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hugmekenobi · 10 months

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S2: The Bad Batch (16)

Chapter Sixteen: Plan 99

Gif by @dreamswithghosts

Hunter x femaleJedi!reader

Series Summary: Some time has passed since everything that happened at Kamino and you and the Batch are trying to figure out your place in the rapidly changing Imperial galaxy. And you're having to do all this whilst figuring out where your relationship with Hunter fits into it.

Chapter Summary: There was a mission gone wrong and then there's what happened during and after Eriadu.

Masterlist for S1

<Previous Chapter

Genre: Friends (idiots) to Lovers (we're in the lovers stage now)

Chapter Warnings: Canon-typical violence, swearing, MAJOR CHARACTER 'DEATH', HEAVY ANGST, my interpretation of thought processes, relatively detailed injury and torture descriptions, vomiting, slight hurt/comfort, brief kissing, Hemlock being a creep and just generally himself, I project my feelings again and reader makes a questionable choice but it needed to happen, no happy endings here

Word Count: 8.8K

Author's notes: If I have done my job right in any capacity, this'll be a rough one to get through. However, I promise I have a oneshot planned that'll fix some of what just happened and if S3 doesn't fix the rest, I will do it then!

You helped Hunter with opening the car doors and as you all saw the awful freefall that lay below you, you knew it was going to take a lot to get out of this situation in one piece.

“This… is not ideal.” Tech commented.

“At least we’re not hanging under the car.” Wrecker offered.

“This isn’t much better.” You said before you ducked as a round of blaster fire headed in your direction.

“Echo, get this car moving.” Hunter instructed as the rest of you fired back.

“The explosions must’ve knocked out the power to the rail line.” Echo theorised irritably.

You moved away from the edge of the doors back to the middle of the car. “What if I just take down their railcar? It wouldn’t take long.” You suggested.

Tech shook his head. “I do not think that would be wise. There would be no guarantee that the resulting impact of you destroying that line would not affect the terminal that we need to get moving. And we’d still be stuck here whilst the Empire can easily send more reinforcements and-”

“Okay, fine do it your way.” You interrupted as you went back to focusing your fire on the Imperials.

“I can try to reboot the system, but I will need to plug directly into one of the terminals on the track.” Tech said.

Hunter addressed the rest of you, “You four, give us cover, Tech up top with me.”

Tech and Hunter moved to the next level of the railcar and Hunter gave his brother a boost up to the roof so he could climb onto the track.

As Tech got underway, Hunter opened the other set of doors and opened fire, particularly on any soldiers that were aiming for Tech.

“I am plugged in. Stand by.” Tech said into his comm as he got to work.

You all were doing a decent enough job at holding them back. They had more numbers, but your squad was more skilled, so you were managing okay.

That feeling of things being under control did not last long as Hunter heard the familiar sounds of ships coming your way. “We’ve got three ships inbound.”

You muttered a series of expletives as you scanned the sky around you for them.

“Where? I can’t see them.” Omega asked fearfully.

“Tech, we need power!” You urged into you comm as you could hear them drawing closer with each passing second.

You all took up positions to open fire on them, but it did very little. The ships got a round of shots away and you had to fight to stay balanced as the car shook with the impact.

Tech stared at his datapad and finally the screen turned green. He tapped his comm, “Echo, now!”

Upon Tech’s word, Echo plugged back in, and the railcar finally came back online.

“Tech, get your ass back here.” You hurried as you saw the ships getting ready to make another pass.

Tech unplugged and got himself across to the main track and started running but he could hear the ships getting nearer.

Hunter concentrated his fire on the oncoming ships. He was able to clip one in the wing and it collided into another which he thought would be enough.

It wasn’t.

The third ship came speeding through and fired a series off shots that found their mark. You all stumbled inside the car as it violently shook and struggled against the onslaught of blaster fire.

The explosion flung Tech backwards, and he fell from the track onto the roof of the bottom half of the car. He tried to stand but the resulting shot had seen to it that the back of the railcar was tearing itself away from the track and as it titled backwards, he went with it. He managed to hook his grappling cable onto one of the grates, but he was stuck hanging over the abyss.

“Come on, Tech! Hurry!” Wrecker implored as he peered down the broken end of the railcar.

“I am climbing as fast as I can.” Tech replied with a grunt as he started to make his way up the cable, but the additional weight and well-placed rogue enemy blaster fire exacerbated the fragile state of the car and it lurched backwards, sending him further down the cable once more.

“Tech!” Omega cried as she saw him fall whilst Wrecker debated the best way to get down the sloped hallway.

“Why aren’t we moving?” Hunter asked Echo as he took refuge from the blaster fire.

“The car’s being ripped from the track.” Another harsh vibration sounded shook through it as he tried to get it moving.

“Wrecker, get him on board.” Hunter pressed, desperation seeping into his voice, before he opened fire on the soldiers again.

Wrecker made to step down, but the car dipped significantly.

“Don’t!” Tech yelled as he fell down even further. “Any shift in weight could send both of these cars over.”

You glanced behind you at Wrecker and Omega and made the call that the others could hold the troopers off. You needed to help Tech now. Channelling the Force, you focused on the point where the two hinges met but it was already fragile, and it would take a lot of energy and focus to keep them together since they were wanting to do anything but and the circumstances were hardly ideal to have that focus but you had to make it work. You could hear more ships coming but you ignored them, you didn’t care.

“You must sever the connection hinge. Now!” Tech instructed.

“Not until you’re up here.” Wrecker argued.

“Tech, I can hold them, just climb or let Wrecker-”

“You can’t keep them steady and wait for me to get up there with the time we have left.” Tech interrupted you as he saw the ships in the distance closing in again.

“She’s got it, Tech.” Wrecker said, doing his best to keep the distress out of his voice as he edged his way forward. As he did so, the cart swayed forward, and he glanced back at you.

“Go.” You said through gritted teeth as you focused on keeping both carts level, but each moment of blaster fire and Wrecker’s added weight were making it harder.

Tech fell a few more metres as the cart continued to pull itself away from the track. He looked around and he knew what he had to do. He needed you all to get away. He wasn’t wrong about this. You all would make it out. He just needed to take himself out of the equation. “There is no time.” He pulled out his blaster. “Plan 99.”

Your heart plummeted. Not that plan, any plan but that one.

Wrecker’s heart filled with dread.

Omega felt nothing but panic.

“Tech, please-” You broke off as you channelled more of your energy into keeping both carts stable, but another round of shots meant the car swung again. Your knees buckled and your hold faltered slightly.

“Don’t you do it, Tech.” Wrecker ordered as he tried to creep forward once more but the cart continued to protest against the strain.

Tech sighed before he accepted his next course of action. It was, in a way, a rather easy decision. Omega had once asked him if they were a family. His answer had been yes, and it was true. He just didn’t think he’d really said it enough, but he loved his family. And what do families do? They protect each other… and that’s exactly what he was going to do. “When have we ever followed orders?” With that, he fired a shot through the glass of the railcar that met its mark, and the connection hinge was severed.

Even if you could hold it, you were out of time. The ships would make their pass at any second and you couldn’t prevent your section of the railcar reconnecting or else none of you would make it out of this.

And you hated it. You fucking hated it, but you were left with no choice; you dropped your hands, released your hold and watched in agony as Tech fell.

“No!” Wrecker cried out as he helplessly watched his brother fade from view and there was nothing he could do nothing to stop it.

“Tech!” Omega yelled.

The railcar reconnected to the track and sped away from the troopers on the opposite side.

Hunter grabbed Omega’s wrist as she moved closer to the open end of the car. “Omega-”

“Go back! Go back!” She said desperately, reaching out as if she could still grab him.

You felt numb. You couldn’t move. Every other noise around you sounded fuzzy. The skulking darkness that had been circling you since Saw Gerrera showed up was asking for a way in. It took every fibre of control to not let it. Hunter’s voice dragged you back to the current moment.

“The car’s going too fast.” Hunter said urgently.

“The system’s fried. I can’t stop it.” Echo replied, desperately trying to plug back in to do something to stop the rapid descent as the back wall of the station grew dangerously close.

You knew your help wouldn’t be fast enough either, and you felt Hunter’s internal conflict as his helmeted gaze darted between you and Omega. It’s Omega first, every time.

Hunter lunged for her just as the cart collided and smashed through the wall of the terminal.

Everything was grey, and dull and bleak.

If it wasn’t for the bitter scent of smoke in the air, she wouldn’t have been sure that she’d even opened her eyes at first.

Debris from the wreckage surrounded her.

And she ached. Her entire body burned with the pain it took to stand.

Tech. She needed to find Tech. He couldn’t be far. She called his name but only managed a few paces before she collapsed once more.

She tried to fight it, but it hurt too much, and the encroaching darkness was too tempting.

As the pain overwhelmed her, she didn’t have the strength to turn it away.

You groaned as you came to and immediately felt woozy as you attempted to sit up. Your hood had already come loose from the collision, but you pushed your mask down to catch your breath and breathe through the soreness radiating through your body.

You brushed the dirt off your face but felt something wet leaving a trail down your cheek. You took off your glove and touched it to find your fingertips covered in blood. You carefully followed the path of blood to the source and winced as you touched the oozing deep cut by your temple. Fighting the dizziness, you looked around to see the others pushing themselves up but then your eyes caught sight of an unmoving figure and your blood ran cold.

You forced yourself to stand, ignoring the shooting pain that coursed through your ankle, and staggered over to Omega. You dropped to your knees next to her and felt for a pulse, which thankfully you found but it was weak. “Omega, come on honey, open your eyes for me.” You begged her as her body shivered beneath your touch. You felt the others come by your side. You hung your head in relief when you saw her eyes flicker open, but she couldn’t stay awake, and you knew she was in bad shape.

“We have to get her out of here.” Hunter said, doing his best to not let the panic he felt upon seeing her like this come through.

Wrecker picked her up. “I got you, kid.”

“Incoming! Get to the Marauder!” Echo shouted as Imperial reinforcements arrived.

You picked up Omega’s bow and provided Wrecker and Omega cover fire as you all retreated back to your ship.

“Head to Ord Mantell. AZ can help her. Hurry!” Hunter instructed Echo as he made his way to the cockpit.

You watched Wrecker gently place her down on your bunk whilst Echo got the ship in the air and into hyperspace.

“You’re bleeding.” Hunter stated, worry etched in his voice as he brushed some of your hair back and caught sight of the mix of fresh and dried blood on your skin.

“I’m fine.” You said groggily as the fading adrenaline meant you had to work harder to fight against the light-headedness you were experiencing. You then noticed the awkward way he clutched his forearm and at the fact standing up straight appeared to cause him some issues. “Are you okay?”

Hunter didn’t answer directly. “Are any of us?”

You glanced around you and felt the anguish in everybody that you knew also resided in your own heart. “No, no we’re not.”

You focused on watching Omega’s chest rise and fall as a way to keep you grounded and willed the journey to go quickly.

“Cid, AZ, we need your help!” You shouted as you limped into the parlour.

Cid took in all of your various injured states and nodded, too taken aback to offer anything else.

AZ dropped the cleaning supplies he was using and flew over to Wrecker. “Follow me.” He led the way to Cid’s room.

“It is best if you leave, and I can work on her without distraction.” AZ instructed.

Neither of them really wanted to, but they didn’t want their presence to be a problem, so they did as he said.

“Where’s Goggles?” Cid asked as Hunter and Wrecker came back into the main parlour.

And it was that question that snapped you all out of what ever fatigued state of denial you were in.

You half collapsed into one of the booths and blinked back the angry, grief-stricken tears that threatened to escape.

Wrecker released a shaky breath and just shook his head as he sat down on one of the bar stools.

And Echo- now that he knew Omega was getting the medical attention she needed- just left the room. For the first time in his life, he needed the solitude.

“We- we lost him.” Hunter just about managed to say as the loss overwhelmed him and he sat down next to you. He welcomed the loving hold you took of his hand as you rested it in your lap and rubbed circles on the back of it and was grateful for tender way you pulled his head to rest on your shoulder. He ignored the slight discomfort the position caused him.

“I’ll give you guys some time alone.” Cid said quietly as she made her way towards the exit.

You all were in too much pain and too emotionally exhausted to notice the comm she took with her.

You’d lost track of how long you’d all spent waiting for AZ to come back with news so when he finally entered the room, the room was ripe with nervous tension. She had to be okay. She just had to be.

“AZ?” You said uneasily.

“Omega’s injuries were severe, but I have stabilised her and she should recover. It is just a matter of time of waiting for her to wake up.”

You all let out a collective breath of relief.

“Thank you.” Hunter said gratefully.

AZ nodded. “Now, what injuries of yours can I assist with?”

“(Y/N) has an actively bleeding head injury and a wounded ankle and Wrecker’s neck is causing him problems. Leave me for last.” Hunter said.

You knew disputing the order wouldn’t be helpful to anyone right now, so you let AZ come over to you first.

After you all were taken care of, AZ went back to monitor Omega and give you guys some space.

“What are we going to do now?” Wrecker asked as AZ left.

Hunter sighed deeply. “We have nothing to go on. No location, no leads. Nothing. And with Tech-” He broke off with a cough before continuing, “With Tech gone and Omega being hurt like that…” He paused for a moment as he considered his next words, “I can’t put her through something like this again. I can’t put any of you through it again. We’re done. We’ll find somewhere to settle.”

“What about Pabu?” Wrecker offered quietly. “She likes it, and we were going to settle there anyway… right?”

Hunter looked to you and you nodded. “He gave us another chance. We should take it any way we can.” You said, clearing your throat as the pain of the loss threatened to overcome you.

“Alright.” Hunter said before he got to his feet. “I’m going to go wait until Omega wakes up.” He left the room.

“Wrecker, will you be okay for a moment?” You asked as you also stood.

Wrecker understood. “Go.”

You bowed your head in thanks and followed Hunter.

You paused by the doorway and studied the way he sat in the chair as he watched over Omega. His posture was tense, and his leg bounced anxiously. You knew he was barely keeping it together, but he was making himself because he was still the leader and had to be. But you wanted to give him a chance to let himself drop the appearance, if only for a moment.

“You don’t have to be strong right now. Not in front of me.” You walked around to the front of the seat and kneeled in front of him. You placed your hand on his cheek to turn his face towards you as he was keeping his eyes firmly on Omega. At your words, it looked like a weight just left his body and he let his head and shoulders hang lowly.

“That plan was never supposed to be used.” He uttered, his throat bobbing as the mask of composure started to drop.

Your heart ached as you felt the guilt and sorrow within him. You reached up and placed your arms around his neck and just held him close to you. I’m so sorry.

“I only got two of them.” Hunter mumbled into the crook of your neck as he met your embrace.

“Hmm?”

“The ships. There were three and I only got two of them. If I had just made sure, he wouldn’t have fallen from the track. The third got the shot away that killed him.”

You pulled away as you picked up on the way the typical rasp in his voice got lower and more uneven. You cupped his face in your hands and rubbed away the stray tears. “Hunter, you can’t do that to yourself.”

“I was supposed to look after us. By taking that mission, I put everyone in danger and look what happened.”

“You went because you knew it was the right thing to do. It gave us a last chance to get Crosshair back. What happened-” You took a second to draw a calming breath of your own. “What happened was cruel and unfair, but it wasn’t your fault. I know that guilt may never truly fade, I’ve been there, but you still have the rest of us. You still have me. Whenever you need a reminder that this was not your doing, I will be there, I promise.”

Hunter couldn’t help but search for any doubt or lies in your eyes and voice but found none. He pressed his lips into your palm and the sincerity and love in your tone served to remind him that he could do this. “We’ve lost two brothers.”

You brought your forehead to press against his and whispered understandingly, “I know.”

“I can’t lose anyone else.” He breathed against your lips, but he could feel himself starting to regain the composure he knew he was going to need for what was to come.

You placed a delicate kiss to his mouth. “You won’t.” You caressed your thumb along his cheek before you stood behind him with your hands on his shoulders as you both waited for Omega to come back around.

“Hunter? (Y/N)?” Omega winced with a groan as her eyes opened once more and saw you both standing by her bedside, the worry on your faces now becoming relief.

“Hiya, kid.” Hunter said warmly as he brushed some of her hair back and reached for her hand.

She let Hunter support her back as she tried to sit up and took in the various bandages that graced both of you and her own fading pain prompted the reminder that the mission had gone very wrong. “What happened?”

Before either of you could reply, AZ whirred into the room and Hunter delicately laid her back down.

“Hello, Omega. I am relieved you are awake.” He scanned her. “You each sustained multiple injuries. However, you all will make a full recovery with proper treatment and rest.”

His reassurance helped calm the anxiety you were feeling over her injuries. You tenderly hugged her as Hunter assisted in getting her upright.

“You’re- You’re okay.” Wrecker said with relief as he came into the room. He crouched in front of her. “Don’t scare us like that again.” He put an arm around her in a fond embrace.

You passed her some water. “How do you feel?”

Omega took it from you but didn’t drink it. “I don’t know. The last thing I remember, we were in the railcar when…” She released a horrified gasp as the images came flooding back. “Where’s Tech?”

“Omega, Tech didn’t make it.” Hunter said, his voiced laced with sadness at having to tell her this again. Part of him had hoped she’d remember so she wouldn’t have to go re-experience the hurt of the loss.

“We have to go back! What if he’s hurt? He- He need us. Tell him, Wrecker. We can’t just leave him!” But Wrecker only looked back at her with nothing but sorrow on his face.

“Omega…” Your voice cracked slightly as you attempted to rest a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Omega hit your hand away. “No! Tech’s not gone! He- He can’t be!” Tears fell down her face.

Her reaction nearly broke you all over again.

“I- I know, kid.” Hunter said quietly as he moved to sit beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

Reliving it all got too much for Wrecker. He wiped his eyes and backed out of the room.

You glanced over your shoulder as Wrecker left and you knew Hunter needed to talk to Omega about what the rest of you had discussed. “I’ll give you two a minute.” You said, your voice still thick with emotion.

“Why did Tech do that?” Omega said tearfully after you and Wrecker had left. She wiped her eyes. “He didn’t let us save him.”

“He knew we were out of time.” Hunter explained as simply as he could. “Tech put the squad ahead of himself. He made a sacrifice, Omega, and we’re not gonna waste it.”

“What does that mean?”

“The galaxy has changed, and so have we. It’s time to put being soldiers behind us for good. The three of us think Pabu could be a good place to make a new life for ourselves. And the rest of it, well, we can figure out along the way. Omega, is that something you want?”

She thought it through for a moment before she nodded.

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” Hunter said. This would work. You all could heal together and make it out okay. It would get better.

You pulled yourself onto the bar stool next to the one Wrecker was sitting on. “What can I do?” You asked caringly. You knew there was nothing you could say that would immediately ease the pain of grief, but if there was anything you could do to help, you would.

“Just being here is fine.” Wrecker mumbled roughly as he kept his emotions at bay.

You rested your hand on top of his- an act he gently mirrored with his own before he removed his hand. You know I love you, right? It was a sentiment you realised you had not shared enough with the others and you didn’t want that to continue anymore.

Wrecker breathed deeply. “I love you too… and it’s not just because you’re with Hunter. You became a part of this family long before that.”

The genuine and heartfelt way he said that touched you deeply. You swallowed the lump that formed in your throat. “It’s a pretty good family to have.”

“Tech would’ve been able to tell you the exact date, I’m sure he kept a record of it.” Wrecker said with a sad chuckle.

You managed a half smile at his words. “That would be in character for him.”

A natural quiet descended on the two of you.

“Did we miss something? Did we miss a way to save him?” Wrecker asked into the silence.

The question was one you had been torturing yourself with ever since the ship had left Eriadu. “What we needed was time, and- and Tech knew we were out of it by that point.”

“Yeah.” Wrecker released a dejected sigh. “He always was the smart one.”

“Here. These are on the house.” Cid gifted you both a drink.

“It won’t help.” Wrecker said as he nudged it out the way.

You did the same.

“I’m sorry about Goggles. I always liked him.” Cid said sympathetically.

“Yeah. Us too.” Wrecker said with a crestfallen sigh.

Despite her words, you, and Wrecker both noticed the way she kept avoiding eye contact with both of you.

“What’s with you?” Wrecker asked.

Cid gulped, “You know, I tried to look out for you guys. But you got too much heat on you. And you brought it here to my place of business. I had to make the best of a bad situation.”

You picked up on her awkwardness and agitation. “Cid, what did you do?” You asked as a hollow pit of dread sat heavy in your stomach.

“I’m sorry.” That was all she said before she looked to the door.

You and Wrecker followed her stare, and a squadron of Imperial troopers came marching through the door with their blasters drawn.

You both instinctively reached for your blasters, but both of yours had been lost in the crash.

Wrecker was unaffected by the first stun blast that contacted him, and he charged at the group, but his neck brace severely limited his mobility.

You dodged the stun shot that was sent your way and realised keeping up a pretence would be pointless now. You threw your vibroblade into the shoulder of the closest threat to you before you Force-pushed multiple troopers against the back wall and used your ally to snap the wrists of others that aimed for you.

“Stop!”

You turned in the direction of the voice to see Wrecker half-conscious, kneeling on the floor with his wrists bound and a trooper holding a blaster to his head whilst the squad regrouped and pointed their weapons at you.

Your jaw tightened but you did as he ordered and let them take you. A kick to the backs of your knees brought you down. They took your comm off you and, judging by the way the cuffs he put on you were slightly different to Wrecker’s, they’d come prepared. You weren’t going to have an easy way out.

“She was right, Sir. This is the Jedi.” One of the troopers that was holding you down by the top of your shoulder said to Doctor Hemlock as he came through the crowd to stand at the front.

You glanced up at the man you now recognised as Doctor Hemlock who was staring down at you.

“Wonderful.”

He’d acted quickly when he knew the Empire was here and he’d kept Omega safe. That’s what mattered first. She was in the mining tunnels and on her way to Echo. The Empire wouldn’t find her. He could now focus on getting you and Wrecker back.

Hunter rounded the corner to the main parlour with his blaster drawn but his heart stopped at the sight. Both you and Wrecker were cuffed and being held at gunpoint by Imperials and Hemlock was right in the middle. He advanced forward a few paces, but the troopers focused their blasters on him.

“That’s not very strategic, Hunter.” Hemlock cautioned. “You don’t need to use your enhanced senses to know you’re outnumbered.” He turned his attention to the owner of the parlour. “The Empire thanks you for your assistance. Our business is done. Leave.”

“You piece of shit.” You hissed as you fought against the grip the troopers had on you as you watched her take the case of credits and walk out the door.

“Please consider your next move very carefully. I would hate for this to end poorly for all of you.” Hemlock advised. He paused and studied your handiwork on the wounded that were now being evacuated from the building. “Such an exquisite creature.” He brushed the fingers of his ungloved hand across your cheek. “You chose well.” He complimented the Sergeant.

You recoiled from his touch.

“Don’t fucking touch her.” Hunter snarled.

Hemlock ignored the clone for now and kept his attention on you. He lifted your cuffs by the middle. “How can someone so powerful be limited so easily?” He dropped your wrists. “Please. Do me the honour of just trying to use it.”

You stared him down in refusal.

“Or both of them will be killed.” Hemlock said simply.

You gritted your teeth and hoped the message behind your eyes as you looked to Hunter was clear- he had to keep it together.

Hunter didn’t understand what was about to happen. You were telling him to stay calm and remain where he was, but he didn’t fully know why. What was Hemlock talking about?

You braced yourself as you did as Hemlock said. You were met with the expected electric current that shot through your system. You didn’t cry out despite the pain; you didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but you couldn’t help but fall forward on all fours. You had to take a few deep breaths before kneeling upright once more. The binds themselves had also grown tighter.

“Incredible.” Hemlock mused. “Years spent studying your people and the Force and we have barely scratched the surface of understanding you, yet science still finds ways to prove itself. Go again.”

“No!” Hunter protested. Watching you do that once was bad enough and you were hiding it well, but he knew you were in pain, and he couldn’t let it continue. Instinct took over and he moved a half step closer to you, but the line of blasters stopped him from advancing.

“How touching.” Hemlock mocked, internally thrilled that the reaction from both of you had been as he predicted. It made the process far more enjoyable. “But if you value your fellow clone’s life, you will not stop this.”

“I can- I can handle it.” You said breathlessly as a way reassure Hunter and stop him from doing anything reckless- you knew this torture was as much for him as it was for you, and you needed him alive. But you couldn’t prevent the pained grunt that left your mouth this time and you fell forward once more, and the cuffs pinched the skin of your wrists.

“Again.” Hemlock ordered you.

“Don’t.” Hunter pleaded, but he wasn’t talking to Hemlock, he was looking at you. This wasn’t something you should have to handle. There had to be another way. He should be the one to take that pain.

Whatever it required to keep them both alive. “It’s okay.” You said, your voice hoarse. You did it again and an audible cry fell from your lips.

Hemlock waited until you sat up. “Again.” He demanded.

You inhaled with a wince and did as he said.

The cycle continued until Hemlock said otherwise.

Hunter wanted to stop it. Despite your words, his resolve was weakening by the second. The only thing stopping him from doing something was that Wrecker’s life was also involved here but he couldn’t stand that all he could do was watch you go through this torment over and over again.

Wrecker struggled against his captors as he watched, but they were too many securing him.

“Stop.” Hunter finally growled at Hemlock after this last round saw to it that you were barely able to right yourself. He saw your arms give out from beneath you with the effort it took to remove yourself from the ground. And from the way you were trying to flex them, he guessed you were losing feeling in your fingers.

Hemlock smirked, “I am merely giving her a preview of what’s to come. I need to know what it’ll take to crush someone like her.”

He kneeled beside your crumpled body and spoke into your ear. “I will look forward to breaking you.” He kept eye-contact Hunter.

Hunter was clenching his jaw so hard that his teeth hurt. The thought sickened him.

You believed him. That quiet, menacing tone in his voice told you he truly meant what he was saying and… and that brought out a level of fear you’d never felt before. But you wouldn’t let that happen yet. Your arms trembled as you braced your palms against the floor and you panted through the throbbing discomfort in your body, but you managed to get back to a kneeling position. In a way, you were also grateful for the harsh but secure hold the troopers resumed since it meant you weren’t required to keep yourself stable.

“Such resolve.” Hemlock whispered to you. “And now onto the other matter at hand.” He said breezily as he stood upright once more and addressed Hunter. “Here’s how this is going to go. You will lower your blaster and hand over Omega. And I will allow you to keep breathing.”

“Omega’s not going anywhere with you.”

The fierce protectiveness of the clone brought out a soft snicker from Hemlock. “Oh. Well, who knew clones are so paternal? Fascinating.”

To hear that observation come from that man had bile rising in your throat.

“I was saddened to learn of your friend’s demise. What was his name? Oh, yes. Tech.” Hemlock taunted cruelly.

“Don’t fucking say his name.” You spat as you strained against your captors. An act Wrecker joined you on.

Hemlock merely reached his hand out to one of the soldiers and took the object. “I’m afraid this was all I could salvage. Consider it a gift.” He tossed the broken goggles across the room to Hunter’s feet.

Your strength was returning and at Hemlock’s actions, you attempted to lunge for him, but the troopers acted quickly and, with a strong grip on your shoulders, they forced you back to your knees.

Hemlock was unphased and stepped forward a few paces. “To lose one of your own, it must weigh heavily on you as their leader.” He signalled back to his men who pressed their blasters against the back of yours and Wreckers heads. “And if you don’t lower the blaster now, you will lose more.”

Hunter looked past Hemlock and you and Wrecker.

Wrecker did the best he could do to shake his head.

“Hunter, n-” The sharp tap of a blaster interrupted you.

He wasn’t losing any anyone else. And with Omega gone, the rest of you could find a way out.

You helplessly watched as Hunter put the blaster down and delicately picked up and studied Tech’s goggles.

“Wise decision.” Hemlock praised before he waved his men forward.

Hunter let them pass and allowed himself to be cuffed and brought over to join the two of you.

You and Wrecker were pulled to your feet, and you attempted to wriggle out of their grip, but they wouldn’t give.

“Sir, the girl’s not in the office.” The troopers informed Hemlock as they came back out.

You and Wrecker glanced at Hunter who subtly nodded at the two of you.

You and Wrecker shared a small breath of relief. As long as she was safe, you could manage whatever came next.

“She’s long gone. Like I said, Omega’s not going anywhere with you.” Hunter said to Hemlock.

Hemlock merely hummed. “We’ll see.”

The three of you were escorted out but what you couldn’t work out was why you were still being physically restrained whilst the other two got to walk normally.

Ord Mantell was in chaos.

People were screaming and clamouring to get out of the way of the Imperial soldiers and AT-AT walkers that were making their presence known.

A series of warning blaster fire halted you all from continuing. You turned in the direction of the fire and your stomach dropped as you saw who was on an upper platform staring down at the rest of you. No, she wasn’t supposed to be here.

“Lower your weapons.” Hemlock instructed his soldiers before he called over to the young girl, “Hello, Omega. We were just talking about you.”

Omega kept her bow activated. “Let them go!”

“Omega, run!” Hunter shouted before he got held back by one of the troopers.

“I won’t let them take you.”

“How about an exchange? If you come with me, your friends will live.” Hemlock negotiated.

“You fucking bastard.” You seethed as you pulled against the hands that were holding the upper part of your arms.

“I don’t believe you.” Omega replied suspiciously.

“I did not come here for them, Omega. I came to return you to Nala Se. She needs your help.”

“He’s lying. They killed the Kaminoans.” Hunter countered.

“Incorrect. Nala Se is alive and well care for.” Hemlock retorted before he returned his attention to the girl. “As you will be.”

“I’m not going with you.” Omega affirmed but she didn’t sense the clone trooper behind her.

“Omega, look out!” You shouted but it was too late.

All of you watched with devastation as Omega met the receiving end of a stun shot and her limp body got picked up by the trooper.

“Scour the city. When you find the third clone, send them back to Eriadu. Governor Tarkin wishes to question you personally.” Hemlock walked over to you. “But you…” He smiled coldly at you. “Your use lies elsewhere.”

Your heart shattered as you realised what that meant.

Hunter’s head turned sharply to look from Hemlock to you and the pained panic on your face mirrored his own. He reacted instantly and ran for you, but he didn’t make it far before the troopers separating the two of you got in the way and shoved him back. He continued to try and fight his way through, but the cuffs limited his effectiveness and a strong punch to his stomach winded him and he hunched over in discomfort. He took a few deep breaths and wriggled free of the two soldiers that had come to bring him back in and tried again but this time he was met with a kick to his already wounded torso.

You were shouting unintelligible sounds of protest as you writhed and struggled against the strong hands holding you back and attempting to drag you away. You managed to stamp on the foot on one of your captors and elbow one of the others in the stomach and their grip faltered.

But they regrouped quickly.

A swift hit of a blaster on your still wounded head had you blinking away black dots. You could do nothing to stop the severe grip one trooper took on the back of your neck, forcing you to hunch over whilst the others grabbed your arms and got ready to take you away.

“Let them.” Hemlock held a hand up to stop the actions of his soldiers. It would only help with his process. Let the two of you have the chance at a last moment together dictated by him and stopped by him. The emotional turmoil it would create would play beautifully.

Still half-dazed, when the troopers let you go, you were left with no choice but to fall to the ground.

Hunter shoved past the line of soldiers and knelt before you. As gently as he could manage, he placed his hands under your chin to push your head up. “I love you.” Hunter choked out.

Hemlock signalled his men.

You wanted to say so much more but you didn’t have the time. “I love you too.” You replied, your voice cracking. Your lips met for the briefest of moments but that was all you managed before you got hauled to your feet and they yanked you away from him.

As he watched your fading figure, Hunter didn’t have the strength to fight the troopers that lifted him to his feet and led him and Wrecker in the opposite direction.

The only thing that was keeping you from giving into the pounding agony that was bouncing around your skull was that Omega was now being carried alongside you. You would hang on for her.

“What are we doing?” One of the remaining troopers asked as he saw the group split off.

“Doctor Hemlock wants her getting a separate shuttle in case the others get away and come looking for them.” The clone in charge of the group answered.

“Please.” You begged with a broken breath as you saw the group separate and Hemlock disappeared down the street with Omega. “Just let me go with her. I won’t-” The butt of a blaster meeting your cheekbone shut you up and you groaned with the stinging pain it left you. Your vision kept blurring in and out of focus.

“Quiet! Keep walking!” The trooper ordered you.

You had so little resolve left. Hopelessness had overwhelmed you, so you followed their orders, your feet dragging as they led you in the direction of wherever the other shuttle was.

Hunter could feel the fight leaving him as he and Wrecker were escorted to the shuttle that would take them to Eriadu. So much of what he cared about had been ripped from him and now the remaining people in his life that he loved would pay the price for his failure. The echoes of explosions and blaster fire grabbed his attention, and he looked up to see a walker come stomping round the corner but it’s aim was directed towards the Imperials.

“Echo?” Wrecker asked.

“Gotta be Echo.” Hunter agreed as he dug deep for the energy to fight back.

Wrecker broke his cuffs open on the top of his knee and Hunter landed a kick to the trooper behind him to give Wrecker time to undo his cuffs.

The two of them worked on taking care of the remaining troopers and stole their blasters and fired on the clones that were aiming for Echo’s walker. What they couldn’t stop however, was the next walker that rounded the corner that fired on Echo’s.

Echo went to the hatch and jumped out of the walker just as it collapsed to the ground.

“Where are the other two?” Echo asked as he emerged from the downed walker with AZ and took cover with his brothers.

“That Imperial took them.” Wrecker answered.

“It was Hemlock. We’ve got to stop his ship from leaving.” Hunter said.

The three of them scanned for ways out but reinforcements were arriving from both sides. It was then though that Hunter noticed a platform that ran above the landing pad where Hemlock’s shuttle must be and the group of them made their way up to it, avoiding enemy fire as they did so.

Hunter ran ahead to the edge of the platform and could only watch with despair and agony as Hemlock’s shuttle took off. He paid no attention to the surrounding sounds of blaster fire; he couldn’t turn his gaze away from the departing ship.

Half his life was on that ship.

Hell, his heart was on that ship.

And he couldn’t stop it.

He couldn’t stop any of it.

And it broke something in him.

It killed him.

Echo’s voice dragged him back.

“Hunter, we have to go!”

Hunter managed to find his voice. “Get to the Marauder!” He ordered and the three of them started to run once more.

They made it to their ship and managed to take off but there was no relief in the feeling. The air was thick with grief and loss.

“There was no way to track Hemlock’s ship. He could’ve taken them anywhere.” Echo said forlornly from the cockpit.

Hunter glanced back to where Omega’s room was, then he saw Wrecker cradling Tech’s goggles. Then he found himself fiddling with the cord around his neck and his fingertips grazed the small symbol attached to it. He’d failed so many people. Everything he’d promised both to himself and to his squad had fallen apart so quickly before his eyes and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. Well, no more. He refused to let this be how things ended. “We are going to get them back.” He said darkly. “And we don’t stop searching until we do.”

The shuttle you were being taken to was on the other side of the city, but you had finally arrived.

The ramp lowered and you didn’t resist them as they nudged you towards it.

You walked a couple paces but then you spotted the smoke bomb thrown at your feet.

Fog engulfed you.

You were set free but all you registered were the panicked shouts and shots from blasters around you.

The Imperials didn’t last long, in rapid succession you heard the thud of each body that had brought you here.

Then everything went quiet.

A hand from behind grabbed your shoulder.

You reacted quickly and swerved out of the grip and whipped around to land a punch wherever you could reach. You heard the satisfying thump of your fists meeting bone and the figure backed away a few paces.

You readied yourself for the next attack, but it didn’t come.

“That’s a hell of a punch you’ve got. Would hate to see what you’re like when you don’t have cuffs on you.”

You recognised that voice and you pushed the faintness away and peered through the smoke at the figure approaching you, sniper rifle on her shoulder as she massaged her jaw. You relaxed your stance. “Lyra?”

“Hey, stranger.” She greeted you as she began picking the locks of your cuffs.

“What are you doing here?” You massaged your wrists as your binds came loose and you felt the Force start to flow through you again, but it felt… tainted. You searched in the Force around you for any sign of them, but there was nothing there. You really wished that meant they’d found a way out and escaped safely but everything felt disconnected. You weren’t yourself; something had shifted, and you weren’t sure if you would be able to right yourself anymore.

“Rescuing you, kinda thought that much was obvious. Where are the others?”

You felt your throat tighten as you searched for the words, but you couldn’t find them, and your stomach turned with both the aching in your head and your heart. You braced your hands on your knees and threw up.

The smoke had cleared, and Lyra was able to take you in properly. Your ankle was strapped, the skin on your cheek had broken and a purple bruise was starting to take shape and the stitches by your temple were starting to tear open as specks of blood escape the wound. It also wasn’t just your obvious injuries she saw- your body looked heavy with defeat. “What do you need?” She asked kindly.

“I need a ship.” You rasped as you wiped your mouth and stood up.

“You have one.” Lyra pointed to the shuttle right next to you.

“No. I wouldn’t get out of the system in that. They’d find me immediately.” You reached down and took a blaster from one of the unconscious bodies.

“So, you need something off the grid that would not pass any standardised mechanical check?”

“Add in an already scrambled signature and yeah pretty much.” You inhaled deeply as another wave of nausea hit you.

“I know someone who owes me a favour and makes a living from selling ships like that. Can’t promise we’ll get very far but it could work.” She paused as she saw the way you still swayed on your feet. “Are you sure you’re up for that? I can go myself and meet-”

“I’m not getting separated from anyone else.” You said sharply before you straightened your shoulders. “Lead the way.”

You waited as Lyra squared up deal and studied your way out of here. The ship did look like a hunk of scrap metal, but it would get you out unnoticed and that’s all that mattered.

“Okay, let’s go.” Lyra said as she came over to you.

You sighed, “Lyra, thank you. For all of this. But you can’t come with me.”

Lyra placed her hands on hips in defiance. “I have nothing here, they wrecked my stall and raided the other stores. I’m going with you. At the very least, you need someone to treat that serious concussion properly.”

Dealing with your injuries were way down on your priority list. You could feel it creeping in again and you weren’t sure you had the strength to oppose it anymore. “What I am… what I’m going to do, you shouldn’t be around for. I can’t-”

“Can’t be worse than what I’ve seen already. Come on, we gotta get going.” She said with finality as she walked past you and up the ramp to the ship.

On her head be it. You thought to yourself as you followed her up and she got the ship in the air.

Omega walked out the Imperial shuttle with a deep sense of unease. She recognised Mount Tantiss and the presence of Nala Se troubled her. She feared for what this doctor had planned for her.

“Have Emerie see to her injuries.” Hemlock ordered the assistant that came to greet them.

Omega didn’t follow the woman, she just looked to Nala Se. “Why did they bring me here?” She didn’t get to hear a reply for the trooper behind her prodded her back to make her go inside.

Hemlock addressed the Kaminoan after Omega was out of earshot. “Your prime minister mentioned you had an attachment to the young clone, so I’ve returned her to you. Perhaps now, you will reconsider working on the Emperor’s project.”

“What he seeks is not possible.” Nale Se argued.

“Make it possible. If you refuse or fail, Omega will suffer the consequences.” Hemlock threatened.

Satisfied that his threat had landed effectively, he waved the Kaminoan away and went to go inside but a clone voice stopped him.

“Sir, we’ve heard reports on an attack on the squad escorting the Jedi and the shuttle never checked in. It would seem she escaped.”

Hemlock had to hide his surprise. Clearly something had happened he had not anticipated. “That is… unfortunate, but we’ll make do… for now.”

Omega was led into a lab and what she saw horrified her. There were tubes and rows of unconscious clones strapped down onto testing tables. Then her eyes caught sight of someone she knew. “Crosshair!”

She ran over to him and tried to rouse him, “Crosshair? Crosshair?” He showed no signs of movement. She heard the sound of oncoming footsteps and turned to see the woman that must be ‘Emerie’ standing behind her.

“You must be Omega.” Emerie said.

“What did you do to Crosshair?” She asked angrily.

“He’s recovering. I tried to warn him what would happen if he did not cooperate with the doctor.”

“I want to talk to Nala Se.”

“Ironic. You trust the Kaminoan, but not me.”

“I don’t know you.”

“No?” Emerie kneeled in front of the young girl and removed her glasses. “You might know me better than you think.”

Omega furrowed her brow.

“We’re sisters, Omega.”

Lyra finished tending to your head and cheek before she went to the cockpit to give you some time.

As you stared down the corridor and out into the blue clouds of hyperspace, you gained a true moment of clarity. The galaxy and the Empire had taken much from you, but you’d always been able to push through.

In a strange way, you’d even thought you were better off because of where you’d ended up. You had gained a greater sense of purpose, you had room to properly care for the people in your life, you had a family.

But now they’d gone too far. Too much had been taken from you, your family, from the people you loved, and you weren’t going to let it happen anymore. You couldn’t let it happen anymore.

You weren’t as strong as you’d thought you were. Something gets cracked enough times enough times, it’s bound to break.

You were done hiding.

Your arms fell to your sides and your fists clenched and the darkness you had been running from since Eriadu came flooding back. Only this time, this time you weren’t going to fight against it.

This time.

This time, you embraced it.

Oneshot>

Tagging: @noeasyisnoisy, @fuckoffthanos, @tpwkcalli, @graciexmarvel, @arctrooper69, @nightmonkeysstuff, @brujaporfavor, @flyingkangaroo, @sunkissedclones, @ladytano420, @keep-calm-and-drink-caf, @yyourmotherr, @xxeiraxx, @dragonrider9905, @skellymom, @lokigirlszendaya, @starwarsnerd111

#the bad batch #the bad batch season 2 #the bad batch s2 #hunter x reader #hunter x femalejedi!reader #hunter x fem!reader #hunter x female!reader #sergeant hunter x reader #sergeant hunter #hunter tbb #hunter the bad batch #the bad batch hunter x you #hunter x y/n #tbb hunter x reader #the bad batch fanfiction #star wars #angst #friends to lovers

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inevitably-johnlocked · 7 months

Note

Hi Steph! Curious if you had any existing lists ready to go? :D

Hi Lovely!

I do! And based on this poll here, this is the list you guys want to see!! I hope you enjoy!!

HURT/COMFORT Under 5K Pt. 2

See also:

Hurt / Comfort Pt. 1: Under 5K Words

Hurt / Comfort Pt. 2: 5K to 10K Words

Hurt / Comfort Pt. 3: 10K to 50K Words

Hurt / Comfort Pt. 4: 50K+ Words Pt. 1

And When The Night Is Over by Simply Isnt On (K, 329 w., 1 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Platonic Bed Sharing / Not Slash) – Sherlock and John sleep together.

Once Upon A Time by ProfessorSquirrell (T, 908 w., 1 Ch. || Family, Snippets of Life, Romance, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Implied Drug Use, Angst with Happy Ending) – There is a room in Sherlock's mind palace where nothing gets deleted. And it looks like this...

My Unfortunately Average Sized Cranium by Haelia (K+, 996 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Headache, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Past Drug Use, Doctor John) – In which Sherlock has a migraine. ALMOST Johnlock. Not quite.

The Four Incidents by TheGirlWithRedHair22 (K+, 1,064 w., 1 Ch. || S1 Compliant, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, John Whump, Accident, John POV, Hand Holding, Worried Sherlock, Sherlock’s Self Esteem) – The first time John was present when someone insulted Sherlock, he brushed it off as a strange coincidence.

Sleep Tonight by Jenn1984 (T, 1,220 w, 1 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Bed Sharing, Worried Sherlock, Sick John, Hugs/Cuddles, Touch Neediness) – Fingers begin prying open his jacket looking for a wound and John would really like to swat at them. No, he's not hit anywhere, he's just damn sick.- John Watson has a fever.

Poppies For John by grannysknitting (T, 1,102 w., 1 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Friendship) – Rememberance Sunday fic - John notices a discrepancy between Sherlock's stated intent and his actions. Sherlock, for once, explains himself. Friendship or pre-slash, your choice. Intended in honour of those who defend us.

And, Usually, He's the One Who GIVES Me a Headache by Cumberbatch Critter (T, 1,315 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, POV John, Cranky John, Headaches, Head Massage) – A migraine is never fun.

Hallucinations can't open doors by Bespectacled dreamer (K+, 1,330 w., 1 Ch. || Reunion, Hurt / Comfort, Friendship, Hallucinations, John’s Wedding, Light Humour) – In which John gets married and Sherlock gets a broken nose.

Here to Stay by MockJayPhoenix12 (K, 1,574 w., 1 Ch. || Post Reunion, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Headache, Bed Sharing, Care Taker Sherlock, Hand Holding, Fluff) – On Sherlock's first day home, John wakes with a migraine.

3:00 in the Morning is a Great Time to Talk by Aztecwarfareandcrumping (K+, 1,775 w., 1 Ch. || Hurt / Comfort, Friendship, Bed Sharing, First Person POV John, Cuddling, Worried Sherlock, Comforting John, Platonic Affection/Love) – "Are you trying to talk your way into my bed?" "Obviously."

Dying Changes Everything by whitchry9 (K+, 1,919 w., 1 Ch || Sherlock POV, Suicidal Ideation, Near-Death, Hospital, Sherlock Whump, Gunshot, Unhappy/Ambiguous Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Friendship) – Sherlock is having an existential crisis and wants to have a near death experience like John did to gain some perspective. “Shoot me John!” he insisted, gesturing to himself. John just looked at him. “Are you completely mad?”

Study in John by chappysmom (K+, 2,158 w., 1 Ch. || Post-ASiP, POV John, Introspection, Friendship, Nightmares, Caring Sherlock, John’s Limp) – After the events of "A Study in Pink," John lies on the couch in Baker Street and thinks about the whirlwind events of the day. What is he getting himself into?

A Room of One's Own by whitchry9 (K+, 2,174 w., 5 Ch. || S2 Timeline, Hurt/Comfort, Supernatural, Sherlock’s Mind Palace, Coma, John Whump, Worried Sherlock, POV John, Angst, Friendship/Bromance, Hospital) – When a severe head injury lands John in a coma, somehow he ends up in Sherlock's mind palace. It's actually pretty nice there, and John is entertaining the notion of staying there, rather than returning to his broken body. But Sherlock isn't taking it as well, and John can feel him breaking around him.

Spilt Milk by Erin Giles (K+, 2,222 w., 1 Ch. || Humour, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort) – John comes back from a trip to the supermarket only to take a trip up the stairs. Both shopping and blood are spilled leaving Sherlock to play the role of Doctor.

BBCSH 'The Comfort of Company' by tigersilver (T, 2,769 w., 1 Ch. || Post-TRF/Mary, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Bed Sharing, Grumpy John, Touching, Clingy/Handsy Sherlock, Cranky Sherlock, Fluff and Light Angst) – It's a trope that John and Sherlock end up sharing in the same bed eventually and I admit I do adore it unconditionally, along with all it infers as to the lowering of defenses and the heightening of trust. I put forth for your consideration that the notion persists because those who think about these things realize these two men are each in dire need of some good company.

Unquantifiable by 221b_hound (M, 2,799 w. 1 Ch. || Est. Rel., Sherlock/Sally Friendship, Grumpy John, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Pet Names, Texting, Sweet Sherlock, Princess Bride References) – John remains a terrible and foul-tempered patient, but he does try to make up for it with pet names and text message silliness. In the meantime, Sally Donovan visits Baker Street for a hint about the Milverton case, and has to deal with a Sherlock Holmes who can't find words big enough to thank her for saving John's life at the warehouse. For afters, there's a viewing of The Princess Bride. Part 33 of the Unkissed series

Museums and Laboratories by RhododendronPonticum (T, 3,004 w., 1 Ch. || Romance, Angst, Obsessive Sherlock, Anxious Sherlock, Anxiety/Panic Attack, Separation Anxiety, Doctor John, Co-Dependent Sherlock) – If Sherlock's kitchen was his laboratory, then his bedroom was his museum.

Reversed by whitchry9 (K+, 3,072 w., 6 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Medical Anomolies, John Gets Shot) – The man pointed his gun at John's chest, right at his heart, and shot.' Wherein John is shot, and Sherlock is the one panicking.

It's Just Another Birthday by Vintage Tea Party (K, 3,207 w., 2 Ch. || Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Sherlock’s Birthday, Sherlock 3rd Person POV) – When John makes a birthday cake for Sherlock he thinks its an innocent enough gesture. But nothing is ever normal with Sherlock and this isn't just another birthday.

Human Body Pillow by Lunavere (K, 4,122 w., 1 Ch. || Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Five and Ones, Sleepy Johnlock, Bed Sharing) – A story about the five times John fell asleep on Sherlock, and the one time Sherlock fell asleep on him.

What John Doesn't Know (Won't Hurt Him) by blueink3 (NR [T], 4,392 w., 1 Ch, || S3 Fix It, Pining Sherlock, Snippets of Life, Hurt/Comfort, Scars, Fluff and Angst, Five and One, Hopeful Ending, POV Sherlock) – Five people who see Sherlock's scars before John Watson. But Sherlock's secrets were never something he could keep from his blogger for long.

Date Night by inevitably_johnlocked (G, 4,451 w., 1 Ch. || Anxious / Worried Sherlock, Caring John, Schmoopy Fluff, Fidget Cube, Baking / Cooking, Date Night, Established Relationship, POV Sherlock Holmes, Understanding John, Grumpy Sherlock, John’s Bum, Kisses, Hugs, Domestic Fluff, Touching, Hair Petting, Light Humour) – It's John and Sherlock's first Date Night as an official couple and Sherlock needs it to be PERFECT. Mrs Hudson helps. Part 7 of I-J's Tumblr Ficlet Collection

When Your Belly's in the Trench by Morgan_Stuart (T, 4,743 w., 1 Ch. || PTSD, Character Study, Rescue, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Torture, Trauma, Danger, Drama, Kidnapping/Captivity) – The next time that door opens, John Watson will kill the person on the other side.

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #hurt comfort fics #my fic recs #short fics

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zalrb · 2 years

Note

So I've been reading your superb Brucas posts and LOVED your choices for your three favorite scenes (82 letters, Pretty Girl/Crazy Girl, and obviously the rain speech is epic!) But I have to nominate the S2 scene where Lucas surprises Brooke, aka the girl behind the red door, with a new home in OTH. Lucas: "I wasn't ready to lose you." Brooke: "I wasn't ready to be lost." Me: *cries for all of eternity* I so enjoyed your followers' UOs about OTH and your responses to them. I guess my biggest unpopular opinion is that S2 is my favorite of the series - it's amazing seeing Brucas as an actual couple for most of S3 and nice to see Naley officially reunited, but S2 highlights this really unique, special connection Brooke and Lucas have as they get to know each other on a deeper level. They have such an emotional, soulful connection - S2 forever dispels the myth that Brucas is just about fun and sexual attraction. Jeyton also makes S2 special to me. Just as Brooke makes Lucas so much happier (and likable!) by taking him out of his head and Lucas grounds Brooke and lets her be more serious, vulnerable, etc., Jake makes Peyton SO much happier and more likable to me than she is at any other point in the series, while Peyton brings out the side of naturally sweet, conflict averse Jake who's ready to fight (for custody, for what he believes in) etc. The fact that these two pairings weren't endgame is TV malpractice!!! And I'll be even more unpopular by adding that while I get why Naley fans dislike S2 and I do enjoy Naley together, Nathan is at his most layered and interesting this season because they're apart, and their angst also gives us some of Bethany Joy Lenz's most perfect acting. Add in some of the most hilariously campy Dan scenes and the fact that overall I like Breyton's dynamic in S2 a lot more than I do any other season, and S2 is just my special favorite. Bet you'll never guess who this is ;)

Hey! Thanks for the message and I agree, painting the red door should be on that list, I just didn't think of it at the time, which sometimes happens when I make lists ;)

I also understand why season 2 would be your favourite season for all of the reasons you just said -- I especially like their connection through her campaign, I'm not sure if you've seen my reviews of the show during my rewatch -- there is a lot of great Brucas content in season 2 and the most I believe Breyton is in that season as well and of course Jeyton.

It's also interesting rewatching season 2 Naley because out of all of the storylines, it's the one that feels the most immediate to me, like, with Brucas and Jeyton, I think because I've spoken a lot about them and how they don't end up together, I just watch it and keep going, you undid all of this for LEYTON so I'm just prepared for the inevitable whereas with Naley, while I know everything is going to work out with them, Haley's motivations bother me and so I watch it like, I know it's all going to work out but I don't think I would stick around if I was Nathan because Haley is pretty shitty in season 2 because she is the one who made it music or Nathan, Nathan was entirely supportive of the whole thing, he just didn't like Chris, which is fair so I watch it like I forgot how much I hated Haley this season, haha.

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imthepunchlord · 3 years

Note

I'm curious since you mentioned trollhunters, but if you ever feel like it, would you change the movie? I myself didn’t really watch the series after b3llow season 1, but everyone said that it sucks.

I actually haven't checked out the movie yet. It's on my list but I'm just not in the mood for it.

And personally, I feel like the whole series went downhill starting with s3 of Trollhunters. It wasn't a satisfying season to me. They didn't take advantage of possible scenarios, and did characterizations I didn't care for, and went in a route I didn't like.

Like, you have Angor's revival, and you got Claire stuck serving Morgana unconsciously. This could set up her and Angor stuck serving Morgana and that could've been so interesting as not only were they enemies that had personal clashes, but Claire was all for Jim wearing Angor's ring. And in a nice little touch of irony, she's now in similar shoes to Angor and they're being forced to serve Morgana together. And the only thing keeping them from going at each other is that they both hate Morgana more, but she holds all the cards and they're stuck in this tension and develop a grudging respect for each other. Maybe something similar to a friendship develops but not exactly.

And s2 made me think I was going to see Claire and Angor interactions and just so ready for that tension. Just like Jim and Walt had a unique relationship, I was ready to see this.

Only I didn't.

And Angor for some reason was ready to be all loyal to Morgana?

Also Gunmar who has been the long built up villain, THE BIG BAD, is now not the big bad and the recently built up Morgana is, to a point that Gunmar is like her servant? And follows her with blind devotion?

I don't know about you guys, but I didn't get that impression the first two seasons...

I'm putting the rest under cut cause I am going off. I don't know what's going on with me today.

I didn't like Merlin. He came out very differently than what I had perceived of Merlin at the end of s2. Yes, he did sound like an arrogant character, but not unkind. And based on what was built up, he was possibly the first and only human that trolls had a lot of respect for and vice versa as he made an amulet for this race to use.

Well, if he was planned like this, I got the wrong impression. He came out to be very obnoxious and creepy. And brought about one of the worst narrative choices I've seen at that time. Troll Jim wound up to be pretty pointless, and it had more cons than pros. He was made to face off against Morgana and guess what? He was out for most of that fight.

So we had gotten pretty pointless angst of Jim losing that normalcy he really wanted to go back to, for a plot reason that he wasn't even all that involved in. I could've rolled with half changeling Jim, but Troll Jim was pointless to me.

I also didn't care for s3's hammering in "your humanity's a weakness" and I'm over here like, wasn't the first two seasons more about his humanity being a strength??

Also missed opportunity of seeing Blinky and Walt butt heads as mentors. Side note, screw you Jim saying that Walt's like a father figure when Blinky is right there. It was only done to feed into the Walt and Barbara agenda which was going to happen anyway so it was a cheap move and a disservice to your dad.

Lastly, Douxie was a very pointless cameo to give attention to.

And then there's what comes after, 3 Below and Wizards.

3 Below I didn't enjoy at all, but I'll admit bias as I never liked space and aliens. This is why if ever asked, I'll say Dragon Age over Mass Effect easily. So 3 Below I personally wish I just skipped. There was nothing in there for me. They didn't even do Toby justice! He should be treated as more of a veteran character who has a unique wisdom to offer but nope! Just gotta still be a joke... it's also pretty dicey that one of the major villains of 3 Below is a black woman, which black characters are rare in this show.

And Wizards, I almost stopped watching at the first episode because Douxie annoyed me so much. At most, I kept watching for Claire and thankfully he got a lot better. And ultimately, I enjoyed Wizards far more than 3 Below, but not as much as the first two seasons of Trollhunters. Wizards was probably more confusing.

I still couldn't say why they had to travel to the past outside time travel convivence for unknown narrative reason.

I still didn't know who these new villains are and where did they come from? Why are they here now? Was I supposed to read a novel I didn't know the existence of?

The Morgana redemption was jarring as s3 was swearing up and down that she's the TRUE big bad. And King Arthur as a villain I didn't mind, but man I didn't like how they went about it.

And that could've been fitting as the Lady of the Lake, Lancelot's adoptive mother, is often thought to be a powerful fairy. And trolls should be of the fae folk, 1, I was suspecting that a lot of these characters were possibly reincarnations of famous characters from the Arthurian Legends. Jim for Lancelot, Claire for Morgana, possibly Steve for King Arthur, ect.

And that could've been fitting as the Lady of the Lake, Lancelot's adoptive mother, is often thought to be a powerful fairy. And trolls should be of the feyfolk, which could make sense as to why Jim Lake would be more easily accepted by races of magic if his ancestor was raised by a powerful fairy.

Oh, and Lady of the Lake, I am so sorry they made you an ugly giant one eyed kraken. Which to me is the most uninspired design that you could do. I'm all for her not being a human figure, but not this.

Last thing I want to rant about is Douxie. Thankfully, he did get better and became more likable. But knowing his set up and getting to see his character, I was so tempted to just turn off the tv. This character who is immortal and has been amongst humanity and "training" for years, well he's having a big tantrum like he's 4 yo. 3 Below already put me off majorly for Tales of Arcadia, and seeing this characterization, I wasn't in the mood for it.

So, that movie, yeah I'm not interested to see it. Mildly curious at most. But Tales of Arcadia, by s3 of Trollhunters, it was going downhill for me. They were making choices and changes I didn't like and it was clearly becoming a show that wasn't for me anymore. I don't know how the fanbase responded to ToA over all as I wasn't deep in it, so I'm going to presume I'm an odd one out fan wise. I'll probably see it sometime, but not anytime soon.

And sorry for going off, you probably got a lot more than you were expecting. I don't know what's going on but I guess I got a lot to let off these days.

#ask Punchie #tales of arcadia #trollhunters #3 below #wizards #toa #toa salt #trollhunters salt #3 below salt #wizards salt #long post

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dogbearinggifts · 4 years

Note

What are your thoughts on tua S2? Did you feel like the characters grew? What did you like? What did you not? I’m interested in your perspective. Your analysis are super thoughtful and interesting!

Aw, thanks, Anon!

Overall, I really enjoyed S2 and thought it was a solid follow-up to S1. I do have my quibbles about it, so I think (for ease of reference and because my thoughts are a little scattered today) I’ll list some of my personal highlights (in no particular order) before getting into what I didn’t like as much.

Big spoilers ahead.

Allison. I thought they handled her storyline especially well. Of all the siblings, I think she had the most difficult obstacles placed in her way (not only is she a Black woman landing in 1961 Dallas, but she’s a Black woman landing in 1961 Dallas who can’t even speak in her own defense for a year) and they sugarcoated exactly none of it. The writers pulled no punches when showing what civil rights protesters went through, which just made their nonviolent response all the more breathtaking. Allison’s fear and anger during those scenes were palpable even as she kept them hidden. But along with that horror, we see the kindness and warmth of the Dallas Black community, the women who take her in simply because she needs their help, and her love for Ray, perhaps heretofore THE most thoughtful husband ever portrayed on screen. I loved him, and I loved him and Allison together. While I understand and respect his choice to stay in 1963, I wish they’d gotten more time together. They both deserved it.

Vanya. We got to see how much the baggage from her past affected her by glimpsing what she might be like if it were taken away. It’s an interesting philosophical question, and it was explored well, in my opinion. She finds it easier to love and be loved, and she stands up for herself more readily—but she also doesn’t hesitate to use powers she can’t quite control and threatens Five without fully realizing how dire her threat is (or how it might dredge up traumatic memories she doesn’t know exist). The moment where Ben finds her curled up, fully convinced she’s a monster, was heartbreaking. I loved watching her find happiness with Sissy, even if that was fleeting (and dear god, Sissy deserved her happy ending with Vanya, dammit, I don’t care if it would fuck up the timeline). Her patience and sweetness with Harlan were just beautiful. And the way she used the confidence she gained during her amnesia to fully come into her own not to exact revenge on her siblings, but to save them, was fucking phenomenal.

The humor. There was a lot more humor this season, and it was awesome. So many iconic scenes—Olga Foroga, Luther babysitting two homicidal Fives, Elliot awkwardly lecturing his guests on the history of Jello, “NEW TIMELINE NEW ME,” “Your vagina needs glasses,” AJ the fish gobbling up the cigarette bubbles, Five getting to say “fuck”….this season was a lot funnier than the previous one, and I think that was one of its strengths.

Klaus’ cult. It was played for laughs, which I both expected and thought was the best way to handle it. He didn’t want to start a new religion with himself at the center; he just wanted to not get thrown out of any more diners, but Destiny’s Children had other ideas. The “I too am a fraud!” scene was hilarious and tickled the question of whether or not a religion founded on false pretenses can still help those within it find meaning.

Luther. Getting him away from his dad, his siblings, and the Academy was exactly what he needed to become the pure of heart and dumb of ass genius we always knew he was, but his first major step in that direction was heartbreaking. We all knew he’d be rejected once he got to the Academy. We all knew Reginald would rip his heart out and stomp on it in his admittedly fashionable shoes. It gets Luther out on his own and forces him to become his own person apart from his dad, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch. He got the positive character development he needed, but the catalyst was tragic.

Diego. We see, for the first time, exactly how Reginald kept him in line—not with meds or with PTSD-inducing torture, but with words. Even when he knows Diego as little more than a stranger, Reginald is able to rip off his skin and fling it in his face with a single diatribe; and even at 30, with years away from his dad, Diego is left unable to speak, feeling as if all of his accomplishments up to that point were the work of a dumb kid who thought he was smarter and more capable than he actually was.

Luther and Diego sharing a braincell. Luther has bad ideas. Diego has bad ideas. When they put their bad ideas together, they get terrible ideas. I loved watching them work together as a team, rather than being at each others’ throats for most of the season, even if I’m left hoping Olga Foroga had a pleasant and quiet day after that phone call.

Reginald. At first glance, it may look like the writers were trying to make him likable so they could parade him around as your average abusive-parent-with-a-soft-side. But it’s more nuanced than that. Abusive parents (and abusers in general) often fly under the radar because they fool outsiders into thinking they’re good people. They’re active in their communities. They give to charity. They have friends who attest to their virtue, significant others who think they’re the greatest. And that’s what we see with Reginald. We see him as the rest of the world did: an intelligent, eccentric man with a sharp sense of humor who cared deeply about scientific advancement. That’s how he evaded suspicion—because there were stories from years past of lively parties at his mansion, of what a gentleman he was to Grace and of how he did everything he could to save little Pogo. But those stories would all have come from people he considered his equals. When he’s with people he considers his inferiors—aka, the Umbrella kids—he’s openly condescending and demeaning. We get to see how he fooled the world, and it is chilling.

Elliot. He deserved better, and you can ship him with any one of the Hargreeves kids and get the cutest thing ever.

The Swedes. They said so much while speaking very little.

Ben. He got more personality and screen time, and it was glorious. His love of his family and resentment toward Klaus practically leapt off the screen. The way he says “I’ve missed you all…so much” once they’ve all left was one of those right-in-the-feels moments; and watching him get so much of what he’s wanted for years when he possesses Klaus was beautiful.

Now, as for things I took issue with….

Ben. I understand why they ended his arc the way they did. I get that they were probably afraid the Klaus/Ben dynamic would grow stale if they didn’t change it somehow and wanted to give him a larger role in S3. His death(???) was heartbreaking and extremely well-done. But it also wasn’t foreshadowed. We never got any sense of what ghosts in the TUA ‘verse are, so the fact they can be destroyed by a ton of sound-turned-energy or by going too far into someone’s psyche or whatever happened….it’s not that it doesn’t make sense so much as there’s not enough evidence to determine whether or not it makes sense. It feels like the writers just kinda made that up so they’d have a reason to change Ben’s relationship dynamics, but if that’s the case, couldn’t they have done it another way? Couldn’t they have made it so the immense energy or psychic woo-woo or whatever gave him a power-up instead of destroying him? Vanya transferred some of her energy into Harlan and brought him back to life. Couldn’t something similar have happened with Ben? And if it tied him to Vanya as well as to Klaus, great! More fodder for angst and humor! (”Vannyyyyyyyy, stop hogging Ben!” “You got him for 17 years, Klaus, you can part with him for 20 minutes.” “Guys, don’t I get a say in this?”) I’m glad they didn’t write him out of the series entirely, but I still wish they’d kept him and all the character development he’d gotten throughout S2.

Episode 10. It looks like they tried to cram half a season’s worth of developments into 45 minutes. Twenty minutes in, I’d already said “Wait what the fuck” half a dozen times. A lot of those moments were explained later on, and I was able to make enough inferences to fill in any lingering plot holes, but…still. Too much stuff, too little time. E9 was a perfectly satisfying ending to the season. Yes, it leaves the siblings stranded in 1963, but they could’ve tied up those loose ends in the S3 premiere.

Lila. She’s an incredibly fun character, but her arc is kind of a mess. Most of that is due to E10, and I do feel that more time to let her arc breathe would’ve worked wonders, but I’m left feeling like her turn from “Handler is the best mom ever and I lurve Diego too” to “KILL DIEGO AND HIS EVIL FAMILY” to “Handler is a bad mom and Diego is right” happened too quickly.

The Commission. Okay, so, the Handler announces the entire Board has been killed, and she’s stepping in as director even though everyone appears to know she’s been demoted (and demoted pretty severely—she went from having an office bigger than some apartments to being a case management drone). There’s suspicion and lots of it. But then, La Resistance is….ten or so people in a single room? And when she calls the temps agents to her side, thousands of them show up ready and willing to fight and die? I dunno. Just seems like there should’ve been more splintering going on there. Again, I think they needed more time to tie everything up.

Aside from those complaints, I loved the season. I set aside most of a day to binge it, and I do not regret that decision at all.

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fandom-imagines-stories · 4 years

Text

Monster

Dean Winchester x Reader

Words: 3497

The Deal S2 E3: Series Masterlist

Summary: Another shocking reveal rocks the Winchesters and the reader battles with what Lavina told her. Everything seems like it’s supposed to be until the darkness takes over her.

Notes: I experimented a bit with this one, so I hope you guys like it. Also, I have officially laid out the rest of this series, so I hope you are as excited as I am! Keep letting me know what you think!

Warnings: Plenty of angst, some sexual content (I don’t know if it counts as 18+, but it’s there, so ye have been warned) Mentions of suicide and torture.

The rage in his eyes was unmistakable. You’d only ever seen him give that look to a monster he was ready to kill. He didn’t know how right he was.

“Dean!” Sam boomed, putting his hand on his brother’s arm. Dean pushed him away aggressively.

“That’s not her, Sam.” He growled, taking a step towards you. The hatred in his voice made you flinch.

“She isn’t a shifter, Dean.” Jody tried to get in between you, but he kept getting closer. “She isn’t anything. I did every test.”

“Then you didn’t do it right, because Y/N is in hell!” He screamed, wishing that he could pull the trigger. But something inside him was stopping his hands from moving. “She’s in hell.”

“I was in hell.” You said slowly. “For a long time. But somebody pulled me out. She brought me back.”

“Amara.” Sam blurted, his eyes darting between you and his brother. “Dean, she brought mom back, she could have brought Y/N back, too.”

“Your mom, I saw her.” You tried to move closer, but Dean still had his gun up. “When that woman pulled me out, I saw Mary, but only for a second. And then it was just that woman and all of this... darkness. She said her name was Amara.”

Everyone was silent. Dean was frozen in place, weapon ready and mind reeling. Sam slowly walked towards you, finally able to get in between you and the gun. He looked down at you with tears welling in his eyes.

“It really is you.” He smiled and pulled you into his arms, lifting you off the ground.

“I missed you too, Sam.” You held onto him, partially to make sure he was real and partially because if you didn’t, you’d fall. You had almost forgotten how tall he was. Sam set you down, but kept his arms around you.

“I can’t believe this.” He grinned. He turned so that he was no longer in between you and his brother, who still hadn’t moved. You could tell from the look on his face that his mind was tearing itself to pieces trying to decide what to believe. You put a hand on his cheek and he didn’t jerk away. Just the touch of his skin lit up your body like wildfire.

“It’s really me, baby.” You smiled through your tears. “I’m here.”

Dean didn’t realize he had lowered his arm until he was tucking his pistol into his waistband. He covered your hand with his and he just knew. He knew that it was you.

“I…” He wanted to say so much, but he didn’t know how to say it. So instead he just crashed his lips into yours. You had been dreaming of this moment for centuries in hell and now it was really happening. He was here, holding you, kissing you, keeping the darkness of the world away. This wasn’t one of Lavina’s tricks. It was real.

Jody insisted that the boys stay for dinner. Sitting there- Dean’s hand on your knee, Sam’s laughter in the air, Jody’s cooking piled on your plate- it felt like nothing had happened. You felt like you again. After a few hours of eating and catching up, the boys decided it was time to get back to the bunker. To take you home.

Sam let you ride shotgun. Dean even let you pick the music. They still just couldn’t believe you were back. Dean was worried that you would vanish any second, his hand keeping a tight grip on yours.

“Oh yeah! Alright! Take it easy baby. Make it last all night!” You sang, Sam and Dean being your back up singers.

“Make it last all night.” They echoed.

“She was an American Girl.” You couldn’t help but laugh as you belted every lyric. It took your mind back to that last night before the hound came. One last road trip, singing to Drift Away, and spending the night in Dean’s arms. It came flooding back like it happened yesterday. Every memory from your life seemed clearer now, having spent years locked in the back of your mind.

It wasn’t long before Sam had drifted off in the back seat and your eyes were growing heavier by the second. You had barely slept at all while you were staying with Jody and now the exhaustion of the past week was hitting you like a brick. Dean was quietly singing Still Rock and Roll to Me to himself when you finally fell asleep.

You’d been avoiding sleep because you were afraid of what nightmares would attack, but there was nothing. Everything was just dark and black and cold. And somehow that was so much worse.

By the time you woke up from the dark, Dean was pulling up in front of the bunker. You felt numb, like the darkness had seeped inside you and was gnawing at your bones. You entered the bunker without saying a word. Sam and Dean exchanging a look behind you.

“What happened?” Sam whispered. Dean shrugged.

“Nothing. She just fell asleep like you did. I imagine she’s pretty damn tired after rising from the dead.”

“Dean, we need to make sure she’s okay. I don’t even want to think about how long she was down there and-”

“Sammy…” Dean sighed, running a hand down his face. He looked at his brother with a hope that Sam hadn’t seen in him in a long time. “Y/N’s back. She’s really back, man, and I don’t want to screw that up again. I know she was in Hell for a long time and I know that’s gonna come with its own kind of baggage, but Sammy, I can carry it. If it means getting the woman I love back, then I will take on anything.” He let himself smile a little. “But can we just be happy. At least for tonight? Can we just celebrate that she’s here? Hell, that both her and Mom are back?”

Sam didn’t know what to say. He wanted to be happy, and he really was. He was overjoyed with the fact that you were back, but he also knew that all of those years of torment were still inside of you. They changed you and neither Dean or him could fix that. For now, he just nodded.

“You’re right. We should celebrate.” He pat Dean on the back as the two followed you inside.

While Dean and Sam went to the kitchen for some late night beers, you had made your way to Dean’s room; the one you once shared with him.

It looked the same, of course. While you were sure plenty had happened while you were gone, it was comforting that the bed and four walls were just as you had left them. One of the drawers in his desk was ajar and you caught a glimpse of something silver. Your hands were shaking as you took out your old picture box.

“He kept it.” You gasped, running your hand over the battered surface. You smiled as you looked inside, laughing when you picked up the picture of you and Sam with sharpie mustaches. It was odd to hear the sound of your own laugh again. It was so foreign and yet so natural at the same time. You tried to keep your tears from hitting the photographs as you continued to look through them.

“Hey,” Dean leaned against the doorframe, offering a beer in one hand and beckoning you towards him with the other. You put the box back in the drawer and gladly took the drink, feeling his arm snake behind you, pulling you closer. “How are you feeling? You seemed a little off in the car.”

“Oh I’m fine…” You tried to lie, but you knew he’d see right through it. “I don’t know, Dean. Everything feels so different and so similar all at once. I’m remembering all of these wonderful, amazing things that I blocked out a long time ago because they hurt too much to think about. But even with all of that, I still feel like there is something… wrong in me.”

“You were in hell, Y/N. That’s going to stay with you forever.” Dean sighed. You pushed away in frustration.

“But it's more than that.” You exclaimed. You grabbed his hand and placed it flat on your chest. “Don’t you feel that? Don’t you feel the dark that’s inside of me?” Dean’s eyes just stared into yours. The green eyes that were the one thing you held onto for 365 years. He shook his head.

“I only feel you, baby.”

You stared at each other for a long time, just taking in the other’s presence. You were the first to move forward, throwing your arms around his neck and pulling his lips to yours. This kiss was different than before. This wasn’t just a reunion kiss. This was needy and hungry and wanting. It was the kind of kiss that slowly unbuttoned your shirt and undid his belt. The kind of kiss that had you pushing him onto the bed and straddling his hips.

“Are you sure about this?” Dean suddenly asked, his fingers hovering over the clasp of your bra. “If you aren’t ready, I don’t want to-”

“Dean.” You interrupted, lifting his shirt over his head. “I have been waiting for this for 365 years. Just kiss me.”

“Yes ma’am.” He smirked, roughly pulling you back down to him.

Every touch sent a fire through you and every sigh against your skin burned, but it was a beautiful kind of pain. A pain that chased away the numbing darkness that you’d felt in the car.

Dean sat up, his arms locked around you to hold you in place. There was nothing separating you now and your skin was pressed against his, lips still moving against each other. He broke away first, letting his lips travel down your neck to your chest. You let out a sigh, looking up at the ceiling as he moved his hips up into yours.

You felt everything, from the grip of his fingers to the growing heat inside of you. If there was truly darkness in you, then Dean was the spark that would light your way through it.

When you both felt that familiar relief, you fell onto the bed with Dean’s face still nuzzled against your neck.

“I’m never letting you go again, sweetheart.” He whispered, kissing a soft spot of skin. You pressed your lips to his forehead. Maybe he wouldn’t have a choice.

“There’s no worse company than yourself when you’ve become what you have.” Lavina circled around you, joined by big clouds of darkness. “You’re going to tear them apart and then it’ll be too late.” She tsked, shaking her head.

“She’s right, you know.” Cas emerged from the clouds, but you knew it wasn’t him. He grinned at you. “I’d cut and run while you still can. You know, before things get ugly.” A hand reached out from the dark and grabbed your ankle. It dragged you to him before you could scream. Lucifer stood over you and in his eyes, you could see it. His face. You didn’t scream this time, though. Instead you kicked his legs out from beneath him and pinned his shoulders down with your knees.

“You can’t hurt me anymore and I’m not going to let you hurt them either.” You snapped. A blade appeared in your hand and you put it to his throat. “I’m not afraid of you anymore.” Lucifer chuckled darkly.

“Well we both know that’s not true, Y/N… Y/N...Y/N…” As his lips repeated your name, the dark clouds closed in on you, taking away any feeling of anger or fear and leaving absolutely nothing. “Y/N… Y/N… Y/N…”

“Y/N!” Dean screamed, breaking you out of the black.

Your eyes shot open and you were frozen in place. Dean’s eyes stared up at you with horror, his heaving chest rocking you up and down. You were sitting on top of him, knees on his shoulders and a knife at his throat.

“No,” You gasped, watching blood drip onto the blade.

“Sweetheart, put the knife down.” Dean said calmly. You dropped it onto the pillow and crawled off of him.

“Oh my god, she was right.” You cried, putting a hand over your mouth to keep yourself from screaming. “I’m so sorry.” Stumbling backwards, you grabbed the first article of clothing you could find. You slipped your arms into Dean’s flannel and slowly backed away from him. Dean moved cautiously, slowly getting out of the bed and walking towards you.

“It’s okay. Just calm down. Everything is going to be fine.” He soothed. You shook your head and kept moving towards the door, walking faster now. “Y/N wait!” He yelled after you as you took off. “Damnitt.” Dean grabbed his jeans and hurried after you.

First you ran into the bathroom and ran cold water over your face. You shouldn’t have looked in the mirror. All you could see were your black eyes.

Your shrieks of terror rang through the whole bunker, waking up both Sam and Mary.

“Y/N!” Dean yelled again, spotting you sprinting down the hallway. “Wait! Baby, stop! We can talk about this! Stop running!”

“I’m a monster. I’m a monster. I’m a monster.” You kept repeating to yourself until you finally found the place you belonged.

You slammed the door to the dungeon behind you, sliding a shelf in front of the door so no one could get in. Dean tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

“What’s going on?” Sam asked, running to join his brother. “What happened to your neck?”

“It’s Y/N. She’s locked herself inside.” Dean put his hand against the metal. “Y/N, open the door, baby, please.”

“Get away from me!” You screamed. “I’m one of them! I’m a monster!”

“Sweetheart, you’re not a monster, just opened the door.”

“Damn it Y/N. Open the door!”

Dean winced, his mind taking him back to that night. Why did it feel like it was all happening again?

“I shouldn’t have come back. Amara should have left me down there.” You cried, sliding to the floor, pressing your back against the wall and bringing your knees up to your chest. “I shouldn’t be here. I’m one of them. I’m a demon.”

“Y/N, open up and we can talk about this.” Sam called through the metal.

“What’s going on?” Mary wondered. She was taken aback by the scene in front of her. Sam and Dean had their ears pressed against the door and Dean was only wearing a pair of jeans. She had been asleep when the boys and you got back, so she was completely in the dark.

“Y/N’s back and something happened with her and Dean and now she’s locked herself in the dungeon.” Sam sighed. “I’ll explain later.”

“Baby, please come out.” Dean begged.

“Let me talk to her.” The three Winchesters turned to the new voice, surprised to find Castiel standing there.

“Cas, what are you-”

“I came because I heard about a soul breaking out of hell and I thought it could be…” His voice trailed off. “Maybe I can try talking to her.”

Dean thought for a second, but figured there couldn’t be any harm in him trying. You and Cas had a different bond than you had with Dean or Sam.

Cas took in everything in front of him and couldn’t help but compare it to that night. You, shutting yourself out from everything while Dean and Sam desperately tried to reach you. Only, Cas wasn’t going to turn his back this time.

“Baby, please.” Dean begged, his voice quieter than it was before. You didn’t listen. Instead, you were rummaging through the cabinet, looking for a very specific blade.

“Y/N.” A new voice made you freeze. Putting as much distance between you and the door, you sank to your knees.

“Stay away from me!” You screamed. “Stay away! I’m not afraid of you anymore!”

“The hell is she talking about?” Dean asked, barely able to make out your words through the door.

“She’s talking about me.” Cas sighed. “More specifically, she’s talking about Lucifer.”

“What?” Sam visibly tensed and Mary’s confusion only deepened.

“What are you all talking about? Like, the Devil, Lucifer?”

“Yeah, like the Devil.” Dean ran a hand down his face. “Cas, you never mentioned anything about Lucifer taking your body for a joy ride to see Y/N.”

“I know, I couldn’t…” Cas inhaled deeply. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.” Dean grabbed him by the collar and shoved him against the wall, his voice lowering to a deep growl.

“What. Did. He. Do?”

“Dean, whatever happened wasn’t Cas’ fault.” Sam exclaimed.

“Yeah, but he knew about it.” He snarled. “What did he do to her?” Cas just looked at him with sad, guilty eyes.

“The worst things he could think of.” He said and Dean let him go, running his fingers through his hair. “Any possible way to torment her, he used it. He showed her you, impaled by Metatron and turned into a demon. He made her watch it over and over again for decades to remind her that everything she did was for nothing. That broke her more than any other torture, which he was also very keen on.”

“Okay, we get the picture.” Sam closed his eyes. He remembered vividly exactly what Lucifer was capable of and felt a deep weight settle in his chest. Dean’s eyes were still locked on Cas, but they were unfocused. Sam knew he was picturing every cut and every slice to your flesh.

A loud clatter from behind the door brought them all back to the moment. Dean released his grip and Cas and pressed his ear against the door. It was silent. A sudden panic flooded his system and he turned to Sam with wide eyes.

“Is the demon-killing knife in there?” Sam started to shake his head, but stopped suddenly, understanding what his brother was asking. A new surge of panic rushed through both of them.

“No, but there’s an angel blade.”

Now Sam and Dean were frantic, trying to get through the door before it was too late. Cas put a hand on Dean’s shoulder.

“Let me.” He said. The two stepped to the side and Cas laid his palm against the door. There was a loud thud and a surprised cry from inside.

The three men burst into the room, Mary close behind. Your wild, frightened eyes scanned the intruders, landing on Cas. Your hands gripped the angel blade tightly, hovering its point over your heart.

“Stay away.” You warned, but your voice betrayed your fear.

“Y/N, don’t.” Dean stepped towards you, but Cas put a hand out to stop him. The angel walked towards you slowly and you pressed your back into the wall, trying to get away from him.

“Get away from me. Y-You can’t hurt me anymore.”

“Y/N, Lucifer is gone.” He said cautiously. “None of us want to hurt you.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to hurt you if you don’t let me kill this thing.”

“Y/N, put the angel blade down. We can help you.” Sam pleaded. Dean was ready to charge you and take the blade by force, but Cas kept inching closer and closer to you until he was crouching in front of you.

“I know you think that there is no saving you. That you have become so dark and corrupted that you are undeserving of life, but it isn’t true. You are still you. Yes, you are broken. You have been beaten down and destroyed too many times to count, but you are here. If you give up now, then you let Lavina and Lucifer and every demon in hell win.” Cautiously, he put his hand on the end of the blade. “But if you stay and fight through this, if you show them what’s really inside of you, then you will defeat them.”

He stared at you with the eyes of a friend who didn’t want to lose you again. You felt him gently pull the angel blade from your trembling hands and pass it back to Sam. You slowly started to uncurl your body, stretching out your legs and arms so that you could pull Cas into a hug.

“It wasn’t your fault.” You whispered and you felt his arms tense, holding you just a little bit tighter. Cas wrapped his trench coat around you, noticing the goosebumps forming on your bare legs. You had forgotten that you were only wearing Dean’s flannel. He stepped back so Dean could scoop you up in his arms, tucking your head under his chin.

“Never do that again.” He whispered, kissing your temple with the desperate desire to never let go.

General Tag: @rae-gar-targaryen; @takemepedropascal; @childhood-imagination; @mylovegoesto; @yellowbadgergirl; @itmejado; @suckmyapplejacks; @kendahl0216

Supernatural: @desimarie12; @deandreamernp; @vicmc624; @halesandy; @livshaes; @d-whinchestergirl87; @mrspeacem1nusone; @crist1216

The Deal Series: @writeroutoftime; @ minninugget; @mia-ono; @erule; @ dannyo000

#the deal #dean winchester x reader #supernatural imagines #gore #torture #castiel #castiel friendship #lucifer #mary winchester #sam winchester #jensen ackles #dean winchester #jared padelecki #misha collins

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haloud · 3 years

Text

things we could burn in one go (eminence) - chapter 9

also on ao3

Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Isabel Evans & Max Evans & Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Forrest Long/Alex Manes Additional Tags: post-s2, Canon Compliant, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Starts Forlex Ends Malex, Other Characters May Appear, Tags Subject to Update, Mutual Pining, Breaking Up, Getting Together

Chapter Summary: Michael and Isobel reckon with the fallout from Michael’s choices; Maria and Max catch up with him post-recovery.

Excerpt:

Maria sat on the steps, an old CD radio of Rosa’s beside her playing a classic Rosa mixtape, a Third Eye Blind track Michael only half-remembered flowing around her, her humming running under it, glittering minerals in a riverbed. She was surrounded by papers, pinned under painted rocks to keep them from being snatched away, her hair tied back by a rainbow scarf, and she bent over to write in a binder propped on her knees.

Michael rapped on the pillar behind him to get her attention, and when she looked up she smiled and set the binder aside.

“Guerin! You’re up! What brings you here with the sun in the sky?”

“Where else am I gonna go to get my sea legs back?”

“Well, come pull your ass into port and sit with me.”

She patted the low stair beside her and Michael did as he was told, swiping his hat off his head as he approached her. For her it was wordplay, but Michael cradled to his chest something more true than maybe she’d intended—Maria was a safe harbor, a port in a storm. No matter how bad things got, her warm heart and practical mind were a reminder to never give up. Just sitting beside her was enough to make him smile, even though he sat with a good six inches buffer between them, still unsure what boundaries were appropriate, still navigating the uncertain waters of being friends with an ex who meant something.

(Wednesday, 11:00 am)

Michael flipped Alex’s key over and over in his fingers, running it along his knuckles, pressing his thumb into the teeth until they left a locking-imprint on his skin, then doing it all over again. At some point, maybe it would start to feel real, if he reminded himself of the thing often enough.

The repetition and stimulation of the rough teeth, the cool, smooth metal, soothed him as he waited on Isobel’s porch. She’d called him here in the first place, so eventually she’d open the door. Until then, he waited. And as he waited, he thought of Alex, because what else was there to think about these days?

(A thousand things, like Jones and Project Shepherd, Max and Liz, and all the work piling up at Sanders’s, but Alex had a way of blotting everything else out, and, no matter how much his brain tried to get him to feel stupid or naïve or childish for hoping yet again, he was going to let himself bask in that shade for once in his life.)

He hadn’t left Alex’s house, still, except to go to work and get things from his own place. At Alex’s, he was still sleeping in the guest room, the both of them afraid that they’d fall back into their old patterns too fast if they fell right into bed. But during the day they shared that space, a kitchen, a den, existing alongside each other as they read or cooked or composed, and the routine wasn’t so different from the tense and quiet days right after Michael’s injury, but at the same time they were nothing alike, not when each tiny glance could mean so much, not when fingers on the soft rasp of turning pages were fingers he could touch, that could touch him.

Everything was different. It was terrifying, and exhilarating, brand new and nostalgic. It had only been a day; it had only been half their lifetimes.

“Ew, you’re glowing.”

Isobel’s voice started Michael out of his thoughts, and he jumped, shoving Alex’s key into his pocket. She was glaring at him, but still he relaxed, because Isobel’s snark was a form of love and her turning scorn in his direction was a sign things were getting back to normal between them.

“It’s all natural,” he drawled as she stepped aside to let him inside.

“Right. Did something happen, or is this just some lesser known side effect of being brought back from the brink of death.”

“Uh…”

In a way, sort of, if only because Michael’s own stupidity had driven him and Alex closer together, but that wasn’t exactly a direct correlation or anything admirable.

“Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p.’ “Just…”

He fell silent. How was he supposed to talk about being in love? He’d never done it before, and this was a first he hadn’t anticipated facing.

“Alex and I…” he tried again, but found himself only able to smile, still without words, and he raised his arms in a helpless shrug.

Isobel’s eyebrows raised. “Oh my god.”

“Yep.”

“I’m still pissed at you, but if Manes is making you his side chick after everything, I’m going to rip his spine out through his—”

“Isobel, no! It’s not like that,” Michael laughed, shaking his head.

“Well what’s it like, then? I cannot handle him breaking your heart again when we’re already dealing with Max.”

He replied, “My heart is fully intact,” as he headed in and dropped down on her couch, throwing a hand over his heart for dramatic effect. “No, uh, Alex and Forrest had a fight, which sucked, but it led to us getting a chance to talk more about, y’know, us, and what we wanted, and each other, so…”

“So this is rebound,” Isobel snipped.

“Can you stop?” Michael said, half-laughing. Even her pessimism on the subject of love couldn’t pop the bubble around his heart right now. He patted the couch beside him, and she hesitated for a few seconds with her arms crossed, before capitulating and joining him.

“Oh, fine,” she groused, leaning against the arm of the couch farthest away from where he was sitting. “Your funeral.”

The words landed like a lead balloon, and Michael winced as her face grew stormier.

“I’m—”

“Don’t,” Isobel held up a hand in his face. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. I don’t want to hear it.”

“Well, what do you want to hear?”

“An explanation, Michael! What the hell were you thinking? Why would you do that? What if he’d just straight up killed you, did you want us to find your body in a cave somewhere or, or never, blown to smithereens by a man who literally breathes fire! You’re so stupid, and selfish, and—” She cut herself off, furious tears welling in her eyes even as the rest of her face didn’t change.

“I know! I know, you’re right, it was stupid. I wasn’t thinking, or, well, I was thinking, but my head was all messed up.” He rested his forehead in his hands and running his fingers through his hair. “I don’t think any explanation is going to make any sense now, out of the moment, but I just…everything was going to shit, and I couldn’t do anything for Max, and I thought Jones might have answers, or could help me unlock new powers like you’ve done on your own. So I could protect everyone.”

Isobel threw her arms up and got to her feet, pacing around the couch; Michael tracked her, anxiety dipping and spiking every time she circled him. Her anger pulsing when she passed behind him made his skin crawl, and he shifted in his seat.

“I don’t even know what to say to that,” she finally spoke, stopping in front of him.

He kept his head bent forward, staring at his knees.

She continued, “I really don’t. I’ve been trying for twenty-one years, but I still don’t know how to get through to you. How to convince you that you’re not alone, that people want to protect you. To help you. But I’m not Max. I’ve never pushed or pried or fought to cling onto you when you shook us off. I just hung around because I knew you’d always come back.” She took a deep breath. Her voice stayed steady and deliberate. “But Michael, this has gone on for too long, and you went too far this time. You have to let us help you. Otherwise—I don’t know. I just don’t. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore.”

Drops of water speckled the tops of Michael’s knees, and he sniffed, swallowed, mouth dry, throat tight and aching. His sister’s gentle hands threaded through his hair, cradling both temples, right hand over Max’s lingering handprint, but no matter how careful that touch was, he flinched.

Isobel tipped his head up so he had to look her in the eye and said, “You’re my brother, Michael. I love you so much. And I would do anything for you, just like you would—and have—do anything for me. But you need to let me! From here on out, I need you to fucking work with me. We’ll figure this out, okay?”

Tears trickling down his face and dripping from his chin, Michael nodded, not trusting his voice, and Isobel fell forward, his arms opening up to catch her, and they stayed like that for a long time, Michael rocking her back and forth, her clinging desperately to his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he finally croaked, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Or Max. I just, I can’t stop myself, sometimes, I know it’s not an excuse, I know it was stupid, I know—”

“I know,” she interrupted his stream of self-loathing, sitting back to look him seriously in the face. “I was in your head, remember?”

She’d found him beneath a vaulted ceiling, stained glass in shifting, alive, alien colors, walled in with his demons. Defining himself inside the devouring maelstrom by the battles he understood. His whole life, he’d sewed himself back whole, and his work wasn’t pretty, but the patterns made sense, and they kept him sane even when the odds demanded otherwise. The image flashed behind his eyes, but that’s all it was, an image. He shook his head.

“Not really.”

“Well. I didn’t really go snooping, no matter how tempting it was,” she said with a self-deprecating roll of her eyes. “But let’s just say…you don’t owe me any explanations you aren’t willing or ready to give. Those belong to you. I know I haven’t always understood that in the past. We both have things to work on, okay?”

“Okay,” Michael rasped, squeezing her tight again. “I…want to work on them with you.”

“Then it sounds like we’re going to be okay,” she softly replied.

(3:00 pm)

Isobel didn’t let him leave the house until both their eyes stopped being red and puffy from crying; It took multiple episodes of some Food Network show he’d never heard of before she agreed to let him out of her sight, and, in deeply un-Isobel-like fashion, she followed him to the door and pulled him into another hug for the road before she let him leave.

The drive from Isobel’s to the Wild Pony wasn’t really long enough to fully ruminate on how bad he must have scared Isobel to warrant this level of reaction. Logically, he’d known, but emotionally it was just beginning to sink in.

Over the past year, he’d been faced with losing Isobel and with losing Max multiple times—had lost Max, in fact. He knew how it felt. Why should the loss of himself be any different to them? In low moments, sure, thoughts shifted beneath the murk of his mind, lurking demons from childhood, that they didn’t need him, they had each other, a more special bond, he was the odd one out, outside, out in the cold. But on the day to day, he didn’t devalue himself like that, not in so many words, did he? But—

To be surprised? That Isobel was afraid, that Max was afraid, that the both of them stood on the precipice of grieving him and had to process the horror of that fall after snatching themselves back at the last minute? It was a slap in the face, a rude awakening. A lesson that for all these years he’d resisted learning.

The first step to protecting those who loved him was to protect himself. He couldn’t keep shelving it as the lowest priority. They were one and the same.

It sounded fake to his own ears, but he’d just have to say it until the lesson sunk in.

With the windows rolled down, the idle breeze tugged Michael’s hair across his face and cooled the late-summer stickiness from his skin. It was just after lunchtime, a little early for Max to be at work, but since he wasn’t at Isobel’s house, it was faster to check for him here than to drive all the way out to his own place.

If there was one positive to his near-death, it was the way Max was invigorated by a purpose. The healing drained him, of course it did; it could have killed him, and that weighed on Michael’s conscience, but afterward, after it worked and he’d pulled Michael back from death, he smiled. He slept. He bustled around Alex’s house babysitting Michael while Alex was at work, and now, with a little distance from fragile death, that didn’t chafe as badly.

Max deserved a better thanks than Michael had thus far been able to render, and with Isobel’s words still ringing in his ears, there was no better time than now.

He pulled up to the Pony, the fairy lights strung across the patio dancing in the wind, the wood of the old building all pale and real in the sunlight. The old, familiar sign above the door was off as long as the bar was closed, but Michael still took a moment to glance at it nice and long, remembering the feel of fixing it under his hands so the whole place felt less liminal, less like a mirror vision of the beating heart that was the Wild Pony glowing under the night sky, lit from within rather than from the sun.

Faint music played as Michael parked and left his truck, so he rounded the corner of the building to suss it out and smiled at what he saw, leaning against one of the trellis supports.

Michael rapped on the pillar behind him to get her attention, and when she looked up she smiled and set the binder aside.

“Guerin! You’re up! What brings you here with the sun in the sky?”

“Where else am I gonna go to get my sea legs back?”

“Well, come pull your ass into port and sit with me.”

“What are you working on?” he asked.

“Oh, you know me.” She gestured vaguely to the arrangement of papers and tucked her feet up beside her, leaning toward Michael, cutting the space between them in half like it wasn’t worth noticing. Some of the tension in Michael’s chest unwound at her ease around him.

“Hustling?” he prompted.

“Yep. I’m just organizing the events I have planned for the upcoming season and making sure I have space set out for scheduling, details, budgeting, the works. High school me would die with envy; my system was never this good when I was trying to study.”

“I’m definitely impressed. Let me know if there’s anything I can help with, anything you need built, or an extra set of ‘hands’ for decorating.”

“How is that going?” she asked, brows furrowing.

“I’m still getting my strength back. Just gotta keep pushing through and hope whatever Jones did didn’t mess me up for good.”

“I’m sure he didn’t.”

Her hand extended but stopped before touching him, until he turned his hand palm-up, asking her to take it. She did, squeezing him.

“You’ll figure it out,” she said. “And the TK aside, have any of the other powers cropped up? The light, the teleporting? Those were the ones Alex told me about.”

“That’s all I remember, really. And no. I haven’t even tried, honestly.” He looked at their joined hands, her wrist bare of the pollen bracelet he’d promised her and wasted, thrown away like trash in a corner of Jones’s cave. This is blasphemy…

“Do you think you will? Try?” Maria asked, head tilted.

“I…hadn’t thought about it. Been focused on getting back to square one with the TK, but…”

Was doing more with his powers still an option? Was he willing to try, and fail, and fail again, without folding and submitting to all the voices in his head that told him every failure was proof positive of the erstwhile adage that he was worthless?

“Well, you have time,” Maria said, squeezing his hand again.

“What about you?” Michael asked. “Any visions?”

Her face shut down. She let go of his hand to smooth both hers down her knees then fold her arms around herself, turning her head away. “No. Still nothing. A few dreams, but it isn’t always easy to tell what’s a normal dream and what’s a vision, and with you out of the woods, the most dire ones are already Jossed.”

“What about Mimi?”

“Huh.” Maria pursed her lips for a second, then said, “I haven’t noticed any change in her? But I’ll have to ask and see what she says. I’m not even completely sure our powers work identically, with the things she’s said about being unstuck in time…I don’t always get that same feeling.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Michael promised her. “Even if it means having to go back to Jones and ask what he knows—”

“No!”

She wheeled on him and smacked his arm lightly.

“Absolutely not! Michael!”

“Not alone, obviously!” He defended.

“Not at all. Jesus Christ. I’ll tell Isobel you said that—I’ll tell Alex—”

“Maria, c’mon,” Michael whined, taking her hand again in an attempt to connect them and calm them both down. “I just don’t want to rule out that he’s meddling in more ways than we know. I still think he’s fucking with Max. You deserve answers, if that’s what’s going on.”

“Not at the cost of your life. Not ever. It could be a hundred other things, too. Stay away from him, Michael, I’m serious.”

“I will. I promise.”

“Good,” she said firmly, wrapping her arm around his again and leaning into him. He let out a long, slow breath as she relaxed.

“You know, in Jones’s cave…”

“Mm?”

Michael carefully encircled her wrist with his fingers. “I lost the bracelet I made for you. The backup one I promised.”

“Are you feeling guilty about that? Because please, don’t,” she replied, covering the hand on her wrist with her other. “That is the last thing on my mind.”

“But I—”

“Hush. I’m glad you had it with you, whatever happened to it. It’s good that you opted to protect yourself, even if it didn’t work.”

“I thought your powers were offline.”

“The visions, maybe. But I don’t need to see the future to read you, Guerin.”

“You are something else, DeLuca.”

“Oh, I’m aware.”

“Hey, Maria—oh! Michael!”

The two of them turned toward the backdoor at the sound of Max’s voice.

“Hey, Max,” Maria said. “Is the inventory finished?”

“Yeah, I was just coming to report back.”

“No need to be so formal,” she teased, standing up and brushing dust from the seat of her pants, looking at the papers around her with her hands on her hips. “I was hoping to get your opinion on some plans, Number One, but someone interrupted, so they’re not quite ready yet.”

“Guilty as charged,” Michael drawled.

Max reached out a hand, and Michael took it to humor him, letting him haul him to his feet.

“I’ll let you off the hook this time,” Maria said as she led the way back into the bar, cool and dim in the daylight. “You can sweep up to say you’re sorry.”

“My pleasure,” Michael said, reaching out a hand, hoping he could summon the broom as nonchalantly as he once could. It sat unresponsive until a spike of formless frustration zipped through him, at which point it flew to his hand fast and hard enough to sting his palm when he caught it. Great. Just what he needed right now—puberty flashbacks.

“I need to run,” Maria said, stowing her binder behind the bar. “Late lunch with Rosa. I’ll see you later, Max—Michael, it was so good to see you. Say hi to Alex for me, okay? I know you’re gonna see him before I do.”

She left with a wink while Michael was still pink and stammering. Maybe Alex had told her already—or maybe that was just Maria, putting him so at ease it was easy to forget how much she saw. His chest glowed so warm he couldn’t stop blushing at that casual acknowledgement, that easy validation, that he and Alex—that Alex and he were what they were to each other, now, again.

“Wait, is she talking about you staying over there, or does she mean—dude!” Max grinned ear to ear and bounded out from behind the bar to pull Michael into a back-slapping hug. “Congratulations!”

Old, brotherly habit had Michael squirming out of Max’s affections, but it didn’t dent his exuberance; he retaliated with a swipe through Michael’s hair, making him duck further out of range, huffing and laughing all at once as he tried to fix it again.

“Yeah, um, Forrest and Alex broke up, and then one thing led to another, so.”

“I’m really happy for you, man.”

“I—thanks. I’m…I’m really happy, too.”

The sudden urge to comfort Max gripped him, a strange survivor’s guilt that things would be working out for him and Alex and Max and Liz would still be so far apart. But it wasn’t his place to throw that in Max’s face now, so he bit his tongue and basked in Max’s honest happiness for him.

“Could you feel, uh, any of my emotions through the handprint?” Michael asked. He ran his hand through his hair over the spot on his temple where Jones had held him, erased by Max’s healing hands, then dropped it back to his side abruptly, flexing away the phantom stiffness that still plagued him, that probably always would. He gave it a shake as if to chase away nervous tingling.

“Nah. But it’s not like I’m looking; I respect your privacy, man.”

“’preciate that,” Michael snarked, and Max just shrugged.

“Any particular reason you ask? I don’t need to know what you and Alex are up to,” Max joked.

Michael considered his answer for a little bit as he made his way between the tables. After all, it wasn’t as if this was the first handprint Max had ever given him. The ones on his neck and hand cut off by his death aside, dozens of times over dozens of years, Max had practiced healing on him and they’d explored that connection. Michael was always the guinea pig; he never wanted for injuries to work on, after all.

But there’d been a lot of handprinting over the past year and change. Max felt something from Liz; Liz felt something from Noah; Rosa and Max had a connection strong enough to tether Max to the world of the living. And then there was Michael, with Jones’s voice in his ear, dripping condescending words about his lack of psychic ability being phenomenal, considering.

At various times in his life, Michael had looked up at the stars and wondered in the silence what it was in him that was irreparably broken.

“Just curious. It’s been a while, and all juiced up like I was, I was wondering if anything felt different.”

“Nothing different. Just you.”

Max smiled like that was a good thing, a comforting thing. And you know what? In between the adrenaline of change, good and bad, in between the rock of Project Shepherd and the hard place of Jones, on an afternoon in a closed bar, a home to both of them, alone with his brother, Michael let it be.

He cleared his throat. “Good. So there’s no…interference or anything? Nothing weird lurking around up there?”

“Not that I can tell; Isobel would probably know better than I would. Whatever he did to you was bizarre, man. It wasn’t like the way, uh, the way I’ve killed people before. Or the way Noah killed.”

“I don’t think he was just trying to kill me.”

Michael made his way over to a booth and beckoned Max over; he lingered over his work for a glance at the clock and then came and joined him.

He continued, “He kept going on about teaching and knowledge and this being the wrong way but the most efficient. He knew it would hurt me, but maybe it would have worked better if he did it to someone more, uh, receptive than me.”

“What are you talking about?” Max leaned over the table, brow furrowed. This close up, the dark circles below his eyes were more noticeable. “Michael, what he did to you wasn’t in any way your fault—”

“I know, I know, that’s not what I mean. Just…look, I saw the security footage from Caulfield, from the day of the Valenti incident. The way that alien approached Jim Valenti and put his hands on him was identical to what Jones did to me, and I think maybe that guy was just trying to communicate but it fucked up a human in a way he either couldn’t expect or was too out of it to realize. And, well,” Michael gestured to his own head. “I’m the most human of the three of us up here.”

“I…huh.” Max sat back and drummed his fingers on the tabletop as he processed that. “Well, whatever the case, it proved you and Isobel were right about him. He can’t be trusted. Nobody should have any more contact with him. We’ll start doing our monthly drop offs contactless until we all figure out what should be done with him.”

His voice was firm, businesslike. Traffic Stop Max was Michael’s least favorite version of his brother and he’d hoped that his turn to the civilian would’ve put that guy to rest, but he had a tendency to rear his head in a crisis.

But in this case, he saw through him, and that façade was hiding something.

“How do you feel about that?” Michael asked, leaning back and slouching, reflecting Max’s rigid body language the way he had for a decade, cops and robbers style.

“It doesn’t matter how I feel about it. He almost killed you; we’ll do what has to be done.”

“Uh, it definitely does matter. You’re the closest thing to a next of kin he’s got, as far as we know. If anyone gets to decide what happens to him, it’s you.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“Is it? ‘Cause, look, I know I fucked up a lot of stuff running off to Jones half-cocked like I did. I don’t want to set off a chain reaction of more bad mistakes that rips us apart again when we’re just startin’ to…” Michael trailed off with a self-conscious shrug. It was realer than he’d intended to get, but it was the root of the issue, wasn’t it?

Max’s face softened, and Michael slumped lower in the booth.

“You’re not. You won’t.”

“You’re just saying that—”

“Michael.”

That tone was always a coin flip if it’d get right under Michael’s skin or if it’d shut him up. It landed on the second one this time, to Michael’s relief.

Max said, “No chain reactions. What we were doing before wasn’t working, okay? I knew I wanted something from Jones, but I couldn’t bring myself to reach out and take it. All you did was force us to make a choice when I would’ve dug my heels in and not been able to for a long time otherwise.”

“The answers you’re looking for, though, you deserve to look for them if it’s what you need,” Michael forged on, battling his clumsy tongue. “I should’ve said that before. You deserve to know who you are and to learn who that is in whatever way you can. Everybody deserves that.”

“Thank you. I mean that. But I was getting so desperate—the things I was thinking of doing—I scared myself, okay? I didn’t think—I don’t think I am that person. And being this person I am right now and who I want to be right now is more important than any answers about the past, if that’s what it means to find them.”

Michael sat with that, looking Max up and down, sitting with his own feelings as much as Max’s words. Parsing his own reactions to Max was something he took steadier, more carefully than most other things in his life. It was a set of muscles he needed to practice with as much as he needed to get power back to his telekinesis.

“Okay, man. I respect that,” he said finally, leaning over the table to punch Max in the shoulder. Max made a face and rubbed that spot.

“Ow, man, thanks, I guess.”

“Damn, did I get you in your writing arm?”

“Try my drink-mixing arm. If I’m off tonight, I’m ratting you out to Maria.”

Michael let out a scandalized noise and slipped out of the booth.

“Where are you going?” Max laughed, dark eyes shining with life in a way Jones’s never could. For all they were identical, Michael barely saw the resemblance.

“To lay low, what do you think? You’re makin’ me a fugitive.”

“Uh huh. Good luck; you know she’s just going to ask Alex.”

“Damn it. The things I do for love.”

A smile on his own face as soon as he turned his back, Michael was almost at the door when Max called his name and he turned to face him again.

“Michael? Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Asking. Listening.”

Those two words held a lifetime of desperate loneliness between them, and Michael would be sitting with that, too, as long as he was holding it in his head, making it a conscious decision, to do right by his brother.

“You don’t have to thank me,” he said.

“I wanted to,” Max replied simply.

“Well in that case…I guess you’re welcome.”

Michael’s phone buzzed in his pocket, not the single pulse of a text but the longer jangling of a phone call. He fished it out, smiling when he saw the name, and he didn’t even wait to get privacy from Max before answering.

“Alex—”

“Thank God. Where are you, Michael? Are you okay?”

“Alex? I’m fine, I’m at the Pony, what’s wrong—”

Max hurried to Michael’s side.

Alex repeated, “Thank god. Don’t come home, do you hear me? Do not come back to the house until I give you the all clear. Stay with Max and Maria.”

“What? No!”

But the line cut off midway through his protest, leaving him with nothing but the dial tone.

#my fic #malex fic #michael guerin #alex manes #malex

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swissmissficrecs · 4 years

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Are there fics where in Harry (John's sister) is among the main characters?

Reply: Certainly, although knowing me, the main focus is still on Sherlock and John but Harry has a significant role in these:

A Study in Spherification by mistyzeo (58K, E, Johnlock) John Watson has been out of work for eighteen months after his last restaurant, Fifth Northumberland, burned to the ground in a kitchen accident. He's more than ready for a new project, but who wants to open a restaurant with a washed up celebrity chef who can't even hold a knife anymore?

Attribute Nothing to Fate by recreational (37K, E, Johnlock) A journey to Italy calls up old desires, but John Watson, trapped by the social conventions of his time, is not prepared to give in to temptation and change his life forever. It takes someone else to do that for him. A homage to E.M. Forster’s ‘A Room with a View’.

Classified(s) by blueink3 (36K, E, Johnlock, Harry/Clara) Clara's American father is the ambassador to some such territory that Great Britain probably used to own, but she (and Harry’s undying love for her) is the reason John is getting on a flight at 12:30pm, flying across the second largest ocean in the world, and pretending to be in a perfectly happy, healthy relationship with an undoubtedly perfectly coiffed stranger.

Cracks in the Wall by [orphaned] (83K, E, Johnlock) After losing his mother to illness, John's family must figure out how to move on with life. John finds comfort in a place he never expected.

Fearful Symmetry by irisbleufic (22K, E, Johnlock, Harry/Clara) Sherlock turned again, staring, eyebrows high enough to hit the ceiling. "Given the choice, why on earth would you spend your birthday with your sister?" John took another sip of tea. "Because it's her birthday, too."

Four Funerals and a Wedding by Susan (12K, E, Johnlock, Harry/OFC) The story of John and Sherlock or Nothing worth having is ever easy.

God help me, I do by PlainJane (90K, E, Johnlock, Mollstrade) A consulting detective, two doctors, a forensic pathologist, a DI, a senior citizen, a recovering alcoholic and the British government walk into a register office... Cases, chuckles, angst and lots of good loving on the journey to one very unconventional wedding day.

How I Impregnated Your Mother by Mildredandbobbin (50K, E, Johnlock, Harry/Clara, Mollstrade) Sherlock and John are together and things are good, great even...except...Sherlock's in a one sided competition with John's dead wife, John hasn't proposed yet, and now Harry and Clara want Sherlock and John to father their children.

Hushabye Mountain by blueink3 (15K, T, Johnlock, Harry/Clara) Harry and Clara welcome a new addition to the family. Or, the story of Lucy Watson-Collins' birth and how Uncle John nearly murdered Uncle Sherlock in the middle of Lenox Hill Hospital's maternity ward.

John Watson and the Three Spirits (aka A Ghost Story of Christmas) by PipMer (18K, T, Johnlock, Mollstrade, Harry/Clara) John hadn’t planned on becoming a grumpy old man. Well, he wasn’t old quite yet. But he wasn’t getting any younger, and as he thought back on his life so far this Christmas Eve, he was coming up with a lot of regrets.

May Your Heart Purr Like a Bumblebee by destinationtoast (14K, M, Johnlock) In which Harry is the biggest John/Sherlock shipper: Harry Watson is back from rehab and temporarily staying with John and Sherlock. She and John warily begin to rebuild their friendship, and then she makes some observations about her little brother and his flatmate which throw John entirely off balance.

Mise en Place by azriona (161K, M, Johnlock) John Watson had no intentions of taking over the family business, but when he returns from Afghanistan, battered and bruised, and discovers that his sister Harry has run their restaurant into the ground, he doesn't have much choice. There's only one thing that can save the Empire from closing for good – the celebrity star of the BBC series Restaurant Reconstructed, Chef Sherlock Holmes.

(More Than) Flesh and Bones series by Jezunya (127K, M, Johnlock, Harry/OFC) A post-Reichenbach, zombie apocalypse, Johnlock story told in three parts.

Pater Noster by SilentAuror (34K, E, Johnlock) During the autumn that John is staying at Baker Street again after Sherlock was shot, he ruminates over the similarity between Sherlock's shot and the one that killed his father when he was fifteen. Cold case meets series 3 fix-it.

Performance In a Leading Role by Mad_Lori (156K, E, Johnlock) Sherlock Holmes is an Oscar winner in the midst of a career slump. John Watson is an Everyman actor trapped in the rom-com ghetto. When they are cast as a gay couple in a new independent drama, will they surprise each other? Will their on-screen romance make its way into the real world? (Also its sequel, Lifetime Achievement.)

The Case of the Fleeing Frenchman by PenelopeWaits (26K, E, Johnlock) Captain James Watson and his son John have been protecting each other and their beloved Harriet for years. Where will true safety reside when a handsome sailing ship and her haunted captain arrive and he makes a shadowy proposal?

The Case of the Meddling Siblings by destinationtoast (36K, M, Johnlock) Mycroft and Harry Watson team up to send John and Sherlock on a case to distract a Sherlock who’s been pining after John. And Harry, at least, is determined to get the boys together. Two sets of Holmes & Watson shenanigans ensue. (post-S2 AU)

The family you choose yourself by Zaeris (60K, M, Johnlock, Harry/Clara) Sherlock has come back and John finds himself unexpectedly forced into the role of father while he struggles to make sense of his feelings about his eccentric flatmate and his plans for the future. Luckily he's got some well-meaning friends to help him along the way.

The Heart in Him by azriona (44K, M, Johnlock, Harry/Clara) Three years after Sherlock fakes his death, he receives a text from Mycroft telling him it is time to come home. But the text doesn’t give the whole story. Not by half.

The Horse and his Doctor by khorazir (128K, T, Johnlock, Harry/Clara) Invalided after a run in with a poacher in Siberia, veterinary surgeon John Watson finds it difficult to acclimatise to the mundanity of London life. Things change when a friend invites him along to a local animal shelter and he meets their latest acquisition, a trouble-making Frisian with the strangest eyes and even stranger quirks John has ever encountered in a horse.

The Measure of a Gentleman by i_ship_an_armada (67K, E, Johnlock, Mollstrade) It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a partner. Less universally acknowledged is that a single man in possession of very little in the way of fortune may be in want of a partner as well, but John Watson had little time or energy to devote to his own wants or needs... Enter one Mr Holmes...

The Song Nobody Knows by Laur (78K, E, Johnlock) If Sherlock could take John Watson back to his cave, he would keep him alive as long as possible. He would collect rain water and sea weed and fish to feed him, and he would keep him warm with his soft feathers. In return John Watson would answer all of Sherlock’s questions. Yes, Sherlock would keep him, his own little mystery to unravel. Eventually, though, the human would die, as they always did, and Sherlock would have to eat him, like he always did. This was much more interesting.

Wild About Harry collection by PlaidAdder (397K, T, Johnlock, various others) This started as a post-Reichenbach fic and turned into a series in which Harry Watson is a repeating character. John and Sherlock get together in the first story ("Empty Houses") and thereafter it's either developing relationship or established relationship. Most of this is casefic and long, but there are a few shorter ones. [This is actually two separate series. You don’t need to read all of the stories in order.]

#request #rec list #honeybeemotorcycles

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nicad13 · 4 years

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What does Din Djarin Want?

Pedro commented in the Entertainment Weekly article about exploring Mando’s motivations in the second season. “On a moment-to-moment basis, he’s discovering that question: ‘What do you want?’” This got me wondering about the possibilities. It feels like he’s pressed between a rock and a hard place for most of Season 1, doing his best to choose the least crappy of his options, without always succeeding. What he wants has largely been a moot issue – what he wants hasn’t mattered. So I feel like we first have to think about what’s been driving him to start, with what little information we’re given.

1. Greed? Nope. Not on a personal level, anyway. When Greef pays him in the first episode, he puts four disks of Calamari Flan on the table. Din puts all four on the table when he goes to the covert, keeping nothing for himself. He doesn’t even ask for the pauldron – the Armorer offers it to him, and mentions how his generosity will sponsor many foundlings, to which he agrees.

2. Friendships among the covert? Doesn’t look like that, either. He walks by a bunch of other Mandos in the corridor and doesn’t so much as give anyone a nod when they turn in his direction. No one comes to his aid when Paz tries to unhelm him for dealing with the Imps. (Perhaps rightly so – Paz knows whatever Din did to get that much beskar from Imps had to have been horrible, and there’s no honor in earning back what was theirs to begin with.)

3. Family? Not at the start. When he enters the covert in the first episode, a few kids run by him and he walks right through their group like they’re not even there. He doesn’t do the kid thing. He might be starting to reconsider that while on Sorgan. He flat-out admits that it would be nice to settle there, but at that point, he knows he’s not ready. And despite all the Omera-hate going on around the fandom, he takes all the time in the world to stop her from lifting the helmet, in great contrast to his reflex-like reaction in all other circumstances. She clearly impresses him with her abilities with a rifle (Mando catnip right there) and he’s there for three weeks – a lot may have happened between them that we don’t know about. I’m a solid maybe on this one.

4. Sponsoring the covert, particularly the foundlings. As far as we can tell, Din gives every dime he earns to the covert, with special concern for the foundlings. To the point where he’ll even sell a foundling to Imps to provide for the ones at the covert. (For a little while, anyway.) His devastation at the slaughter at the covert is quite clear, despite the fact that he doesn’t seem to have any friends there and isn’t even familiar enough with it to really know his way around other than from the entrance by the bazaar. He’s also keen to stay with the Armorer to help and send the others on their way. I’m so puzzled by his fierce dedication to a place he seems to have so little connection to despite the fact that this is the only thing I can tell that made him tick to begin with!

All of that said, what might drive him in Season 2?

1. The Darksaber? I have to wonder if he even knows about it to begin with. It’s an ancient saber built by Tarre Vizsla, the first Mandalorian Jedi, so it’s both a Mandalorian and a Jedi artifact. Din has no idea who the Jedi are until the last episode of S1. No doubt he will learn about it in S2, but I’m wondering how much about it he will learn? At the very least, it’s something that the Empire has robbed from Mandalore, just like the beskar, and Din is going to want it back at the very least to get it out of Imperial hands. Wookieepedia describes it as “respected by the Mandalorians as a symbol for the leadership of House Vizsla, and later Death Watch.” Some feel that it’s a powerful enough symbol that its owner can unite all of Mandalore. What Din will do with it once he gets it is up in the air. He doesn’t strike me as a leader of that level, at least not yet.

2. To keep or return the child? Din’s attitude towards the kid evolves substantially over the course of the first season. He’s ready to dump him off on Sorgan, but not entirely for selfish reasons. He clearly wants the kid to be happy, and does sound pained at the idea of separation, even if he can’t admit it to himself. “He’ll get over it. We all do.” (You don’t sound convinced, Din.) When they get to Tatooine, Din panics when he can’t find the kid where he left him in the bunk and takes it like a champ when Peli rips him a new one about taking care of kids. By the time they get to Ran’s station, Din flinches when Mayfeld fake-drops the kid (after not flinching when Xi’an comes at him with a knife), and has apparently reached the point where he’s having one-sided conversations with the kid. “I told you that was a bad idea.” While this progression of affection seems evident, it all gets turned on its side when they get back to the covert and the Armorer tells Din to find the child’s people. “You wish me to train this thing… You expect me to search the galaxy for the home of this creature and deliver it to a race of enemy sorcerers?” This thing. This creature. I dunno about anyone else, but Din’s choice of words to refer to the child here feels downright chilling. Particularly since he called him “the baby” once or twice shortly before. Maybe it’s just the concussion talking… I dunno. He’s back to more affection and one-sided conversations by the end though. “Why don’t you hang onto that.” I’m guessing this will be something he struggles with in Season 2.

3. Omera? We’ve not seen anything about Julia Jones being confirmed for Season 2 (that I’m aware of), but we know that folks on this production can keep their mouths shut on huge spoilers when needed. One of the episode titles is “The Return.” Return to where? Sala Baker mentioned that he would be back for Season 2. He played the Klatoonian Raider Captain on Sorgan, but it’s entirely possible that Baker will play a different role all together. The evidence is admittedly flimsy on this one.

4. Cara? She takes a hard turn from “STAY WITH ME MANDO” to “I’m gonna stay on this crappy planet” in the last episode, much to Din’s disappointment. “You’re staying here?!” She doesn’t do the baby thing. She’s also the first person to ship Din and Omera in the first place. “Settle down with the beautiful young widow…” She strikes me as the kind of person who goes after what she wants, and that’s at least three deflections. She loves Din like a brother, but that’s about where the evidence runs out. But who knows? Things may evolve.

5. Revenge? So far we are of the understanding that Din’s village was attacked and his parents killed by Separatist droids. We also know he was rescued by Death Watch. Fans of the Clone Wars series will also recall that Death Watch was a terrorist organization that was not above staging Separatist attacks only to swoop in and “save the day” to gain political favor. If we put two and two together… well… see the source link below for more details on that possibility. Esposito’s quote about “Maybe there’s an opportunity to get [Mando] to fight some battles for me” has me really wondering about this. IF Din’s parents really were murdered by Death Watch, is Gideon the one who tells him? As former ISB, he would likely know this kind of thing. How then will Din play his disdain for the Empire against his rage against Death Watch? Imagine the taunting. Imagine the angst. This possibility is the one that really has me cracking my knuckles in anticipation.

The next couple of months cannot go by fast enough!

#the mandalorian #din djarin #baby yoda #cara dune #omera

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sandalaris · 4 years

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SethKate for the 10 sentence meme?

one sentence per genre for a pairing

How can anyone do any of these with just one sentence?! At least I tried.... there’s a lot of run on sentences in this, btw, although after a few I just decided the one sentence rule could shove it and went with keeping each one short, and at least one I said screw it and made it pretty long for a one-sentence story.

1. Angst

A shadow self, that’s what Amaru called them, the ones she twisted and turned and brought forth from the other side, and logically Kate knows he had no choice, knows he did what he had to do to save Richie and her and the world, but logic has no hold in the face of screaming gaping wound in her chest that pulses and weeps grief and guilt when she looks at Seth’s face. It’s a cruel and ugly twist of fate, to still love the man who killed her brother.

A/N: A mild AU I will never write (but have thought about what would happen before) in which Amaru did her shadow-self thing on Scott and Seth is forced to kill him.

2. AU

There’s nothing wrong with the school itself, she decides, even if she does find some of its rules and traditions a bit odd. She wouldn’t even need to be here except Our Lady of Sorrow holds the only duel credit program with both an opening in Statistics and Intro to Psych that was willing to let Kate in given her... unusual circumstances (being homeschooled, a devout Baptist, and technically enrolled at a local public high school - a PE credit apparently requires a bit more than her daddy and the internet can provide - had her sure that even applying was a lost cause). She only has to spend half a day on campus and only one of her classes is even near the annex building so she hardly sees Seth (she refuses to call him “Mr. Gecko” on principle. She’s only somewhat a student here, and he is certainly not her teacher, even if he is a teacher.. she thinks).

She’s counting the weeks until the semester ends.

A/N: I would love to read this as a full fic... just not sure I want to write it, lol.

3. Crack

No. Nuh-uh. No way. Seth is not some pansy assed prince charming setting out on a quest or one of those glory seeking wannabe knights who graduate from the Fairytale Training Academy, and he’s certainly never wanted to be anyone’s goddamn hero, so little miss damsel in distress, who’s probably some secret lost princess because Seth’s read this tale before and he hated it the first time around, can save her sob story for some other guy because he is absolutely not-

“Please.”

...fuck.

A/N: A reluctant Seth who is entirely too aware of fairy tale tropes and trying everything he can not to be in a one? Way more amusing than it should be to me.

4. Future fic

Seth eyes the group of sparkly wrapped boxes sitting on the counter with distrust, part of him already counting their numbers and trying to figure out how many have his name on them. After last year, when Seth managed to sneak a peek at every single last gift and “ruined the surprise,” Kate had managed to hide every Christmas present so well he’d begun to wonder if she’d decided he didn’t get any this year.

He reaches for a small, shiny box, the tag just peeking out from the curly bow and revealing a “th” in a familiar loopy penmanship, when Kate suddenly hisses behind him.

“Don’t even think about it.”

A/N: “Future” makes me think domestic fic (at least in FDtD), and that’s not an area I’m real familiar with, so *waves hand* this is what you get. :P

5. First Time

Her hands are shaking. Not visibly, but enough to make her fingers feel weak and the gun in her grip far too dangerous.

“You ready?”

She doesn’t know if she’s imagining the doubt in Seth’s voice, regret bleeding through at agreeing for her to play a bigger role, but she nods firmly anyways, tightening her grip and stepping forward.

A/N: Kate’s first heist... although I doubt Seth let her use a gun the first time. Too dangerous in the hands of an amateur. And I’m pretty sure Seth kept Kate’s role as danger-free and background as he could, because she was still fighting so hard to be considered an equal partner at the beginning of S2.

6. Fluff

She’s just managed to settle into the perfect spot when the bed shifts slightly behind her and a familiar hand fumbles sleepily at her arm and over her stomach before finding the hollow dip of her waist. Kate lets out a half-hearted protest, bits of warmth escaping at the blanket slips down and the sheet bunching beneath her as Seth wastes no time tugging her across the mattress, the sound dying into a soft laugh as he tucks her half under him and grumbles wordlessly against her temple without even opening his eyes. She shifts, tugging the corner of the pillow down a bit so its not digging into her neck before letting out a happy sigh. Perfect.

7. Humor (I had a hard time with this one, so I just wrote something random)

Kate makes a noise of frustration, pushing herself from her chair and snapping, “I’m gonna die a virgin. Again!”

“You know,” Richie says with far too much brotherly glee, “if you’re looking for someone to-”

“Shut up, Richard!”

8. Hurt/Comfort (another one where I didn’t exactly want to go full hurt/comfort, so instead I went Hurt? As in injury? Yeah, lets go with that.)

“Ohgodohgodohgod.” She can’t seem to stop the litany of words, repeated phrase cycling through her mind as she presses harder. There’s blood, so much blood, seeping red and too thick through her fingers that she can’t even feel the pain.

She should feel it, she thinks, she did before. Or maybe its better that she can’t, she doesn’t want a repeat of the well.

She takes another step, seeing the door just a few steps away. There are people beyond it, Seth and Richie’s people (Seth’s going to be so pissed, she thinks with a kind of worrying detachment.) It’s a simple goal: get to the door. Everything will be alright if she can just get to the door.

A/N: Kate is totally OK in this. It’s bad, but not as bad as she thinks, and while she doesn’t make it to the door before collapsing, someone comes through really quickly and sees her.

9. Smut Hand holding?

The leather is soft against his skin, well worn from years of near continuous use and Kate’s dedicated care. He remembers when she first got them, the fancy looking box with its folded tissue paper holding them inside like they were a gift. He had hated them, hated the way they covered Kate’s small, deadly hands, the way Dad expected for her to be grateful, how necessary they were.

He slides his hand up, pad of his thumb brushing over the expensive leather covering her palm before it presses against the soft, vulnerable skin of her inner wrist, and he swears for a moment her can feel the nervous flutter of her pulse before he curls his fingers to lock around her wrist.

She looks at him, an amused quirk of to the edge of her lips as he raises her hand between them and he meets her gaze, not bothering to measure the redness of her eyes as he reaches his free hand up to pinch the fabric just above her pinkie.

“What’re yo-” She cuts off with a choked gasp when he tugs, but doesn’t jerk back. He’s inexplicably proud of her for it.

Her eyes are wide and a little panicked, bottom lip trapped between her teeth as she watches him tug at the top of each finger, loosening the well-fitting glove until it sits loose on her small hand.

He takes in a shaky breath, feeling unaccountably nervous as he grips the empty tip of the glove’s middle finger, like he’s removing far more than just a simple bit of leather. But then again, maybe he is. After all, Kate’s almost never lets any of them see her without her gloves, not willingly.

He pauses at the thought, gaze flicking away from his task to look at Kate. He regrets it almost immediately. He wasn’t going to stop once he started, wasn’t going to give Kate cause to think he held any of the fear she’s convinced he must feel. But maybe she sees the question in his eyes, or feel it in the sure way he holds her wrist because she nods, small and hesitant but there. He pulls the glove the rest of the way off and lets it fall to the floor.

He lets out a breath just as Kate seems to suck one in, her gaze locked on her bare fingers and Seth loosens his grip, fingers already turning so he can run the flat of his palm up her wrist, forearm pressing against forearm as his hand aligns with hers.

He’s grinning, sudden and full of too much smug satisfaction if Kate’s affectionate eye roll is anything to go by, but Seth doesn’t care, already lacing their fingers together so he can hold her hand proper for once.

A/N: This is part of a tUA inspired AU that has no plot and therefore will never be written. But I know exactly what Kate and Seth’s abilities are, which is part of why this is such a thing for Kate here and why Seth feels her fears are unfounded.

10. UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension)

She doesn’t blink, barely seems to be breathing, holding herself so carefully behind her desk, straight backed and fingers laced together as she stares stubbornly up at him. He smiles, slow and measured and knowing, letting his gaze sweep over the cardigan she’s begun buttoning all the way up since he joined her little class, before leaning close, meeting her gaze and dropping his voice low, like a secret between them.

“And what do I get if I get it right?”

A/N: Seth goes back to school to get his GED, Ms. Fuller is not what he was expecting. I actually had a whole scene playing through my head for this, because I like build up, and it was really hard to pick just a small part to put here.

None of these are edited, despite how long it took to post, meaning I have mixed feelings on them, lol. I think I like more of them than I expected to, so yay!

#sethkate #asked and answered #my writing #these were both really hard and really fun #and with mixed sucess

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inawickedlittletown · 4 years

Text

Eddie Begins - Some Thoughts

I’m putting his under a cut because spoilers. Also because fair warning it’s over 3k long. I clearly had a lot of feelings.

Pretty much from the moment that we knew we were getting an Eddie Begins, anticipation has been high and boy did this episode deliver. The episode opens with Christopher’s birth and Eddie is present for it and his emotions are all over the place and so well displayed. I loved the moment when the doctor asks him if he wants to cut the cord and he says no and Shannon just roasts him right there and then “you’re an army medic, but this makes you squeamish?”. The scene does a lot to establish Shannon and Eddie and Eddie is just precious when he gets called “dad” — “I like the sound of that.”

One thing that we don’t get in the middle of all of this is the birth complications? Nothing about the scene suggest that there were any complications. Christopher is delivered, the doctor tells the new parents that it’s a boy and they have the moment about the umbilical cord. But we were told previously that Christopher was stuck and that his CP might have been a result of the birth complications. So it was interesting that we didn’t get to see that.

Next we see them post-birth in a hospital room with Eddie’s parents and we get a very interesting tidbit: Eddie’s dad was not present at either Eddie or his sisters’ births. And later in the episode, we also learn that Eddie’s dad wasn’t around much — because he was working — when Eddie was little. It’s an interesting parallel and in some ways this may even go as far as to make commentary on gender roles and how both Eddie’s mother and Shannon were primary caretakers of their children and expected to do so. It even might explain why Eddie felt like he needed to support his family by working rather than by being present.

When Shannon’s mom arrives, Eddie runs over to hug her. His parents are warm and welcoming, and Shannon is surprised but pleased and they talk about her clean bill of health and everything seems nice and happy but the set up for angst is happening because we know Shannon’s mom will get sick again and we also know that Eddie and Shannon are not going to be happy. The whole atmosphere of the room changes the moment that Eddie is asked how long he’s staying for and Shannon isn’t happy when she says that he’s only there for another week. What new mother would be happy with the prospect of her husband leaving so soon after they had a baby? But Eddie points out that the sooner he goes the sooner he returns and then returns for good. That obviously doesn’t end up working out because as we see later when Eddie is finally back, things don’t go well.

Shannon gives Eddie the necklace with the St. Christopher charm and explains what it is and Eddie vows to come back and be with his family and as the scene ends Eddie says this:

“No matter what happens, I’m always going to fight to come home to my family.”

This of course is when we get that flash forward to later in the episode when Eddie is calling on the radio that he’s alive and yet no one can hear him. It is the perfect transition into the future. The writers have done such an amazing thing in creating this episode and framing it around Eddie’s past in a way that truly gives us so much information about Eddie and yet connects us to the story at present. The placements of the flashbacks just hit so strongly.

That said, I want to write about the past on its own first.

The next time that we see a flashback it is 2015 and Eddie has reenlisted in the Army. Christopher was born in 2011, so that puts Christopher at around 4 years old and from the way that this scene plays out it’s also clear that Eddie wasn’t home long before he decided to take on another tour of duty. (Edited to add: apparently Tim says this scene was supposed to be in 2013 which still doesn’t make a lot of sense other than how young Christopher looks)

What we do know is that Eddie was not around when Christopher was diagnosed with CP and that he doesn’t understand it necessarily past knowing that his son is “sick” and that all of what comes with that is costly. We also find out during this argument that Eddie enlisted in the army after Shannon found out she was pregnant in the first place — that was his response to her pregnancy. So he wasn’t around for her from day one.

Eddie is clearly of the mind that in order to take care of his family, he must be the breadwinner and that he must support them by working and bringing in money. He needs to provide for his family. While I think that absolutely plays a part in his decision to re-enlist, Eddie also doesn’t communicate any of that with Shannon. He doesn’t listen to anything that Shannon has to say and just does what he thinks is best without consulting her and it’s a little bit heartbreaking. Shannon is also looking for other solutions. She hasn’t been working because she’s taking care of Chris and yet she offers to sell the house, the cars, and to start working but to Eddie that’s not putting Christopher first. And this disparity between them is the argument that will never end — Eddie deciding things without consulting his wife and not understanding that Shannon needed him around and that Christopher needed him around.

Shannon makes a point of telling Eddie that he’s made all the choices even while saying that he has no choice. We know because Eddie and Buck have spoken about it, that Eddie did feel like he was running away when things got hard with Christopher and Shannon and it is hard to watch it actually happen. When he goes to pick up Christopher, it is awkward and unsure and Christopher clearly doesn’t even know him and that just cuts so deep because we know the kind of relationship that Eddie has with Christopher in the present.

Next time we are in a flashback it is still 2015 (I actually 100% think they screwed up with the year though going off of how 3 months after this incident when Eddie is home Christopher is said to be 6 years old so it would be 2017...except that the last flashback we get tells us it’s 2017 so who knows). Christopher looks older through the video chat and we also learn that Shannon’s mom is sick again. And this whole sequence is all about how Eddie earned his medal and we get to see him in action. But this gives us this beautiful moment to parallel with the present where Eddie is looking at the St. Christopher medal and at a picture of Christopher and it just seems like he’s sure he’s going to die and in that moment he’s thinking back to his argument with Shannon and I think it’s a moment of realization for Eddie for how much he has missed out on knowing his son because as much as he may love him, he also isn’t there for him. As an aside I want to add that back in S2 Christopher says that he wished for Eddie to come home for Christmas one year and that Eddie did. So Christopher knows all about Eddie either from Shannon or from Eddie’s parents — but he knows all about his dad even at a young age. Enough to miss him and want him home and to love him just like any child loves their parents and it’s also something that Eddie probably doesn’t realize until much later on when he does get to be around Christopher and be his dad at last.

Eddie is injured and he gets his Silver Star and he doesn’t feel particularly deserving or heroic about any of it, but the next time we see him three months later he’s back home in Texas and the whole family is there — at least his parents, Pepa, and his Abuela are around and it’s clear that they’ve come out to Texas to see Eddie and because they’re celebrating his medal.

Eddie brings out juice for Christopher in a cup with ice and his mom immediately tells him off and while yes it’s true that Eddie may have done something wrong, his mom is also very quick to judge him and his lack of parenting skills. And what’s interesting about this moment is that when he mentions it to Shannon she has clearly been dealing with Eddie’s mom for years and likely getting the same treatment. This would have been the perfect moment for them to bond over that.

Shannon jumps into asking Eddie about going to California and the thing about the way she asks is a little bit obnoxious. In S2 Shannon and Eddie argue and Shannon says something along the lines of “you didn’t want to leave your family in Texas” and it is implied that Eddie thought he couldn’t leave the support system of his family in Texas. As we come to find out here, she meant that he literally would not leave the family that had flown in to see him on a whim just because Shannon wanted to pack up and take off the next day.

Shannon lights up at the idea and doesn’t try to understand why Eddie is so against it. She’s just ready to go and we know this is about her mom and that she’s been waiting for Eddie to be home for a long time, but I think she was pushing in a way that was always going to result in Eddie saying no. And what Eddie asks for is more time, but Shannon is done and can’t give him any more time.

“I needed more time too” is all her note reads after she leaves them.

Shannon’s feelings and actions are absolutely valid and I think she needed to leave him, but she’s also wrong in doing it the way she did instead of giving Eddie the ultimatum of: “I’m leaving. That’s that. Figure out what you want.” I’m not sure how Eddie would have taken that, but it would have gives us a different perspective of her leaving. Another point to make is that it is one thing for Shannon to abandon Eddie and another to abandon Christopher and leave him behind because she could have taken him with her. She’s his mother and she left him and Eddie is justified in being upset about that.

The next flashback places us in 2017 and Eddie is talking with his parents who are adamant about having Christopher move in with them because Eddie has three jobs and isn’t around often enough and because they have been the only constant in Christopher’s life — not Eddie and not Shannon. Eddie actually defends Shannon leaving even though he’s also angry at her. I think her mom is 100% justified in blaming Shannon for leaving her son, but it’s interesting that Eddie sees it as Shannon leaving him specifically and not necessarily Christopher. I also find it interesting that Eddie is applying to be a firefighter at this time and that he isn’t doing so in Texas — unless the FD in Texas rejected him? — but he mentions Chicago and LA and obviously we know he goes to LA but I don’t buy it that he decided on LA because of Shannon. I think it’s in part to do with Abuela and Pepa being there and that Eddie isn’t all that sure about finding Shannon. After all, we know that he doesn’t reach out to her at all until he needs to for Christopher’s school.

I find it fascinating how Eddie’s parents offer him little to no encouragement about stepping up and being a good dad. They acknowledge that Eddie loves Christopher, but then in the same breath point out how Eddie doesn’t know Christopher and how Eddie is inadequate as a father especially if he’s going to be working as a firefighter. It just in some ways drives home for me how much Eddie’s view on life has been shaped by these two people that didn’t truly believe in him and that clearly value the family unit and the idea of the nurturing mother and all of those things are still so present in him later on.

And then we get the most beautiful scene in this entire episode and it is Christopher sitting outside on his own because that kid can do whatever he wants and Eddie finds him and sits with him and they have this beautiful moment during which Eddie decides to ask Christopher what he wants and Christopher wants to be with his dad — “I missed you all the time” Christopher says and Eddie could never leave this boy ever again. And I think when they start talking about leaving that Eddie is entirely conscious of the fact that he’s going to do it against his parents’ wishes and I just love the way that he holds Christopher in that moment. It’s just precious and perfect and I love it so so much.

In the present time we have Christopher and Carla stop by the station because apparently it’s show and tell at school later in the week and Christopher is Christopher so of course he’s been searching through his dad’s stuff and he wants to take Eddie’s medal in. But before that we get a nice sequence about working radios and the look that Eddie and Bobby share when Buck fails at using his radio is so full of fond and “why do we deal with him again?” and it is perfect.

Christopher of course gets his way because he’s Christopher and both Carla and Buck are there just watching Eddie give in like they both clearly knew he would. Also, it’s interesting to note that Buck doesn’t seem to know the story of how Eddie got his medal. Then the 118 are out on a call. A boy is missing. Eddie figures out where he is — in an abandoned well — and then when it is time for one of them to propel down to get the boy, it is Eddie going down and he sounds a little like Buck when he tells Bobby that he’s the one going down there. And the audience is preparing for angst. And because this is 9-1-1, it is the perfect time for the weather to just get worse and worse.

Eddie pulls a Buck and cuts the line when he almost has Hayden and his thirty minutes are up and it is both a moment of complete trust from Eddie that the rest of the 118 will get him out of there and stupidity. And yet it just makes so much sense for him to do that when he almost had Hayden and when Eddie is sure that if he doesn’t get Hayden in that moment that the kid will likely drown.

This is the first instance of Buck panicking a little when he says “I lost the weight” and he’s confused and doesn’t want to admit what he already likely knows — that somehow Eddie is no longer attached. They all look so devastated.

The next thing that happens is one of my favorite things. Bobby immediately tells Chim he’s going down but Buck is ready to volunteer because of course he wants to go after Eddie so that he can save him. Hen points out how horrible that idea is because Buck is just as stupid as Eddie and then the two of them would be stuck down there.

In the end, Chim goes down and he finds Hayden and Eddie and Hayden is pulled up to safety while Eddie waits. This is exactly the moment when things go wrong again. Lightning strikes and Buck tackles Bobby and there’s an explosion and the truck falls and things underground are even worse than before.

Eddie is thrown about down below, but Buck is the one having a breakdown because as soon as he realizes that Eddie is in trouble, Buck throws himself to the ground where the hole was drilled and he is digging through the mud as if somehow that can get him to Eddie. Buck is desperate and devastated and his logic is all but gone as he yells and yells Eddie’s name in exactly the same way that he yelled for Christopher during the tsunami. It is absolutely heart wrenching.

Buck’s reaction here is not normal for a co-worker or for a friend. It is the reaction of someone that loves without any doubt — it is the reaction of someone that knows they could be losing someone especially dear to them. It is absolutely true that Buck and Eddie are best friends and that they are close, but this connection that they have between them just transcends that. It is more than that. As much as we know the others love Eddie, they don’t react this way. They don’t let their emotion overtake them in the same way that Buck does — Buck who doesn’t lose his composure in this way when he needs to be a professional does for Eddie. And it’s a beautiful thing whether we look at this romantically or platonically, either way what is evident is that Buck loves Eddie.

When Bobby goes to Buck, there is no quelling the desperation and it is as Buck realizes that he can’t do anything that he falls back onto Bobby and it is such a heartbreaking expression that it is difficult to not read more into what Buck may feel for Eddie.

The next thing we see is Buck cleaning his hands. He’s desperate to go back out there and find a way to rescue Eddie but no one knows quite what to do and there’s a moment when he, Hen, Chim, and Bobby are standing outside the house where it is very clear that everyone is thinking about the odds and the likelihood that Eddie is already gone and for Buck that is not an option — it’s not something he even considers entertaining. There’s a beauty to his devotion and yet so much hurt too. The others are of course not going to give up either, but they are less convinced of a good outcome.

Eddie meanwhile is stuck down there and now he’s in water and his oxygen eventually runs out and he’s basically on his last breath and in that moment where everything seems lost we hear a voiceover: “Woah, you got a kid,” it’s Buck.

It’s a flashback montage and the first thing that comes to Eddie’s mind is the moment when he tells Buck about Christopher. Yes, this is literally the first instance on the show where Christopher is brought up, but that didn’t mean that it needed to also be the first thing that starts up this flashback montage especially since the rest of the montage is out of order. Buck shows up a lot throughout all of it and the logical aspect to this is that Buck is just always around when Christopher is, but they made a conscious choice as to what would be shown and I think that does speak volumes about Buck being a part of the family. I’d love to see someone figure out if they even left out any of the moments that feature Buck with Chris and Eddie. The montage is shown while Carry You by Ruelle ft. Fleurie plays which is such a fitting song. (And I will forever give props to the person in charge of music for 9-1-1 because they always know how to pick the perfect song for every moment). We hear Eddie call the 118 his family in a small voice clip from an earlier episode and then a repetition of: “I’m always going to fight to come home to my family.” And it is Eddie fighting to get out of that water and live for Christopher.. Oh, the feels.

Meanwhile, the 118 is figuring out how to find and rescue Eddie and Buck looks like his whole world has fallen apart. He looks so close to falling apart again because by this point he must believe that they won’t find Eddie. And Eddie makes his dramatic entrance and he just pushes past some other firefighters and no one tries to grab him or stop him. Buck loses not a second to run to his side even though there are a bunch of other people around. Bobby is right there next to him and the shock that Bobby displays and the way he says Eddie’s name in that moment also says so much about Bobby being sure that Eddie was long gone.

The way that Buck holds Eddie up and actually grasps his hand is a thing of beauty. And Hen is there right behind him telling Eddie they will get him home and Eddie is still thinking about his son and the importance of making that show and tell and being there for Christopher which is what we flash to in the next moment and once more we are hit with how much Eddie treasures his son, his good luck charm.

This episode was a lot of what I wanted from an Eddie Begins. It gives us a deeper understanding of Eddie, filling in all the gaps that we could only guess at before and giving us a fuller picture of what Eddie and Christopher’s journey has been. Mixed in with that was a rescue that in some ways fit in with the flashbacks and I am so glad that we got this. And yet I also do have to say that more could have been done in terms of showing Eddie’s growth as more than just a parent because at the end of the day the episode ends up being more about Eddie becoming a father and embracing that rather than about Eddie changing and growing in other ways.

Other Meta/Reviews

#911 fox #911 spoilers #buddie #911 meta #eddie diaz #spoilers

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somerpmemes · 4 years

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Carmilla S2 Starters

Change as needed

“PG 13. How incredibly dull.”

“I guess I should just be happy you haven’t found a brand new crusade to be on.”

“She looks like an extra from Carrie.”

“It’s all fun and games until a primordial monster gets loose and devours us all.”

“The very least you could do is start pretending like you survived puberty.”

“Huh. So evil has PETA protesters.”

“I really wish you’d cut out the mythologizing.”

“I see we’re low on brave-but-stupid for the week.”

“This isn’t something we have to talk about.”

“And when did you become the voice of reason?”

“A certain amount of murder just comes with the territory.”

“That’s…. actually more plausible than I was expecting.”

“Now, wasn’t that an improvement to your usual hysterical nonsense?”

“What in the name of Skrillex is that?”

“Do you think we’re having a conversation?”

“And that was as close to a plan as we got.”

“It’s not a lot but it’s our best lead.”

“But you like death threats and screams.”

“Maybe it’s time to sort through some of those self-destructive patterns.”

“I had really forgotten how much fun this kind of thing isn’t.”

“How can you be so blase about that?”

“Don’t you want justice for that?”

“So, that’s suspicious.”

“Love doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.”

“It’s later than you think. It always is, really.”

“Don’t mind me, I’m just hallucinating.”

“Oh, stop talking, I killed you!”

“May I join you on your lonely quest for redemption?”

“I thought there’d be more disobedience in our civil disobedience.”

“We really need less sulking and more strategizing here.”

“I won’t do it. Find somebody else to play your hero.”

“If you really loved me then you’d stay.”

“You haven’t listened to a single word I said. I’m done.”

“Let’s try that again with 80% less wallowing.”

“Do you think budget details could actually cause a person’s brain to bleed?”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

“I wasn’t sure if you were gonna come back.”

“I thought we’d get along better if we established some boundaries.”

“Not that it’s any of your business but I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Look, I may not know what you’ve got up your sleeve but are you sure you want to do this?”

“I didn’t mean for it to work out this way.”

“I guess I should have known that something like this was coming.”

“I’m not just avoiding you”

“If you dissect it, it can’t hurt you.”

“Life is awful and incomprehensible, so it’s usually better to be terrified together.”

“We’re gonna need gauze and peroxide and possibly ether.”

“I know your heart’s in the right place, ___, but you’re really not thinking this through.”

“It’s not perfect, but things are getting better.”

“If things go sideways, I’ll put you down for the first I told you so.”

“You’re gonna confess what you did or you’re gonna die screaming.”

“I’m going to burn! You! Away!”

“I am SO tired. Tired on like, a cellular level.”

“Didn’t think you’d still be up.”

“What makes any person sacred to another?”

“You want the kind of love that clicks. Like a key into a lock. But I don’t have any of that to give you.”

“I wish I could say that it doesn’t matter, but it does.”

“God, you’re predictable. It’s embarrassing.”

“Just because I’m too practical to kill you for sport, doesn’t mean you aren’t expendable.”

“You still aren’t sure?”

“Time has already changed us.”

“You know what the world is? It’s a fight to the death.”

“Either you have the power, or you serve the power.”

“You know, just for once it would be nice to get good news for a change.”

“Sounds like… the only plan that we’ve got.”

“Don’t you think death can be beautiful?”

“Those are bloody footprints! We do not run in the direction of bloody footprints!”

“This isn’t a crime scene, it’s a setup.”

“This world can be a messy place, and if a girls going to get anywhere, she might have to spill a little blood.”

“Sometimes the truth is insufficient to the needs of one's soul.”

“Are we all about to die or what?”

“That temper of yours is gonna put you in a bind someday.”

“There’s almost nothing in this world that’s absolute.”

“You’ll be surprised what one can learn to co-exist with.”

“I am going to hunt, torture, and kill you. And it won’t be satisfying if it ends too quickly so you need to run.”

“I’m also thinking you’ve got some serious PTSD, or maybe that’s me.”

“Look- I know we’re in trouble, but when you’re the only one trying to fix a messed up situation, maybe it’s not all your fault when things go sideways.”

“Yes, yes, very touching. Here’s a hammer and nails.”

“___, I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re losing. And we’ve been losing for a while now.”

“How are we supposed to come up with a plan to save ourselves with nothing?”

“We need your help. ...sorry, I just vomited in my mouth a bit.”

“I don’t think I can stand losing anyone else.”

“I’m ready to suffer and die as long as it’s for the right reason, the right person.”

“Everything that I’ve ever done to uphold what I think is right has caused so much damage.”

“You’re in this mess because I am anything but a hero.”

“Have you ever considered that maybe “hero” isn’t one thing that one person was supposed to be by themselves?”

“The universe doesn’t care whether you live or die, you just do or don’t.”

“Does that mean no one is coming to save us? Fine. We can save ourselves.”

“I’m sorry, I expected more angst on that.”

“I feel like I lost myself.”

“A moment of forgetting to care isn’t the same as a lifetime of apathy.”

“I might not always like the choices you make, or the way things turned out, but I think it would be infinitely more tragic if you let it stop you from trying.”

“Wait long enough by the river’s edge, and the bodies of your enemies will float by.”

#carmilla #rp #rp starters #starters #sentence starters #sentence starter meme

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skamamoroma · 5 years

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Episode 4: Wtfock S3

Thank you so much for all of the lovely messages about these posts. Who knew people would want to ready my rambly thoughts. I wrote these kind of overly long in-depth emotional spiral posts about Skam It s2 and enjoyed it so much so it’s good to know wtfock inspires similar spiralling!

I’ve tagged these posts specifically so if you want to read the others, then follow the tag below :)

Anyway, I love that the episode opens with someone interested in Robbe’s life. We’re reminded that Milan cares even if he does want a bit of gossip, he’s sitting there looking at the videos and taking an interest. I love that he and Robbe had that ‘little club of two’ moment about Zoe being jealous… it makes you remember Robbe’s not alone and he has the beginnings of a home.

Seeing Robbe just chilling on his sofa, headphones on and scrolling through photographs is so similar to Isak and every other remake where they search and end up finding something to stare at and obsess a little over. It kills me that all Robbe has are photos of Sander with Britt. Sander is in the background and Robbe still smiles to himself. This isn’t a video like Marti, Lucas and Isak had… he has less but he’s had more of Sander in real life and it just reminds you of that DISTANCE. I love how in other remakes, you still felt that longing but it was more exciting whereas here I feel a little bit heartbroken for Robbe as he’s had to spent days and days keeping himself away from Sander and nearly gave in. He came so very close to letting himself lean into his feelings and it was abruptly ended… he wasn’t thinking when he nearly kissed Sander, he was clearly acting on impulse but now he has this distance, he’s thinking and it’s easy and harmless and means nothing in his head. I think he’s fully aware of how he feels but Sander is so far away in every sense of the word that the reality isn’t as overwhelming. That’s really kinda sad to me.

Then there’s Milan again with his casual sexuality chat. It’s so important in every remake to have this moment because it’s the Isak of it all being faced with an open homosexual man who is talking about relationships and sex and guys and they use that to ask questions they wouldn’t ordinarily ask… and the answers always kill me because Eskild said the whole “if he talks about blow jobs” thing which made Isak remember Even did EXACTLY that… but here, Milan says that sometimes you can tell is someone else is gay from subtle signals, a look in their eye “something trapped inside that desperately wants to come out”. That look at Robbe is VERY telling. I’m not sure if Milan knew 100% but he certainly had the whole shady history of the girls telling him Robbe might be but the fact that Milan tells him that being gay can be SENSED… yeah it’s kinda true but also kinda wildly untrue in many many many cases but Robbe believes it in that moment. He’s left wondering whether that part of him can simply be SENSED by looking at him, by assessing him and that clearly freaked him out. We don’t know the intensity of his internalised homophobia but Milan’s words here were so different from the original that it had such an effect for Robbe personally and for his story. His face at the end is A LOT. That moment when he’s about to download Grindr, to actually accept and lean into his feelings, the feelings he KNOWS are there… and he doesn’t. It’s hugely important to understand Robbe because he’s fighting it massively. BUT THE SONG. Oh the song. Hahaha. Todrick Hall and ‘I Like Boys’ could not have been more perfect for this moment. It’s kind of tongue in cheek, it’s a little like we’re seeing the reality of the part of Robbe’s mind he’s denying and it’s a little nod to Milan too… so so so good and I think when I realised that this season’s music was going to be killer!

But aside from an adorable moment with Yasmina, we’re straight into THE DANCERS SCENE. Ah the classic. This episode mirrors the original so closely but they’re made subtle changes that are really telling and specific for Robbe. He isn’t sitting there looking bored and check out like Isak, he’s UNCOMFORTABLE. He looks like he wants to be anywhere else. It’s all kind of oversexualised and he looks a little like he’s sorry for witnessing it and isn’t that something he does a lot - he always feels BAD for objectifying women or seeing the stuff his friends talk about play out in real life. He clearly looked almost sorry for touching Noor in his bedroom, he had to check nobody was watching when he was sweet to her in the sand dunes and now he looks embarrassed to be watching what he’s watching. Poor kid. He can’t accept it’s a piece of art because all he’s doing is connecting it to how he feels WRONG in himself, how he’s not experiencing what his friends are, how he didn’t want to come along in the first place, how ALL OF IT ties into Noor, a girl he’s dating but doesn’t feel attracted to… it’s so overwhelming and poor love looks like he wants to crawl out of his own skin.

And just like he did with Milan, he sees a chance to distance himself from being gay by using the dance teacher. His internalised oppression rears it’s ugly head but what I LOVE about this moment and god KUDOS to Willem H is when Jens kicks back and Robbe immediately questions if Jens has a problem with it….. Robbe’s FACE. It’s a 360 turn around and instead of wanting that distance between GAY and himself, he’s now terrified that actually Jens might have an issue with it. Talk about being crippled by fear and insecurity surrounding something true about yourself. How terribly sad and Willem H sells that little moment because his eyes are full of fear.

I kind of understand Jens in this moment. At the time it was difficult to because of how the whole group had been framed. Jens has consistently checked in with Robbe and given him those moments of friendship and support and yes, the group has failed to notice Robbe’s obvious discomfort and unhappiness and they wound him up over the vlogs and the pranks but here, Jens has no real reason to understand why Robbe would flip. It IS out of nowhere but it’s another moment of Robbe just being so overwhelmed and hating himself and the situation he’s in that he snaps and retreats. I find it so tough watching Robbe do this knowing how much he changes and how much more comfortable he becomes with who he is and the world around him… this all feels like he’s constantly feeling suffocated and fights to get out of any situation so he can breathe.

Oh isn’t this the episode of being bombarded by ideas of sexuality. I LOVE watching it in this way as episodes because every single clip is another prod at Robbe, another way for him to realise he’s DIFFERENT and to feel like he doesn’t fit, not with his friends, not with Milan and his life, not as someone who appreciates the attractiveness of women, not with religious folks… he feels set aside from all of that, confused, alone and every part of him is saying that the fact he feels uncomfortable is because it’s wrong and then you have Yasmina saying that homosexuality is perhaps a ‘disorder’ or a ‘choice’... and isn’t that the nail in the coffin of misery. It’s that confirmation the dark part of his brain has been looking for.

ENTER SANDER. The one person who makes something in him feel nice. Sander reminds him of when he was in his little bubble dream world of the seaside, when he was able to pretend his life was different. Sander’s mentioning Bowie again and being interested and friendly and making Robbe special by including him in his interests. It’s incredibly sweet and the moment Robbe lies down and listens to Space Oddity, I remember feeling like this season could be something really impactful. That spinning camera, the stillness, the close up of his eyes makes you feel like Robbe is kind of day dreaming he’s back there… and the fact that day dream is interrupted by Sander’s call is just PERFECT. Sander, ever the whirlwind, doesn’t just message, he calls to chase up! And the whole moment of Robbe preening himself is so youthful and cute, I can’t handle it. God, he KNOWS he likes Sander. He goes in and out of allowing himself to act on that feeling that he gives himself whiplash.

I think I genuinely feel, way more than any other remake, that Sander feels like a dream. EVERY SINGLE TIME Sander appears (and it’s true of the end of this episode too), he takes Robbe out of himself, transports him and it’s like Robbe is dreaming, existing in some other place because Sander shakes everything up and he’s this platinum haired dreamboat figure… it’s almost like he’s unreal and he feels that way on a proper rewatch like this. He feels otherworldly and isn’t that kina cool given how much he loves Bowie.

Maybe Sander is like the Ziggy Stardust working his way through this alien planet?! To Robbe, he’s a walking dream and Robbe gets mesmerised and forgets himself… and it isn’t until that distance kicks in that Robbe returns to reality with serious force.

Their telephone call is so CUTE. Sander is a little flirty and you can see how endeared Robbe is. Willem H’s FACE when Sander suggests Robbe bribe him… that moment of shock and awe. PERFECT, my god. But the moment that kills me is just how utterly devastated Robbe looks when Britt appears. His whole face falls and you can see he’s so instantly saddened at the realisation that he’s not ‘special’, that Sander isn’t ‘his’. We, with the benefit of knowing the future, know that that’s nonsense and Sander is clearly doing all of this because he’s 100% smitten and wants Robbe in every conceivable way… but Robbe’s little forlorn look makes me want to crawl into the screen and squish him.

Robbe collapsing onto his face, that tortured youthful angst is PERFECT and Sander yet again makes him believe he can do thing. Sander’s presence moves Robbe’s progress on even a fraction… and Robbe can’t ignore these feelings so he tries Grindr again and that moment of “but this isn’t me” that crosses Robbe’s face is gut wrenching. He’s looking at the comments not recognising himself in that behaviour and it’s not wrong, it’s just not him…. Although he’s not able to make that distinction yet. He sees “not him” and meaning he can’t be gay rather than he’s just a different type of person. What a horribly relatable moment. And then the music dictates the entire mood yet again - “shout shout let it all out” because he needs to and things are so tangled and confusing and upsetting and there’s Noor reminding him he has a girlfriend.

And now we have Noor. Overreacting. I still laugh. He was like half an hour late and she absolutely loses her shit. I can’t take her seriously. I get that she later explains that she feels like he’s not fully into their ‘thing’ but she’s talking about love and it’s WAY TOO MUCH… and hahahaha the fact that this segues into the shot between Britt and Sander while Sander pretends he’s going to feed Britt and actually feeds himself is… i mean it’s genius. ABSOLUTELY brilliant… Sander is everything Robbe wants and kinda needs in this moment and he looms large as Noor and Robbe appear in the background, all the while we’re reminded of Britt also looming large but that Sander has fed Robbe before, enjoyed it and found it incredibly cute and he chooses not to do that with Britt, chooses to be a little selfish and cheeky and think of himself…. Kinda, maybe how he was when he chose to openly flirt with a boy at the seaside while Britt was elsewhere. The four of them in the shot in this way is just AMAZING.

Robbe, YET AGAIN, doesn’t like to hurt people. He doesn’t like to cause pain but Noor is talking about LOVE and they’re known each other a few weeks. It’s almost laughable if it weren’t for the fact that they’re young and also we know Robbe feels this way about Sander pretty quickly too. Poor Noor really thought they were something. I think Robbe finally shouting that he feels suffocated is so important because we’ve seen it, we’ve seen him explode and then run but he’s always alone. He retreats and we never follow him and he’s rarely honest with his shouting… here he is honest and he retreats but Sander is waiting right there when he does.

I love love love that! This time, Robbe doesn’t end up alone.

The fact that Sander, currently Mr Walking Day Dream or the whirlwind personified, makes a bit of a joke of it all and sings Bowie is endlessly funny and sums Sander up in a second but it’s this flippancy again. He doesn’t really care if Britt hates him or finds him weird or if he doesn’t feed her and certainly doesn’t care about Noor and Britt following her. All he cares about is Robbe and I said this so much at the time but Sander reminds me so much of Eliott in that respect. That “nothing else matters” idea, that all of the MESS around them and the mistakes and confusion means nothing because there’s this strength to the feelings there and there’s an inevitability to them. I think Sander feels that and believes it aka “I saw you in the moonlight and thought he is the one”.

Sander is just SUCH a bitch in this moment and it’s hilarious. Bleach blonde bitch or what.

The fact we get an extended shot watching Sander’s response to Robbe’s misery is perfect. He’s not bothered in the slightest about Britt and Noor. He doesn’t know why Robbe wants to message them, he’s waiting for Robbe to engage with him and then that downing the drink…. BALLSY AS HECK. He’s like “ok dude, I’ll do this for us” - he knows what he wants. He wants Robbe to himself and that smug little moment when Britt confirms that they don’t want to be bothered is perfect because Sander gets his wish.

I love that we segue into 21:21 and another Sander dream sequence. These moments with Sander are just overwhelming and almost TOO MUCH. They’re cinematic and they’re bold and send Robbe spiralling… and he gets to rest into the moment, to be present and Sander’s presence makes him forget everything which is why I think he’s able to be so balshy! He’s able to be himself. Nobody else is around, nobody is there but Sander and Robbe knows he’s safe there.

Not to jump the gun but I think this is what makes 22:53 aka the attack feel all the more devastating because Robbe’s dreamlike existence when Sander is around is so brutally ripped from him and torn to shreds. It’s metaphorical but it makes me wish they’d included a moment post attack with Robbe feeling a little more uncomfortable being open with Sander in public. We kind of had a moment of it but not enough, personally, and I feel like it would have served the story well. That said, they brought the comfort with Sander and the defiance hard after the attack that it worked in its own way, I just feel, by way of constructive criticism, that they could have shown the impact that the brutality of beating attacked for being open and comfortable could have on someone like Robbe in a more obvious way to then show how you can overcome that. Anyway…. MUCH lovelier things to talk about!

Sander coming out of that shop and Robbe grinning to himself just reminds me of the words “it’s just you and me”. That club of two thing feels so strong with these two. I felt it with the original and the remakes in very subtly different ways but with these two, I have this real sense of breathing out in comfort when they’re together and it makes you want it for them all the time. Robbe is so relaxed and again, it’s that jarring change. Sander is just smitten and so giddy he gets to have Robbe to himself and Robbe’s making Booking.com jokes and being all cute… how Sander didn’t melt on the floor at all of this knowing what we know about how he felt about Robbe. Bless him! I love that Robbe winked. He’s in his comfortable dream state… he can do that and it’s all fine and lovely and wonderful and Sander’s there looking like a dream and buying him sugary drinks and has a head full of adventure that Robbe just can’t help but smile, swoon and FOLLOW. Because when Sander says “come”, Robbe follows. Every time. Ah Sander, such an Even.

This entire montage is so beautiful. Wildfire is THEIR song. I kind of feel like the words are for Robbe this time. He’s so free. YET AGAIN, he’s with Sander and everything is fun and free and he doesn’t need to worry.

“When you release, when you let go, you can find yourself where you belong” - those words and for Robbe. The song is for both of them… different verses for different parts of them that represent their struggles. IT STUNS ME. This song could not have been better chosen or used… and thank GOD we got it back when Sander needed saving. This moment, the endless tunnels to bike through and the city at night to sing in… all of it is Robbe’s journey to comfort and knowing what it’s like to let go and feel and experience.

I like that Sander retained the Even rebelliousness, the smugness, the slight pretentiousness… it fits him perfectly and the getting naked does not AT ALL seem weird. He’s extra as all hell and he doesn’t seem out of character… if anything, if they’d have done the same as the original then it would have perhaps felt out of character !!!!!

Then we have Sander’s “all the way or no way”. His motto in life. His character summed up in a few words. He’s perfectly WONDERFUL. You can see why Robbe is so enamoured and in awe. Sander is just the type to turn someone’s world upside down.

The fact that Robbe is free and at the whim of someone SO freewheeling as Sander is overwhelming.

THE LYRICS. Wildfire breaking me again and again.

“Darling, please. Don’t give up. Trap your hate and sing for love, let me be the one who sings along”. MY GOD.

Those lyrics just before Robbe kisses him is so beautifully done. They’re like Sander’s words to Robbe although unspoken. That idea of - just let go, give in, be free, do what feels right and what your heart is telling you to… because I’ll be right here with you”. GOOD GOD, the music is so perfectly chosen, the moments it fades in to spell out what’s happening in the clip is just so well done.

I love their first kiss. It’s kind of messy but entirely desperate. It is shot like a dream sequence with that blurry underwater moment, the whole thing sparkly and bathed in shimmery blue light… and Robbe looks dazed and lost to the moment. It’s exactly the effect Sander has on him and what life and the world feels like when Sander’s around.

Then Sander is gone.

And we know what happens when Sander goes and Robbe is left to his own mind and the influence of others. Robbe looks exhausted and Zoe’s words slap him round the face. He’s reminded that he’s hurting people, that he has betrayed someone. He looks like he’s going to cry. He doesn’t like to hurt people and once again, he’s WRONG, what he’s doing is BAD.

Space Oddity playing again to remind him of that spiralling and Sander… it’s all acoustic and sweet but Robbe’s alone and Sander isn’t there to help him believe. The way Robbe strokes the screen over Sander’s face and blocks him… the dream’s over and he’s back in his brain and in the real world where he has been told he is wrong.

And the scene that I can barely watch. Sander is so sweet and optimistic and beautiful. We know he’s so utterly smitten with Robbe and how MUCH this must have hurt. Robbe’s choice of words is stark and worrying and just so totally WRONG. He was cruel and calculated and everything he isn’t and you can see the way he shakes when he’s on the other side of the door. Sander’s beauty and promise and that glittery dream world aren’t real and Robbe’s so firmly in reality now, is rejecting that lovely freedom and he actively broke his own heart.

It hurts. It’s not ok that he said what he said and in the way he said it but I understand, in the context of his story, why at the end of THIS episode where is feels WRONG and he believes who he is hurts people… that he chose the WORST but most effective way of putting that distance back where it was.

Poor poor Sander. Poor sweet boy feeling like he has done something wrong and hurt the person he adores… but part of me knows Sander understands behaving in ways that might hurt people, knows the damage your brain can do when it tells you that you aren’t allowed happiness and loveliness. I think thats why Chernobyl and the concept of exploding brains and fucking up because you felt terrified… well, he get it, doesn’t he? And I think he saw Robbe’s truth when he met him. He saw his sweetness and I think Sander always understood Robbe’s heart…

That “i save you, you save me back” concept had to be strong here and thank god it was!!!

So yeah, this was LONG but this episode is an important and beautiful if brutal one! If you’re still awake, you deserve a bloody huge medal. Thanks so much for reading all my nonsense. These are just my own ideas and interpretations and it’s so interesting to read what others think too! The show lends itself to that so perfectly.

#wtfock #hopefully the read more works this time!#thoughts etc #wtfock episode thoughts #rosander #robbe ijzermans #sander driesen

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tonystarkbingo · 4 years

Photo

TSB MIV Week 10 Roundup!

Go give all the love to our wonderful participants!

Title: You don’t change horses midstream Collaborator: Kahuna Burger Card Number: 4094 Link: AO3 Square Filled: R4 - I Regret Nothing Ship: Gen Rating: Teen Major Tags: Major Character Death, Infinity War AU, Steve Rogers critical Summary: Everything comes together for Steve's perfect ending. Word Count: N/A

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Title: The Groomsman Collaborator: feignedsobriquet Card Number: 4039 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K2 - Misunderstandings Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: Art Summary: Fanart for 27dragons and tisfan’s The Groomsman Word Count: N/A

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Title: Loki, God of Sewing Collaborator: newnewyorker93 Card Number: 4042 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: Adopted - Stay Still Ship: None Rating: Gen Major Tags: Crafts Summary: A felt needle book decorated with a cross-stitched Loki wielding a threaded needle. Word Count: N/A

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Title: BUCK-E’s Problem Collaborator: lbibliophile-mcu Card Number: 4090 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: T3 - Crack Ship: Tony Stark & Bucky Barnes Rating: Gen Major Tags: drabble, fanart, Dum-e’s Drawings, Bucky Barnes’ metal arm Summary: Hanging out in TON-E’s workshop, DUM-E collects the best stories. BUCK-E is not amused. Word Count: N/A

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Title: Mr. & Mr. Stark - Chapter 1 Collaborator: hddnone Card Number: 4006 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A2 - Hindsight Ship: WinterIron Rating: Mature Major Tags: Gun Violence, Assassins Summary: Bucky had been so busy hiding from Tony, he never realized what Tony was hiding from him. Word Count: 650

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Title: [Podfic] The Shirt Collaborator: Juulna Card Number: 4065 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S3 - showoff Ship: Stuckony Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Threesome - M/M/M, Smut, Porn with Feelings, Masturbation, Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, Sexual Fantasy, Rimming, Tattoos, tony stark has no shame, (actually he has a little bit of shame), Feels, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Porn, (but really more porn than anything), Fluffy Ending, Polyamory, First Kiss, Possessive Bucky Barnes, Possessive Steve Rogers, Bottom Tony Stark, Top Steve Rogers, Stuckony, Crack, (Yeah I admit it), tony gets a tattoo for bucky and steve, they find out during sex, that’s basically the fic, with some shirt porn tossed in, Clothing Porn, Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 30-45 Minutes, Avengers Merchandise, Bucky and Tony are Both Showoffs Summary: How an impulsive decision that Tony made at sixteen and an equally impulsive decision that Tony made at forty-three combined to have the best outcome ever. Word Count: Podfic Length: 30-45 Minutes

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Title: The Only Real Starks Collaborator: eachpeachpearplum Card Number: 4003 Link: AO3 Squares Filled: Chapter 1, adopted prompt - present tense Chapter 2, T2 - wolf Ship: Pepperony Rating: Teen Major Tags: fluff, family, soft dad Tony, tiny mention of schoolyard bullying, art Summary: Morgan comes home from school clearly upset about something, but it’s only as he’s tucking her in for the night that she decides to tell Tony what happened. Fortunately, Tony knows exactly how to solve the problem. Word Count: 875

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Title: Targets Acquired - Mission Failed Collaborator: ABrighterDarkness Card Number: 4074 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: A3 - free space Ship: Tony & Bucky Rating: Teen Major Tags: moodboard, WinterSoldier targeting Tony&Pepper, explosives set at the Tower Summary: The Asset has been given 24 hours. The target is the newly minted Iron Man and Stark Industries. They cannot be allowed to continue as they are and Insight is not yet ready. But Stark knows he’s there, has hidden Potts and Hogan. The Soldier flees. Stark follows ready for a fight that never comes.

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Title: untitled Collaborator: lronhusbands Card Number: 4011 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: T4 - picture of Malibu House Ship: None Rating: Gen Major Tags: moodboard Summary: moodboard

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Title: Mr & Mr Stark - Chapter 2 Collaborator: hddnone Card Number: 4006 Link: AO3 Square Filled: R4 - Kink: Begging Ship: WinterIron Rating: Explicit Major Tags: explicit sexual content, Gun Violence, Assassins Summary: Bucky had been so busy hiding from Tony, he never realized what Tony was hiding from him. Word Count: 1888

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Title: Untitled Tony/Bucky Fanwork Bingo Fill [Art] Collaborator: hundredthousands-art Card Number: 4088 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: A5 - Hanahaki Disease Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: Hanahaki, art Summary: Bucky goes missing. While out looking for him, Tony finds a trail of bloody flower petals in the snow and hopes it’s not too late to tell the man how he feels.

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Title: Fri on the Wall Collaborator: lbibliophile-mcu Card Number: 4090 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S2 - Confessions under the influence Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: Mutual pining, Supportive Friday, 5+1 Things, Drabble sequence, Dialogue-only Summary: Friday watches her idiot, pining boys. Or, five times Friday tried to support their relationship, and one time she decided to take more drastic measures. Word Count: 600

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Title: Pepperony Christmas Cross Stitch Collaborator: rebelmeg Card Number: 4034 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: K3 - Image of Rescue Pepper Ship: Pepperony Rating: Gen Major Tags: pixel art, cross stitch pattern, fandom craft Summary: You can’t deck the halls without an awesome, sleek Pepper ornament and an ugly Christmas sweater-inspired Tony ornament.

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Title: Mind Control Collaborator: ceealaina Card Number: 4008 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S1 - Technopathy Ship: IronHusbands Rating: Teen Major Tags: Technopathy, MIT Era, Fluff and Humor, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting Summary: Rhodey always knew that Tony was special. He just hadn't realized how special. Word Count: 2739

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Title: Keep Me Warm Collaborator: 27dragons Card Number: 4027 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A5 - Fake Dating K5 - Car Trouble T4 - Stranded A3 - Free Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: Alternate Universe - College/University, Sharing a Bed, Snowed In Summary: “That sucks. Wait. It sucks? I thought you were kind of bummed about not getting to see your family for the holidays.”“Yeah, but I wanted to see them at home, where I could go into my room and close the door when I need a break,” Bucky grumbled. “But instead it’ll be in some cheap hotel in New York where I’ll have the great choice of sleeping on the floor in one of two rooms – the one with my parents, or the one with Becca and Gram.”(or, Tony gets a brilliant idea.) Word Count: 5243

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Title: same time next year Collaborator: peachy Card Number: 4017 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A4 - Happy Ending Ship: Stony Rating: T Major Tags: Christmas, Modern AU, Tony Stark needs a hug, getting together, angst with a happy ending Summary: four (4) Christmases with two (2) idiots who can't admit they're in love. Word Count: 3314

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Title: A Fairytale, This Is Not Collaborator: Fighting_For_Creativity Card Number: 4004 Link: AO3 Square Filled: Adopted - Science and Magic Ship: WinterIron (endgame for the fic), Merlin/Arthur, Merlin/Morgana, Merlin/Gwaine (due to the nature of the fic, bear with me folks) Rating: Mature Major Tags: Reincarnation, dreams, visions, canon typical violence, ok Howard, kidnapping, (HYDRA in later chapters), team as family Summary: Sometimes, unbeknownst to Tony, his reflection doesn’t show the man the world sees. Yet his dreams show Tony, what has been, and what will come.On a journey to himself, Tony Stark learns to trust and live, finding a family with unlikely people and love in the most unexpected ways. Word Count: 1776

#tonystarkbingomarkiv #tsbmiv #tsb miv weekly roundup #tsb miv week 10

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lightsandlostbells · 5 years

Text

Skam France season 3, episode 7 reaction

hope they called that mural “Jackson Bollocks” as an ode to the method of creation

Episode 7

Clip 1 - Intervention

Lucas is lying on the couch when Mika comes up holding the drawing from Eliott, asking if Lucas is the hedgehog. He says he found it in the trash. Nooooo, so Lucas threw away the drawing? Yikes. Whereas Isak had the courage to reach out to Even after receiving it, the drawing was a symbol of hope (bolstered by Jonas’ comments about Even needing to break up with his girlfriend), to Lucas it means nothing, just another knife to the heart. Because you know, they decided to make Yann walk away from Lucas, so Lucas did not get the reassurance. Not just about Eliott needing to break up with his girlfriend, but about much at all. Like why bother reaching out to anyone and opening your heart when they’re just going to reject you?

Not the main point, but Manon is like, “What have we said about going through the trash?” to Mika which I think is funny, that Mika has such a strong habit of going through the garbage that Manon needed to have a talk with him about it. Who’s really the raccoon in this show, hmmmm?

Lucas jumps up and confronts Mika about it, trying to grab it, but Mika gives it to Manon instead. Mmm, not sure how I feel about Mika making this moment not private and doing it in front of Manon and Lisa. Because yes, obviously Manon suspects/knows Lucas is gay, and Lucas is in need of help. But Mika also knows that Lucas was so defensive about being called gay and being seen as gay, he’s been defensive about what happened with Eliott the other weekend, so IDK why he’s just like, Manon, look at this drawing someone gave to Lucas (which is a love note). Lucas came out to Mika, not Manon, Lucas might not be ready to talk to Manon about it.

Mika gives the cue to Manon and she mentions an intervention so you know they were talking about this. I don’t mind them doing that since Lucas is so clearly struggling, but again, kinda ehhh on doing this prompted by the drawing.

Lisa is just sitting there reading a magazine the whole time. Mika says Lucas is just wasting away on the couch and is like a stain that won’t go away, and they already have one stain, with a glance at Lisa (who asks where’s the stain). It’s a funny moment except that I was like YOU MADE HIM STAY ON THE COUCH and then Lucas also says it, the couch is his bed now. THANK YOU. Not that it’s good Lucas is about to cry when he says this, but good that he did call them out for that moment, because it was really thoughtless and did have an emotional effect on him. They better feel the guilt from that and make up for that moment later by having Manon on the couch, or they all take turns, or something that doesn’t give Lucas nowhere to retreat in his own home.

Lucas doesn’t want to talk to them at first, but with some firm prodding by Mika, he says that Yann rejected him when he told him he was gay and that he feels like he’s being made fun of when he goes to school, everyone is whispering about him because of a guy who forced him to deal with it (Eliott, forcing Lucas to confront his sexuality) who went back to his girlfriend and doesn’t give a shit about him. He’s crying as he says this, for obvious reasons; it’d be horrible for anyone, let alone someone who has been hiding and bottling up his emotions from everyone.

I haven’t been the most complimentary toward Axel’s acting in the past; I wasn’t impressed with him in S1 and S2, and there are also some moments in this season where he felt off. But I think he does a really good job here. He sounds like a kid who’s barely holding it together and finally letting it all out.

Mika takes what I think is a good tactic and says to put aside Eliott right now. That’s important, because there are bigger issues underneath, more than one relationship. He says Yann isn’t homophobic. Yann has never had a problem with Mika, so there must be something else. (I agree with him that Yann isn’t homophobic, but I also think it’s possible for someone to have a different reaction to their best friend being gay vs their best friend’s older roommate who probably isn’t more than an acquaintance being gay. For example, the acquaintance probably isn’t encountered in many intimate or close contact situations, whereas a homophobe might start to freak out about sleeping in the same bed as his best friend or changing clothes around him. Again, not that I think this applies to Yann or that Mika should say anything like this to Lucas right now, just an observation.) Mika says it is frustrating when people react like assholes. He also says something really good, which is that Lucas will spend his whole life telling people he’s gay. This part is very good and true to life. Lucas will have to come out over and over, especially in a world that views heterosexuality as a default. And it might get easier but it’s not necessarily ever going to be easy. People will have varying reactions of acceptance. But Yann won’t leave Lucas. Mika is doing most of the talking, which is good because he’s the one with firsthand experience of coming out to many people, while Manon rubs Lucas’ shoulder.

Lucas is really crying and breaking down. He says no, they didn’t see how Yann walked away from Lucas and left him like an idiot. So Lucas feels that both Eliott and Yann have left him. He thinks he never should have told him. Which tbh is one reason I feel it was bad to have Yann react like that, because now we get statements like this, although Mika thinks it’s important to talk rather than keeping everything inside and suffering.

Lucas says Eliott doesn’t care about him. Manon says something really good, too, that Lucas isn’t gay because of Eliott. She mentions seeing the gay websites on his phone last year which … might be embarrassing and not the best thing to bring up in the moment when Lucas is already miserable, like the point is made clearly without that example, Manon. He says he didn’t know back then. Know that she saw the websites or know that he was gay (meaning he was questioning)? I think he meant the latter, so he was just kinda fumbling and figuring everything out in S1 and maybe didn’t consciously understand why he tried to sabotage Yann and Emma’s relationship. Although Lucas seemed like he knew what he was doing more than other Isaks, IMO, because his performance came across as more consciously manipulative to me than Isak, who seemed more haphazardly opportunistic. Which was why S1 Lucas reminded me of a serial killer and I didn’t care for him, lmao.

Anyway, Manon says that is was bound to happens someday, which is true. I don’t know if it totally doesn’t matter that Lucas fell in love with a guy now, because who knows, maybe Lucas would’ve had an easier time with coming out part if he were in university, or if he wasn’t struggling with rent and his family on top of everything else. But he would’ve had to deal with it sooner or later, or else repress himself and be miserable.

Mika says a closet is dark, narrow, and smelly. There’s no benefit to going back in there, so be proud and live your life. Fuck anyone who judges. Good speech, Mika, you’ve leveled up from your earlier appearances.

Lucas seems to be feeling a little better as Mika and Manon cuddle up to him. Lisa is like wait …. you’re gay? God forbid there’s ever a fire in the apartment because Lisa would be toast.

I think on its own, this was a really good scene with several important messages. It’s just that in context we have two white characters supporting a gay guy when the black character failed - and supporting him because the black character failed. And I don’t think Yann or any other black character needs to be put on a pedestal and depicted with no flaws, but with common stereotypes of black people being more homophobic than white people, and with this being a change in the remake rather than an adaptation of an original scene (like if Jonas rejected Isak and Eskild and Noora comforted Isak about it) it’s just a weird choice that they should have thought about from a broader perspective. I get that Yann comes around in a few clips but I don’t know why they needed to take away one of the character’s best moments for the angst. Lucas easily could have been crying over being outed at school by Chloé, for example, and have Manon and Mika comfort him over that.

Clip 2 - The happiest place on Earth?

Lucas goes to school and sees Basile and Arthur. They notice him and jump into action, seeming very chipper and supportive. Including Arthur, who was last seen hitting Lucas in the head. Uh oh. They know, don’t they.

Arthur’s glasses are taped up from the fight, lol.

Arthur “casually” drops in that oh, he was in a gay bar this weekend! So you know the boys, and probably the whole school, heard the news about Lucas being gay. Arthur is like, we should go sometime! Basile is like, we should go to Gay Pride! All of this is awkward but also, the best thing Basile has ever done, at least.

There’s no apology between Lucas and Arthur for the fight at Chloé’s party, which I don’t really mind because I can buy that Arthur maybe realized Lucas was struggling due to his sexuality and lashing out, and that he’s over it, and Lucas is just happy that his friends accept him. But I do think the fact that it’s totally glossed over is something that falls way more into Disneyland than not, lol.

Arthur mentions his mom’s friend Catherine, who is a lesbian. Errr, his mom’s friend, or his mom’s friend? Basile and Arthur are like, lesbians, so cool, and one version of the subs includes that they’re like “especially in porn”? I think it’s Arthur who says so. Heavy sigh if that’s the case, like ... of course. I guess that’s teenage boy Magnus-level ignorance on the level of “who’s the girl and who’s the guy” that I will put to the side for now, although I don’t think anyone’s going to roast Arthur for it like Isak roasted Magnus (which is what makes me cool with Magnus’ line, that it’s called out and even the other boys are shaking their heads at him). Anyway, Lucas looks amused or at least not upset by all of this.

Daphne interrupts by literally bursting through them to ask Lucas if he is gay. Basile leans forward to smell Daphne’s hair and she hits him in the face. GOD WHEN WILL THIS END. I mean, I would endorse an episode that’s just Daphne hitting Basile in the face, but even more I would endorse a season where we didn’t have this retrograde, creepy, sexist bullshit excuse for a budding romance. (And I’ve said the same thing about Noorhelm, lmao, but Skam France at least had the excuse of adapting the series closely from existing sexist bullshit. This is whole new sexist bullshit, and in some ways I find it even worse because Noorhelm/Marles are at least from the girl’s POV. Daphne doesn’t even get that dignity here.)

Lucas says it’s true and Daphne screams and launches herself at him. The boys look happy. Arthur says they were afraid of making fools for themselves. Lucas says they did, but that it was funny.

Daphne is happy for him but thinks it’s a waste for the girls. There’s a moment where Lucas is clearly thinking “... straight people ...” but he ends up saying he’ll take it as a compliment. Basile takes the moment to remind Daphne that he is extremely heterosexual, as if she or any of the rest of us could ever forget. We know you’re aggressively heterosexual. That is your one character trait. Daphne thinks he is also extremely annoying. She gives Lucas a vigorous kiss on the cheek before she leaves, and it seems like a presumptive gesture about how Lucas is her Gay Best Friend now but at least it made Basile mad. Basile pouts and Lucas is like, well, it seemed like she was thinking of you. So Lucas has been outed but is chill with it, and the real good news for everyone is that Daphne wanted to kiss Basile for reals? Yay! And by yay I mean WTF.

This is obviously a big moment for Lucas, and a nice scene for him in terms of his friends accepting him considering the talk Mika just gave him about people’s reactions, and of course how bad the first two times he came out went. So from that perspective, sure, I get why it’s enjoyable. But watching it in the larger context, ???????????????????

Skam France: Our version of the coming out scene was realistic. This isn’t Disneyland. Also Skam France: This scene.

Now I don’t think it’s unrealistic for Lucas’ other friends to support him once they learn he’s gay, not at all, but this clip? Total Disney. They might as well be wearing mouse ears. Hell, the boys were giving off such goofy chipmunk vibes that I legit thought of Chip ‘n’ Dale (no, really, look at Arthur’s face in this scene). It’s not just that they’re supportive and chill, it’s that they’re almost about to throw Lucas a coming out party in their enthusiasm, like if they had confetti and noise makers it would not be surprising. And yes, it is sweet of them to try to make Lucas knows they’re fine with him being gay, and the overcompensation from the straight friends is a thing that does happen in real life. But in the context of “this isn’t Disneyland”? Get out of here. You took away what would have been an iconic moment for Yann, but Lucas’ other (white) friends were OTT enthusiastic. All the white kids had a great initial reaction to Lucas coming out, it’s the black best friend who doesn’t. Curiously, in the original show, Mahdi had a great reaction to Isak coming out and was the one to chime in about pansexuality. In fact, in the same scene as Isak coming out to him, it’s shown that people were also stereotyping Mahdi with the gossip, saying he was an angry homophobic Muslim when Mahdi is not homophobic and isn’t even Muslim. Skam certainly wasn’t perfect on racial issues but that moment was actually toying with the expectations of the homophobic black guy and shutting them down. I really don’t think Skam France was trying to present that stereotype on purpose - I think the goal was just dramaaaaaa - but again, they should’ve considered the larger implications.

And lmao, this isn’t Disneyland but Lucas getting outed at school went swimmingly and he didn’t seem concerned at all? He didn’t come out to Basile, Arthur, or Daphne of his own volition, it was clearly via gossip that they learned. And instead he’s just like ... haha these goofballs? I get that perhaps he values his friends’ reactions and their acceptance more than what random other students might think, but this is perhaps the most jarring part of the scene for me, particularly in terms of supposed realism. Because if that’s your defense ...this material is definitely not more realistic than how it was handled in the original. Isak being outed at school wasn’t the end of the world for him, but it was something that made him uncomfortably visible to other students, with suddenly receiving attention from randos (even if they meant to be nice). When he came out to Mahdi and Magnus, he was nervous about it, and it went well but there were still the insecurities in his delivery and dialogue, Magnus had dumb comments, etc. It was nuanced, realistic and optimistic. This scene was going for happy but it also felt like it smoothed over more complex content.

However, I might not be as critical over that part of the scene had a) the damn Disneyland comment hadn’t been made just a few days prior b) a certain comment in the later clip with Chloé didn’t make it seem like they’re being dismissive of the effects of being outed.

Clip 3 - Lucas and Yann hug it out

Later that day, there’s activity in the common room, the boy squad making use of the new table football. Yann approaches the boys, you can see that Lucas gets a little happy when he sees him approach. Arthur gets Basile’s dumb ass to leave so it’s just Yann and Lucas.

Yann apologizes for leaving and says he needed to think about everything. And I have to say, some of what’s frustrating is that the straight character “needed to think about everything.” I get that not everyone reacts perfectly, that’s what Mika said earlier, but frankly, I don’t like that we have to make a gay character’s coming out about a straight character’s soul searching. That’s neither the time nor the place. It was important that Jonas didn’t make Isak’s coming out moment, a time of great vulnerability for Isak, about himself. And Lucas was in even greater distress than Isak, he was telling Yann all about how miserable he was prior to mentioning Eliott.

One way that I feel like they could’ve made Yann’s walk-off more justified for the ~angst - still very disappointing to ruin that iconic moment, but more understandable - would be to have Lucas come out, Yann is cool with that, but then as they’re talking and laughing Lucas lets slip how he ratted out Emma last year and Yann gets upset and walks away. Again, not the best time or place, but at least that would’ve clearly been about something wrong that Lucas did to Yann that Yann is right to get mad at, not cheap fake-out homophobia for the dramaaa.

Yann says he doesn’t have a problem with gay people, especially not Lucas, and it was a little weird to think about Lucas having a thing for him; it’s flattering but he doesn’t want thing to change between them. I mean, Lucas already told you that he fell in love with Eliott so lol, Yann, chill, he’s moved on.

Yann says Lucas is his best friend and that’s why he reacted badly, because Yann always told Lucas everything and was there for him, tried to give him opportunities to talk, but Lucas couldn’t do it and ended up talking to Mika and the girls, half the school knew because Yann did. Arrrrrrgh. THAT’S NOT WHAT HAPPENED. The only person Lucas actually told was Mika, another gay person (and seriously, if you can’t figure out why Lucas would come out to another gay guy first, get over yourself). But everyone else just guessed or found out by accident! In fact it kind of bothers me that this part is never corrected, like it almost feels like the narrative itself is conflating coming out with being outed. And Lucas told Yann on Friday that people “suspected” or gave him weird looks or whatever, which should’ve already given Yann a clue that Lucas isn’t telling them directly.

Anyway, Lucas says sorry, and thankfully Yann says he doesn’t have to apologize, because if that had slid by as justified I would’ve been pissed. Yann says he’s the one who needs to apologize, that if Lucas was afraid to tell Yann, it was because he was afraid of Yann’s reaction. I think it’s more complex than that, Lucas needed to accept himself as gay before telling anyone else, but Yann makes a thoughtful, empathetic point here. Yann realized he made a lot of gay jokes and homophobic comments, and he’s sorry for that. Lucas is sorry for not talking to Yann earlier. (For real, you have nothing to be sorry for! You don’t owe it to anyone to come out to them at a certain time!)

Yann suggests they hug it out, so they do, and Lucas cries from happiness. Yann says not to keep something like that from him again. At least Lucas should know to come to Yann later in the season when shit gets real.

Yann asks about Eliott, and Lucas says he and Eliott were supposed to pain the mural, and Yann suggests they do it together with Basile and Arthur. Why do I feel like letting Basile near a paintbrush is a bad idea? I just feel like he’s the kind of guy who would paint everything, consciously or subconsciously, to look like boobs.

There are some nice messages in this scene and I like that Yann took responsibility for his prior homophobic jokes, but what frustrates me again is that Yann didn’t actually need to walk away from Lucas in order to get that content? We could’ve had a supportive coming out scene on Friday, and today Yann tells Lucas he was thinking about it over the weekend and he realized all the crap he said in the past, and he wanted to apologize for everything. Therefore getting in the same good message while not resorting to cheap drama. Because yeah, I’m glad this plot thread didn’t go on longer, but the fact that it was so short and easily resolved kinda makes it more apparent how they just wanted a shocking Friday cliffhanger.

Clip 4 - Religion and science

Lucas sits down in class next to Imane. When he takes out his book, there’s a note inside. A drawing from Eliott. It’s his raccoon fursona, looking at his phone in one panel, with a sad face as there is no activity, and the next (the alternate universe) is the raccoon happily looking at the phone because there’s a message from Lucas asking about the drawing, and a response from Eliott (one that’s the same as the exchange from Isak and Even in the equivalent of this drawing). Lucas didn’t send Eliott a text yet, so I dunno how I feel bout this drawing in that light. Like Isak did reach out to Even after the first drawing, and the second was Even’s way of apologizing for not responding to Isak’s text, hinting at his internal conflict. Even was seriously giving mixed signals: let’s break up, actually here’s us in a parallel universe, now I’m not going to respond to you talking to me again, now here’s me responding finally and saying I miss you. But Eliott is sending him another note being like “talk to me” when it’s really not his call. Eliott broke up with Lucas and got back with Lucille, so Lucas has the right to ignore his drawings entirely. Lucas clearly doesn’t want to talk to Eliott and has not given any hints that he’s ready to talk. (But also ... then it gets ridiculous that Lucas is still like HE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT ME when Eliott is begging Lucas to talk to him, like Isak was getting the sense that Even was indecisive by his hot-cold dynamic, couldn’t make up his mind, would send a note and then ignore Isak for days. Eliott is now on fire for Lucas again, clearly. I guess it works if you think Lucas is trying to believe Eliott doesn’t care to avoid getting hurt again, but I don’t know if that’s in line with him crying and being upset about it.)

Anyway, Imane looks at the drawing, too. Lucas puts it away and asks Imane if she did her homework, and she says she thinks she messed up - like she did with Lucas before, about evolution theory and homosexuality. She says that homosexuality did play a role in evolution, and Lucas says she wasn’t wrong about everything, like the way science was used to hurt gay people. Imane says we’re past that now. Errr … “we’re past that” as in Lucas and Imane and their disagreement? Or past that in that science is no longer used to hurt gay people because … that is strongly debatable … even if it’s not as extreme as in prior decades…

Imane and Lucas agree that science and religion evolve, they just take time. Imane says that no religion condones homosexuality, but that none of them say to hurt homosexuals, and like, L M A O. You cannot say with a straight face that no religion is against hurting gay people. Even if the beliefs and practices aren’t like “stone gay people to death” there are plenty of churches that advocate for conversation therapy or other harmful practices. That statement is so bizarre? It assumes an inherent benevolence in religion by default, as if destructive and doomsday cults don’t exist, for an extreme example. And I think it’s also a sweeping statement to say no religion condones homosexuality, either, although it might depend on your definition of “condone.” There are some major faiths where homosexuality isn’t mentioned in the religious texts at all, so not exactly approval, but not explicit condemnation, either. This is just a weird line, and I seriously wish this conversation had been more focused on Islam (as Isak and Sana’s was) as not only are Imane’s lines so broad as to not make sense, but I feel like it’s more powerful talking about her own religion and her own experience and POV on it, rather than encompassing every single religion. Especially when Islam in particular is seen as hostile to gay people, like part of the reason Isak and Sana’s friendship was so important because there’s a belief that Isak’s sexuality and Sana’s religion means they cannot mix and they are incompatible as friends and could never get along. It’s a little odd to me that Islam itself feels downplayed in this conversation.

Lucas is all, so this means you’re asking for forgiveness? Imane tells him not to get cocky. Heh.

This is a sweet scene but I’m wondering how it’ll fit into the narrative. It happens in episode 8 in the original, and it directly prompts Isak to come out to his mom later that episode. Unless Lucas were to come out to her shortly after this clip, I feel like that purpose of this scene would get lost, unless they connected it to Imane again.

Clip 5 - Lucas and Chloé

Chloé is outside, Lucas sees her and goes up to her, she tries to leave but he tells her to wait. She’s like, here we fucking go again.

Lucas says he’s sorry for everything. He says he thought it could work with a girl like her, who was so beautiful and cool, but it’s not her, it just doesn’t work with girls at all for him. Chloé says that he sucks and that she really believed it. But that she doesn’t get what it’s like to be in his shoes and how she would have reacted, so maybe one day she could forgive him. You know what? It’s not perfect, but I do think this is a nice inclusion. She’s still mad at him but she does show empathy for his position, and acknowledges that she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be gay. At least it’s a sign of character growth. The resolution with Emma is the only thing that I would’ve liked more from with the original S3, and if Emma had said a line like this, I would have been more satisfied.

Lucas is about to go but then Chloé says she’s sorry too, because she might have gotten a little revenge by talking. Again, something that I do appreciate, her apologizing to Lucas for outing him, and if Emma had done this to Isak, I would’ve been pretty fine with the resolution of her character in S3. Lucas says not to worry, if she hadn’t he wouldn’t have had the courage to open up. WHAT. Are you fucking kidding me? You were doing so well with this scene and then you drop that unholy horseshit in there?

If Lucas had been like, “Don’t worry, we’re cool,” in the sense that he had forgiven her, or he was trying to move on and put it past him, then sure, I understand that. He doesn’t want to have a grudge or a standing feud or anything, and he knows he used Chloé and he’s thinking they both hurt each other, time to wipe the slate clean. Fine. But framing Chloé running her mouth in revenge as a good thing? Making the gay character grateful to the straight character for outing him? Fuck off.

If a real human being said this to someone ... I would disagree with the principle that the outing was actually OK but I’m not going to argue with someone’s personal experience and feelings. But Lucas isn’t a real person. He’s a character and the people behind the show put words in his mouth. In this case, he’s basically saying it was a good thing a straight person outed him in vengeance because he wouldn’t have had to courage to do it himself so soon. It is absolutely baffling why anyone thought this line was a good idea. It is again a case of prioritizing or soothing a straight character’s feelings. God forbid Chloé have to live with the guilt of outing someone? Because actually it was a good thing!

And Lucas did have the courage in him! He came out to Mika first, before Chloé started yelling about he was gay at a party, before he knew he’d been outed. But another thing about this line that bothers me isn’t just that it states the outing was a good thing in the end, it’s the idea that the gay character wasn’t brave enough to come out and he needed a straight person to force him out of the closet. Suggesting that Lucas just didn’t have the guts in him. Fuck off.

The beginning of this scene felt like an improvement over the handling of Emma’s character in S3 - and it’s pretty rare for me to think Skam France actually improves on Skam, tbh. But that one line? Makes the handling of this subplot even worse. It makes me grateful that we didn’t get Isak telling Emma how her outing him was actually for the best. It makes me wish Skam France had just copy-pasted the original scene. I would rather have Chloé not apologize than to have her apologize and get Lucas’ followup line.

The way the outing is treated in this episode bothers me so, so much, and this is perhaps the worst of it. It bothered me that Lucas seemed so unruffled by learning everyone he knows now knows he’s gay; it bothers me even more that Lucas is now alleviating the guilt of the straight girl who outed him because her selfish, vengeful action ended up giving him courage. What the fuck were they thinking.

Chloé says she’s happy for him and Eliott. Lucas says they’re not a couple, and that he believed in it more than Eliott did. Chloé says she knows what that’s like. They say goodbye. So they wrapped up that storyline wayyyy faster than in Skam. I wonder what’s gonna happen with that? Is this the last we see of Chloé? I feel like there will probably be one more clip with her toward the end, maybe as a send-off, maybe her and Yann hooking up. But her walking off did have a finality about it, so maybe not.

I feel like they’re flying through all these subplots and trying to make Lucas cool with everyone so they can get to the Lucas/Eliott content and drama. The Imane-Lucas conversation was in episode 8 for Sana and Isak, this conversation with Chloé was in episode 10 for Emma ... what are they going to put in place of those clips?

Yann and Emma come out and Emma is talking about her FWB thing with Alex. Yann says now that Lucas is done with Chloé, is it OK if he tries? LMAO. Well, that’s blunt. Lucas says it’s fine, but to do it right because Chloe’s a nice girl. Uhhhh, ok. Because of That Line this Chloé praise is putting a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t want to demonize her or anything but it’s just another sense of Poor Sweet Nice Chloé who didn’t do anything that bad, as opposed to Chloé being a mostly decent person who made a big, thoughtless mistake (like many of the characters on this show) but who apologized and matured. But at least Yann is checking with Lucas about pursuing Chloé, instead of dating her secretly like Jonas did with Emma.

Some POV-breakage as Emma sees Raptor Alex with a girl and it took me a moment to realize it was Manon due to the distance, despite her distinctive wardrobe. I thought she was just upset about Alex talking to some other girl all of a sudden, lmao. Anyway, Emma realizes that Manon and Alex are probably having a heated Charles-related discussion and that Manon isn’t opening up to her.

Clip 6 - Mural painting time

Boy gang is painting the mural. They bring up Eliott, Lucas explains Eliott’s drawings and the complicated situation. Dude, Lucas, in this case you’re the one not wanting to talk to Eliott. You’re the one making it more complicated. Eliott wants to talk to you. He’s dropping all these hints and yet you don’t buy them. I think it’s fine if you don’t want to talk to him, even if you don’t trust him, but at this point you’re the one holding out.

Arthur casually drops in that he was dating a 34-year-old with kids at some point … errr ... when did this happen ... how old was Arthur ... I wish I could be assured this was Arthur spinning some fabrication about his love life rather than showing us he has mad game with MILFs. (This is one of those moments where I’m like A Man Probably Wrote This because I cannot see anyone in OG boy squad commenting they were dating a 34-year-old mom as if the viewers were supposed to find this funny or impressive, unless it was Magnus telling an obvious lie to pretend he wasn’t a virgin.)

The boys give Lucas advice, but again, this is so weird because Eliott seems like the one chasing Lucas, and Lucas is the one retreating. They’re all “send him a message, push the matter” when Eliott is the one who has been trying to push the matter for almost two weeks? Skam France has been a lot better about not just copy+pasting the original show this season, but here’s an example where it creeps in, the execution is too borrowed from the original scene, not geared toward the different dynamic in Skam France.

Lucas texts Eliott, Eliott texts back that he wants to see Lucas, Lucas takes advice from the guys on what to send back. They’re like, say I’m busy, but do NOT send a gif. Lol, I like that bit. Emojis were out, now gifs are forbidden, too.

Lucas texts back that he’s busy with the mural and then gets worried when Eliott doesn’t respond. The boys encourage him, and Basile has his most redeeming line ever, that there are billions of Eliotts on the planet, but Lucas is unique. I will pay Basile a genuine compliment, that was a sweet thing to say.

Lucas gets a text that Eliott is arriving, so the boys leave. Basile is upset that they didn’t start the mural. Tbh, totally in character that he was more disappointed by not getting to paint his jizzing flower idea than by not getting to meet Eliott (opposed to Magnus who wanted to meet the famous Even).

Eliott walks into the room. Next to him is a poster that says, “It’s about time.” LMAO, that’s a fun production detail.

Lucas seems like he’s shaking. Eliott offers him a hand with the mural. Or, you know. With something else.

Clip 7 - Lucas uses his ass as a paintbrush

When Yann said earlier this week that the boys would help Lucas paint the mural, I knew Eliott and Lucas were going to get steamy while painting. I just ... did not expect bare asses in broad daylight.

Lucas and Eliott survey the mural and Eliott asks what he was planning on doing, Lucas says he doesn’t know. This conversation is obviously not really about the mural but their relationship status.

Eliott suggests going all Jackson Pollock on the mural. Can I just say ... one of the many things about this scene that bugs me, plausibility-wise, is that no one had any plans for the mural until they showed up? I’m not much of a painter, but ... wouldn’t the first step be to apply a coat of primer? I looked up ways to get rid of a mural and that was the first step on every guide. And wouldn’t the best course of action be to plan what you’re going to paint and draw a sketch of it or something? I realize that these are sloppy teenage boys who DGAF but changes are high the mural will be even uglier than it is now if you just let Basile and company paint whatever the hell they want with no particular vision.

Jackson Pollock was speculated to have bipolar disorder, by the way, so it is a nice detail that he’s Eliott’s go-to inspiration here.

Eliott demonstrates how to go all Jackson Pollock by throwing some paint at the wall. Lucas tries and Eliott teases him, and when Lucas laughs, Eliott says it’s good to see him smile, he missed it. Lucas is all “...” and says Eliott looked happy with Lucille last time. Eliott says he can’t say that. Ever since Eliott met him, Lucas is the only thing that’s mattered.

Tinkly piano music starts so you know shit is about to get real. ELiott throws more paint, Lucas stares at him, then throws paint. Thematically, you could say this is about covering up the old (Lucille and Eliott) to make something new (Lucas and Eliott). Eliott dabs paint on Lucas’ nose, Lucas throws paint back at him, they get into a paint fight. This part is legit cute, although lol, part of me is thinking they will have zero paint left for the mural since it’s all over each other. They’re covered in paint, and then they passionately kiss. Then they take off each other’s shirts. Then they take off their pants as they continue to kiss, pressed against the mural. The camera swoops and swoons. Ass happens. Paint smears on butt cheeks. They are definitely totally naked. Lots of dramatic staring into each other’s eyes. Sex is sure taking place.

An observation: Paint on human bodies looks striking and pretty at first, but then as it smears together, starts to look like they rolled around in mud and pig shit.

Look … this is not my type of scene. The dramatic cuts and edits, the music, the camera spinning around them. I get for a lot of people this clip was artistic and beautiful, and in another film, maybe it would be for me, too. I mean, I have seen the paint sex clip of J'ai tué ma mère, and it’s really good! Disclaimer, I have not seen that full film, but the editing and music in that scene works well.

By the way, I totally think this clip was prompted by fans asking for an homage to the film scene. I definitely saw fans asking for it back in S1 and S2. I don’t know if the Skam France crew has confirmed that, though.

@rabidkoalathug sent me a cool bit of trivia about the film scene, by the way: the original paint scene from j'ai tue ma mere, which this paint scene was inspired by, has a song in the background, right? it's called noir desir by vive la fete. the chorus goes like "C'est la manie" which translates to this is mania, or it's mania. i know there's no significance, but just thought it was a cool coincidence. I do, too! I think it actually does add some extra relevance to the scene as an homage, it’s a subtle hint about Eliott’s bipolar disorder if you’re familiar with the original scene and it ties the two scenes together. A fun little Easter egg.

Overall … this does not feel like Skam. And maybe this lends itself to a larger discussion about what Skam is supposed to feel like, and whether it can diverge from that. But I do expect shows with the Skam label to go for a certain level of realism - that doesn’t mean everything is cynical and gritty, but I do think it should feel fitting toward teenagers’ actual lives. I don’t expect Eliott’s big secret to be that he’s a werewolf, for example. I also don’t expect the characters to be 16-year-olds played by 30-year-olds dressed like they’re posing for the cover of a fashion magazine, or that everyone at the school dance will just happen to know the elaborate choreography for a song that isn’t the Macarena. Skam’s appeal was being grounded in the reality of being a teenager in modern Norwegian society.

This scene is not realistic and grounded. This doesn’t happen with teenagers. Even if two teenage boys started having sex while painting a mural at school after hours, the way this scene is filmed all dramatic and glamorous is not what the reality would be like. I mean … where’s the vulnerability? If they filmed this scene with more awkward fumbling, it would retain a sense of realism. Because this should be awkward! Even apart from the paint, it’s Lucas’ first time with a guy, probably his first time ever. That would be a lot to deal with on its own, and then you add buckets of paint into the scenario, and that would add its own brand of awkwardness even if this was the 1000th time they’d had sex.

Also, L O L forever at Yann having to walk away from Lucas because Realism and yet …. this scene happened.

Fandom went WILD reacting to this scene. While there was a big reaction to the coming out scene, feelings congregated toward anger and disappointment; this scene seemed divided between feelings of genuine enjoyment, bafflement, and hilarity. And in a way, I’m kinda glad this scene came after an episode where the presentation of Lucas being outed pissed me off, because I’m not pissed off at this scene at all. It’s just Too Much. They’re having sex in broad daylight, in front of giant windows, in a seemingly unlocked room.

If they had just ended on them passionately kissing, covered in paint, it would’ve been fine. I would’ve bought it. I know they want to show their first time having sex, but if they just woke up naked the next day at Eliott’s place, it would’ve made sense. If we saw them stumbling through the door at Eliott’s and stripping off each other’s paint-spattered clothes, it would’ve been fine. I mean, probably take a shower first or hose each other down, but sure.

I’m not even sure what to say that hasn’t already been said, lol. Just the paint, man, the paint. Like they definitely got paint all over their dicks. Paint drying in the cracks of their asses. Paint is not an acceptable substitute for lube, my dudes. I fucking lost it that the writer had to clarify it was non-toxic paint because everyone was concerned they would get lead poisoning and spend the aftermath of their sexy mural adventure in the hospital.

It’s still daylight, the sun is shining on them, and they’re right in front of the windows! What! And I know some people pointed out the windows are mirrored on the outside so people outdoors won’t see inside the room. But it’s still ridiculous! The doors aren’t locked! People could walk in! (And maybe this is just me, but I feel like even if you knew people couldn’t see you through the windows ...it’s just really hard to turn off that instinct that people could see you. Wouldn’t be the same for everyone, of course, but I’d still find it very weird.)

People mentioned that at a French school, typically everyone would be gone by that time and no one would be around to get a glimpse of the Lucas/Eliott technicolor bangfest. While that may be true on average, I would like to respectfully disagree and argue no, the chances that someone could have seen some paint-covered ass and balls are definitely more than slim:

The boys were there painting the mural. They were at the school doing stuff at that time! With that in mind, wouldn’t it be possible that there were other students doing things at the school, too? They have their own “murals” and projects to work on? If no one’s supposed to be there that late, then why are the boys there, anyway?

Eliott was at the school. He hauled ass to the mural really fast, like less than a minute after he texted Lucas. So “no one at the school” is false because Eliott had to be hanging around the school for whatever reason at that time. It had to be a normal, conceivable thing for him to do.

This school has an established night security guard who comes in on Fridays. Now, it might be too early for his shift to start. But isn’t it also possible that there are people like this guard, or groundskeepers, or janitors, people who might be checking up on the school after hours?

But errr, the smoking gun, the point that matters most: YOU CAN LITERALLY HEAR PEOPLE TALKING AND MAKING NOISE IN THE HALLWAY. When the boy squad leaves and when Eliott comes in, you can hear some chatter from people outside the room. It sounds like the gym is nearby, actually? That’s what it reminds me of, like maybe there’s sports practice or a game or something going on. And you can hear people talking even when Lucas and Eliott start painting the mural. It’s not even hard to notice? Listen when Eliott is telling Lucas it’s good to see him smile, for instance. You can clearly tell there are people nearby.

I don’t think it was necessary for me to lay that out, however, it makes you wonder ... why did they include the sound of the people talking in the hallway right before Lucas and Eliott start fucking at school? Like was that sound just there naturally because the school was being used for something else besides filming at the time? Because that’s certainly a thing to remove with editing. But lol, I’m just imagining if the Skam France editors put that in on purpose, like hey, wouldn’t it be even hotter if we implied they’re having sex where they could totally get caught by the basketball team or whatever?

There are ass prints on that wall. Just to commemorate Lucas’ deflowering.

Just a note: My comments and criticisms about this scene are basically coming from an artistic perspective. What I don’t want to do is diminish the effect scenes like this may have for LGBT youth in France, or LGBT people in general, because even if the execution of this clip is too OTT for my taste, I’m sure it also means the world for other people to see Lucas and Eliott happily and passionately have sex on television. In the grand scheme of media, scenes like this are still revolutionary. That’s something I feel about Skam France overall, too; I have a lot of issues with this season, but I’m aware how important it is to people, not just on a level of “I like this show a lot” but “Media like this genuinely improves my life for the better, Lucas’ story gave me the courage to come out, etc.” I don’t think being important means it can’t be criticized on a basic writing/directing/acting level, but I also don’t want to ignore how media like this can touch people’s lives. Anyway.

I do want to give Skam France credit for this: they sure didn’t shy away from showing gay intimacy. This was way more explicit than anything shown with Yann/Emma or Charles/Manon. And whether you think there’s an element of fan pandering to it, as some do (because the people behind the remakes have to know those Evak fans are a vital resource) it is still important to see gay intimacy normalized on TV and not hidden behind closed doors. In this case ... almost literally, lmao.

Social Media/General Comments:

Mika posts pics with Lucas calling him his protege, and there are more flat pictures after the intervention, so at least Lucas has more warmth coming from that front. He probably feels closer than a distant cousin by now.

For someone who’s apparently not into Raptor Alex other than FWB, Emma makes sure to document their grocery-buying trips in great detail. That’s pretty domestic.

Lucas texts Mika after people at school know that he’s gay, and Mika refers to himself as Lucas’ mentor, which frankly took him long enough? And calls Lucas kitten as Eskild called Isak godkitten. Again, at least Lucas feels more like his home is a home.

But not to harp on this again... Lucas being like, it’s done, everyone at school knows, it wasn’t so bad! Uhhh, it’s not like Lucas walked into school wearing a shirt that said “I’M GAY”or made a public post on his IG or anything that was his choice. He was outed. And I can certainly accept that he realizes it’s not so bad to be out of the closet, but still ... he was outed and him being like “it wasn’t so bad” just seems like such a ridiculous dismissal. Like yay, the matter was taken out of Lucas’ hands, but it’s fine! I’m just confused why the Skam France crew want to make statements about homophobia in France on their SM but then minimize Lucas’ outing to nothing, really. I’m not saying he has to suffer a ton because of it - Isak didn’t - but there was at least some sympathy in how Isak’s outing was depicted, I felt like Julie actually did understand that being outed wasn’t so great (even if we didn’t get an apology from Emma like with Chloé).

And I feel weird making criticisms like that because the Skam France screenwriter is gay? I don’t know how much he’s adapting the story to his personal experience. Maybe this is how it went for him or someone he knows. But I do think you can’t defend choices as “realistic” or have scenes where Mika talks about how people react badly to coming out sometimes, and then present this outing as NBD.

Eliott’s secret account started to follow Lucas on IG during the week. I feel like he just wanted Lucas to pay attention and notice him, lmao, after sending him multiple drawings didn’t do the job. He also “subtly” listens to a song called Toi Et Moi (you and me).

Okay, I’m laughing at the pictures and IG stories with like the boy squad posing in front of the mural with brushes and paint cans when they did not do a SINGLE fucking thing as far as actually painting the goddamn mural. They literally spent more time taking selfies than painting.

But Lucas did make sure to take a picture of the messy paint-covered canvas on the floor after he and Eliott fucked, and Manon says she can’t wait to see the result. Manon … you will see the result of what happens when Lucas and Eliott decide to take their “painting”escapades back to the apartment. You will see it all over the place.

Eliott posted a pic of Jackson Pollock at work on IG and Lucas liked it. So the mystery is no longer a mystery to Lucas, he knows about Eliott’s IG.

I hope in S4 Eliott just continues to post cryptic things on his IG, but because we’re no longer in Lucas’ POV or following their story, they’re just completely random and drive the fans up a wall with trying to figure out what the fuck he means. A mango? Why the fuck did Eliott post a mango?? Alas, we shall never know.

I am not French so please feel free to clarify or correct me on cultural or translation notes.

If you got this far - especially when this wasn’t a very positive recap - thank you for reading!

#skamfr reactions #skam france reactions

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