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innytoes · 3 years

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Self-Insert January: Let’s Go Steal A Protégé

Yes I did write a self-insert fanfic of my own fanfic. Most of this was written in December and then um, January happened. This takes place December, probably before Christmas (and is obviously not canon).

Happy Self Insert month!

Being with Leverage, Jamie had seen a lot of weird stuff. Done a lot of weird stuff, too. But all the breaking into highly classified places and museums and pretending to be a circus performer and jumping off the Eiffel Tower did not prepare them for the magic portal that opened up in the ceiling of the Leverage Offices, or the lady that fell through it.

Luckily, their startled yell had summoned an Eliot, which meant that if this was the beginning of an intergalactic space war or some kind of mutant criminal rival of Parker’s, Team Leverage was going to come out on top.

Except Eliot actually put away his knife and greeted the lady, who struggled out of the squashy purple beanbag chair she landed on. “Hardison, Parker, Inny’s here!” he called.

“What the hell is an Inny?” Jamie asked. Was it a species of alien? Was Hardison’s Doctor Who obsession because they literally knew The Doctor? Honestly, it wouldn’t really surprise Jamie.

“I the hell am an Inny,” Ceiling-Lady said, before gasping and pointing at them. Which was concerning, to say the least.

“That’s Inny,” Hardison said, coming into the office and handing the lady one of Jamie’s Mountain Dews. Rude. “She’s from a darker timeline and drops out of the ceiling once or twice a year to catch up. And get inspiration for her fanfiction. Apparently we’re like, a TV show over there. What’s up, girl?”

“Is that why nobody is allowed to move the beanbag chair?” Jamie asked. They had thought it was some weird Parker thing. Or perhaps that it was on top of some kind of secret trap door to Hardison’s BatCave or something. They ignored the part about the fanfiction and the TV show. That was too Truman Show to think about. Though their brain was already going over actors they’d cast as the team. Eliot would totally be played by Chris Evans, right?

Inny stopped chugging the Mountain Dew long enough to shrug. “They used to live somewhere with way lower ceilings. Nearly broke something falling from this one.”

“Yeah, me,” Eliot grumbled. He nearly broke something again when Parker dropped down from the ceiling onto his back. “Dammit, Parker!”

“Inny!” Parker proclaimed. “How is Deeks?”

“Good!” the lady fished a beaten up phone out of her pocket. “He met some alpacas, wanna see?” Parker snatched up the phone and made delighted noises. Jamie peered over her shoulder. They had to admit the dog was pretty cute, and the alpacas looked very intrigued by their small, same-coloured, short-necked friend.

“How’s life in the darkest timeline?” Hardison asked.

“What date is it here?” the lady asked, looking around. “I mean, if you still know.”

“Why wouldn’t we know?” Parker asked, still swiping through dog pictures.

“Well, I mean, 2020, am I right?” Inny said, waiting for a reaction. She looked incredulous at their blank faces. “It is 2020, here, right?”

“Um, yeah?” Hardison ventured carefully.

“How dark is this timeline of yours?” Jamie asked carefully. Sure, it was a tumblr joke, usually reserved for stuff like the however-many-renewed-season of Supernatural when great shows were cancelled or whatever creepy feature FriendCzar had tried to impose that month.

The woman paused, frowned, then took a deep breath. “In response to the global pandemic of a deadly respiratory virus, President Donald Trump suggested on television during a briefing that people should inject or ingest bleach to kill the virus.” She took another big breath. “And that’s not mentioning the fact that he downplayed the seriousness of the virus while knowing how deadly and contagious it was, called it a hoax, made taking safety precautions a political thing instead of a public safety thing, and held massive super-spreader events.”

“Donald Trump?” Jamie asked. “The ‘you’re fired’ dude?”

“Oh my sweet summer child,” Inny responded, before taking another swig of her Mountain Dew. “Yeah, I mean, I thought the fact that Australia was on fire at the start of the year was going to be the only terrible thing I was going to tell you.” She laughed and shook her head ruefully, like that was some kind of funny joke.

“Australia was on fire?”

“Yeah. Parts of the US too, for a while. Orange skies. But since the country was basically on lockdown anyway, it wasn’t like it was very different to stay inside for that…” Jamie stared at the lady, then back at the adults. Parker didn’t look overly concerned, but then, she never really did. Eliot and Hardison were both frowning, though. There was no sign that this was some kind of elaborate prank Hardison was pulling on them with the help of one of Sophie’s acting friends. Besides, he was good, but not ‘fake opening a magic portal in the ceiling’ good. At least not within the five minutes Jamie had been in the other room.

After a litany of horrible things, which were apparently not even all of them, the woman stopped. “On the upside,” she said. “I perfected my banana bread recipe, Deeks met some alpacas, Leverage is getting a reboot, and I figured out why I probably keep dropping in here.”

“To remind us that things aren’t so bad like some messed up version of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’?” Hardison guessed.

“Because Jamie is my OC,” she said, dropping a fucking bombshell like she just dropped out of the fucking ceiling. Jamie felt their brain fill with static, because no, they were a real person, and that either meant that this lady was full of bullshit, or, well, basically god. The Truman Show feeling returned ten times over. “This is my fanfic.”

Hardison recoiled a little. “No,” he whispered, fully understanding the implications of that. Hell, it was probably even weirder for him. Sure, knowing they were a TV show was probably cool, even more so with the reboot. But Fanfic Land didn’t fade to black and Jamie was pretty damn sure some kinky shit went on behind the soundproofed doors of their bedroom.

“Now, there’s two prevailing theories about this, as far as my internet rabbithole searches can tell,” Basically God Maybe continued. “Either I wrote this world into existence, because the multiverse is ever expanding and that is one of the ways it expands, or I just got some vibes from whatever crack between worlds keeps bringing me here and wrote down your shenanigans.”

At Parker and Eliot’s blank looks, Jamie clarified: “Basically, she’s either God or…”

“Some kind of shitty false prophet,” the lady on the beanbag chair beamed. “Probably the second one, honestly. My subconscious turns everything into a zombie apocalypse sooner or later, and you guys seem to be fine.”

Jamie whipped around to look at Hardison and Eliot, hopeful. “We’re fine, right?” they asked quickly. If anyone knew about a starting zombie apocalypse, it would be those two. Between Hardison poking around in basically every intelligence agency’s server ever and Eliot’s contacts, they’d know. God, Jamie hoped not. They were so not ready for a zombie apocalypse. Eliot hadn’t even taught them how to murder someone with an axe yet.

“We are definitely fine,” Hardison assured them.

“Yeah, I figured,” Not-God agreed. “If I had my say, Eliot would have stopped pining long before he did and kissed you guys.” Eliot grumbled and glared, probably because she was right. Parker patted him condescendingly on the head, which wasn’t helping matters.

The ceiling started crackling and glowing ominously. The lady put her can down as she slowly drifted off the beanbag, alien-abduction style. “Well, it’s been real. Be good, guys. Have some fun adventures. Ruin some rich douchebag’s day for me.”

“Will do,” Parker promised. “Say hi to your dog for me.” She got a thumbs up.

“Let us know how the reboot turns out,” Hardison said. Jamie figured it would probably fuck with the space-time continuum if she downloaded the show and brought it to them, but who knew. Maybe there was some kind of loophole for that, too. They were kind of curious to see what a Leverage show would look like. It probably had kickass fight-scenes.

“Stay safe,” Eliot said seriously. He’d been the most concerned about the talk of the pandemic, probably because you couldn’t punch it.

“Will do,” Inny shrugged. “I mean, 2021 can’t possibly be any worse, right?”

The portal crackled louder, which Jamie hoped wasn’t a sign. The lady was almost at the ceiling. She looked concerned, like she realised she just totally jinxed herself and the new year.

“Hey, just in case you are god,” Jamie called up. “Can you give me superpowers?”

The portal closed to the sound of laughter, and then there was silence. All that remained was a dent in the beanbag and an empty can of Mountain Dew.

“What the fuck,” they told the room at large.

“Yeah, you get used to it,” Parker said, before wandering off back to the blueprints she had been studying.

“I’m just gonna… check some things,” Hardison muttered, making a detour to the kitchen to grab a ginormous bottle of orange soda before getting behind his computer. “And buy a bunch of disinfectant and toilet paper, just in case.”

Eliot rolled his eyes, before bumping his shoulder against Jamie’s. “Come on,” he said.

“Come on where?” Jamie asked. “I’m having a bit of an existential crisis here.” If they were someone’s OC, did that mean that they didn’t have free will? Did it mean that all the cool things they had done the past year had only been because of some weird lady that fell out of the ceiling? Or did it mean-

“I’m gonna teach you to throw a knife so you can take out a zombie,” Eliot said.

Fuck that, the existential crisis could wait until 2am. They had more important things to do. Knife throwing would be fun and useful no matter if there was a zombie apocalypse or a pandemic, or they got superpowers.

#fanfic #self insert month #I wrote a thing #leverage #lets go steal a protege #HardisonxParkerxEliot #I almost didn't post this because of you know the civil war thing in the US #but then I thought wouldn't it be funny if this was pre-january and self insert Inny was just like: well fuck #dear americans I'm sorry #yes Deeks did meet some alpacas it was adorable

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need-a-new-hobby · 4 years

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The Boogeyman

summary: oc is dr. piper bishop. you may find a full profile on my tumblr (soon). her qualifications are 4 Ph.Ds in different branches of psychology, a master’s in history and bachelor’s in literature all by 22 (I wanted her to compete w/ reid). based on S2E6: The Boogeyman

When her honey-brown eyes fluttered awake, it was still dark. 5:30 am. She rose out of bed, rubbing her eyes, like a child waking up on a Sunday morning. Slipping on her ruby slippers, she staggered to the kitchen, remnants of last night’s class schedule and history projects strewn across her beige countertop, to make a cup of tea. It was strange, here in Ozona, to drink iced coffee, never mind tea. She set the kettle, pulled her long cardigan to cover her chest and regarded the manor in the woods. The whistle shattered her gaze at the dilapidated house.

In Virginia, 6 agents discussed the death of two children in the middle of Texas. "Nicholas Faye of Ozona, Texas, was beaten to death roughly 13 hours ago. Blunt force trauma to the head," JJ sighed. There was never a good day nor time to deliberate on innocent and defenceless children. But she’d worked this job too long to slip into that pattern of doom and gloom. "He’s the second young boy to die the same way in the last 2 months. A local hunter found his body in the woods. First victim’s name, Robbie Davis."

"Are these boys connected somehow?" asked Morgan.

"Ozona’s population is roughly 2 500. Everyone has some kind of connection."

"Well, if they weren’t linked before they certainly are now." Morgan wore the same grim expression of exasperation as JJ. The agents agreed that they were both murdered by the same offender who was hunting children. The repulsiveness wasn’t lost on any of them.

^-^

Piper Bishop was a history teacher. She asked herself why every day. Every day she’d sit on her front porch, sipping on tea, asking why. Her entire life, she’d wanted to help people, and her entire life, she questioned if it was enough. She wasn’t smart enough to go to medical school, her father had made sure she understood that at most. Her clear preference for the humanities was seen as repulsive, condemned for "supporting these damn bleeding-heart liberals". Neither were Daniel’s remarks lost on her either. She remembered her last reunion with her siblings. "You have 4 Ph.Ds Pipes," he’d said, blues gazing at browns. "Why are you teaching school kids?" She’d find the answer every time a young girl whispered about a bully in her ear, every time a young boy bared his scars to her. She’d tried doing the psychiatry gig, but the stigma behind her patients meant she had none. Her father’s words still stuck to her. Though she’d shaken him off, his voice became her own. What if he is right though? What if you really won’t amount to anything? Piper laughed at her own absurdity. She’d almost missed the sunrise. The warm sun peeking out at her behind the trees melted away all her doubts. "Time for school Dr. Bishop."

^-^

"You guys hear Elle was cleared?" Spencer sat down with his cup of hot coffee next to Derek. Well, more sugar than coffee anyway.

"Self-defence," Derek stated, flipping through the files, with an air of disbelief.

"So it was a good shoot." Derek turned towards the young agent.

"She hit what she was aiming for." JJ commented without a glance at the two men in front of her, eyes focused on the case at hand.

"That’s not what I meant."

"I know." The blonde agent said.

"If they cleared her," Morgan asked, "then how come she’s not here with us? Or Hotch?"

"Focus on the case," Gideon reprimanded, seated away from them. Taking it as a sign to change the conversation, JJ handed out the autopsy reports. Morgan then suggested the bludgeoning was a form of frustration or rage.

"With no apparent sexual motivation," Reid added, "that’s rare when the victims are this young."

"The unsure is taking pleasure from the kill itself." Gideon contributed.

"If it’s not sexual, what’s the significance in killing young males?"

"Most serial killers prey upon specific types to carry out fantasies of revenge.” Spencer answered, drawing on his memory. “Bundy killed women that looked like an ex-girlfriend who jilted him, Dahmer claimed that schoolyard harassment federal into his fury."

"Okay, so maybe these kids represent someone who victimised the offender?"

"Unlikely," JJ replied, "they just found another body. 11 year old girl."

^-^

Piper glanced over her desk quickly once more. Her worksheets were ready, her timeline of Alexander the Great was drawn up and her map of Alexander’s territory was pinned, dotted with little flags and sketched out. She was determined to make this module the best one yet to make up for the tension in the classroom. She’d already lost 2 kids to that coward in the woods, she wasn’t about to lose a third. The Persian horde had arrived and the young doctor opened the gates to receive the 45 little kids raging to their beloved history teacher. No, 43 now, she chided herself. Closing the door, she mentally reminded her to control her emotions. She turned to face her little devils, "Who’s ready to fight the Macedons?"

Her warm eyes flitted across the desks. That was weird. Three desks were empty this time. "Has anyone seen Sarah?" She entertained her class for a while and told them to take a worksheet each while she made a call. Piper popped her head into Mr Davison’s class and asked him to keep an eye on her class. She tapped her fingers erratically while the administration office checked up on Mrs Peterson. "Well,?"

"Dr. Bishop, Sarah’s not at home either."

Piper took a shaky breath before entering her classroom. She’ll be fine. She probably got lost on her way to school. The police will do their job. Relax.

"Okay, who can tell me who Alexander is?"

Hailey jumped up and recited, "Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and a member of the…" The young brunette stumbled. Piper could see the happiness leech from the young girl’s face.

"Argead dynasty, idiot." Jeffrey yelled, sticking his tongue out. "She can’t even speak. Are you dumb, Hailey?"

"Enough, Jeffrey, don’t you ever put someone else down for trying. If you keep your head down and keep studying, maybe you can be a teacher too, but trying and failing is better than doing nothing at all." Piper turned her attention to the tears rapidly forming in the child’s blinking eyes. Piper handed her a tissue from her desk and kneeled down next to her. "It’s okay kiddo. We make mistakes sometimes. That doesn’t mean we stop trying. What do you think that word says?" After a couple of tries, Hailey got the hang of it, and Piper could move on.

"Alex spent most of his years on a military campaign through western Asia and northeast Africa," Piper said, drawing their attention to what she’d say was an impressive map. "And by the age of thirty, he had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from Greece to northwestern India."

^-^

Gideon and the local sheriff trudged through fallen leaves to the site of where the battered boy was. "This isn’t a dump site," Gideon noted, "the murder happened right here." Kneeling down, he said, more to his own benefit than the sheriff, "Autopsy report claims no sign of a struggle."

"Poor little guy never had a chance."

Gideon envisioned the incident. The 8 year old boy walking past, turning back to see his abuser.

"The victims knew their killer." He muttered to himself. "Followed them to this spot."

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, the kids went this deep into the woods because they trusted them. Probably stashed his weapon here beforehand. We’re looking for someone intelligent, methodical, but the method of killing doesn’t fit. It’s confusing. Doesn’t make sense." Gideon’s words were as fragmented as his thoughts, desperately trying to pull the pieces together.

Less than a quarter mile away from the other dumpsites, the gangly doctor stood next to the bagged and battered kid. "Violence was post-mortem," revealed the medical examiner on the case, equally horrified at the scenes unfolding over the past few weeks.

"So, the killer’s becoming more brazen."

"But now he’s spending more time with the victims even after death." Morgan glanced at the yellow 'Hunting Area' sign nailed to a tree. "If he’s a hunter," Derek turned to Spencer, "he’d know every inch of these woods."

^-^

The PA squealed out just as Piper was getting to the Persian conquest. "All students, please head to the assembly hall immediately, all teachers to the teacher’s lounge." The young woman herded the daydreamers out, grabbed her Doctor Who mug and rushed to the lounge. Whilst pouring herself a cup of coffee, James told her about the parents and the BAU members coming to discuss the murders. Steeling herself for a gruesome speech, Piper headed over to the hall to introduce the kids to FBI agents while James stayed behind to console parents. While the soles of her sneakers rushed, her head wandered. Who were these agents? Were these kids gonna be okay? At the entrance to the hall, her forehead wrinkled and her body collided with a lanky agent and her warm coffee stained the whole of both their cardigans, her brain juice spilling all over the floor.

"Sorry," they both exclaimed. Gideon and JJ walked by, snickering as she entered the hall, but Gideon barely spared them a glance.

"Seriously, I am so sorry." Piper gushed. "I have some tissues, and there’s a bathroom right there."

The agent just laughed and took the cardigan off. "Don’t worry about it, it’s brown anyway." He stared at your TARDIS mug. "Is that…" Piper blanched. Did she now also have to explain Doctor Who to him?

"I know it looks like a phone booth but it’s actually a…" She stumbled. "I have no idea how to explain this without sounding like I’m a complete lunatic."

"No, I know what Doctor Who is." He chuckled softly.

Piper sighed in relief. "Finally, you have no idea the glances I get for this thing."

"Reid!" Gideon yelled from the hallway.

"That’s me. Bye." Spencer waved awkwardly at the young woman in front of him, before sidestepping her quickly to get to his mentor.

^-^

"It could be someone you know or it could be a stranger you pass at the grocery store. But it’s vital that we keep our eyes open and our children close. Now as Ozona’s guidance counsellor, I can only help your children with the aftermath but our police department is working with the FBI, gathering information on the case. To elaborate on that, Agent Jason Gideon." James introduced the middle-aged agent to the anxious parents sitting in the lounge. Reid stood behind his mentor.

"We want you to know we’re doing everything we can to find the person responsible. Until we do there are a number of precautions you need to take. Let me go over some of them with you."

^-^

Piper watched the kids attentively, just barely paying Agent Jareau and Agent Morgan attention.

"It’s a buddy system," JJ started. "That means you always go everywhere with a friend."

"That’s because bad men and women only talk to us when we’re alone."

"We don’t know what these guys look like yet. It might be someone you know."

Hailey raised her hand.

"Yeah, sweetheart, you got a question?" Piper was touched by the kindness in Agent Morgan’s voice. You couldn’t fake that tenderness.

Hailey took a deep breath, "There was this little girl once on the news who just got grabbed right in front of our house. Could that happen to us?"

The tall agent looked back at Agent Jareau. Piper understood the hesitation.

"Hailey, sweetheart, nothing will happen to you, you have my word." She walked over to the young girl and gently rubbed her shoulder. "So long as you listen to the FBI, honey." She nodded to the agents and stepped back.

^-^

"Any more questions?" Gideon asked.

"Did you ever find his hat?" Mrs Faye asked in a trembling voice, fighting the urge to cry.

"'Scuse me?" Jason was confused.

"The red one I put on him. He was wearing it when he left."

"I’m sorry, Mrs Faye," Jason rubbed his hand.

"Mandatory curfew at 5pm." James interjected and dismissed the parents. "Just make sure you know where your children are."

^-^

Piper grabbed her bag after the last bell had gone. The ghosts of Robbie, Nicholas and Sarah hadn’t left your head. She wished she could kiss the fear away from those kids. Piper jumped at the rap on the door.

"Agent Morgan. What can I do you for?"

"Just a few routine questions." Piper gestured to the seat next to her desk.

"How can I help you?"

"How long have you worked here?"

"Must be about a year now."

"As a history teacher?" Piper smiled.

"Did you guess from the armour and the coffin?" The tall doctor swung his head to take a look at the almost replica of armour.

"Have you noticed anyone looking at the children in a strange way?" Morgan continued.

“Is this an original?”

“Gods, no. Everyone knows a teacher doesn’t make enough to own original Macedonian armour. Also Greece refuses to sell any artefact to American citizens considering their scuffle with the British Museum.” Her eyebrows furrowed as she considered Morgan’s question. "I don’t think so. The chances of a child predator in a small town are ridiculously low since state law requires registered sex offenders live 2,000 feet from schools and Texas’s registry is public. I suppose the problem would then be unregistered ones, in which case, kids are always under supervision. Most likely, only someone the kids trust would be the coward doing this. In that scenario, the only adults with that kind of trust would be family friends, family, the teachers and the bus driver. I’ve met all the parents and none of them fit the psychological requirements of a sexual predator and honestly, neither do the teachers."

Morgan smiled at your thought process. "Huh, you’d make quite the profiler, but we don’t think it’s a sexual act since the bodies don’t show any sign of a sexual assault."

Piper mulled over the new information. "I know those kids. They’re good kids and even if it just boils down to a case of rage, no adult within their inner circles would be capable of such a thing. It’s not that it’s impossible, but it is highly unlikely. A lot of these people have kids of their own." She saw the disbelief on their faces so she switched tacks. "What’s your profile of the killer?"

"We can’t disclose that to the public yet."

"Then think of it as a consultation." Piper said, pulling out her resume from an inner drawer.

Morgan whistled and Reid glanced at the sheet over his shoulder. "4 PhDs in clinical, child, abnormal and counselling psychology. Why are you a history teacher?"

Piper glanced at the door. "Everyone told me to start my own practice, and I did." She pointed at the glowing resume in Derek’s hands. "When people heard about this, they came too. But slowly they stopped. At first I thought it was a good sign. But I’d call them in a month, and they’d tell me they’d slipped back into their addictions, or their depressive episodes." She combed her hand through her hair.

"So I quit, packed my bags, moved to Ozona and asked for a teaching position." She let out a shaky breath. "I am more than qualified to help you out, Agent Morgan, so please let me." Morgan looked back at Reid who shrugged.

^-^

"Can I have your attention please?" The local department turned to focus on Agent Gideon. "We’d like to make something clear." He cleared his throat. "Due to the velocity of change, we predict this offender could try to strike again at any time. His confidence builds with every attack."

"Look for someone physically fit, shy, kind disposition. Someone you may trust with your own child. Because the killer targets kids, he may be small himself," Morgan took over, "and though we keep referring to this unsub as he, do not rule out a woman."

A mother and her young son rushed over to the small congregation. Piper recognised her. "Excuse me. My son Matthew never came home today."

Gideon stepped forward, asking where he was last seen. "His teachers saw him in the parking lot after school." At that moment, all officers and agents moved to start looking for the boy. Reid and Morgan turned to the map, trying to figure out how and where he may be taken. Noticing the woman in distress and panic, JJ asked the woman to take a seat. Piper watched the scene from a corner and focused on the little boy with her.

"What are you thinking about over here?" She knelt down in front of him.

"Nothing," said the child softly.

"You look awfully upset to be thinking about nothing. Wanna tell me what’s wrong?"

"Matty said he was just gonna ring the doorbell. At the haunted house. On the hill."

"Finnegan’s place," interrupted James.

"Forever kind of a local legend," the sheriff informed the agents. "Folks say he watches kids from the window. Hunts 'em. Skins 'em. Eats 'em."

"Why weren’t we told about this?" Morgan faced the sheriff. "Fables often come from an ounce of truth. We should exhaust every possibility."

^-^

As day turned to night and the FBI agents raided Finnegan’s manor, Piper sat on her porch, mulling the profile over and over. She knew the people in town. She’d have known if there was a killer in their midst. Do you, though? You think you know better that professional profilers? What, because you wrote a few research papers in 4 years. Get a grip. She glanced at Old Man Finnegan’s place. He’d stopped coming into the town after his wife died, she knew that much. No, it couldn’t be him. Why would the kids trust a man they fear? So, who? Shaking her head, the young woman walked into the house. She grabbed a mandarin from her little fruit bowl and busied herself making a cup of tea. I have to be making an assumption. C’mon Pipes! Her mind flashed back to class. The little boy in her 7th grade class yelling at little Hailey then the incident in April in the parking lot. Ignoring the yell of her kettle, Piper left her orange on the counter and rushed to her dining table to her binders. She scrambled to her 7th grade class binder. Jeffrey Charles and on top, her cursive handwriting that her mom was so damn proud of. Father, James Charles, guidance counsellor. Mother, unknown, left in Apr. 2006. She flicked to her notes.

Disruptive. Borderline bully. Possesses strained empathy for others. Loner. Apathetic towards school. Can be attributed to broken family.

She glanced at the time. 1:30 am. Shit. Should I call Morgan anyway? Piper pulled out her phone and the card Derek had given her. Not giving her brain the chance to overthink, Piper dialled the number. After 7 rings, she hangs up. Of course he didn’t pick up your call. Did you really think what you have to say matters? She brushed the nasty voice of her dad off, but left the phone on the table. She took the kettle off, turned the lights off, locked the door, and went to bed.

^-^

The boys separated in the night, torches and guns at the ready. Gideon and Reid took the back while Morgan and the sheriff took the front of the house. Morgan flicked the lights on and off, but nothing happened. "Definitely haunted."

Gideon and Reid edged towards the garage. "FBI," Gideon yelled, only to hear the soft mumbles of a child.

"I didn’t want the old man to find me."

"All right," Gideon said, rather gruffer than he intended, "No one’s gonna harm you."

^-^

Spencer settled down in the darkness. "Hey Garcia, did you get anything?" he greeted their tech analyst softly.

"Well, only that Finnegan’s house in the hill is like the Bates hotel of Ozona, Texas." She grinned and continued her knitting.

"Yeah, we heard the legends."

"Spencer, seriously, people that go into that house supposedly never come out. SpoOky!" Penelope sang.

"Garcia, could you at least pretend not to enjoy that rumour so much considering I’ve actually entered the house?"

"Sensitive," she mocked the young doctor. "Sorry,"

"Besides, local police say there are no reports of that happening."

"Yeah, this is true. All complaints filed were false alarms. But then there is that matter of his missing wife," the blonde taunted.

"Wife? What wife? When did she go missing?"

"Almost 50 years ago," she said sinisterly.

"Is there no record of her ever being found?"

"I got 2 words for you my friend, rear window." Reid abandoned his files to pay attention to his dear, quirky and unrelentingly mischievous friend. "That guy probably chopped that lady up into delicious, bite-sized little pieces."

Something creaked outside Reid’s window.

"Think about it, Spencer," she continued, "she may have never left the premises." Garcia could barely contain her giggles. "She may still be in the house," she whispered into her mic.

That creaking something creaked again.

"Garcia, I’m sitting here in the dark, alone. Thanks."

"While you’re waiting for a potential murderer to come home, that’s kinda dangerous." Garcia smiled into her mic, twisting her pen in her hand and picturing the deliciously scared features on Spencer’s face. "Kinda sexy," she added.

"I gotta go," Reid said, looking out into the darkness on the other side of the window.

"You’re having creepy fun, I wish I was there."

As Reid turned off his cell, he glanced back towards the noises on the stairs. Slowly standing up, he felt something. An entity. A presence. An existence. Spencer turned his head around, only to bump into a tall, dark stranger and he jumped, terrified. "You really are afraid of the dark," Derek said, smiling.

"I’m working on it," Spencer shot back quickly and walked away.

"You should work a little harder."

The sheriff came back to the group, reporting that his deputy would get the boy back safe. Morgan shook his head. The whole town was on edge. Perhaps that’s why Finnegan was in the wind. The agent flicked his torch to the wall, only to see a rack of rifles.

"The unsub didn’t use a gun," Gideon pointed out. He kept walking, piecing together his thoughts aloud. "Finnegan’s an avid hunter, why didn’t he use it?" He reached under the table to pull out Robbie’s lunchbox and Sarah’s backpack.

"I guess Finnegan brought the kids back here before finishing them off. But why wouldn’t he get rid of the evidence?"

"He considers them trophies,"Spencer said softly.

Morgan huffed. "When this is all said and done, I’d like to hang his head on a wall."

^-^

Morgan, Reid and Gideon paced the next crime scene, only this time it wasn’t a child. It was Finnegan. The medical examiner explained that he died of natural causes.

"His heart probably gave out while setting this trap," Reid suggested.

"Yeah, well, karma’s a bitch," the M.E. commented, "those coyotes were gnawing on him for a week."

"Before the second or third murders even happened," Morgan pointed out.

"This area’s off the travelled path, it’s a wonder anyone even discovered him at all."

"If you ask me," the medical examiner suggested, "those leaves didn’t cover him by themselves."

"If Finnegan’s been dead all this time, who’s living in his house?"

^-^

Piper Bishop rose later than usual. 7 am. She’d missed the sunrise. Shit. Pulling on her slippers, she went through the rounds; a cup of tea, pancakes, review of the class schedule and that’s when she remembered. She meant to call Morgan in the morning. She dialled his cell again. Nothing. Sighing, she told herself she’d drop by later today. She changed into her favourite outfit, white satin button-up, dark blue pants, grey blazer, drop necklace.

^-^

"Here’s a question," Reid asked, crossing his legs on the couch, "if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound in nobody hears it?"

Morgan stared at him. "What the hell are you reading over there?"

"I was just thinking," Reid gazed back at the journals on his lap.

"Found something," Gideon announced. The boys followed him into the kitchen.

"Provisions," he said, staring at the near-dozen near-empty dishes, "delivered by the church to every elderly’s doorstep." He waved his hand to all of them, saying, "Each one dated after Finnegan died."

"So the unsub ate everything?" Morgan asked.

"Almost everything," Gideon answered, "unopened bowls of creamed spinach thrown in the trash, each one wrapped with duct tape."

"One with each tray," Spencer noted, handling the casings carefully.

"So we’re looking for a guy who really, really hates spinach?" Morgan was exasperated.

"Who doesn’t?" Spencer retorted.

"Ritualised, meticulous, organised."

"He would eat the same particulars." Reid was confused.

"Full prints," Gideon ordered. At that, Gideon’s cell rang and seeing the name, walked out.

"It’s about Elle, isn’t it?" Spencer said, walking closer to Derek, arms crossed. "I talked to her in Ohio."

"Reid, we all talked to her."

"No, no, I talked to her before. I went to her room one night and…she was drinking."

"She almost died. I’d be drinking too."

^-^

To say Piper was frustrated would not even begin to cover her chagrin at being unable to talk to Morgan. He wasn’t answering his cell and she couldn’t find a sub this last minute. Her students felt the tension and none wanted to see her explode. They kept quiet, answering their comprehension questions of Alexander the Great’s Persian conquests. As soon as the bell rang, she started, rushing students out the door and grabbing her bag. She dialled the sheriff’s number and asked to meet his as soon as possible.

"Just hear me out, Sheriff," she pleaded.

"You really expect me to believe that a child could do something as heinous as this."

"Jeffrey isn’t an ordinary child. His mother left him in April, you know that. Children grow resentful of other children anyway."

"That’s ridiculous. So he’s a little jealous." He got up and started pacing.

"Except he’s not just resentful about mothers, it’s about James too. You and I both know how much he cares about those kids. Some days he calls me at 3 in the morning to talk about how stressed he is. Not 'cause of his workload, but 'cause he’s worried he’s not doing enough. Sheriff, I’m begging you to see reason."

"No, you’re delusional."

"I don’t think you know what that word means and you definitely aren’t qualified to use it.”

"A child would never do this."

"That’s exactly why you’ll never find your killer."

"Are you doubting me, Ms Bishop?"

"No," she said forcefully, "Quite frankly, Sheriff, you don’t know the first thing about kids. I’ve seen how worried Langdon gets sometimes because he’s scared that his Daddy isn’t going to come home one day. I’m not doubting your ability, Sheriff, I’m doubting whether you’ll find the unsub before another child has to die. 3 children are dead, I’m trying to help and for the record, it’s Doctor." For once, she felt calmer and having said her piece, she walked out the sheriff’s office, greeting Agent Gideon politely before she walked away from the both of them.

^-^

"Why the woods, JJ?" Morgan asked, sipping his terrible coffee in station’s waiting room.

"Hmm?"

"Your fear, you said it was of the woods. Why?"

"Oh, I was a camp counsellor when I was a teenager. In the woods up in Vermont, I had the night shift. Tucked the girls in, turned off the lights, you know the typical stuff. Everything seemed fine, all the kids were asleep, you know. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Until, I noticed there was some blood on the hallway floor. So I followed the blood trail out to the camp director’s cabin, walked up to his bed and he was just lying underneath his covers, dead. Someone stabbed him. I ran out of there so fast, out the door, down the hall, I just remember it being really dark and once I got to the door, there was another counsellor. I guess she must have heard me scream. Anyway, they caught the cleaner on his way to town. He must have had the knife on him. So, that’s when I decided didn’t like the woods." JJ fought to suppress her giggles at Derek’s expression.

"You’re serious?"

"No," She laughed. "No, I don’t know why I’m afraid of the woods. Why is he still afraid of the dark?"

"Yeah, Reid?"

"Because of the inherent absence of light," he replied.

"That was good JJ," Morgan’s phone started ringing, "Just know that paybacks are a bitch."

"Hey girl," he called to his favourite tech analyst.

"I love our relationship. We barely need words."

"Talk to me baby."

"So I pulled two sets of prints of those trays," she said.

"Two?"

"Yeah, one of them belonging to a child?"

"Okay, which one of the victims? Why don’t you work with the Ozona Coroner’s Office?"

"Oh baby, that’s so yesterday. I’ve already got those minions working on it. The other set, however, is on the database. Name is James Charles, he’s the-"

"He’s the local guidance counsellor helping with the investigation."

"You’re kidding. Sending address now." Morgan looked at the two agents who had just abandoned their cups.

"Call Gideon. We know who the unsub is."

^-^

Piper was supervising the history projects. She’d managed to pull off having a history fair with a Renaissance theme to cheer the kids up. Each kid had to make a diorama and the history department would judge based on creativity, historical merit and above all enthusiasm, a word she was not feeling. A month ago, she would’ve been over the moon, but now, all she was thinking about was when the next body would show up. She’d yelled at the sheriff and Agent Gideon had seen it. It was unprofessional and now they’d never listen to her. So you finally agree then? It was a stupid and unnecessary thing to say. Clearly you aren’t as praiseworthy as teachers say. "Ugh," Piper swept her short wavy hair into a tight ponytail. Kneeling next to Langdon, she asked him where Jeffrey was. His shrug was worrying. Piper pulled out her cell and called the administration office. "Hi ladies, is Jeffrey at school today? He’s not in my class."

"His dad called him in sick."

"Thanks, girls." Piper tried to push it out of her mind. Maybe she was wrong.

After school was out, Piper grabbed her things and left. That’s right baby girl. Just let the police do their job and just go home like the insignificant bitch you are. She grabbed her helmet and was about to drive home when she got a call from the ladies in Administration.

"It’s James. They’ve arrested them Piper. What do we do?"

"Hang tight Claudia, I’ll deal with it, okay."

^-^

"Here’s the deal," Morgan leaned over James in the interrogation room, "I could stand here and tell you what I think you were doing in Finnegan’s house for the last 2 weeks. Or, you could do us all a favour. Sign a confession, maybe get a little something taken off your time. What’d you say?"

"I never stepped inside Finnegan’s house." James stared right back into Morgan’s eyes.

"What the hell do you think you’re doing?" Piper slammed the door behind her. The agents turned from staring at the small television screen. "Seriously, you think Jamie would do something like this?"

"Piper," The sheriff started.

"No, you don’t get that privilege anymore. It’s Doctor or nothing because clearly you don’t value my experience, Sheriff. I’m sorry to interrupt what clearly isn’t a waste of your time, Agents, but James couldn’t have done any of this."

"Then why won’t he talk to us? He had the baseball cap at his house, his prints are all over the food trays. I don’t see another explanation."

"His prints were on the food trays because he volunteers at the church’s food drive and he’s not the one with the baseball cap, it’s his son. That’s why he called him in sick yesterday, it’s why he’s hiding the truth from you all. James doesn’t have the time nor the motive. If his wife left him, why would he attack kids? More importantly when? When he isn’t at school, he has a session with a kid. If not there, helping with your investigation or handing out food for retired folks. The man has no opportunity and no motive. If anything, he’d be killing women resembling his wife, but instead he’s devoting every possible minute of his life to this community. As for why I think it’s Jeffrey, if you’d listened to me, Sheriff, the kid lost his mom in April. If you don’t know, if a kid loses a parent when they’re in their formative years as a result of abandonment rather than death, they grow increasing resentful of kids who do have their parents. Except for Jeffrey, it’s like he lost both. When his mother left, James devoted his life to the community and as a natural consequence, Jeffrey lost his father too. Whether you believe me or not is up to you, but 3 kids are dead and Jeffrey is missing." They were all standing up, ignoring the interrogation and gawking at Piper. Reid couldn’t stop staring at her and her ears began to redden significantly. Gideon broke the silence.

"Stay. Observe. You know him better than we do. Watch his behaviour and tell me if you don’t think he’s guilty."

Piper was slightly relieved that Gideon took her seriously enough to let her stay.

"How these last 6 months been for you James? Not too good huh? I don't know, your whole life is falling apart isn't it? Oh yeah you got to be feeling a loss of control, sense of abandonment. And I would guess, a little impotent maybe?" Morgan chuckled. "Come on man, give me something! Why did your wife leave you? What happened James, she get bored? I mean you don't seem all that exciting to me. She started feeling a little uninspired? You're not a minute man, aren't you? Uh, that's what it is!"

"You don’t think that’s a little uncalled for?" Piper exclaimed.

"We need him to talk. If he gets angry, he may slip up." Piper settled down.

^-^

"You think Dr. Bishop’s right?" Reid asked, playing with the handcuffs in his palm.

"I don’t know. I can’t believe a kid could be capable of something like this. She seems close to James too. Could be covering for him."

"I guess so."

"You know, it's bad enough his mother left and now his father's in custody. We’ve also got to take the poor kid into child services."

"It’s the law."

So is jaywalking. I don't have to like it. Good afternoon this is Agent Jareau, with the FBI, we're gonna be picking up Jeffrey Charles in about 20 minutes, if... Okay, I see. Thank you."

"What is it?"

"Dr Bishop may have been right."

^-^

"Jeffrey never was at school today. His father said he was sick." JJ informed them.

Piper’s instinct was to yell 'Aha!' but thankfully she went against it.

"Reid, go though his apartment." Gideon ordered.

"No, you don’t seriously still think this is his fault."

"I think he may have blamed his kid for his failed marriage."

"Then I can’t watch this interview. Let me help Dr Reid with the search." Everyone looked to Gideon.

"Okay, fine. Reid, keep an eye on her."

^-^

"Why are you so sure it isn’t him?" Reid asked her softly.

"Hmm?" Piper looked up from the abandoned dirty dishes.

"What you said back there, how are you so sure?"

"I’m not exactly the most experienced psychologist. I mean, I’ve studied it, wrote about it, talked in conferences about it, but I haven’t applied it, not the way he has. I guess, if he does turn out to be the killer," she huffed, "then he’s not the man I hoped he’d be." Reid stared at her.

Piper pulled the elastic from her hair and moved past Spencer to the bookshelf.

"It’s difficult. Being a single parent. Not that I would know. But I can understand." She pulled a book of the shelf. Kurt Vonnegut. "But James handled it as best he could. He put his personal trauma aside for the whole community. Only issue was," she turned to look back into Reid’s soft gaze, "his kid got the brunt of it. Most saints have something to hide, Spence. Gandhi accused his eldest son of 'alcohol and debauchery,' even sexual assault. And no-one believes me because no-one’s met the kid. He has serious rage issues, strained empathy for others and is apathetic to others."

"Huh. Look at this." Piper moved towards the doctor.

"It’s an EpiPen. So?"

"So, at Finnegan’s house, we found all the creamed spinach duck-taped and thrown out."

"Spence," Piper levelled her gaze, "Jeffrey has an allergy to dairy."

^-^

"Can I have a word with him?" Gideon asked. Morgan nodded and left the room. "It’s a rough day, huh? Coffee?"

"Yeah I wouldn't mind."

"Milk?"

"Please."

"So how long have you known that your son is a murderer?" Gideon abruptly asked without breaking eye contact.

"What are you talking about?"

"You might have been the one who brought the food trays to Finnegan's, but your son ate them, everything but the creamed spinach."

"You want me to confess? Is that what this game is? That's fine. You bring me another pen, I'll write out my confession."

"We found an EpiPen in your kitchen."

"So what that proves that my kid has an allergy."

"To milk."

Piper had had enough. "Let me in there, I’ll get him to talk. If Gideon threatens the freedom of his child, James won’t talk. He’ll talk to me."

"Not with Gideon in there." Morgan chided you.

^-^

Piper sat cross-legged on the chair, head resting on the back of her arms. Morgan was almost falling asleep. Reid was on his 8th cup of coffee. Piper’s ringtone woke Derek up and she couldn’t help laughing. "Big bad Derek Morgan’s afraid of a ringtone?" she laughed and raised the phone to her ear.

"Hi, Mrs Belle. How can I help you? Is Tracy okay?" Piper’s change of expression from glee to gloom wasn’t lost on anyone. "Okay, sit tight Mrs Belle, we’ll find her. Please relax." Piper hung up the phone and tied her short hair up again.

"Tracey Belle was just reported missing. Last seen getting off her school bus on Fuller Road."

^-^

What happened after was just a blur. Piper had managed to convince Gideon to let her come, citing her certification for hostage negotiation. They’d all strapped the Kevlar suits on and found a spare for her. Reid and JJ left in one car, Morgan and the sheriff in another and Piper was paired with Gideon.

"Why are you a history teacher?" Gideon asked.

"Hmm?"

"You’re 25, you have 4 Ph.Ds in Psychology, a Masters in History and Bachelors in Literature."

"Thought I wasn’t doing much good in a university classroom. Swapped it for an elementary school"

"I’m a profiler. Don’t lie to me."

"Yes, sir. They wouldn’t come because they didn’t want people to think they or their kids were crazy. So I stopped. I wrote books and papers. I taught at universities. But I kept getting this nagging thing in my head, that I should be doing more. So I packed and moved."

"Where’d you teach?"

"The main ones. Guest lectured at Brown for months at a time. Harvard was my alma mater so I was there for a semester. Columbia offered but I rejected them. They were kinda stung that I chose a high school over them." He chuckled at that. "None of you smile a lot."

"Hmm?"

"Especially you. Do the cases get that bad?"

"Yeah."

"So why do it?" The car stopped near the woods. They both got out of the vehicle and headed towards the others.

"Because it has to be done." He looked over at her and smiled.

^-^

Tracy was running. Her bag was gone. Jeffrey was going to hurt her. She knew she was at the playground, but after a few minutes, the woods had enveloped her. She prayed that her mom was looking, that someone was looking, but the only thing that filled the little girl’s little heart was the dread. Dread that in these big bad woods, she was all alone with a killer.

"Split up, she’s gotta be somewhere."

Bishop and Gideon ran through the woods looking for the small blonde.

"Tracy!"

Trees.

"Tracy!"

Trees everywhere.

"Tracy!"

They were looking for a red and a blond needle in a green and orange haystack.

"Tracey!" Jeffrey cried in a sing song voice. "Let's just go home. I was only playing! Why do you have to be such a baby? Tracey?"

Tracy’s feet hurt. She should have been home by now. She staggered towards the nearest tree and hid. He couldn’t find her here, would he? Her breaths were jagged and she was terrified.

Bishop heard screaming. "Tracy!" They ran towards the piercing scream. She saw the scene unfolding and determined to be anything but helpless, Piper ran in between Jeffrey and Tracy. "Stop!" Gideon ran to Jeffrey, locking him in one arm, throwing the bat away with the other. Piper pushed Tracy into JJ’s arms and breathed with relief.

^-^

In the aftermath of things, James was pacing, scared of what his kid had become, terrified of what would happen to him. Piper held her head in her hands, sitting on the parkside bench. Morgan gently pushed Jeffrey into the car. Reid sat next to her.

"You did good."

"Did I? I blamed a kid for a serial murder because he lost his mother. What does that make me?" Piper lifted her head to look at him.

"A profiler." Spencer rubbed her shoulder and walked away. Piper glanced at James, pacing.

"You think you could have prevented this?"

"Maybe if I’d been there for him…"

She put a hand on his shoulder. "James, you’d put the world’s problems on your own back if you could. You can still be there for him. What he did, it isn’t his fault and it isn’t yours." He looked at Piper, his gaze shattered, his soul broken.

"You really believe that?"

"I believe that care and love can make anything possible."

^-^

Piper packed her things slowly. She folded her maps, packed away the Macedon’s armour and the Egyptian coffin.

"So where to next?" Gideon leaned on her desk, arms crossed.

"Vacation to Italy, maybe Venice. Figuring things out." She shrugged.

"You did good today, but…you could be better."

"I’m sorry?"

"I want you on the team." Piper levelled her gaze to Gideon, standing straight.

"In what capacity?"

"Consultant, on a temporary basis. If you put in the hours and do the classes, maybe even an agent. You in?"

"This a one-time offer?"

"Yes."

"I’m in."

#criminal minds #spencer reid #derek morgan #penelope garcia #jj #gideon #spencer reid x oc #reid x oc

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angelanimedesaray · 4 years

Text

Through The Looking Glass Chapter 4: Friend

AN: Ah, yes...here we see a bit more of a focus on Reader’s background, with a follow through on something that was more briefly touched on in the last chapter. A little more on the side of heavy topics, buuutttt it goes back to lighthearted again, don’t worry. The heavy stuff is more of a backdrop in the younger years in this story. Also, I think the next chapter is going to be time passing, cause these are starting to feel a little...I don’t want to say forced, more like hard to weave into a solid chapter in a straight, continuous timeline. I feel like I’m starting to stretch ideas further than they were initially intended to stretch to make a chapter without jumping all over the place. Finally, sorry, but that means the serious/heavier stuff is gonna start kicking in sooner than I originally planned XD

Characters: Levi, Reader, Reader’s Mother, Mentions of various background OCs

Pairing: (Eventual) Levi x Reader

Warnings: Language, Bullying, Minor Injuries, Aftermath of Bullying

Word Count: 4669

<---Previous Chapter Masterlist Next Chapter---->

(One Year Later)

*Reader’s POV*

Your fingers flexed around the slick plastic pouch that was pressed against your throbbing forehead, the freezing pouch getting gradually harder and harder to hold as your fingers grew painfully numb and the ice that had kept the pouch solid melted against the heat of your forehead. Your other hand held one half of a break-in-two popsicle, sucking mindlessly on the frozen treat to sooth the second pain on your lip. Your foot scraped idly at the dirt as you sat on the last step of the back door stairs, nose starting to get runny with the cold of the popsicle, ice pack, and the slight chill in the air...also because your tears had been happening off and on for the past couple of hours. The sun was also high in the sky, blazing down on you and making you have to squint slightly against the light if you wanted to look anywhere but down.

Inside, you could hear your mom still on the phone, still yelling at whoever she was talking to from the school. At least out here she was a little muffled, not as loud as she’d been in the house up in your room. You didn’t want to be around while she was yelling, even if she wasn’t angry at you, which was why you’d opted to be chilly on the steps instead of tucked into your bed like your mom would probably prefer.

“It’s your job to take care of my kid while she’s at your school, what the hell are all your teachers doing on the playground if this is happening on a daily basis?” you heard her shouting inside, and you felt yourself start to curl up like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell.

I wish Dad was here...

Frankly, you weren’t even supposed to be home right now. You were supposed to be sitting in class with Ms. Richardson for math time...or maybe it was time for reading by now. Either way, school was still in session, but you were home early because during recess, while about to go down the metal slide on the playground, one of the other kids had pushed you hard enough you’d tipped forward, slammed your head against the slide, and...well...the next thing you remembered was your mother looking down at you. You didn’t remember where you were when you came to, either, just your mom looking at you and the light being a little too bright as you asked why she was there. After a confusing blur of events you couldn’t get straight or remember details for other than you thought a doctor might have been involved because you remembered a man in a white coat and the crinkle of tissue paper, you’d found yourself here, on the steps, listening to your mother scream inside because you had nothing else to do.

A friend would be nice, too. I don’t have any of those at school…

“What the hell happened to you?”

You jumped at the unexpected voice directly in front of you, looking up sharply and wincing when it made your head swim, but still able to make out the familiar boy standing in front of you. You must not have noticed him walk up to you because your head had been down…

Levi looked even better than the last time you’d seen him. His skin didn’t look sunken in anymore, though he was still pale. Instead of a ragged mess, he’d finally gotten a haircut, black strands of hair falling just past his ears and a little longer in the back, just above the nape of his neck, the rest shaved down. His clothes were cleaner--still dirty, but no longer torn, frayed, and far larger than he was--and while there still seemed to be dirt and dust clinging to him, he seemed cleaner, too.

For a moment, you couldn’t help but wonder why he wasn’t at school. Was he homeschooled? He hadn’t seemed worried about school the first time you’d seen him, so maybe that was the case. Too bad...you could really use a friend like him at school, especially with how bad things were getting.

“Was it those two assholes again?”

Remembering Levi had asked you a question, you blinked, noticing that your hand had started to fall in surprise and Levi’s gaze had lifted towards the discolored goose-egg on your forehead before you covered it up again with the ice pack. You shook your head slowly, taking the popsicle out of your mouth so you could answer him, though you kept the cool treat resting over the split in your lip from two days ago that had been re-opened with recent events.

“Those are bad words,” you said disapprovingly. Levi only rolled his eyes, so you chose to answer his question, still sulking. “No, they stopped picking on me after you pushed them,” you said softly.

Inside, your mom’s voice rose considerably to what was basically a scream, making you wince and Levi look back towards the house.

“A court case is what’s about to happen! My kid’s been coming home with bruises and cuts and scrapes for two years, it’s been getting worse, not better like you kept telling me it would! Your recess monitors aren’t doing anything, they’re sitting there watching and letting the other kids get away with this bullshit! None of this should have gotten this far--I shouldn’t have to pull her out of school to take my unconscious daughter to a doctor--!”

“The kids at school are getting worse…” you said quietly, your mother’s voice growing more muffled as she paced away from the back door again. Levi’s eyes seemed to get harder, suddenly studying you up and down, and you squirmed under his gaze, subconsciously tugging at the pant leg of your shorts to try and hide the large bruise that covered the sensitive skin of the back of your leg behind your knee. It was older, like the split lip, but still discolored and obvious--the spot where Serenity had kicked with her steel toed boots until you’d pushed her away. You didn’t think you managed to hide it quickly enough, cause Levi’s gaze seemed to narrow.

“Aren’t you fighting back?” As you shook your head no, his gaze seemed to harden a little more. “Why not?” he asked with surprising force.

“I’ve tried,” you said defensively, rubbing gently and absentmindedly at the bruise on your leg. After you’d pushed Serenity away with that self defense move your father taught you, you’d ran, not wanting to get kicked with those boots in a fight. More specifically, you ran towards the recess monitor who’d been watching to get Serenity in trouble for hurting you. Instead, you got in trouble for pushing another kid on the playground and got detention and recess revoked for a while. Your eyes burned with angry, frustrated tears at the memory that you pushed down, the words ‘only babies cry’ ringing in your ears. “Even if I just push someone off me, I get in trouble with the adults.”

“Who gives a shit what the adults say? Make them leave you alone so you don’t get hurt.”

It wasn’t that simple. Maybe with those two boys Levi shoved it had been, but this was different.

“If I do, the school’ll have an excuse to kick me out. Mom hasn’t moved me to a different school cause she says this is the best one. She had to try really hard to get me in, even though the school didn’t want to. I can’t get kicked out cause Mom and Dad want me to do really good in school. They say since I’m smart, I have a chance to do better than them...so I can’t get in trouble, which means I can’t fight back.”

Maybe that’s why they all pick on me...cause they see I won’t fight back…

“Tch,” Levi let out a long sigh, hand raking through his hair as he sat down on the steps next to you. “If they’re anything like those idiots from before, it would only take one time to make them leave you alone.”

With all the problems at school, it might only take one time to get you kicked out.

You shrugged, resting your elbow on your good knee as your arm started to hurt from holding the ice pack against your forehead for so long. “It doesn’t matter. Mom found out my teacher’s trying to fail me on purpose, and started talking about schooling me at home. I think she’s gonna do it after this.”

Right now, however, you really didn’t want to be talking or thinking about any of this. Levi always looked so serious or hesitant. You liked seeing him smile, though--you liked getting him to play with you, to have some fun. He never knew the games you wanted to play, and you always had to teach them to him, but when you did manage to get him to loosen up and play, it made you feel...proud, for some reason.

Deciding you needed to change the subject away from the sad things, you put down your ice pack, ignoring how your head throbbed as you reached for the other half of your popsicle all wrapped safely in the white wrapping, pulling it out and offering it to Levi with a small smile.

*Levi’s POV*

Levi carefully took the bright red treat that matched the one Y/N had been sucking on, holding it awkwardly for a few seconds. It felt...cold. Freezing. How the hell was there something this cold in weather this warm?

“You look much better,” she said after he’d taken it from her, her voice sounding far more cheerful this time...though it seemed a little forced.

Levi studied her. The small smile she gave him despite the sad look in her eyes, the multicolored goose egg that swelled across at least three-fourths of her forehead, the reopened split lip that might have been bleeding still if she wasn’t holding the red frozen treat against her lip. He’d seen her flinch when her mother shouted loud enough to be heard from inside. She’d been hunched over, curled into herself on the step when Levi first realized where he was and spotted her. He wasn’t used to seeing her to timid--usually she’d been right in his face with all her upbeat intensity, and he didn’t like seeing her shrinking away because she was in pain.

She wanted to try and go back to being her usual upbeat self. That was what she was trying to do by switching the topic back towards him and away from her. She was asking him to stop talking about what was happening, and to help her be her usual self.

Though it made him wonder...if she was still in pain, if she was still upset, yet she was still able to be upbeat and happy...was that really who she was? Was it a front?

He’d play along. If it helped her feel better for a while, then all right.

“Can’t say the same for you,” he returned flatly. She looked taken aback for the first second, and Levi worried he hadn’t made it clear he was joking and had hurt her feelings.

Thankfully, she broke into a brighter smile, laughing partially from surprise, and partially out of real amusement.

“This? Whatever, I’m pretty,” she said cheerfully, though the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes as she said it. She didn’t really believe it, then. She was simply returning the banter, looking away and sucking on the frozen treat again. She hadn’t told him what it was called yet…

Tentatively, Levi finally mirrored her action. It was freezing cold, but sweet, like some kind of fruit, melting slowly in his mouth like it was turning into a refreshing cold juice. He attempted biting down on it, but a jarring chill shot through his teeth and down his spine when he tried, promptly stopping him from trying to bite it again and reverting back to letting it slowly melt in his mouth.

He liked it. It was sweeter than anything he was used to, yes, but still good.

A companionable silence settled over them as they both sucked on their matching treats, Y/N now wearing a slight smile. Even though she didn’t want to think about what she’d told him, he still did.

It might not have been anything deadly, but she was still banged up. Levi’d heard her mother say that she was unconscious and had to be brought to a doctor. The last time he’d been here, she’d brushed off the kids picking on her like it wasn’t anything serious, and he’d believed her. She’d been upset, yes, but she’d brushed it off and moved on without much of an outward reaction. Not to mention, he’d easily scared the two kids off. So he’d let it go.

This, on the other hand...this was serious.

Part of him wanted to go and kick their asses himself if she was so insistent she couldn’t do it herself, but he knew that wouldn’t help. Sure, they’d know he was strong, but if he wasn’t there the rest of the time, that wouldn’t stop them from hurting her. It wouldn’t help her.

Frustratingly enough, he could also begrudgingly admit he understood why she felt she couldn’t fight back. It sounded like her parents wanted her to have a better life and were pushing her to get the best education in order to do that. He wasn’t sure how all of this could be better, though--it was already more than he’d ever seen. A large house, obvious luxuries, citizenship on the surface with trees and open grass in the back...but he hadn’t seen much beyond this. Maybe there was more, something her parents wanted attainable for her. They wanted a good life for her, and she was worried about ruining that.

That didn’t mean he thought she should just lay down and let others beat her unconscious.

Levi came out of his thoughts as Y/N moved next to him, setting down the wooden stick that remained after she’d already finished her half of the treat. At the same time, she leaned over and rested her head lightly on his shoulder, the side that the goose egg wasn’t on resting against his shoulder. Levi stiffened at the unexpected contact, unsure how to react or if she wanted something from him in return. She seemed to be curling into herself again after he stiffened, but she didn’t move her head off his shoulder.

“Levi...are we friends?”

Levi glanced down at her, unable to see her face from the way her head was turned.

Where did that come from?

“I guess.”

She ducked her head a little lower, and for a moment, Levi thought she was about to pull away, the weight she was putting on his shoulder lessening for a moment.

“I don’t really have anyone else…” she said softly, almost too quiet for him to hear.

Oh.

Now that he thought about it, he didn’t really have anyone else, either. All he had was Kenny...and Y/N. Kenny wasn’t anything close to the warm or compassionate type that Y/N was. And he rarely saw Y/N. But when he did…

The weight on his shoulder got a little lighter as she started to pull away, and the words rolled from his lips before she could pull away thinking he didn’t really see them as friends or that he was being evasive because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings right now.

“Then we are.”

She paused, processing his statement before she fully rested her head against his shoulder again, scooting a little closer in the process. It wasn't any kind of contact he was used to, but he tolerated it. It seemed like she needed it, and it was...sort of nice. He liked this. Normally she was dragging him all over the place and he didn't get the chance to really stop and enjoy the surface. Right now, he was able to sit quietly with her and breathe in the fresh air, feel the warmth of the sunlight he was normally denied, listen to the sounds of birds and rustling trees again as welcoming as a familiar lullaby. This time he was able to revel in the feeling of being on the surface, and this time he wasn't alone while he did so.

He wanted this--he wanted to live up here on the surface with the sun and fresh air instead of in the rot of the Underground. He wanted to be able to see Y/N more often, whenever he wanted--to be able to beat up those assholes that were picking on her with what Kenny'd taught him, and stay so they knew to leave her alone or they'd get hit again.

What did he have to do to stay up here instead of be stuck below ground?

Before he'd realized it, his entire treat had melted away, all that was left the red-stained, smooth stick it had been attached to. Levi set it beside him on the steps like Y/N had done, still mulling over thoughts of how he could try getting surface citizenship. Kenny would know something, right? Levi didn't expect the man to help, he always wanted Levi doing things for himself, but maybe he could at least point Levi in the right direction? Levi knew Kenny had been on the surface regularly, so surely there was something Kenny could tell him.

"I'm sorry if this is boring," Y/N said abruptly, interrupting Levi's thoughts. "I'd offer to play a game or something, but I feel woozy when I move around too much."

"That's okay." He didn't mind. He was enjoying the quiet, and she was hurt--the last thing he wanted was to make things worse all for some stupid game they didn't need to play.

She straightened up a moment later, his side feeling chilly now that she suddenly wasn't leaning against him. "There's other games we can play, though, sitting right here on the steps!"

"We don't have to--"

"I'm always having to teach you the games we play, which makes me think you don't play enough. So yeah, when you're here, we have to play something!" she said in that tone of hers that told him she wasn't taking no for an answer, a determined pout making her split bottom lip prominent.

Why did he even let her boss him around so much?

A fresh bread roll was offered to him without hesitation by a hand as small as his own. ”Here. Here! It’s for you.”

Because every time she’d been forceful with him, it hadn’t been to hurt him...but to help him, muscling right past his rougher exterior to get at the heart of what he needed and make it happen. So he let her, because even if she was bossy about it, he tended to enjoy the outcome.

“What are you thinking?” Levi asked, ready for the incoming explanations depending on how many games she wanted to try.

She perked up, clapping her hands together in anticipation. “All right! We could play Double Double This, or have a Thumb War, Or play Simon Says, or we could play Slaps. What do you think?”

What kind of game names were those? Especially that last one, it sounded like the point was to go around smacking people...though considering the state she was in, that probably wasn’t the case. Interesting mental image, though.

Levi shrugged. “I don’t know any of those. Whatever you pick.”

She let out that exasperated sigh of hers--he really didn’t know why she was still surprised when he didn’t know what any of these games were, by now she should have just accepted he wasn’t going to know them. “Okay...we’ll start with Double Double This, cause that might take a little while to learn.”

Turning so they were facing one another, she took Levi’s hands in her own and started to teach him. According to her, the fun was in learning it, and gradually being able to follow the pattern faster and faster. It took him a couple tries, but once he had it down, ironically, it was Y/N that kept messing up, bursting into a fit of giggles before she’d straighten and demand they try again. With how many times they had to start over, Levi was sure that the game was going to become muscle memory.

When she finally stopped messing up the pattern, and after they picked up speed until she couldn’t keep up with how fast Levi was going, she switched games, teaching him the simplistic thumb war game, and doing a few rounds of Simon Says (A game she said was more challenging when you were on your feet and anything was fair game to be called out). They ended on the Slaps game she’d mentioned, her pain apparently forgotten since she was all for playing a game where the objective was to smack the other person’s hand before they could pull away. Another one he was good at, considering his nerves were a lot steadier than hers and he was faster. He could spot her flinches and bluffs, able to keep his hands steady over hers and unmoving except when he really needed to while she squirmed and kept starting to pull her hands back with soft squeaks of nervousness. It was actually sort of fun making her jump or squirm when feinted, making her think he was about to try and smack--always lightly--the back of her hand and watching her squeal and jerk back with a wild whoop of laughter. It kept making the slightest smile ghost across his lips, a thrill going through him as well, even if he was too fast for her to actually land a smack on his hands unless he let her.

Eventually, when Y/N ended up shaking her hands to get rid of the sting from all the times they’d smacked each other’s hands, they stopped playing.

“That was pretty fun,” she said with a grin, still shaking her right hand. “We’ll have to do that one again sometime--you’re real good at it.”

Levi watched her lean back against the steps, picking up the pouch she’d had pressed to her forehead earlier and playing idly with it to keep her hands busy. It sloshed around like it was filled with water…

“Hey, Levi? I never asked you where you live,” she said curiously. “You always just sorta show up, but I don’t know where you came from.”

So she finally asked. She must not know, then. Was her opinion of him going to change, like he’d worried it would the last time he came here? “I live in the Underground.”

He waited in tense anticipation, waiting for some kind of disgusted reaction like he’d been led to believe surfacers would react to him with.

“Underground? Like...like in burrows? Like hobbits in Lord of the Rings?”

He had no idea what she was talking about with that nonsense about hobbits, but for a moment, he honestly thought she was making fun of him. Until his sharp gaze registered the pure confusion on her face as he turned to look at her, ready to make some kind of scathing remark until he saw the look in her eyes. Her brows were crinkled together, nose scrunched up, a thoughtful frown on her face. Did she really not...know what the Underground was? How could she not? Wouldn’t someone have warned her to stay away? Wouldn’t it have come up in that history class she’d told him she was so fond of last time he was here? Half of him wanted to call her out for messing with him, but she looked genuinely confused.

“The Underground,” he repeated, suddenly unsure of how to explain it to her. “It’s...a city, underground. Dark, dirty, lots of...shady people,” he said haltingly. How much did he really want to pop the protective bubble she seemed to be wrapped in? He didn’t want to tell her that he never saw the sun. That everything seemed to be in shades of brown and filth. That rot clung to everything and everything. That you could probably see a dead body every other street.

“So, you have your own house in a city that’s below ground?”

“The city’s below ground, but I don’t have my own house. Kenny and I go wherever there’s space.”

“Who’s Kenny?”

Levi paused. How did he explain Kenny? The guy who took him in and taught him how to kill a man in ten different ways as soon as Levi had recovered enough to start learning things? Again, it didn’t feel like something he should tell her.

“He’s...he’s a guy who used to know my mom...that started…” ‘Taking care of’ didn’t sound quite right. Did you really throw someone you were taking care of into knife fights to see how well they did and if they’d learned anything? “Looking after me,” he settled on saying.

This felt awkward. He didn’t really want to be talking about it, and Y/N’s eyes were burning with curiosity, focused entirely on him as he struggled to find the words to explain a situation that had been so rooted in his sense of normal he wouldn’t have considered it strange if he hadn’t been glimpsing Y/N’s life in contrast. Since the moment he’d realized she was naïve to the kind of horrors that he saw day in and day out, he didn’t want her to find out about them. She lived in a peaceful existence that he wanted to live as well, and he was afraid to lift the curtain on his reality for her and risk shattering it with too much knowledge about his harsher world.

“You said you were learning to play the piano?” he asked instead, switching the topic as abruptly as she had earlier. She blinked in surprise, but after a moment of hesitation, nodded. “Have you gotten better?”

Taking the hint, she eased back into lighter conversation, talking about the songs she was learning to play, humming segments of some of the songs out loud, and talking about some of the more complicated keys she was starting to take on. When she started to slow down and run out of things to say about one topic, he’d prompt her to another based off the interests she’d told him about last time. Keeping her talking about the smaller things brought back the peace he’d had before she’d started digging into where he was from. He was able to keep them there, comfortable, listening to her talk about her world, up until the moment he blinked...and once more found himself in the Underground.

It was such a non-event, so sudden with no warning, no exclamation. The most that happened was the sudden silence as he found himself alone under his and Kenny’s room of the week after Y/N had been speaking to him. It felt like some kind of...disrespect, considering how big of a deal for him appearing back in the Underground was. Being shoved back underground with no warning shouldn’t have been so subtle, so quiet. It was like he couldn’t fight back, like he had no control over it--he didn’t, but this just made it even more obvious, more frustrating. He wanted to stay above ground, yet in the literal blink of an eye he kept finding himself kicked back into the rot. He hated it.

He had a friend up there, someone who clearly cared about him. And after getting a few tastes of what life could be like...

I’m going to find a way to stay up there...one way or another, I’m going to live on the surface.

Next Chapter---->

Levi Tags: @humanitys-hottestsoldier @clary-quinn @sunny-flo

Tags: @fanartdom @kaz2y5-pie @tartheyes @super-peace-fangirl @huntersbunker @nefelimalfoy @soft-levi-girl-blog @kissing-violet-wings @regalillegal @sugas-daddy7

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shadowsong26fic · 4 years

Text

Some Stuff

Not a proper Coming Attractions post, that’ll come out on the first Monday of the month as always, but...a more general update on some projects (and also possibly looking for input?)

Basically, I’ve accepted the inevitable, that I’ve fallen back into ATLA in a big way. I haven’t actually rewatched the series yet, because my roommate was doing so and I kept popping in and out and I didn’t want to confuse myself by trying to do a straight rewatch while she was doing hers, but I have reread a bunch of old fanfic/RP logs, and have some plots I kind of want to work with again? Either as fulltext or as an AU Outline. Behind the cut are some more details, as well as seeking Opinions on which, if any, I should actually work on.

I am also Determined to not fall out of SW as this is going on, lol. More details about that behind the cut, as well.

(Also, I’ve talked about some of the stuff listed here on my writing discord, which feel free to come stop by and hang out! It’s basically an extension of this tumblr, only a little more interactive. Find us here!)

Star Wars Stuff:

I plan to take next weekend to bang out at minimum the next Precipice chapter, and possibly the next two (though I’ll stagger posting if I do manage to get both done). And then try and give myself a more active schedule to get the next parts of the series out.

I’m also working on a dragonshifters AU, which I’m enjoying a lot. I think OFLAM may be relegated to the back burner for a while, though I’ll probably kick it up again if I end up doing it for SWBB next year (unless I tease out enough of a Plot for dragonshifters to do that instead, lol). I’ve talked about some of the worldbuilding on my writing discord, too.

I also still owe some meme responses from way back, which I do intend to get to at some point I promise <.<

And I haven’t forgotten some other extant projects--Devoted!verse, the Ventress outline, Bail Unfucks the Timeline, Distaff, etc.--but they’re pretty back-burnered for the time being. If something Sparks in any of those, I’ll probably dive into it, but for now I’m not actively working on them in the way I am on dragonshifters and Precipice.

AtLA Stuff:

So, there’s sort of...four or five projects spinning around in my head right now, lol. One of which, if I do it, would not work as an outline so it would be fulltext. It’s canon-compliant, for the most part.

...well, I should interrupt myself here to say the following: I haven’t read a lot of the comics or tie-in novels, and my familiarity with more recent Word of God is limited. I’m basically operating out of canon defined as “it’s in the original show or WoG I’m specifically aware of, drawing in stuff from other sources as it appeals to me but otherwise ignoring it.” Where WoG contradicts itself (i.e., the timeline for Lu Ten’s death),I go with whatever answer I prefer.

In terms of worldbuilding details added in Korra--ehhhhh, it’s sort of held a little higher than the comics, etc. (in that, if I remember it, unless it Josses something I really, really liked/was foundational to something I’m doing, I’ll probably include it); but most likely whatever I’m doing will go AU enough during the first series for a lot of the other detail work/character-specific stuff to not matter.

Anyway! Back to the fun stuff.

There’s one story I’m playing with that’s not going to work as an AU outline. Depending on exactly what I focus on, there’s a couple different fulltext fics buried in it, and I’m not sure which I’d work on (or if I’d braid the two of them together). Basically, it deals with the siege of Ba Sing Se and Lu Ten’s death, and some of the fallout from that, focusing on an OC of mine and her daughter. I found a short fic I wrote for a challenge back in the day that ties into this concept, which is at the very end of this post. If I work on this, I’d probably change the names of the two relevant OCs and possibly how she gets her memory back (it was written specifically for a “what happened in the rest of the world when Zhao captured Tui” challenge; guess how many of them were Hama-related), but. Anyway, building on either the Siege portion of the story (which has a lot of West Side Story on its soundtrack in my head lol), or focusing on what she does after she remembers him. Or both! Both is also good.

The rest of the options are mostly Zuko-centric canon-divergence fics.

First option, Airbender!Zuko. This occurs because The Spirits Said So; he’s gotten very good at fake firebending using airbending. Probably to the point where he’s so deep in denial that he can’t even see the pyramids anymore, to stretch that analogy to the breaking point, lol. Basically, not much changes until the north pole, but there’s some ways for it to go from there...

Second option, Avatar Zuko. This one has been floating around in my head more lately. Reading old RP logs, my partner and I played through a bunch of different variants on how this all worked, but the one in my head right now is basically--a few months before he’s banished, they’re at Ember Island or something and he’s out on the ocean/fishing or something. Sudden storm, he stops the boat from capsizing through panicked waterbending. No other witnesses, for whatever reason. He initially decides he imagined it, something else must have happened. Except then, when he’s in the palace infirmary after getting his face melted, he does it again. At that point, he basically decides that his options here are “get turned into a weapon and kill A Lot of people, or get disappeared into some dark hole somewhere where I can’t cause any problems.” Neither of those is particularly attractive, so he decides to run away. He doesn’t know what his long-term plan is at this moment--if he’ll use the comet to regain favor/save his nation based on the context he’s operating under right now, or do something else. But he has about three and a half years before then. He figures he’ll spend a year at the Western Air Temple, looking for texts/mosaics/something to get him at least vaguely airbending; then go to the North Pole to learn waterbending for a year, then spend a year in the Earth Kingdom to learn earthbending. Planning, for the last two, to present himself as mixed and while he has a lot of his Fire Nation father’s features, he inherited bending from his other parent (or grandparent, when he goes to the North Pole). For those of you familiar with my original fic, this will also include the first iteration of a prominent secondary character from Feredar/The Farglass Cycle. Mostly so Zuko has someone to talk to at the WAT XD.

Third and fourth options are a bit more nebulous, and both break off during the Ba Sing Se arc. First option, Zuko gets injured during the stampede when Aang moves the zoo (this will probably draw in at least one of my BSS OCs because I am pathologically incapable of not creating OCs, lol). Second option, Zuko leaves his mask behind in Lake Laogai, which means Aang will know he’s in the city. Not sure where either of those would go from that point but there’s some Significant Differences there, lol.

...anyway, that’s where things stand now. Which, if any, are y’all interested in seeing?

As promised, the clip from the Lu Ten story, originally written for a challenge back in...yeesh 2010 XD. Again, this is canon-compliant at least up until Iroh and Zuko arrive in BSS, and I’d possibly change the names and/or how she gets her memories back.

An Wei sat by the window, holding her little girl and watching the sky. Today had been one of Huai's bad days, so An Wei had her hand resting lightly on her daughter's neck, counting her heartbeats. The doctors had told her, back when Huai was a baby and they'd figured out what was wrong with her, to hope for seven years--but only to hope, not to count on them. So An Wei took special care to always, always watch. She never regretted her child, no. Occasionally, she wished she had never met Huai's father, but...well, she couldn't remember much about him, other than the kind golden eyes (false kindness?) that had taken her in so completely during the Siege. She didn't think about him very much. It was too painful--and dangerous. Above and beyond the dangers in thinking about the War That Was No War, her own father had... Well, he hadn't been pleased. She didn't remember the argument, but her uncle wouldn't have brought her to the Lower Ring midwife who had cared for her during her pregnancy if she hadn't needed to hide. Despite all of her vigilance, it was her own heart that skipped a beat when the moonlight filtering in through her window turned an eerie, dull red. She gasped and clutched her daughter a little tighter, praying that Huai would sleep until this went away, so it wouldn't frighten her. That is, assuming it would go away. She shivered and shifted Huai so the little girl was facing away from the window and watched in horror as the bloody moon failed to return to normal. "Please..." she whispered. "Please be normal when she wakes..." As if in response to her desperate pleading, the moon flared silver again after a half hour. But she barely had a moment to relax before it winked out completely. An Wei jumped and stifled a scream. "Don't be afraid of the dark, this'll light your way home." She jumped again. There was no one here in the room with her and Huai, but she could have sworn... The moon blinked back into existence and a pretty girl with long white hair rode in on one of its beams. An Wei stared up at her, still frightened, pulling her daughter away from the girl as best she could. The moon-girl bent down and kissed An Wei's forehead. "Remember now," she murmured, then faded out of sight. ** "Don't be afraid of the dark." He smiles and makes a little light in his palm, carefully transferring it to a bundle of sticks. "This will light your way home." ** She studies the hairpiece he wears in his topknot, turning it over and over in her hands. "There's something you should know about me, too. About my family." ** "We can make this work, Itsu." He's determined, hopeful, his golden eyes shining. "We'll talk to my father. He'll understand. We'll make it work. Meet me here, at the usual time." "I trust you." ** She waits and waits and waits, until long past dark, but he doesn't come. ** She hates speaking with her guardian, but she's scared and has nowhere else to go. "Please, help me," she finishes quietly. He nods. "I'll keep you safe, Highness. You and your child. I promise." ** The light spins around and around and around, and she forgets her name, forgets her lover, and in her place is An Wei, a young woman trained as a scribe, seduced by a nameless Fire soldier, rather than... ** Itsu let out a little sobbing breath. Huai shifted in her arms. "Mommy?" she whispered, still half-asleep. "It's okay, baby, everything's okay. Go back to sleep." "'Kay." Huai closed her golden eyes again and her breathing evened out as much as it ever did. Itsu held her daughter close. Twice over a princess, at the worst possible time, born with a broken heart. No wonder Long Feng hid us so deep.

[to clarify--Itsu is Kuei’s sister. I forget how I set the relative ages, but assuming, as seems to be the case in flashbacks, that Lu Ten is about 10 years older than Zuko, he’d be somewhere between twenty and twenty-two when he died, depending on which date you believe; Kuei is around the same age (possibly a year or two younger?) and Itsu within two years of them.]

#shadowsong26fic #shadowsong writes star wars #shadowsong writes atla #feedback greatly appreciated #miscellania

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vexilexicon · 3 years

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8, 21, 43, 79 ❤️

OH YOU WANT ESSAY LENGTH? I’ll give you essay length dfghjkl.

8. Stay Awake - Dean Lewis

this one’s kind of hard, but it sort of fits Virginia Davies. again, her relationship with the Doctor is really complicated and weird, and they’re never officially ever involved romantically but there is the weird back-and-forth and almost codependency, even from the Doctor, because he’s the only person she has in this universe and he took her on as a companion on his “farewell tour” in I think it was s6, in the timeline when he thought he was going to die at Lake Silencio and actually did.

and then she’s with a Doctor who doesn’t know her, and that timeline she met him in never comes to pass, so she never really gets that closeness back - and of course then he finds out about some of the stuff she did and the choices she made, and he makes her leave.

If the feeling's gone Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake with me Just keep on holding on Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake with me

All our memories are packed into boxes Stacked up against the door 'Cause they say the bigger the love, the harder the fall Well, I'm crashing through the floor

I still feel your breath on my lips As you're walking out the door But my hand starts to slip Never felt like this before

21. betterman - Virginia to Vegas

honestly I got nothing. I’m very sorry, but it just doesn't fit anyone dfghjk

43. Mommy Fwiend - Penelope Scott

would probably have to be Jericho Jones (and wow isn’t that a name I haven’t mentioned in a hot minute), mostly for the full-on fuck off vibes, and how little shit she takes from the asshole guys on the Southside

I don't wanna suck you off Just to hold the spot Of every mental health professional you ever saw I'm not your therapist I'm not trained for this And I don't wanna take a fucking risk

79. Angela - The Lumineers

nothing really jumps out to me, but listening more than a few times and I start feeling like it’s kind of Rowan Potter? not all the lyrics, mostly the sound of the song itself - it feels very like, cathartic-ending-like? not happy, not sad - more like bittersweet but fulfilling? at least for Rowan. the only lyrics that fit are short snippets but I’ll share em anyway ehehe

Strangers in this town They raise you up just to cut you down

But you held your course to some distant war In the corners of your mind

From the second time around The only love I ever found

Were you safe and warm in your coat of arms With your fingers in a fist Did you hear the notes, all those static codes In the radio abyss?

send me a number 1-100 and I’ll tell you the song it corresponds with on my top 100 spotify wrapped playlist + and oc/ship it reminds me of! (forgot to put this at the end of the last one oops)

#spotify wrapped oc ask game #oc ask games #oc ask game #ask games #ask game #about: virginia davies #about: jericho jones #about: rowan potter #moirei #asks

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adamsvanrhijn · 4 years

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What Thomas-ship fics are you following/reading at the moment? Are they any good? :) looking for some recs!

naturally they are good if i am reading them ;-) but yes i believe so and i am following a few! i am assuming based on how you phrased this you’d prefer ongoing fics so i’ll focus on those

so i was reading:

But when I am Grown Up, will somebody Love Me? by likehandlingroses

Thomas/Richard and consists of 5 one shots spanning from 1927 to 1946, but it is over now! nevertheless highly recommend. she also just posted a oneshot: The Trouble With Thomas, which is not thomas ship fic per se but is mrs hughes’ evolving perspective on thomas and it touches on his relationships.

i am currently reading:

of more profane things by strawberriez8800

Thomas/Duke of Crowborough, canon divergent au where that whole heiress thing works out and thomas gets to be the duke’s valet while he’s married to lady mary. it’s so fucking stressful to read you’re just waiting for the other shoe to fall and i LOVE it. in progress, there are currently 24 chapters and it’s ongoing.

In Apple Blossom Time by DarthNickels

Thomas/Courtenay, need an ao3 account to read, email me at [email protected] if you don’t have one and would like an invite. canon divergent from series 2. this is a prequel in the series The Trees Sweetly Blooming, which is a must read if you have not already; thomas and edward end up in domestic bliss in 1920/1921 (with caveats of course) and this is how they get there. fucking excellent characterisation on all fronts and i have lines in my head from this series constantly.

i am also currently reading these three thomas/richard fics which are like the EMBODIMENT of fandom more cake in broad terms, all three of them deal with thomas and richard at turns gliding and fumbling through a relationship they both feel strongly about and encountering roadblocks but trying really, really hard:

i'll yield to the flood of your beauty by callmewirkmood (explicit)

ongoing with 16 chapters, begins during the royal visit and carries on in their relationship from there, currently we’re in jan/feb 1928. they have feelings and conflict and also sex, it’s great. excellent sharp prickly thomas. it is also the Other ongoing pornographic thomas/richard fanfiction and if you like mine you will very likely love this, lmfao.

Free From the Life that You Knew by for1dollarnameawoman

ongoing with 7 chapters, set in the 1930s. summary is perfect: Following a family tragedy, Richard begins to rethink what he wants to do with his life, and tries to bring Thomas along with him. has york OCs whom i’d die for.

hold me dear (though i’m far away) by nilescrane

ongoing with 3 chapters, lots of focus on Thomas playing tug of war with himself and the rope being his heart. holy mary mother of god the STRESS, the prickly thomas, so many elements. left off on a cliffhanger and i’m dying.

others:

InfiniteCalm posts fucking excellent thomas/richard oneshots, the most recent You're Knee Deep in Clover is like...... really amazing i love it, multiple perspectives on thomas and love at downton.

Three-Fold by votsalot

8 chapters, ongoing, has Thomas/Richard in it, it’s a mindfuck psychological thriller with supernatural elements and normally i hate that sort of thing but i am REALLY vibing with it. the premise: thomas and later anna disappear owing to a spooky magic painting; they end up back in time as themselves circa 1912-1914..... and have to alter the timeline. jumps between the future and the “past,” time loops, curses etc. lots to think about. downstairs ensemble fic.

two fics i’m extremely behind on but was enjoying:

Rehabilitation by dancing_satyr

s6 divergence, Thomas/OMC. Thomas gets a job in London, meets a man (who is an orthopedic doctor with a fancy practice), begins to like the man, the man perchance likes him back but has a lot of emotional baggage and Thomas has got lots of that his own alreayd, etc. Has frankly a delightful Thomas + Duke of Crowborough conflict resolution subplot.

Don't Stand in the Wind by EffervescentYellow

Thomas/Courtenay, canon divergence set post s6; the premise here is that Lt Courtenay DIDN’T die but that this was basically kept secret from those at the cottage hospital.... and Thomas finds out much much later.

#fic recs

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pancakemikus · 4 years

Note

I love your header! One idea I had is a Parent Trap style fic between Bill and an OC of mine and another is Bill, Ted, and Bill's girlfriend (my oc ;) ) going to a summer camp and it's like Friday the 13th where there's a killer on the loose.

Hey, sorry a lot if I respond now, but I was busy with things that I have to do for the back to school, however, I have only one fic, the first one you wrote to me, but the next one (the one I have lost the file, unfortunately) I will write as soon as possible a stand-alone post, dedicated to your second request.

Enough talking, now, let’s go!

“No way dude…” Bill was shocked when he arrived at the summer camp, he couldn't believe his eyes.

He didn't know exactly why he found himself in that summer camp, but Bill thought that something strange, and curious was waiting for him.

“Ok, so guys, you will have some time to get to know each other and get to know each other!” said the camp entertainer, “However, this might and the following nights, is going to be prohibited to go in females and males room ect...understand?”.

All the kids there said yes, and Bill started wandering through the camp, in search of something interesting to see.

When he saw a girl, struggling with her suitcase.

“Can I help you?” Bill asked and the girl nodded, as Bill noted, she was red for the commitment that was putting in taking her suitcase in her shared room.

“Thank you, If you hadn't been there, I would never have brought the suitcase here”.

There was a tone of relief in her voice, but, her aspect was too similar to his.

Bill hadn't thought much about this thing, and he ignored it.

“Anyway, my name is Bill Preston, what's yours?» Bill asked her, expecting an answer, «My name is __________”.

“Ok, so, do you know when we are going to have dinner?”? he asked her, hoping to have an answer, she did have that answer.

«It should be around seven o'clock in the evening if I'm not mistaken».

The boy smiled, thanked her and left her.

He felt a strange vibe through his veins, and that happened only when he saw _______.

If only his era where he was living, had been more modern, she would call Ted to tell him his strange feelings, however, he could even dream of it.

"Sooner or later I have to ask Rufus to take us into the future,» Bill thought and felt like his best friend wasn't having a great summer with his dad.

Then, he started thinking about some music he could have made to show his friend when he came back to town.

Before dinner, Bill heard someone arguing with a known voice.

«But Miss, I don't want to get back in England, I mean, I want to stay here with my other friends!», it was ______.

«But, you have to get back, we can't hold you more, it's just the first day here, go back with the others and don't worry about it».

Bill saw the girl cry at a certain point, so he waited for the main animator to go away.

«What happened?» Bill asked, showing up in front of the girl eyesight and she answered.

«I don't want to go away already!».

Bill didn’t know how to feel about the hug of the girl, he didn’t felt she was clingy but sure their new relationship was getting strange. So, Bill felt as his friend Ted was talking to him.

“Dude, try to say something, I know you can do it! Or try to quote me!”

“Well, I and my best friend often say one thing, Be excellent to each other and Party on dudes!” Bill tried to console her, and he succeeded, she smiled a lot.

“I bet your friend is a lucky guy to have you as his best friend, I wish I will be able to know him as this ends!”

Bill smiled a lot, and they went to dinner, however, the two sat together and talked a lot, their life seemed too similar, and they had too many experiences that seem to be shared, such as their birth.

“Wait, so you were telling me during our dinner that you’ve born in my same city,” Bill said and _______ answered:” Yeah, I don’t know why I live in England tho, probably it’s for my education and whatever my mom had in mind, your dad is with another woman”.

Bill responded:” Yep, my stepmom is... well, how do I say it, she was a senior student when I was a freshman”.

The girl gasped: “Wait, are you serious? I think you had a crush on her, you are blushing”. Bill tried to fake his expression but she was right.

Then, ______ got a photo out of her suitcase.

“Look, This is my mom, I don’t know why her photo is cut like this but I never had the chance to know”.

Bill understand her, he had a similar photo of his dad with him still it didn’ felt like it was related at all, but his gut feeling was trying to say something to him, something he had to investigate, with his new friend.

So, he got back to his bungalow and took the photo he had with him, he was lucky to have it.

When Bill was back, he gave it to her and…

“Today is the damn second time I am saying this but...NO WAY DUDE!!” Bill and _______ were shocked, ok, perhaps their absurd resemblance should have told them something, but that's not the point.

They were conscientious that after they were born something strange happened, Bill wasn’t sure of it, but for him, it was clear that they were related, they were too similar.

“I am sure of it, we’re twins!” Bill stood up and took her hand.

“Wait, so you’re telling me that we have the same surname so my name it had to be and it should be ______ Preston, it suits better you know?” _______ nodded happily.

But Bill kept thinking about how it would have been fun being with her and Ted in the phone booth with her and going through the different historic periods with her.

“I don’t think we can change each other places, Bill, I feel that Ted will be upset tho, what we can do?” _______ started thinking an idea of how they could change their lives, and Bill had a smart idea.

“I know what we can do!!” Bill jumped happily and talked about his strange idea to his friend.

“So, we have to meet a guy named Rufus that can help us with getting back in time before we were even born!?” _______ was shocked at the idea that she had to get back in time just to stop her mom and her dad.

“Probably, we’re going to ruin our main timeline, but the risk is worth it”. Bill was sure of it, however, one thing was sure, trying to find some peace was hard for them, and getting out of the bungalow, was risky.

So, they tried to sneak out and walked quietly into the woods with the two pieces of the photos they had but mostly some torches to help them go into the forest or at least a place we could meet with Rufus.

Getting where they wanted was hard, but at least it helped, as Bill expected, Rufus was waiting for them.

“Thank god my friend you are here!” Bill said he was relieved to see a familiar face, and Rufus knew that the girl with him was his twin.

“I heard that you want to stop your parents from getting separated, well, I am willing to help,” Rufus said to the both of them and ______ asked him:” Is it going to be worth it? Please, tell me that we are not going to ruin Ted’s life I want to know him at all costs!”

Rufus assured the girl that the boy’s life wouldn’t have been ruined, it was clear that _____ was worried for his excessive self-centeredness towards the situation in which they found themselves.

So, they got inside the phone box and hoped for the best.

“This is surely an old hospital and thank god we’re in San Dimas and not London” _____ said.

"Why saying this?" Bill asked and _____ answered him: "Do you think I am a London fanatic? I used to study and I've done other boring things there".

As Bill saw their mother with them, he decided to dress up as a doctor and fake an excuse on why he would not separate the children.

"Excuse me, miss!" Bill said, ignoring his childlike aspect, "What a beautiful pair of twins we have here".

"Oh thanks, Dr., They are my precious twins _______ and Bill, do you think they are going to be successful?".

Bill was rather embarrassed, considering his history debt with his best friend and tried to fake his emotions: "Oh, oh yes! I think that they are surely going to be successful".

Rufus and ______ laughed a lot while they were spying on Bill, but then ______ decided to find their dad.

"Found him! I knew he was there" ______ was happy and then dressed as a janitor if she dressed as a nurse she probably would have disappeared into another room trying to help a patient.

"Excuse me Mr., are you ok?" ______ asked and her dad responded: "Oh yes, I'm fine, I look tired, don't I?"

_______ nodded and then her dad asked: "Should I find another woman, I mean, I love my wife… But…"

______ was starting to be disappointed and tried her best to convince her dad otherwise.

"I don't think this will be useful in future, just try to be happy and glad that two lives are born, if you are going away now, probably their future will be messed up".

"Thank you miss, I will think about it".

Rufus knew that their timeline changed, so he called back Bill and _______.

As they returned to their camp, everything changed, their parents got together and Ted was there, safe and sound.

Who would have thought that a few words could become useful.

Have a nice day, and sorry for the wait ;-;

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armada-of-ships-against-antis · 5 years

Note

Gush about some of your favorite ships please

Sorry for the long wait, but I think I might be ready for this now. (and before anybody wonders, of course it is in the middle of the night and I should go to bed now! Cause it’s the best time to gush over your ships!)

Okay lets begin with Spirk - man I was raised being a Trekkie and to be honest I never saw the great appeal of Kirk, cause my fucking younger than 10 year old heart already belonged to that vulcan! And I bailed my eyes out when he died! But after Kirk and the crew did everything to bring him back, I was like: Okay Kirk is a good one, okay! Nobody will ever be able to seperate them, only over my dead body. Back then it was more about the friendship but I’ll be dammned if I didn’t become a Spirk shipper some 10 years later when rewatching it. But why stop there, get Bones into the fun, too! Try to provoke that human side of Spock, trigger some unlogical feelings, try to beat him in 3d chess!

Okay bear with me there are three other Star Trek ships I wanna gush about! I pretty much watched the series in the order they came out, so next was TNG that I saw, and although I loved data to every bit and byte of his android being, I was at a loss for a love interest for him. Okay there is always Geordie I guess or Picard, but TNG never hold a deep appeal for me in that field. So on to DS9. When I saw it as a kid, is was boring shit with all that politics and religion. I was around 18 when I rewatched and then in only the fourth episode I became suddenly aware of how motherfucking much Garak flirted with Julian Bashir! And I fell so deeply in love for their weird dynamic of a young and easily impressible human doctor with a mysterious cardassian spy tailor. I ran around showing scenes with them to people who were not shippers and they agreed, that there was tension. And right there was my first time finding background informations about my ship. It was there! I didn’t just interpret too much! Andrew Robinson, the actor said himself he thought of Elim Garak as an omnisexual character who had a certain interest in Julian. It was absolutely mindblowing to me (also I started to google what omnisexual meant and found about pansexuality, so this is kinda part of finding my own identity, thanks to the closeted representation of a queer alien in sci-fi show from the 90s)

Okay two more and I’m done with Star Trek. But both are from Voyager. Throughout the series I loved the chemistry between Janeway and Chakotay. The slightly forbidden, the pressure, the loneliness of being captain of a ship so far away she probably would never see her husband again. Tragic shit and so perfect set up. And then came Seven of Nine and manged to shake things up. Suddenly I was a multi shipper, because I couldn’t decide if she or Chakotay should be with Kathryn. The one was loving, supporting and the other was awkward, learning new things about finding humanity again. One was frowned upon because of their ranks and the other because Seven was still more borg than human in how she behaved. So pretty cold, while also confused a ton of times and Janeway ALWAYS had the time and nerves to explain it to her. Just like the doctor (who speaking between us is also a solid shipping option for Seven!)

Damn I tricked you by forgetting myself, that I did develop a shipping crush on Q x Picard. Damn have you ever seen those two interacting. The cockiness in the room, the mocking tone, the resistance. Have you seen those scenes you could perfectly take out of context and already have a “morning after sex” scenario?

Good now let’s take a deep breath and come to the Harry Potter fandom. Or in my case Severus Snape’s playground to be shipped to literally everybody! If it had Snape in it, I would read Everything during that time. Snarry was my most favourite, followed by Snape x Lucius, Remus, Sirius. But I also was looking into x Hermione, Draco, Lily, James, McGonagall, Dumbledore, Ron, Neville (Oh what a small and angsty ship), Bellatrix, Voldemort, Narcissa, Tonks, hell I even read one with Hagrid! (Okay I admit I didn’t enjoy that). Snape was my shipping bitch. Beside that I was of course loving Sirius x Remus.

Okay we move a tiny bit backwards in my life timeline, because before I started to excessively ship my ship bitch with everybody that was breathing, I had a rare ship in Final Fantasy (VII to be more precisely). Hojo x Vincent. You know just your ordinary crazy, mentally instable old (as in probably 60 years old) mad scientist having his way with a young agent from a special task force who canonly had a love interest in his wife… yeah. You know the totally normal stuff you ship every day! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I mean I also had the regular Cloud x Sephiroth, Cid x Vincent, Cloud x Tifa, Tifa x Aeris, Reno x Rude or Rufus and so on, but hell yeah I wrote one of my longest fanfictions with most of my OCs for Hojo and Vincent and someone commented on it. That person became my fucking best friend for now over 13 years who went with me through so much shit but is still my shipping partner in crime till now.

Together we discovered the movie Megamind and watched it more than 10 times in one week! We were so instantly on board with Megamind x Roxanne that it nearly hurt. And when we started an rpg, we shipped the fuck out of them, gave Minion a mermaid to love and that was the most perfect and sweet shit. They are just adorable! He’s such a goofball, sick with love only hold back because of his supervillain image.

I also met my second girlfriend via fanfiction comment. I had written a smut one shot about Tarrant Hightopp, the mad Hatter with ‘his’ Alice. That was also the first one I attempted to translate into English. When we met for the first time, we also watched Alice in Wonderland around 10 times together and we were in love with the lovely dynamic. We were frustrated when we found out, there was even a kiss in the script that never made it to the fucking screen! It was outrageous! I started to learn how to write a scottish accent and strew in some scottish words in our rpg to make it more authentic.

(And after that I managed to pull her into the pit of the Harry Potter fandom, hell I even pulled her into the pit of shipping mlm which she didn’t like until Snupin. But our main ship was suddenly Snape with her OC and we wrote a lot. Like between 2-8k word for one single post in our rpg! In the end we had enough to fill two books. We did even cosplay as them.)

Let’s get back to the Final Fantasy fandom a bit and let me gush over the other ships I had over the years. I’m still a huge Squall x Quistis shipper from part 8 and Laguna x Kiros! I also have an eye on Cifer x Fu-Jin (hah one eye, cause she has a an eyepatch, urgh I know that was a bad joke). And while I started as a big Auron x Tidus shipper, it shifted more to Auron x Rikku. I shipped them when I was about 15 (her age) and I thought I wasn’t allowed to do that, so I made a whole fucking AU where she was older and it developed into a totally original story of my own, which I have never ever written down even one page). With X-2 I satisfied myself with Paine x Rikku, they were such cute opposites of each other, I couldn’t resist! Only some years ago I played FF 15 and damn it was a shipping paradise again for me. Like all of the four protagonists are a match for each other! And then Ardyn appeared and made me weak in the knees. So Ardyn x Noctis but also just because those the truly most favorite characters: Ardyn x Ignis. Not exactly the fluffy happy stuff, I can tell you that. Manipulation, angst, abuse it had it all.

I can’t talk about Final Fantasy and leave Kingdom Hearts out, so yeah I started as a typical Sora x Riku (not Rikku from FF 10) fangirl and with part 2 I also feel for Axel x Roxas. I know, I know but at least with Organisation 13 you had a whole bunch of shippable characters. Just make one or two of them your shipping bitch, in my case Xemnas and Xigbar and ship the shit out those guys with everybody you can think of in the organisation.

And when we are already talking about Kingdom Hearts, I just jump into Disney a bit. Like every girls dream was to find their prince, ect and I was like: yeah Mulan and Shan Yu seem to fit nicely… Frollo is a fucking ass creep, but damn that scene in the cathedral when he sniffs Esmeraldas hair… Jasemine you look good in that red slave outfit for Jafar to be honest and dear Adam, you should have stayed a beast for Belle. Happy ruining your childhood. You’re welcome. :D Not that I shiped those during seeing those movies the first time, but you know I rewatch stuff!

Good okay let’s check the watch… good 1 hour later…. I’m not gonna finish this any time soon…. I’m sorry. I just tried to make a list of ships that seem important to me and I would probably write another hour or two. I just hope this satisfies you for the moment ;)

If you or anybody else wants to hear about more video game, movies or series ships and me writing an essay about that shit… feel free to ask I guess LMAO

Good Night dear people (or maybe not I see 15 messages on my dash)

#ask me #armada #too many fucking fandoms to tag!!

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blankparchment · 5 years

Text

Imagine the Doctor tells you that you’re going to die; he knew your death was fixed before he met you

This is written with an OC because I’m not a fan of second person. It’s the 11th Doctor in my head but you can imagine it however you want.

I take requests if you’re interested!

"Doctor?"

The door had never been open before. Every adventure, every moment with the Doctor began by opening that door. But not this day. Today it was open. Ryland stepped inside the TARDIS quietly and closed the door behind her, watching the Doctor at the console. He was heaving his breaths and muttering with a tone too low for her to hear. The TARDIS hummed quietly, and the sound was almost forlorn.

It seemed like the Doctor hadn't even heard her. Cautiously, she stepped up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. He was shaking. "Doctor?" she repeated.

"You need to go." His voice was steel. The silence after his words was suffocating.

"Doctor, what are you talking about? What's wrong?" Ryland moved beside him and turned to face him, trying to look him in the eye. He didn't look up from the console. She ignored the pit rising in her chest and the sudden tightness of her throat. Something was wrong with the Doctor.

"You need to leave. I don't care where you go. You need to go and get as far away from me as possible," he told her lowly. Ryland didn't attempt to leave. Instead, she slowly reached for his arm, waiting for him to say more.

He took a quick breath and shook his head. Without warning, he slammed his hands down on the console. Ryland jumped but didn't say anything. "Go!" he shouted. "There is no place for you here! Not anymore."

"What is this about?" Ryland asked, grabbing his arm fully. Her voice was beginning to shake. "You can't just say things like this and expect me to understand."

The Doctor scoffed and brushed her hand off. He turned his back on her and moved to the other side of the console, pulling a lever and hitting a few buttons. "I don't expect you to understand, I expect you to go!"

Ryland shook her head rapidly, stepping back. That wasn't what he meant—that couldn't be what he meant. The Doctor was the one constant in her life, the one person—no. No, this couldn't be right. "What the hell is this? You can't just . . . just shout at me and expect me to go away without an explanation. That's not how this works."

The Doctor stormed up to her, glaring. Ryland took a step back without realizing it. "This works how I say it works!" he snapped. "This is my ship!"

"Screw that!" Ryland snapped. She tried to push him away but he didn't even move. She had to fight not to step back again. She had never been afraid of the Doctor, but then, she has never seen him like this before. "I don't care where we are, you don't get to do that! You don't get to-to invite yourself into my life and then push me away!"

"Ryland, I am only going to tell you this once—"

"Good, then we can finish this conversation!" Ryland shouted, crossing her arms protectively. She let herself have only a single moment to breathe before she pushed on. "I-I don't care what your reasons are, I know something's wrong!"

"Something is wrong!" the Doctor roared. "I don't want you here!"

Ryland took a step back and looked away. She didn't see the Doctor close his eyes briefly or clench his shaking hands into fists. When she looked back at him, all she saw was bitter anger.

"I don't care," she said. Her voice shook and she was tense. "I'm not leaving until you explain."

"There's nothing to explain." He wasn't shouting, but somehow the dead tone of his voice was worse. "There's nothing I want to say to you. I just need you to leave."

Ryland took another step back, until she was against the cold banister of the TARDIS. She grabbed it with both hands, trying to stop herself from trembling. "You promised I wouldn't be alone again. You promised. This isn't you. You've never done something like this before, j-just calm down. We can talk about this. We have to talk about this. I'm not going to leave, Doctor. I can't just leave—"

The Doctor shook his head. "You can't stay!" he bit out. "Do you understand me, Ryland? You can't stay. You don't have that option. You need to leave and get far away from here, far away from me."

"Doctor—"

"Just trust me!" he exploded, throwing his hands out widely. "For once in your life, just trust me!"

Ryland looked down at the floor, taking a deep breath. "How can I trust you, Doctor? I-I don't even know who you are right now."

The Doctor sighed and, for the first time, Ryland could see the fear in his eyes. The tension in his shoulders dropped in resignation. "Ryland. Brilliant Ryland." He stepped forward and put his hands on her shoulders. She tensed without meaning to. "I'm so sorry. But there's nothing I can do. I tried everything, I went through every timeline, looked for every loophole, but there's nothing. I can't save you."

"Doctor?" she asked. He watched her expression change and his eyes softened. "What are you talking about?"

"Ryland, it's a terrible thing to know when you're going to die. But I know. I know when you're going to die, Ryland, and I can't stop it. I can't. Every time, in every situation, it's always you or the world. And I've tried. I've thought of everything. But it isn't enough."

Ryland swallowed hard and her breaths became more difficult. "Doctor, what . . . how could you know this? You're being ridiculous, how could you know when I'm going to die?" Her voice shrank and he could hear her trembling deaths. "D-doctor?"

"Ryland, I'm so sorry," he breathed. "The first time you met me wasn't the first time I met you. I met you on your last day on Earth. And I knew you were dying, I knew it was a fixed point. I knew it the moment I met you. But you grabbed my hand and you told me that you didn't want to die alone. You were so afraid." He moved a strand of hair from her cheek with his thumb. "And you were so brave."

"You went back," she whispered. "Y-you went back into my time stream and you . . . met me. You got to know me. Took me on adventures. You became my friend."

The Doctor smiled but his eyes were still pained. "I did. And it's been years since I first met you Ryland. Back then, it was about you. I didn't want you to be alone. I didn't want you to die with a stranger."

Against everything in her, Ryland started to cry. "And now?"

"Now I wish more than anything that you didn't have to die. I wanted to help you, Ryland, but I didn't count on caring about you this much. But how could I not? You're brilliant. Truly magnificent."

"Why would you do that?" she asked. "I was no one to you, and I was going to die either way. Why-why would you go back and befriend me if you knew I was going to die? You must have known it would hurt you. I could have died and you wouldn't have felt a thing. The world would've kept spinning. No one would have mourned. I could have just died and that would have been it. For everyone. No one had to get hurt." Ryland let out a sobbing breath and the Doctor pulled her closer to him, looking her in the eye.

"Oh, Ryland. Innocent, wonderful Ryland. Can't you hear yourself? You're worth so much more than that. It's been an honour to know you."

The Doctor wrapped his arms around her and held her close, letting her cry into his chest.

"I don't want to die," she cried, "I don't—I can't—"

"I know," the Doctor said, holding her closer. "I'm sorry."

#11thdoctor #doctor #thedoctor #doctorwho #imagine #oneshot #doctorxoc #doctor x oc #doctor x reader #doctorxreader #angstfic #fanfic #fanfiction #angst #sad #timetravel

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gumnut-logic · 5 years

Text

Gentle Rain (Part Five)

Title: Gentle Rain

Warm Rain Series

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Author: Gumnut

23 Jan 2019

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: Sometimes it is so gentle, you don’t realise it is happening.

Word count: 1986

Spoilers & warnings: Virgil/Kayo, Scott/OC, spoilers for Warm Rain up to this point in the timeline.

Timeline: Six months after ‘The Proposal’, almost a sequel.

Author’s note: For @scribbles97 A little shorter than usual, but at least you get it in one day instead of having to wait several and besides, it stopped itself there. More conversations in this. I promise the rest of the boys will make an appearance soon. I was pondering a situation at the end involving John, but I figured you’d all kill me if I put a hole in TB5 or crashed TB3, so I didn’t :D I hope you realise how much effort is being put in to not blow anything up here :D Many, many thanks for all your wonderful support and particularly regarding Em. I wasn’t sure how well I could write her, but I’ve received lots of very kind comments, so thank you ever so much ::giant group hug::

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

Virgil shook himself once he made it into the hallway. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it all, other than he was definitely going to have words with his brother.

Kay seemed to be forming a friendship with the doctor and as far as he was concerned, that was something to be encouraged, despite the conspiracies likely in his future. He had wondered for years if locking themselves away on an island was a good thing, particularly for his sister and grandmother. The socialising options were almost non-existent.

He frowned. In fact, he couldn’t recall Kay making any real connections with anyone since they had moved out there. Except perhaps Penny. Was that healthy? But then he hadn’t made any connections himself either. A sigh. Yet another sacrifice for International Rescue.

Skipping two floors and a couple of corridors, he approached Scott’s room. Jeremy was on duty today and Virgil smiled as the security guard held out the portable hand scanner. It could be considered ridiculous to go to this level of security, but when the Hood fools you once, you do your best to prevent it from happening again. The man’s death hadn’t changed Tracy security standard. Kayo wouldn’t allow it.

After confirming his biological identity, Virgil pulled his iR ident card out of his pocket and flashed it across the hospital’s security panel. The door slid silently open.

The room inside was dark. Virgil slipped in quietly, not wanting to disturb Scott if he was asleep.

Sleep was the main reason why his brother was so cranky in hospital. He found it almost impossible to get enough rest. Ever the light sleeper Scott would wake at the smallest disturbance. Whether it was years as a pseudo-parent to his younger siblings or as an acquired response due to the Air Force or International Rescue, his big brother could go from a dead sleep to fully alert in a split second. Useful as an emergency responder, a pain in the ass in hospital.

Virgil stepped lightly across the room to the chair beside his brother’s bed and sure enough, the older man was asleep. Scott’s hair was in his eyes and he lay on his right side, his left arm in a cast draped over his chest, keeping it clear of the injury in his abdomen. Virgil let out a breath and sat down as quietly as he could. He didn’t often see Scott asleep. Scott unconscious, yes, simply sleeping? It was rare to actually be able to approach him without waking him. The fact he wasn’t currently awake now was likely because the man was ill, medicated and exhausted.

Sliding his tablet from his back pocket, he sent a text to Kay and settled down to read his latest issue of Engineering International.

-o-o-o-

After Virgil left, the room was silent until Em broke it with a sigh. “I’m sorry I did that. Didn’t mean to blubber all over your fiancé.”

Kayo sat up straighter in her seat. “You’ve been through a lot. Be patient with yourself.”

“It shouldn’t matter. It’s not like I have lost anything I haven’t already lost.”

Kayo bit back a reply. The doctor obviously wasn’t ready to face the issue. “Give it time.”

Em didn’t answer, but looked away a moment before turning back, her expression calmer. “How is he really?”

Kayo blinked. “Virgil?” Em nodded. “His usual stubborn self. Why?”

“He comes across as a man who hides his concerns from others.”

Thoughtful. “Virgil...Virgil thinks he is protecting others from himself.” The idiot. “It’s a Tracy genetic fault.”

Em smiled. “So, I should expect similar from his brothers?”

“Oh, probably, with unique variations. Alan, you will find on the floor somewhere before he admits to it. Gordon is a drama queen. He’ll joke about breaking limbs before he admits to having broken one. John, well, where is John? Yes, he has admitted himself to hospital when you weren’t looking. And Scott? He’ll ask you ‘What injury?’ while picking pieces of himself off the floor.”

Em stared. “You really grew up with these guys, didn’t you.”

“Oh, yes. Yes I did.”

“Stressful?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” She grinned and Em grinned back.

Silence fell for a moment and the doctor’s expression grew thoughtful. “Do they get injured a lot?”

That sobered Kayo. “Sometimes. It is risky work.”

“What about you?”

She shrugged. “A few times.”

“How do you cope?”

Kayo thought a moment. “We’re family. We make do.”

“But last time was different.” It wasn’t a question.

Kayo straightened her face, not really willing to speak about it. “He nearly died. Wasn’t the first time.” But it was the closest.

Em appeared to realise she was stepping on intensely private territory. “I’m sorry, it is none of my business. I just...I want to understand.” She frowned. “Why do you do it?”

“International Rescue?” Em nodded. “Because when you cry for help you need to know that there is someone out there who will answer.” It was almost a motto.

“But why you? Why your family? You sacrifice so much.”

“Who else is there? Should we step back and let someone else make the sacrifices? Somebody has to do it. We can, so we do.” A breath. “Why did you become a doctor?”

A small smile. “To help people.”

“There you go.”

Em looked down at the hands in the remains of her lap. “I will do everything I can to help Virgil, Kayo. I promise.”

Kayo smiled. “I had no doubt you would.

-o-o-o-

Some idiot in Brazil was making claims to have solved the relative ion versus reaction problem in fuel synthesizers again on page four. God, did any of these guys check their facts. Virgil had already assessed all six of those ratios for viability and they had all failed. The answer lay not in the ratio but in the temperature. He and Brains had their synthesizers churning out fuel at three times the premium rate. They had to. They needed the quantity and the speed.

“Growling at your magazines again?”

Virgil looked up to find his brother smirking at him. “Did I wake you?”

“No.” A pause. “Well, maybe.” A one shouldered shrug.

“Sorry.”

“Eh, not your fault.” He looked about. “Where’s Kayo?”

“With Em.”

“Oh.”

“Uh huh.” He hesitated a moment, but then jumped in. “What’s with you telling her I was injured?”

“Uh.” And Scott was struggling to sit himself up. Virgil stood and helped his brother into an upright position. “Shit, that hurts.”

“Here, hold still while I shove this pillow...there. There you go. Comfortable?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Well?” Virgil sat back down.

“Well, what?”

“Why did you tell her I was injured? She told Kay.”

“I didn’t have to tell her. She asked me. Apparently, you’ve been favouring your right side and she noticed.” Virgil stared at him. “She was worried.”

“Sure.”

“It’s what happened!”

“Yeah, well, now Kay’s worried. I didn’t want to worry her.”

“Worried about what?” And Scott was frowning at him. “What exactly is wrong with you?”

Oh, crap.

“Nothing!” His big brother glared at him. “Nothing much.”

“Virgil.”

“It’s just a little ache.”

“Bullshit.”

“Scott-“

“You lie to me one more time and I’ll ground you until I get a medical report.”

“We can’t afford to do that.”

“I will not have you flying injured, Virgil! I don’t give a shit how little that injury is. Damnit, you almost died. Don’t you dare do that to me again!”

Hell. “Scott, calm down. I’m fine, honest. Just some aching muscle and puckered scars, that’s all.” He reached out and grabbed his brother’s shoulder. “I’m okay. Em’s going to help me with treatment.”

Scott stared up at him and Virgil could see the effects of medication in his eyes. Scott didn’t react quite like Virgil, falling asleep rather than confessing all his secrets, but it did make him a little more emotional. “Honest, Scott. I’m okay.”

“You better be.”

“I am. Unlike you.”

His brother’s shoulders slumped under his fingers.

Virgil sighed. “Hey.” He squeezed gently.

“What?”

“You’ll get to go home soon.”

“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Look after yourself, Virg. Please.”

“I do.”

Scott didn’t answer.

Virgil sighed, and let go of his brother, grabbing the chair and dragging it closer to the bed before sitting down. He dropped his elbows onto the bed and his chin onto his hands. “I think we’re in trouble.”

“What?”

“Kay’s making friends with Em as we speak.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Wants to invite her over for Christmas.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh. They’ve already cornered me. You’ll be next. She’s a doctor. With Kay in her back pocket, we’re doomed.”

Scott snorted, smirked, and started laughing.

Virgil looked up at him. “What’s so funny? I thought you were cranky.”

“You. You are so screwed.”

“Hah! Thanks.” He glared. “Remember you’ve got rehab ahead of you.”

“Crap.”

“Oh yeah. We’re totally screwed.”

-o-o-o-

“Do you have any plans after leaving the hospital?”

Kayo’s expression was a polite enquiry, but Em sensed she had more to say. “I’ll go home, I guess. Get myself set up with a new array of mobility devices. I’m thinking maybe a hoverscoot rather than the chair. Less bulk.”

“What about Christmas?”

Em shrugged. “Can’t say I feel like celebrating this year.” At Kayo’s concerned expression, she hurried to amend. “Don’t worry, I’ll get over it. I’ll be okay.”

“Yes, Virgil.” And Kayo was glaring at her.

“Okay, fine. Do you have any better suggestions?”

“I was thinking you could join us on Tracy Island.”

Em blinked and stared. “What?”

An arched eyebrow. “Would you like to join us for Christmas?”

“Go out and stay on Tracy Island, the super secret base of International Rescue and the Thunderbirds?”

“Of course, we’d have to blindfold you and drug you on the way over.”

Em stared.

“I’m kidding.”

“Oh.”

Kayo was smiling at her, not unkindly. “You would be very welcome.”

The thought filled her with amazement. The whole star struck feeling wrapping around her brain and buzzing her out. It was an amazing opportunity. She could thank Alan for his assistance. Meet the other brothers. Maybe see a Thunderbird. Finally meet Scott without him bleeding all over her.

That last cleared the fuzz. She had been enjoying talking to him. He had an interesting sense of humour and a lovely smile. Those eyes...

She shook herself. What the hell was she thinking? Look at yourself, Emaline. You’re a mess.

“Em? Are you okay?”

She forced a smile. “Um, thank you so much. I never expected...can I think about it?”

Kayo frowned a little. “Of course. Are you sure you are okay?”

“I’m good.” And she suddenly wanted to be alone. To think or to cry, she wasn’t sure. Probably both.

The woman’s green eyes obviously didn’t believe her. “We’re not all that scary, you know.”

“It’s not you.” And she realised she had admitted there was a problem. Damn. At the inevitable arched eyebrow. “It’s me. I just...let me think about it. Please.”

Kayo reached out and took Em’s hand, holding it between her palms. Her skin was soft and her touch gentle. “Em, I know it sounds like a big ask. A bit dazzling perhaps. But really, we are just a family inviting you over for Christmas. Grandma can’t cook, so don’t eat anything she offers you. Virgil can bake and barbecue a great steak. Scott will burn the burgers, but he pours a good wine. Gordon may stick tinsel down the back of your shirt, but you have my permission to thump him. We...I would like your company. No expectations, just a time to relax and enjoy good conversation.”

Em stared at her and her voice came out small. “Okay.”

A genuine smile spread across Kayo’s face. It lit up her features. She squeezed her hand gently. “Thank you.”

Oh, shit, she’d just said yes.

Bloody hell.

-o-o-o-

End Part Five

Part Six

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #virgil tracy #kayo kyrano #scott tracy #virgil/kayo #scott/oc #warm rain

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emma-m-black · 5 years

Text

Eobard Thawne/OC - Idea

Part One - Chapter One

Part Two

For such a giant building there was sure no one around. As Lillian made her way through the halls of S.T.A.R. Laboratories her heels clicked and echoed against the cool grey walls. She had followed Caitlins instructions to get into the building. The key card she had given her and code worked without any issue. Which made her glad, she did not want her first visit to S.T.A.R. labs to involve the police thinking she was trying to break in. She still could not believe that Caitlin had ditched on being her to meet her, but she was an adult and she could totally handle walking herself into super sophisticated laboratory without someone holding her hand. Maybe it would have been better if there was actually people here, it was so quiet and cold. At least she had guilted Caitlin into bringing her coffee when she finally got here.

She came to the elevator and the doors opened before she even had a chance to push a button. “Creepy.” Lillian spoke with a whisper as she entered the elevator and hit the desired floor. Thankfully Caitlin’s instruction for how to get to the Cortex as she called it were very thorough, and it didn’t seem like it was all the difficult to find if you had some semblance of an idea as to where to go.

She entered what was known as the Cortex and looked around. There was no one in sight save a lone figure laying unmoving in a bed in a glass windowed room just off from where she was.

Lillian took a step further into the room just as a voice sounded behind her. “Can I help you?” Lillian jumped and quickly spun around as she moved a hand to her heart in fear while her other hugged her purse towards her chest. The voice had been quiet but in the emptiness of the room echoed much louder then she was sure intended. She found a man in a wheelchair had snuck up behind her, a man that was none other than Doctor Harrison Wells.

“Harrison Doctor...I mean Wells Harris…” Lillian began as she tried to find the right combination of words in her panicked state.

��It’s actually Doctor Harrison Wells, and who might you be exactly?” Doctor Wells questioned from his spot in his chair. He had come around the corner just in time to see the edge of a purse and the tips of cherry red waves he did not recognize.

“Yes sorry, I know who you are. I’m sister, Caitlin...I mean Caitlin’s sister.” Lillian spoke quickly as she tried to pull herself back together. “It’s ah, an honor to meet you Doctor Wells.” Lillian smiled widely and stuck her hand that had just been clenching her heart out towards him. Doctor Lillian Snow, pleasure to meet you.” She spoke to the dark haired, eyeglassed man before her.

“Ah.” Said Harrison as reached his hand out to shake hers. Just as their hands were just about to touch a spark of electricity shot quickly from Harrison to Lillian, zapping her in the process.

“Ouch!” Lillian yelped as she pulled her hand back slightly and gave it a shake.

The spark had been so fast that he was sure Lillian had not seen it, but he knew it was the speed force. Could she be another speedster, did she know who he really was? So many questions filled his mind but were quieted as she took his hand in hers in a shake.

“I’m a big fan of your work Doctor Wells, this is truly a pleasure and an honor.” Lillian spoke as she released his hand.

“You will have to excuse me, I wasn’t aware you were stopping in. Caitlin isn’t actually here at the moment.” Harrison spoke as he began to wheel his chair around Lillian to the center of the room.

Lillian turned around to follow Harrison’s movements. “Yes, she said she would be a little late, that’s why she gave me a key card to get down here. I guess she hadn’t mentioned that she asked me to come in as a second opinion?”

“No actually, I also wasn’t aware that Caitlin even had a sister.” Harrison replied from his spot in the middle of the Cortex. His mind racing as he thought back to the information he had gathered from future events and there was never a mention of Caitlin Snow having a sister. He wanted to get to his time vault and ask Gideon exactly what was going on, but he did not dare leave this unknown woman alone with Barry Allen. If she knew anything of his plan or even if she had a plan of her own she could ruin everything for him.

“Lillian!” Came the voice of Caitlin as the young woman entered the room holding a cardboard coffee tray containing four drinks. She moved to stand next to her sister. The resemblance between them easily seen as they stood next to each other.

Harrison noted their facial features and body type to be quite similar, but it was their hair and eyes that made them look so drastically different. Where Caitlin was a brunette with brown eyes, Lillian’s head was encased in waves of cherry red which caused her jade green eyes to stand out sharply against her light skin. If you did not see them standing next to each other Harrison was not sure you would know they were sisters. But together, you could clearly tell. Knowing he did not want to leave Barry alone with this new person he decided to pry for information instead of just asking Gideon.

“So, older, younger?” Asked Harrison as he leaned back in his chair slightly so that he could observe Lillian’s reaction.

“We are twins actually.” Replied Caitlin with a smile as she as she reached her free arm around her sister to squeeze her. “Although Lily always likes to remind me she came out first.”

“You’ll have to excuse me once again, Caitlin never mentioned you before, and you introduced yourself as Doctor. Exactly what do you specialize in?” Harrison questioned as he watched Caitlin separate herself from her sister.

Lillian began to blush. “Oh I’m a Surgeon, Doctor Wells. Nothing that exciting.”

“Oh please.” Caitlin said with a huff. “She has a Ph.D. in both Molecular Genetics and Molecular Engineering. As well as currently having the best mortality rate in the country.”

“Very impressive.” Harrison spoke slowly as he examined Lillian once again.

It was at this that Lillian began to feel herself blush harder as she watched Harrison’s eyes scan her up and down. Sizing her up in her in her black dress leggings and white button down blouse. She hoped that it wasn’t showing because she felt like at any moment she might melt into a puddle. “It’s really nothing compared to you Doctor Wells.”

At this Caitlin elbowed her sister in the side. “Stop being modest, You are brilliant.” Caitlin said with a smile. “She is brilliant, that is why I asked her to come and look at Mr. Allen. I hope that is okay Doctor Wells?”

“Of course. If your sister can figure out exactly what is keeping Mr. Allen in his coma then I welcome the help.” Said Harrison. “But if you would excuse me, I have some things to attend to. Please help yourself to whatever you need Doctor Snow.”

Harrison then turned his chair and wheeled himself away. Heading through the facility and into an abandoned hall. He positioned himself in such as way to rest a hand against the cool concrete, and as if by magic part of the wall disappeared revealing a hidden room. Quickly Harrison made his way into the room, the lights turning on inside as he went. The wall knitted itself shut behind him.

Standing from his chair Harrison moved forward toward a lone pillar in the room and placed his right hand upon it. A woman’s face then appeared before him. “Gideon, search for all reference to a Doctor Lillian Snow. Both in this timeline and the original.”

“Yes Doctor Wells.” The voice responded and quickly images of news articles and government issued certificates were set about for him to view. “It appears in your original timeline Doctor Lillian Snow would have died the night of the particle accelerator explosion. She was killed in a car accident with a drunk driver on her way home from Central City Hospital.”

“In your altered timeline it appears she was never killed. There is a missing persons report on her however, not issued until months from now. However, I have found this.” Said the voice of Gideon as a marriage certificate appeared before him. It was dated from his home time, around the date that he had left. On it read Eobard Thawne and Lillian Snow.

“How did this happen?” Harrison asked as he removed the glasses from his face.

“Well, I would assume you two fell in love.” Gideon spoke with a slight sarcastic undertone........

So, let me know what you think. I’ve got about 28 pages written and that being about 2 and a half chapters. This is just a snippet from chapter 1 but I wanted to see what everyone thought :) This is gonna run through Flash and into LOT

#eobard thawne #eobard thawne/oc #matt letscher #flash #reverse flash #reverse flash x oc #eobard thawne / OC

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tigerlover16-uk · 7 years

Note

As someone who likes hearing your thoughts on DBSuper and anything DB related in general, how do you think Toyotaro's influence in the DB world will be remembered? Honestly the man has done nothing but disappoint by writing poor plot points while dissing many characters and putting Vegeta up on a pedestal. Granted, he's not the first writer to commit these mistakes, but if he keeps this up he'll never make it big in the manga world. Think he can make a comeback with the DBSuper manga?

It’s still strange to hear people actually have interest in what I have to say, but gratifying nonetheless. Thanks for that.

And honestly, God only knows on both accounts. Public opinion on things can radically alter within weeks, and greater time and reflection can give fans a lot of time to look deeper and re-evaluate their opinions on certain works, for better or worse.

Ken Penders was once a beloved writer for the Archie Sonic comics, with many of his stories being longstanding classics. Then his stupid lawsuit happened that resulted in all the characters he created being ripped out of the comic haphazardly, forced a reboot that nobody wanted, and was probably a factor in the recent unceremonious cancellation of the comic right before a 3-part story could be concluded and any kind of closure could be had on anything. So as soon as all that nonsense turned him into the anti-Christ for the Sonic fandom, people began re-reading his work now as more critical adults compared to as impressionable children and realizing that a lot of what he wrote, while there were definitely some merits (There’s a reason people were angry so many of his characters and ideas weren’t allowed to be used anymore), his writing actually had a ton of problems and some of his stories were outright stupid. Endgame gets the worst of it, going from a well regarded would-have-been ending for the comic that changed the series forever, to a subject of mockery for it’s numerous plot holes, weird character decisions and just overall messy story.

On the other hand, we have the Star Wars Prequels. People HATED those movies with a burning passion for years since The Phantom Menace proved a let down for many, and I mean they violently HATED everything about the movies and insisted they killed Star Wars as a whole.

Yet nowadays with the Force Awakens re-invigorating the franchise as a pop cultural juggernaut and yet splintering fan opinions further, many now admit that the outcry to the prequels was WAY overblown. While a lot of old school fans still hate them, many are now willing to admit they did have good ideas and moments and were more mediocre than bad, and there’s a generation of people who grew up on and love the movies more than the original trilogy (Myself included) that can more comfortably admit to liking them and discuss why out in the open without being attacked and ridiculed (Mostly).

The movies are still huge base breakers and will always have the reputation of being disappointing follow ups to the legendary original trilogy, but after Clone Wars proved to everyone that great things did and still are coming out of that era in the timeline, most are willing to admit that the movies weren’t as damaging as they once thought.

Both examples go to show that anything can happen with time. We can make predictions, but we don’t know for sure how something is going to be regarded five or ten or twenty years from now. Doctor Who was a complete joke after it’s initial cancellation and before the revival came around, now it’s a beloved mainstay of pop culture in and outside of my home country again. Even Dragon Ball GT, while not well regarded, is generally seen in a more forgiving light by more people now than it was for years after it’s initial airing here in the west.

Truth is for most of the time he’s been writing the manga, Toyotaro has actually been popular and liked by the fandom. Right up through the end of the Future Trunks saga portion of the manga, the man has had a swarm of Dragon Ball fans passionately insisting that his is the “True” canon of Super and superior to the anime in every way. There are still people that think that way.

It was only about the time he got to Goku Black’s first confrontation with Vegeta that a lot of people really started doubting him, thanks to how ill regarded manga Black is by most in the fandom, especially compared to how beloved he was in the anime even by people who don’t like the saga. And then came the revelation that Toyotaro re-used panels from his Dragon Ball AF fan manga for the series, and apparently incorporated some ideas from it, basically literally trying to canonize his fanfictions and apparently basing Goku Black’s personality on his OC Xicor (And as we’ve established, that worked out SO WELL for him), and suddenly a lot of people realized something was up.

Which paved the way for a lot of people that had been critical of the manga up to that point, such as @dragon-ball-meta here on tumblr, to shed some light on a lot of his questionable writing practises. His treatment of Goku in several instances that made him out to be more dismissive and in several cases annoyed with his children in particular starting to gain notoriety, which hit a breaking point when chapter 27 came out last month and caused an uproar over the “Goku didn’t know when Gohan was born and Vegeta called him a terrible father” nonsense that basically looked like it was canonizing the “lol, Goku’s a bad father” meme (The most disturbing part… Toyotaro has apparently said that Goku is his FAVOURITE character… yeah… let that sink in).

I think that was the final straw for many that basically turned the man into a joke for a huge portion of the fandom. It was one of the worst controversies I’ve seen in this fandom for quite some time, so naturally just about everyone was talking about it. The Japanese fandom I’ve heard was really ticked off about it especially, given Goku is still the most beloved character in the franchise over there, even being recently voted the most beloved anime hero by most age demographics in the country.

So, his reputation has already undergone a major shift since he started writing the manga. He still has his fans who will stick by him through thick and thin, but many people meet him and his work with a lot more scrutiny than they did before, and many people consider him a joke (Gochi fans especially).

If things continue the way they have been, I feel he’s likely to be regarded as “That fan artist that draws good stuff, but shouldn’t have been hired to write an official manga because while he had a few good ideas, he REALLY wasn’t up to the job” that’s what it’s looking like anyway.

Could he make a comeback? Who knows, despite my own outrage with the Goku moment last chapter and my issues with how the Zen Exhibition match is apparently being handled so far in the current chapter, the guy did have a good idea in giving us a more fleshed out introduction to the Gods of Destruction at the start of the Universe Survival saga. For all we know despite these issues, his handling of the rest of the story could actually turn out to be really great and people might prefer it over the anime. Anything’s possible, really. How many people thought My Little Pony’s latest iteration would become one of the most popular and talked about cartoons of the decade?

I kind of doubt that will happen. My problems I’ve already brought up aside, the manga cut out Krillin’s character arc, all of Gohan’s scenes, didn’t adapt the Resurrection F arc (Meaning it didn’t properly build up Frieza for his comeback here, so the manga can’t function as a self contained story with only the original Dragon Ball manga being necessary to understand things that happen in it), cut out the Hit two parter further building on his character and abilities, and further ironing out his rivalry and odd friendship with Goku, completely botched Frost’s character compared to the anime, while also screwing Piccolo over badly in their fight, as well as removing most moments featuring the supporting cast and even reducing Future Trunks to a foot note in a saga that was literally designed as an excuse to bring him back, and is known for rushing through the story compared to the anime in a bid to catch up considering how ridiculously behind Toyotaro has gotten thanks to the monthly schedule.

Which is an especially bad thing if he does that here, considering this saga has to accommodate the majority of the Z fighters getting character moments and good fights, including re-introducing Android 17 after a long absence, as well as introducing and fleshing out slews of new characters. And given his alterations to the Zen Exhibition match which really look like they’ll hamper Gohan’s role and screw Buu over completely, and his poor handling of the Super original characters that aren’t Beerus, Whis, Gowasu and Botamo in the last two sagas, I find it likely he’s not going to do a great job with most of them. Heck, I fully expect Krillin to get knocked out instantly as a joke rather than helping to knock out two opponents with Roshi and 18 and holding his own against Majora.

Again, I could be completely wrong and he could do a good job, and I’m just being judgemental and jumping to conclusions. But I’m finding it hard to be confident that he can make up for his set backs, even if he does end up doing some things better. Which isn’t saying much, his last two sagas he wrote did a few things better than the anime, and they were still worse stories overall.

If he does turn things around and actually writes a really good or even great saga and generally cleans up his act going forward, I could see Toyotaro making a comeback in the eyes of the fandom and being remembered in at least a more fond light than he is now. But if he screws up as badly as I fear he might and like he’s been doing lately, I can only imagine his standing in the fandom getting worse, and at best he’ll largely just be forgotten and ignored by most fans when Super finally concludes, or he’ll be a laughing stock. How that’ll effect his career in professional manga writing, I don’t know, but it likely won’t do him much good.

I guess this whole thing is a learning experience for fans wanting to start working on the actual properties they follow. Even if they’re extremely talented in one aspect (Toyotaro with his drawings) and have passion for what they’re doing, that doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to do a good job if they’re on writing duties, and they better put their absolute best efforts into things and think things through clearly, because their contributions WILL be scrutinized and they will have a significant impact on the franchise in general.

A lot of fan artists and fanfiction writers do great stuff and deserve to be respected, I know people who have written stuff that’s better than professionally published stories and in some cases are better than parts of the series the fans were adapting from. But there’s a REASON why fanfiction writers aren’t usually hired to write for the works they follow, and why it’s often considered a bad idea. And Toyotaro in many cases has done a good job of proving that point.

I really don’t hate the guy, whatever you may get from how I talk about him. I just want to make that clear for everyone, especially anyone who likes his work reading this. I kind of envy him as a fellow fan for getting to work on writing an official Dragon Ball story, I’d die for that opportunity, and I will still give him credit wherever it’s rightfully due, especially with his art. I just wish he thought things through better and didn’t make as many questionable choices despite having so much more time and being in a better position to plan things out than the anime writers had.

Will Toyotaro make a comeback? Good question, probably not, but we’ll see. I’ll say this though, for all his problems his adaption and the things going on in and around it is at least interesting to talk about, and at least we’ll have some nice artwork and drawings of all our favourite characters to look at however things turn out.

#dragon ball super #dbs #dragon ball #dragon ball z #toyotaro #dragon ball gt #goku #dragon ball super manga #dbs manga

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