not like they were breaking any rules (if we ignore the fact this universe shouldn't exist at all thanks to Madokami), but more that Kamihama is a special place. And yet we still have no idea of how exactly the cult's doing this, what is a Rumor, why exactly are they collecting emotional energy like Kyuubei would... actually there's one more thing that makes the cult not much better isn't it, Touka's saying they reject Kyuubei system and yet they're doing the exact same thing as them, that's super shady. Also there's no way there's no consequence to doppeling out when this series works on equivalent exchange, there's definitely gotta be some con to it. SO MANY QUESTIONS.

Talking about questions, I'm always curious about the exact timeline for this story. Whenever they talk about Mel's incident, they say it was "one year ago", and then half a year later Mifuyu's still not over it and it seems like she doppels out at this point, but in the game they say it takes another half year before that happens, I think(?). Which always left me the question of: When exactly did the Magius start acting then? It should've taken some time to get the organization as big as it is now, so one has to wonder how long ago did the incidents in Kamihama start, since by the time Iroha shows up the magical girls here already seem used to it. This always leaves me feeling like this “one year ago” is closer to “almost two years ago” rather than “a bit over a year ago”. At least by this time in the story, it should be.

Knowing exactly when did The Wings of the Magius start would also let us guess at how long Iroha herself has been a magical girl, since Touka was probably still hospitalized when she made her wish. If Iroha's really been a magical girl for over half a year, that'd explain why she was already used to it by the time she came to Kamihama, despite being weak. Rather, that'd mean she's done a great job surviving thus far considering how she's only been shown sucking at battles lol (I’ll probably never get the answer to this, tho)

By the way, we STILL have no clue as to what happened to Iroha's little sister... I don't think we're making any progress on this front this season anymore. Poor Ui, even the show forgot about her.

So yeah, that was ep 12. Next episode, hopefully, we'll get more on the reactions of our girls upon learning the truth, and see what Yachiyo plans to do, if she had a plan at all coming here... which I suspect she doesn't, she's in fact even too late to do anything about it. I told you she'd regret it! The next episode's also the last one for this season, so you can look forward to having some awesome thing to tie it off *wink*

This is it for this post, hope to see you again on the next one. Have a good morning/afternoon/evening and remember to stay hydrated!

[sablelab]

Covert Operations - Chapter 93

DISCLAIMER: This is a modern AU crossover story with Outlander and La Femme Nikita.

 SYNOPSIS: James Fraser and Karen Yee make the trip to Tan O and must go overland to find the monastery where the Rising Dragons are holding Claire. Back at Section One Madeline and Operations are briefed and a backup team is organised to support Jamie.

Here’s to the start of 2020 and the continuation of Covert Operations. THANKS for reading.

 Previous chapters of this story can be found at … https://sablelab.tumblr.com/covertoperations

  CHAPTER 93

Making a perfect descent Jamie landed the light plane on the private airstrip on the outskirts of the town of Tai O and taxied the aircraft to where Fergus had arranged for a 4 wheel drive jeep to be waiting for him. Using the information gauged from the video recording, he’d been able to pinpoint that Claire was being held captive at the Tsz Hsing Monastery situated in the south-west. The monastery was located in a relatively remote part of Lantau Island where the roads and trails were not easily defined and since the environment was also inaccessible to normal vehicles in this region, this kind of transportation was a necessity. To complicate matters the landscape was difficult and mountainous as well, hence the four wheeled jeep would be able to manoeuvre the conditions of the terrain. Not only that but the vehicle was well camouflaged and would blend in nicely with the surroundings. Everything had been organised for him by his little buddy back at Section One. Jamie also had Karen Yee and she would verify Claire's location. She had no other choice although he knew she would not divulge information voluntarily. Hence, it was necessary to make some inroads before morning as there was much, he needed to do on this mission to find his Claire. The sooner he got started the better and after consulting his map, Jamie bundled his reluctant passenger into the jeep and headed in the direction of Tai O to begin his journey. Karen Yee sat stony faced beside him. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* 

In no time Jamie made his way into the ancient and quaint fishing village of Tai O located on the west coast of Lantau Island. Known as the Venice of Hong Kong the sleepy hamlet could trace its history back more than three centuries when pirates ruled the waves around the island. In a country of modernization on the big island of Hong Kong, Tai O had obviously retained most of its historical settings as the sight that greeted him was several hundred stilt houses indicative of a traditional rural life. Driving through the earthen streets it was evident that this was a rural area reliant on the fishing industry for the stilt houses and fishing boats dotted the waterways and fishing village scenery. Salted fish, a traditional Chinese food, hung from premises along the dirt road to dry, and shrimp paste seemed to be the village's only economic industry as premises for making the seafood paste was located everywhere in the town. Passing through the village the terrain began to incline and a little further on Jamie came to signage directing hikers to a number of well-marked trails that meandered into the national park. The Lantau Trail a 70-kilometre, 12-section hikers' haven was the best known of these trails and a section of the circular route through the finest scenery of the Lantau Country Parks began at Tai O. This part of the trail started a little way past the township with steps leading up into the wooded forest. The very steep contour of the steps looked difficult to negotiate and was typical of the route that Jamie now drove along. As the area was suitable for hikers, Jamie's mode of transport was a necessity. Fifty percent of the island was covered with forested areas and the dense foliage of this type of environment would make the going that much harder for him to negotiate to find the monastery where Claire was being held. Driving into the forested area he wanted to put some distance between him and the township before setting up camp somewhere along the way. Looking very much like tourists setting out on a weekend camping trip, Jamie knew he would need to negotiate the rough terrain in daylight hours for his safety. It would do no one any good if the jeep went over an embankment along the road in the pitch black of night. Although the road began to deteriorate, he continued on for every kilometre meant he was getting closer to his Sassenach. After travelling for an hour or so, the road suddenly dipped and became more hazardous. Although Jamie negotiated the jeep with skill manoeuvring the vehicle around potholes and other obstacles along the way he decided to cut the engine and set up camp for the night. Swerving into a cleared area he pulled the jeep to a stop. Karen looked at her abductor with disdain. "Why are we stopping?" "Out of the jeep," he ordered without even a sideways look at his passenger. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* 

"What are you doing?" Karen asked in shock as James Fraser approached her side of the vehicle with steely determination.

When Karen refused to get out of the jeep Jamie pulled her out and dragged her away. Caught unawares by his actions, she put up a fight and lashed out kicking with her legs while hanging from his arm. Dragging her into the woods, Karen repeatedly turned to try to make eye contact with him, but Jamie completely ignored her antics. If only she had, then she would have seen a steely quiet in them that was devoid of any emotion. Although she struggled against him, Karen felt the strength of Jamie's grip as he placed her arms behind her back then tied her securely to a tree. Belligerently she slid down the trunk and sat on the ground. "Why? Why are you doing this?" Ignoring her question, Jamie turned and walked away. Returning to the jeep he fetched some security lasers and blankets. Karen watched as he meticulously aligned the parameter with the lights then turned them on. There was no camp fire but the low shielded lights placed around the base, created an eerie glow in the makeshift camp. "What do you want?" "The location." "Ahhh! You think I will tell you," was her insolent reply. Jamie stared at Karen for a second. "Where is it?" She merely stared him down in defiance. "You have all the answers ... so you find it Jamie Fraser," she sneered defiantly. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Leaving Karen tied up to the tree Jamie went to study the map he had on the area. According to his calculations they were probably about twenty kilometres from the monastery, but the gradient appeared to increase noticeably the deeper they went into the mountains. Tomorrow's journey would probably be hard going and they would have to take it slow in the rough conditions. This meant that getting to Claire would take longer than he'd first anticipated. Although it was only twenty kilometres in distance, the time to travel along the terrain could be doubled or even tripled depending on what he found along the way. He decided to contact Fergus to clarify his estimates and see if there was an alternate route, he could take to avoid some of the difficulties that lay ahead over the next few kilometres.

"Fergus? ... Fergus?" 

There was a brief pause before he received an answer. "Jamie? Is that you ... I can hardly hear you. The reception is very poor." 

Jamie could hear the crackling of his radio unit too and the faint reply back from Section. "I need the coordinates for the monastery." "Twenty kilometres due East, at nine thirty." "Thank ye ... Is there another way to get to it?" "No ... there's only one way in and out." "Okay." "Jamie ... We've gauged that the Rising Dragon's surveillance at the monastery is sophisticated; from now on we maintain radio silence." "I understand." "Do you want backup?" "No ... I'll be ......" There was more interference and the reception was dreadful. What? ... What did you say? ... Jamie ... you're breaking up ... I'm losing you ..." Fergus stated alarmingly as he was unable to hear the final word of Jamie's reply. "... fine." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* James Fraser looked like he was talking to himself, so in a challenging voice Karen called out from the tree to distract him, "Hey ... I've got to go. Is that all right?" Turning slightly, he looked at her. "It's okay if I say it is." Karen was indignant. Leaning against the tree she turned away, hatred burning in her eyes at having to take orders from this man who held her prisoner. "I request permission then." Jamie didn't look at Karen when he answered her request. "Permission denied." He won't rest until we're dead. Karen thought as she watched him ignore her pleas. Then he'll die, too, she vowed. Claire and Jamie will both die together. Her mind went into overdrive contemplating her next move. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Sometime later he approached Karen with a blanket and retied her arms in the front, then left her there. Although she was still shackled to the tree, she had enough rope to find some privacy for her bathroom requirements when needed. With a malicious look, her eyes followed his retreating back. "May I say something?" "Go ahead." "Regarding the past ... as far as I'm concerned everyone in the triad ... was just doing their job ... and, as for the present ... I have no hard feelings. I just want to stay alive." Jamie turned and met Karen's gaze. "Really?" Her expression continued to show only sincerity. "Really ... In fact, there's a question that ... I've been wanting to ask you, Jamie, for a long time. It's kind of a ... personal question, but seeing as how we know each other better now, I guess we've got a lot in common and you won't mind my asking it ..." He looked up but didn't turn to face her. "When you guys go on Missions, or whatever you call them ... how does Section One react to you and Claire being together romantically?" Jamie's expression remained blank, but he turned and issued a final warning. "I said drop it. It's best if ye don't mention Section One." Karen wore a fake repentant expression on her face as she apologized. "I'm sorry, I'm over the line. I'll see you in the morning then." Having said all she'd wanted to say to try and put Jamie off guard Karen rolled over with a smug look on her face.

She was aware of their little 'secret' ... it could come in handy once the triad had rescued her. Now ... If I can just alert them somehow, then James Fraser will be on the receiving end of their revenge. My father will not tolerate such treatment of his daughter. Once we get closer to the monastery, I'll think of something to let Andy or one of the others know that I'm being held captive. 

Pulling the blanket around her Karen curled up with a plan formulating in her mind. She was soon asleep. 

Getting comfortable for the night Jamie closed his eyes. Suddenly the vision of a face appeared in his mind's eye with eyes that pierced his soul.

This was the face of his beautiful, brave Sassenach the woman who had been tortured on the disk. The Rising Dragons may have broken her physically but they would never break the light that shone within. She was unwavering. Her tenacity and bravery in the face of her torturers was nothing short of magnificent. If he could have taken her place to save her from such atrocities he would have gladly done so. His heart broke with what the triad had done to her and when he found out who the person or person were who had done this to her he would show no mercy.

The next vision he saw was of her blue, cerulean eyes radiating with love and laughter. Claire Beauchamp was everything that was good in his life. 

He was only a short distance away from her now and once he reached the monastery, she would be safe. Claire's ordeal would be over. He was coming to rescue his woman and nothing would stop him from that objective. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* 

It was early morning and the sun was just beginning to filter through the tree. Jamie had packed up the camp and was ready to leave. He'd studied the map again and once satisfied about the route he was about to take, folded it up and roused Karen. Walking over to the tree where she was tied up, Jamie gave her a swift kick with his foot. Immediately she sat up and stared at the imposing figure standing over her. 

"We're leaving in five minutes. Be ready." Jamie walked away leaving her alone. When he returned a few minutes later to untie Karen from the tree she was ready and waiting for what would happen next. Jamie pushed her ahead of him and in so doing placed a tracker to Karen's skin where it would not be seen under her ear. If by chance she managed to escape, Section One would be able to trace her movements. Physically escorting her to where the jeep was parked, Karen grudgingly got into the passenger seat with a scowl on her face. Once she was in the vehicle, Jamie climbed in beside her. Turning over the ignition and putting his foot to the floor it was evident that he was in a hurry to get underway. The jeep jerked forward as he accelerated, the tyres spun in the dirt as he left a cloud of dust in his wake. Moving away from the camp site James Fraser manoeuvred his way along the dirt track skirting the rugged mountain range leading to the Tsz Hsing Monastery while beside him his passenger sat silently her eyes glued ahead. Back at Section One...

Fergus entered Madeline's office to report on the mission, but as he walked in, he stopped short when he saw Operations deep in conversation with her. He came further into the room and stood quietly before addressing his leaders.

"You wanted to see me?" 

"Yes Fergus." Madeline looked over Operations' shoulder at him. "Your work went well locating Jamie." "Thank you Madeline." Operations turned to face him too. "So where are we then? Has there been any other communication from the Rising Dragons since they sent the last video disk?" "Nothing ... but we've kept the channel open in case something else comes through." "And Jamie? ... Do we have him under satellite tracking?" "Yes sir ..." he replied looking at Operations. "He's heading due north at the moment but he'll need to diverge to the east when the road meanders around the mountain." "How long will it be until he reaches the monastery?" "It's difficult to be concise Madeline, but I estimate that it will take several hours to travel in this kind of terrain." "Can you be more specific?" When pushed to give a definitive answer Fergus replied, "At a guess I'd say around dusk." "Good." Fergus nervously shifted from one foot to the other. Noticing his unease Operations asked, "Is there a problem?" "I lost communication with Jamie before I could ask about back up for the mission." "I see ... and what do you think?" Fergus looked up, flabbergasted at the question, wondering why Operations would ask his advice. "W-what? Me?" "Yes Mr Claudel... what do you think we should do?" "It's a ... subjective call. But I did a computer analysis." "An analysis? Don't you mean a sim?" "Yeah ... a sim," he replied nervously. "That's what I did." "And?" Fergus honestly stated his opinion. "Jamie is the best operative that Section One has but ..." "... even the best need help sometimes," Madeline said finishing his sentence. "And according to the numbers, there's a three percent advantage to going in to help him." Operations appeared mollified at his assessment, but he still watched Fergus carefully. "Three percent ... Then, we go in." Madeline also acknowledged his statement. "We agree ... Under the circumstances I think a backup team would be beneficial." "See to it Mr Claudel ... Put together a Team and organise a briefing in thirty minutes," his leader added. "Yes sir," he nodded in assent. "That will be all ... you may go." As he departed, Operations' face showed he was in two minds about what had just transpired. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Once Fergus had left her office, he turned back to his second in command. By the look on his face Madeline knew he was not happy about something. "What's the problem Dougal?" Taking umbrage, he answered her question with one of his own. "Why wasn't I told that Jamie had contacted Section?" "You had enough on your plate already Dougal ... what with your brother Colum and all." Ever the diplomat, Madeline had managed to diffuse his ire with her answer. Colum had been on their backs lately but now that Jamie had contacted Section, things were back on track. Not only would he rescue Claire but he may also eliminate other triad protagonists and find a vital clue to bringing the mission to a conclusion. Madeline felt that the end game was almost imminent. "So, another mission against the Rising Dragons is being profiled?" he replied placated by Madeline's explanation. "Yes ... that's right. They're a special priority again since Jamie is no longer dark." "Then ... may I offer some input?" "By all means."

Madeline was not surprised at his appeal. Operations was a proud man and if he felt as if he was out of the loop then he was not happy. Obviously, Fergus' announcement had caught him off guard. 

"We're going to have to reallocate resources. I hope that won't leave the other missions too thin." "They'll be fine." "I was just making a comment." "All right." "It might also be hard in the time that Fergus has given us." "Although the Intel on the mission is weak, we'll have to work what we already have on the triad at the monastery's location and hope that Jamie will succeed." "We should at least do a decent risk assessment Madeline." "There's no time. We'll send the backup team instead, and besides Fergus gave you the numbers and you agreed." "Delay only increases the risk and Jamie will risk everything to save Claire." "I agree. I think we may have underestimated him." "Yes ... We misjudged him very badly. I never thought he could be so reckless." "Where Claire is concerned ... he is predictable, but under the circumstances it has worked in our favour. You didn't give him a choice Dougal, but by backing down you have kept the mission on track, otherwise the fifteen days you allowed him could have seen the mission go pear shape." "You know, controlling the world is easy Madeline. What's difficult is controlling them." "There's another possibility. He's just better than we are." They both smiled at this comment. "He's good. He and Claire together are quite good. Fortunately, even the best have weaknesses." Contemplating her statement, Operations nodded his head in agreement. "The mission will proceed as planned. It won't fail ... Jamie will make sure of that." Somewhere on the mountainside...

Passing through a densely forested acacia and Brisbane Box tree plantation, the condition of the track began to deteriorate as the challenging road became narrower and narrower. The wheels of the jeep spun in the dirt sending up a cloud of dust into the air and it became much more difficult and dangerous in sections. Jamie had to slow the jeep right down to manoeuvre along the dirt track. He hugged the side road in sections as to his right the steep incline was extremely hazardous. One mistake could have sent the jeep careening over the embankment to their certain death. He travelled along the track like this for a couple of kilometres until the road widened again and he was finally able to increase his speed. 

Karen remained relatively quiet beside him. She knew that this was the most dangerous way of approaching the monastery and that it would take hours before they were anywhere near it. If only she had some way of communicating with Jonathon or Andy at the monastery then she could alert them to her predicament. Karen decided that the best course of action would be to wait until they were closer. The monastery was surrounded by sensors and if she was able to activate one of them without Jamie knowing then they would know they were there. With that thought in mind Karen suddenly became talkative. "This has nothing to do with the Rising Dragons ... has it?" Jamie didn't bother to answer, but kept his eyes on the road as he concentrated on driving. "It's all about Claire ... isn't it? It's not just your job, is it?" Jamie paid no attention to her questions. Rambling on Karen announced. "Yeah ... I've figured it out. You love Claire and you want to rescue her so badly ... that you'll go to any length to do it." The woman was babbling on but there was truth in her statement yet he still continued to ignore her. "Well let me tell you something James Fraser ... you won't be able to protect her and yourself against the triad when they find us. So, if I were you, I'd let me go so that you can save yourself." A smug smirk crossed Karen's face as she was convinced that her questions had hit their mark. Satisfied that she had made Jamie feel uncomfortable she continued with her incessant questions and statements as they drove along. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* The mountain track gradient increased and they began to climb once again. Below Jamie could see a water reservoir and in front of him was the mountain summit. The views were tremendous; the area was dominated by magnificent craggy cones and peaks of the mountain range. The long distance to the monastery, combined with all the repeated climbing and descending made it a harder journey than at first thought. At the rate he was going it would be nightfall before they had reached the monastery; the sun was already starting to lower in the sky. Since they only had a few hours of daylight left, Jamie knew that they needed to find the monastery before evening for another night spent in the forest meant another night that Claire had to suffer alone. Eventually they came to a stream where the crystal clear water was untouched by the pollution of civilization. The water cascaded over the side of the mountain into a deep ravine. When Jamie began to pull the jeep over to park to refill their water bottles from the stream, Karen looked around for a way to escape. Deciding that this was her best chance she unbuckled her seat belt and bent forward intent on leaping out of the jeep. But when she tried to open the door, Jamie merely reached out grabbed her hair and yanked her smartly back into the seat with a thump. She was no match for him. Duly chastised she slumped down in her seat ruing her missed chance at escape. Finally stopping the jeep, Jamie pulled out his map of the province and studied it closely for a while. He pocketed the map before getting out of the vehicle and filling the water bottles from the steam. Once done they continued on their journey. Turning right, the road began to suddenly drop then angled as he went down a fairly steep hillsides rocky road. A little further on the road then became almost level.  However, once again Jamie had to hug the shoulder of the road due to the narrow track. Thankfully there was no traffic coming the other way for there was certainly no possibility of any two vehicles passing each other on the road. They had failed to see any other vehicles coming or going since they had started out, hence Jamie made a reasonable assessment. It was apparent that any transportation to and from the monastery was by air. The sun was beginning to set and as it was getting a little darker the visibility was decreasing. He knew they must be nearing their destination for Karen wouldn't have tried to escape if the monastery was not close at hand. Jamie was more vigilant. Any sight of a level section that could land a helicopter or small plane would indicate they were near the monastery. Suddenly off to his left he saw it ... a small landing field with a helicopter parked on the ground. Pulling off the road he stopped the jeep in a wooded area under the cover of the trees. Making sure that Karen was secure, he got out of the jeep and peered through the foliage. There in the distance was a beautiful brick building standing peacefully in the glow of the setting sun.

At last he had arrived. Beyond the boundary ... somewhere in that building, the triad was holding his Claire captive. James Fraser’s eyes clouded with a coldness to chill the bones. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ to be continued Friday 10th January

[ertrunkenerwassergeist]

Love and Happiness Come in Colourful Hands

I did it! Writing prompt from celsiahawthorn about the question how Regis would react to Noctis having a wife and children in Dreams of Our Past.

It got quite long (I seem unable to give short answers). I hope you like it!

Cor burst into the middle of an audience. That in itself wasn’t that strange since his duties as the General of the Lucian army often made him late, seeing as they were fighting a losing war against Niflheim.

Cor being late normally meant there was an emergency, some great thing that had gone wrong yet again. From property damage to people nearly dying during training to surprise attacks of Niflheim, everything had happened at least once during his tenure as king.

Before Regis’ heart could do more than skip a beat in trepidation because the surprise attacks had been happening more and more often as of late, the look on Cor’s face made him feel nervousness of a different kind. It wasn’t that mix of anger, determination and growing resignation he wore every time he brought news of yet another attack, another battle lost, another retreat, more lives to weight on his conscience.

For everybody that didn’t know him very well he looked just as stoic and stern as ever – the unflappable Immortal – but Regis knew better. Something had upset his old friend a great deal. The King saw it in the way he flexed his fingers, how he didn’t quite meet his eyes.

Cor stopped just long enough to follow the protocol in bowing to the King, as was proper. He didn’t wait for an invitation to step up towards the throne, he just did it, causing the other occupants of the throne room to whisper and bristle in indignation. They were soundly ignored.

Under the sharp eyes of the assembled court Cor Leonis bent down towards him and whispered something he had nearly given up hope to ever hearing within his remaining lifetime: “Your Majesty, we have found a trace of Prince Noctis.”

At once Regis’ mouth had gone dry. He swallowed and had to concentrate upon keeping a neutral face, mindful of the witnesses that were watching like a thunderoc stalking its pray. Hope bloomed like a flower deep within his chest, its petals warm like the sun. Maybe this time whoever had tipped them off would prove to be more than a person out for a quick profit. He had seen the records of all the false tipoffs Cor was trying to hide from him.

“My thanks, Lords and Ladies, gentlemen and madams ministers, regretfully we will have to continue this most enlightening discussion another time.”

He lifted his hand as if an afterthought and the court was adjourned. He had already forgotten what they had been talking about not even a minute ago. Some looked like they dearly wanted to protest, but they didn’t dare to – yet. Regis still retained enough of his power added to the not inconsiderable respect to his bloodline, but he knew it wouldn’t last for much longer. Not with him not getting any younger and ignoring their requests to marry again and try for another heir.

After the great double doors had closed, Clarus turned towards them. Next to the three of them only two guards remained with them in the throne room.

“What has happened?” he asked, his face an expressionless mask that was supposed to hide the worry he felt.

Clarus had aged as poorly as him, the lines on his face growing deeper and more numerous by the year. His frame was still strong and solid, but he carried a shroud of tiredness with him that was nearly as palpable as his own, his son a perceived disappointment and his daughter deathly sick. It was a heavy burden to carry.

“Not even half an hour ago I received a concrete lead to Prince Noctis’ whereabouts,” answered Cor, barely holding on to his usual no-nonsense tone when giving a report.

Clarus’ mouth fell open in shock. It would have been funny to see his friend so openly flabbergasted for once, had Regis not needed all his willpower to hold himself together. He had been falling apart at the seams since his son had vanished and now it was like someone had pulled at the wrong threat and he started to unravel.

“Tell me everything and leave nothing out.”

Cor tilted his head in acceptance and pulled a carefully folded sheet of paper from the inner pocket of his uniform jacket. No, realized Regis, that was no ordinary piece of paper, but a thick parchment, like it had been used until maybe two hundred years ago, for official documents. But the sheet in Cor’s hand looked very new. The King hadn’t known that these were still being made. Animal Welfare would have kittens over this.

“At around 10:27am Mrs. Colloquia from the reception called my office. She said there was a woman who claimed to know where the prince was hiding,” Cor started.

“Where is that woman now?” Regis demanded.

His heart was racing a steady staccato in his chest and the rising tension was turning his innards into tight knots. At last he hadn’t eaten breakfast otherwise it would have come back up now.

“She’s waiting in front of the throne room, your Majesty. Ignis has an eye on her. But before you call her in you should know a few things. Firstly, she has a letter with her she’s adamant to give to you in person. She says it’s from Noctis and I believe her.”

“Did you demand proof for her claims?” Clarus wanted to know.

Cor stared at his Shield with that kind of expressionless face he got when he thought the people he was talking to were idiots, until Clarus looked away with a huff.

“She showed me the letter when I asked. It carries the personal sign of the royal crown prince.”

The petals of hope within his chest grew into burning coals. His feelings were a jumbled mess he couldn’t even begin to untangle as he sat in the throne he had wasted the last five years away on and heard the best news he’s been told since he heard of Aulea’s pregnancy.

Noctis’ personal sign was only known to a handful of people and all of them lived and/or worked at the citadel. His son knew to never share it with people he didn’t trust with his life. It was also a precaution against forgery.

“Secondly, she claims to be his wife.”

“What?” yelped Regis and Clarus at the same time, causing the guards remaining to startle.

The King prayed that he’d heard wrong. Noctis was barely twenty. Marriages at so young an age were seldom good. Mors was proof enough for that. Cor gestured towards the folded sheet of parchment in his hand.

“The marriage license,” he said and held it out for Regis to take.

His fingers felt numb as he grabbed the thick sheet with trembling hands. It felt like good quality parchment to him, even if he barely knew anything about parchment at all. Unfolding it proved the sheet to be unusually large and beneath the signatures was a big red wax seal showing an engraved flame under a sun with six rays.

Ifrit’s seal.

That was very unusual.

Regis’ gaze raveled towards the signatures. There were five in total. Bride, groom, two witnesses and the priest. The priest’s signature was an unintelligible series of loops and wavy lines and the ones of the witnesses were only better insofar, that the first letter was actually readable. Noctis’ didn’t look like he remembered it being, but that didn’t have to mean anything. He himself had only developed a consistent one at seventeen after all. The last signature was harder to read than his son’s clear, if squiggly looking cursive, but after a few seconds he had managed to decipher it.

Hiemi Lucis Caelum.

It was a traditional Insmonian name and also a very old one.

The King needed a few seconds to tear his eyes away from his son’s name and looked at the actual text. Even the most traditional marriage license today wasn’t as long as this one. It was clear at once why that was the case. The vows had been written down in triplicate. Once in something that looked like a close approximation of modern Lucian, then ancient Lucian and lastly a language he did not know. The elaborate cursive was also very unusual. His eyebrows rose in surprise.

“That was also my reaction,” said Cor with a hint of amusement, “but it fulfils all the requirements to be a legally binding document.”

Clarus made a face but it didn’t really register to Regis. He read the text again. Even the part in quasi modern Lucian was very formal and took great care to use full titles. Damsel Hiemi Vigilant would enter into the holy bond of matrimony with Patrone Noctis Lucis Caelum, Crown Prince of Lucis, and would gain the title Dame of House Lucis Cealum. It was a chore to read, even for him. The spelling was all wrong and some words he couldn’t make heads or tails of. Not only were ‘v’ and ‘u’ the same, but the ‘s’ seemed determined to be as close to an ‘f’ as possible.

“Is that really wise, Majesty?” asked Clarus who had read over his shoulder.

“Wise or not, this is the first viable clue we have about what happened to my son. Send her in, Cor.”

Both his friends bowed in acceptance, if only grudgingly on Clarus’ part. Curiously leaning forward Regis wondered what kind of person his maybe daughter-in-law was.

 His first thought when he saw her was what a beautiful woman she was, his second that he had never seen the kind of clothing she wore in his life.

She wore a curious thing that looked like a hybrid of a tunic and a dress that was bound around her ribcage in the way of the Ladies during the Founder’s time. The bright orange shawl she wore in her curly black hair clashed horrendously with the sky blue and sunny yellow of her tunic that stopped just shy of her knees.

She was nervous, but she held her head high in stubborn determination and her steps didn’t falter, like so many people’s did when they entered the throne room for the first time. Her hands clutched the strap of the messenger bag that hung from her shoulder. It was obviously handmade with a frame made of bronze coloured rods and worn canvas. Long silvery grey feathers hung from one clasp.

Every step she took echoed loudly from the walls of the throne room. Regis needed a bit to realize that her sandals that wound up her calves in elaborate geometrical patterns were entirely made of metal. That couldn’t be comfortable.

The woman – Hiemi he reminded himself – and Cor who guided her came to a stop before the first set of stairs. “Your Majesty, as ordered, the Lady Hiemi.”

She threw Cor a look like she wanted to stab him as he used the word Lady, but she just dipped into an elegant clearly practiced curtsy in the way ancient Lucian princesses had done towards their King. It had fallen out of use a long time ago when the dresses at court had gained wider and heavier skirts.

“Your Royal Majesty,” she said in an accent Regis had never heard before.

It had a lilting quality to it that was accompanied by rolling r’s and dark sounding vowels. Where did she come from? Her facial features were classical Insomnian, but everything else screamed foreign. Unbidden the corner of his mouth twitched behind his beard. No one called him Royal Majesty outside of official ceremonies.

“Be welcome, Dame Hiemi. General Leonis told me you have news about my son Prince Noctis.”

Regis deliberately used the title he had read in the marriage license. She looked very pleased at that.

“Yes, Royal Majesty,” she said in her lilting accent and rose from her curtsy. “I promised His Royal Highness to deliver his letter in person.”

Anxiously Regis waved her to come to him and with every echoing step she took his heart seemed to miss a beat. He had to suppress the urge to simply stand up and meet her halfway to pry his son’s letter out of her bag. When she came to a stop in front of him, Cor close behind her and his eyes never leaving her slight form, she curtsied again and then slowly pulled a letter out of her bag.

She curtsied yet again, deeper this time, and only stood back up after he had taken the envelope. Whoever had taught her courtly etiquette had been throughout, if two thousand years out of date. Clarus watched the happenings from his left side with watchful eyes.

For a moment Hiemi looked like she didn’t quite know what to do next, but then she stepped back towards landing where the stairs parted towards the gallery. She looked amused by the way Cor kept close to her which was not a reaction people usually had when the Immortal stared at them with a dark face just daring them to give him a reason to draw his blade.

Regis turned the thick envelope between his hands. It had the brownish colour and rough graining of poor quality paper, a crass difference to the high quality parchment of the marriage license. He would have to get it looked over by a lawyer. For a bit longer he simply held the letter, Noctis’ personal sign carefully drawn on the back of the envelope. His fingers traced every line of it. Now that he was so close to an answer he didn’t know if he would be able to bear the words.

Clarus, Cor and Hiemi waited patiently until he had centred himself enough to actually open the letter and read it. The paper was of as bad a quality as the envelope. The handwriting had changed from a scrawled Lucian standard script to a loopy cursive that was worthy of centuries past, but the words were all Noctis. He had to fight with the tears burning in his eyes.

 Father, stood there in solid black ink,

 I will never be able to make right what I have wrought with running away. Know however that it was done to spare you and myself and everybody we hold dear even more pain. It is no excuse and I fear I may never be able to convincingly deliver one.

My actions have let me to get to know wonderful people I wouldn’t have been able to meet if I had stayed. One of them is the woman who has delivered this letter to you, my wife, Hiemi. We married little over a year ago and as far as I am aware she took our marriage license as proof with her.

As for the reason why I had to vanish – and believe me, father, if in nothing else, that I would never have left, if there wasn’t a very legitimate one – I would like to tell you in person. It is not something you should have to read about in a letter, written by me or not.

Just a warning:

Do not, under any circumstances, let the Lucii or Bahamut get a hold on this information. It is a matter of life and death.

Hiemi will be able to answer any immediate questions and, if you want, will guide you to where we are living in Insomnia. Do not worry, father. I love her deeply. She is a wonderful person with a temper like the stories of my mother you always told me when I was young. She will do you no harm.

 Your son,

Noctis

 P.S. Hiemi will keep calling you Royal Majesty until you say different. Correct titles are very important to her people during official happenings and only relaxed at the invitation of the other.

 A wet laugh escaped Regis. Next to him Clarus was beginning to get impatient.

“Majesty,” his Shield said in concern.

He looked like he was close to throwing the only woman in the throne room out of the window. Regis brushed away the tears – when had he started to cry? – and took a deep shuddering breath. Luckily there were only two guards to see him loose his composure. They knew how to keep their mouths shut; otherwise the consequences wouldn’t be pretty for them.

“It is alright, my friend,” he said.

And it really was, Regis realized in surprise. He would have to have a long talk with Noctis, no several very long talks, but this letter alone made him feel better than he had in years. Hiemi still stood on the landing, her fingers tightly linked with each other, and her gaze directed towards him in worry and understanding. Cor looked torn between wanting to hit something and wanting to drag Regis towards a more private part of the citadel.

Carefully he folded the letter back up and tucked it back into its envelope. At once it vanished in a soft clinking sound and the glow of blue magical particles, as he sent it into his armiger for safekeeping.

His daughter-in-law – by the Gods, he had a daughter-in-law – watched with keen and interested eyes as he did so. With a great deal of effort he stood up from the throne, had the strange wave of energy after the earthquake given him a brief respite, his condition was rapidly worsening now. Time was running through his fingers and he could do nothing about it.

“Come, my dear. And you may call me Regis,” he said with a smile and stepped down towards the gallery on his left side.

The young woman lifted a striking black eyebrow but followed his request without a word.

He took a closer look at her, like she did with him. She would see nothing but a tired old man, a tired old man who had been given back a reason to live. Her own face upon first glance was classical Insomnian, like the kind one saw in old paintings. Behind that, however, was something he couldn’t quite define. Long curls tumbled down around her shoulders and towards her waist in a thick curtain.

Cor pulled one of the chairs closer for him to sit down and motioned for Hiemi to do the same. She sat there, shoulders and back straight and even now in her strange clothing had the aura of a royal princess. The silence between them grew uncomfortably long as they simply stared at each other.

“How is he?” he asked at last.

She tilted her head in thought. “He misses you.” That sentence sent a bittersweet pain through his heart. “He tells the children stories about you and how you always try to do right by your people. Astra loves these stories. I think Healer – I’m sorry, Noctis – made half of them up just to entertain him.”

The blooming smile on her face showed her dimples and gave her something girlish. “He works hard, sometimes to exhaustion, but he always makes time for his family. He cannot stand to see people being hurt and does what he can to help them. Sometimes he makes me livid when he wants everything to happen at once. When I first met him and he asked me how he could repay me for my help, I joked that I could use a new house. I didn’t want anything from him but he just wouldn’t let it go. After I said that he didn’t ask again and I thought that was the end of it. Half a year later he told me that my house was finished.”

Regis couldn’t help himself and started to laugh. That was the famed Lucis Cealum Dramatics in action. Cor, who stood beside Hiemi’s chair like Clarus stood next to his, rolled his eyes, his lips twitching dangerously. His Shield dragged his hand down his face in resignation.

It wasn’t the most out there thing a Lucis Caelum had done to impress a love interest and potential partner in marriage, but it was definitely creative. Hiemi’s unusual dark green eyes glittered. Regis could practically touch the love and affection this woman held for his son. He was glad for it.

Then something registered she had said and he abruptly straightened.

“Children?”

She blinked in honest surprise. “Yes. Didn’t He-Noctis write about them in his letter?”

Regis shook his head without a word, a sudden burst of nervous and giddy energy traveling through him. Hiemi sighed, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation. She muttered something, her accent thickening until he couldn’t understand a single word she said.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked in surprise.

He didn’t speak all languages that existed on Eos, but he liked to think that he could at least place all of them. This one he had never heard before. It made him feel unsettled.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought he would remember to mention his own children in his letter to you,” she answered clearly annoyed that her husband hadn’t done so.

“Children,” he said again.

Next to him Clarus choked and muttered something under his breath he didn’t bother to understand, too busy with trying to understand how his son had managed to have children.

Children.

As in more than one.

How had that happened?

It had been generations since the royal family had been able to produce more than one child per generation. The royal family was now bigger than it had been for near three hundred years. There was him, Noctis, his wife and –

“How many children are there?”

“Two,” Hiemi answered as if she didn’t understand the enormity of that statement. “A girl and a boy. Solaris – the girl – is the older one. She’s eight years old and Noctis found her beaten half to death in an alleyway. She clearly is a Lucis Caelum,” she hurried to add when she must have seen something on his or Clarus’ or Cor’s face, “Noctis said his magic recognized her as one. Astra is the boy and three years old. Noctis is his birth father and I adopted him as my own when his birth mother didn’t want him. He needing help to take care of the little star is how we met each other.”

A fond smile curled at her lips and made her face gain a maternal softness he had often seen in Aulea before she had died, when she had talked about their child. Something in him relaxed at that knowledge.

But by Bahamut’s bladed wings. He was a grandfather.

He had never dared to hope after the crystal had chosen his Noctis as the Chosen King, but now giddy warmth that sang of lovelovelove traveled through his very being and he couldn’t stop the wide smile even if he had cared to try.

Hiemi answered his smile with one of her own and reached into her bag. The canvas was covered in colourful patches someone with a careful hand had sewed on. He couldn’t say what the bag’s original colour had been. His daughter-in-law pulled out more papers that had been carefully folded, even if most of the sheets were full of crinkles. It was a whole stack of them.

“The children did these for you,” she said and held them out towards him.

He took them as if they were one of the most precious things he had ever held within his hands. And it was true, he may have not seen them yet, but his grandchildren had made them for him, they had never met him, knew only stories and still they had made him a present, and that was enough for him to treasure these until his dying day. He could see at first glance that they were all pictures of some kind.

Tears were threatening to fall again.

“Thank you,” he managed to say around the lump in his throat.

Hiemi just smiled in understanding. “Neither Solaris nor Astra could decide which ones I should take with me, so they gave me all of them.”

Regis took the first sheet and unfolded it, mindful of the poor quality of the paper. On it were five handprints in different sized and colours. In childish letters there was written something under each of them. The smallest one was midnight blue and under it was the Name Astra, next was Solaris’ handprint in vibrant red, followed by three handprints that clearly were from adults, in green, gold and purple. Under each was a word that he did not know. Lastly there was a word or name that lacked a handprint. Hiemi seemed to notice it because she leaned forward a bit and motioned at each one.

“The green one is me and ‘mati’ stands for mother, ‘tata’ under the golden hand means father, ‘avunculus’ is uncle and ‘natata’ is grandfather.”

Oh, this was… he lacked the words to express how he felt at that moment. This was a family portrait without faces and they had included him in it.

“It was Solaris who came up with it and before we knew it Ardyn had gotten the paints from somewhere.”

“Ardyn?” he asked because he didn’t know what else to say.

Hiemi motioned towards the purple handprint that at the same time was the biggest one.

Huh.

Ardyn.

Why did that name haunt him everywhere he went?

[angrylizardjacket]

time’s arrow {Roger Taylor}

Anon asked: Hi, I love your roger/ben imagines so much and was wondering if you could do some angst with Roger x female, maybe they are good friends and she sees him with another. Whatever you would like! Thank you x :)

A/N: 2727 words. A story told through Seasons. I took a little bit of liberties with the prompt, if that’s okay? This hit me like a lightning bolt and I had to write it. Angst with a happy ending. (I’m just trying to show I’ve got versatility in writing, okay?)

Warnings: Implied sex.

You meet him in Spring, before it all begins, he sits up the back of your Intro to Head and Neck Anatomy lectures, the only class with open spots available by the time you were looking for a science credit. You find out he’s in a band three weeks into the first class, finally going to the local bar, sick of cramming your brain full of information you’re not even sure is necessary for your degree. He grins at you and wow okay, you didn’t even think he’d recognise you.

“You’re in, um,” he’s leaning against the bar next to you in this dimly lit pub, grabbing a drink between sets. Faltering for a moment, his eyes travel down before you clear your throat, angry at yourself for blushing, but his smile widens, “my class.” He finishes, taking a sip of his beer. You agree, rolling your eyes at him, but even that seems to amuse him. He asks your name. The guitarist is calling him over, setting up for the next set, but you tell him before he leaves. Something tightens in your chest when, later that night, he catches your eyes mid-song, his look of intense focus shifting for a moment as he grins, giving you a wink.

He takes to sitting next to you in lectures, chewing the end of his pencil and taking occasional notes in a falling apart notebook that looks as though he uses it for every class. You catch lyrics in the margins and at the bottom of some pages, but he’s cagey about that in a strange way, just says you’ll have to come to a gig to find out what they’re about. So you do.

Gigs become a regular for you, and you start to become friends with the girls who frequent the shows, often hosting predrinks in your dorm room for Mary and her friends on a Friday night. You learn on one of those nights that at least two of the girls have hooked up with him, and there’s a strange, sinking sensation in your chest. You’re not sad, or at least, you tell yourself you shouldn’t be. You and Roger are just friends, it’s not like there’s anything going on there, sure, sometimes after a really good show he’ll give you a pash, but it’s- that’s just him. 

It’s not like you’ve never thought about it, but you also know his reputation, and that it’ll do more harm than good to get involved with that. He’s the one mistake you don’t think you want to make.

It’s Summer, a few years later, when they trade in the van to get money to hire the recording studio. Roger had really loved that van, and he lay on your sofa for a solid hour grumbling about it, about how Freddie had some kind of nerve. You roll your eyes at him, call him a drama queen, which he takes offence to, but moves obligingly when you sit down, letting him rest his head in your lap.

When you raise the point that it might be worth it, he looks frankly aghast, griping about how he has to catch lifts everywhere now. He calms down somewhat when you start carding your fingers through his hair, though he still pouts.

“If it comes to it, I’ll buy you a car, you baby.” You snort, despite the fact that you’re currently barely making a living wage on some retail job, it’s not where you’d thought you’d be after university, but sometimes that’s just how it is. He looks up at you, and when you look down at him, he’s looking very intense. Perhaps he might say something poignant about your offer, you think, but instead he reaches up and pokes your nose.

“I can see up your nostrils.” He tells you, and you smack his hand away, scowling. You stand abruptly, ignoring his complaints, smoothing your pants out against your thighs.

“Come on,” you offer your hand, which he regards with both confusion and a bit of disdain, “you can’t mope around my apartment and complain about the band again. We’re going out.” That gets his interest.

You’ve been to bars with him before, and usually you go home alone while he gets the pick of the prettiest girls of the night, or he decides to wingman you, which hurts your heart a little, but you won’t decline. You were attractive in your own right, you won’t deny that, you didn’t technically need his help, but a selfish part of you likes the way the attention to you, even if it’s to help you get with other people.

Tonight is different, tonight he doesn’t leave your side, he slings an arm around you as the two of you stand by the bar watching the truly mediocre band they had on that night. 

“You know why they aren’t recording an album?” You ask as the set ends.

“Because they didn’t sell their van?” Roger mused, vaguely bitter, but not melancholy as he swirled the last of his drink in his free hand.

“No, it’s because they’re terrible.” Turning, you smile at your own blunt remark, and when he looks back at you, he’s grinning with a little disbelief. There’s very little space between the two of you, but that doesn’t make your heart race anymore, he’s your best friend, close contact was part of the bargain. But he kissed you, quickly, without warning, and when he pulls back, he turns away to order another drink like nothing had happened.

Your mind is spiralling, this isn’t post-gig excitement, this wasn’t something you were expecting. The selfish creature in your chest that you tried to deny for so long was crowing with victory. Taking a quick look around the bar, you don’t recognise anyone, though there are a few girls who look like they’d be his type- but his hand is moving to wrap around your waist as he turns back.

“What was that?” Voice quiet, you take his drink and have a sip of it yourself, the movement done from muscle memory alone. He raises his eyebrows at you, not regarding the drink, that was a usual occurrence, but at the question. He doesn’t seem to know how to answer, baffled at the question. Dropping you gaze, you take a sip of your own drink. “Why me? Why tonight?” You asked. Looking incredulous, he stepped back, looking you over.

“Have you seen yourself tonight, love? Couldn’t help myself.” You’ve heard him talk like this before, to other girls, not as blunt, but with you he can get away with it. The creature in your chest is elated, and you find yourself smiling, actually blushing. He moves closer once more, his arm around you, voice low as he spoke into your ear. “Trust me, you look very fit tonight, any man would be lucky to have a crack at you.” Heart in your throat, you hope you’re reading the situation right, at the same time ignoring the part of you that knew this was a bad idea.

“Even you?” You turned to face him, watching the way his smile shifted to a smirk, and he pulled you a little closer.

“You know I’m always feeling lucky.” 

You kiss him, feeling your blood thumping in your veins, selfish and excited in equal measure, but with his hands on you, you can’t find the focus to care about the former. 

Once the bad starts up again, Roger pulls away, making a face at them, asking if you wanted to get out of there. You do, and the two of you are elated on the quick walk back to his apartment, stopping only when he pressed you up against the wall of an closed shop to suck a hickey into the skin of your neck. You catch sight of it in his bedroom mirror, but he’s pulling off your jacket and you have better things to worry about.

It’s not weird, like you thought it would be, when you wake the next morning and he’s curled up, fast asleep with his back to you, but your chest aches just a little. He avoids eye contact over breakfast, though you chat like normal. The gripes about his van have died down, though he makes an offhand comment about things are changing that you read enough into to realise what had happened.

“You’ll always have me, Rog.” You reach across the table to take his hand, and he finally looks you in the eye, he looks so relieved, not that he’d ever say it. Afraid of losing another thing he cared about, he had panicked last night and tried to keep you close in the only way he knew how. He certainly loved you, but not in the way you wanted him to. Giving his hand a gentle squeeze, you give him a smile that doesn’t reach your eyes. It’s not his fault.

Bohemian Rhapsody airs in Autumn, you’re regional manager now, and you’re sitting in your office when you hear for the first time; you almost scream when the first harmony comes in after the radio host introduces the song.

“You’re a star, Rog!” You gush over the phone on your break, unable to wait until that night when the band was having a celebratory get-together to talk to him.

“Of course, I am, you think I sing that high to be paid in peanuts?” You can hear the smile in his words without even seeing him, and being able to hear his voice warms your heart.

“That was you?” You laugh, the ‘Galileo's playing back in your head, and you try to picture him singing it, which only made you laugh harder.

“Oi,” he bristled, indignant at your laughter, “I’m the only one with the range to execute Freddie’s vision.” You could see him in your mind now, proud and stubborn, standing tall to defend the decision.

“I’m proud of you.” Suddenly sincere, you find your smile turning to something more genuine as you think back on far he’s come.

“Thank you.” His own voice has become less animated, more sincere, though you can still hear him smiling.

“Love you, Rog.” You tell him, just as you always did when you parted ways.

“I’ll see you tonight.”

He’s grinning, draped with casual confidence in an armchair in Freddie’s living room when you arrive, and you feel like you’ve been taken back five years, the casual enthusiasm he’s exerting. Smile brightening, he stands when he sees you, striding across the room to enfold you in a hug.

“Good to see you!” He practically beams at you, holding your shoulders as he looks over you, as if assessing you, seeing if anything has changed.

“Of course, you’ve been holed up for weeks, I wouldn’t miss this for the world!” Though he’s in front of you, you’re words address the room as a whole, and when he steps back, Brian moves in to hug you as well, asking how you’ve been.

The boys are your friends, all of them, you’ve been around for most of their big band moments, and it eases something in your chest to be here for this one too. But then the ease sharply tightens as a woman you’ve never seen before sits on the arm of Roger’s chair, and he rests a hand on her thigh, smiling up at her.

Mary follows your gaze, and her smile is sad as she pulls you down to sit beside her, asking you about your thoughts on the single. You answer, though your heart’s not in it, and the selfish creature in your chest rears it’s ugly head after such a long slumber. 

The monster has shifted, changed and grown, it hadn’t cared about him running around with any pretty girl he could find for the past few years, but this was different. Roger had made it clear that he was far from sacred, but this was the band, this was Freddie’s home, this was the place of some of your happiest memories; this was yours. 

You stay well into the early hours of the following morning, despite the interloper, but Roger still stopped you at the door.

“I’m really glad you could make it, I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.” He’s smiling at you, but you don’t smile back. It’s been a long night of being kind and pretending that you’re heart didn’t hurt.

“Well, you’ve very busy.” You shrug, punctuating it with a yawn. His expression turns confused, and you open the door.

“Y/N.” He tried to get your attention, but you left, throwing a goodbye over your shoulder to him. “Love you.” He calls through the door, but you stay quiet, refuse to say it back, just keep walking. You’re too tired to be upset, but maybe you’ll get there tomorrow.

Things change, and you’ve grown to accept that, but sometimes old aches don’t heal like they should. Or at all.

“I’m getting married.” He calls you at the end of Winter.

“Oh.”

“Oh?” 

Your relationship’s been on the mend in the years since the Bohemian Rhapsody launch night. You two smile and laugh like you had when you were younger, and you’ve learned to listen to his exploits and his gripes about women, offering your own about your partners, though they’re few and far between. He’s still your best friend, and you learn to act like it. 

“Congratulations.” Your voice is flat. It had been a shock, you’d heard about his latest on-again off-again girlfriend, and had even offered advice in certain situations, actual advice, no malice at all.

“Thanks.” He doesn’t seem to know where to go from here, and silence stretches out between the two of you.

“I should go.” You finally murmur.

“What? Why?” He spluttered, and you sighed deeply.

“Was there something else you wanted to talk about?” You asked, closing your eyes and leaning your forehead against the wall.

“I- no, but I want you to be there.” He paused. “And I wanted to be the one to tell you.” Clenching your jaw, you make a snap decision.

“I can’t-”

“Why not?” He actually sounded angry, which was perhaps warranted, though your next words shut him up.

“Because it hurts, Roger.” After a beat, your voice is quiet. “Because I love you.” Taking a breath, you let yourself relax. “I want you to be happy, but I can’t watch you marry someone else.” There’s silence for a very long moment, but you hang up before he can respond. You take the phone off the hook. You need to be alone, just for now.

“After everything, you still-?” It’s the first day of Spring, and he’s on your doorstep, seemingly unable to say the word love. You’re wearing your pyjamas and he looks like he’s just walked out of a Rolling Stone cover shoot, though he just sort of looks like that now, you supposed.

“Don’t worry about it.” You try not to betray how much his visit shocked you, or the way his very presence after your recent conversation hurt you.

“You’re my best friend! Of course I’m gonna worry about it!” He threw his hands up in the air, exasperated. Sighing deeply, he stepped forward. “I thought I fucked everything up when we hooked up, I’m sorry, I panicked.” He was looking at his fidgeting hands, rather than your surprised expression. “And then... I thought I fucked it up again when I chose the band over you.”

“You never-” You tried to protest, but he smiled self-deprecatingly.

“No, I did. I loved you, and I thought that would get in the way of the band.” Clenching his jaw, he looked up and you could see the regret in his eyes. “It was easier to fuck around that tell you I love you.” Your breath stopped in your throat as he finally walked closer. “And I thought after everything, that you deserved better; you know what I’m like, why would you-?” But you cut him off with a kiss.

“You’ll always have me.” You murmured, finally letting yourself smile. Nothing about it felt selfish, in fact, it felt as though the sun was finally shining on you, warming you from the inside out.

“I know,” he agreed quietly, wrapping you up in a hug.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Have you thought of an AU where one of the others other than Rachel got split in half during the starfish book?

“Great.”  Rachel crosses her arms, surveying the scene.  “So starfish regenerate.  And now we’ve got two Marcos: one dumbass and one psychopath.”

Shallow Marco (as Jake has mentally dubbed him, with a twinge of guilt) recoils, eyes filling with tears.  “Jake, Rachel’s being mean to me!”

Robot Marco (and Jake feels bad about that one too) speaks over his double.  “I’ve tested all eight of my most commonly used morphs, and my abilities remain intact.  Therefore, it’s only logical for my other half to remain here, and for the destruction of the Anti-Morphing Ray to resume on schedule.”

Shallow Marco bursts out laughing.  “‘Other half’!” he says.  “You called me your other half!  Like we’re married!”

Robot Marco turns to Jake.  “Anyway —”

“I wouldn’t marry you,” Shallow Marco says.  “You’re boring, and bossy, and short.  And Jake is prettier.  Not as pretty as Rachel, but sometimes she’s mean and Jake is usually nice.  I wish I had a nice smile like Jake.  He’s not cute, but he’s more like, like…”  He looks at Cassie imploringly.

“Jake’s very sweet,” she suggests.  “But we should probably get back to —”

“Ax!” Shallow Marco bursts out.  “Ax is, like, hot when he’s a human.  Like, really hot.  It’s like he, like, got Rachel’s hot nose but not that weird thing with her chin, and Jake’s shoulders but not, I mean, let’s be honest that his face is totally asymmetrical, and Cassie has hot potential if she was a guy, but only —”

«Anti-Morphing Ray!» Tobias practically shouts.

“Don’t worry, you’re hot too.  But also, like, only as a human,” Shallow Marco assures him.

“We drop a nuclear bomb in downtown Los Angeles,” Robot Marco says.  “While the yeerks are distracted by the fallout, we engineer an electromagnetic pulse to travel through the community center.  With the metal floors, it should generate sufficient amplitude to kill all the controllers inside.  From there it will be easy to walk in and destroy the AMR.”

They all stare at him in horrified silence.

Robot Marco bursts out laughing, a second too late.  “Kidding!  I’m kidding.  Jeez, your faces!  What, this guy —”  He makes a dismissive gesture at his other self — “Is the only one allowed to be funny?”

Jake sends both Marcos home.  Robot Marco at least seems to understand the importance of not letting Peter find anything out.  And Jake honestly doesn’t know what else to do with them.  After they’re gone, the others discuss the actual plan for interrupting the transit of the AMR.  However, there’s nothing else they can do tonight.  Jake breaks up the meeting.

That night, Jake is about to fall into bed to try and force sleep through the worry when he hears Tom’s voice call up the stairs.  “Hey, midget?  Marco’s on the phone, asking for you.  He sounds weird.”

Jake is fairly certain that he breaks Olympic speed records on his sprint down to wrench the phone out of Tom’s hand.  “Hi!” he says into the receiver, breathless.

“You know what’s funny?”  Shallow Marco — it has to be — giggles slightly.  “Being underground.  It’s all squishy and gross, but remember the moles?  That was hilarious!”

“Uh-huh.”  Jake is excruciatingly conscious of the controller watching him from ten feet away with raised eyebrows and infinite patience.  “Sure is.”

“Also it’s really scary here, and dark, and scary, and the other me scares me.  Can I please please please spend the night at your place instead?”

Jake’s place has hazards of its own.  He glances at Tom again, unable to stop himself.  “I don’t know if that really makes sense…”

“Okay.  I guess I’ll just call you back the next time I think of something…”

“Come over!” Jake blurts.  “It’s no problem at all.”

“Thanks!  You’re, like, the best.”

It’s almost too easy for Jake to push past Tom and go talk to their parents.  To say, “Marco needs to come over,” the taste of the implied lie bitter on his tongue.  He hates leaning into their compassion, playing on their cynicism toward Peter, but it also works.  Marco arrives within half an hour, thankfully by bicycle rather than by wing.

“Thanks for letting me stay over!” he chirrups at Tom, who answered the door.

The yeerk, apparently thrown by this, stares at Marco in silence for a second before mumbling, “yeah, whatever.”

“You know…”  Marco rests a hand on Tom’s forearm, staring up into his face.  “You have just the nicest smile.  You know?”

A look of dull confusion crosses Tom’s face, his eyes slowly blinking once, twice.  Then, with a shake as if trying to stay awake, he apparently decides not to dignify that one with a response.

“Okay!”  Jake swoops in, grabbing Marco by the arm to yank him upstairs.  “And we’re going to bed.  Good night, everyone!”

Marco blows a kiss at Tom as they go.

The next morning, it’s Jake’s mom who knocks on the door and says, “Sweetie?  Phone call for you.  It’s Rachel.”

Marco doesn’t move, a lump of covers and tangled black hair in the sleeping bag on the floor.  Carefully Jake steps over him and tiptoes into the hall to take the phone.  “Hi!” he says to Rachel, trying for a casual tone.  “What’s up?”

“I’m gonna kill him,” Rachel says through her teeth.  “Marco’s dumbass half called my house five times last night.  Five times.  The first four were all ‘ooh, Rachel, I can’t call Jake so you’re the only one who can save me from this noise I just heard,’ or ‘Rachel, I’m scared of yee— uh, yetis, will you defend me?’  The fifth one was a fucking booty call —”

“That’s ridiculous,” Jake says, “Shallow Marco’s been here all…”  Which is around the time his brain catches up to his mouth.

Dropping the phone, he sprints back to his room.  The sleeping bag flops over when he kicks it, not nearly enough weight inside.  Long black hairs — cut off near the root, tucked under the blanket — scatter out to float across the floor.

Shallow Marco wouldn’t cut off his own hair just to sell a ruse.  But then, Shallow Marco wouldn’t be capable of pretending to be his other self.  Robot Marco, on the other hand…

“Rachel.”  Jake fumbles to pick up the phone.  “Get everyone to the usual place, STAT.  We have a situation.”

«It would appear,» Ax says slowly, «that most of Marco’s more affective functions — emotion, empathy, temperament, and the like — have ended up in this half.  Whereas his missing double appears to be in possession of colder cognitive functions such as judgment and decision-making, and yet remains as defunct in social communication as this Marco is in long-term planning.  However…»  He shifts his back hooves, shrugging in an oddly human gesture.  «I am hardly an expert in human behavioral norms or psychosocial development.»

Shallow Marco bursts out laughing.  “You can say that again!”  He elbows Jake.  “Get it?  Get it?  He said ‘I am hardly an expert —’”

“Got it,” Jake says tiredly.  “Ax, what’s that tell us about where, uh, thinky-Marco is going?  And how do we stick him and feely-Marco back together?”

«Marco’s cognitively biased half would likely have very little concern for anyone other than himself.»  Ax glances around at all of the others at once.  «I’m afraid he may have left the war entirely.»

«Great,» Tobias says.  «So we’re all the way back to the first month of this whole fight, when Marco was looking to bail at every possible opportunity.  No offense,» he adds, glancing at Shallow Marco.

“Assuming he ran, where would he go?” Jake asks.  “Feely-Marco, did you notice anything about him?”

“Yeah!”  Shallow Marco straightens in indignation.  “Is that really what my hair looks like from behind?  How come none of you told me?”

“Tom,” Jake breathes.  The realization comes too late; he could kick himself.  “He acquired Tom.  Probably the only reason he came to my place at all last night.”

«That’s probably not good,» Tobias says.  «He might be off infiltrating yeerk meetings right now.»

“Not necessarily.”  Cassie pats a horse’s neck, the motion distracted, self-soothing.  “Tom’s also an eighteen-year-old.  A legal adult with a driver’s license, access to a bank account with Sharing funds, and the ability to pass unquestioned through yeerk security.  If I was going to grab someone’s DNA and run…”

“You wouldn’t steal another human’s identity to do it,” Rachel points out.  “I still think it’s more likely he’s off kicking yeerk butt, or at least trying to.  Could he be going after Eva?”

«Is it necessarily bad if Marco’s cognitively biased half is trying to advance the war effort?» Ax asks.  «He does seem cogent enough to avoid coming to harm.»

«Kinda depends,» Tobias says.  «This version of Marco’s apparently willing to morph humans when it suits him.  What else is he willing to do?»

“Drop a nuke on Los Angeles,” Rachel says.  “Fuck.”

“Is that what he’s doing?”  Again, Jake looks at Shallow Marco for help.

«Not to be the guy tripping over the elephant in the room, but…»  Tobias looks down, straightening a couple feathers.  «Marco’s the smartest person on this team.  And the best liar.  Right now, he’s working with a twelve-hour head start.  Whatever his plan is, we’re probably not going to come up with it in the next twenty minutes of brainstorming.»

“Right.”  Jake shoves to his feet.  “Then we’ll just have to split up and find him.  Ax and Cassie, Rachel with Tobias, and I’ll take Marco.  Bird morphs.  Check in at the clock tower two hours from now.”

Shallow Marco bursts into giggles.  “Morphing is so weird.  And gross,” he wheezes, laughing harder now.  “And dangerous.  We’re craz —”  He gasps.  “Crazy people.  And we’re all — All gonna die —”

Ploosh!

Cassie lowers the bucket, now empty, back to the ground.  Shallow Marco shakes himself off, dripping but no longer on the verge of hyperventilating.  “Sorry,” Cassie whispers.

“My hair looks just as good wet as it does dry, so it’s okay.”  Marco smiles at her.  He seems to have forgotten his near-panic.

“Right,” Jake says grimly.  “Let’s go.”

Cassie and Ax find him first.  Or rather they find the first unambiguous sign of his presence.  They agreed to head for the community center and mall with their known cluster of yeerk pool entrances.  Jake and feely-Marco are off checking out bus stations and car rental areas for signs that a guy looking like Marco — or a guy looking like Tom — left town for good.  Tobias and Rachel, who have the most experience flying, are canvassing a broad area which includes most of the town and surrounding woods outside of the area over the yeerk pool.

There’s a body lying facedown on the sidewalk outside the door of the community center.  Human, male, obviously dead from the angle of his neck.  Ax looks at Cassie.  She looks back at him.  Together, they tilt to land.

Ax demorphs, presses cursory fingertips to the man’s pulse point at Cassie’s quiet instruction.  Nods, confirming what they already knew.

Cassie takes the time to change to wolf morph.  They don’t know what they’ll find inside.  She and Ax walk as softly as they dare through the door of the community center, fur standing on end.  Cassie’s nose detects blood, fear, pain.  Human and animal and alien.

They pick their way through the silent lobby.  The electricity is out, leaving half-dark.  A second human sits behind the desk, head lolling back, bullet hole between her eyes.  The room is otherwise deserted.

There are two corridors ahead.  Ax tilts a stalk eye at Cassie, inquiring.  Every one of her instincts tells her that the way to safety is straight ahead, where she can hear only soft traffic and smell only old furniture polish.  She walks down the left-hand corridor, with its terror-smells and echoing screams and hint of kandrona on the air.

The next body they find has no head.  Cassie sniffs briefly at the wound, again confirming her suspicions.  It’s clean and unburned, stinking of blood and death but not of ozone.  Not a dracon burn; a blow from an andalite tail blade.  Visser Three is here.

They don’t stop at the next seven or eight bodies, all killed by Visser Three.  Cassie glances up at Ax; he looks as confused and troubled as she is.  Did Marco manage to sow discord in the Yeerk Empire this quickly?  Is this a completely unrelated incident?

Neither one of them has said a word since before they landed.  Walking through a graveyard as they are, no words seem necessary.

It’s inevitable, really, when Visser Three himself looms out of the darkness ahead.

Cassie drops to a half-crouch, teeth bared.  Ax’s tail blade snaps to the ready.

Visser Three… stands there.

Stiff-kneed, every hair standing on end, Cassie takes another step forward.  Another.  There’s pale-blue blood pouring out of Visser Three’s nose, his ears.  His left side — stalk eye, arm, both legs — is strangely limp.

«Ax?» Cassie asks, voice too high-pitched, hoping for answers.

Ax takes two more steps toward the visser, not lowering his tail blade.  Visser Three gives a sudden spasm.  The fur on his right arm shifts, becomes red and scaly —

Skish!

Ax’s tail blade has twitched faster than either of them can think.  Visser Three falls, dead.

Ax stares at the body for a long moment, chest heaving, tail twitching as if in an effort to clean it of blood.  Visser Three lies unmoving, and soon he is no longer breathing.  

«Come,» Ax says at last, voice shaky.  «We need to find Marco.»

Marco himself is not far from the end of his ghastly trail of breadcrumbs.  He sits brooding over his fallen kingdom, a mountain of black fur and bloodstains amidst what have to be close to a hundred other corpses.  Some are hork-bajir, some human, several taxxon.

Ax gingerly steps forward.  «Mar—»  He stops, staring.

Cassie slinks around his far side, watching Marco, a snarl still in the back of her throat.  She sees what drew Ax up short, and sits hard on the ground.

The body resting at Marco’s feet is one Cassie only knows as Visser One.  But she knows enough to recognize the woman, to see the same full lips and dark curls and high cheekbones that Cassie associates with Marco himself.

Unlike everyone else in the room, Eva bears the clear marks of having been killed by a gorilla.  The small pistol still cradled in her limp hand wasn’t enough to save her, or Visser One.

«Ax.»  Cassie’s voice comes out strange, but she finds she can do this.  She can tap a deep reserve, take charge, when no one else can.  «Go find Jake and Rachel and the others.  Bring them back here, as soon as possible.»

«Will you… be all right?» Ax says.

«We’re going to be just fine.»  This time her voice is too gentle, bordering on patronizing.  Marco doesn’t react to her tone.  Ax just nods, and begins to morph.

During the half hour that Ax is away finding the others, Cassie bears witness.  She coaxes Marco into demorphing, and then she listens in silence to the dull recitation of his explanation.  How, once he’d had Tom’s DNA, getting into the yeerk pool itself was easy to do.  How he’d simply acquired a yeerk from out of the pool.  The next part had taken some doing, but after whispering and tracking rumor and observing the patterns of movement, he’d managed to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time to shove Esplin 9466 out of the way — and slide into Alloran’s brain himself.  From there, it had all been so easy: executing half a dozen subordinates on the slightest excuse, bellowing contradicting orders and threatening death for all who disobeyed, claiming that there were traitors in their ranks who had to be eliminated.  Marco estimates that he has decimated the entire arm of the invasion force here in California, and that the carnage is continuing to spread even now.

“I had to demorph inside Alloran’s brain, in the end,” Marco says.  He and Cassie are both human by now, just two kids sitting among the corpses.  “Blew half his circuits in the process.  Shame, really, since he wasn’t even fighting back against me and he could’ve been useful.  But I suppose it’s one less distraction for Ax, so it’s more gain than loss.”

Cassie keeps her opinion of that assessment to herself.  She keeps it all to herself, even the tears that burn behind her eyes and the tension in the fist clenched at her side.  This isn’t Marco, she tells herself yet again, not really.  This is a half-person, lacking one half of all human nature.  Their Marco is himself entire.

“Speaking of distractions we couldn’t afford, I took the time to kill Tom as well.”  Marco shifts slightly, a careless leg propped against his mother’s body.  “Jake might be upset at first, but he’ll thank me in the end.  It’s better for the overall strategy to have him out of the way, and Jake will see that soon enough.”

This Marco, Cassie thinks, is not half as smart as he seems to think he is.

Jake makes it two steps into the room and staggers.  Mechanically, out of sheer lost uncertainty, he starts going from body to body: checking faces, checking IDs, checking for signs of life.  Shallow Marco shoves past him, running for the center of the room.  He falls next to Eva’s body, keening from somewhere deep inside. 

Robot Marco lifts his head up, watching his twin with what looks like idle interest.  “I remember what it was like to be half of you, to be frail and shrill and vulnerable.  Do you remember being competent and clear-sighted and monstrous when necessary?”

Shallow Marco (and yet there is nothing shallow about him, not now) lifts his head up to stare his doppleganger down.  His bloodshot eyes, his trembling lips, the soft sob of his breath… Jake has never seen Marco like this, not even after Eva’s first death.

“You see,” Robot Marco continues calmly, “it’s only a matter of time before the chee find a way to make us one again.  Morphing tore us apart, but I’m almost certain that it can’t hold us this way.  I got plenty done while I was free.  The war is won.  However, I’m starting to see that I need you almost as much as you need me.  Therefore, it’s—”

BANG.

Robot Marco jerks, mouth halfway open, and actually looks down at the bullet hole through his heart.  “You…”  He sounds genuinely surprised.  “You…”  He dies, still upright, between one breath and the next.  Jake sees it happen, watches the slow fall of his body.

Shallow Marco lowers the gun, resting it back into Eva’s hand.  “It’s funny, when you think about it,” he tells Jake.  There’s an edge of laughter — of tears — of something, catching at his voice.  “He didn’t think anything of me.  I don’t feel anything toward him.  It’s…”  Another sobbing breath catches in his chest.  “It’s hilarious, and…”

Rachel starts to move forward.  In an instant Marco (the only Marco, now) has whipped the gun back up to point at her chest.

“He killed my mom!” Marco screams at Rachel.  “Don’t you dare— He killed—”

Rachel holds up both hands.  She takes another step forward, because Rachel’s never had the good sense to be afraid.  “I know.  I know.  And I’m the last person to give a crap about that.  But right now, I just don’t want—”

“What, this?”  Marco whips the gun up, points it at his own head, and pulls the trigger.

There’s a faint click, but it doesn’t go off.  It’s empty.  Or jammed.  Or it’s simply not a semi-automatic.  Jake doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care, because Marco has time to look at it and laugh like it’s the silliest thing he’s ever seen, and then Rachel tackles him.  She tosses the gun clear across the room, wrestling both hands behind him, and pins him to the floor.

“I will,” she pants, “cause you severe bodily harm—” another gasp — “if you even think about morphing.”

Marco doesn’t answer.  He just curls under her, looking small and alone and very young.

“Okay.”  Rachel relaxes her grip a little, after a time.  “Okay.  Yeah.”

She looks up.  Her expression says now what?

Jake stares back, face full of I don’t know.

They’ve won the war, Tobias thinks, watching it all from overhead as if it’s happening to someone else.  If they haven’t won it already, Marco has just handed them the opportunity to finish the job.

One of the bodies curled on the floor is a girl can’t be any older than the Animorphs themselves.  One of the bodies has the face of a friend, of a part of them all.

Sure, Tobias thinks.  Yeah.  This is what victory feels like.  Sure it does.

Still.  They have a chance now.  To find a way forward.  To figure it out.  To find a way to live through the war, even if it has eaten half of their selves alive.

[skammovistarplus]

Culture and Translation - S01 E04

Slowly getting through these, although they’re out of order. I’ll post an index when I’m done with season 1. 🤦‍♂️

CLIP 1: A wild mom appears

22:30 is a perfectly cromulent time to have dinner in Spain, but ngl, I’d have it a bit earlier on a school night. Eva’s supposed to be at school at 8:30.

Eva is eating the Hacendado store-brand “natillas de vainilla” from Mercadona (vanilla custard). Lol can you imagine that Skam España gets enormous, and people from abroad make trips to Mercadona because of Skam España?

Pesada (“annoying”): Okay, I love “pesada” because it literally translates as “heavy,” but it actually means that someone is being annoying/nagging to the point where it feels tiring to put up with them. There’s an idiom in Spanish: “eres más pesado que una vaca en brazos” (you’re heavier than carrying a cow bridal-style) and I find the visual hilarious.

CLIP 2: Carrying their bags for some reason

This clip dropped at 11:39, but the characters are all carrying their bags and backpacks. You don’t take your backpack out for recess. You leave it in the classroom and take the valuable stuff with you. We don’t have lockers.

Ni de reojo (“Not even a glance”):  Looking at someone “de reojo” is looking at them from the corner of your eyes, but that’d have been too long.

Bien, normal (“Good, fine”): In Spain we often use “normal” to respond to small talk (how are you doing, what’s the weather like, how was dinner with your family, stuff like that). I went with fine, as I haven’t really heard “normal” being used that way in English.

CLIP 3: Are these our biology buddies?

I do like the juxtaposition of Eva telling Nora everything is fine, only for Eva to UNLOAD on Lucas the very next clip.

I can’t watch this clip without remembering that I did the Social Sciences track of Baccalaureate, and yet, I had to translate a fucking optical microscope exercise for Skam. This fucking show.

Es que es muy heavy, Eva (“You crossed a line, Eva”): I also really like the Spanish slang “heavy.” It comes from heavy metal, and it’s meant to bring to mind the intensity of the harder heavy metal bands. And hey! It shows up on Urban Dictionary with the same meaning: Serious and intense, but also too much. I think this might be outdated slang in the US?

Y yo estaba rayada (“And I was going crazy”): I’m pretty sure that to be “rayado” comes from “discos rayados,” i.e. skipping records. When you’re “rayado,” you are stuck on a specific thought or emotion to the point of obsession or being unable to move past it. It’s NOT “sounding like a broken record,” as in English, because being “rayado” is internal. You’re stuck on a continuous loop within your own mind. It comes up several times throughout the show, and I’m pretty sure I used a different expression each time because nothing felt quite right.  

Tú qué vas a decir (“Like you’d say anything different”): The literal translation would be, “what are you going to say.” However, that sounded like it could be a question, even a rhetorical one, when Eva is throwing Lucas’ words back in his face.

CLIP 4: Carrot cake

Carrot cake is a relatively new import in Spain. I think it’s trendy for coffee shops to have it on their menus now. Since it’s so recent, it was adopted with its English name, rather than the Spanish translation. This also applies to brownies, pancakes (which were actually called “tortitas” for a while, but now it’s become trendier to call them pancakes), muffins and cupcakes.

Aquí os quedáis (“I’m out”): Lucas actually says, “you stay here,” but the connotation is that Lucas is leaving because he’s Done with Eva and Jorge. Eva and Jorge can choose to stay or leave or do whatever, but Lucas is leaving and not taking Eva and/or Jorge with him.

Que aproveche, chicos (“Enjoy, you two”): Enjoy, as in enjoy your meal, of course! “Chicos” could be translated as “kids,” and when the teachers use it, I do translate it as kids. But the waitress is calling Eva and Jorge “chicos” just because they’re younger than her, not because she’s calling them children. You are either young enough to be “chicos” or old enough to be “señores.”

I mean, if Lucas is going to parent trap them, he could’ve at least paid for the cake. This entrapment with an unpaid bill is kinda rude!

CLIP 5: Nailing Viri

Eva has a palmera in her hand! See Wikipedia for info on this supposedly palm leaf-shaped pastry. The picture captioned “Pig’s ears” is closer to the one Eva has in this clip,

Un clavo saca otro clavo (“there are other fish in the sea”): The literal translation is, “a nail takes out other nail,” as in, the construction kind of nail. The connotations of both sayings are a little different. “There are other fish in the sea” has the connotation that you’ve been dumped, but there are plenty of people in the world for you to explore. “A nail takes out another nail” can mean you’ve been dumped or that your love is unrequited, and that the only way to get over it is to find someone new asap. I also found a debate in a translation forum over whether the nail in the idiom means a dick, as in, only by hopping on another dick you can get over the previous dick, and I can honestly say I have no idea if the idiom is about dicks or not.

Viri con la mierda (“Viri with the junk”): Viri actually says “Viri with the shit.” Haha. This girl squad is so gentle and well-spoken.

Quick note on grades: Grades can be 0 to 10, where 10 is the highest grade. You pass with a 5. Anything under 5 is a “failing” grade. 5 through 5.99 is a “passing” grade. 6 through 6.99 is a “good” grade. 7 through 8.99 is a “notable” grade. 9 through 10 is an “excellent” grade. Once you’re in university, you can also get an “honor roll” grade. Only one or two students can get that grade on a specific course. As far as I know, “honor roll” does not exist as a grade in Spanish primary schools, middle schools or high schools.

Encima se pica (“She goes and gets ticked off”): “Picar” literally translates to “to itch” or “to sting” (such as a bee or a wasp sting). If something “te pica” in the slang sense, it means something has offended you, and the speaker thinks it shouldn’t have. There’s a saying, “si te pica, te rascas,” which translates to, “if it itches, then scratch yourself.” It means that if the tea has been too hot, you don’t get to lash out, you need to deal with it. Cris is indignant that she’s trying to help Viri out by telling her the truth straight up, and Viri is offended, instead of grateful.

Una chica de cuarto (“A fourth grader”): Fourth grader as in being in her fourth year of Mandatory Secondary Education! A grade below the girl squad.

CLIP 6: Underage drinking  

I don’t know where that tunnel is, and I desperately want to know. On that note, I was so fucking chuffed when the clip came out. I really didn’t think they’d even attempt a street drinking scene. They obviously had to have it a secluded place in order to keep the shooting a secret, but it works.

Okay, so my personal take on the call to prayer scene is this. The clip dropped at 20:07 on the 6th of October, and Isha (the fifth prayer) happened at 19:08 at the very latest. (There are several methods of calculation.) So Amira probably did pray before meeting up with the girls. However, once she took in their initial reactions, Amira might’ve wanted to see exactly how badly the girls would take it, so she pushed a bit harder. Committing to praying five times a day might also be new for Amira, and so she might’ve wanted to test those waters. Ngl, asking her to do it somewhere where nobody sees Amira is with them is pretty fucking bad.

A buenos días (“Good morning”): Jorge is doing one of his voices here. I guess he sounds a little like a rural old man. And yes, he says “good morning” even though it’s visibly dark outside the tunnel, lol.

There’s a conversation happening below the camera line and a bit aways from the mics. It’s hard to catch all of it, But Lucas drops the bag with the ice cubes and tells people to help themselves. Dilan grabs ice cubes with his bare hands, and Hugo calls him out for being gross. Dilan asks Hugo why he minds. Tbf to Dilan, a botellón is usually a gross affair with drinks being spilled, vomit, and sometimes piss, so touching the ice with your hands is small potatoes in comparison, lol.

Verdad o atrevimiento (“Truth or Dare”): For the record, the version I played was called Beso, Verdad o Atrevimiento (Kiss, Truth or Dare). I guess there’s a larger English language influence that’s made it more authentic to drop the Kiss option from the name, if not from the dares themselves.

Va lanzada (“going for it”): Lucas says Cris is “lanzada,” which literally translates to being launched, or going as fast as something being launched. Such as a rocket, for instance.

Pa mala yo (“I’m the badass”): Cris is quoting the Aitana and Ana Guerra song Lo Malo, which comes up again later in the season. The gist of the quote is that Cris has no need for bad boys, when she can be a bad girl herself.

Le dio un amarillo (“she had a whitey”): In case you’ve never heard of “a whitey” before, you can find a detailed explanation on Urban Dictionary, which corresponds 1:1 with the Spanish expression.  I had to do a lot of research to find the best translation, so pls appreciate!

Fue muy borde contigo (“He was an ass to you”): “Borde” is yet another classic Spanish slang words. To be “borde” is to be rude for no reason. While it’s slang. It’s not a swear word, and it’s not rude to use. I went with “ass” as I figured it comes across as softer than “asshole.”

CLIP 7: Safety considerations are ignored

Both this clip and the clip before (which dropped at 20:07) generated a discussion in Spanish fandom spaces, specifically about when Spanish teens go out and what their curfews are. Lots of people felt Eva and her friends are going out too early and going back home early, as well. Part of the discussion has to do with something the remakes have shied away from: dropping clips at ungodly hours. As some might remember, during Isak’s season, clips would drop at 3 am because Isak was insomniac. So far, the remakes have held back on dropping clips during hours the target audience may not be awake to react to them, generate discussion on social media, etc.

Spanish people have a (not unearned) reputation of starting the party after dinner time (so 22:00-23:00) until dawn. That said, every teen has their own set of parents with their own set of rules. Personally, I didn’t have a curfew, but we were generally partied out by 4 am.

That said, if I’d been as wasted as Eva is in this clip, I’d have headed home at midnight, sure. Mostly ‘cause I’d have wanted to nap it out.

It makes me smile that Eva and Jorge are jay-walking. There’s no penalty for doing so in Spain, by the way. And especially in small towns or villages, where traffic is light and sidewalks not wide enough for more than one person, it is far more common for people to walk down the middle of the road, rather than using the sidewalks.

I don’t understand how Eva’s house works, by the way. That door makes it look like Eva lives in a detached house with a front yard, a fence and a gate. But we know from other clips that you can show up at Eva’s front door without needing to be let in through a gate. Also, there’s no window by the gate. You can definitely see a window by the door in the final clip.

My friends were shocked and appalled that Jorge would leave without ensuring Eva got inside her house safely, since she was so drunk and it’s past midnight. Grudges have been held.

The gagging noises at the 18:54 mark are poetic cinema.

[yilduza]

‘Destructive Whirlwind’: nurses' perceptions of patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder

(tw: suicide mention) (these are selections from the journal article, it has been abridged and not reproduced in full)

“Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) first appeared in the American Psychiatry Association's Diagnostic and Statistic Manual, 3rd edition (DSM-III) in 1980. Only 6 years later, Gallop & Lancee (1986) found that this disorder carried a strong negative stereotype. They reported that when nurses were asked what words came to mind when they thought about borderline patients over 90% responded with either ‘manipulative’, ‘attention-seeking’ or ��trouble’. This conceptualization shows no sign of abating; in 2006, Deans and Meocevic found that the majority of nurses they surveyed perceived BPD patients as manipulative.” Markham (2003) found that qualified nurses rated patients labelled BPD as more dangerous and had a stronger desire to maintain social distance from them, than patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Similarly, observational research has recorded that nurses' interactions with BPD patients are significantly less empathic than their interactions with patients with affective disorders (Fraser & Gallop 1993). The prognosis of BPD patients is poor; they show high rates of premature termination of treatment, ongoing dependence on the mental healthcare system (Nehls 2000) and about 10% commit suicide (Bateman & Fonagy 2004). As result in Nehls (2000) stated that BPD patients are perceived as ‘untreatable and undeserving of care’ (p. 66)

In 2007, James and Cowman found that over 60% of the nurses they surveyed did not support the view that BPD patients were untreatable and almost 90% wanted further training to increase their skill base for working with this client group.

Six participants were interviewed. All of the participants are working as members of psychiatric nursing teams, either in London or in Hampshire. Four of the participants work in an acute adult ward.

Core theme: Destructive Whirlwind

This can be seen as the theme around which nurses' experiences of BPD patients revolve. It refers to nurses perceiving BPD patients as a powerful, dangerous, unrelenting and unstoppable force which leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. The participants reported BPD patients having a huge, disrupting presence, which they described as demanding and draining. The participants provided numerous examples of the vast amounts of time and energy they spend ‘dealing’ with these patients. The term ‘whirlwind’ was taken from the data itself

They seem to shout ‘help me, help me, but you can't.

All the nurses interviewed perceived BPD patients as having a mental health problem. In conjunction with this, they considered them to be unable to cope with life and in need of help. However, the nurses seemed to struggle with feeling that they could not ‘treat’ these patients; this was closely linked to BPD patients ‘not getting better’

However, this participant went onto describe how this [getting results from putting in the work] is not always the case and how a BPD patient he was working with committed suicide. Perhaps overtime, these types of experiences will alter his perceptions. One participant, who has worked in mental health for 17 years, recalls how she used to feel at the beginning of her career:

I can make this person better; I can be the one that changes their impression about all those horrible people that they've come across in mental health.

She then explained how she now accepts that she cannot always help. The impact of exposure to this client group was also described by another senior nurse:

When I first was training . . . somebody would be admitted and I would be in the nurses office and the other nurses, the qualified staff, would go ‘oh god another f-ing BPD’ . . . I'd be really indignant and say ‘how can you say that’ . . . later as I became more experienced . . . I did start to see them as a kind of unified group.

Theme 3: Manipulation

The nurses had a strong sense that they were being manipulated by BPD patients. They associated BPD patients' dishonesty with their manipulative behaviours. The idea that BPD patients are dishonest was linked to a general perception that they were not genuine. The participants frequently talked about there being an ‘agenda’ behind BPD patients' interactions with them and trying to discover the real reason behind why they were doing something or wanting something.

I actually withdrew from any sort of therapeutic liaisons with a client because I felt they were not genuine.

An important implication from this research is the need to train nurses in appropriate treatments for this client group. Perhaps, such training could also provide nurses with a framework in which to understand their interactions with these patients. For example, the cognitive behavioural cycle described by Rayneret al. (2004) could be used to explain patients' behaviour, nurses' reactions to this and the impact this then has on patients' effect and in turn their behaviour.

The therapeutic relationship is now widely thought to be the most important factor for outcome (Clarkson 2003); thus, it can be hypothesized that enhancing the relationship between BPD patients and staff teams will have a reciprocal effect on patients' process. Consequently, future research should explore the reality of nurses' interactions with these patients, so that steps can be taken to improve their relationships. Given the close conditions in which nurses work, it may be beneficial to conduct focus groups in which nurses could construct their shared reality of BPD patients.”

WOOLLASTON, K. and HIXENBAUGH, P. (2008), ‘Destructive Whirlwind’: nurses' perceptions of patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 15: 703–709. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2850.2008.01275.x

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This study only had 6 nurses participating which naturally leads to a relatively limited scope, however, the review of previous research is useful and the results are relatively in-line with prior research into the attitudes of mhc professionals towards individuals (mostly women, lbr) with bpd.

some thoughts:

-the therapeutic relationship is important for outcomes and yet it’s very difficult to have a trusting relationship with a nurse (or other professional) who enters the relationship expecting manipulation and deception

-this is especially crucial when evaluating suicide risk among patients with BPD (since having BPD already places you in a high-risk group.).  how do you effectively assess risk if you’re assuming manipulation and deception?

-people with BPD often see themselves as “bad” and undeserving of help, and are hyper-sensitive to how other people behave towards them.  picking up on disdain or hostility towards them from the people responsible for handling their care can be extremely damaging to self-image, and feelings of being bad and worthless can be triggers for self-destructive behaviour.

-as an aside to the quote “The prognosis of BPD patients is poor” the prognosis for BPD has been increasingly recognized as more positive than it once was.  And whatever the prognosis is, it may be demoralizing for staff working with clients with BPD to think they’ll never improve but trust me when i say it’s even more demoralizing to have that implication communicated to you as a patient.  how do you find hope, how do you find the tenacity and the strength to live with BPD and work towards a healthier life if you’re told from the outset how impossible it is?

-mental health care is based on both observable behaviour and internal experiences. both are important components.  if you’re unable to share your internal experiences with the professionals you’re working with, or they’re unwilling to listen in an unbiased manner, your treatment may not be very effective or tailored to your actual needs and symptoms.

-the 2007 research by James and Cowman is a positive step forward in suggesting that the majority of the nurses they surveyed wanted further training 

-lastly: given how high rates of trauma are in people given this diagnosis it is irresponsible to fail to consider how re-traumatizing a blanket assumption of deception and manipulation might be.

[fear-god-shun-evil]

By Li Min

Is the Word “Once Saved, Always Saved” Tenable? I believe many brothers and sisters in the Lord are familiar with the word “salvation” and want to be saved by believing in the Lord. Moreover, everyone preaches these words “Once saved, always saved.” Then, does once saved mean always saved? If we want to figure out this question, we first need to know if these words are right and if there is any reference in the Lord’s word? Whatever views we hold onto, we shall not rely on our own notions and imaginations. Only if we find the basis from God’s word can we act in harmony with God’s will.

What Did God Say About Salvation?

Many brothers and sisters would say: It is based on the records in the Bible that we believe in the Lord in this way. Is this truly the fact? Let’s see what the Bible says about salvation.

The Lord Jesus said: “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17).

“He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16).

“But he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved” (Matthew 24:13).

These scriptures only tell us that Jesus’ incarnation is to let us be saved and what we should do to gain the salvation, but doesn’t mention that once saved, we will always be saved. If we think like this, there will be a serious deviation in our understanding, and we are twisting these words. We all know the Lord is faithful. If He promised us that once saved, we would always be saved, He would tell us clearly. However, the Lord Jesus never said it like this and many apostles never testified like this, so the word “Once saved, always saved” is untenable. Even if many spiritual figures and Bible expositors accept this view, they can only stand for themselves but not the Lord’s will. We know only the Lord Jesus is the heavenly King and His word is the truth, the way, the life and with power. And only He can decide who is able to enter the Heavenly kingdom. If we hope to be approved by the Lord, we should take Jesus’ word as our principles and bases rather than hold on to our personal understanding and imaginations. Otherwise, it’ll finally be in vain if we just live in our personal logical thinking or hold on to the tradition of men and groundless theories but don’t seek to understand the Lord’s will and take His word as principles. Speaking of this, it’s necessary for us to know what the word “salvation” truly means in the Bible.

What’s the True Meaning of Salvation?

Brothers and sisters in the Lord all know that, in the Age of Law, Jehovah used Moses to promulgate laws and commandments for the Israelites and taught them what they should do to fear and serve Jehovah; what is good and what is evil; what deeds will be blessed and what actions will be cursed; what they should do to get along with each other and how to live; how to offer sacrifice to God to atone for their sins, etc. But at the end of the Age of Law, people had been corrupted by Satan more deeply. They lost the heart of fearing God and lived in sins so that they offered the blind or lame oxen, sheep and pigeons to Jehovah God’s altar. If they kept living in this way, all the Israelites would be condemned to death by the law. To save people under the law from the threat of death, God incarnated into flesh as Jesus and did the work of redemption. As long as people accept Jesus’ salvation, confess sins and repent, their sins will be absolved and they won’t be condemned or put to death by the law, at the same time, they’ll have the qualification to pray before God and enjoy His abundant grace and blessings. This is the salvation for people under the Age of Law, and the salvation here means not to be condemned by the law. It’s just as the records in the Bible: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2). “That if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Romans 10:9). That is to say, at that time, as long as people’s hearts believe and their mouths acknowledge the Lord as Christ, and accept the Lord Jesus’ salvation, they won’t be condemned by the law, nor will their faults be remembered by God. This is the true meaning of salvation.

What’s the Difference Between “Being Saved” and “Being Forever Saved”?

After knowing those above, some brothers and sisters might say: The Lord Jesus’ crucifixion has already saved us successfully and He has forgiven all our sins. We’re not sinners in His eyes and we’ve been justified by faith. What’s more, the salvation is once and for all. But is this really the fact? What’s the difference between “being saved” as we think and the standards of “being forever saved” required by the Lord? Let’s look up the Bible, “But as he which has called you is holy, so be you holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be you holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:15-16). The Lord is holy, so if we want to be saved forever, we should cast off the bondage of sin to be the man who can receive God’s word, obey Him and love Him.

However, are we holy now? Since we followed the Lord, we have some good behaviors such as bearing hardship, expending zealously, visiting and helping weak brothers and sisters, abandoning worldly burdens, giving alms and donating, and working diligently for the Lord, etc., but our sinful nature hasn’t been solved and we can’t help but commit sins. For example, we always lie to maintain our own image; we hate others and form cliques because of envying others; we plant our own flags; we often tell people how much we’ve suffered; we exalt and testify ourselves; we stand in God’s place to let people admire and look up to us; we still complain and betray God when we’re faced with disasters or trials and tribulations; we believe in God with our mouth but worship, look up to and follow pastors and elders; some of us even steal and enjoy God’s offerings; our sinful nature, such as arrogance, selfishness, craftiness, evil are still very deep-rooted, making us live in a vicious cycle of committing and confessing sins. This is a patently clear fact. Obviously, if our sinful nature and satanic dispositions are not solved, we can’t get fully free of sins even if our sins are forgiven a million times! We are still bounded by sins, how can we say we are saved forever? It is said in Hebrews, “For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries” (Hebrew 10:26-27). God’s disposition does not tolerate human offenses, and He will accomplish His word if He said so. We have known the Lord’s requirements after we believe in Him, but we still can’t live out His word. We commit sins and resist Him often, so how can we say we’re once saved and will be always saved?

How to Achieve Being Saved Forever

At this point, some brothers and sister might ask: Will our expectation, being saved forever, in believing in the Lord for years come to nothing? What should we do to pursue to be totally free from sins and to be purified by God, so that we can realize the wish in our hearts? Actually, we can’t meet God’s will by ourselves and we need God to personally save us, so that we can gain the great salvation, being saved forever. Just as the word recorded in the Bible: “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and to them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin to salvation” (Hebrew 9:28).

I remembered a spiritual book said: “For, in the Age of Grace, the demons went away from man with the laying on of hands and prayer, but the corrupt dispositions within man still remained. Man was healed of his sickness and forgiven his sins, but the work for just how the corrupt satanic dispositions within man could be cast away was not done in him. Man was only saved and forgiven his sins for his faith, but the sinful nature of man was not taken away and still remained within him. The sins of man were forgiven through God incarnate, but it does not mean that man has no sin within him. The sins of man could be forgiven through the sin offering, but man has been unable to resolve the issue of just how he can no longer sin and how his sinful nature can be cast away completely and be transformed. The sins of man were forgiven because of the work of God’s crucifixion, but man continued to live in the old, corrupt satanic disposition. As such, man must be completely saved from the corrupt satanic disposition so that the sinful nature of man is completely cast away and never again develops, thus allowing the disposition of man to be changed. This requires man to understand the path of growth in life, the way of life, and the way to change his disposition. It also needs man to act in accordance with this path so that the disposition of man can gradually be changed and he can live under the shining of the light, and that he can do all things in accord with the will of God, cast away the corrupt satanic disposition, and break free from Satan’s influence of darkness, thereby emerging fully from sin. Only then will man receive complete salvation.”

From these words, we can know that the work the Lord Jesus did is only to redeem man but not to judge and purify man to fully save people from sins. We are only forgiven of our sins by receiving the Lord’s salvation, but the sinful nature is deeply embedded in our hearts and we still live in the circumstance of committing and confessing sins. Therefore, we still need God to do another stage of judgment and cleansing work to change us if we want to be purified and fully free of Satan’s influence. Only in this way can we get rid of sins and be truly saved. It also fulfills the word in the Bible: “And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejects me, and receives not my words, has one that judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day” (John 12:47-48). “Who are kept by the power of God through faith to salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5).

From above scriptures, we can see that God has plans and steps on saving us from evils and sins. If we want to be saved forever, we not only need the Lord Jesus’ salvation, but need to accept God’s work of judgement and chastisement in the last days, so that we can get rid of the bondage of sins, be fully purified and perfected by God and live in God’s light. As a matter of fact, many verses predicted that God will come again and do the judgement work. For example: “God judges the righteous”; “And I will come near to you to judgment”; “the judge stands before the door”; “for the hour of his judgment is come”; “for he comes to judge the earth”; “judgment must begin at the house of God” and so on. From all these chapters, we are more certain that God will do the work of judgement and chastisement when He comes in the last days.