#her spending two years completely isolated trying to heal him after what happened at the volcano :)

[arklay]

RESIDENT EVIL → DR. DIANA WESKER

but i will transcend and vomit this loser out of me i will become the next big thing

[template]

[padfootdaredmetoo]

Spellbound - Chamber of Secrets

Peaky Blinders X Harry Potter - Part Four

Previous Parts

Summary: This is just a short blurb about the family at the end of COS and the summer. Thinking the chapter for the end of Prisoner of Azkaban will be pretty long, and then of course I'd like to spend a lot of time on the fourth book and then moving forward as things get darker. I have a great request for the beginning of Order of the Phoenix. If you have any ideas for POA GOF OOTP HBP or DH, (or any Peaky Blinders events too) please send me a request so I can add it in.

Thanks for all the love on this series! <3

The second year of school went just as well as he had expected. A giant fucking snake tried to off him. He lay in the hospital wing already knowing what was going to happen. Ron and Hermione were both asleep. He was so thankful they would be alright. Ginny was safe, and he knew a thing or two about Voldemort so he’d write to her over the summer to see if she needed anything. Something about the pain he inflicted made a person want to turn inward and isolate, Ginny was already so quiet, he didn't want her to disappear. 

He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths for a brief moment he thought maybe his family wouldn't come. He’d be in and out of the hospital wing so many times at this point maybe they got tired of coming? The feeling made him sick, he didn’t want to be a burden on his family, especially the Shelby’s. 

He heard hushed voices arguing and he relaxed immediately. They pilled in through the doors and Madam Pomfrey was at a loss to try and stop all of them. You rushed in managing to escape her and landed on his bed wrapping him in a big embrace. 

“I must ask you all to leave. He needs to rest! I sent you a letter confirming he is unharmed -” 

“Unharmed! He’d bandaged! -” Polly snapped moving over to his side to look at his arm. 

“Not to mention traumatized by the giant snake that tried to eat him,” John said following his Aunt. 

“Definitely going to be some lawsuits coming your way,” Esme said giving her a hard look. 

“Look at our little fighter! Snake didn't stand a fookin’ chance against our boy!” Arthur boomed, throwing a few fake punches in the air. Ron sent Harry an amused look from across the room.

“Ah Poppy, you haven't aged a day,” Sirius said with a wink handing her a box from Honey Dukes. She took the gift still trying to get a word in to respond to all the rude comments. 

“Thanks for looking after him. I almost had a heart attack when I read your letter.” Remus spoke with his hand on his heart. Madam Pomfrey's flushed annoyance quickly turned to sympathy as she looked at Remus. “It’s a real relief for us to know you're here for him, I couldn't stand someone else -” Remus shook his head unable to finish. She patted his arm tenderly. 

“Try to keep them quiet dear,” She said softly. “See if you can get some food into him too.” She gave Remus one last look before retiring back to her office. 

Sirius gave Remus a wild look that made Harry want to burst with laughter. 

“Oh don’t start with me.” Remus snapped. 

“I didn't say anything.” But Sirius’s smile said it all. Harry laughed with a full heart seeing his family all together. 

“Finn was caught in a school exam or he would have come along too,” Polly said. 

Thomas stood at the end of his bed. He hadn’t spoken but looked at Harry in a way that meant he cared. Most people wouldn't have seen it but Harry knew it was there. Something he could trust. 

“Now, how are Ron and Hermione?” You asked softly, tracing your fingertips along a newly healed gash above his eyebrow. 

“Good, they will be alright.” 

“Ron and Hermione, didn’t some girl get flushed down a toilet?” Arthur asked, his voice still completely too loud for a hospital wing. 

“You met Moaning Murtle?” Sirius asked. 

“Oh we met her alright,” Ron called out. Everyone let out a sound of greeting at Ron’s voice.

“Where is the little pumpkin head?” John called out. Ron got up and they cheered him on. He moved over to Hermione's bed next to Harry and pulled the curtain open. 

Hermione gave them a big smile. She was still a deathly shade of pale, but her eyes were bright. 

“The Three Musketeers,” Polly said affectionately. 

“How many times is this castle going to try and kill you three, Eh?” Arthur asked shaking his head. “Should have both you come ‘round this summer to learn a few things.” Ron’s face perked up and Hermione fought the urge to laugh. 

“My sister’s going to be okay. She’s still in a healing sleep.” Ron said changing the subject. 

“Are you really going to file a lawsuit?” Hermione asked her eyes looking to Thomas.

“No.” Tommy said and Harry let out a breath. 

“The school trying to kill you is at least half the fun,” Sirius said with a smile and Remus elbowed him in the ribs softly. 

“He’s joking,” Remus said. “We will talk to Dumbledore about our concerns.” 

Hermione nodded then closed her eyes again. 

Thomas gave a nod of his head towards the door and everyone got the message. They needed to let them rest. The way Sirius set his face told Harry he would not be leaving. 

They said their goodbyes and Polly assured him that it would only be a week till he was home again. Harry watched you get up to give Tommy a kiss and return to his side. 

“You need to come home early just write to us.” He patted Harry’s foot and Harry gave him a nod. 

“Thanks for coming.” He hated how emotional it sounded. Tommy waved him off. 

“Couldn't keep them away. Looking forward to having you home kid.” He gave Harry a nod and then left. 

Sirius, Remus, and you stayed and he was grateful. The three of you went on to tell them whispered stories of their many nights in the hospital wing. Hermione dozed off and Ron tried to keep his laughs to a minimum due to his bruised ribs. 

Remus went down to the kitchens and brought back two trays of food. Ron’s eyes almost teared up.

Eventually, night fell and Madam Pomfrey gave them a hard look. 

“I can stay if you want,” Sirius said, and while the comfort of having Padfoot at his feet sounded nice. He knew he would be okay. Sure there might be random bits of Voldemort scattered around but his family had chased those scary thoughts away. 

“I’ll be okay, if I can’t sleep I’ll use the mirror.” He lied to make Sirus feel better.

You leaned in to kiss his forehead and adjusted the blankets. You did the same to Ron. 

“Really, if anything happens you call us right away. No heroics.” You said sternly and the boys nodded. 

Harry watched them leave and found it wasn't that hard to drift off with a full stomach. 

_________

That Summer was one of his all-time best. Mr. Weasley won a contest and wanted to spend the money on a trip to Egypt. He placed the letter down and tried to think up his best negotiation skills. He looked both of you over as you ate your breakfast. 

“Erm -” he cleared his throat earning him both your and Tommy’s attention. “You know how it is having kids. Mr and Mrs. Weasley never get a lot of time to themselves.” 

“Don’t all their kids go away to school for most of the year?” Tommy said giving him a look.  

“Yes, well - I was thinking maybe I could invite them over. See if they want to go to Egypt alone.” Harry looked up from his eggs on toast with big eyes. He watched the silent conversation play out between the two of you. 

“I think that would be a nice idea,” Tommy said. “Business is in a good place. I’ll be around more anyway.” 

“We’ve got the space.” You agreed. 

Harry continued on “I’m also worried about Ginny, you know. I think it would cheer her up after everything. Not to mention we can help with chores and I can give my pocket money to the cook to help with the food increase-” 

“Harry we said yes.” Tommy stopped him. “If you are negotiating with people you have to pay attention.” He scolded him but Harry didn’t care. He beamed and ran upstairs to write to Ron. 

Harry moped around the house waiting for the letter back. He would understand if they would all want to go to Egypt, so he added that they could come stay after their trip too.  He sent a letter to Hermione and just as always he got a response by the end of the day. Her parents are taking her on vacation to visit family in France. He told her to have fun. 

He waited and wondered if maybe they hadn't got the letter, maybe they had already left. 

The phone rang in the middle of dinner and Tommy let out a disgruntled sigh of annoyance. 

“It’s fucking dinner. Who the fuck calls me in the middle of dinner.” But Tommy knew full well it could be a family member in crisis, so he watched as you got up to answer the call. 

“HELLO - THIS IS AURTHUR WEASLEY.” Harry heard his voice from across the dining room and darted to the other phone in Tommy’s office. 

“Hello, Arthur.” You said pulling away from the phone. “Don’t shout just - softly.”

“Oh, like this?” he said still speaking very slowly. 

“Exactly.” You encouraged him. 

“Merlin’s beard! It’s like you're standing next to me!” 

“I know it’s great.” You smiled. “Is everything alright?” 

“Now I hate to call during supper. But the family is rather excited about Harry’s letter.” 

“Ah yes, how do you feel about it?” 

“Well, they are quite keen on going to yours. Are you sure you want to take on the lot of them?” 

“Of course! It won’t be a problem. We have lots of room. Field in the back for Quidditch.” 

“Yes yes, they have mentioned the Quidditch. Wanting Sirus to teach them.” you laughed at that. 

“Of course, they are more than welcome to come after your trip as well.” 

“Ah kids, staying at yours is apparently more exciting for them.” 

“Still I don’t want to interfere with family time, just thought maybe you and Molly would appreciate a vacation alone.” 

“Dear, you have no idea how nice that sounds.” He chuckled. “Well, Percy is adamant about staying home to study, but everyone else good to go. I’ll have them pack up and we can send you some money for food -” 

“Oh gosh no. Don’t worry about that. Have enough to feed an army and then some.” 

“Well if you change your mind on that just send us a letter.” 

“Alright. Might be easiest to get them here by floo.” You suggested.

“Oh yes, certainly. We will send them over on Monday?” 

“We look forward to it.” you smiled.

“Well, thanks again love. I’ll let you get back to your supper.” 

“Thanks, Arthur. Cheers!” 

The phone disconnected and Harry let out a whoop of triumph. He was so excited. 

____________

Harry wondered how things could work so easily. They were initially a bit intimidated by Arrow House, but once settled in Harry loved how they fit into the family. 

Fred and George being the eldest worked with Sirius and Remus to construct the Quidditch pitch. After that, he felt his family was the happiest. There was no leftover school drama. The world wasn't ending. No threats from the business. 

They would wake up eat the breakfast you’d cook them in the kitchen. Sirius and Remus would come and make them laugh and put on records while they ate. They’d pile outside on to the pitch and practice. Sirius would show them different moves and plays while Remus read. 

Ginny was by far the easiest to teach, something Harry thought was interesting. He was just happy she didn't feel left out. 

Then the family would get off work and watch them play. Harry looked down at their blankets and chairs in the grass, food and wine laying around, sun kissing their faces. He listened to them laugh and shout out cheers and commands that didn’t really make sense for Quidditch. He knew this was the happiest moment.  

They would have a late supper in the grass, then sit by the river when everyone cleared out. Fred and George would tell them scary stories from a book they had found in the library, editing them of course to feature magical creatures. Sirius would have them in the cottage teaching them card games till the late hours of the night. 

Harry knew they had never had their own bedrooms before, and was shocked that they all ended up piling into his room. This just meant the jokes and stories could continue till they fell asleep. 

He had never laughed so much and slept so little. He really didn't want the summer to end as if something inside him knew that this was going to pass. The warmth of the summer would fade and the reality of his situation would be coming towards him soon. 

With everyone he loved around him and having fun it was easy to forget about Voldemort.

[skyberia]

[Knocking on ur door] hi I’m interested in nephos. What’s this abt a death curse?

[SLAMS THE DOOR OPEN] hiii omg [GRABS YOU BY THE COLLARS] GET IN HERE RIGHT NOW

so, for starters, their general Tragic Backstory goes something like:

néphos was born cursed, or was cursed really shortly after birth.

their parents abandoned them basically immediately after they were born, presumably because they didn't want to deal with a Literal Cursed Child (or maybe because they had something to do with it…?)

by the time he was found by another person, he was nearly completely overtaken by this curse, his body almost entirely covered in these dark marks shaped like tendrils.

luckily the person who found him was a good samaritan-- a kind old halfling cleric who took them in and decided to try her best to help them, whatever the cost.

she couldn't find a way to dispel the curse through the usual means. hard to when you don't even know what the hell you're dealing with, she's never seen anything like this before

it's obvious that she's running out of time though, and that if something wasn't done soon they'd die. so she did the only thing she could think to do, which was buy them time.

ultimately she managed to take the curse and "isolate" it to his left eye, rendering it blind and darkened, but effectively slowing down its progress and making it so he could at least have a proper chance at living!

however doing this took a Lot out of her, basically seeping her of nearly all of her energy and magic and rendering her really weak and sickly as a result.

she managed to care for and raise them for a few years, but when they were a child still she became too ill to continue doing so and had to be taken for basically permanent care at a local house of healing, leaving them to fend for themselves in the streets.

thankfully what she did was pretty effective, making it so the worst they had to deal with (curse wise. they still had a pretty rough time in other aspects) for the first like two decades of their life was weird looks and a lack of depth perception.

but then one day he looks in the mirror and finds dark marks coming out of their left eye, reminding them that all that was done was just a measure to Slow Down the progress of the curse, and that he's still bound to succumb to it someday soon...

he tries to look for cures, goes to every curse specialist he can find, then to whatever expert cleric or wizard that's around, and none of them can even tell him what the curse even is. nobody's ever seen anything like it, and so obviously nobody has any fucking clue how to get rid of it!

so eventually they just give up. accept the fact that their lifespan is going to be significantly shorter than most other elves, that they're going to suffer a horrible and unknown fate at some point, and decide to just make the most out of whatever time they do have left

and that's it :) that's their whole deal. he then spends the rest of his days in baldur's gate fucking around and narrowly escaping finding out, placing bets on what'll get to him first the authorities or the curse, Except that's not what happens at all and instead they get abducted by mind flayers and get a tadpole inserted in their brain, and when they next manage a glimpse in the mirror Oh! Lol! the curse's suddenly spreading a lot faster than before huh! but they can't spend too long worrying about that because they suddenly have a bunch of new friends with a lot of problems and issues that are more pressing than his own and on top of that the world's falling apart and they're the only ones who can save it and Oh, uh, he just nearly died in combat and somehow that made the marks from the curse worse, and it's kind of starting to react weirdly with his lightning magic? and-- hey, you know now that you mention it, his whole life he just went along with this story his mother figure told him about his origins but the more he thinks about it the more holes he finds in it and it starts making less and less sense, and ha ha haa haaaaaaaa

(insert the whole companion questline i made up for them here. in order to not keep both of us here all day and also immediately contradict all the information i just gave you and overcomplicate everything, the really short version is: the woman he thought saved his life lied. Among other things)

anyway. Some other general things about them:

their full name is néphos huan

they're 54 years old

they don't know this but they're like elf mixed-race. their father was a sun elf, and their mother was a drow. he gets the red eyes (...eye...) and grey hair (and the penchant for ruthlessness, probably) from his mom.

their "job" pre-events essentially consisted of them seeking out people with issues and offering to help sort them out, for a price. Usually a quite high one.

he has a sort of reputation around baldur's gate as someone who can "solve any problem with a snap of their fingers!" because of this, which kind of makes him sound like a djinni. he is not. it just turns out that a lot of problems can be solved by frying whoever's causing them with a concentrated lightning storm lol

they're really reckless. i cannot understate this. At every turn they will see something that has a high chance of killing them (but that has some potential reward) and they will run straight at it. This was already a problem before but the tadpole makes it SO much worse

he's a real "what's in it for me?"/"where's my reward?" type bitch. refuses to do anything without knowledge that there will be some type of compensation for him at the end. This is a fine attitude to have and definitely doesn't have consequences that carry over to his personal relationships making them more difficult than they should otherwise be

i could go on for ages longer abt their general dynamics with the other characters and also their fake companion quest and so on but i will . leave it here for now. Thank you for asking. i love you

[ephemereos]

Indulging further into the hyperfixation with another kawoshin au.

Farmer Shinji x Alien Kaworu

Accidentally set it in america dhjbfjke both of them are between 18 and 20, didn't really think of a precise age.

As for warnings, mentions of torture in regards to Kaworu's past, but nothing too graphic, I'm not going into detail.

In this au I came up with absolutely for like pure self indulgence, Kaworu is an alien who ran to Earth to take shelter from an invasion happening on his planet. They are humanoid aliens, with extremely high empathy and abilities to understand other living beings' emotions perfectly. They are a pacifist race, reason why they were so easily invaded, as their defenses were low. Kaworu's safety spaceship crashes on earth, getting the attention of the authorities and he's immediately brought into a government research lab. Kaji works as a guard there and can't stand the thought of a living, breathing being getting tortured and experimented on. Especially when it looks so much like a human. The research facility had never done experiments on living beings, they mostly focused on rocks, plants, other matter that seemed to come from outer space and that needed analysis.

Kaji decides to break Kaworu free, creating a foolproof plan beforehand, taking multiple weeks. He has the sympathy of other guards and workers from the facily, who too empathise with the alien, deeply upset at how he’s being treated. Kaji’s able to break Kaworu free, getting him into his car and then speeding away to the safety of his small house in a rural town in the middle of the countryside.

The first thing he does it patch Kaworu up: bandage his cuts from the vivisection, cover hos bruies from the blood withdrawals with cream. He becomes Kaworu’s surrogate father, constantly making sure to tend to his wounds while he’s recovering, the boy spending a few days of total moping around between Kaji’s guest bed and the couch because he is just so exhausted and in pain from the experiments. When Kaji is working he alternates naps to watching tv, curious about human entertainment. He loves animal documentaries or historical ones. Once a few days have passed and he seems to be doing better, as well as Kaji being sure no one is onto him, the man decides to take him for a small ride to his trusted farm where he gets fresh produce, wanting Kaworu to get some fresh air and having promised he’d let him see cows in real life.

Shinji finished Highschool and, unlike his parents had thought, he has no desire to go to university. The school years have exhausted him to the point that the thought of more studying makes him sick. So over the summer, while his parents travel around the country for their job as researchers, he started working at his aunt Misato’s farm, taking quite a liking to it. He likes staying with the animals, tending to the plants. It’s tiring, but he enjoys it and makes him feel alive. Kaji is a regular and always welcome at the farm.

Kaji prked his car near the cows before going to Misato to ask for what he needed. Shinji is the one who had to bring the produce to his car while Kaji and Misato chat. What Shinji didn’t expect to see was an albino boy looking at the cows with the eye sparkles a little kid would have. The boy is quite cheerful and friendly; he asks for Shinji’s name as well as the cows’. What unsettles Shinji the most is seeing all his bruises and bandages: around his hands, his arms, his neck even. When Kaji comes around he pats Kaworu on th3 shoulder, saying it’s his nephew visiting him. Shinji immediately thinks abuse is going on. He doesn’t want to make a scene, nor is he sure of his suspicions, so he keeps quiet and watches the two go away.

The following day Shinji decides to take his bike and go to Kaji's place, using excuse that he forgot a bag of apples and needs to deliver it to him to get the address out of Misato. He bikes to his house, walking quietly around it to peer inside and see if the albino boy is there.

"I didn't expect to see you around the house."

Shinji almost shits himself. The boy is behind him, calm as he can be, smiling at the brunette. Kaworu invites Shinji inside and an awkward conversation starts, Shinji worried sick and trying to understand if Kaji is the one at fault for Kaworu's wounds. Kaworu quickly picks up where Shinji is going and reassures him that no, it wasn't Kaji and he would never do anything like that to him. Shinji is relieved, but not completely, still anxious to understand who might have hurt the other boy that bad. Kaworu takes a while, his high empathy analyzing Shinji and his behaviours in an attempt to understand if he's completely safe as he seems or not. Eventually, Kaworu decides to tell him the truth, making Shinji promise to not tell anyone else.

Shinji ends up hanging out with Kaworu all day, now curious to understand the other, until Kaji comes home and chaos ensues. He’s mad at Kaworu for exposing them and possibly putting them at risk, but when Kaworu tells him his reasons and that he thought that maybe, having allies in the city would help them, Kaji calms down and realizes that having a bit of support might not hurt. He talks to Misato, explains the situation and she’s surprisingly very calm about it. She tells Kaji that, if he’s worried, he could leave Kaworu with them during the day as he works. The farm is in the countryside, it’s quite isolated and Kaworu would be safe there.

Until Kaworu’s wounds are fully healed, Misato only asks him to keep an eye on the cattle or feed the chickens, trying to keep his labour to a minimum to avoid opening up his wounds again. After that he helps shinji in the fields and doing other things that might be more tiring. The two grow a lot closer, goofing around on their spare time, Shinji sometimes taking Kaworu to arcades in the evening, having him wear a big goodie with the hood pulled up so that he won’t be easily spotted as an outsider.

Their peace is soon broken as Kaji starts suspecting that the facility might be onto them and he tries to find a solution. He can’t run away with Kaworu, he would immediately become suspicious and be tracked down. So Shinji offers to take Kaworu away. He has money put aside for what was supposed to be his university fund. He has a van his parents got him instead of a car because he wanted to be able to drive but also help Misato with deliveries and such. He and Kaworu quickly pack their things, leaving instructions to Misato as to what to say to his parents in case they call her and ask about him, instead of calling him directly, and then they run off, stopping in a city farther from their own to buy supplies to modify the van, turning it into a livable space.

They keep travelling, only stopping for very short periods of time and picking up short jobs like dog sittinng and lawn mowing to avoid spending all of the money saved (it’s quite a bit but they have no idea how long they’ll be on the run and want to avoid tricky situations). Kaworu gets to see the world, the beauty of nature and many different people and Shinji gets out of his comfort zone too.

They grow closer with each day, especially considering there is only one bed. But they soon don’t mind at all and all embarrassment is gone. Sometimes Shinji stays up longer, and stares at Kaworu’s scars, feeling a pit in hos stomach at the thought of what could have happened if Kaji hadn’t intervened. Kaworu, being a creature based on empathy, can feel Shinji’s emotions crystal clear even in his sleep and wraps his arms around Shinji in an attempt to soothe him. It works every time, with Shinji curling in closer to Kaworu and calming down, eventually falling asleep to the other’s heartbeat.

[chocolate-parfait]

I adore your writing so I was wondering if I could get headcanons for some Ikesen boys (Mitsuhide, Kenshin, and Nobunaga)?

When MC first comes through the wormhole she doesn’t have her son with her and her entire stay is her stressing about it since he is only 5 years old so as soon as the wormhole opens she’s gone before they even blink. They don’t expect her to come back but she does! and with her son this time!

Thank you so much bub! I missed writing for ikesen and honestly, I’m a sucker for anything involving parenting :) Thanks for requesting!

Also I,,, I really went all out for Nobunaga huh

Mc coming back with her son - ikesen headcanons (Mitsuhide, Kenshin & Nobunaga)

words: 2.9k / tw: mentions of injuries and violent behavior / female mc

Mitsuhide

How could possibly someone as clumsy as his little mouse be a mother? Jokingly, he asks you whether it was you taking care of your son or the other way round. He teases you a bit, only enough to gain some strands of information here and there; he may find the excuse that, as the man in charge of security and secrets, that was only part of his job, when in truth he’s actually worried about you. He gathers that your child isn’t with you, and this only serves to fuel his curiosity and worry even more. Nonetheless, he doesn’t pry. You must have your own reasons and secrets, and for once, he's willing to leave you to them.

Once he notices your feelings for him, he becomes sure of the fact that, whether you had a husband or not, he definitely owned your heart no longer. He’s acting more confidently and boldly than before, adding more intensity to his innuendos and subtle flirting. Then, you tell him you’re from the future and you get closer, spending the days basking in each other’s company and usual teasing banters.

...but, oh boy, before he even knows it you’re disappearing in the thickness of the fog and coldness of the rain. If the wormhole had opened when Sasuke had predicted, then you probably would have told him about your plans. You needed more time to mentally prepare yourself, but when Mother Nature decides to open her time-traveling black holes, it's not your choice to make. Mitsuhide will be okay, probably... or at least, you hope so. ok but boy teased you too much, this is his payback

After you're gone Mitsuhide needs a couple of seconds to register what had just happened. In truth, he expected it, kinda (or at least, that’s what he wants to believe), and although it hurts, he’s not one to complain. First off, it could have never worked between you two. He’s... he’s quite the despicable guy, with tons of enemies and secrets. No one in their right mind would want to stay with him for more than 2 minutes, but he had never really cared. Until you came along. And how could he even wish to hold the first place in a mother’s heart? It went without saying that your son was your top priority, and it was fine, it was bound to be that way.

He puts on his habitual facade and moves on with his day, but don’t be fooled; he has no intention of ever forgetting you nor he's completely at peace on the inside. He feels a stinging pain buried deep underneath the arid soil of his heart. The heart wishes what the heart desires, and even when one has resigned to keep a distance from everything it longs for, the pain persists, and it's probably ten times even harsher in the melancholy of it all.

(Hideyoshi obviously catches up on his act, and almost headbutts him out of exasperation when he sees he’s not letting out even the tiniest of sighs)

The days pass by, and Mitsuhide is sure you won’t be coming back. But you do. Once more you catch him by surprise, you destroy his expectations and act outside of the box. And when you finally face him for the first time in what felt like lifetimes, your son by the hand and a wide smile on your face, he stares at you bewildered, wide eyes and an unusual expression of genuine surprise on his features.

“You... you’re really something, little mouse” It’s all he says before striding over to you and hugging you to his chest. His words may conceal them, but you can feel his true feelings in the tightness of his embrace, the thunderous pace of his heartbeat, and the barely noticeable shaking of his sigh.

Maybe he can let himself feel some happiness, after all? Surely, he will have to work extremely hard to protect it, to destroy anyone who might try to bring harm over you, but Mitsuhide is a man of many ways, and he knows how to reach his goal.

Weirdly enough, your child quickly grows fond of Mitsuhide, and it's not long before he starts calling him “Papa”. He's always staring in awe at whatever he does, even the tiniest of tricks will make him giggle excitedly with surprise. On the other hand, your lover is unsurprisingly good with kids. Probably because they're so easy to please and to fool with lies (like a certain someone). He could tell the little boy that you're the Moon princess and the courageous Mitsuhide saved you by a sea of horned monsters, and he would totally believe him without even questioning it first. Maybe it's a family trait?

He does not expect to find himself with a family out of the blue, but by the fond look of his golden orbs, you can tell he's grateful for it. Whenever he kisses you goodbye before going to work in the morning or ruffles your son's hair with playful tenderness, you know it's a silent vow, renewed each time. He's going to do everything in his power to assure your happiness. You've given him a warm place to return to, a spot in the light, love, and gratefulness; protecting it all is the least he could do to return such blessing.

Kenshin

You tell him about the wormhole, about the rain and the lightning, about why you have to go back. Kenshin may have been on his way to healing, but when he hears of your son he recesses 10 steps back. The dark part of himself he was trying so hard to chase away pushes towards him feelings of jealousy and anger (you had, after all, loved another man and bore his child; moreover this man was not by your and your son’s side for whichever reason, leaving you both alone), but the other half of his heart, which loved you so dearly, could not tolerate depriving you of your son.

He’s afraid of you leaving him forever, no matter how much you tell him you’ll definitely come back. He wants to trust you just as much as you trust him, but once more his darkness haunts him and clashes with his sober side. He could lock you up forever or he could let you go, you’d be safer and happier without him. Maybe you will actually come back, or maybe you will forget about him as soon as you step back to your time.

This whole issue causes him to isolate himself from everything and everyone. He needs time to think and come to terms with his feelings, but he’s oh so aware of the quick passing of time. Soon, he’ll have to make a decision that will impact his whole life forever, and yet he can’t really seem to find a proper solution. Not alone, at least.

Stay by his side, patiently put up with his negative thoughts, and comfort his fears away. Promise him over and over again that you will come back, that you wouldn’t forget him for anything in the world. Eventually, he’ll be able to convince himself and fully abandon himself to his trust for you.

When the fateful day comes, he does not expect you to slip away from his arms in the blink of an eye. Your warmth disappears and the cold air hits him with the full realization of what had happened. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm his pounding heart down. All he can do is wait. It might take you days, months, or even years, but he’s willing to wait.

During your absence he drowns his loneliness in sake, he fills the vacant spot in his arms with the white bunnies you used to found so adorable and occupies his time with sparring matches. Then, one day, coming back to his room from a council, he slides the door open and he’s met with two identical pairs of eyes staring at him.

One can only imagine the plethora of emotions hitting him all at once. Before you know it he’s throwing himself to you with the speed of an expert warrior. He hugs you so tightly you can barely breathe, reluctantly letting you go only to get a look at the face he had so longed to see, pressing a deep kiss on your forehead. What stops him from ravaging your lips with even stronger passion is the child’s presence. Maybe it’s better to keep some things for later, you tell him, and he accepts with the cutest of pouts gracing his delicate features.

For some time he’ll be the clingiest he has ever been, though he doesn’t forget your son, whom he now considers as his own. You two look very much alike, and knowing how much you cherish him, he quickly becomes fond of him, too. They spend a lot of time together, forming a bond pretty quickly. Kenshin teaches him all there is to know about the samurai world and the way of the sword (not that he has any intention of throwing him in a battlefield, yet. He’ll let your son accompany him to war only when, as an adult, he’ll be wholly aware of the dangers he’s going to face). Oftentimes you can see them sparring together in the practice room, a rare and soft gaze blessing your lover’s eyes.

Now that both of you are with him, he knows better than to let his fears win him once more, for thus he knows you won’t leave him again. He confesses to you his deepest feelings and thoughts on this matter during quiet, tender moments of intimacy. Maybe one night you're sharing a drink with him while gazing at the night sky from his room; there, he’ll turn his mismatched irises on yours, cup your cheek with his strong hand and tell you, with the most love-dripping tone you had ever heard come out from his mouth: “Thank you for coming back to me, my love. I swear I won’t let you face any danger as long as you two are by my side.”

Nobunaga

So his favorite fireball has a baby fireball? What a surprise, indeed. It's only a single piece of information, and yet it brings to his mind so many possibilities that he can't help but fall deep in thought. Do you have a husband, then? Did he perhaps leave you? If so, how did you manage to take care of your son? He knew life wasn’t easy for a repudiated woman, and one could see it with their own two eyes just by taking a stroll in the poorer neighborhoods of the city. (well, that was something he was trying to change)

Then, he asks himself whether the night of the fire you had been so reluctant to go with him because of your motherly duties. You could have just said so earlier, he would have taken your son to the castle, too. Quickly, you add more interesting details to your story, telling him of the wormhole, your time-travel adventure, and the future.

He half-forces you to make THE bet, the one you cannot ignore, with the added risk that if you lose, you won't be able to see your son ever again. Pretty cruel, right? In your eyes, it might seem so, but truthfully, he's going to let you go at the end of the month, independently from whether you win or lose; he just thinks it'd be spicier to not let you know this very important detail. 

What our grand lord does not expect, is to be hit by Cupid's arrow and cursed with the love of a lifetime. His feelings are so strong he has to stop himself multiple times from directly confessing to you. He blames all the flirting, the sensual touches, the longing kisses, and his affectionate gaze on the bet. You are nothing more than a physical distraction, he can’t let himself love you, and you don’t love him. This way, you'll be able to go back without regrets and doubts. He won't let you, his soulmate, suffer over such a heart-wrenching decision.

Such a prideful and haughty man lowering himself to such tricks only to keep the smile on a woman's face. Pretty ironic, isn't it? Unfortunately for him, anyone can guess the contents of the Demon King's heart, and you are no exception. If you had solemnly promised your return, he would have believed you, that is the type of man he is, but Fate acts before you can take action, and anticipates your departure to the most unexpected of times.

So in the end, you truly did leave him. His beloved fireball, vanished in the same way she had appeared, like a bolt from the blue. He's going to miss you so dearly, and his loneliness will surely take away his sleep at night, but there are still so many things for him to do. You will probably have your fair share, too, though he's sure you'll manage. If it wasn't for his obstination and pride then maybe he would have the humility to deny the same for himself. Maybe one day your path will cross his once again, but who knows, maybe by that time he will have already conquered the whole land, maybe a lethal blow will have taken his life, maybe he'll see you on his last, dying breath. Anyhow, he's going to wait. Patiently and calmly, and he promises himself that were you to return by his side, he won't be denying his love any longer.

It's almost been a year from your departure, and now the snow is slowly falling once more to cover the roofs under its soft embrace. Nobunaga is sitting on the balcony of his tenshu, looking at the city yet bustling with life even in the frigid cold. Just like Azuchi, he hasn't changed much. A couple more scars have appeared somewhere on his body, and the skin just under his eyes has gotten a little darker, but his heart is forever the same. With his thicker haori shielding his lower body from most of the cold air, he brings the red cup of warm sake to his lips, mind wandering to the same, old thoughts of you. Suddenly, his vision turns dark. A pair of warm hands are covering his vision, but before he can reach for his sword, your voice tickles his ear in a low whisper. “Guess who?”

Turning to face you, as a hand rapidly flies to cover his ear from the sudden attack, he quietly basks in the view of your smiling face before slowly erupting in a loud laugh. What an unpredictable one he has fallen for! He must be equally as foolish if he let someone sneak over to him as he was thinking about you.

He takes you in hir arms and keeps you there, where you naturally belong while pressing a kiss to the crown of your head. Your smell, your softness, your body that fit with his like a sword and its sheath. “Welcome back, fireball” With you by his side, everything will be completely different than before. No more sleepless nights or lonely sighs; now he'd have a companion by his side at all times. Sometimes even two.

Nobunaga does not exactly care about the fact that your son is, genetically, not his. Blood is only important to the fools that only view you as an heir-making machine, but he values bonds and the singular individual way more. If he had prioritized family over what was important to him, he would've been killed by his brothers years ago, but it did not happen. What I'm trying to say is that he becomes the fatherly figure your son needs, and he treats him no differently than he would with his biological son. Although yes, he would like to, one day, have another little demon (or a baby angel, depending on whose genes are stronger) running around the castle, to him, yours is already the perfect family.

Nobunaga passes down his views (he doesn't force them, it's more like when a parent explains something to his baby and the baby absorbs everything) onto your child, and makes sure he receives an education fitting for a noble of those times (an open-minded one, possibly). Since he views him as his biological son, once he grows up it will be up to him whether to help his father unifying the country and then, eventually inheriting and ruling everything one day. Growing up in those times though will probably make him accustomed to the idea of fighting even at a young age, so unless you're strictly against it, there will be high chances of him becoming a samurai and following in your lover’s footsteps.

Leaving the gruesome matters aside, Nobu and his son are one hell of a pair of troublemakers! Buy some throat syrup because Hideyoshi will be screaming his lungs out. The man lectures your husband and your own son twice the times you do, either because of their sugar consumptions, their life-threatening activities such as running in the halls, or just general shenanigans. They're quite the headaches, frankly. One of their favorite and safe (because Nobu is there) activities to do together, is going horseriding. The demon commander will sit the boy between his arms and let his horse run at full speed. By the time they come back, the wind will have made a mess of their clothes and hair, but both will have the biggest and purest of smiles on their faces.

(Additionally, for all of them: if they ever catch anyone talking shit about either you or your son, they won't hesitate to slice them up with their swords on the spot.)

[meeko-mar]

Can I just compare Bakudeku to Korrasami for just a moment

Not as in, their relationship, but in terms of fandom experience, perception and how it became Canon.

So, some years ago, LOK was on it's 4th and final season. So of course, shipping discourse was high. Who would Korra end up with? Would she end up single, be back with Mako?

Or....there was a big calling for the couple Korrasami, that is, Korra and her female friend Asami, to get together.

Now, up until the point of the finale, (and grant that I haven't watched in a while so I'm speaking in an overall sense and recalling my experience) Asami and Korra had been teaming up more and more. Korra had been really, badly, injured in the last season, leading to her isolating herself in the SWT for about 2 or 3 years to heal with Katara, and upon heading back to Empire City, she takes an abrupt turn to spend more time isolated and on a sort of spirit journey in the wild because she didn't feel ready to face her destiny and her friends and was suffering from PTSD. She later returns to EC, and to Asami, and they are close together for the season.

This all caught the attention of the Korrasami shippers who had, at the time, kind of only been casually shipping them because, hey, wouldn't it be nice? and they were slowly and steadily getting more crumbs, and the ship gathered momentum as the seasons progressed.

But lo and behold, everyone else was saying such things as:

"they're a female/female ship, it will never happen, even if you want it to" (even shippers of Korrasami were resigned to this because the precedent in youth animation in western cartoons at the time, was of course, not inclusive of same sex couplings).

We SAW the subtle development between the two and DARED to hope and dream that it might one day become canon, even though we thought it unlikely because of the trend towards heteronormativity. We saw their interactions and toiled over if they were trying to hint at something more between them.

"They're just friends. You're reading into it"

Because the "just friends" behavior of Korrasami in later seasons were:

-Asami being deeply supportive of Korra when she was injured (and for a time, disabled) Like, literally, getting on a knee, putting her hand into Korra's and saying "I'm here for you, for ANYTHING you need" kind of supportive, even offering to COME to the SWT with her. (Korra sacrificed her desire to have Asami close because she didn't want Asami to drop her duties as basically a CEO to tend to her)

-Korra receiving letters from all of her friends during her healing period, but ONLY responding, in a very beautiful letter, to Asami's.

-Korra honestly apologizing for being gone so long without writing more than one letter or sharing more of what was going on or where she went

-Asami complimenting Korra's new hair and Korra BLUSHING and looking SO charmed(and returning the compliment of how amazing Asami always looks) --there is no hetero explanation for this.

-being battle partners and constantly having each other's backs

-Asami protecting Korra from pursuing enemies while she's in the Spirit World(leaving her physical body vulnerable)

-other characters in their circles being literally like "What's going on with you two??"

-Culminating in the final episode after the final battle with Asami breaking down, confessing that she wouldn't know what she had done if she had lost Korra in that final battle(she'd even lost her father the same day) AND THEN Korra comforting her and suggesting that they, the two of them, alone, take a trip together, to get away from it all for a bit.

-It ends, when They literally walk into the spirit world portal holding hands and staring lovingly into each other's eyes as the camera pans from them into the spirit portal

Which, LET ME TELL YOU, watching this when it first premiered, for the first time, WAS AN ALMOST TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCE. It was a soft scene, emotional, beautifully animated, and the MUSIC just hit you right in the heart. Like, they didn't even kiss to really hammer it in that THEY ARE IN LOVE, however, it was an EMOTIONAL PAYOFF and there was NO arguing that they were not a couple. Creators soon after confirmed, yes, they are both bisexual women, and they are in love.

And so, you could definitely say that Korrasami could have been interpreted as just "Very Good Friends" behavior, of "Gals being Pals", and many people DID argue that, and would later claim that there wasn't "enough build-up to the relationship". And part of the atmosphere in media back then(esp. Nickelodeon at the time) they really couldn't be blatant about it up until that ending. It was even a thing that Nickelodeon had been kind of shooting them in the foot for a while with switching around air times, and eventually taking it off air and putting it only available to view ON THEIR WEBSITE. There was a lot of fuckery with the studio at the time, and It wouldn't have been far off to think that they had issue with the idea of this series ending with two girls together romantically.

..

It just kind of makes me think of people telling BKDK, not only "They're m/m, it'll never happen in shonen manga" but ALSO anything from "they hate eachother" to "They are toxic because Bakugou bullied him(blatant disregard for any current development of Bakugou's character) and so it can never ever happen" to "Ok sure they're becoming friends again, but that doesn't mean they love each other or will by the end of the story"

When arguably, Korrasami was basically given the same dismissal.

And my dudes, it's only gonna get more intense from here.

Like, Bakugou and Izuku are friends now(again). There's no denying that. They would literally die for one another. Their relationship, and the emotions between the two of them in the coming arcs will only be compounded, with how the last arc left off and how Izuku SUDDENLY left and how Bakugou has so many unresolved feelings, and how, like Korra being the Avatar and having to save the world multiple times over(and the PTSD she got from it), Izuku is carrying a heavy burden that Bakugou is determine to help him see it through to the end without LOSING Izuku in the process. Their stories are so closely tied together and they are SET to return to each other, and it CANNOT end WITHOUT them being together, in some capacity, even if it is just platonic.

So...I wouldn't write BKDK off just yet. We're at the same spot right now that Korrasami shippers were when they were starting to seriously think that there was something canon about Korrasami.

So, Am I saying that I for sure, 100% believe that BKDK will become romantically canon? Not really; the hurdle of it being a Shonen-oriented manga being actively marketed for boys, is admittedly a huge hurdle to overcome, and I, as an American, cannot begin to understand all of the cultural barriers, or implications breaking any of those barriers would have to a Japanese audience or for Horikoshi/his career as a manga-ka.

I still don't know what Horikoshi is thinking when it comes to BKDK, he's obviously very private and all we can do is speculate on what he feels about it; there's still a possibility, however small, that he may actually be the biggest BKDK of us all, and "telling the story he wants to tell" may yet include BKDK becoming canon(that quote may also have nothing whatsoever to do with any romance, but we don't know)...But, much like I was at the point in the Korrasami tale, I'm still painfully aware of the precedent that remains in the way.

Like the Korrasami tale, though, I suppose there is that possibility that we will see something completely amazing and groundbreaking, and I will once again have that transcendent experience where an unlikely ship suddenly becomes reality. At this state in the Korrasami tale, I had NO IDEA that we were shipping the real, canon deal, and it honestly surprised me, being that I usually attach myself to something that never becomes canon, lol(*cough*Zutara).

We're in the thick of it now, we just gotta wait it out and see.

[pparkerpoetry]

Face Reality (Part 5)

Title: a Home for the Lost (why were they cast aside?)

Summary: None of it went to plan.

Ranboo never planned on facing it, Tommy never planned on leaving, Fundy didn't plan on losing the one place where he belonged. Sam didn't plan on opening his house to a bunch of traumatized hybrids that would worm their way into his heart.

And yet, here they were. Here they were, together. Maybe that was the best part of it all. Part 1 Part 6 Masterlist

_____

Ranboo started learning about everything that he’d missed, like how Tommy’s wings came to be and what people had been up to. Other things, he just noticed. He was very perceptive, and it only served to isolate him from everyone more. He could tell things that other people would rather not face, like how Tommy pretended that everything was fine with Phil and Techno and himself. How he pretended that they were a family, and as they relaxed together, how he would show his vulnerability. Ranboo would’ve bought the act that Tommy believed in wholeheartedly, if not for one thing.

Tommy never let them preen his wings.

So yeah, they could all pretend in their little dollhouse that everything was fine and that their relations were fixed, but it would never be perfect. They could believe it all they wanted, but subconsciously, they knew it’d never go back to the way it was before. Maybe that’s why they so desperately put on a show.

Ranboo noticed these things. All the time, to be honest.

He also noticed that slowly, after he had returned and told Tommy why he’d left, that Tommy drifted slightly from his old family. It wasn’t a bad thing, if a little sad, because he’d found another that believed in him and wanted the best for him instead of trying to make up for using him. 

On a different note in the same tune, Sam and Puffy were angels sent from heaven. Nothing could convince Ranboo otherwise. The way they had gently pushed Tommy in the right direction, understanding how messed up he’d been and knowing that harshness wasn’t the way to fix it. Maybe that’s why when they saw Ranboo accompanying Tommy on one of his visits, they recognized his unrest.

Ranboo knew they had a past, those three. He didn’t think Tommy realized it, but they’d adopted him. They’d decided that Phil wasn’t fit to be a father to anyone but Technoblade long ago, and he was amazed at the subtle way they’d taught him to be better. Maybe they were the reason, then, that he’d matured so much. Maybe they could be his family, too.

And they were.

Phil and Techno still received visits from Tommy every now and then, and Tubbo was over most of the time because at the end of the day they were still best friends, but in their own time they realized that maybe it was best to let bygones be bygones. They’d always be close, they’d always love each other, but maybe this time, the damage was done. In this case, it was okay. It was never mentioned, it was never brought up, but it was acknowledged by everyone. He couldn’t really cut them out, not that he wanted to, but he couldn’t have even if he did, not with the constant reminder on his back that he would always be Phil’s son.

Instead, Tommy spent most of his days at Sam’s base, and Ranboo spent most of his time with Tommy, so they ended up just hanging out with Sam and Puffy more than they intended. Maybe it was all part of the plan for the two older adults.

In any case, Ranboo grew closer and more comfortable with the other three, until soon, he wasn’t quiet and reserved anymore. He wasn’t scared of his own shadow, flinching at every footstep. He was Ranboo again, and he owed it to his family. Maybe, now that he’d healed, he’d be able to face the family he’d lost.

_______________

The summer afternoon found Tommy and Ranboo under a tree, half asleep and lazy, one writing and the other talking. It was hot, and muggy, but Sam had said that he needed to do some renovations and Puffy was away. Ranboo knew she was spending time with Niki, but he had yet to go with her to see his sister.

Did that technically make Ranboo Puffy’s sister-in-law? Or was Niki now his step-mother?

He didn’t want to think on it too much. It’d just make his head hurt.

Ranboo didn’t even completely know what Tommy was rambling about, but he smiled and nodded and he did truly enjoy it. Or, he enjoyed Tommy’s company. Was there a difference?

He zoned in when Tommy nudged his shoulder. “Hey, big man, you awake?”

Rolling his eyes, Ranboo responded. “I am now. What’s up?”

“Something I just remembered, Ranboo- I, now here’s a biggie-” Tommy paused for suspense. “I know how to fly a plane, but-”

“Hold on, you can fly a plane?” 

“Yeah,” Tommy shrugged. “I didn’t appear here, a 16 year old. I had other experiences. Anyway, I know how to fly a plane but I don’t know how to ride a bike.”

“A bike?”

Tommy mistook Ranboo’s confusion for mockery. “Yeah, big man. Phil never taught me. Who taught you, if you’re such a pro?”

“Tommy, I barely even know what a bike is.” Ranboo deadpanned.

So, now, the two young men, for that’s what they were at this point, stood outside of the base that they had been told to stay out of all day. Specifically, they were to stay out of it unless it was an emergency. Was this an emergency? See, that’s where it gets complicated.

“What kind of man my age doesn’t know how to ride a bike?” Tommy argued, “We need to learn and clearly, we haven’t got one. I think that Sam might. He strikes me as a bicycle kind of guy.”

“Neither of us are dying, though!” Ranboo protested. “He’ll probably get mad if we interrupt him, too. What’s he even doing?” 

Tommy groaned. “He’s just, I don’t know, building n’ shit. It’ll take two seconds, Ranboo, come on-”

The large door opened, and though neither of them were short, they felt incredibly small. And nervous.

“Can I help you?” Sam asked, looking at his two- his uh, his two mentees. Yeah, that’s it. Mentees. That’s the word he’s looking for. Definitely not something else. At all.

The two- well, now, they looked like boys, - stared at him, anxiously, suddenly at a loss for words. 

“Well?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m done with building, it didn’t take as long as I thought it would. What do you guys need?”

“We don’t know how to ride a-”

Tommy interrupted, “What Ranboo’s trying to say is, neither of us had spectacular father figures in our early life, and we don’t- well, really, we were wondering if you happened to have a bicycle anywhere here? I’m sure we can figure it out on our own, but we don’t have any bikes, is the issue-”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure I’ve got a bike around here somewhere, come help me look.”

So, Sam turned and left, leaving Ranboo and Tommy to trail after him. Not like little ducklings. Not at all. More like, uh… more like… something else. Not ducklings.

After rummaging around a bit, they found one, and after a little more searching, they found another. None of them were sure why Sam, who lived alone, had two bikes (could he even ride them? He pleads the fifth. Why? You’ll find out later.), but they weren’t going to complain. Now, Ranboo and Tommy had thought that Sam would hand them the bikes and let them be off, but, to their surprise, he didn’t. He took the handles of one and walked with it over to a path.

“Hey Sam, why are you going over there?” Tommy yelled, still standing by the main entrance.

“Well, you aren’t going to bike on the grass, are you?”

Wordlessly, Ranboo and Tommy jogged to catch up. Sam stood on the pavement, holding one bike, as Ranboo walked up with the other. He handed his to Tommy, and clapped, bringing the attention back to him. 

“Alright! So, get on the bikes.” Both of the younger men knew what he was doing. They didn’t say anything, though, and obeyed. “So, when you bike, you have to stay balanced…”

They spent the afternoon learning how to ride bikes, and though it maybe wasn’t the most productive way to spend an afternoon, it was a fun and relaxing one that they all needed. It ended with Sam sitting in the grass next to the road while Tommy and Ranboo rode their bikes up and down it. They all chatted, and laughed, and they barely even heard Puffy return. At least, not until she spoke up.

“Hey guys, I’m back! And, I… I brought someone with me.”

Ranboo stopped his bike and turned to where the voice was coming from, stopping all movements abruptly. Sure, Puffy was standing there and he was happy to see her back, but right next to her, looking nervous, was Niki. Not his sister. She’d made sure of that. She was Niki, nothing more.

“Hi, Ranboo.” She said, not meeting his eyes. “It’s been a bit.”

When had Sam and Tommy left? “Yeah. Hi, Niki. What’re you doing here?” It came out harsher than he intended.

“I thought- well, I figured, now that we’ve both had a little more time to, to think about things, I thought that I could come and… apologize.”

It was a little quieter then. Niki was waiting for a response, and Ranboo was thinking of one. What did he want to do? As much as he wanted to forgive her, some of the things that she’d done couldn’t be glossed over.

“I… I forgive you.” Ranboo started, “But, Niki… Niki, you’ve got to understand, you hurt me. You hurt me a lot.”

Niki sighed. “I know. I know I did, Ranboo, but at the end of the day, aren’t you still my brother?”

His chest felt like it closed. Was he? “I’m not sure I am anymore, Niki. I don’t even know who you are.” He looked away from her crestfallen face. “But… I think I’d be willing to re-start.”

He looked back up, and Niki looked a little happier. A bittersweet cheerfulness. He held his arms open, and she ran over to give him a hug. Maybe they weren’t family anymore, but they could be. They just had to hope. This time, neither of them pulled away from the hug. They didn’t want to, but at some point, Puffy told them that it was going to get dark soon, so they needed to head inside.

Sam and Tommy were in the kitchen, making dinner, although only one of them was really working. 

Niki and Puffy stayed for dinner before heading home. It went great, and it was a very relaxed atmosphere. They chatted, made fun of Tommy when he was clumsy with his wings, and laughed every time someone made a joke. Ranboo was truly happy, and he hoped it lasted this time.

That night, when it was dark and the noises of the forest had all settled, Ranboo was thinking. “Hey, Sam, where’s the renovations you were working on this morning? I can’t tell a difference here-”

“Forget that, Ranboo,” Tommy said while yawning, wings hitting the hybrid gently. “We’ve gotta head out if we want to make it back to the cottage in time for a good night’s sleep.”

“Well, about that…” Sam said, laughing a little. “Follow me.” They did, and they followed him down a hallway to two doors, right next to each other.  “Left is for Ranboo, right is for Tommy. I mean, you don’t have to use them, and obviously you can decorate them how you want to, but…”

They each opened their doors, and they were met with little bedrooms. Not too little, but not too large, each with a bed in a corner, a chest, and some other bits of furniture. “Did you make bedrooms for us?” Ranboo asked, and once Sam nodded, he grinned. “That’s great! Could we stay the night? Please?”

“That’s kind of what they’re here for.” Sam said, and he melted inside at the happy grins that Ranboo and Tommy exchanged. “I’ll let you guys get comfy, uh, goodnight?”

“Goodnight!” The other two cheered, nearly crushing Sam in a hug before going to their rooms.

By all means, it should’ve been a peaceful night, but when there’s a traumatized hybrid involved, you never know what to expect. That night, Ranboo’s dreams were plagued with nightmares, all violent and scary and loud- he didn’t know exactly what was happening, but he knew that he was there with Fundy, on the ground and bleeding. He could feel the tears rolling down his face, this time they burned again, with new vigor, and he was forced to look the fox in the eyes as they dimmed. He didn’t know why he started crying harder, but soon he turned to see who had killed his friend, and there stood Dream, hair long from his time in prison.

“It was only a matter of time until I escaped, Ranboo.” Dream taunted. “Ranboo!”

He was scared. Was he going to die?

“Ranboo, wake up!”

And, just like that, he sat up in bed, breathing heavily. Tommy was near, but that didn’t make sense, they didn’t share a room. What was Tommy doing here? Ranboo could feel wings circling around his body, comforting and warm, as he tried to calm down.

“You alright, Ranboo?”

He managed to nod, but it probably wasn’t convincing. He still couldn’t speak. Why couldn’t Dream just leave him alone?

“Am I okay to leave, or-”

“Can you stay?” His voice sounded small, even to him, and was hoarse from screaming in terror. Sam must’ve been a deep sleeper to not wake up.

“Sure thing, man.”

They went back to sleep, then, Ranboo curled in on himself with one of Tommy’s wings draped over him protectively. This time, they slept well, and when Sam went to wake them up the next morning, he did nothing but smile and walk away. He’d let them rest. They’d more than earned it.

When Ranboo’s eyes slipped open a few hours later, he let out a small sigh. He was warm, and he was happy, and he didn’t ever want to move. He was content to have stayed in bed for hours, but then he felt the blankets behind him shift. He let out a confused little warble that sounded remarkably like a cat getting its sleep interrupted.

“What was that?” Tommy groaned. “My ears aren’t started yet. Catch me in a few minutes.”

It was more than a few minutes before they got out of bed, hair wild and eyes still half-closed despite the sun that shone through the windows. Sam greeted them with a cheerful, “Hello,” to which they responded with a vague grunt. They were very articulate in the morning, it appeared. By all means, it should’ve been a dream. It should have been the best thing to happen to him in a while, and it was. But, Ranboo couldn’t shake the underlying feeling of dread that plagued his mind. 

“Ah, what do you want to do today, Ranboo?” Tommy asked loudly, sprawled out across the couch and head lolling back. 

Ranboo thought for a moment, the pit in his stomach growing. “I think that maybe we should go on a trip today, to… to uh, to visit Fundy.”

Tommy furrowed his eyebrows and lifted his head. “Fundy? As in, my nephew, Fundy?”

Nodding, Ranboo fidgeted with his hands. “Yeah. Is that okay?”

“‘Course it is, big man. You want to go now?”

Ranboo got up swiftly. “If that’s okay. I’ve got a bad feeling.”

They bid Sam goodbye, and went off towards Fundy’s house. It took them a while, because they had to ask Niki for the coords, but they found it eventually. Fundy lived in a village that had gone unnoticed, a peaceful haven that usually would’ve been somewhere for weary travelers to rest. Now, however, the air was thick with dust and there was no one to be seen. The first houses that Tommy and Ranboo found were nothing but ruin, the ashes still smoldering. It was only after a shrill horn could be heard that they realized what was happening.

There was a raid.

They broke into a run, swords pulled out. They yelled for Fundy, and the only response they got was the sound of the Illagers that they ran towards. 

Fighting seemed to go on forever as Ranboo and Tommy slashed at the enemy, backs to each other, until finally they got a chance to breathe. There weren’t as many, though still a lot. Ranboo tried to listen harder, trying to detect even a hint of life in one of the houses. When he heard a soft whimper, he grabbed Tommy’s hand and pulled him to it.

When they saw two Illagers standing over Fundy with their crossbows out, they didn’t hesitate to throw themselves forward. They looked up over the bodies, then, and their eyes softened when they saw how Fundy curled up into himself. He was so small, and he still had his eyes tightly shut.

Tommy got up and wiped his bloody hands on his pants before going over to Fundy. “Hey, Fundy. Is it alright if I touch you?” Tommy didn’t even really have to ask, because the minute Fundy saw the blond, he latched onto his arm. Ranboo hadn’t ever seen Tommy look so awkward, slowly putting his arms around the fox that really wasn’t all that younger than he was. 

They’d all had their childhoods stolen from them, it seemed. 

Fundy was inconsolable, and Tommy motioned for Ranboo to help. They seemed to have the same idea, when Ranboo gathered the fox into his arms and they walked outside to see the still-smoking ruins of all the houses. 

When Fundy stopped crying for a moment, and opened his eyes, he did nothing but utter a small, “Ranboo?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Ranboo said, and was surprised when Fundy closed his eyes again to burrow further into his hold. 

Sam had to do a double-take when the boys got home. “Is that Fundy?” He asked, getting up quickly.

Tommy and Ranboo paused, like children who had been caught sneaking a pet indoors. Only, they were tall young men with a traumatized fox hybrid in their arms. Who, Sam soon learned, was now homeless.

“Please, can he stay with us Sam, please?” Tommy had pleaded, Ranboo standing near, still holding Fundy. “He’s got nowhere else to go, Sam, please?”

And, well, Sam took one look at his little brothers and had to concede. “Of course he can stay,” Sam said, already coming up for a plan for Fundy’s room.

Later that night, once Fundy had been told he was fine to stay and was sharing a room with Tommy (all three of the boys, for that’s how Sam fondly thought of them, ended up crammed into one bed by the morning, though, and neither of them knew which one of them had the nightmare. Maybe it was all three.), Sam let out a soft chuckle. 

He really was collecting a menagerie of fucked-up kids, wasn’t he? Only, they weren’t really kids anymore.

Well, he was growing his little family, and if no one else was going to let these kiddos heal, he would. They deserved the chances that war and adulthood had stolen from them. They deserved the love that he was set on giving them.

[loving-all-for-loki]

Voiceless Love Chapter 7: Missing You

Loki x reader, Bucky x reader

Word count: 2166

Warnings: swearing, sad reader, Bucky fluff

A/N: Okay, so for anyone who’s reading this as their introduction to this series, Loki is not in this a ton. I have a little, but if you didn’t read chapter 6, this is going to be very confusing. As for the series, this is the last “base” chapter meaning there are going to be two different options: the Bucky route and the Loki route. There may be three to four more chapters on each route until the end, I’m not entirely sure, but the choose your own part of the series starts after this chapter. I will be posting the next chapter for each route at the same time so the schedule is still continuous. Also for my tag lists, I will be tagging you in both. If you’d rather not be tagged in both and just one, please let me know. <3 Other than that, thank you for all the support. Remember the tag list is still open if you want to get tagged in the upcoming chapters. Back to the heart wrenching story.

Tag List: @caffeineoverloadandstudying @zizzlekwum @daddysfavoritesexkitten @buckylokisimp @magicalpieex @lokiyoulittle

You’re not sure how long it’s been since Loki was taken back to Asgard. Someone could tell you it’s been an hour or two months, but it wouldn’t make a difference. The outside light has not seen your room since. Your heart has not felt joy. The Avengers have not been blessed with your presence. 

Bucky started to get really concerned for you days ago. They haven’t seen you come out of your room for food or even the bathroom. Tony teased the thought of you being dead, but nobody found it funny. Bucky even yelled at him for the insults about Loki still, knowing if you were to hear them by any chance, you’d go ape shit.

He’s tried to make contact with you, but he fails every time. Leaving food by your door, sliding notes underneath, even knocking and begging you to talk to him, but he’s always faced with deafening silence. His heart has not been the same since you locked yourself away. Steve complains about him no longer being a good spar partner and replacing him with Sam. He’s been left out of two missions for not being focused enough or being too chaotic. One time our of pure anger, Bucky ignored Cap’s orders and almost got himself killed.

“Bucky this isn’t the time to play around. We need you in the game. Don’t screw up again.”

“I’m sorry, Steve, but I-” “There are no buts in war and I think you’d know that. I understand your concern for Y/N, but you need to let it go. She’s not coming out. Leave her be. Focus on the missions or else I’m going to have to bench you.”

Bucky knows Steve is right, but there’s nothing he can do to stop his brain from thinking about you all day long. Every time he passes the library, he longs for the time where you would spend all day there reading stories about love and adventure. He longs for when you’d sneak into his room and spend all day in bed with him, asking him to read to you. He longs for your writings on his skin again. He feels so empty and boring without your scribbles all along his arm.

He sits around the living area ll day, drinking coffee and staring out of the window. The tower feels so quiet without you and Loki running around giggling, baking, reading, etc. It doesn’t feel like home even if home involves Bucky watching someone he loves love someone else. He misses your touches and glances. The way you’d offer for him to join you or taste the cookies you made. He even misses the occasional times Loki put too much salt in the cookies and made him eat them. 

Bucky walks over to the door to your bedroom solemnly. He slides down the door and sits there with his long legs blocking the whole floor of the hall. He slowly rolls his knuckles on the door, knocking and hoping to get your attention yet he gets no response.

You’ve been under your blankets crying for so long, you don’t know how time works. The only thing reminding you that you’re alive is the times when Bucky comes and tries to talk to you. You have no energy to get out of bed due to the consistent crying you’ve been doing. You feel like you’re getting weaker every day. It’s the same feeling as when you healed Bucky from almost dying. Moving becomes a chore and you can’t fathom doing anything. No one is really sure how you haven’t eaten or peed for this long, even you. Sometimes you like to think it’s Loki’s magic allowing you to mourn the loss of him working. There are moments where you feel him around you.

You miss his cold touches, sending chills down your spine. His bedroom has become a place of pain and you refuse to go near it. Because he isn’t around to pick you up, you haven’t drank or taken a bath either. You completely ignore taking care of yourself. There’s no point in taking care of yourself if there’s no one to admire you. 

Bucky comes up to your door again and starts knocking. You see his body block some of the light coming from under your door, showing that he’s sitting there. The sound surrounds you in the quiet room and drowns out your sobs. 

“Y/N, please talk to me. We’re all concerned for you and want to help you.”

You ignore his voice, turning over to look at the wall opposite of it. Pulling the blankets over your head, you try to fall asleep but Bucky keeps talking to you through the door.

“I remember when I fell off the train back in… actually, I don’t remember when, but I woke up and was surrounded by Hydra. For years, I felt alone. I would black out at times when they controlled me and I didn’t know what was happening. Then Steve found me and told me he knew me. I was confused and scared. I was a soldier with no memory. For months, I was with someone who knew me, but I felt so alone. There was so much I was missing and didn’t know. Everything terrified me and made me alarmed. I was on the edge of my seat all the time. What I’m trying to say is I know how you feel. You miss someone you care for and I missed a whole part of my life I longed for again. I felt the loneliness you’re going through and I isolated myself, too. It was a terrible time and I want to help you. I don’t want you to deal with the feelings because I remember how it felt. Please, let me help you.”

At the end of his long speech, you felt yourself get up off of bed, still covered in your blankets. You open the door and look down at Bucky sitting with his legs out. He looks up to you with a pity smile as you stare down, still with tears running down your face. Bucky stands up and pulls you into him, holding you in a tight embrace. 

“I know I said some… unkind things and I’m sorry. I’m also sorry you don’t have Loki here. We’ll get him back.”

You don’t believe him when he says they’ll get him back. You’re aware he’s only saying this to make you feel better, but your heart hopes his words are true and honest. The warmth of his body against yours makes you miss Loki even more, wishing it were his body. You squeeze tighter, imagining Loki in your head with his long hair, blue eyes, and strong hands. Bucky squeezes back, rubbing his hand up and down on your waist. 

“You’ll be okay, doll.”

You back up from Bucky’s hug and adjust your blanket. He takes your hand and leads you down the hallways to the living are where Nat, Sam, and Steve are sitting. They quiet down their conversation as you walk in. Nobody looks your way or makes any comment about you leaving your room. Bucky has you sit down at the kitchen counter as he scrummages through the fridge.

“I’m sure you’re hungry. Do want anything specific?”

You shake your head and the way you don’t speak doesn’t go unmissed. Bucky nods, knowing the progress with you talking has gone away and you’re back to square one. He pulls out some leftovers and give them to you. You pick up a spoon timidly and start eating, but Bucky thinks you look weak. Your hand is shaking as you bring it to your mouth. It’s as if you had healed him again. 

“Are you feeling okay?”

You shake your head no which alerts him. Bucky immediately takes the food from you and picks up you bridal style.

“Bucky, what ARE you doing?” Nat asks.

“She’s not well, I’m taking her to med bay.”

Steve gets up and follows Bucky and you. He watches as you keep dropping your head and waking up as if you can’t stay awake. Steve then looks up to his best friend and sees how tired he looks as well. Everyone’s aware of Bucky’s feelings about you and he knows nothing will change that, even your own love for Loki. Sometimes Bucky’s obsession and attachment to you scares him. He’s worried he’ll lose Buck in his pinning for you, his longing, his jealousy. He’s seen Buck in hard times, but sparring with him for the last two months while you were with Loki was rough to watch. Bucky was rough, sporadic. He was irresponsible during missions, reckless. It was like he had a death wish. 

“Buck,” Steve says once he sees you fall asleep, “we need to talk.”

“Not until she’s being taken care of.”

“That’s the thing. Your attachment to her is unhealthy.”

“Steve, I know you lost your love years ago and I’m sorry, but my love is here in my arms and she doesn’t even know who she is to me. If I can do something, I will.”

“I have nothing against you helping her, but you need to detach from her a little bit. I’m scared for you.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. You’re going to get yourself killed if you stop stressing over her all the time.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything, knowing that Steve is right. He doesn’t dare to argue against him because a) he doesn’t want to wake you and b) he knows nothing he says will change Steve’s concern for him. He’s right, though. He had been reckless, almost dying even after the first time. He’s hid his injuries from the other teammates, but looking down at you, he can’t help but think how it’s worth it. If he doesn’t have you, he has nothing. As long as you’re around, even if you’re not his, he’s happy.

“She’s all that matter to me now.”

“I understand that.”

They arrive at the Medbay and keep you there. 

Weeks go by and you finally return to the team. Everyone welcomes you back with some drinks and games, trying to get you to warm back up to them. You appreciate the sweet gesture, give into their advances, and stay out there with them. Bucky’s heart jumps with joy seeing you smile and enjoy your time with the Avengers. A couple drinks in and Tony decides to play truth or dare with everyone which makes you roll your eyes.

“Really?” Clint complains.

“What? It’s fun!” “It’s childish, Tony.”

“Yeah, seriously, can’t we play something else?” Steve complains, too.

“How about drink or dare?” Nat offers.

“I like how you think, Ksenia Onatupp.”

Confused, Nat looks to Steve who is equally confused and shrugs. Tony grabs a large bottle of Vodka from the kitchen and sets it on the table.

“Alright, since he made fun of me, I say Legolas goes first.”

“This is so dumb.”

A couple rounds go by and everyone is a little tipsy. You end up sitting on Bucky's lap with your legs across him. He keeps a protective arm around your waist as his metal arm rests on your thigh, rubbing his thumb up and down. Steve keeps looking over to see you two cuddling, disapproving the way Bucky has been ignoring his advice and keeping some distance. He visited you every day while you were recovering from everything.

“Y/N, I dare you to dance.”

You furrow your eyebrows at the lack of music and direction. Tony looks incredibly proud, but as a more sober person, you know how dumb that dare is so you take a drink. Tony groans at you, but everyone else is just drunk enough (beside Thor who could chug three whole bottles of Vodka and feel nothing, lucky duck) to not care. You turn to Bucky and yawn, which is his signal to pick you up and carry you to your room.

You wander to the bathroom in your room to chance while Bucky waits in your room. He looks around at all the new things on your bookshelf. There’s a little stuffed snake which he’s sure Loki got for you as well as a lot of photos of you and him in frames. There’s one of you two during a movie night, you on his lap, and one of him kissing you while dancing. The smile on your face is wider than Bucky has ever seen. He knew you were happy with Loki, he just refused it.

Bucky walks back to your bed when you stroll in. You lay down as he tucks you in and kisses you on the forehead. Before he walks away, you grab his arm and dig through the table next to your bed. You grab your pen which you haven’t used in awhile and write ‘thank you’ on his arm.

“Of course, doll. I’ll see you in the morning.”

[pitiless-achilles-wept]

Not dead yet!: Marking my 2-year anniversaries

On Sunday I marked my two-year “cancerversary” of my diagnosis and on Tuesday a member of the support group I co-founded (for young women who are stage 4) died. Like me, she had triple-negative breast cancer. Like me, she was diagnosed stage 4 two years ago. Like me, she had exhausted several types of treatment (because triple-negative is a beast) and was looking for the one that would work. She asked me about Saci (Sassy!) and proposed trying it to her doctor less than a week before she died. Nine days before she passed she joined our Sunday cancer yoga group from bed at the hospital to join our meditation exercises. Like me, she remained confident and positive and absolutely refused to give up hope. (Like me, she also wore her hair purple sometimes.)

There were many things that are unlike about us too. She had two teenage children who now don’t have their mother. She was twelve years older than me and had had Hodgkin’s before she had breast cancer--even worse luck than mine, to triumph over one cancer only to get this diagnosis. Unlike me, she wasn’t strong enough for Saci, the only targeted triple-negative line of treatment, because her body had reacted badly to immunotherapy. She was in the hospital for two weeks with somewhat mysterious symptoms all of which added up to her body shutting down. On Saturday she went home with her family in hospice care. 2 days later she was gone.

It’s not usual for things to go so fast. Typically, doctors, patients, and family members all have some advance warning and patients spend a solid amount of time in hospice care. I am sure that people will ask me why it went that way for her. I’m asking myself why too, since it is so shocking and so entirely unfair. The fact that it can happen that way at all is frightening to me as a fellow patient since it’s the scenario of nightmares. That really could someday be me. No one ever wants to think that--and I cannot live my life focused on it either--but it has to be acknowledged as a possibility.

[More below the cut about memories from 2 years ago today and hopes for the future. Also, an invitation to contribute to some writing if you want.]

Today, January 28th, is the 2-year anniversary of my stage 4 diagnosis. In a way, it feels more significant than my initial cancer news. I had four days being horrified, but thinking that I would get through this as a phase in my life. It would be terrible--I’d have a double mastectomy, scorched-earth chemo, radiation, anything to get rid of the cancer--but then it would be done. On the Monday following my first set of CT scans I learned that that was not true. My lungs were full of tumors. (Later, after lots of waiting, MRIs and biopsies, I'd find that my lymph nodes, spine, and liver were affected too. I still have tumors in all those locations, but no new ones.) I wrote a description of getting that news in an email to a friend over the summer, after I had read Anne Boyer’s "The Undying”:

“The worst part about the lung tumors for me was that my dad had gotten a very early flight and I learned the news while he was in the air. My mom told me we could not text or tell him on the phone, that he would need to be with us both. So I drove to Newark straight from the doctor's office. It was in the teens outside and windy as we slogged to the baggage area where we were to meet. I saw my dad in his warmest and ugliest puffy orange down jacket, looking small in it, forlorn and horribly vulnerable. I fell into his arms, thinking at least that airports were such horrible places, so impersonal and banal, that no one would look twice. 'It's in my lungs,' I said into his shoulder so that I would not have to see his face. I was crying into the jacket that somehow smelled of winter cold even though he had been inside for hours. 'Please, Daddy. Fix it, please.' I spoke like a child because, on some very deep level, I think I really did still believe that my father could fix anything. I was embarrassed, though, and so I tried to stem my tears as he put his big hand on the back of my head and said, 'Oh sweetie, we'll get through this. We will.' I knew that really he could do nothing--and that this was his nightmare of powerlessness--and so I sniffed and blinked and I did not let myself cry again until June.”

Two years later this moment seems as if it just happened. The impact of my diagnosis on everyone dear to me, and especially my parents, is one of the worst things about it for me. We all know that there’s only so much “better” I can get, with the current science, and we’re all playing for time while the research moves forward towards something better, something that would make this a treatable chronic condition. I go back and forth, emotionally, on how likely I think that is and how good my position is for the future. Right now, comparing myself to the group member who died, I feel relatively fortunate, even as chemo exhausts me, I lose every scrap of hair that was ever on my body, and I spend half of my days being almost unable to eat from nausea and loss of taste. I feel glad that I was able to get Saci, that my body has so far stood up to the ceaseless trials I have put it through, with four treatments and surgery (and full-time work and living alone etc. etc.). I feel strong, not scared, even as I feel the emotional toll of terrible loneliness from covid isolation, winter, and carrying a sick body through my days alone.

I do not love the “fight” metaphor because so much of having an illness is completely out of your control and I never want to take myself (or anyone else) to task for “losing.” And so instead I will praise my body for enduring. I will praise myself for my enduring also, in both an emotional and physical way. I checked back in on how I was feeling as this anniversary approached last year and was pleased to see how much better I feel about it now, partly as a function of being in a treatment that is (likely) keeping me stable rather than in the midst of choosing another new one. Here is what I wrote back to my group of friends in November 2019, the run up to the one-year mark:

“I’m feeling like I can’t plan and don’t want to celebrate, like I can’t perform “fine” for the people in my life to spare them from the pain I’m causing by not doing better and feeling horrible about it. Perhaps it would help if I let them know that they didn’t need to perform “fine” for me? I understand the desire to protect me from the obligation to take care of them and appreciate it. But sometimes it can feel like I’m the only one experiencing anger or grief or pain, though I know I’m not. Feeling so isolated in my emotional response provides no catharsis for it. Compassion and sympathy function on the notion of “fellow feeling.” If you’re just out here, feeling by yourself, you can’t expect any comfort. As always, I think of the moment in the Iliad when Priam and Achilles cry together over dead Hector. Grief (and you can grieve for many things aside from a death) is something explicitly to be shared.” So I guess I’ve shared it here. I can do that. And I can do another thing, which is to tell you I love you. People don’t really say it enough and reserve it too entirely for romantic contexts. It’s weird--it’s not like we are wartime rationing love! And every time anyone says it to me it helps. It’s an affirmation that I am integral in some way to people’s lives which, in a society that so greatly valorizes marriage/partnership and children, is something I can be in doubt about.”

There are some things I like here, though, and that I would now like to reiterate and invite you, my far-flung friends, to do for my 2-year milestone. Never has the notion of “fellow feeling” in times of grief and depression hit harder or been more important than during covid. In a way, the nation (or even world) was forced into much the same position, emotionally and practically, that my cancer put me in. People are isolated, unable to perform “fine” and wondering if other people feel the same way, or even if any of us can take care of each other at all. I am here to tell you that you can. Maybe not immediately but--sooner than you think--you can. Emotional reserves may be low but reaching out to support someone else can actually replenish them. You do not have to feel alone, or to feel, alone.

And for me, for this milestone and for the cancer-related depression that I certainly do have, I’d like to invite you to help me, so that I can do the same for you. I invite you to write something about how this milestone feels for you (either about me or not), how it relates to all the other insane things going on in the world or with you (not about me at all), how you felt on the original day when I shared my stage 4 diagnosis (definitely about me)--really anything that is on your mind or in your heart.

“Oh great,” you may think, “the English PhD has asked us to do homework!”. But no! It's up to you what you do. Write in whatever form you want, however long, even anonymously. And if you do I will write you back! Not with grades or comments, but with something to connect to what you shared. It is a way to create fellow-feeling; to open up, connect, heal. With me, yes, but also as the group of extraordinary people who have gone with me so far on this hard road. It’s a very different proposition to support someone through time-limited treatment with a good outcome than it is to sign on for whatever comes next. You are all, truly, pretty extraordinary.

Anyone who wants to send a note or reflection can email me or drop a file or post in this Google drive folder. Like I said, feel free to share whatever and do it anonymously if you’d rather. You can also askbox me here (better than DMS) or submit a post to this blog. (I'm taking a chance with open DMs for now...we'll see if that needs to change.)

I am grateful for all of you every day, but especially today.

Love, Bex

p.s. The title of this post refers to the cinematic classic "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," a film my high school self and friends loved. They, along with other wonderful folks. gave me a "cancerversary" cake with "Not dead yet, motherfucker!" on it this Sunday. p.p.s. The average life expectancy for people who get this diagnosis is 18 months to 3 years. Hitting 5 years would be extraordinary. Starting Year 3 is a huge deal and I have every intention of being extraordinary. (Never been average at anything in my life...I either succeed spectacularly or fail epically!)

[skipppppy]

I’m so fascinated by your she ra fan character! I’m trying to understand the storyline but it’s a little hard to find everything, and I was wondering if you would mind explaining it here?

Thank you very much! Her story is SUPER convuluted, I elaborated on it a bit on another ask about her relationship with Entrapta, but I’ll try to sum it up as cleanly as possible but a lot of different factors come into play so it still might be LOOONNGG. It’s also not a very happy story, unfortunately, but it would be helpful for me to get it all written down!

In terms of things that might be triggering, her backstory involves mention of a wide range of abuse. It won’t be explicit but I just want to be safe!

I’m actually gonna put most of it under the cut for the sake of anyone who follows me or any tags so they aren’t cursed with a mile long post on their timeline. I know the pain 😅

So here it is! I present A COMPREHENSIVE TIMELINE OF ALL THE BULLSHIT ARIA HAD TO PUT UP WITH!!!!

-For background context, she’s a Wingfolk, a species of Bird People native to Etheria who live in a kingdom built into a forest of giant trees named Ornithia. I could go on about them for hours but all you really need to know is that they have hollow bones to achieve flight (which is also the case for real life birds), which makes Aria’s body very light and frail. So she’s basically useless in physical combat which is why she never really defends herself. She was also a particularly weak flyer, which is why she doesn’t avoid a lot of situations by simply flying away.

-EXTRA BACKGROUND CONTEXT, Aria was born around the time the Horde landed on Etheria. Her father was a sorcerer at Mystacor, who had a reputation for ignoring ethics in the name of science. This all came to a head when a meteorite struck the surface of the planet; he rushed to the sight, stole it, studied it for a while, and after learning it had a powerful magic, decided to try a ritual in which he extracted the magic from the meteorite and fused it with his daughter’s soul. It took a few years for people to find out but when they did he was exiled for his actions, and Aria, still a child, was given to her mother.

-ONE MORE SMALL DETAIL: from about the age of 18/19 onward, she started having dreams about a mysterious figure made of blinding light who knew secrets about the universe and promised to find her one day so they could “finally be together again.” 3 guesses who THAT is lmao (hint: it’s Horde Prime)

-I won’t go into details about her childhood because we’d be here forever but the most important things you need to know are 1) Aria’s mother was a HORRIBLE parent and preferred to get blackout drunk rather than look after her children. 2) Aria had 4 younger brothers who, due to her mother’s negligence, she had to raise entirely by herself, which is why she feels responsible over others and has such a “nurturing” disposition, it was forced on her. 3) She took her brothers and ran away from Ornithia when she was 15, and built a home in a small woodland in the mountains of Dryl where she has lived ever since. 4) Throughout her childhood she befriended Princess Entrapta and the two were extremely close due to their isolated upbringings.

-When the BFS visited Dryl for the first time in Season 1, Aria was there acting as both a lab assistant and royal advisor to Entrapta, and joined the rebellion alongside her. Nothing crazy happened, but when Entrapta “died” Aria was beside herself with grief and ended up leaving the rebellion in order to go tend to Dryl, since it needed a ruler and as advisor it was her job to step up and take responsibility. Unlike the others, however, she refused to return to aid in the battle of Brightmoon, since she was kinda miffed at how the Princesses treated Entrapta (lookin’ at you, leash lady Perfuma) and was thoroughly pissed that they didn’t even TRY to go back for her, even if it was just to find her body and give her a dignified burial.

-Season 2 was when things truly went to shit. When the Horde came to claim Dryl, Aria resisted but was defeated pretty easily. When Glimmer and Bow came to scout out the situation, they saw her being hauled away and tried to save her but basically got caught in a stalemate where they couldn’t act because the Horde threatened to harm Entrapta if they acted. They told Aria to go with the Horde and promised that they would form a rescue party to save the both of them. But after they learned that Entrapta had joined the Horde by choice and had more important missions to deal with, rescuing her just..stopped being a priority. She wasn’t a rebel so they had no obligation to get her, so eventually they forgot about her entirely.

-Aria was kept as a prisoner for a while, but Entrapta found out pretty quickly what happened and went to find her. At that point Catra was growing frustrated with all the menial paperwork she had to do, and since she’d had experience being an advisor/secretary type, Entrapta basically proposed to Hordak that Aria act as his assistant in the same way she used to at Dryl. He accepted since it meant he would be spending less time running the Horde and more time building the portal. Aria was against the idea of helping him since she was still holding out hope that the rebels would come save her, but she was simply threatened with the classic Evil Horde punishments (torture, more torture, being locked in a cell for weeks without food or water, a tad more torture). So from mid-Season 2 to the end of Season 4, that was pretty much the position she was in. Being the Fright Zone’s resident desk jockey.

-Not much happened in that timespan, most of what occurred revolved around the portal incident and the aftermath. While Aria had been playing the part of Hordak’s pretty little secretary she was trying to find weak points in the Fright Zone’s security system so she could bust her and Entrapta out of there. Due to her and Hordak building the portal (and smooching lol) she’d been spending less and less time with Aria, which had been making her a little upset. She felt like someone she’d spent her entire life caring for was replacing her for something better, but her suspicions weren’t confirmed until she asked Entrapta about leaving together and she refused. That was the first small nudge towards a downward spiral. Then Catra returned with Adora and the Sword in hand and the Princesses came to stop the Portal. The rebels had come to save Adora and forgot about her. She was willing to forgive and join them, until they saw that she had been assisting the Horde, assumed she had betrayed them alongside Entrapta, and decided to leave her behind without giving her a chance to explain herself. That was the second, slightly stronger nudge that made her teeter over the edge of a breakdown. And then Catra told her that Entrapta had abandoned her to rejoin the rebels. While it was a lie, it was perfectly placed salt in the wound, and the straw that broke the camels back into her shifting allegiance and properly joining the Horde.

-Throughout Season 4 she had the same role as before, except this time she actually cared about her work, and had taken on the additional role of helping Hordak with his busted tech since Entrapta wasn’t around to do it. He had already come to rely on Aria for paperwork, but now she was helping him with his machines and they had a shared trauma over being “abandoned” by someone they cared deeply for. She was literally filling the void Entrapta left, and in a way they started to care for each other. Aria, being a hopeless romantic who had read about a trillion love stories about gentle protagonists who healed the evil monster men with their kindness, took to him like a moth to a flame and happily played the role of “the next best thing” against her better judgement. It wasn’t really a healthy relationship, but they did genuinely care for each other and found comfort in one another’s presence.

-It didn’t last, however. Catra was vaguely aware of the “thing” they had, and while she was indifferent for the most part, she was dealing with a downward spiral of her own, and she slowly became paranoid that Aria would distract him from completing their plans. In her poor, burnt out kitty cat frame of mind, the only way to deal with the situation was to get rid of her. So, deciding to kill 2 birds with one stone, she told Hordak that Aria had been jealous of his relationship with Entrapta, and SHE had been the one to send her to beast island. And Hordak believed her.

-I won’t go into detail about what happened after that, because it was VERY GRUESOME! We all saw how Hordak reacted when he found out what Catra had done in the original show. Now remember when I mentioned that Aria has hollow bones that made her incredibly frail and physically incapable of defending herself? Yeah. It was not pretty. Hordak wasn’t completely at fault, since he thought his anger was warranted, but by the time he’d learnt the truth and realised his mistake she was dead. In the space between the incident and learning what really happened he’d thrown her in the abandoned black garnet chamber with no food or water and basically left her to rot. He was EXTRA mad at Catra for pulling that with him, but he didn’t have time to grieve since he, Glimmer, Catra, and Aria’s lifeless corpse were beamed up into Horde Prime’s flagship.

-When Prime initially found her she was still dead. However, remember the healing magic that came from the mysterious meteorite that had now fused with her soul? Spoiler alert! It belonged to him. The meteorite was one of his most prized possessions, and the dreams Aria had been having were the magic’s attempts at trying to establish a connection with him across dimensions. (the meteorite was somewhat sentient. This is perfectly normal and well thought out writing I swear) And being reunited caused a huge surge of magical energy that resuscitated her, allowing Prime’s clones to give her some much needed medical help.

-After being pretty much comatose for 2 weeks Aria finally woke up, and was finally able to speak with Prime in person. When she found out that the “mysterious figure” from her dreams who had promised to find her was REAL and had just saved her life, she basically just latched onto him. She was, understandably, TRAUMATISED from the last 2 or so years of her life, so she was too scared to go anywhere else or trust anyone, so Prime didn’t even have to try to win her allegiance. He was also very happy to have his meteorite back, even if it now had a mortal body with skin and a face and a slew of emotional baggage. So she spends most of Season 5 being showered in love and affection by Prime and all her attendants, eventually being crowned Empress. While Prime was unequivocally evil and Aria was aware of that, he mostly sheltered her from what he was doing, in fear that her loyalty to him might falter. Maybe in a fun au she could’ve convinced him to leave Etheria alone so they could be together for longer, but alas, it was not to be.

-In the aftermath of the Heart being destroyed and Prime being killed, her downward spiral returned and shifted into OVERDRIVE. The people who had abandoned and neglected her took her one safe person away from her and they were being hailed as heroes for it. While she now knew that Entrapta had never abandoned her and was instead sent to beast island, seeing her get a happy ending with the man who had, to be quite blunt, physically abused and assaulted her, shattered any part of their friendship that might have been recoverable. She retreated into herself, taking over Horde Prime’s role as ruler over the Clones. She turned the Velvet Glove into their new home, trying to be civil with the other Princesses but eventually descended into a cold, bitter, vindictive Empress who ended up making terrible decisions as a cry for help.

-I’m still undecided on what to do with her after her fun villain arc, but I do know that in the aftermath she’d probably either step down from the throne so she could properly heal from her trauma, or work with her clones to fix up Prime’s flagship and get as far away from Etheria as possible and find peace in a new life away from everything that hurt her. I may also bring back Horde Prime from the dead through my sheer will to ignore canon so they can be together, since they are for all intents and purposes, soulmates. And I don’t think it would be very fair to let my poor hopeless romantic who just wants to be loved lose her handsome prince forever. I think it would be sexy if I committed necromancy I think.

ANYWAY...THAT WAS A HEFTY READ..SORRY IT WAS SO LONG, BUT THANK YOU FOR THE ASK!! I CAN COME BACK TO THIS FOR REFERENCE NOW

TLDR: babygirl has had it ROUGH

[haleigh-sloth]

How do you interpret Shigure's love for Akito? Meta about it please? :3

Lol. It’s your lucky day. I was literally already in the middle of working on one discussing Shigure’s and Akito’s roles in the story before you sent this. So everything I had typed up for that post I’ll put here! I’ll talk about his love for her a little bit throughout!

So basically the entire story of Fruits Basket is a chess game, in which Shigure and Akito are the players—-oh and plot twist, there’s only enough pieces for one side. So both players are fighting over the pieces.

Both players are master manipulators who use everyone around them to get what they want (which is each other)—but they play the game using completely opposite methods. They both manipulate the same group of people in their own twisted ways. However, one of these method proves to be more effective than the other: Shigure’s.

Furuba is pretty much just Shigure and Akito at each other’s throats, and everyone else (including the main character) is caught in between this fucked up lover’s quarrel.

Akito is not by any means a likable character at first. She’s the antagonist, she’s cold and abusive. Her role in the story, what side she’s on, is not questioned in the slightest, unlike Shigure. Akito’s method of manipulation is utilizing her power to feed her need for control, since she had no control whatsoever over her own identity growing up. She’s the kind of player that tries to control every aspect of the game—every piece, every pawn—and make them act as she pleases in order to get what she wants. Not only does she focus so much on trying to control everything, she also focuses on everybody’s weaknesses and uses them to her advantage. If there was a budding romance within the zodiac, she punished them both by only truly punishing one of them. Hiro and Kisa, Hatori and Kana, Rin and Haru—she only chooses one out of the two to attack, but ultimately she ends up punishing both. Ultimately in the end her attempt to maintain control over all of her game pieces blows up in her face, and she loses the game. (That’s a spoiler for the end kind of...sorry)

Now Shigure, he’s a more complicated player. At first he seems like a nice, open, generous guy who opens his house to a stranger out of the goodness of his heart. Then you get a small glimpse into his interactions with Akito and you start to realize he has some master plan in the works. And you start to wonder whose side he’s really on. And at some points you wonder if he is even a protagonist, such as moments like this

At this point, even though readers and watchers don’t know--he is very very much talking about Akito. 

The reason Shigure seems like the anti-hero of Furuba is because he plays the game just as much as Akito, but uses much less cruel methods. Unlike Akito, Shigure does not try to control anybody at all. In fact, he does the opposite. He opens up pathways and opportunities for everyone and gives them the agency to make their own choices. In the end, this is what ends up working because he’s the one who gets what he wants. 

Now for Shigure’s and Akito’s relationship:

It’s messed up man. Lol. They both love each other and at the end of the day, they’re all they both want. But Akito is trying to make that happen by isolating every single zodiac member from each other while ALSO bringing them all close to her. And that doesn’t work because it’s not possible. She can’t be the center of everyone’s world while also keeping them all apart from each other. Akito wants to keep the curse to keep those bonds because she was deprived of that from her neglectful and psychologically abusive mother. Shigure wants to break the curse because he knows that while Akito wants those bonds, those bonds are also suffocating her. 

Shigure wants to break the curse because he loves Akito and wants to be with her. His twisted way of getting to her is isolating her from everyone that she keeps trying to force into her world--the zodiac. Shigure manages to be the mastermind behind breaking the curse by simply giving them freedom. He allows Hiro and Kisa to spend time together at his home. He allows Rin and Haru to stay together by keeping their secret. He allows Tohru to choose to stay with him at his home after being told she can go back to staying with family. He could have asked her to stay, and she definitely would have. But by giving her that choice he allowed her to realize just how much she loved the Sohmas on her own terms. And that choice is what started the rest of the journey to breaking the curse, because Tohru was able to accept how much she cared for the Sohmas and let her love for them spread throughout. Tohru influenced every zodiac member in the sense that her acceptance of them gave them all strength to make their own choices--which is what truly broke the curse in the end. Shigure used a completely opposite method from Akito to play this little manipulative game, and in the end it works in BOTH of their favors. 

Shigure and Akito are opposites but also very, very similar. And they’re perfect for each other. Shigure went through the utmost effort to get to Akito, which is something Akito needed in order to start healing from these long years of facing rejection from her mother. 

Anyway I love Shigure, he’s the worst. But also the best. 10/10 Shojo manga character lmao

[handonshipper]

If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Chapter Three

Hope headed downstairs after putting her father to sleep. The voices in her head caused by the Hollow were getting to her. It was getting harder and harder to manage. The most relief she had gotten since she took in the Hollow's magic again was when she was spending time with the waiter from the Mystic Grill, Landon Kirby, yesterday. Something about being around him was different. A little distracting at least. But she was dangerous to be around right now, and she knew it. Which was why she did not consider going to find him.

The tribrid wondered what exactly the waiter was doing in New Orleans, her home town. Was it merely a coincidence or something more? She felt drawn to trust Landon and felt comfortable around him, but she had also recently been betrayed by Roman, her ex boyfriend, which resulted in her mother's death. At the thought of this, the voices grew, and she struggled to ignore them. She breathed out slowly and entered Rousseau's bar. "Declan, hey, I need a favor from the bar." Suddenly her body froze as she spotted a familiar face, her anger flaring up again. Elijah Mikaelson. Her uncle. "What are you doing here? Killing my mom wasn't enough? Now you've come for Declan?"

"That's not what I'm here for." Elijah disagreed, but Hope didn't care. She just wanted to be angry at him. To not let her own guilt sink in. It was painful enough the brief moment it had while she was with Landon. It was easier for her to be angry with Elijah instead of facing all of it. And the voices in her head certainly weren't helping.

"He killed her" Declan said, stunned.

"That's not what happened." Elijah defended

"No, but if you weren't there, she'd still be alive." Hope said, and her rage fueled the voices, causing then only to get louder and louder. She clutched her head. "Stop! God, stop!"

"What's going on with you?" Declan asked, confused and concerned at what was happening to her. He moved to go towards her but stopped as Elijah grabbed his arm.

"Stop! Shut up! Shut up!" Hope shouted. Their voices certainly weren't helping the situation.

"What did you do?" Declan interrogated Elijah. Elijah grabbed him by the neck and pinned him up against the bar.

"Hey, don't hurt him!" Hope said, moving closer, momentarily distracted from the voices by the scene before her.

"I won't. We can't do this in front of him."

"Okay, fine." She waved her hand and put Declan to sleep. The human then fell to the floor. "Now it's just the two of us."

"My memory was gone. I didn't know who she was."

Considering everything the tribrid was feeling at the moment, that wasn't a good enough excuse. "Well, now you do. How does it feel?"

"Like the worst pain I've ever experienced."

The whispers got more intense in her head, and she put her hands on her head and looked around a little, trying to force away the voices. She lowered her hands and looked at her uncle. "I hate you."

"I hate me, too." Elijah said, self loathing obvious in his eyes.

Hope knew she shouldn't blame him, but right now she needed to be angry with someone, and it was easy to be angry with him. "You let her die." In a flash of rage, consumed by emotions and the hollow's magic, Hope waved a hand, cutting him magically repeatedly as though she was clawing into him until he collapsed

"Hope" spoke a familiar voice, but the tribrid didn't give herself a chance to process who the voice belonged to. In a flash of rage, she waved her hand back and caused a deep gash across the person that entered. "Hope" the voice repeated, though now it had a groan, and the tribrid suddenly realized who the voice belonged to.

Landon Kirby.

Landon was walking down the street as he thought about everything that happened. He wanted to make sure Hope was alright. He hadn't seen her since the day before. But he also did not want to interact with her, no matter how much he wanted to. He knew that he was no longer the same Landon Kirby he had been before he melted into a pile of goo. Before he had been sent to Malivore and lived what felt like years in complete isolation, Before he had to fight monsters in the prison world to survive.

He knew he was darker, fought with both brawn and brain. He attacked first and didn't let himself worry about the consequences. He just needed to fight and kill. That had been his mindset for the past several weeks since he got out of Malivore. And now he was here, surrounded by people.... It was a lot, and he wasn't sure that he could manage it well enough not to end up being a burden on Hope or anyone else.

Suddenly, he heard Hope's voice from inside Rousseau's as he neared it. "Stop! Shut up! Shut up! Hey, don't hurt him!" There was a little bit of a pause "You let her die!"

A concerned Landon Kirby stepped into Rousseau's and called out her name to get her attention. "Hope" Suddenly, without really paying attention to who it was, Hope waved a hand back. Suddenly, a large gash cut across Landon's chest magically, and he stumbled back a bit, leaning against the wall as blood started soaking his shirt. "Hope" he repeated, groaning a little in pain. This wasn't a wound he could exactly stitch up.

"Landon?" Hope questioned,   her eyes widening in horror at what she had done. "Oh god" she said as Landon slowly slid to the ground, putting pressure to his own wound. She grabbed something sharp from nearby and cut her palm. "Here, drink this", she said, putting it near his mouth but not on it.

Landon shook his head, not wanting to risk being sent back to Malivore. He wasnt sure what exactly happened. But he also didn't want to take any chances.

"It can heal you. Drink" Hope said, looking at him, her eyes wide in concern.

Landon shook his head again. "Not you" he said, forcing back a groan of pain

A hurt expression flickered across her face, and she moved her hand away. He could see her wound closing up. Her uncle, Elijah, was healing from his own wounds at the moment.

"Hope. What happened?" Klaus questioned, walking inside the bar.

"I uh. I attacked Elijah, and Landon came in. And I accidentally hurt him too" Hope said. "And he's refusing to drink my blood. I don't know why. I told him it would help"

Klaus walked over and bit his own wrist before feeding it to Landon forcefully. Landon drank some of the hybrid's blood. He coughed some of it up, anxious about how vampire blood would affect him.  But the blood already started to heal him. His eyes drifted shut and Landon lost consciousness.

Hope was pacing downstairs in the Mikaelson home, trying to keep herself calm and have as much control over the whispers as she could. It had died down after she hurt Elijah. The pain wasn't as bad as it had been before. But she knew it was only temporary. She looked up as her father came downstairs after putting Landon.

"How is he?" She asked immediately.

"He's alright, just sleeping. He's getting a bit feverish, but it's mild." Klaus said, looking at his daughter. "Who is he?"

"His name is Landon, and he's human. He, uh, he used to serve me milkshakes at the Mystic Grill. He took a trip here. I'm not sure how long he is staying. He says it depends on if he has reasons to stay."

"What was that? You won't take my help, you reject the bracelet, you're throwing Elijah around" Klaus said, looking at his daughter with worry.

"It stopped the voices." the tribrid admitted, trying not to sound as vulnerable as she felt.. She had all of this power and she knew it was killing her. And the voices were so intense, part of her wanted to scream and take out all of New Orleans to feel better.. But she didn't want to hurt people. She never wanted that. It was why she worked hard to control her magic so she never used too much. Never used more than necessary for a given occasion. Though she hadn't exactly been following her own rules lately.

Her father looked at her, stunned "What?"

"Ever since I took the power back, the whispers... I can't think, I can't sleep, I can't even breathe. But right now, it's silent. Is this the rest of my life? A rage that can only be quieted by violence?"

"Hope, if violence is what you need to feel better, then you have the perfect father. We'll handle this. In the meantime, you should probably keep your distance from your friend. Landon"

"I was thinking the same thing." Hope said, looking at him. "Thank you for bringing him here and making sure he was alright."

"You're welcome" Klaus said.

"I saw Landon yesterday" she said, trying to talk to him before the voices grew too loud again. "We talked for a bit, and I showed him around New Orleans"

"You could manage it? The voices?"

"It was... I don't know, easier around him. I can't explain it. It was still there and bothersome but it wasn't as bad. I have no idea why" Hope said as she followed her father upstairs to her room. "I thought I could handle it. I really did."

"You're handling it as best you can, and I'm gonna be here with you every step of the way." Klaus promised as he looked at his daughter.

"Will you stay with me awhile?"

"Of course I will. So do you like this boy?"

Hope was silent for a moment, but she was grateful for the focus on Landon instead of the voices constantly in her head. "Even if I did, it doesn't matter"

"What makes you say that?" Klaus questioned curiously.

"My last love interest betrayed me. I dont think I am exactly the right person to be dating"

"The first person I was truly involved with is currently under a sleeping spell in this very building." Klaus pointed out with a slight smile. "Do you like this boy"

"Yes. But I can't think about a relationship" Hope said. She never would be able to. She could feel herself dying. It wasnt fair to him. It wouldn't be fair to get involved with anyone while she was dying. Though she couldnt exactly say that to her father. "He's human. Our family gets ourselves involved in a lot of dangerous situations. And mom just-" She shook her head

"Your mother would want you to be happy"

"I know she would." the tribrid said simply but she had already made up her mind. She wanted Landon to be safe. Not be killed like Camille, Hayley, Jackson, and many others had been while close to their family. If he was genuinely as nice of a guy as he seemed, then she definitely didn't want to ruin his life, which is probably exactly what she would do if her family got involved with him. Invaded his life. He already got hurt because of her. Hope wasn't sure she could avoid that happening again if he didn't leave.

Hope was confused on why he was pushing her to be in a relationship, especially after how he reacted whenever anyone else got in a relationship. However, after looking at him for a moment, she recognized the reasoning from his expression. He wanted her to have hope. To find something to live for and to look forward to. Something to fight for besides family.

[letsperaltiago]

🌟 HAPPY 12TH OF DECEMBER: DOOR TWO 🌟

Welcome to door two of four!

Behind my Christmas calendar’s second door is a... dating, kind of early-relationship, Peraltiago Christmas oneshot! ♥️ 

Summary: Amy feels like Christmas is crumbling around her and when the stress becomes too much, boyfriend Jake steps in and takes care of it.  Takes place somewhere right before S03 E10: Yippie Kayak. 

Rating: G 

 Words: 4k (just barely)

Read on AO3 here

🎁⬇️OPEN DOOR TWO HERE ⬇️🎁

my gift to you is all my heart

Christmas 2015 is the most special one so far, Jake dares to admit - and that’s coming from a guy who really couldn’t care any less about the season of families pretending to be picture-perfect and a 'shallow but pour some glitter on it'-kind of joy. Slap some red and green colors on an otherwise dysfunctional world and call it a happy place for a month or two.

It’s not that he wants or aspires to hate Christmas; it’s not that he wants to be the cynical one in a crowd of happiness and optimism. There just happens to be a lot of wounds, never fully healed scars, from the many lonely Christmases he spent as a child and teenager. Between his dad considering his parental role a part-time job and his mother working full-time to make a living for them, there wasn’t much - if anything at all - for Jake to love about the holidays and more specifically Christmas. On the contrary, the season rather emphasized how dysfunctional his family was...

Perhaps this year, he really hopes, the season of joy and light will feel more… like a season of joy and light. This year he has Amy which is an experience he’s never, obviously, had before and something he’s more than excited to try. His girlfriend loves Christmas and hopefully, it’ll rub off on him even though he’s surely the Grinch in their relationship the second Thanksgiving hits. It’s almost as if, for a month or so, he and Amy’s dynamic is completely flipped upside down. Not that he's calling his girlfriend a Grinch! Although, a secret to no one, Amy does take on a more serious role in their relationship. All that aside: the second the holidays come around, Amy is the most bubbly and cheery about silly, in Jake’s opinion, stuff like napkin-like turkey, too many pies, secret Santas, seizure-inducing fairy lights, and the only thing worse than normal vegetables: baked vegetables… Meanwhile, he’d rather isolate himself in his apartment, with his mayo-spoonsies and Die Hard, as the delusional world outside goes on.

Then again: he hasn’t had Amy around, at least as a girlfriend, before.

It’s a few days before Christmas eve. An evening he’s not looking forward to since Amy’s leaving tomorrow to spend the day and weekend at her parents’ place - which means not with him, and it’s definitely activating his so far decently subdued inner Grinch. How come Christmas wants to come off as this super jolly season when actually it forces him to be away from his girlfriend? What a scam.

About an hour ago he arrived at Amy’s place to find the door locked, which was weird considering that it was her precious day off. Luckily Amy’s already figured out that her boyfriend is of the clingy kind, which she enjoys, so she’s given him a key to her place. This so he can - quote Amy - “Come and go as you please. Like a cat. A really cute, hot cat.”

He’d chuckled at her comment, then kissed her out of sheer happiness because he has a girlfriend that wants him to have a key to her place! A girlfriend who wants him to drop by and cuddle her, laugh with her and annoy her - whenever!

And so here he is: flopped down on his girlfriend’s couch, watching Die Hard, since it’s the only Christmas movie he can stand to watch. He’d sent her a text telling her he was here, making sure he wouldn’t scare her whenever she was to arrive, but alas never heard anything back. This he suddenly realizes as Hans Gruber is taking the people inside of Nakatomi plaza hostage. He hopes she’s okay, suddenly feeling a bit worried. However, the feeling doesn’t last for long. Basically stumbling through the door comes Amy holding what looks like a thousand shopping bags, which impresses Jake so much that he misses the worried frown and sweaty glow on her forehead.

Being the good boyfriend he is, something he takes a lot of pride in, he of course jumps from the couch to help her. “Hey, babe. Need any help?”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

His offer just barely manages to make it out of his mouth before she’s already dismissed him and disappears into her so-called happy place - in reality, a room dedicated to all of her books and crafts.

Even though he doesn't comment on it, it's unmistakably unusual behavior for her. “You sure? I can do whatever you need; help you unpack, make you some coffee, look cute…”

In her little office, Amy is marching, all at once systematically and chaotically, around the room like the devil is after her. It’s as if he isn’t there, as if she’s avoiding him, and just barely takes the time to stop and throw him a vague glance. “Jake, please. I just need some space. I have presents to wrap and… stuff.”

Oh. Space. The word doesn't go by unnoticed and makes Jake's stomach drop. Space is usually not a good word when coming from a partner, he’s experienced, and this time around it seems to sting that much more than back with Sophia. Is this the end of him and Amy already?

Everything they've done runs through his mind with the speed of light. Things were going so well, he thought. Just yesterday they’d been snuggling on her couch, sharing lazy kisses and giggles as their favorite show (they have a show!!) played in the background. Things like “I love my family but I can’t wait to see you again after Christmas” and “Can you believe how far we’ve gotten since this time last year?” were said, making Jake feel so infatuated and sure. They'd even kissed and made stupid remarks at each other under the mistletoe Jake put up in the door frame leading to her bedroom.

Now, suddenly, it seems as if he’s the last person Amy wants around. Without even consciously deciding to do so he backs away from the tiny office, thus allow his girlfriend some… space. God, he hates that word and every memory associated with it.

Communication is key, Jake knows. However, it’s not as if it went well the last time he kicked down the doors when a girlfriend asked for space. Hence why he doesn’t dare to kick down any doors, literally or metaphorically, when the one to Amy’s office is closed.

He doesn’t know what to do; he doesn’t know what he can do? Make coffee - he can do that right? At this point, he isn't sure of anything. His heart starts beating faster and faster against his ribs, and he knows it’s because, maybe not that deep down, he’s afraid. Afraid of losing the possibly best thing that’s ever happened to him.

Coming from behind the shut door Jake can hear thumps and paper rustling. Jake isn’t the big Christmas-connoisseur but even so, he finds, what he believes is, Amy’s present-wrapping abnormally loud and chaotic - something that seems as unlike Amy as can be. He’s brewing a pot of coffee, for the both of them, something he hopes will be well-received, when suddenly the sounds coming from his girlfriend’s furious wrapping-project goes silent. All at once, with a thump, as if she’s hit a wall.

The silence lasts, and though Jake expects the rustling to pick back up any second, it doesn’t. He can feel himself grow considerably more worried. A big part of him, the one that’s still suffering Sophia’s actions even though he is fully and completely over her, haunts him. It feels a lot like being in a tug-of-war between pressing his way into the room, thus whatever is going on with Amy, and staying back and out of his girlfriend’s sudden need for space.

What does it for him is the sound of a loud mix between a groan and a whine. He has to go in, he quickly decides. Gently he pushes open the door, just enough for him to peak his head inside the room, and the sight before him certainly doesn’t calm his nerves: Amy, sitting at her little office desk with her computer before her, with her face buried in her hands and ripped wrapping paper surrounding her. He can’t tell if she is, but just the thought of her crying makes his heart wrench.

“Amy?”

The way her posture completely changes in reaction to the sound of his voice, from hunched over the desk to sitting straight up, as if she’s hiding something surely can’t be good. Even though she tries to be discreet about it, Jake can tell how she quickly wipes her eyes with the back of her hands. In a motion she hopes is discreet but isn't. If Jake’s poor heart wasn’t scratching the bottom of his gut already then it definitely is now. Still, he pushes the door wide open and tries one more time with a voice so soft and attentive that usually only comes out when they’re being really emotional; something he’s trying to grow into and better at. For her.  

“Ames… Are you okay?”

Even though there’s no one else but them in the apartment - hopefully, it is Brooklyn, after all - he closes the door behind him to give them some privacy.

“I’m fine, Jake.”

Fine is definitely not how she sounds, a shakiness to her voice, and how she looks averting his gaze, rather diverting her eyes to her laptop screen. To make it even clearer she starts typing - she isn’t fine. Anything that can keep her busy and from unveiling the true colors of the situation seems to be on her agenda.

The urge to back out is so strong, overwhelming, and Jake quickly recognizes the old, certainly bad habit. Although this time around, with Amy before him like this - hunched over and so far from the confident Amy he knows - he also feels the opposing yearning to stay and challenge his former habits. For himself, for Amy, for them - the best six months of his life. Seven, to be precise. The fact that he cares to keep up with this, how long they've been together, says a lot about where he’s at. With her he’ll count every month, week, day, hour, minute and second he gets to be with her.

Emotions are key. He needs to do emotions - the very serious kind.

“You’re…” he halts for a second, feeling as if he’s about to jump off a cliff - not that he's ever tried it before. But it must feel scary. Kind of like this right now. “You're not fine. Obviously.”

Slowly he walks towards her and, after hesitating with his hands waiting in the air above her, contemplating whether it's what he should do or not, he places his hands on her shoulders. The way she stiffens under his touch has him alarmed, but just as quickly as she's tensed up she relaxes. As if she realizes she can safely surrender whatever fears or worries she has to him.

“Tell me what’s wrong - please. Is it something I did?”

“No!” She flies around in her seat to face him to hopefully undo whatever worries about them she's ignited. The first thing Jake notices then is her somewhat red eyes and a look that begs for him to believe her. Hesitantly, he does. Still, it doesn’t make the sinking feeling in his stomach vanish.

Amy turns back around in her seat to face the lit laptop to hide. Frustrated she runs her fingers through her otherwise perfect hair and ruins her perfect ponytail; small tufts of hair on the loose and going in whichever direction they please. Something he's only used to seeing first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon before bed. And even though Jake loves sleepy Amy, morning hair, makeup-free face and all, he wants nothing more than to fix her hair for her, carefully weave the flyaways back into the otherwise still somewhat neat ponytail.

“Ames, I’m just kinda worried. Tell me what’s up, please… Even if it has something to do with me.” His hands never let go of the soft grip on her shoulders as he says this. Right now holding on to her feels like the only grounding element in his universe. She suddenly feels tense under his touch again and he hates that he might be the one doing this to her.

“It’s really... stupid.”

His eyes wander across the lit laptop screen in hopes of a possible hint. USPS Tracking Service.

“I’m sure it’s not stupid, babe.”

“I just-” her hand reaches for the mouse but then hesitates as if touching it will expose her. Either way, she decides to go for it; she grabs the mouse and opens the program containing, what he recognizes as, her day to day calendar - the step down from her life calendar. "I bought this really beautiful necklace for my mom for Christmas…”

He figures they’ve got some time ahead of them and gently pulls over an extra chair for him to sit on. In his seat next to her he follows the cursor on her screen, flying all over the different dates, boxes, color-coded labels and appointments - the many perfect elements of a Santiago-calendar.

“But then earlier, a few subway stops before home, I got an email from USPS saying that the package's arrival would be delayed! So I tried to work a timeslot into my schedule, for me to shop for a new gift from my mom, but it’s impossible." Every word flies out of her so fast she can barely catch her breath and the last part basically comes out of her in the tone of a wail. Jake can easily sense that she’s riled up and is making it hard for herself to calm down. With every word, she grows more and more frantic, panicky, as she switches back to the window with her calendar. What he sees shows, indeed, no room for gift shopping. He knows she thrives on it but he sometimes wonders how his girlfriend lives her life, densely packed, like this.

“I knew it’d be hard to fit in, with me working a full shift tomorrow, the polar swim and then leaving for my parents’ right after, but I thought it'd be possible! Turns out it isn’t... I’ve tried to re-arrange the next 24 hours in my calendar in every way thinkable and nothing works. Nothing.”

“Honey...” he consoles, calmly placing a hand on top of hers. On his face is a small smile, one that can rest in the fact that there was indeed nothing wrong with them, even though he of course feels some concern for his girlfriend who is clearly completely beside herself. Though she's finally speaking up rather than shutting him out, it's obvious that it doesn't come easy to her and there's a vulnerability to her panicky explanation. But it's not, never will be, something that'll scare him away. "... It's okay."

"No, it's not, Jake!"

Yelling isn't exactly the right term but it's clear that the two are of a different point of view.

"I had ordered my mom the perfect Christmas present, one that would so surely beat my brother David's, and now? It's ruined. I won't receive the stupid present in time and I don't have time to shop for a replacement, which, either way, will be less good. I might as well stay home for Christmas this year and spare myself the embarrassment."

It takes a beat of silence for Jake to assemble his thoughts and form an answer. The smile from before is once again back; he knows how to kill her insecurities - with kindness.

"While I would not mind you staying here with me..." He leans in to place a soft peck on her shoulder. "... I'm sure there's no way your mother would want you to stay away simply because of something as silly as a present - no offense."

"Jake, I appreciate your support but you don't know her like I do."

Though the situation reminds Jake of just how stubborn his girlfriend can be, something both frustrating but also endearing, he also remembers just how stubborn he can be. Maybe this time, for once, the latter can come in useful. If there's anything more stubborn than a panicked Amy then it's without a doubt a Jake who wants to see his girlfriend smile. He's a man on a mission - Amy's very own John McClane.

"Okay... I know I have a questionable track record but hear me out..."

She looks at him and for a second, upon seeing the anxiety in her eyes, he stutters to assemble himself one last time before showing her, at least trying to, that he can take control and help her handle her problems - even the worst which honestly isn't as bad as she might think. Softly, making sure to not alarm her, he reaches over to remove her hand from its tight grip on the mouse and replace it with his own. With it, he moves the cursor on the screen to point at the blue '9 AM to 5 PM'-time slot labeled Work, followed by a yellow 'Polar Swim'-slot at 5.30 PM.

"... I was supposed to be off a bit earlier tomorrow but let me fill in for you instead. You can leave at 4, go get your mom a gift, which she by the way will love, and make it back in time for the polar swim. I'll stay till 5 for you. I'll run the arrangement by Holt so you don't have to worry about it."

The silence is loud but not loud enough to hide her thinking; it screams through the way she bites her lip and eyes wander all over his face in search of some kind of truth. She turns her entire body in her seat to fully face him and, somehow, she suddenly looks both cheered up but also remorseful.

"Jake, thank you, but you don't have to do that for me. I know I'm just being crazy. My mom can do without a gift this year."

"Amy Santiago," he reprimands before grabbing both of her hands in his, making sure to keep a hold of her gaze in the process. "Maybe I don't have to but I want to. Ames, let yourself live out the full 'Peralta boyfriend'-experience. Also, stop calling yourself crazy when, in reality, you just care a lot. That's good; to care like you do."

Finally, after it being gone for so long, he catches a glimpse of her characteristic glow. Her eyes are also once again shiny and inspired, and he knows he's doing something right. Everything within him wants to do right for her. For a moment they quietly stay back, in each their seat, and look at each other with admiring eyes. Both wondering how they got so entangled in the other's very much different lives. Yet both eternally grateful. Amy's the first to break and throws her arms around his neck.

"You're the best, Jake," she declares with newfound peace of mind. "Thank you so much."

"No need to thank me." His arms have returned the favor and are securely wrapped around her waist. He's forever sure; nothing feels better than holding her like this. Happy. They stay like this for who knows how long, for seconds or hours, until Jake suddenly retreats into his seat and offers her a cocked brow along with a teasing smile.

"By the way... What's up with the wrapping paper-mess?"

"I had to test the new wrapping paper I got!"

He chuckles. God, he adores her.

"But why the mess?" He hicks a ripped piece of paper lying at his feet.

"Turns out I've bought the worst kind of wrapping paper and I got... pissed." She timidly looks down but still smiles, Jake hopes it's because she knows he likes her love and passion for all things crafty. They go silent and he can tell she's thinking. She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, rather insecurely and not affectionately like she would with a double tuck.

"By the way..." She clears her throat then looks at him. Right in the eye. "I'm sorry for earlier. I didn't mean to cut you off and push you away like I did. That wasn't okay - at all. I just-" the words get tangled up and caught in her throat to which Jake reacts by reaching over and softly clutching her knee followed by a comforting squeeze. In his eyes, she sees an invitation to speak her mind and she wonders, every day, how she ever lived her life without him by her side like this. The least she can do is explain her actions, ones that were actually just caused by a stupid defense-mechanism.

"I just didn't want you to see this... unfavorable side of me, I guess. I know I can be a bit much."

"Amy," he coos hearteningly. "Of all the sides of you that I've seen, or you will come to show me as this relationship evolves, never have I ever found any of them unfavorable. You're not 'a bit much'... You're everything I want and need."

Though he doesn't dare say it, not quite yet, this feels a lot like an undefined definition of love - one, he's quite sure, comes from everything she's taught him, shown him, and made him feel these past seven months.

She leans over the gap between them. Their lips collide in a kiss so meaningful that it speaks louder and more clear than any words ever could. He tastes like cinnamon and coffee, and with him she feels safe, like there are no ugly truths about her for him to see through. Every day with Jake is like coming home is. It's no longer just unlocking and walking through a door: it's being herself, even during critical moments, and still feeling welcome in her boyfriend's embrace and eyes. Her hands cling onto his cheeks for dear life, pouring all her emotions into the soft movement of her lips, and it's the most accepted and cherished her A-type self has felt in a partner's presence. Who would've thought that this kind of string of emotions would be a reaction to the touch and care of Jake Peralta?

On his part, with the three magic words just barely clinging to his tongue, he internally decides to hold back and keep them for a more suitable moment. Even if, something he's learned from their relationship, there is no such thing as 'the right time'. 'The right time' is only a theory made up by hopeful, sometimes also hopeless, lovers. Much like themselves just barely a year ago. But with this one declaration, what he hopes will be the greatest I love you of his lifetime, he does want some control. The moment shouldn't be surrounded by ripped wrapping paper and tipped over shopping bags.

Hopefully, she can wait just a bit longer. Then he'll tell her, even yell at the top of his longs, that he loves her. He loves Amy Santiago.

[lilbabychilton]

Two Weeks- Spencer Reid

Spencer Reid x Reader

Tags: Angst

Notes: The Reader, who lost her husband previously, comforts Spencer after he loses Maeve. (This’ll probably be part of a nearly canon universe, sooo we’ll see.)

Two weeks.

It had been two weeks since you watched helplessly as Spencer Reid got his heart broken and his entire life shattered.

You’d been at the BAU for a little over a year now, keeping your distance and never really allowing anyone to get close. You transferred there from Brooklyn SVU after your husband died. The gaping hole in your heart had never really mended instead of healing, you built walls. 

Watching Spencer lose the one he loved most brought up all of your unresolved trauma. Despite your best efforts to stay away from others, you’d grown a soft spot for Spence. He never asked questions, never pushed; but whenever he could tell something was wrong, he’d show up at your desk with a coffee.

One night, after a particularly triggering case, everyone had gone home; but you remained. Staring absently at the wedding picture on your desk, ghosting your fingers over the metal frame, you began feeling the all too familiar pangs of grief tugging at your heart strings. It was as if wind was howling through the emptiness of your heart. 

“Still here?” Spencer asked, leaning against your desk, his hands shoved into his pockets. 

“Still here.” You replied solemnly, letting out a deep sigh and prying your eyes away from the frame. 

“You okay?” He asked timidly, always careful never to cross your clear boundaries. 

“No.” You replied bluntly, shoving down the need to cry so far down into your gut you could feel it. The heaviness settling there like a block of concrete in the ocean. 

“You want to go get pizza?” A small, sympathetic smile crept onto Spencers face. Trying to cheer you up while effectively knowing nothing about you was no easy feat. “I know a place that’s open, it’s pretty good.” 

You graciously accepted, and found yourself sitting across from each other in the nearly empty restaurant. Spencer rambled on and on for hours about anything under the sun, and you didn’t stop him. His voice helped fill the emptiness, and to tell you the truth, it brought you joy. Watching him wax poetic about his interests was like watching a little ray of sunshine dance in front of you and warm the cockles of your soul. 

But now that ray of light was gone; and your heart ached all the more, wondering when it would come back. 

You made your way up the stairs to Spencer’s, apartment bag in hand. The hall was dimly lit and looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 70’s. Somehow it wasn’t where you pictured him living, but you pressed on. 

“Hey Spence, it’s me” you called gently, knocking on the door and waiting for a response. There was no answer. 

“Can you just let me know you’re alive in there?” you asked, with a sigh not at all expecting an answer. But a minute later there was a hard slap against the door and you felt your heart sink. 

He clearly wasn’t going to let you in, probably in no mood for company. But you couldn’t in good conscience leave him there to be alone another day. You’d been there, you did exactly this when your husband died, and to be honest isolating just made you feel worse, numb almost. 

So instead of leaving you did something you hadn’t done since you were a teenager; you picked the lock. Laughing to yourself as you pulled out the lock picking kit you bought on amazon a month ago in a wine drunk haze. 

“Who knew it’d come in handy.” You thought darkly as you heard the lock click open. 

You opened the door and were hit with a wave of humidity. The air was thick, the curtains were drawn, and there were books thrown all over the floor. Your mind flashed back to your house, a year ago, it looked exactly like this. And you looked exactly like Spencer, laying on the floor, greasy unkempt hair, and pajamas that probably hadn’t been changed since he ambled home that night. 

“Hey Spence” you greeted gently, sitting on the floor near his head.

“How did you get in?” He asked, completely unfazed, eyes fixed on the ceiling above him. 

You held the lock picking kit over his eyes and shook it a little. Spencer exhaled harshly, might have been a laugh, might have been frustration. 

“I’ve never told you about my husband.” You said, playing with the shoelaces on your beat up tennis shoes. Spencer turned his head, not willing to speak but interested in what you had to say. 

You never talked about your personal life. The only one that had known was Rossi, and you assumed he told the others not to ask, and you were grateful. 

“He died in a fire almost two years ago,” you started, “arson to be specific.” 

“I’m sorry” Spencer breathed, tears rimming his hazel eyes. 

“I know,” you replied, “me too.” 

“I was a Brooklyn SVU Detective and he was a firefighter. I was working a child trafficking case and I hadn’t slept in three days.” You anxiously picked at your nail, you’d never told this story to anyone but your therapist and even then it’d been a struggle. But you swallowed the lump in your throat and continued on. 

“The unsub was burning location’s to cover his tracks. The last location still had kids in it. Both my husband and I were called to respond. I couldn’t do anything with a burning building, so I waited outside, watching the crowd.” 

“Fuck” you muttered taking a breather and putting your head in your hands, by now Spencer had sat up and was listening to you intently with his legs crossed and his chin in his hands. 

“All the kids were out, they were doing a final sweep. I watched three firefighters go in,” you took a deep breath and felt the tears welling in your eyes threatening to fall and your voice shook. 

“And I watched two come out. I don’t think I’ve ever run harder in my life. By the time I got there two men were dragging my husband out of the building. He died holding my hand in the ambulance.” 

Tears were streaming down your cheeks when you finished your tragic tale. 

“Was that supposed to make me feel better?” Spencer asked getting up off the floor and moving to the couch, he was crying too. 

“No,” you scoffed, wiping the tears off your face and following him. “What I’m saying is, I get it. And it fucking sucks.”

Spence paused for a long moment then looked at you, “it does fucking suck.” 

That was probably the most inarticulate thing you’d ever heard him say, and you grabbed his hand to comfort him, “but it sucks more to do it alone, trust me.”

“When’s the last time you ate?” you asked and Spencer just shrugged. 

“You have to eat.” You said catching his sad gaze. 

“Not hungry.” He mumbled and you shrugged.

You stood up and walked over to your bag, pulling out a carton of lactose free ice cream and some plastic spoons. 

“I survived on this after John died.” You said, walking over to Spencer and handing him the container. 

“How do you know I’m lactose intolerant?” he asked with a near microscopic smirk threatening his lips. 

“I mean, other than the fact that statistically it’s super likely,” you began, “I pay attention, I’m distant not dumb.” 

Then you pulled out your laptop, and a set of dvd’s and set them on the coffee table. Spencer leaned forward to inspect them.

“The first season of the Doctor Who reboot?” He asked, turning the case over in his hands and scanning the images. 

“I’ve got all the other seasons in this bag. Sometimes you’ve got to distract yourself.” You said, laughing inwardly at your next thought. 

“When John died I binged all of the show Dexter, it was awful.” you paused, taking in your surroundings “but it was better than sitting in the dark and crying til I made myself sick.” 

“How?” Spencer asked, his face scrunching up in thought, like for the first time in his life he was at a loss for words. “How do I stop myself from doing that.” 

You sighed and he began to cry, you pulled him into you and stroked his hair as the sobs wracked his tiny frame. 

“Force” you said simply, “you force yourself to do it. The person you love wouldn’t want you to wither away in the dark.” 

“It’s so hard” he cried and you cried too, no one knew better than you did exactly how hard it was. That’s why you were here. 

“Do you blame yourself?” You asked. Spencer said nothing, he only sobbed harder, clinging onto you so hard you were sure he’d leave marks. 

“I did too” you said, easing yourself back and taking Spencer with you. “Rossi consulted on a case for us before my husband died. Said I had talent and should come help out at the BAU.” 

You paused and thought about that moment bitterly, as you were sure you always would. It was one stupid, simple decision what would have changed your entire life for the better. 

“I said no” you continued, absently playing with Spencer's hair in an attempt to sooth him. Your partner used to do that for you after John died, she’d come over every day and just play with your hair until you fell asleep. 

“I liked my life in New York. John was willing to go but I was scared.” You scoffed, and Spencer turned to you. 

“Do you still blame yourself?” he asked his eyes swollen from crying and sunken from lack of sleep. 

“Sometimes.” You replied simply, “less often now.” 

“Listen Spence, this is going to suck, and it’s going to suck for a long time. But I promise that eventually it’s bearable.” 

“That’s hard to believe” he said, no tone, no emotion. You knew exactly what was happening. Sometimes in grief your body gets so tired of feeling you just stop. That’s almost worse than the sadness. 

“Oh I know.” you said, “But you find people who make it easier. I’ve got my old partner in New York, she checks in on me all the time, we spend a weekend together every month. And there’s you too.” 

“Me?” Reid questioned, his brows furrowed. 

“Remember that night we got pizza?” you asked, and he nodded. “That was John’s birthday, we got back from a case where a woman lost her husband and fuck, Spence, I was in a rough spot.” 

“I assumed as much.” Spencer said, his memory rolling back to the deeply pained look he saw on your face as he packed up his things. 

“You were there, you didn’t ask any questions, didn’t try to comfort me, you were just there. And that meant a lot.” You said cracking a half smile. 

“I’m sorry I broke in,” you said moving some stray strands of hair out of his eyes. “But I couldn’t stand knowing you were going through this alone. Especially not after you helped me through one of my toughest days since I started here.”

“I appreciate it,” Spencer said, sitting up.

“The ice cream is going to melt.” You said, your eyes flicking over to the poor container sweating in the heat of the apartment. 

“You should probably eat it.” You said picking it up and putting it into his hands. 

“Only if you eat it with me.” He replied grabbing a second plastic spoon out of the box. You smiled and accepted it. 

“Only if we can watch Doctor Who, and only if you point out everything that isn’t scientifically sound.” You said and you watched a smile grow on Spencer’s face. 

“Okay.” He replied and you got everything set up. 

Wading through grief is heavy, it falls over you all at once and it’ll suffocate you if you let it. Sometimes you need a reprieve from it all. Something to help you feel joy again, remind you that the world is still turning. A ray of sunshine in the oppressive darkness. Spencer was one that for you, and now it was your turn to be that for him.

[kai-borg]

Tisane - Tea party AU

Tisane was yet another of the Pale King’s countless failed children creations, why? Because they had mind to think, a will to break, they were a Vessel too impure to be his Hollow Knight that would contain the Radiance and finally halt the spread of her wrathful infection amongst his subjects.

In fact Tisane was so impure a Vessel they failed in all three of his rulings, because had they made it to the king they would have had voice enough to scream in pain, well, realistically more likely let out a choked whimper, as the Pale King snapped their neck, impaled them on a spear of light, or killed them in whatever way he chose to do to those Vessels that managed to pass his trials and stand before him but were too impure for their task, before throwing them back down into the pit of their other failed sibling’s bodies.

In a way Tisane was almost fortunate in the way that their early fate was laid out, as it meant they never even had the chance to try and attempt the King’s trial in the first place.

Though could it truly be consider fortunate they avoided meeting an end so young with what it meant for their future?

Tisane, as was said, never even had the chance to even try to attempt their father’s challenge, in fact they never even had the chance to feel the Pale King’s influence and know of said orders the rest of their clutch (and all those who had preceded, and later followed them) were told to follow, or at least enticed to by their fathers godly glow from so far above their dark and dismal birthing grounds.

This was in part because they hatched extremely late compared to the rest of their clutch, in fact had they hatched just a bit later they would’ve been left just as alone as they currently are, though that would’ve been only until the King lowered his next clutch into the Abyss to be... revived. That was because by the time they’d managed to crack their egg’s shell and emerge their father had already begun to ‘test’ their siblings, which was also entirely what caused the reason that they  never even hade the moment needed to feel their father’s influence to happen.

Because as they pulled themself out of their egg, and were shaking whatever... fluids would’ve come out with them off, they then immediately had one of their falling (and very, very dead) siblings slam into them so hard they pretty much shattered their mask like a sledgehammer would a fine china teacup.

In other words, pretty much killed them on the spot.

Or at least they would’ve been had it not been for their own natural affinity when it came to Soul because of being born of the Pale King, which was only increased because of the degree of their 'impurity’ meaning they were more Wyrm and Root than Void than nearly all of their siblings (both past and future), and, that... well, not only would they have absorbed whatever Soul remained in their dead sibling when they hit them, due to Soul’s own interesting characteristics when it came to... inflicting injury’s in fighting (not that a case like this could really be considered such even under the loosest of interpretations, but it still worked the same nonetheless), but they were in what was essentially a graveyard composed entirely of Soul, or at least what little still lingered in the countless masks made at least partially of it (a fact well shown by a Vessel’s ability to heal their mask, and it being the only part that remained when they died instead of reverting into their shade form like the rest of their body).

This didn’t mean they revived from their near death any time soon though, they weren’t exactly consciously healing themself in the first place, it was all just a purely instinctive reaction of their body due to the amount of accessible Soul it was surrounded by after it’s should’ve been near fatal injury.

In fact Tisane didn’t come back too until not only after The Hollow Knight themself had been chosen, but even after the few remaining living Vessel’s had escaped (or been taken as Nosk food in those unfortunate one’s cases). 

This also meant Tisane woke up in a pretty uncomfortable situation considering the usual schedule of events the Pale King had planned while he tried to find his Pure Vessel, i.e. a lot of dead children, which to be precise meant Tisane came to buried under who knows how many years worth of layers of the cracked & pointy masks of their dead siblings they had to dig themself out of.

Not a fun time at all.

Following this Tisane found themself... alone. 

In fact they were even more alone than their sibling’s practically mindless, death crazed Shades, because while their impurity may have let them have a voice to speak, in doing so it interfered with the innate hive mind-esque connection their other siblings have due to their Void based nature.

This didn’t mean they were incapable of ever being able to use it like their siblings, in fact they were just as well connected to it as any other Vessel, the issue was that it was entirely subconscious, sure they could learn things from it as other Vessel’s did, but they were entirely unaware of said knowledge until encountering something that involved it, and even then they wouldn’t consciously realize they shouldn’t have had any way of having the knowledge they just became aware of. 

All they needed really was someone to help make them consciously aware of their telepathic connections, like, really if they’d just had the time to hear their father’s voice calling for his creations to meet his challenge that probably would’ve actually been enough for Tisane to have woken up at least aware of the connection they had with their kind (as difficult it may have been considering their madness and rage was enough to cause the Void sea itself to act upon it)... not that they knew about that, so instead they were completely, entirely alone.

This was also a similar case when it came to their voice, they might have been able to vocalize, they were even aware of the concept of words, specific sounds with specific meanings, but that didn’t mean they had any idea how to talk, it’s not like the Vessel’s that weren’t dead had any reason to learn how to, and in the closest one’s case would’ve ever even been considered lessons they had any reason to be taught. And of course they could’ve talked if they’d had someone teach to them, or even at least been around someone else who could, but they didn’t, and they weren’t, so instead the sounds they did make could’ve been considered, and mostly like would’ve been to any bug who heard them, babble, nonsensical chirps, whistles, gurgles and like, baby talk in other words, just a little bit more refined.

As you can guess, being alone was not a fun experience for a literal child, Vessel or not. Sure, Tisane might’ve had an entire abandoned civilization to explore, so long as they avoided the strange, familiar feeling, floating, horned tentacle things that attacked them whenever they spotted them, or the sea of liquid that would sprout tentacles and try to swat them if they got too close, but there were plenty of ruins, broken statues, and strange odds and ends left over from the civilization that used to worship the Void, but they were still alone, and definitely getting pretty depressed because of it, not that they really knew what that was, just that they were sad and desperate for a... something... 

They didn’t know what exactly it was they wanted but for some reason they felt like they knew of some kind of... warm feeling they were supposed to feel if another bug put it’s arms around them which sounded... nice. (They couldn’t feel it when they did it themself but they still couldn’t help but try whenever the loneliness started to get too much)

It was also a bit maddening. Tisane might’ve been mature enough that they would be considered a child instead of a grub (spending who knows how many years subconsciously absorbing the experiences of others who were given the chance to grow tends to do that to one), but even to a child that kind of isolation would’ve been too much for their mind to try and adapt to.

All that combined with their subconscious knowledge sort of all compounded together once they discovered the cracked tea set that practically became an inseparable feature of themself following.

Why? Because of three specific little things in Tisane’s repertoire of subconscious knowledge, one lesson the Pale King gave his Hollow Knight while ‘programming’ it to have some basic etiquette even as a mindless automaton, and two little bits of childhood pretend even Hornet, the princess of Deepnest, daughter of Herrah the Beast, was immune to enjoying, both by herself, and especially when playing it with her sibling, though that didn’t mean it was just them, or in other words, Tisane knew what a tea party was.

And one can’t have a tea party without friends. And as they knew, they didn’t exactly have to be alive to be a friend, they mostly just needed some form of face.

And, well Tisane knew a place with plenty ‘friends’ they could have now, they just had to make sure they were still put together enough they wouldn’t break when they collected them.

After this Tisane, while now a lot more stable, and still just as no longer lonely, didn’t exactly recover from the sort of mental break, in fact they went pretty downhill.

Their life was dedicated to their ‘friends’, chatting with them (i.e. blathering nonsensical chirps & clicks at them with only the barest semblance of consistency) as they explored what remained down in the Abyss’ caverns, cleaning & fixing them, Tisane even named them (though they’re names only in the sense of them being sounds consistently used for them, though less as the sounds they only use for them, and instead as the only sounds they use for them), though with their limited vocabulary they of course came out as whatever mixes of chirps and clicks Tisane could put together, specifically (from left to right), Ctitch, Chirp, and Qirp, and of course Tisane always made sure to set aside time to have tea parties with them.

As time went on Tisane even began to gather new ‘friends’. Scavenging through the pit of masks they’d hatched, nearly died, and then dug themself out of for any mostly intact masks, and shards they could find, storing them in one of the more intact ruins/smaller side caverns they’d eventually chosen as their dedicated ‘home’ during their isolation, where they tried to piece them back together, though of course their first three ‘friends’ were always their most important, and always at every tea party.

On the topic of Tisane’s tea parties again, Tisane hadn’t just gone downhill because they were treating dead inanimate shells like they were alive, but also because they were so dedicated to the concept of having tea parties with them that they were putting themself in danger with every one so they could make it ‘authentic’.

How you may ask? Well easily, by having ‘tea’ to pour of course! Or in Tisane’s case as there was only one source of ‘liquid’ in the Abyss’ caverns, Void itself.

Yes, Tisane was so dedicated to these tea parties of theirs they would risk being consumed by the Void sea every time just so they could fill their teapot with liquid Void from it. They actually became quite good at it eventually, managing to figure out ways to... distract it in a way so it’s tentacles would strike elsewhere, and give them just enough time to dip the teapot in before running away.

Though that’s not to say they didn’t experience a number of close calls before, and following the learning of those skills.

As Tisane remained in the Abyss they also managed to grow, unlike the majority of the living vessel’s, their constant saturation in the Void’s energy and consumption of it (yes, they actually drank their ‘tea’) plus their consistent absorption of Soul they unknowingly gathered from their dead sibling’s masks during their frequent scavenging trips, provided just enough of the necessary conditions from them to reach their fully grown state like the Pure Vessel.

Though they weren’t in as... healthy a condition as the Pure Vessel had been when they’d reached that amount of growth.

While Tisane could subsist of of the Void and Soul energy, yet again because of their impurities it was not enough to fully support their body as they grew. This lead to them having a very ill-proportioned, malnutritioned looking build (and that’s saying something for a bug). Thin, weak looking limbs, dull, sickly chitin, hunched posture, and even a sunken, emacieted look around the eyes of their mask.

This was essentially what Tisane’s life boiled down to for the next however many years until the Little Knight, Ghost, finally reached Hallownest after the Pure Vessel failed, and the few remaining  Vessel’s were drawn back to Hallownest.

Though this doesn’t mean Tisane’s story had a happy ending following this, in fact I truly don’t think they could’ve had a worse end.

Tisane’s story ended as it began, with an object heavy enough, and falling fast enough to crush their head into nothing but shards, only this time there was no graveyard of Soul for them to absorb and survive with.

Sometime during Ghost travel’s, most likely once they’d taken the Kingsbrand from the Wyrm’s corpse and brought the spell that kept it from collapsing to an end, or maybe even once they’d used the combined Kingsouls to open the Abyss, the Abyss experienced heavy seismic activity, enough to cause the collapse of numerous stalactites, structures, and even side caverns throughout.

One of which was Tisane’s.

The event itself would’ve been bad enough because of it’s unexpectedness, but it just had to catch Tisane at the worst time it possibly could’ve too, right in the middle of a tea party.

They had barely any time to react, one minute they were ‘chatting’ with their ‘friends’, the next everything was shaking, chunks of stone were falling everywhere, and of course all Tisane could think to do was save their ‘friends’, and once they spotted the slabs of rock falling down in a way they knew they weren’t going to avoid as they tried to get away, well... you can guess what they did.

Later, as Ghost entered the Abyss, confronted their past, gained the Void heart, and collected the Shade Cloak they may have stumbled upon what first looked like the corpse of an insect that had been killed by a chunk of stone crushing their head, though once they inspected it they would’ve realized it was actually a hollow shell of nearly petrified dust and grime in the shape of an insect, as if it was from a bug that had never bathed, and who’s body had vanished in it’s entirety after death, that looked almost like it was protectively curled around something.

If they decided to give it a hit with their nail, or realistically just given it a light poke it a large portion of it would’ve crumbled to reveal a scattered pile of white, almost familiar looking shards of some kind of material, along with some clay shards mixed in.

Obviously whatever that bug had been trying to protect even as they died they’d failed at doing.

Maybe Ghost would’ve pondered how the bug had even been down there, maybe they’d wonder why the bug had tried so hard to save whatever they’d try to save, maybe they’d have wondered if there was enough essence left for their dream nail to tell them something that could help them understand only to get a desperate cry of ‘please... don’t leave me alone’ before whatever essence had remained around that ‘shell’ dissipated entirely, maybe they’d even have felt sorry for the bug who’s final act before they’d died in such a horrible way had been entirely in vain.

But in the end there were more important things they had to do than stare at the corpse, and it wasn’t even that, just a dirt and dust formed shell around where a corpse used to be, of a bug they’d never know.

-========================================================-

Little bonus section:

I actually have a number of other story ideas based around this character I might get around to writing sometime (if I ever get around to writing anything in the first place), tho a number of course were inspired by other fics I’ve read.

Like what if Tisane wasn’t ‘knocked out’ and did make it to the Pale King, but instead of being murdered discarded as a failure, the Wyrm decided to keep them as a gift for the White Lady once he realized how impure they were.

How would that affect the story? Would it force the Pale King to come to terms with the fact none of his Vessel’s were pure, not even his Hollow Knight? Would Tisane get infected instead? Or maybe even take on Hollow’s role to try and save their sibling? I dunno!

Or what if Tisane survived, but somehow missed the Little Knight entirely, and the Ghost ended up doing the Embrace the Void ending, or just outright fell into the Void Sea sometime, and due to weird timey-wimey Void stuff they ended up getting sent to an alternate timeline where the Pale King realized his plan wouldn’t work, and didn’t murder all his kids?

Like just imagine the While Lady having a picnic or something with all her children when all of a sudden a hole something tore itself into existence and spat out a new child (Tisane in their world having either not hatched, or having hatched late again and accidentally being forgotten about in the Void (so now they’re extra lonely because no mask friends for you!)) who are so visibly unhealthy they look starved, on her garden, and who’s not only pretty much feral, but also holding the broken masks of three of her children, a teapot, and all the while is screaming in very recognizable baby talk.

Now that’s a recipe for some angst, even more so if instead of them being relatively similar ages to how they should be, it’s younger Tisane and all of her other kids are older.

You know, just fun little story ideas with the potential for some horrible, horrible angst

[know-the-way]

I know it’s really stupid of me but I was kind of hoping for a redemption arc for Faustus. 😅😢

It’s not stupid, not at all! It’s natural to want to see the best in people, particularly when you believe they can be better than what they are now, so it’s completely understandable.

And, ya know, if the show gets picked up - he may have one yet still, we don’t know!

To me, this season really highlighted what the purpose of Faustus’ character is supposed to be, imo. Thinking of episode 4, we’re shown three different levels of corruption through three different characters.

The first is Harvey. Pure, sweet, golden boy Harvey is revealed to have some deep-seeded hatred of witches. Does he have any reason to hate witches? Well, let’s check - he lost a brother, got manipulated, controlled, and lied to by his first love, and has been in an endless cycle of extreme danger for the past year of his life. I think it’s fair to say we all understand that prejudice is not okay, but is it equally understandable why Harvey has some hang-ups about magic and witches? I personally think it is. (Not to the point of joining a literal witch hunt or angrily accusing your distressed best friend of killing your dad at her 17th birthday party 🙃, but understandable nonetheless.)

I personally think the intention with Harvey’s character being a cadet in Blackwood’s army was to demonstrate how, even when we believe someone to be morally good and just, they can become someone else when they endure pain and that pain is never properly addressed.

Did Sabrina apologize to Harvey for everything that happened between them? Yes. But did she repeat the same troublesome behaviors in different ways after that? Also yes. She didn’t demonstrate change in her actions, and a loootttt more happened with Harvey and the witch world in a negative way beyond his relationship with Sabrina, so the mistrust he feels isn’t entirely unjustified.

Then - “oh wow, oh my God, my second love has also hid being a witch from me, can I catch a fucking break here? Why should I ever trust another witch in my life?”

Answer: because they are humans, none being wholly good or bad, and they love you.

Roz talks to Harvey, tells him she believes he’s good, and demonstrably proves her own “goodness” by sacrificing herself to save others at Dr. C’s. Roz shows Harvey that she means what she says and her feelings for him are real - that she is a scared, broken human like him, just trying to do her best with what life has given her. Hence, when the moment of truth comes - Harvey remembers his humanity and proves his own “goodness” by saving her. But if Roz had never spoken to him, never acknowledged what he’d been through and that his feelings were valid... if no one had ever truly cared about his pain? It seems apparent that Harvey would have continued down a very dark path.

Which brings us to...

Mary. Mary has been literally murdered, had her identity hijacked by a demoness, her fiancé is dead, she doesn’t remember several months of her life, and her previous favorite student is a witch who has seemingly performed magic more than once on her.

Mary has every right to fear witches at this point. She has had zero trustworthy interactions with the witch world and from her perspective - her entire life has been stolen and no one cares. No one checks in on Mary, no one validates her pain, and as a result - no one in the witch world seems to have any compassion, humanity, or kindness in them. Enter the Pilgrims of the Night, who recognize her pain and fear without even knowing her, acknowledge it, and offer her solace in their congregation on the basis that her experience with witches is shared by the Reverend Lovecraft and his flock.

They prove themselves to her when the advice the Reverend/Faustus gives her (“let the dark in”) saves her life. My God, someone finally seems to care if she lives or dies!

People who care about others are good, so the church and the reverend’s mission must be good, too. Therefore, she is absolutely invested in whatever is asked of her and will blindly follow their lead in order to protect others from experiencing what she has. To me, Mary in the perverted universe represented the crossroads of corruption - where you truly believe what you’re doing is the right thing, even if it hurts others because those “others” have hurt you... and they will surely hurt again if you don’t stop them.

However, I think if Mary was finally told the truth - the full truth - and Lilith herself apologized for being the first piece in the puzzle... along with all the other witches... AND they showed that they actually cared about her well-being... Mary could find her way back through forgiveness. Or, at the very least, she could understand and process everything so that she could find a way to heal that doesn’t involve persecuting others.

And now, there’s Faustus. We aren’t entirely clear on Faustus’ history altogether, but we do know he’s had many experiences of being slighted by the churches of darkness (despite following the rules to a T).

He was rebuked by Edward for wanting to marry Zelda after mentoring him for who knows how many years, lost the office of high priest to him, and when he finally gets the title - here comes Edward’s self-righteous brat to fuck him over again. There he is trying to carry out the Dark Lord’s request to get Sabrina to sign her name in the Book of the Beast, even though she insults their doctrines and faith at every turn, and the coven and academy he’s had working like a well-oiled machine for the past 16 years is being slowly ripped apart. Why is the Dark Lord allowing this? Why is he having to endure a meddlesome child’s antics? Why is he not being rewarded for doing exactly as he’s been asked and returning the Church of Night to stability after Edward nearly destroyed it altogether? Like hello Dark Lord, can you throw me a fucking bone here?

Small victories - he finally secures Zelda’s hand in marriage and an audience with the anti-pope. This is what his life should’ve looked like two centuries ago, but no matter. He’s correcting it all now and by Satan, nothing is going to stop him this time.

But then...

Oh cool, Sabrina is here to intervene again and has presented the text of his old rival for consideration along with his (clearly superior) manifesto. What’s that, you say? Oh, she’s also gonna crash my wedding, accuse me of murder, and spread claims about my manifesto without having even read it? Wow, ahaha, sounds hilarious... except why am I not laughing?

He arrives in Rome and gets an inkling that the Dark Lord may finally be taking action about this heretical little monster because he’s offered the title of anti-pope by the unholy high council themselves. Finally, some appreciation! He just needs to hang on a little longer, eliminate these small meddlesome threats, and soon he will reside over a peaceful kingdom far removed from anymore mortal nonsense.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, what do you mean Sabrina convinces the council he’s unfit to be anti-pope? This is bullshit, man! You know what? Fuck this place, I’m gonna make my own damn church and ensure no other headstrong witches like Sabrina Buzzkill Spellman can ruin it. That’ll finally return things to ord- MY WIFE KEPT MY OWN CHILD A SECRET FROM ME?! WHAT THE FUCK?! Alright, that’s it, The Spellmans are clearly here to poison others (ironic foreshadowing) - time to wash my hands of them completely, I am so over thi- what’s that? The Dark Lord’s here? GOOD. About time this asshole showed up to set people straight and remind them that the values of his unholy church, which Faustus has exemplified perfectly, must be respected.

You mean for me to bow down to whom now? The halfbreed brat who has been directly and willfully wreaking havoc on the congregation he’s patiently and painstakingly lead back to greatness? Are you fucking serious, m8? No. Absolutely not. No. I’m getting out of here, and since I won’t have the little twat poison anyone else, I will literally poison them instead. Be free, sheep!

It’s up until this point that I believe Faustus was still mostly at the crossroads stage, same as Mary. He believed everything he was doing was the right thing, based on the teachings from the religion he devoted his entire life to, and that he’d be rewarded for serving the Dark Lord so faithfully - until the Dark Lord proved several times in succession that his religion was all a lie. That three+ centuries worth of groveling and abiding and waiting has meant absolutely nothing.

So now we have the Eldritch terrors. Beings more powerful than the oldest gods. He spends 15 years isolated in a time bubble purifying himself, devoting everything to them, and won’t it be so glorious when they welcome him into his ranks? He’s set them free now, after all, they owe it to him.

But doing the same action over and over and expecting a different result is what? The definition of insanity, friends. Of course the Eldritch terrors reject him, too... of course Sabrina gains their attention and veneration instead... of course he should have tried to seize their power for himself a long time ago... so, fuck it all, he’ll do that now. There is no right and wrong, there is no observed justice - if there was, he would have been rightfully recognized for all the time, effort, and pain he’s endured only to receive nothing in return.* No one ever acknowledged his pain... no one ever even considered it. Over time, that takes its toll.

(*Clearly, I mean this to be from Faustus’ perspective and not my own.)

Of course, he has inflicted more than his fair share of pain himself and I am of the personal belief he needed to pay for that, but... equally imagine being hurt over and over and watching those who did it walk away, not only without reprimand, but with the belief that they were right and just to do it? Could it slowly drain on one’s soul to watch the rules apply to some and not others? Debatable, I suppose, but I personally think yes.

So... I say all of this only to point out that there is still potential to acknowledge his pain. And thus, there is imo still potential to understand, communicate properly (I am very interested in any conversations he and Sabrina may have had during their training - I know he said she took a vow of silence, but clearly some talking occurred for Sabrina to learn so much about the void from him), grow, and finally - for him to be given the chance to repair everything he had a hand in breaking. It wouldn’t be an easy or painless task to get to that point, and no one would be faulted for not trusting him to do so, but I think there is potential for it. If they get picked up and they want to finally allow the characters some time to reflect and process shit, they could include Faustus in that.