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#i actually do not have any new years resolutions this year except to stay the course. for the most part my life is well put together
hawkeyedflame · 9 months
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i guess i'm a touch late but,
2023 was a truly amazing year for me. i feel so blessed to be healthy and alive and experiencing the beauty in the world in spite of all the setbacks i've had over the years.
i was able to travel to canada and see the breathtaking rocky mountains three times this year. my wife was able to visit with me as well, and two of my best friends from out of state traveled down to visit me/us over the summer. our immigration decision will be handed down very soon, and we will finally be able to close this difficult chapter of our lives for good.
my brother and sister-in-law blessed our family with another child over the summer and he is precious in every way. my niece continues to be a joy to watch grow and engage with the world. i got a better job, with much higher pay, a wonderful team of coworkers, and a very generous work-life balance. i picked up running again this year, feeling finally healthy enough to move my body in ways i hadn't been able to in an entire decade, and even started racing again. i'm running a marathon in april with some friends. i go to the gym at work every weekday. i have been hiking and snowboarding. i've taken up learning the irish language, i've re-committed to learning how to draw, and i've been making and maintaining healthy habits slowly over the year. i have friends i see regularly and most days i forget my computer even exists, which is surreal to me as someone who used to be extremely dependent on, probably addicted to, social media and video games as escapism.
my mental health is practically perfect, not even a whisper of depression or anxiety, thanks entirely to my diet, which has in turn allowed an upward spiral of productivity and genuine living that has driven me past merely not being ill, into the territory of being near-constantly joyful and deeply at peace with myself.
i got a tattoo which has become a source of confidence and assurance, a small but bold reminder that i am strong enough to be true to myself and live my life honestly and for the benefit of my family and community. i have brought healing to many people this year and my hope is that the effects continue to ripple outwards into the world over and over.
nearly nothing bad happened to me or my loved ones in 2023. it was easily the best year of my life and i genuinely believe 2024 will be even better. normally i'd cry out not to jinx it, but i believe it will be better because i am better, and i will continue to shape better and better versions of myself. i hope this year will be good for everyone else, too.
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what you love you devour {c!Wilbur Soot}
Summary: As someone who is chronically honest and the self-appointed court jester of this world, your place in any conflict or situation had always been whichever place to be amused you the most; being on the side of the grown-ass man who put time and effort into waging war against smartass kids over discs? Of course. Immediately switching sides to join the child as he and someone you've never met before start a drug empire? Of course. Except said newcomer seems to know exactly how to keep you entertained; your place becomes by his side, and you quickly come to realise that no-one else will ever compare.
{ masterpost }
Need to Know: She/They Reader. Villain!Reader. Past, toxic c!Quackity/Reader, established platonic c!Dream & Reader. Set during the DSMP timeline. 
A/N: 25,323 words. this has been about 2 years in the making, which is why i haven't tagged the few people on the taglist but anyways, i finally came back and reread what i had and was like.... this actually holds up pretty well as is. so yeah, i've added and subtracted a few things here and there in the last few hours to make it all make sense overall, but holy shit im so happy to have it out there. is it possibly the wankiest/dramatic thing ive posted in a while? yes. but its also 25k so eat up. and if you wanna talk to me about it! PLEASE DO!!
Warnings: VILLAIN!READER, discussions/implied suicidal ideation, violence & blood, implied and joked about smut, heavy psychological/emotional manipulation, romantic obsession, betrayal, murder, implied torture. it gets pretty dark at times, just take care.
Citrus Scale: 💚 LIME 💚
{ full playlist }
"You've created capitalism, good job," sarcasm dripped from your words as you leaned against the side of the Camarvan while Sapnap attempted to arrest Tommy and the most recent newcomer, a brunette with a way with words that you found yourself admiring.
"I didn't create capitalism," Wilbur automatically defends himself, turning on you like he had the words on the tip of his tongue, simply waiting for someone to bring it up. Though he was playing at being innocent, you could see he was holding back a smile.
"What do you mean?" Tommy, behind him, frowned, before spluttering, "you know what, who cares- Wilbur, buddy don't listen to her, she'll say anything to get a rise out of people," he grumbled, but you just talked over him, addressing the newcomer.
"I'm not implying that you, new boy -"
"Wilbur," he corrected you automatically.
"- you, Wilbur, were the theological creator of capitalism," you rolled your eyes, but couldn't help your own smile at the situation, "I'm saying that you're trying to have a monopoly on potions and the ability to brew them, so you can inflate the price to whatever you want with no competition that people would be able to buy from, all that artificial supply and demand bullshit."
"Don't know what you're on about," but Wilbur's back was to the others as he said it, lips twisting into a grin, "this is but a humble hotdog van."
"A humble hotdog van!" Tommy added resolutely for emphasis, which you yourself repeated, much quieter, turning the words over in your mind as you narrowed your eyes and looked over all of them, "oh get lost, go run back to Dream," Tommy huffed, before turning on Wilbur, "why are you even giving her the time of day? She's in his guard, she's probably here helping Sapnap."
And that's when your gaze finally flicked to the man himself in full diamond armour, who was glowering at you, bow half raised. He stays quiet.
"He doesn't seem too keen on her," Wilbur points out, looking over his shoulder, giving the faintest smile to the kitted-out guard.
"It could be a ruse!" Tommy insisted.
"I'm simply a court jester -" you tried, hands raised defensively, but Tommy cuts you off.
"You shot me!"
"What's a humble court jester doing at our humble hotdog van?" Wilbur asks, turning back to you. At this prompt, however, your whole face lit up and you stood up straight, frantically digging around your pockets, searching, until you offer a small stack of blaze rods, like it's an offering.
"Playing along," you tell him, eyes alight with mirth and mischief.
"Why?" But he takes the blaze rods and you give a shrug, shoving your hands into your pockets.
"It's the funniest option."
---
"It's not capitalism, it's a drug empire," Tommy grumbled under his breath the moment they bring you into the Camarvan and shut the door behind you, before he added, "and I still don't like that you're here."
"It's not my fault that the concept of a grown-ass man going to war with literal children over two discs is deeply funny," you raised your hands in mock surrender as you sat on the counter in the hotdog van.
"Then why were you on his side?" He demanded, and you schooled your grin into something seriously.
"Thomas, Thomas listen to me -"
"Do not call me Thomas," Tommy told you flatly, and for a moment you couldn't help your sharp smile.
"Listen, Tommy, my boy, I was on the side of the grown-ass man who was waging war over discs; you're a kid, dude, being on your side would make too much sense and would be far less funny."
"One, you're a terrible person," Tommy says flatly, and you can't help but laugh not exactly inclined to disagree with him, "two, I'm not your boy, and three, if it suddenly becomes fucking funny for you to turn on us, I will kill you a lot, okay?"
"Okay," you nod, conceding, and though he's still frowning at you, mistrustful, you can't help but follow it with, "but I think you underestimate how much I appreciate our new friend, whose first thought, after finding his way to us, was 'I'm going to build a drug empire and recruit Tommy-goddamn-Innit as my first ally'; very few things can top that, honestly."
Wilbur, who was kneeling by a chest a few feet away and had been quiet this whole time, snorts a laugh. Good.
"Does Dream trust you?" However, when he spoke, your bright mood evaporated. Then he stands, turns, and leans his hip against the chest he was just rifling through, cocking his head to one side as he regards you, "it's not bait, I'm not asking you if you're a double agent, I trust you -" though there was something behind his eyes that contradicted his words, "- just, does Dream trust you?"
"Dream and I have... an understanding," you said carefully, "I understand that he is incredibly powerful -" Tommy made a derisive noise in the back of his throat at that, "- and he understands that I am simply a court jester."
"I don't remember many jesters with enchanted netherite axes," Tommy mutters under his breath. For the barest moment, when he looks at you he sees you looking right back, something dangerous, something like a warning in your eyes that vanishes so fast he’s half concerned he imagined it. No-one else seemed to have seen it, judging by how Wilbur’s continuing on. You’ve already looked away.
"So he may expect you to turn on him?"
"Eventually," you agree, "but he also knows I'd turn back to his side with the right incentive," you knew no good could come of trying to hide your nature, especially since it could lead to others actively attempting to win your loyalty, which you couldn't deny was pretty nice. Tommy was actively glaring at you after this particular admission, however Wilbur hums thoughtfully, regarding you with an expression you can't quite read, one that makes you feel like he's evaluating you; you sit a little straighter.
"Would you steal his potion supplies for us if he had any?" And suddenly, Wilbur's tone was light, as if he were asking for you to run an errand rather than commit treason. While Tommy was flabbergasted at his bluntness, you nodded emphatically.
"Oh, absolutely."
----
"Could you be more subtle while robbing me?" Dream frowned the moment he saw you up to your elbows in a chest in what he considered to be his base of operations.
"Not my fault you're bad at hiding your stuff and good at finding me," you huffed in return, not even bothering to look up, even as Dream peered over your shoulder to see what he'd left behind that you were currently looting. Tortoise shells and empty bottles, not much, but it's something.
"I don't appreciate you stealing my shit for Tommy," Dream pointed out, and you snorted a laugh, beginning to pocket your findings. He sat beside the chest, watching you, "I'm going to stop him."
"You're going to try."
"I thought you were on my side," but even as he said it, he wore a grin that was all teeth; you both knew he was joking, "you'd tell me where the discs were if you knew, wouldn't you?"
"In a heartbeat," you agree without hesitation, sitting back on your heels and finally looking at your sort-of ally, "but we both know Tommy doesn't trust me as far as he can throw me."
"He's a smart kid," Dream's smile gets tight at the edges for just a moment, and when you look to him, he’s looking back at you with a shallow gaze - you ever take something from me like that again and I’ll fucking kill you; you hear your own voice in your head, and wonder if Dream’s thinking of that same moment, of your violent, possessiveness rearing it’s head, your axe pressed to his chest in the dead of night. Back in the present, his gaze clears and he looks at the chest you’re currently elbow deep in, pointedly, "you are robbing me." The memory passes from your mind.
"You weren't here and I'm not using actual force; this is looting at best," at your indignance, he rolls his eyes, looking away, and you open the chest again, taking the remaining items, despite their meagre value. "I'm not doing this for Tommy; Wilbur's the one who suggested it."
"The new guy?"
"The new guy," you confirmed with a nod, "the first thing he does after getting here is commit crimes; I think I'm in love," you tell Dream flatly, mostly joking.
"Sounds like a man after your own heart," Dream points out, not even trying to hide the teasing edge to his words; how deeply bizarre this interaction would be if anyone else were to walk in.
With all of the chest's contents safely in your pockets and satchel, you sit back, eyes narrowing as you give Dream and his mischievous smile a look as you finally try and figure out what this whole interaction means. However the teasing does well to hide the faint notes of apprehension in his voice.
"'s the reason I sided with you in the first place;" you said slowly, "you know how chaos gets me going," your tone was flat, clearly conveying that you hadn't deciphered the nature of this interaction, but your actual words were enough to have Dream himself laughing despite this, the air clearing. "You here to stop me?"
"Does anyone else know where my base is, and are you going to steal anything else from me?"
"No and yes," you answer bluntly; if you were anyone else that answer would be two death sentences, one right after the other, "blaze rods," you quickly elaborate, wilfully digging yourself deeper as Dream opens his mouth.
"You can't have my blaze rods," he says, though he's smiling faintly at your well-worn antics.
"Agree to disagree," you stood swiftly, trying to step over his legs to get to the next chest. Dream grabs your shin with one hand, stopping you in your track as he's sighing deeply.
"Go away, Y/N," he says firmly, letting go of you to get to his feet, beginning to push you to the entrance of the bunker, even as you whined; the fact that he let you take as much as you already had was not lost on you however, and you let yourself be nudged to the door, only putting on a show of protesting.
The timer that had started ticking the moment he'd found you in his bunker had finally run out.
"Get better security," you told him, and he gave you a wide, toothy smile.
"Love you too," he responded, "and keep me updated if you ever find those discs." At that, you give him a quick salute and head back in the general direction of the Camarvan.
----
"L'Manberg?" You said, not even trying to hide your scepticism.
"L'Manberg," both Tommy and Wilbur reiterated, sounding completely sincere in their dedication to the ridiculous name.
"L'-Man-Berg?" You said, slower, squinting at them, waiting for their sincerity to crack.
"But don't worry, Tommy himself said that 'even women can work here'," Wilbur said, corners of his mouth twitching at Tommy's various irritated exclamations, "like... in the hotdog van... with us; we're not implying that women have to work to be here, this isn't- this isn't communism -"
"You've made that abundantly clear," your scepticism broke in the face of his floundering, "I remember you brought capitalism to the Greater Dream SMP, Mr Soot," you were desperately trying not to laugh, though Tommy was fairing much worse than you at that.
"I mean- I mean- I mean-" Tommy spluttered through his laughter as it died down, trying to get himself back to being something resembling serious, "you also- you can't be on Dream's side if you're with us."
"I'm not," you answer honestly and easily.
"So you're on our side?" He clarified, though you had to hum at that.
"No..." you said carefully, before finally looking him in his eyes, "I'm on my side, I just happen to like," without breaking eye contact with Tommy or your serious facade, you pointed directly at Wilbur, to his left, "him." Tommy's outrage at your answer was predictably hilarious, hence the main reason as to why you gave it, and Wilbur's delighted 'that's good enough for me' and accompanying smile was enough to solidify your loyalty with them, at least for the time being.
----
"I knew it would be you," they've taken no chances with you when they started taking people prisoner; Tommy was the first to go, and you happened to show up right as Fundy was being lead away. Wilbur and Tommy had both sent you messages, letting you know people were being arrested, and while they probably meant for you to stay away, you had other ideas.
So now, here you were, with Sapnap's crossbow bolt between your shoulder blades as you were being unceremoniously shoved to the courthouse.
"Stop talking," he muttered, poking you probably harder than necessary, but it did little to dim your smile.
"I've barely said anything," you shrugged, the nonchalant movement only serving to remind you, as if you could forget, about the weapon at your back, "but I'm flattered, really; I knew it would be you."
"Stop. Talking."
"They've got several people escorting Tommy, and even Fundy has Eret and Tubbo," you kept chattering away, despite your guard's grumbling, "but we've fought together, you know what I'm like, and so does he," you gave a faint laugh, "they knew I'd listen to you; you're the only one besides Dream himself who could get me to go peacefully."
"Why then? If you're going to keep talking, can you explain why? Why are you going peacefully, why with me? Are you actually saying you would have put up a fight if I were anyone else?"
"Would you trust anyone else to bring me to jail on their own?" You asked simply.
"I think you overestimate how challenging you are -"
"So that's a yes, you'd trust... Tubbo to lead me to the courthouse alone?" Your tone was sly and heavy with implications, "or Ponk? Or what about Eret? I don't know him but he seems nice. I'd like to get to know him, if you're saying you'd like to swap -"
"I don't trust you," he cuts you off, words forced out through gritted teeth.
"But you trust you," you hum thoughtfully, "because you know you're the only one up for it. They're sweet kids, but they're still kids, aren't they? If the right person talked for long enough they'd believe anything. This is why I knew it'd be you taking me to court; you're better than that," you're better than them hangs in the air, unspoken but still so loud, and you're glad he can't see the way you're grinning.
Then, you give a self deprecating chuckle, shrugging again.
"Honestly I'm probably giving myself too much credit here, I'm unarmed and unarmoured, you're easily overkill as my escort, but again, I'm flattered," the pressure between your shoulder blades lessens until the sharp bolt is gone, and you hear Sapnap's footsteps fall silent. Intrigued, you turn, and you see him scowling.
"Don't do that, don't be cute, don't be coy;" he frowned at you, at how your expression had been schooled into something tamer than the delight you were feeling, "you won't trick me; I remember Dream in that warroom, you remember, we were all planning and he assured us that you were your most dangerous unarmed and unarmoured -"
"I can't believe you remember that," you huff a disbelieving laugh, hoping the delight in your eyes didn't give you away.
"Yeah, well I do; don't coy, don't be shitty, okay? I was sent here for you for a reason, me, alright Y/N? I'm the one with the crossbow," already your words were working their way into his psyche, the bestowing of compliments, building him up, only to undermine it all. Whether he realised it or not, the praise you hid amongst your teasing and self-aggrandizing felt good to hear; you're just glad he believed it.
And so you walked with a crossbow bolt nestled between your shoulders, in silence for the rest of the way, being shoved into a cell beside Tommy, who'd been sitting on the bed provided, chattering away loudly to the other guards.
"What took you so long?"
----
The jacket you're given doesn't fit quite right; it's close, but maybe the arms are a little too long, and it sits strangely when you button the front with more than one button, but you wear it with pride, grip tight on the lapels as you spin on your heel, waiting for an approval from the others.
"Looks good on you," Wilbur's voice is carefully neutral, though he nods, his slight smile betraying him.
"Now will you finally admit you're on our side?" Tommy asked, brow pinched as he looked you over.
"What do you mean? She's with us, of course she is," Tubbo voices his confusion, and you finally, finally relinquish.
"Yes, Tommy, I'm fighting for L'manburg," you inclined your head towards him, smiling faintly.
"Say it, say you're on my side," Tommy demanded, "because I wanna remember this moment when you inevitably double cross us."
"Tommy," you said carefully, trying not to show how amused you actually were.
"Don't patronise me," he warned.
"Tommy," you shifted your tone to something a touch more respectful, but the boy's mouth remained set in a firm line, "I'm on your side as long as you're on Wilbur's side."
"Of course," Tubbo pipes up brightly, "we're all on the same side, for L'manburg," and he so cheerfully misses the subtle nuance in your words that it seems to convince Tommy. Wilbur's smiling to himself, genuine, whole face scrunched up and pleased.
"Seems like an overreaction," Eret, who you were yet to get a proper read on, looked over the four of you with interest; he hadn't been here long either, "they robbed Dream for us, they got arrested too -"
"Y/N is a trickster spirit at the best of times," Tommy tells him, "you can never be too careful, trust me."
"I'm just a jester," you raised your hands in a placating gesture, gaze dipping if only to hide the spark of mischief that found its way to your eye every time you found yourself underplaying your abilities.
"A revolutionary jester," Wilbur corrects, and your gaze snaps to him, your smile growing a touch wider, a shade sharper.
"A revolutionary jester," you agreed.
----
"You should have a home here," you hear Wilbur musing as he's chopping wood with a distracted energy, "do you have a home?" He quickly follows it with, and you snort loudly.
"Christ dude, of course I have a house," though you take a moment to reconsider, "well I have a bed in the savannah," you paused, "near... near Dream's Mountain." You admitted. There's a hum, and when you look to Wilbur he's regarding you curiously.
"Still?"
"Dream doesn't operate out of there anymore," you told him candidly, "but I like it; lots of sand," you added, and Wilbur actually paused.
"Can I ask you something very frank?" He asked, leaning against the handle of his axe where it was pressing into the dirt. You nodded, "what incentive would it take for you to turn on us, and on L'manburg? If Dream offered any number of weapons or diamonds or armour, would you take it?"
"I have everything I need," you told him honestly, "and I don't think Dream could offer me enough incentive to turn against L'manburg the way it stands right now," you shrugged, but he tipped his head to the side, frowning.
"So what would it take you to turn on us individually?"
Your mouth fell open, unused to being properly listened to, properly understood.
"You listen too much," you muttered, unused to being caught out in the way you would twist words. Wilbur, seemingly surprised at your reaction, grins from ear to ear.
"You know, while you were all being arrested, I heard something; I heard someone say that you're at your most dangerous when you're unarmed and unassuming, and I think I'm starting to get it-"
"If I find Tommy's discs, I have an obligation to give them to Dream," you let the words fall from your lips in an effort to derail that train of thought, gaze on your hands as you pluck blades of grass from the ground, twisting them in your fingers. Wilbur carefully lowers himself to the ground, to your level.
"From what I understand, that seems perfectly reasonable, in your mind at least," he says with a half smile, looking to you, expression somewhat unreadable, his pause harbouring something quietly hungry; "and what about me?"
Mouth opening and closing at a sudden loss for words, you find yourself unable to look him in the eyes.
"I have no pre-existing reason to turn against you," your voice is quiet, is flat, but your forgetting fingers betray how antsy this particular shred of honesty made you.
"So, Tommy's the only one you'd throw under the bus?"
"Its up to you," you shrugged, "and I'd only steal Tommy's disc and hand them over, I wouldn't hurt him."
"Are you lying?"
"I don't lie;" your tone was harsh, looking to him with a fire in your eyes, "I will not betray them, or Tommy in any other way, so long as they are all... aligning... with... you." There's no pretty way to twist your words around it, and you can't help your faint, flustered embarrasent, "my word is my bond." Then, softer, heart in your throat, "stop looking at me, Wilbur."
"That's a lot of power you've given me there," he said with a faint laugh, "so if it's no longer in my best interest to align with them-"
"It depends on if you mean that they're no longer allies, or if they're actively hostile," you point out, "because the ways in which I would betray them if they are not my allies are... varied. If they're my active enemy, then that's more of a straightforward fight, you know?"
"And if I decided it's no longer beneficial to be allies with you?"
"You'd be smart," you tell him, knee-jerk reaction, which startles a laugh from him; you give a faint, self-conscious apology, "honestly I'd respect it, it'd be an incredibly funny move after the things I've said, you know?"
"But, no, if I betrayed you, what would you do?"
"Are you planning on betraying me?"
"Not currently," he shrugged easily, and you blinked slowly at him.
"I don't know what I'd do, not yet, but I can get planning," you said with an almost teasing air, while he splutters in protest, "yeah I know you just said you weren't planning on it, but I'm pretty sure you've lied to every single question I've asked since getting here," you paused, smile growing wider, and strangely fond, "actually I think you've lied more than you've told the truth in general since you arrived."
A second passes, then another, then finally he breaks out into laughter.
"And you accuse me of listening too much!" His expression was frankly delighted.
----
You follow them into the dark, down the stairs, listening to the way they were joking about Eret managing to come up with a nuke. The night is unassuming. Spirits are high. 
But they bring you all to a small room full of  chests. Something is wrong. You stay with Eret by the door, and he's got a hand on your shoulder - you can't run. 
"The chests are empty-" you hear Wilbur's confusion, right before Tommy asks what the button in the middle of the room does, and before he can even press it, his fingertips barely contacting the wood, you step forward -
"Easy now," Eret's voice is a gentle murmur, only for you, grip tight on your pauldron. When you look at her, a moment of silence amongst the others' confusion, his expression is… unreadable. Ice cold now, there's a sword through your chest, you can feel it where you shouldn't, followed by the searing heat of blood filling your lungs and windpipe -
"Y/N?!" Wilbur's eyes land on you as Tommy presses the button, you fall to your knees, choking on a mouthful of blood, and when your gaze locks with his, the reality of the betrayal sets in. There's horror in his eyes, and you see Tommy and Tubbo turning before you're suddenly gasping awake in your bed in L'manburg, shaking, eyes wide and goosebumps rising along your skin as you hear your comrades screaming and shouting for help, horrified at Eret's betrayal, all coming in tinny through the communicator still on your hip. You don't properly know what happened after the button was pushed, and you think that was a conscious decision.
Your first life is taken quietly, not with a bang but with a whimper.
There's something inevitable about it for you, at least in your mind, but the others didn't deserve this, didn't deserve that betrayal. You can still feel the sticky heat of the blood in your lungs, your throat, ice cold sword where it had pierced through your back, slipped between your ribs, and come out the other side. 
"It was never meant to be," Eret sounds like they’re smiling as they say it, as the others are yelling, and you realise that they're probably reviving in their own homes. You want to ask, want to demand answers, but your hands shake, and when you find your voice, all that comes out is a furious growl, low and full of venomous malice the likes of which the others had never heard from you, judging by how your voice cut through the chaotic mess of shouting.
"What the fuck did you do?" 
Eret leaves the communication channel. The silence rings in your ears.
"He betrayed us," Wilbur said, tone flat, thinly veiling his own fury at the situation, "she had us killed by Dream and his men," and then, "he killed you." Like it means something, like he's worried your apathy, or even your connection to Dream, could sway you from your anger. Like he knows betrayal of your nation means little; like he knows you well. Something about this catches in your mind; you knew it was only a matter of time before you were betrayed, but the rest of them cared - Wilbur cared enough about you to know you, and Eret had him killed too. 
Your communicator vibrates for a moment, and you look down to see a message from Wilbur himself; Where are you?
Your life was of little consequence, the same could not be said for your comrades.
"They killed me," you said softly, before you swallowed hard; home. Dig the ground by the corner of the walls near the river, you send back. "You died too; you all died. Who was there?"
"Who do you think?" Tommy cut in, loud and brimming with rage.
"It was all so fast, but I saw George, and Sap, and Dream," Tubbo cut in, voice a little shaky, bring Tommy's fury down somewhat.
"Punz was there too," Wilbur said carefully, "they have our things." And you stay quiet as they rage, as you sit in your bed, unable to get up, mind moving a thousand miles a minute as you try and figure out how to process all of this, what it all means. It doesn't take too long before there's sunlight streaming into your little, cosy hovel, followed by Wilbur climbing down the ladder provided, packing dirt into the hole he'd made to keep your location secret. 
When he gets to the bottom of the ladder, he takes a deep breath - Tommy and Tubbo are chattering away, audible over both your communicators. Making eye contact, finally, he doesn't quiet seem to know what to do, or where to go. You turn off your communicator. Everything tastes like iron. You don't move. He leans against the wall by the ladder, closing his eyes tightly for few moments, and slowly sliding down, sinking to the ground. 
"Wilb- mate are you alright? Where are you?" Tommy's voice rings out from the communicator still on Wilbur's hip, and he sighs deeply.
"I'm fine, I'm fine, just need a few moments, I'll be with you soon," and he turns off the communicator before getting a response. 
Silence. Deafening silence.
"I'm sorry," your voice is a whisper, but it's clearly audible in this little room. 
"What?" Tone immediately defensive and sharp, Wilbur's eyes snap open and he looks to you with a glare.
"No, I- I've had betrayal coming for a long time, but you- you all didn't deserve that," you clarified, hand on your chest, feeling the raised, tender scar tissue where the sword had come out - it had slid through your sternum like fucking butter, it had been so cold, even as the points where it had touched your clothes caught fire, even as it melted through the metal of your armour - your hand starts to shake. Everything tastes like iron. 
"What happened?"
"What did Eret say to you?" His question surprised you, and when you look to him, his gaze is hard and cold.
"Easy now," you remember, "held me back when I went to step forwards, and ran their sword through me before the button had even properly been pressed -"
"I saw," Wilbur's voice was softer.
"I'm sorry, I should have warned you -" your lip was trembling, shake in your words as you drew your knees up to your chest. 
"You didn't know, you couldn't have-"
"I could have done more, I could have done something -" the tears start to fall.
"Dream's guard were laying in wait, and the button was their cue to ambush us," Wilbur explained carefully, "but you…" he swallowed hard, "I watched you die." He sounded furious and disgusted, looking at his own hands, twisted into claw-like shapes, ruminating on his own helplessness at the situation.
"You're the only one who noticed," you said, barely audible, "I don't think you were meant to notice."
"What the fuck does that even mean?"
"I wasn't meant to see what happened, and it was meant to be assumed that I died in the skirmish," you said, tone flat and bitter, before your tone grows malicious, "because Dream is a coward."
"I wasn't meant to notice?" He asks, voice weak.
"No-one was; dying in the skirmish is less targeted, but if I had glimpsed any of their team killing -" You swallowed hard, dropping your gaze, "any," you push the word to hide that it's not exactly the truth, "of you… Dream knows I am more than capable of exacting revenge." There was a dark truth to your words that Wilbur couldn’t even begin to fathom, a history he was unaware of.
"I do notice you," Wilbur says, and you're brought from your bitterness momentarily, surprised by the earnestness of his words. He stands, "and I've never heard you speak like this before." 
"There are rules," you tell him, watching him cross the room to your bed, to sit by your side, "and I don't expect the same level of honesty that I give, but I expect- I expect- I-" but you can't find the words for what you're trying to say, sitting forward scowling at your hands.
"You would have let him betray us all still if you'd know, wouldn't you? You would have even let her kill you," Wilbur's tone is alight with realisation, and your mouth drops open with surprise; yes, yes of course you would, how did he put it into words like that? He doesn't even sound particularly hurt by that realisation, more fascinated.
"I absolutely would have," you answer.
"But you had no idea," its not accusatory in the slightest, his tone matching yours, alright with bright interest, "which is why- why- why you're so- why you're reacting like this," its like he's trying to piece together how he sees you out loud, "you need to know where all the chess pieces are, what moves are being made, you're not playing as much as you are a spectator delighting in the chaos of it all, with a front row seat." But he's grinning from ear to ear. Your whole body is alight with the instinct to reach out and touch him, to prove he's real and not something you're imagining, because no one else has even cared to figure you out like this, and no one would even come close to reacting so brightly about it. 
"I'm sorry I'm like this," you say with a momentary huff of disbelieving laughter, but he reaches out and puts a hand on your knee. The contact burns. You look down at his hand like you can't quite believe it, head swimming, trying to process this all. 
"Don't be; knowledge is power and you never lie," he pointed out, "you're a good ally to have." Your heart feels like it's beating out of your chest. Wilbur Soot I'd die for you; the words press against your teeth until it's almost painful, and his hand is still on your knee. You grab it - he's real, he's here, the things he's said are real too!
"I won't betray you," is what you say instead, and Wilbur's expression turns to surprise in the face of your earnestness, your seriousness. You never lie; the thing he's said is playing on both of your minds at this moment, of this you're sure.
"You shouldn't say things like that," he says very carefully.
"Then you understand the full extent of what I'm saying, don't you?" You take his hand now in a handshake, palm to palm, "Wilbur Soot, I will never betray you."
"You have never lied to me," he said, voice low and serious, demanding an answer. You meet his gaze.
"I have never lied to you," you affirm, before adding, "you know me." And you're fairly certain he doesn't quite understand the importance of that, that his understanding of you is the reason for your loyalty. "You don't have to extend the same sentiment, don't worry, like I said I don't expect the same lev of honesty -"
"I will not willingly betray you, Y/N," Wilbur says, matching your earnest seriousness, "and I will attempt to only be honest with you." 
----
“What is it about you?” There was a strange quality to Dream’s voice as he voices a question that had seemingly been weighing on him for a long while. Wilbur, where he was trying to fit all of his friends’ equipment on his person to carry back to them, snaps his attention to Dream, brow furrowed. 
"What?" 
"Loyalty is the one thing Y/N covets above all else, and yet for some reason they’ve given it freely to you -” Dream’s voice was smooth and thoughtful, like he’s not quite aware he’s speaking out loud. 
“Maybe it’s because I respect them -”
“I respected them, but still...” he trailed off; again the idea of a darker shared history between you and Dream makes itself known. Wilbur's scowl deepened, "I don’t think they genuinely respected me... or anyone, before you. They get possessive, like dangerously possessive, but you’re different." 
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You know the thing they do, the way they can talk around people and topics without even lying, and make it look, you know, like it’s easy?” And the minute the words leave Dream's mouth, Wilbur's gaze drops; of course he'd noticed.
"They’ve got a way with words," Wilbur's agrees, slowly, eyes narrowed. At the defensive notes in Wilbur’s voice, the smile dropped from Dream’s face. He’s seen this loyalty before, but never before in someone you yourself were loyal to in turn. This is uncharted territory. This suddenly feels like a dangerous conversation to be having. 
“Everything they’ve done is to amuse themselves, so you make no sense to me; what about you is so compelling that they find entertainment in playing revolution?”
“Maybe,” Wilbur says, tone light but clearly well thought out, “someone who is used to listening to everyone else finds a certain novel charm in being heard.” His gaze is icy, but he’s not looking at Dream; he’s standing at the end of the room, gaze hard as he looks at the door, as if focusing intently on something in his mind as he spoke; “I think you assume everyone believes in the ideals that their side stands for, and I also think,” he narrows his eyes, still staring into space. Despite not being the target of his glare, Dream, for the first time in the conversation, feels a strangely familiar powerlessness, “that you underestimate an individual’s loyalty to another individual, rather than to a cause,” he paused, “or a nation.” 
“I’ll fight for you, of course, but I can’t kill any of those kids -” in Dream’s mind, he’s taken back to the moment he’d recruited you to his side after he’d stolen Tommy’s discs. You’re looking up at him from where you’re leaning over a grindstone, sharpening your axe. When he’d asked why, you blinked slowly at him, “I’ve barely spoken to them; I can’t discern if they deserve it.” There’s something cold in your eyes as you look at him, and he hears it clear as day without you needing to say it out loud; I don’t kill people I don’t know.
Something about Wilbur in this moment reminds Dream of you. He feels the faded scar on his collar bone ache faintly; the part of him that had wanted to somehow warn Wilbur of your true nature was quickly growing quiet in the back of his mind.
Then, Wilbur looks at his own hands for a moment, before digging through his bag, through the various belongings he was now carrying. He pulls out your axe, and looks back up at the space by the door. Then, to the button, before finally looking at Dream, your axe still in hand, but it rested by his side, nonthreatening. Dream can’t look away from the weapon.
“You were laying in wait for us in the name of your nation,” Wilbur says, tone strangely neutral; he looks back at the door; “you complain about a lack of respect but won’t warn them when they’re about to die.” This is where he’d watched you die; that, atop the various other insights Wilbur has shared here have Dream’s blood running cold. Dream wants to argue that you would have tipped them off, but his words die on his tongue; he at least knew you better than to interfere in a good plan, an entertaining plan, where you would be able to watch the effects of a major plot twist play out in real time, even if it meant you too had to be sacrified... And Wilbur knew this about you too.
“I see,” Dream muses, trying to hide how shaken he was by the moment that had just passed, “you’re starting to make more sense now.”
“And you know what,” Wilbur said, unsettling tension breaking as he grinned, “I think you’re making more sense too; Y/N’s willingness to still bring up their loyalty to you does at least.”
“Their loyalty to me?”
“They still look out for Tommy’s discs on your behalf,” he said candidly, “we all know, but they’re yet to find them so Tommy’s yet to have a proper go at them.”
“It’s always sunny in L’Manberg then,” Dream says, dryly. 
“It’s... amusing, to try and see the world the way you see it,” Wilbur’s chipper, but there’s something almost malicious in his bright tone, and Dream’s hair stands on end. His own words haunt him, your loyalty called into question; did you simply help him because you found him trivial and amusing? While it doesn’t exactly surprise him, it stings in a way he didn’t expect. Looking back at Wilbur, it’s clear that at least some of Dream’s feelings about this particular revelation showed on his face, despite his best efforts. Wilbur’s grin was cheshire-esque. Even his smugness somehow had an echo of yours. 
He leaves. Dream feels sick, alone in the final control room.
----
"Can I ask you something?" Wilbur asks tentatively, and you look away from the furnace you'd patiently been waiting to smelt your iron ore.
"Of course."
Another long pause; you approached him where he was sitting at the table, watching you with reservation. 
"What happened between you and Dream?"
Surprisingly, your expression dropped to something blank in an instant, gaze going glassy. 
“He’s my friend,” you say flatly, turning back to the furnace, but not before Wilbur caught a glimpse of your grimace.
“I think he was trying to warn me against you,” Wilbur huffs a faint laugh, but it’s more to test your reaction; when you turn back, your expression is wide and innocent, almost pleading.
“What did he say?”
“That I’m the first person you’ve shown actual respect to,” Wilbur says, tone light but words blunt; it surprises you, which he can read on your face, and you hesitate for a moment, not wanting to confirm or deny as much. His smile grows wider, grows endeared, “and he did say you tend to get possessive.” Your gentle, flustered nature turns into something colder at that, and you look to your hands.
“He says a lot of things,” you mutter, with an air of bitterness. It’s interesting interacting with you; half the time you still seem to try and put on an act around him, though the other half you seem to let yourself be as honest as you’re able, “he says a lot of things to the people I like, then they like me less.” Then, suddenly, you look to him, defiance in your eyes, “I don’t care what he said, I’m not using you, Wilb-”
“Hold on, he never said anything like that,” he holds up his hands, defensive, placating. Your eyes go wide and your mouth snaps shut; you can’t look at him, sitting down, hunching in on yourself. 
“Sorry,” you mutter, sighing deeply enough that your shoulders sag, “Dream is my friend, I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but I thought... he’s taken things from me like this before, things I, well...” you can’t quite put it into words, but Wilbur sits back, watching you, when something in his mind clicks.
“Covet.” His voice was soft with understanding, gentle as he asks “who was it?”
You blink slowly; there was something visceral and feral burning through your veins. You’d spent so long intricately designing the way the world would see you, this single moment feels like you’re on the knife’s edge trying to figure out if having him understanding you is endearing and heartwarming, or cloying and dangerous. He promised he wouldn’t betray you, but he’s not as honest as you’ve trained yourself to be. 
But you promised not to betray him, and you’ve become someone defined by your word. All you can do is leave, if that’s what you want. You can’t lash out, you must let him live with the way he knows you, with no promise to keep it to himself. Self preservation is the way your fingers flex, aching for your axe.
“I’ve given you too much power over me,” you swallow hard, hands in fists. 
“You won’t hurt me, though.”
“We both know I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
“And you do want to,” he says it like it’s a fact, all light and neutral. You keep your mouth shut; you can’t lie if you don’t speak, no matter how sweet you know it would taste to lie. “I have never felt fear or anger like I felt when I watched you die,” he breaks the silence. 
“I’m sorry,” you mutter through clenched teeth, staring intently at the floor.
“You’re not to blame,” he says easily, “none of us deserved that; you didn’t deserve that.” 
“You didn’t deserve to see that,” you corrected automatically. 
“I thought you wanted to hurt me.”
“Well I can’t.”
“You won’t,” he says, tone still light. You glance a look at him, only to see him resting his chin in his hand, regarding you with a gentle smile. The distinction stings in your mind, the way he clearly understands your internal conflict, it sets your teeth on edge, “you knew what you were getting into when you offered your loyalty; Dream was confused, you know, about why you’d given it so freely when you covet it -” that word again, your expression twists into something frustrated as you drop your gaze back to your hands, “- but he doesn’t really get you, does he?”
“He likes to think he’s like me,” you mutter, “but then he acts like he’s better, like he’s building a family from this war, but he’s going to be left with people filled with resentments. I was aquiring resources, but he didn’t like my methods...”
“Who?” Softer this time, Wilbur asks.
After a very, very long time, you look to him, gaze shallow.
“I thought Quackity was like you, I thought he’d understand.”
“Understand you?”
“Understand the world, the truth,” you wet your lips for a moment, “but he clung to pretty words without question; I could see he had potential, so I kept him around, and it was easy - it was so fuckin’ easy -” You recount how you’d set your sights on loud-mouthed, brash, desperate for recognition Quackity, and how you’d made him your whole world, bombing him with affection and attention, making him feel understood, like the place he belonged was by your side. Quackity had always looked for somewhere to belong, that hadn’t changed, though you muse that you may have made it harder for him to trust it when he finally found a place where he felt like he belonged. 
“Everything I fed him was a lie I’d laced with something that sounded close enough to love and sincerity that he’d believed it,” you looked down at where you were tracing shapes on the back of Wilbur’s hand as he listened intently, “I gave him nothing, but made him believe he had everything, until... until I wanted to see how far I could go. I wanted to see if he’d die for me... and he would have, until Dream decided to grow some morals.” You stood, sudden fury burning through your veins at the memory, “he had to sew the fuckin’ seeds of doubt in Q’s mind, had to pick holes in my lies -”
“You lied that much?” This seemed to genuinely shock Wilbur, and you stopped your pacing to look to him.
“It’s why I don’t lie; it’s harder to pick holes in the truth, harder to undermine me,” your lip curled, “Q lost faith in me, stopped trusting me, and there was fucking nothing I could do about it; it was my fault, honestly, so I don’t lie anymore. I’m upfront about who I am. I only keep people around if they’re useful, or they’re entertaining, because that’s the other fucking thing I learned; nothing fucking matters more than keeping me happy, because everyone gets too serious for their own good in the end. Dream was fun before he- he- he-”
“So am I useful or entertaining?” Wilbur asks, and you freeze. Then, slowly, you take a deep breath.
“It was novel to feel understood.”
“And now it’s bloody terrifying you,” he says gently, “because as much as you want to, you can’t trust anyone as much as you trust yourself.”
“I understand people, Wilbur, and no-one I’ve ever met has understood the inherent benefit to honesty the way I have.”
“But you still promised me your loyalty.” He says. You swallowed hard, nodding once. You meet his gaze, refusing to break it, refusing to back down, waiting for him to elaborate. “And I promised you mine, as best I could,” he pauses gives you an evaluative look over, “I can’t trust people, obviously, but I know I can trust you.”
“People don’t like me when they realise I can pick them apart, that I can rewire and reprogram them like I’m an engineer,” and Wilbur regards you curiously as you say this, like he’s going to try and counter it, but you square your shoulders, “even you, Wilbur; do you think, when we met, you’d still trust me if I was upfront about this?” And he closes his mouth, thoughtful, “I wanted so desperately to keep around the first person to halfway understand me, you’re impressed rather than fucking terrified like you should be. Because you know it’s true.”
“Are you trying to push me away?”
“We both know you won’t go,” you say with the faintest, self-deprecating smile, “a stalemate of respect, of our own design.” Then, your expression turned serious, “I have never felt fear or anger like I did when I realised you watched me die.”
Then, very slowly, his gaze meets yours, hard-edged and dark.
“Do you trust me as much as I trust you?” It’s a loaded question; he’s never been given any reason to doubt you, mostly thanks to your honesty and loyalty, but you’d never been afforded that same assurance. But in this instance, it didn’t matter, you knew your answer without a shred of doubt.
“Yes, absolutely.”
----
Its said a shark can smell blood in the water from a mile away, and you, you know there's a traitor living a peaceful life up in the castle. It irritates you, sets your teeth on edge; it's not that they killed you that bothers you, it's that they were careless about it, they let the one person you never wanted to hurt watch you die. The event had shaken Wilbur; the taking of your life was not the matter you cared about. 
"You okay?" Others had noticed how distracted you were; in your mind, all you could see was the shocked horror in Wilbur's eyes, and the feeling of the blade in your back. Blinking quickly, back to the present, you smiled brightly at Tubbo, or as brightly as you could manage.
"Of course." 
You watch the others sparring and training together and your hands ball into fists, as if aching for a fight. But you've got an image to keep up; you're not the brawn here, you're a jester, you're meant to keep those who you care about smiling. 
"You ever wanna hold a sword to my neck like that..." you tone is suggestive as you trail off, grinning at Wilbur, who's got his sword poised beneath a training dummy's chin, glaring at it with ferocity. The moment you call out, however, his focus break, and you see him fighting back a smile as a flush works its way up his cheeks.
"Come test your luck then," he calls back, and you blinked quickly.
"I don't want to fight you, Wilbur," you tell him, quieter, hoping it comes off as soft, as something endeared.
"You should know how to fight," he points out, lowering his sword, digging the tip into the dirt as he leans on the pommel a little.
"I know how to fight," you counter, and a long moment of silence follows as he considers that.
"How have I never seen you with a weapon then?"
"You have, you just haven’t seen me use it as a weapon." You tell him rather pointedly, voice low, and though you’re still smiling, there’s something sharp at the edge of your voice that’s unfamiliar to him. It takes him aback, and for a long moment he’s silent as he regards you with a newfound seriousness, “I’m just a jester; what’s a jester want with a sword anyways?” You half laugh, a little louder now, gaze flicking to the others milling around nearby. Nobody outwardly acknowledges you, nobody apart from Wilbur, who just frowns. His gaze is trained on a spot just past your head, where you know the hilt of your axe sits. 
You know you need to act soon, the idea of Eret living in the lap of luxury after everything that happened has your blood boiling. It's getting out of hand. It's getting distracting. 
"You're very observant," you note, tone fond as you come back to the moment. Wilbur surfaces from his memories too, his own smile turning all kinds of fond.
"Out of necessity," he points out, making his way over to you. There's something about his tone that is fond, is knowing, and it melts your heart a little, those hints of understanding that no-one else had bothered to afford you. The person who'd betrayed the only person to understand you had been crowned king; soon, your retribution would come soon. 
"What's bothering you?" Quiet enough that no-one else could hear, Wilbur reaches out, fingertips gentle on your cheek as he tips your face, has you look him in the eyes. You wonder what he sees when he looks in them, because for a brief second, for a flash, again you see the memory of silent horror as he'd watched you lose your first life. You swallow hard, and close your eyes, leaning into his touch for the briefest moment. 
"I keep thinking about what Eret did," your voice is barely more than a whisper, giving only the truth, no attempt made to obfuscate it, like you usually would. Wilbur was quiet. You didn't want to open your eyes, didn't want to witness his reaction, but he's quiet. 
You don’t tell him what you’re going to do, what you’re planning; there’s no need for him to worry unnecessarily. If you survive, you survive, and if you don’t, well you have another life to fall back on. If you wake up in bed with a new scar and one less life, that was your decision to make. No-one should worry on your behalf, but Eret needed to know that their actions would have consequences. 
So you choose a night where the moon is overshadowed by clouds, and take your axe with you. 
You’ve always been one to make an entrance, and even now you don’t disappoint, laying in wait for as long as it takes, hours spent dead silent and idle, simply waiting.
"You should be very careful if things don't go exactly to plan," finally your voice rings out through the throne room, and Eret, all dark hair and pale eyes, stops dead where they'd been passing through. Slowly, so slow its almost painful, they turn to look at you. You, draped in the throne like you own the place, axe leaning carefully against the arm of the seat. Your name escapes her mouth like a curse.
"It did go to plan," she hisses, tone guarded. 
"If it had gone to plan, I wouldn't be here," you say, shifting a little, sitting a little lower, "if your timing had been better," you paused with a shark-like smile, "I may have been the only person in L'manburg to have no issue with your betrayal," and finally you look at him, watching his face as he tries to piece together what you mean, why you're here, "on paper I admire you." You tell them callously. Their lip curls in derision.
"Dream said you'd see my side," they say carefully.
"Dream says a lot of things to a lot of people," for a moment, your expression darkens, "I'm sure he told you to kill me first."
"To avoid…" she trails off, frown deepening. Your smile returns, wide and dangerous.
"You broke something of mine, Eret," you tell him seriously, a mad glint in your eyes, "and part of your plan worked like a charm; I won't go after anyone else because I've got plausible deniability, I didn't see who killed who in that skirmish." 
"Then why the fuck are you here?"
"Because you killed me, and Wilbur watched; it's all he could do. It was a cruel thing that you did, making someone feel helpless like that."
"You're not here because I killed you?"
"Why would I be? I'm a court jester," you huffed a little laugh, smile turning cruel, "but you used me to make Wilbur sad, and someone's got to take the blame for upsetting the thing I like."
"If that's true, why spend all this time talking? Why not just kill me?"
"Because I like to make sure you get my message; Dream's heard my message, he tried to tell you," this is where you stand, finally, rising, gaze shallow, picking up your axe as you go. Slowly, you descend the steps of the throne, and Eret draws his sword. There's uncertainty in his eyes; he's close to where you want him.
"You're stalling."
"The more I talk, the more you try and remember what people have said about me, don't you? But they don't talk about how I fight, it's never been the most impressive thing about me," you give a low, guttural laugh, axe low in your tight grip, "I'm most dangerous when I'm unarmed and unarmoured, right? That's what they say, right? What do you think that means, really think about it?" 
Eret swallows hard.
"It means that you're all talk," he's trying to put up a confident front, but you watch him tighten his grip on his sword. You raise your axe.
"Not quite." 
There's nothing elegant about the way you attack, movement uncharacteristically blunt with speed that surprised the King before you. Teeth bared, you slash and duck and weave, playing dirty, tripping them up. You take hits and lash out, snarling and spitting with anger until there's no mirth, only malice, and you bring your boot down on their hand, knee pressed to their throat. There's fear behind their glasses. There's a cut above your brow, blood trickling down your face, slashes along your arms, certainly a few on your chest, but Eret's on her back on the cold floor of the throne room.
"You have no fucking idea of what I'm fully capable of," you snarl, leaning in close to their face, applying pressure until they drop their sword, hissing in pain, "this is your only warning; if you hurt- if you fucking touch my things again, I'll make it stick-" and leaning back, you use your axe to separate their head from their shoulders, taking their first life. 
And you're alone, breath coming out shakily, gasping as the adrenaline courses through you. Somewhere in the castle, Eret is waking up with your words echoing in their head. You should leave. Standing slowly, you cast a derisive look to the blood stain on the floor, the only proof of the altercation. Someone else's problem. 
You leave through the front doors, still carrying your bloodstained axe. Really, he should have better security. 
At the doors to the castle, you pause, casting a derisive look over your shoulder; this all could have been avoided. You pull out your communicator, flicking through your contacts.
[keep your things on a shorter leash] you send to Dream. He should have chosen more carefully, or been more insistent. But that was his problem; if he kept up like this, you may have to start questioning your friendship with him. 
But there's something cathartic that comes as the adrenaline is depleting. It's said that revenge doesn't provide the cathartic relief that one hopes for, but you weren't looking for revenge as much as you were looking to send a message. And you're fairly certain that message was thoroughly received. Eret had been afraid, deeply and truly afraid; you'd seen it in her eyes. It made up for the fear you had seen in Wilbur's. 
You breathe a deep sigh, letting your shoulders relax for a moment; you head home.
There's static in your ears as you travel back to L'manburg, and you don't quite register that you're back on your nation's soil until you hear shouts. Tommy, Tubbo; the children, they spot you covered in blood that's both yours and not, and they're full of concern. You smile. The wound on your head starts to ache a little, the adrenaline wearing off fully.
"Don't worry about me -" you try, unable to keep the fondness from your voice.
"Wilbur!" Tommy hollers, because he knows. Everyone knows. You've staked your claim enough that even your allies know where to turn when you're acting out of character. It has you laughing, quietly at first - Dream had tried to warn Eret, how stupid must they be to ignore that, to not follow his instructions to the letter? - but your laughter only gets louder as Tubbo takes off, also calling for Wilbur ad Tommy, genuinely concerned, asks what the fuck happened to you.
"I'm a jester," you laugh, eyes a little wild as you look to the child, "I'm just a fucking jester! A messenger! Can't kill the messenger," there's something wild, something feral about you, covered in blood with a grin that's all teeth, bloody and bruised and covering a bloodstained axe. Tommy takes a step back, wary and quiet. His eyes are wide as he looks to your axe. 
"I thought you used a bow," he says quietly. Your smile grows wider.
"I'm a bad shot with a bow," you tell him seriously. He blinks slowly, processes your words.
"You shot me," there's apprehension in his voice. He's getting it. Perhaps you should take more caution here; you don't want to break the illusion of you he sees.
"I didn't know you then," is what you say, and see the confusion and vague horror as he tries to figure out what you mean by that. But he's interrupted.
"What did you do?" Wilbur doesn't see the humour in your appearance, he seems like he's barely containing rage. When all you do is grin, giving a slight shrug, he turns to Tommy, tells him he'll take care of you, that the boy should join Tubbo. Tommy looks between the two of you; he tells Wilbur to be careful. You laugh again, bright and loud, and Tommy and Wilbur both frown at you, but at least Tommy follows Wilbur's directions.
With the kid gone, Wilbur turns on his heel, making a beeline for where he knows you've hidden your living area, and you follow him without question.
In your house, his voice turns softly malevolent;
"Who did this to you?" Oh. Your heart catches in your throat, and the surprise must read on your face; despite his furious expression he's gentle when he takes hold of your wrist, leading you to your basin.
"You don't need to worry about me," you tell him softly, though you obligingly sit on the edge of the basin. You lean your axe up behind you.
"You're covered in blood," he points out, gaze flicking for a moment to meet yours as the water runs, filling the basin up. 
"Only some of its mine," you try, endeared by the care he was showing, "I just had to deliver a message, that's all."
"You look like you had to go through hell for it," he muses.
"You don't need to worry about me, Wilbur," and you reach out to take his hand where he's dousing a washcloth in the water. He goes still. 
"What message?" He asks, finally conceding, tone finally soft. He flips your hand, carefully wiping the blood from it. 
"People need to be more careful who they use me against," you say idly, and Wilbur is quiet as he works diligently away, cleaning the blood from your hands, from your arms when you offer them. 
"I kept seeing the moment you saw me die," you tell him softly, voice barely more than a whisper as he's rinsing the blood from the cloth. He gives pause; you continue, "I expect betrayal, but I can't imagine how it must feel to have to watch that and be unable to do anything; I suppose that's why Dream told them to kill me first. If their timing wasn't perfect, I'd see one of you slaughtered - I could have seen you slaughtered," you muse, looking down at your hands, at the blood beneath your nails. Carefully, Wilbur finally lifts your chin so he can gently dab at the wound on your forehead, looking as though he was holding back a fond smile. "But I think what happened was worse; I never want to be the source of your unhappiness, on purpose or not," then finally, you look to his eyes, to how he's focusing, and your heart beats hard against your ribs, "I don't want you to worry about me." It's barely more than a whisper, far more honest than the candid way you'd said as much earlier. 
"What did you do?" It's fond now, much lighter than the situation at hand called for, and for a moment he meets your gaze, smiling ever so slightly, your face still in his hands.
His eyes are so dark, you never want him to stop looking at you like this; these feelings are already becoming dangerous, on the verge of swallowing you whole. You need him closer. It had been a blood sacrifice to atone for that look in his eyes.
You will never have the words to tell him all you’re willing to do for him. 
"The king is dead," you tell him, "long live the king." 
----
"Surprised you weren't optioned as their VP," Quackity's smile was all teeth as he slid into the booth, across from you. 
"Surprised you were," you fired back, glad for his company; the two of you don't talk like you once did, but you'd always held a fondness for him.
"POG2020 here to drown their sorrows at losing?" He asked, tone edging on something almost mean, but stopping just short.
"Those of them that can drink," you'd grinned, gaze turning to the bar where Wilbur was glaring into a half drunk pint, "he promised me a drink half an hour ago," but you're tone was fond. Quackity makes a noise of sudden understanding.
"That's why you weren't his VP," he says, sitting a little lower in his seat, expression smug, but eyes alight like a tiger with his interest piqued. You make a noise like you have no idea what he's talking about, "poor form, really, looks bad if he's sleeping with his VP."
"You dirty fuckin pervert," but your grin gets wider as your tone gets flustered, "we're not fucking!"
"But you want to," his grin gets wider, "late nights at the office, just the two of you, all alone, its stressful, it's a tough job you know-" his tone is low, teasing in a way that means you can't meet his eyes, but his tone shifts as he seems to hear what he's saying, "hey do you wanna come work with me?" It's mostly a joke, smile turning to something genuine with the way it crinkles by his eyes, and the tension from mere moments ago disappears, and you lean forward, resting your chin on your hand with a sly smile.
"Depends on the benefits," you match his earlier tone, teasing and low, and he mirrors your positioning, face now close to yours, close to the middle of the table.
"I'm sure I could talk Schlatt into something reasonable for the other benefits," he's still smiling, still mostly joking, as were you, though you couldn't deny the thought of being Quackity's assistant and part of the Jschlatt Administration was deeply amusing given your recent history.
"You really in the market for an assistant?" Your tone was brighter, far less joking, and for an instant, Quackity flushed an amusing shade of pink.
"I could be- this was meant to be a bit-" 
"You here to rub my nose in it, Quackity?" Wilbur's voice, when it joined the pair of you, was accusatory, and though you don't move from your surprisingly intimate moment, Quackity's eyes slide to the side, to watch Wilbur side effortlessly into the seat beside you. 
"Former President Soot," Quackity grinned, but instead of watching Wilbur's reaction, he looked back at you, raising a single, almost challenging eyebrow. Wilbur, at the very least, ignores the comment.
"You conspiring against me?" He asks, mostly directed at you, and while Quackity tries to snort and play it off, you can feel Wilbur's hand slide down the length of your back coming to rest at your hip, arm now around you, and you lean out of your moment with Quackity and into his touch.
Something in Quackity’s gaze turns cold, like he’s awash with memories long past, like he’s quietly mad at himself for losing himself in the moment with you, for forgetting any part of what you’d put him through. 
"Not in a technical sense, but I also hadn't agreed to anything," you tell him, finally looking at him. As you settle into the space beside him, his arm moves to wrap around your shoulders, fingers resting gently on your upper arm; it's a clearly possessive gesture. Something in your heart bursts with warmth.
Looking to him, you see he's looking back at you, expression burning, question in his eyes; was I interrupting? Your grin turns sharper. If he had been interrupting, you're more than capable of telling him to fuck off, but just having him around reminds you that this is better than any alternative. 
"Oh," Quackity's voice was alight with realisation, breaking the moment, and you turn to him as Wilbur leans into you a little more, "you would have made the worst VP," he practically crows, tone more mocking than it was light, "you wouldn't have made it a week."
"Don't be a prick," Wilbur scowled, "if they'd wanted the job they of course would have been more than welcome to it -"
"Good old fashioned nepotism," Quackity, sounding especially smug, did little to brighten Wilbur's mood, who was set to mumble something else snide before Quackity's eyes fixed on you, "wait, you didn't want to be VP? I was actually right, wasn't I? You knew exactly what would happen, yet somehow he doesn't?! Have you even seen yourselves? How does he not - Ow!" You kick him in the shins under the table. Hard. 
"What the fuck are you on about?" Wilbur asks, as Quackity brings his leg up to rub at his sore shin. He's still fucking grinning. Asshole.
"Keep your dirty little mouth closed, Q," you warned. 
"Don't worry, I know its not my dirty little mouth you're interested in- fucking ow, Y/N!"
"Good," Wilbur's voice in your ear is warm and pleased and he's leaning on you now, solid and tipsy with his forehead against the side of your head, "he's being a dick, you have terrible friends you know."
"You'd be the worst," you murmur back, voice syrupy and full of affection as Wilbur actually giggles, not even bothering to try and contradict you. Quackity, across from you and still rubbing his shins, mimes gagging. 
"Go be Vice President, Quackity," Wilbur sneers.
"Don't be a salty bitch, Mister Former President," Quackity's lip curls. 
"Kick him in the shins again, my love," the nickname alone, Wilbur in your ear, it has your heart in a vice-like grip, and Quackity must see it in your eyes how eager you are to follow through because he draws his knees up to his chest with gusto, flipping you both off. You laugh.
"Love you, Q," you tell him with sincerity, out of habit. When he tells you to shut up, there’s nothing joking in his tone in that moment, gaze avoiding yours as he’s shimmying from the booth.
"You're so generous with your words," Wilbur's voice is a gentle sigh, something wanting, something almost forlorn. For a moment your breath catches in your throat, but before you can respond, before you can even think of a response, he's already talking again, "what was he on about anyways? Talking shit about you like he has any right to, you would have made a great VP, I asked, you know I asked -" he sits up, as if worried that you think he thinks less of you, but his arm is still around you.
"Will your the only one who wanted me to be VP," which isn't a lie, but in your trademark fashion, it also wasn't the whole truth. 
"They don't trust you with a nation," he sounded so bitter, and for a moment your heart stutters in your chest. 
"They shouldn't," you tell him softly. 
"Do you like Quackity more than me?"
"I think I probably like him more than you like him, yes."
"That wasn't what I was asking and you knew that," then his voice drops, something in his eyes as serious as you've ever seen, "do you like Dream more than me?"
"Wilbur…"
"I know- I know you're close, I know, I just… I need to know, you know?"
"Will…" and as you say his name, voice a hesitant murmur, he cups your face.
"You don't have to- to be worried if you do, I just need to know, for me, it's selfish but I need to know for me; I'd understand, of course of course I'd understand, you two have history-" and his gaze is boring into you, eyes wide and dark and you can't find the words for how much you want him to hold you close, hold you tight and never let go. 
You hesitate. You drop his gaze.
"You do," he sounds heartbroken, his grip on you grows slack.
"I have never lied to you, Wilbur," your tone is nervous and hesitant, "but I'm afraid of answering, I'm afraid of what it means."
"You'd… you'd betray me for him?" Drunk and emotional, he sits back, but your hands are shaking. 
"Wilbur, I'm afraid of answering because… you're wrong. It's you. Over Big Q, over Dream, over everyone… Wilbur I-" your voice caught in your throat, words too honest by half, so you swallow them, choose safer ones, "will choose you," you let out a shaky sigh, "you have my loyalty." 
His eyes were wide as saucers, shiny and overwhelmed and emotional and then he's holding you so tight it's like a vice, face pressed into the crook of your neck.
"You've always had my vote," you tell him faintly, and he holds you tighter still. 
"You," he whispers incredulously, not even your name, just, "its you." And your mind hears them said like a mirror, like he himself can't quite believe your honestly. 
----
“They’re exiling you,” you hear Quackity before you see him; they’ve got you locked away, and probably for good reason, but also probably at his insistence.
“It’s better than the death penalty,” you say, huffing a laugh.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” his tone is gentle but reserved, and when you finally look up from your hands, elbows braced on your knees, you see him leaning on the bars of your cage. It’s too dark to read his expression, but you can tell from his voice, “just play nice with Schlatt and you can stay a citizen.”
“Play nice?” You asked with the faintest of smirks, “what does that entail exactly?”
This is where he grows quiet, crouching down and looking at the floor, mouth in a thin line.
“You’re good at playing nice, it shouldn’t be hard,” you can’t mistake the bitterness in his voice, and you give pause, “just say it was an act, your loyalty to that dictator, Wilbur.”
“Lie, so I can swap out one perceived dictator for another?” You asked softly.
“Helping run a campaign for the former president only to admit that you don’t actually give a shit, and stay loyal to the man who won by forming a coalition with the two losing parties, that sounds exactly like something you’d do,” he pointed out, and there’s something in his voice you can’t identify, something akin to faint desperation, though you can’t quite understand why. But still, something catches in your throat. 
“Isn’t it funnier to stay loyal to the former president who lost after the two losing parties formed a secret coalition? To the point of exile?”
“Can’t you just play nice? Can’t you just lie?”
“You wanna keep me around that bad?” You asked, faintly teasing edge to your words, but as soon as he stands, as soon as he speaks, you can hear him growing defensive.
“I’m the Vice President trying to offer an olive branch to a potentially skilled ally,” he sniped, “don’t get it twisted.”
“I’m not going to lie to try and play nice with the dictator who stole the nation from the person I’m loyal to,” you tell him, blunt. Quackity is quiet for a very long moment. 
“Dream ‘ll be heartbroken,” his voice is suddenly strangely rough, “someone’s knocked him out as top fuckin’ dog in your little, black heart -”
“Q,” it’s finally clicked, and you don’t know what else to say. 
----
“I want you to know what I’m capable of,” you say softly, looking up at the stars. Then, slowly, you look at Wilbur, who’s regarding you with interest, “everyone ends up afraid of me,” you tell him, “and it might be self sabotage, but I want you to fear me too. I’m not used to love, I’m not used to understanding.” 
“More honest than usual tonight,” he muses with a gentle smile.
“If I’m not feared I feel like I’m being underestimated.”
“It sounds like self sabotage.”
“I feel violent today,” then, looking up at the stars you take a deep breath, “I love you. I don’t think I’ve said that before; I love you, Wilbur.”
“You love me and you want me to fear you,” he says slowly. His gaze follows the tense set of your shoulders, “not used to loving someone?” You shake your head. 
“I want to cut off your head, just so you know I could,” you tell him, hands behind your back, gaze skyward, “I think I want to fuck you, but I’m not sure, I’m really not used to loving someone, not genuinely. I don’t think I know how to love you in a way that makes sense.” 
Finally, you turn to him, expression neutral, while inside you were alight with nerves. He’s watching you, dark eyes thoughtful. You swallow hard.
“I’m trying to push you away,” you tell him without hesitation, “because I’ve given you too much power over me, and I-” you voice catches, your façade cracking, and finally you drop your gaze, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m like this.”
Even your honesty was it’s own kind of dishonest mask, and there was nothing more fear inducing than genuinely letting it slip. Your image is a house of cards and you keep handing Wilbur fucking fans. 
“You know at some point I am just going to leave; I don’t want to, but if you keep pushing -” he pauses, as if expecting a rebuttal, but your mouth remains firmly closed, which causes him to frown, “- I’m going to end up leaving. Do you want me to go? I’m just going to ask, because you keep pushing, you keep doing this, I’d rather you were just honest with me.”
“I’m always honest with you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I don’t want you to stay around me out of some sort of moral obligation,” you tell him.
“That’s not an answer.” 
“And I can’t answer because you can’t guarantee you won’t end up fucking fearing me like everyone else! I can’t answer because I am not going to be responsible for someone else’s feelings; if you stop caring about me I don’t want you to feel like you should still be around me, and just go on to resent me!”
Squeezing your eyes closed, face scrunched up, you force the words through your lips, “I would give you the fucking world, Wilbur, but I don’t expect- I don’t want to expect anything in return,” your jaw clenches for a moment, but you relax your face, eyes still closed, “obsession,” you sigh gently, “is safer if I am sure it is not reciprocated. Especially obsession like this...”
“Like this?”
“The things I obsess over... they’re just that; things. And I want to keep them safe, but I don’t... I don’t actually love them like I love you,” your lip curls, and you look at the ground, slowly sinking into a squat as you contemplate, “it’s fucking obscene,” you spit, as if disgusted at yourself. “Love makes me feel fucking filthy; it’s always funnier when I’m the object of desire.”
“You’re still trying to push me away!”
“And yet you’re still here, so who’s the real idiot!?” You snapped, lip curled in a sneer as you shot him a venomous look; the shock of it all was plain as day on his face, but you don’t let the faint guilt you feel show on your face as you look at your hands.
“I love you,” he says faintly, still sounding surprised, like he can’t quite realise what he’s saying, “and I’m just tired to trying to fight you on that, I don’t know how to prove that what I say to you is the truth; you don’t have a patent on honesty, and I just don’t know what to do to get you to believe me.” And then, coming back to himself, anger returning, “it’s not filthy to be in love!”
“It is when it’s obsession,” your answer comes out more like a growl.
“Y/N, my drug empire turned into a nation, I think more people should be obsessed with me,” he says with surprising levity. Something protective, something jealous flares up at that suggestion, but you keep your reaction to yourself, looking up at him as something close to hope flares bright in your chest. “You act like you’re the only one here, like you’re the only one allowed to worry about me, like you’re the only one willing to- to die. You killed the King for me, you have Dream’s respect, if I was going to be afraid of you it would have settled in by now,” then, “the only reason I haven’t killed Eret for what he did to you is because you got there first yourself. Do you believe me when I tell you that I love you?”
The question hangs in the air between you both; you think you can almost see it there, catching starlight. You look at your hands instead.
“I believe there’s something wrong with the type of people who fall in love with me,” you admit, barely louder than a whisper, “and part of me believes you’re better than that.” 
“Listen to yourself,” he gives an exasperated chuckle, “there’s something wrong with you.”
“I know that,” you say almost immediately. Silence lapses out between you, and finally Wilbur sighs, stepping in close and wrapping his arms around you.
“I think it might be why I love you.” 
There’s never been a more dangerous feeling in your chest than in this moment, in his arms. You want to tell him you’d kill for him, you’d die for him, but it’s more than that, more than you could explain or do justice with words alone, so you hug him back, and never want this moment to end.
“There’s something wrong with you, too.”
----
He is silent; cold and unmoving and your hands start to shake. 
"You did what you had to," your tone is flat, no distress, nothing, just flat. Phil is quiet. Neither of you move. You can hear your heart beat in your ears. "We should move his body."
"Yeah…" and then, softer, "actually, no, it won't be around for long… but we can set up a gravestone."
"What do you mean?"
"Bodies here don't stay, they move on-" and as Phil speaks, as you step towards the body on the ground, hand outstretched, it begins to fade to ash, to dust. Only his things were left behind. Your fingers curl into a fist and you lower your hand, "are you okay?" His voice has the barest shake, like he still can't believe what just happened.
"It was never meant to be," you tell him instead of answering truthfully, forcing yourself to smile as you finally look up to the father of your best friend, your- "are you okay, Phil? I'm sorry you had to do that, I'm sorry-"
"You're okay." He sounded deeply concerned by what he'd perceived to be your response. Looking out from the room to the crater, you see Withers flying overhead, and hear shouting and confusion.
"I should go," you say softly, "I'm the only one left who could take the fall for that," you muse, jaw tightening for a moment, though noone can see your expression. When you move past Phil, you pause, and tell him quietly, reassuringly, that he did what had to be done, and that you were sorry. 
"Was he just a means to an end for you, just another joke? You'd gotten better, you'd gotten kinder-" his voice finally betrayed his distress; his son was dead by his own hand and you'd just watched, "what happened?"
It takes you a long time to formulate your response, terrified of letting yourself be vulnerable; you'd been the villain too many times to not expect an opportunist to use your vulnerability against you. Phil may not be that opportunist, but you know better than anyone what dangers may lurk behind a kind face and sincere veneer.
"Whatever I may have felt is no longer relevant, to you, me, or anyone; he's gone, as is L'manburg."
"Did you even care about him?" Phil asks gently, "don't talk your way around me, please, Y/N." Your breath catches for a moment; he's giving you an imploring look, holding your wrist carefully; outside, someone, possibly Tommy, is hollering both yours and Wilbur's names with fury. 
"Care is a very weak word for how I may have felt," you tell him softly, holding his gaze. Your tone is flat, but you see it in his eyes when he catches your meaning, how you can't bring yourself to admit out loud that you loved Wilbur, "not that it matters now… not that anyone would believe you if you told them." You said, tone dismissive. Phil lets you go.
----
"Oh hello, Quackity!" You hear Ghostbur cheerfully greeting someone as he peers out the window, leaning far enough out on the sill, pushed up on his toes, that you're half worried he'll fall. You hear violently loud shushing outside your house and your blood runs cold. Why was he trying to sneak up on your house?
You’re intrigued by it all, and don’t try and put up a fight.
"I suppose the kangaroo court is now in session," you mused, peering up at the precarious contraption above you, "can you at least tell me why you're dropping an anvil on my head?"
"Because you're a threat to society," Quackity grumbles, though he can't bring himself to look at you.
"Because you drove my father to madness, helped him blow up half the land, then you killed him once he'd outlived his purpose," Fundy was unflinching as he levelled a glare at you.
“They didn’t kill me,” it’s Ghostbur’s voice that joins the foray, amid the shouting, while you’re hopping from one foot to the other, looking up at the anvil, the gentle reverb that accompanies his soft speech cuts through the din.
And suddenly the madness stops; all eyes on the Ghost.
“Don’t kill her over me, if that’s your reasoning;” he paused, nervous, “or just don’t kill them…” he trailed off.
“Don’t you get that they’ve already made up their mind?” Quackity’s rolling his eyes, standing by the lever that decides your fate, “if they wanted someone to release them, they could have convinced one of us by now-” and he looks to you, eyes dark and cold, and the moment you’d shared back at Wilbur’s grave surfaces in your mind ‘you’re getting better at hearing the truth’.
"Quackity-" you breathed, alight with intrigue at this development, unable to help yourself. There's an old, familiar flicker of misguided desire, for lack of a better word.
"Keep my fucking name out of your mouth," he muttered, only loud enough for you to hear, "and quit it with that tone." He can't look at you; you delicately wrap press your hands to the glass of your cage.
"Q, what tone, I don't-" but even you could hear the giddy notes that bleed through in your words.
"You're about to die; I'm about to kill you, but you're hear acting- talking like you did when you pretended to care about me-"
"I have cared about you from the moment I met you," you fired back defensively, "I have always cared about you, Quackity."
“God I really fuckin’ preferred it when you lied, then I didn’t have to try and figure out what the fuck you mean when you talk like that,” he snapped, before making his way from the podium, “I’m sick of them, someone else pull the lever.” He called out; he’s taking a stand, trying to block you out, keep your words out of his head. This was the Quackity you’d been so captivated by when you’d met him, the man who intrigued you, who you thought could challenge you, whose very nature excited you. Heart beating in your ears, you press your hands to the glass of the cage, looking out past him, to the others.
“I was not responsible for what happened to Wilbur,” you called, looking to Fundy, who you’re pleased to see looked conflicted, “what happened to L’Manberg wasn’t my fault- I fought with you. I fought with you all,” there’s the faintest notes of desperation in your voice. You had already made peace with your fate, now you were simply intrigued as to whose hands your blood would be on.
“Fine, Fundy if you’re conflicted because they didn’t kill your dad, you can stay out of it,” Quackity’s got his hands shoved in his pockets, but you can see the hard, tense line of his shoulders.
“It feels like our actual execution reasons... aren’t there anymore,” Tubbo points out, “and as a leader, I feel bad killing someone for being a nuisance, and not even a nuisance to me or anyone else.”
“This feels kinda personal,” Ranboo adds, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, “which is fine, but they don’t seem like a threat to the country.”
“Did you fucking forget she became Wilbur Soot’s right hand?!” Quackity demanded from them, stepping forward again, “ she may not have been responsible for pressing the button, but she had ample opportunity to stop him; hell, she had ample opportunity to not be a dick. How can we even believe what she says?!”
“People do some fucked up things for love,” Ranboo gives a simple shrug.
“And Y/N doesn’t lie,” Tubbo pointed out, looking to you. In this moment, time freezes; his words buzz in the back of your mind as you look to Quackity, trying to decipher how he’s reacting when you can’t see his face. Because he can’t give it away, can’t bring himself to admit the power you once had over him, the sliver of power you still have, can’t make himself look weak, and it’s killing him.
They’ve only known you to be honest, and for that you’re glad... but Quackity knew you before.
Perhaps your begging, your desperation, had worked too well.
----
“You gonna give the people a show?” Your heart is beating in your throat as you find yourself waiting in your cell, hands restrained behind your back as Dream himself paces in irate silence outside your cell.
“I gave you the option to come back, to join me to not go down this road,” he’s seething, hands balling into white-knuckled fists and unballing again and again, “I don’t understand you, I don’t fucking understand you, Y/N,” and he stops, pulls off his mask to run his hand through his hair in irritation. Then he looks to you, and you’re looking back, expression thoughtful, or at least, you hopes it comes across as thoughtful, rather than betraying the way you’re heart is hammering against your ribs.
“It’s not your fault it’s more amusing to be on the side of revolution,” you told him, lips quirking into the faintest smile, “they called it L’manberg,” your smile widens, unable to help your own laugh, and his distress becomes more evident. Then, smile slowly fading, you meet Dream’s gaze, giving a slight frown.
“You didn’t have to do this,” you tell him seriously, “you could have picked anyone else to do this, you didn’t have to volunteer.”
“If I had picked anyone else,” he swallows hard, looking at the ground and taking a deep breath, “you would have talked your way out, and it would have made them look weak, but there would be a target still on your head and you’d be hunted.”
“And you?”
“You’ve never done that thing you do with me, talk circles, trying to get me on your side -”
“You’re already on my side,” you say gently, but his expression turns pained.
“They know - everyone knows I’m the only person on the side of Pogtopia you haven’t attempted to talk your way around, but I’m also the only person who could convince you to go into exile, to not fucking let yourself be killed, and have the others not hunt you furiously when they find out.”
“Dream the Great and Powerful,” you smile, tone fond and frankly adoring, he winces again.
“You’re a pain,” he mutters, mostly to himself, before he lowers himself into a squat, as if to centre himself, gaze lifting to you finally, “you can go; join Tommy in exile, you don’t have to… to… you don’t have to die, dude.”
“If I die, in their eyes I’ve atoned for my crimes,” you try to sit back, settling in a little against the wall, “you and Tommy will never see eye to eye, but like you said, that thing I do, the way I talk my way around people, that has affected more than just you,” you took a deep breath, “the only person I really respected apart from you died, Dream, the only person who truly vouched for me apart from you is dead, Dream.” Your smile grows tight, and suddenly you can’t look him in the eyes; respect, it was so much more than that. Your heart grows warm at his memory, the mere thought of his smile, before growing cold and sad as he demanded that Phil kill him. It must show on your face.
“Wilbur protected you,” Dream said, tone knowing, but you couldn’t help but bark a laugh at that.
“Wilbur was my limiter,” you corrected, and Dream’s eyebrows rose, momentarily broken from his distress, “I respected him, I… anyways, so if he asked me not to fuck with one of our allies, I wouldn’t - except to give you Tommy’s discs,” you clarified, and for the barest moment, Dream’s lips twitched into something almost resembling a smile.
“You’re kind of awful,” he says gently, “you’d fuck with your allies? Just change sides, don’t mess with the people who trust you and expect them to keep trusting you as such.”
“My ally was Wilbur, the rest of them were on his side,” you explained, “I’m on my own side before anyone else's,” you reminded, and he nodded seriously, looking to the floor, bouncing on his toes.
----
"I- I mean I'm not sorry," Quackity muses. You don't look up, but you hear him sit on the other side of Wilbur's Tombstone. 
"I don't know why you would be; you're not responsible for what happened to me."
“Oh,” Quackity frowns, giving pause, “no, I meant about him,” and he slaps the side of the tombstone with one hand.
“Not your fault either,” you shrugged.
"He did it to himself," which is right, but not in the way Quackity means it. He thinks Wilbur blew up. He doesn't know what was asked of Phil. You're quiet, and finally Quackity speaks; "did you actually love him or was it another one of your stunts?"
"Love is a strong word," you respond, tone devoid of inflection. He can't hear how badly you want to confirm, you want to holler how fucking wide the sky has gotten in Wilbur's absence. 
"Can you just teach me how to not fucking care? Because how is it so easy for you? How do you wake up and decide you're going to ruin lives and stand by while the world goes up in flames?" 
“I don’t do it on purpose.”
“It’s just a side effect of who you are as a person,” he says derisively. 
"You find what you love and let it kill you," you tell him, voice quiet. 
"You find who you love and let them kill you," he says, knowingly, "you followed Eret into the control room because of Wilbur," he said knowingly, "and we all saw who gave you that mark on your neck," he laughs humourlessly. "But you can't even entertain the idea that I could hurt you, can you?" He asks.
"Find who you love and let them kill you."
"What then?" 
"Hope your love for them dies too; severing attachments takes great personal sacrifice." 
"You sound like Dream."
"I've known him the longest, you know?"
"He's your best friend, I remember," he tells you derisively, "so did your love die?"
"My attachment to him is situational at best." 
“But does it die?” He asked quietly, “you severed the attachment, but does the love die?” His tone is hollow, and you swallowed hard. 
“You’re getting better at hearing the truth.” You give a humourless laugh, and he responds with a non-committal hum
“I liked you better when you lied," he says quietly.
"I almost got you killed," you tell him flatly, and he huffs a faint laugh.
"Correction, I almost died for you."
"What's the difference?"
"Intention," you can hear his faint smile, "find what you love and let it kill you, after all." Then, quieter, "you should finish the job."
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Give me that kind of power over you," you tell him flatly. 
"You should finish what you started," he scoffs, the mood shifting more and more with each word, "you're the one who wanted me to die for you; if you're learning to be all honourable and noble and shit, you should learn to take accountability -" he huffed in frustration, "can I be perfectly fucking honest with you for a moment?"
"I'd appreciate it," you tell him. There's a few moments of silence that follow, and finally you shift, peering at him over your shoulder to where he's leaning against the headstone, legs kicked out in front of him. He looks at you, eyes dark and tired.
"I'm so tired of giving a shit about you."
You know there's something selfish in how you miss seeing his smile in this moment. But then again, did you miss his smile, or did you miss what it represented; his love and loyalty. 
----
"You're getting rained on," Ghostbur said quietly, looking at you with his wide, cloudy eyes as you held an umbrella open and aloft above him.
"I'll live," you said pointedly, and at Ghostbur's smile became faintly strained, but he accept the umbrella. You, however, didn't move, sitting beside him on the log that you'd found him on.
"What are you doing out here?" He asked, shuffling a little closer, if only to try and shield you too with the little umbrella. Instead of looking to him, you look at the grey, drizzling clouds looming overhead.
"I saw it was clouding over," you told him, "and no-one I spoke to had seen you for a while..." you trailed off, shrugging, as if that was enough.
"You've always been a lovely friend, I remember that, I remember..." but his own voice trails off, dies in his throat; you look at him with interest, and after a beat he looks back at you, "I remember the good times, the happy times, and you, in the beginning you were a wonderful friend, but I don't... they say I blew up a nation, you know, and I don't remember that, but I don't remember a lot leading up to that either. It -" he hesitates before backtracking, choosing his words carefully, "did something bad happen between us?"
Your understanding of the word, of the time you spent with Wilbur, it was all shattering in your mind at once. His eyes were wide and full of concern when you look back at him, and he reaches out gently, wiping away a tear you hadn't realised had fallen; you hear the hiss of the water against his thumb and move out of his touch.
"Sorry," he says softly, genuine apology in his voice, "was it because of what I did to L'Manberg?" He asks gently. Around you, the rain was getting heavier.
"I thought we were happy," it came out barely louder than a whisper, and you quickly wiped your eyes, despite the rain now coming down hard enough to hide your tears, "I should have... I know I should have said something, but I thought we both just knew, you know? I should have..." and you turn, bottom lip trembling, "I'm sorry, Ghostbur, I know you're not him, you keep saying that, but I never got to tell Alive-You that I... you know," you swallowed hard, "that I love him. You? Him? I never actually got to tell him properly, in a way that makes sense. But I did. I do. And I thought... Fuck," the word comes out in a harsh breath, and you find yourself scowling and looking away, "probably for the best that I didn't say anything if he - you, I guess - weren't - wasn't? - happy."
"I know he cared about you, as much as I can remember, he never stopped caring," Ghostbur's voice is quiet, and finally, you look at him. His face is scrunched up with concentration, but there's small trails of steam -
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you cry," you're genuinely apologetic, and he looks shocked when you look up, as if he hadn't even noticed.
"Just because I don't remember doesn't mean... well a lot of things were not good memories towards the end, but that's because of everything going on up here," he was wiping at his eyes quickly to dispel the tears before he taps his temple with two fingers, "and if what you're saying is true, he wasn't unhappy because of you, he was just unhappy, and it... there are months missing for me, and that's no-one's fault."
Oh... well you supposed you could understand that, still, it was difficult to process this whole conversation and all it's implications.
"How is this the most amusing option, if you don't mind me asking?" He suddenly speaks up, and you look up with confusion.
"What do you mean?"
"You're upset, I don't think I've ever seen you upset -"
"Well it probably wouldn't be a good memory if you had," you reminded, to which he conceded.
"But I remember clear as day when we met, and you told me and Tommy that you simply did whatever amused you the most, this... this doesn't seem particularly amusing."
"I don't operate like that anymore," you told him frankly, staring at your hands.
"Oh," he muttered softly, before asking, voice tentatively, "why did you think to come find me?"
You take a moment to deliberate, to consider your own reasoning and motivations, still looking at your hands, fingers twisting and curling and locking into inconsistent shapes.
"You used to do this near the end," you said softly, "used to run off and sit near the button and think and think and think but never do anything," you paused, "and I never cared about the land like I cared about you, so I was all for blowing it all up, but it... I could see it was doing something to you. The election, everything that was happening, it did something to you; you were spiralling, and I knew if I didn't know where you were, you were by the button. Awful and fucking beautiful, and dude, I'm- I'm so sorry I didn't tell you but, Christ, I was so in love with you, Wilb-" looking sharply at him, your voice died in your throat, and you corrected yourself, "him. Not... you're different. Right. Ghostbur." He blinked at you, a little taken aback by the sudden passion of your outburst, of your explanation. You cleared your throat. "No-one else had the balls to acknowledge that the land no longer functioned by the ideals it was built for, and I loved your passion; I could listen to you talk down there for hours. Sometimes I did. It was like a prison and a safe space all at once, and I don't know if it made things better or worse, but when he couldn't stand to see what the world had become, we'd sit in that room with the button and talk."
Finally, you looked at him, seeing him and not the man he used to be.
"And today I couldn't find you, and I knew it was going to rain, and... I know rain hurts you. There's no button, but you don't spend time in town anymore, so I looked for Friend." You looked at the little, blue sheep who'd been happily munching on some grass during your conversation. Then a faint, cold pressure in your hands, and you look down to see Ghostbur pressing a vial of a thick, blue liquid into your hands.
"Have some blue," he said softly, "it'll make you feel better." And then, much softer, he thanks you for finding him, he takes your free hand and laces your fingers with his, "thank you for talking to me."
"Thank you for talking to me." You mumble, giving his hand a squeeze, feeling a touch guilty for unloading all of this on him. No-one else would listen, or if they would, they didn't care; people had gone from not trusting you because you refused to be completely loyal to any thing but yourself, now they hated you for staying loyal to what they deemed to be the wrong thing. Allies were few and far between, and Ghostbur may see himself as separate to Wilbur, but you weren't going to stop yourself from caring about him too.
----
"You're in here," Tommy's voice is quiet where he's thumbing through a notebook you half recognise. Making a noise of interest, you look a little closer at the notebook - What I Remember. Ghostbur's notes, you feel yourself growing tongue tied.
"I don't- you shouldn't be reading that."
"You suddenly decided to grow a conscience?"
"Shut up," your lip curled, "and I'm not in it."
"Who else would be the Favourite Jester?" He asked, turning the book around, but you covered your eyes. 
"Don't be a sook," he sneered.
"Does Ghostbur know you have it?" You asked, and he grew a little antsy at that, to which you simply growled at him to give it back. But still, you catch a glimpse of it;
“Its you.” - in the notebook, in Ghostbur's neat scrawl - you chose me when no-one else did.
----
"I think Tommy trusts me," you told Dream, frowning at your brewing stand. Dream, for his part, finds the humour in your statement where he's sitting at your table, leaning back, his feet on the table.
"Tommy, I've changed!" Your tone shifts to a mocking imitation of your earlier conversation with the boy, "death has changed me!" And you dropped the act with a snort, "getting a scar doesn't make me a different person," you rolled your eyes. Dream clears his throat.
"Sorry about that, again," he muttered.
"No hard feelings, dude, obviously," you grinned over your shoulder.
"So you- you're okay with my plan; the two of you fought side by side for your nation -"
"I'll be by your side until -"
"Until something better comes along," Dream nods in resignation.
----
“I’m sorr- Ghostbur I’m so sorry,” you sniffled, angrily rubbing at your eyes, frustrated that he had even seen you get so emotional, “I’m not- you shouldn’t have seen that, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, crying’s normal,” he said, voice a gentle echo of the one you loved, “do you want to talk about it?”
“Not with you, Ghostbur,” though you’re shooting for light, it doesn’t land, and instead, he looks to the floor, apologising. You wipe the tears that refuse to stop spilling from your eyes.
“You still miss him so much it moves you to tears?”
“You caught me in a moment of weakness.”
“I didn’t think you were capable of those,” he says with a faint laugh, and you look at him, see his quietly fond smile, and for a moment you see the memory of Wilbur himself, and your expression crumples. Immediately as you bury your face in your hands, you feel him by your side, apologising, trying to lay a comforting hand on your arm. The touch is cold but familiar, and you reach out instinctively and grab his hand.
“Ghostbur, my life is a fucking joke and I’m not laughing anym-” he kisses you quick when he gets the chance, his mouth on yours so close to being familiar, but not quite. It knocks the wind from you, and for a moment you let yourself fall into it, grabbing his sweater and pulling him closer. 
“Does that help?” He asks a little breathless when you part, and you can’t look him in the eyes, only at your shaking hands balled up in his perfect, yellow sweater. 
“You’re not him,” your voice is a shaky whisper.
“I...” his words get caught in his throat, “I think right now I’m close enough. Does this,” and he holds your face with one hand like it’s porcelain, like he’s afraid you’re about to shatter, “does this help?”
“Why?” You can feel how weak you are in this moment, unable to let him go, knowing the truth of the whole situation. 
“I don’t like seeing you sad.”
“It’s not your job to make me happy, give me time and I’ll be alright,” but you don’t let him go, then, “tell me you don’t love me, please.”
“It seems dangerous to even entertain the idea; I’m not Wilbur,” he says gently, and finally you look at him, meeting his gaze, leaning into his touch. 
“Do you even want any of this?” Your voice is barely a whisper, “me, or anything like this moment?” Ghostbur visibly hesitated.
“I don’t want you to be sad,” he said with a surprising firmness, “I want to do whatever makes you happy,” then, his voice goes quiet, “even now, I forget sad things, people tell me sad things and the conversation ends, and I just... lose whatever they said,” he gives a faint smile, “but even in time that aren’t... aren’t the happiest, I haven’t forgotten you; something about being around you makes me happy, happy enough to remember you. All I want is for you to be happy too.”
“Did you lie to me?” Your voice is barely more than a whisper, and you can’t look him in the eyes, so you watch his lips twist into something thin and unhappy, before stumbling over his words, trying to deny, “did you lie about not remembering me? About not remembering... not remembering how close we were?”
“I thought...” his expression reads apology, his hands coming to cover yours where you can’t bring yourself to let him go, still holding him close by his sweater, “it would be easier for you to let go, to move on, if you didn’t know.” 
“But you don’t care about me like he did.”
“I care about you,” his eyes go wide and concerned, “but I’m not him. You understood him better than anyone and- and- and- he needed you- uh, your company,” he correct, faint blush rising on his cheeks at his own implicit wording, “more than anything else. You’re the one who stayed.” 
You swallowed hard, huffing a humourless laugh.
“And he’s the one who got away.”
“Y/N...”
“This feels...” you look to your hands still holding him close, then to his mouth, then his eyes, taking a shakey breath, “self destructive, for us both,” and his expression reads shock, reads apology, but in that instance you cave to your need for contact, leaning into him, to find what comfort you could in him. A shiver runs down your spine as you make a snap decision, “I know you’re not him, but I still love you,” you lie; he’s not the one you promised to always be honest with, but for now he’s as close as you’ve got, and you can’t let him go, “please don’t go.” 
----
It’s been a long time, relatively since you’d seen Q when you run into him. You’re not looking for him, you’re merely roaming on an overcast day, but he looks like he’s on a mission. He seems surprised to see you, right before his expression turns dark.
“Figures I’d run into you out here sooner or later,” his words genuinely confuse you, which he seems to pick up on, because at least for a moment, he seems confused himself, before clarifying, “Dream’s in prison.”
“Oh?”
“Don’t ‘oh’ me.” His audible irritation makes your own smile grow just a touch wider, “you know you should be there too.”
“Cruel, Q, they’ve already killed me for my crimes once,” you practically sing, amused smile stretched from ear to ear, “haven’t I suffered enough?” His smile was thin and mean.
“Not even close.”
“You make me miss being a bad person,” you say with a hint of self deprecation.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Quackity snorted, “you’re still terrible.”
“I like you standing up for yourself; self confidence is a good look on you.”
“You like anyone who actually challenges you,” he rolled his eyes, “which makes me feel fucking stupid for ever caring about you like I did. You don’t give a shit about simps, I get it now.”
“You’re better than that,” you tell him, which is a metaphorical slippery-slope, a half truth, since you only half-believe it, but your tone is low, is sincere, and he blinks quickly, surprised. 
“I- yeah, I know,” he scowls, but turns away. 
“Good, it’s good you know your worth,” you tell him seriously, “you have...” and you huff a faint laugh, tone awed and gentle, “so much potential, Q.” And for the barest moment, his expression softens. Carefully, he steps up to you.
“This is how it started last time,” his tone is low as you feel the feather-light way his fingertips ghost up your arm. He’s in your space, gaze locked with yours, searching for something in you that you can’t begin to guess at, right before he grabs your chin hard enough that it hurts, “you try and  build me up so you can tear me down - I’m not doing this again.” 
God damn it, you can feel your heart beat against your ribs at the sight of the fury in his eyes. 
“Q-” you try, soft and a little helpless. For a moment, both his grip and his gaze softens, and you know that look, that faint gentleness, from a time long passed, “I never spoke poorly of you, you just lost faith in me.” 
The look in his eyes before he storms off gives him away; he hates that in a twisted way, it’s still the truth.
----
“I’ve always appreciated your honesty,” Ghostbur muses; night is falling over the snowy biome you’d decided to call home, the house Dream had built for himself that sat abandoned since he was taken prisoner. Ghostbur is sitting on a bench, looking around, ankles crossed wearing a sunny smile.
“It’s the only thing I’m consistent about,” gave a wry smile, not looking up from where you were crouched in front of you brewing stand; everything started because of these brewing stands, just look how far you’ve come. You try not to dwell on that.
“Consistently inconsistent,” his tone was bright and fond, but then he hums, “you’re consistent in a lot of ways; you’re loyal -” he points out, but you’re so quick to respond it doesn’t even register at first. 
“Only because I love you,” then, silence, and you scrunch up your whole face with regret, “him, Wilbur,” you sigh deeply, “don’t get me wrong, Ghostbur, I care about you, probably too much by my standards, but...” and you trail off, a touch apologetic.
“Everyone keeps telling me that I did, or well, he did, all these terrible things; I just... I just want to know why.”
“Why what? Why he did what he did?”
“Why you still loved him when he did all those things,” Ghostbur clarified. You freeze.
“You want me to be honest?” Your voice is soft, and when you look over, you see he’s drawn his legs up to sit cross-legged on the counter, tearing apart a loaf of bread for something to do with his hands. 
“You’re always honest,” his tone is earnest, but he can’t look at you, before you can speak, however, he goes on, tone softer, “I remember bits and pieces, more and more as time goes on. More of you is always coming back; more of us, and I thought not remembering would be the most painful part about being around you, making you sad because I can’t remember what happened to make you feel so close to me before... before I died, but I think remembering’s worse,” he looked up, “because I’m not him. Like I’m borrowing someone else’s memories even though they’re mine, because I don’t think like he did; I don’t think I understood you the way he does. I don’t...”
“Everyone’s so quick to tell me what terrible things I’ve done - my son, Fundy, I spoke to him, he’s- he’s- he’s not happy with me, you know? Nor is Tommy, I mean most people just need me to know how awful I was, but you... you speak his name with love and honey on your lips and I don’t know how or why, you make all the terrible things sound like miracles and I don’t know why.” 
Slowly, you get to your feet, stretching a little, as your words begin to fall from you and you make your way over to Ghostbur, his pale form golden in the candlelight.
“I don’t know how to put it, but I don’t... I never feel quite real, not - for lack of a better word, given the nature of everyone here - human enough, and I look around and I see Tommy and Tubbo and George and Puffy and -” you rest your hands on his knees, gently, as you watch his hands tearing apart the loaf of bread, “and they’re all effortlessly people, they’re good, they’ve got dirt beneath their nails and a sparkle in their eyes, and I tried being good and noble and honest, and the only part I liked was being honest but being too honest somehow made me the villain; no-one understood. Dream came the closest, he felt like another amalgamation of interactions pretending to be human, but he knew his power and his place and his role, and he didn’t understand that I had no interest in playing the same part over and over again; consistently inconsistent, apart from my honesty and my loyalty. He liked my honesty and loyalty, so he did his best to accept the rest of me that came with it.”
Looking him in the eyes, finally, you could see it dawning on Ghostbur. Your fingers tapped a gentle, inconsistent rhythm on his knees. 
“But Wilbur... you - he - he... he...”
“He loved you,” Ghostbur’s voice was gentle, but after all this time, the confirmation from his returning memories, it was enough for your voice to catch in your throat. Then, he nodded again like it was a confirmation, “he loved you.”
“He loved me,” you said, voice barely more than a whisper, “not despite who I was, but because of it, loved all of me, at least, that’s what it felt like... I’d never felt that before, and I... I never wanted to let it go,” he’s putting the bread to the side, slowly sliding off of the counter and into your space, “he was staying true to himself, and they hated him for it, but I never could, and I never will.” You murmur, as he wraps his arms around you, holding you tightly in the dimly lit room. 
“It’s you,” you whispered against the fabric of his sweater, echoing your words from what feels like a lifetime ago, “above everyone else, I choose you. You have my loyalty.”
A moment of silence; he swallows hard, presses his face into the crook of your neck.
“It’s you,” he whispers back, just as Wilbur had those months ago; at the time you though they were an incredulous echo of your own thoughts, but now you know it’s an admission, a return of affection, a declaration; you have my loyalty, he’d been trying to tell you. 
You can’t tell Ghostbur you love him, you can’t tell him you love him, you cannot tell him you love him, no matter how much you want to. He’s not Wilbur. He’s not the Wilbur you fell in love with. 
You tell him anyways. Whisper it like it’s a secret. 
“I love you. I’m sorry.”
His answer comes whispered with a kiss at your temple, a small token of comfort.
“I know.”
----
The world had fallen still in a way you had only felt before natural disasters. There was quiet. There was peace. Something was wrong. Your conversation with Dream played on repeat in your mind, over and over and over.
"You will owe me a life." You can't forget the gravitas with which he'd said it, eyes dark and eerie as he sat cross-legged on the floor of his prison; you will owe me a life.
The phrasing had caught you off guard, because what in the hell did that even mean? It could mean anything, hell he could claim your first child if he wanted to, but you'd been desperate enough to not question, to just accept.
"You really do love him, don't you?" He'd said softly as you'd sat opposite him, when he'd jokingly asked if you'd take his place in the prison in exchange for Wilbur back.
"Of course," had been your serious answer to both questions. Dream had laughed, equal parts fond and weary, his gaze drifting up to the impossibly high ceiling.
"Its a nice thought, though I doubt Sam would simply let you switch with me," he mused, adding, "you know Ghostbur won't be around anymore."
"But Wilbur will be alive," you insisted, and finally he looks at you.
"You trust me," its not a question.
"I've always trusted you," its not a lie. Dream blinks at you, surprised by your honesty. He should be, somehow everyone overlooks your defining trait being brutal honestly. Moments like this remind you why you need Wilbur back so desperately; he understood you in a way no-one else did, not even Dream.
"I killed you," he says, almost to himself, like he's just remembered that fact.
"I know," you nodded, "and I trusted you then, and I trust you now. Everything happens-"
"Don't say for a reason," Dream gritted his teeth with irritation at the phrase, but you gave a faint smile.
"No, I was just going to say that everything happens. We live, we die," you shrugged.
"Then why are you asking me to bring him back?"
"I didn't realise your book of necromancy was purely for decoration," there's a slight edge to your words, lip curling in knee-jerk defensiveness. Dream looked back at you suddenly, eyebrows rising at your tone.
"Is that why you trust me?" There's something betrayed in his voice, and he sits back, away from you, something dangerous in his eyes.
"That's..." you tried to find a way to talk your way out of the situation, but your inability to lie was more of a hindrance now than anything else, "so reductive," you settle on. But you're fidgeting.
"Then complicate it for me," he's practically ordering, and if he weren't the only way to bring back Wilbur, you wouldn't be complying so easily. Then, like a bolt of lighting it hits you; you look up, gaze unwaivering as you meet his.
"Kill me."
"What?"
"Kill me. Don't bring me back," you yourself are almost ordering, tone leaving little room for argument.
"What the fuck; why?" He hissed in confusion, and you knew, in that instance, that your point would be clear.
"Why not?" Something amused and sinister curled at the edge of your lips as you regained the upper hand in the conversation, "if you'd prefer, I could kill myself; walk straight into the lava until my lives run out," and with that, you carefully get to your feet as he frowns at you. Sauntering over to the flowing, molten walls, you stick your hands in your pockets, looking pensively at the liquid rock.
"Wouldn't it kill two birds with one stone? If I'm dead, maybe I'll find my way back to Will, and you won't have to revive him. That's what the kids call a win-win, right? I won't ask you for anything, but, you know, I won't owe you anything either."
When you look to him, you get to watch in real time as it dawns on him. The way his face contorts with bitter anger makes your own, imposing, gloating stance soften, even as he looks away, refusing to look at you.
"I don't..." you sighed deeply, "I don't trust you because I know you can revive me, I trust you because you're a pragmatist, Dream, and as long as I'm useful to you, well..." you trail off, coming back to him.
"I don't understand you," he said, finally, voice terse, "you've fucking commodified your existence and sold your allegiance to the highest bidder; how do you stand it? I get it, you think I'm controlling, fucking news flash, so was Wilbur, so was fucking Techno, so is everyone. We're a bunch of cruel, self-canalising, power-hungry assholes masquerading as heroes and villains trying to make ourselves feel better for the atrocities we commit."
"And what currency am I selling myself for?" You snort, despite his serious tone; when he looks at you, as if he can't believe you're laughing at his rant, you tip your head and regard him thoughtfully, "while I appreciate that that seemed to have been weighing on you for a while, I'd advise you to not project your shit onto me; have I ever cared about having power for myself?"
That's actually a good point, he seems to realise, and finally, his expression softens, and he gets to his feet.
"Do you care about anyone other than yourself?" Surprisingly, it's not judgemental, it's intrigued, like he has a sudden understand of you that makes everything else make sense. Your smile is so soft and unguarded as you gently cup his cheek with one hand, fondly rubbing your thumb across his cheek.
"You know, you might be my best friend," you told him instead of answering, "and I trust you." He takes a deep breath, expression going serious as you can almost see the cogs turning in his mind.
"Despite... fucking everything, and who you are as a person," he said with the faintest smile, "I actually trust you too," but he hesitates, the slightest crease forming above his brow, "but I don't think I can still say that if Wilbur comes back -"
"Dude -" you're surprised by Dream's honesty in turn, but you do respect it as he clarifies himself.
"He's the one you care about, the only one besides yourself, I know, I've seen it," he gives a faint smirk, "we're still friends, of course, there's no doubt about that, but if I asked you to kill someone that Wilbur would rather have alive, or if I asked you to, say, join me on an adventure with a low survival rate, if Wilbur asked, you'd choose him, wouldn't you? You'd do whatever it takes to make him happy."
"Dream... I -"
"Your loyalty is absolute, but selective; you put yourself first, then Wilbur, and maybe I'm overestimating my place in your life, but I think I may be below him, but above most others..."
"What are you saying? What do you want?" You asked carefully.
"I'll bring back Wilbur, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but I'll bring him back, but you'll owe me a life," and you can't even begin to properly process what he's saying, "not his," Dream clarifies, "I wouldn't do that to you, but in one way or another, you will owe me a life, and when I ask for it, however that may be, you need to uphold your end of the bargain, or I'll send him right back to where he is now."
I'll bring Wilbur back. I'll bring Wilbur back. I'll bring Wilbur back. That's the four words he'd said that you're fixating on, that're playing through your mind on repeat, and you practically crush Dream in a hug as you agree, breathlessly thanking him. He hugs you back, and you can feel his smile against your shoulder, laughing somewhat fondly at the notes of relief in your voice as you mutter that he's your favourite.
"For now," he snorts when you step back, and you give a sheepish smile, ducking your gaze.
"For now," you agree.
----
"Who let you- does Sam know you're in here?" Quackity's voice is dangerously quiet, a strange smile on his face, like having you here is a boon rather than a terrible mistake.
"Q, what the fuck?" You rubbed at your eyes, forcing the sleep from them. Dream is already scrambling as far as he can from the newcomer, anger and fear in his eyes. He tells Quackity to fuck off.
"What are you doing here? You planning an escape for my favourite little war criminal?" He paused, "have you moved on now that your favourite little war criminal is dead?" Everything about him seems sharp, seems cruel and threatening; something about it is thrilling, like a challenge, and you find yourself standing to your full height, refusing to drop his gaze.
“Big Q,” you take some small pride in the fact that your voice doesn’t shake, “you’re looking markedly more malicious today.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been coming here for a while, looking for one simple thing, and your buddy there really hasn’t exactly been helpful,” there’s a faintly manic gleam in his eye, but your blood is hissing and spitting in your veins, conflicted and delighted in equal measure -
“He was your friend you fucking asshole!” The words burst from you, disgusted as you wear a manic grin. 
“I was your friend, you fucking piece of shit!” He hollers back, “I was more than your fr-” but his mouth snaps shut, expression one of seething rage, “don’t fucking talk like you still trust him, like you care about him;” the curl of Quackity’s lip is cruel, the look in his eyes cold as he shifts his grip on his sword; a humourless laugh escapes him, “except, of course it’s you who still cares; first Dream, then Wilbur, the only people you actually care about are just like you,” and there’s so much derision in his voice that it almost stings, almost, if he wasn’t right. How can he not see the way his cruel tone delight you? How can he not see the irony in his words in this very moment; “now fuck off, you’re in my way.” He sneers.
“I’m not letting you hurt him,” you refused to move, and his eyes widened, disbelieving laugh escaping him.
“Look at that! Did the wizard finally give you a fucking heart?” 
“Look at that!” You mirror his tone, though your own is acidic, pushing, you’re pushing him now, the way you know best, “did you finally get over your pathetic feelings? You finally getting smart enough to see me as a real threat?” And you’re in his space, in his face, refusing to back down, waiting for the moment he snaps.
“I never cared about you, I cared about the fact that you paid me attention; note the difference,” he snarled; it’s a lie, you know it’s a lie, can remember the way he’d looked at you, how he’d almost died for you, and it’s fucking intoxicating.
“You’re so good at hearing the truth, but you’re fucking shit at obfuscating it,” you tell him with a cool confidence, “I hung the stars in your sky, Quackity,” his jaw clenched tightly at your change in tone, the look in your eye, “but tell me again about how it was all an act for you, say it in a way I’ll believe this time.” It’s designed to cut him, and you can see it in his eyes when it does. Fight back, damn it! 
“Maybe I’ll give Dream the day off, kill you instead,” he tries, but you can tell his heart’s not in it. 
“This isn’t fun for him like it is for you,” Dream pipes up, and Quackity shoots him a surprisingly confused look, while your look over your shoulder, faint disappointment in your eyes. Dream, however, exhausted and paranoid with Quackity in his cell, still has enough wherewithal to understand you better than almost anyone else.  
“I wish you would,” you don’t look away from Quackity. Your voice is cold in the wake of Dream’s revelation, and when he looks back at you, Quackity looks... uncertain. A dangerous state to be in considering his opposition.
“You’re down to your last life, don’t fucking test me,” Quackity warned, but his heart’s not in it like before. As you approach him, he raises his weapon, but your confidence strides never falter, “Sam wouldn’t give a shit if I killed you, no-one would.” 
“You would,” you tell him snidely, finding yourself growing sick of the sound of his half-baked cruelty. 
“Are you just here to let what you love kill you?” He gives a mean, humourless smile. 
“Bold to assume I love you, Q.”
“Well, seeing as the only bastard you ever knew how to love was so eager to off himself, I figured I might be all you have left to get back to him,” there’s faint triumph in his eyes when he can see his malicious words touched a nerve, but he wasn’t playing your game right, and you were tired of not having fun.
“It’s not my fucking fault you look for a home in everyone who’s halfway nice to you,” something in you snaps, and your tone is cold and unwaivering, “don’t blame me for your fragile sense of self; you were so ready to believe anything I told you, but when I did what people fucking do - when I let you down - you had to go and let it shatter you,” you sneered.
“You being a shitty person is my fault?” He scoffed, and you stepped up to him, emboldened. You barely even feel his sword at your throat.
“Before breaking your cheap, little heart, I hadn’t been honest a day in my life; everyone had told you as much, you chose to ignore them; did you think you could fix me?” You gave a harsh laugh, stepping forward, crowding him into taking a step back, expression irate, trying to keep up his strong front, “Actually, I guess, wow, you did; since you, I haven’t told a lie,” and you gave him a derisive look, “because fucking you up wasn’t a challenge, making you fall in love with me wasn’t a challenge, getting you to the point where you’d die for me? Not a fucking challenge, Quackity. You offered me your life and it fucking bored me.
Talking to me makes you want to be a worse person? Good luck with that; you will always be better than you fear, better than you fucking hope or wish you were, because you couldn’t fucking stomach killing me once, you couldn’t fucking stomach being a truly terrible person.
You want my blood on your hands? Your hands were mine, and I couldn’t have given less of a shit, so no, if I have any say, you’re not gonna hurt Dream, because you’re hurting him to get the thing that’s going to bring back the person I actually fucking fell in love with. I can’t believe I ever wasted my time on you when he was out there.
I’m tired of trying to be amicable with you when you’re still - fucking still - picking up the pieces and trying to figure out who the fuck you are; God, I fucking hope you kill me, I hope it brings you peace, I hope it brings you clarity, but you better make sure it counts, you better make sure it fucking sticks!” 
----
"You do things that hurt you because you don't know what else to do, even if you don't enjoy them," Ranboo's voice is flat, and your expression twists to something derisive, though you attempt to regain your composure.
"Incredibly presumptuous of you," you respond, still alive, if burned.
----
"How many more?" Ghostbur's touch was light on your forearm, tracing the shiny, healed scar of where you'd thrown your hands up to protect your face as Quackity had shoved you into the lava waterfall that surrounded Dream's cell. It hadn’t killed you; he hadn’t been able to go through with it, and the lava curtain parted as the bridge approached the cell at Sam’s command. But it had still left it’s mark.
"What?" You surfaced from your thoughts as his cool hand stilled against the memory of the burn.
"How many more until you see him again?" He asks, and he doesn't look sad often, but he can't look you in the eyes. Then, gently, his hand comes to rest on your shoulder, thumb brushing against the scar that stands out on your neck, a perfect circle, a perfect reminder of what you’d lost the second time you’d died.  
And you meet his gaze, can see the nerves hidden just behind his eyes - is this why you do this? Am I… not enough? What a dangerous thought, dangerous territories; how cruel you were to let him fall for you, even a little, even when both of you knew it was a terrible idea. 
Dream's voice was in your head - Ghostbur won't be around anymore - and you'd answered without flinching - but Wilbur will be alive. 
"One," your voice came out hoarse, "one life and I'll see him again." You can't look him in the eyes, even as he holds your face; he has no idea what to say to that. It's the truth, but not the one he realises. 
"You don't love me, right?" You asked, clearing your throat, moving carefully out of his reach.
"You shouldn't kill yourself for him," Ghostbur tells you with uncompromising sincerity instead of answering, "you're worth more than that."
"I need you to tell me that you don't have feelings for me, Ghostbur -"
"Seems like a very worrying thing to be asking given the circumstances," again he tries to deflect, but there's something close to guilt eating you up inside, and you stand, moving out of his space, Dream's voice in your head.
"Do you love me or not, Ghost of Wilbur Soot?" You demanded, and his expression turned hard, so unlike his usual self.
"I'm not him," he said carefully, but his gaze dropped; he couldn't look you in the eyes, "and I don't think it should matter either way, because you've made it abundantly clear that he's the one you want; I'm not going to say I don't and let you kill yourself."
"I promise I'm not going to fucking kill myself!"
Ghostbur went very quiet. 
“Any answer is dangerous, really, so it doesn’t matter either way,” he’s pulling his sleeves down to cover his hands, to fiddle with, trying to distract himself, “I love Friend,” his tone was aiming for something light-hearted, an attempt to change the topic, and it did it’s job well enough; your lips twisted into a grin.
“First a Salmon, then a Sheep, your tastes are -” but he looks at you, giving a strangely amused little smile.
“Questionable?” He finishes your sentence, and you find yourself less amused with the situation; he brings up a good point, including you all the same, though you’d been meaning to say bestial, but fuck, what does that make you? For a moment, you find yourself in crisis, wondering if you were technically in a polyamorous relationship with a ghost and an actual sheep. But you push it to the side -
“It’s selfish,” you hear his voice in your head, see him looking at you with wide, shiny eyes in the dim light of a pub, but you can’t help but repeat the words that had been said to you, “but I need to know for me -”
Ghostbur could say anything, and you see the realisation dawning on his face; he knows what you’re asking. He could be silent, he could brush you off, he could say anything else -
“It’s you,” just the way you’d said it to Wilbur, confirming what you feared; Ghostbur drops his gaze when he says those words to you, when he means to say I love you, how can you not see that?
Those two words hang in the air between you, like they always have. You should leave. You should go before you develop a conscience. But you can’t... there’s something familiar, something intoxicating about this moment, his loyalty; you’ve seen this before, you’ve craved this before. 
You step up to him, and as if on instinct, he rests his hands on your hips, leaning into your touch when you hold his cheek gently. 
“I love you,” your murmur, and his eyes fall closed, breathing deeply, “I love you.” It’s easy, it’s too easy, to fall back into this, to let him rest his forehead against yours, your arms around his neck, knowing in your heart that his loyalty, his love, was a means to an end; “I love you.”
He trusts your words, even now. 
“Please don’t go,” he whispers, pulling you close now, moving to press his lips to the crook of your neck. So you stay. Your time with him is limited, though only you know that, so you will enjoy it while you can.
----
"This was your plan," Tommy muttered, horrified, as the realisation dawned on him, "you're the one who pointed out that killing Dream in the prison didn't break any of the prison's rules," he whispered, before turning on you, eyes wide, Friend's leash still looped around his wrist, "you're the one who suggested using Ghostbur as a decoy, because no-one would suspect him."
"You set him up," Ranboo was horrified. One by one they were turning on you.
"You knew Ghostbur didn't- he didn't want to be revived!" Tubbo exclaimed, hurt and betrayed, "I thought - Y/N I thought you loved him, how could you -?!"
"Wilbur and Ghostbur are not the same person! How do you all keep forgetting that?!" You snarled in response, expression contorting to one of rage; that was enough to shock them into silence, taking a step back as they regarded you with a new kind of fear.
"We were happier with Wilbur gone, we liked Ghostbur and he liked us!" Tommy exclaimed, before his voice dropped to something soft and betrayed, hurt in his eyes, "Ghostbur didn't fucking deserve that; you're a terrible person," and your expression dropped to a smirk that didn't reach your eyes.
"I'm sorry about Ghostbur, I am, but the ends justifies the means; do you remember what I told you when L'Manburg was first forming? I told you I'm not on Dream's side, but I'm also not on yours," and you paused for a moment, before looking to the heavy remains of the button room, through which you knew Wilbur himself would finally be returning any moments now, "I'm on Wilbur's."
----
Then you see him, and oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck this is real and you owe Dream a life and Wilbur is alive. You're frozen in place. He's talking to Tommy, who sounds frankly horrified that Wilbur is back, but you're frozen. Heart beating in your throat, the sunrise that’s coming brings with it a warmth, though to you it feels closer to vindication. 
And there’s yelling and horror from the others who’ve accompanied you, but you can’t hear them, approaching slowly, with measured, even steps.
Then, his eyes meet yours and something in his expression softens. When he smiles at you, every terrible thing you did was worth it for this moment. Having the others there is too much. You don't want an audience, you don't want anyone there to judge you and your choices, the things you've done to get to this moment.
"This," Tommy turns on you, "this is what you bloody well wanted; now you're acting all shy? " His lip curled, and your expression turned flat and unamused.
“Don’t mistake respect for shyness,” you tell him bluntly, with a cool confidence that was unrecognisable to the blonde, who hadn’t known you well enough before he’d begun starting conflict to know the depths to which you could sink. But he was beginning to learn. 
“She’s part of the reason I’m here at all,” Wilbur reprehends him, while Tommy physically recoils at his tone, "Dream himself said as much." And then he's offering you his hand; nothing else matters.
"I can't be here," there's disgust in Tommy's voice, but its enough that the others leave, giving you and Wilbur peace. Finally.
"You're a sight for sore eyes," you tell him, taking his hand with a sharp smile, which he mirrors.
"Thirteen years I was stuck in that train station, and you're just as stunning as when I last saw you," he muses, and you reaches out to run your fingers gently through the unfamiliar white strands of his hair. His eyes study your face, your expression, drinking you in; you'd missed how dark his eyes could be, and when you look back at him, meet his gaze, you see a hunger there.
"Don't leave me," escapes you, but it comes out as a demand, insistent, “don’t ever fucking leave me again,” and you see him swallow hard, then slowly, he smiles.
"Never again," and he's kissing you desperately, mouth on yours with an intensity you relish. I missed you, I missed you, I missed you - you can taste it on his tongue, sticky sweet and somehow sharp and you dig your nails into him, maybe trying to keep him here, keep you both in this moment. When the kiss breaks and you're breathing hard, you don't let him go, though he doesn't either.
"You lied for me," he muttered, something akin to delight on his face, which shocked you enough that you stepped back, or at least tried to, though he held you tight, "no, not-" he tried to clarify, "I won't leave, I don't plan on it, but- I love you." Your heart is beating in your throat, still not quite sure what he means, "I've loved you for a long time," he added, and reaching out, he cupped your face in his hand, "I remember this," he murmured, "Ghostbur - you're scared I didn't love you because he couldn't remember, but I loved you so much, for so long, I just knew... knew what I was going to do. I knew I was going to leave you, I loved you but I was so doomed, so he couldn't remember."
When had your vision gone cloudy, when had tears started to sting your eyes.
"Don't cry, my love," Wilbur murmured, leaning in to rest his forehead against yours as your breath stuttered from your chest as he soothed the biggest fear that had been plaguing you for months.
"Were you worried that I didn't love you because of him?" He asked, like he enjoyed hearing you bare your soul. Of course he did. You remember kissing Ghostbur, his cold lips and soft apologies when you'd pulled away, and you wonder if Wilbur had those memories too.
"He's not you, no point trying to fret about your feelings based on his actions," you huff a watery laugh, finally letting go of him with one hand to wipe at your tears, “he didn’t understand me like you did, but he...” you swallowed hard, “I’m glad to have had him around in the interim.” Wilbur’s lips twist into an amused smile, and his gaze clouds over for the barest moment; you wonder if he can see your resolve cracking in Ghostbur’s memories, taking comfort in his when he’s the closest thing to Wilbur himself that you can find, the lies you’d told to keep him by your side in your moments of selfish desperation.
“I think he loved you, in his own way,” Wilbur said gently. However, as you made a vaguely guilty noise in the back of your throat, he continues thoughtfully, "though, you know, when Dream came to pick me up on that train, when Ghostbur took my place, Dream made sure we both knew, you know; she's the reason you're here, Ghostbur, he'd said, and said that makes you part of the reason that I'm coming back at all," he muses, strange quality to his voice that you couldn't quite place, though when your eyes were dry, you looked at him definitely, challengingly.
"He's not you," you reiterated, firmer this time, "I cared for him for what he was, but he's not the one I want; I love you." You said without hesitation, before you realise what you've said, and you go still, before taking his face in your hands, making sure he's looking you in the eyes, "I think I’ve loved you from the moment I met you, Wilbur; I love you, I fucking love you -" and he's endeared by your declaration as you wrap your arms around him and bury your face against the crook of his neck, whispering the words like you're hoping they'll find a place on his skin forever.
"I didn't tell you before and I'm never making that mistake again,” you admitted faintly; “it’s you.”
“Above all others, I choose you,” his smile is warm, and something bright lights up in your chest. Grinning, elated in this moment that you’d worked so hard to finally get to.
“You have my loyalty, my love.”
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willdexpoindexter · 2 years
Text
It Had To Be You
Kent decides to start the new year off right: by seducing his best friend. It doesn't go quite as planned.
~~~
 It’s twenty minutes past midnight on New Year’s Day, and Jeff Troy is in his absolute favorite place in the world: sitting on a couch with Kent Parson.
 They’re a little tipsy but not drunk; they decided to forgo any big parties this year and instead stayed in and watched When Harry Met Sally, though the movie ended an hour ago and Kent’s huge flat-screen TV has been cycling through generic landscape photos instead and Kent’s toes are tucked under Jeff’s thigh as they chat about nothing.Kent’s toes are tucked under Jeff’s thigh as they chat about nothing.
 There’s a lull in the conversation and Kent looks over at him. “I never got the point of New Year’s Resolutions. New year, same Kent. Just gonna keep fucking up my way through life.”
 “You’re not a fuck up,” Jeff says, like he always does.
 “Sure,” Kent replies, just like he always does. One of these days, Jeff is going to get him to agree.
 Kent sighs and leans his head back on the sofa taking another swig of his beer, probably long since gone warm. “Staying in was a good idea but I could really use a lay. It’s been ages.”
 “It’s the middle of the season. You complain about this every year.”
 “Yeah, well, doesn’t make it suck any less.”
 Kent opens his eyes and looks over at Jeff.
 Jeff raises an eyebrow. “What?”
 “We could always kill two birds with one stone.”
 “Oh?”
 “Could be fun! You know, just a little stress relief between friends.”
 “Kent…”
 “Come on, come on! Talk dirty to me, Swoops.”
 Jeff looks at his best friend, his best friend who he’s also a little bit in love with — and who he wishes cared about himself as much as Jeff does — and he takes a chance.
 “You are valid and deserving of love just as you are.”
 Tears spring to Kent’s eyes and Jeff immediately knows that this didn’t go how he wanted it to.
 “What the fuck, Jeff?”
 And he knows it’s serious because Kent never calls him Jeff.
 “Kent, it’s not that I don’t wanna hook up with you. It’s that it would never just be a hookup for me and I can’t do that.”
 Kent stares at him, his eyes still wet, and Jeff waits to be kicked off the couch, out of the apartment, even out of Kent’s life. He waits for something, expecting anything and everything — everything except what Kent does.
 Which is to close the gap between them and kiss Jeff softly, like he’s something fragile. Something precious.
 His eyes flutter shut on their own and it takes him a moment after Kent’s lips have disappeared from his to open them again.
 Now it’s Jeff’s turn to ask: “What was that?”
 Kent gives him a crooked little smile. “New year, new Kent.”
 “Really?”
 “Maybe this is the year that I finally let myself,” Kent took a deep breath, “ask for what I want.”
 “And what is it that you want, Kent?” Jeff asks, leaning closer but not quite closing the difference.
 “It’s always been you,” Kent whispers. “Just didn’t think you’d want a fuck up like me.”
 “You’re not a fuck up,” Jeff says like always.
 “Sure,” Kent says, but there’s a glint in his eye that tells Jeff he might actually believe it this time. “And what if I was your not-a-fuck-up?”
 “We’ll work on the wording,” Jeff says with a smile and leans in to kiss Kent again. “Happy new year, Kent.”
 “Happy new year.”
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lunion · 4 months
Text
I love how Bill Cypher culminates every single aspect of Gravity Falls.
Recently, I was listening to "it's gonna get weird" and it got me thinking about how the final arc actually gives a resolution to something Gravity Falls explores on its own: Normal vs Weirdness
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Gravity falls is a show that centers itself around Dipper and Mabel's adventures on the titular city, as they live their summer facing the weirdest and most uncanny things known to man, all the while also being regular kids (as far as the Pines family can be regular, at least).
Where this gets really interesting is on the final arc. Gravity Falls really prepares everything for a grand send off, both for the characters and for the audience. As Dipper and Mabel are both approaching the disappointing but inevitable reality that summer is nearing its end, the Pines twins both start their arc with a flaw: refusing to move on and indulging more and more.
Gravity falls was not only bold, but it was scaling as time goes on, as any story tends to.
I mean, you guys remember the Northwest mansion episode, right?
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We went from gnomes kidnapping mabel to marry her to this.
Fast forwarding to the final arc, we have Dipper and Mabel with no intention of ever deescalating.
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Mabel refuses to let go on a temporal level: Feeling the inevitable march of time as summer TIME is ending, losing access to her friends and the idea of getting older and no longer experiencing the fun moments of childhood, Mabel wishes for everything to stay where they are in gravity falls, as kids, remaining engaging on the same things forever.
Mabel doesn't want to MOVE ON from gravity falls (just like we didn't)
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Dipper on the other hand is actually on A VERY DANGEROUS PATH as well: He is called by Ford to stay in Gravity Falls and study these anomalies.
You know, the same anomalies that almost killed people over and over? And they keep escalating? NEED I REMIND YOU THAT HE WAS TECHNICALLY DEAD WHEN HE GOT TURNED INTO WOOD?
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Weirdness in gravity falls always felt to me akin to what "Horror" was in most folk tales, urban legends and so forth. It's mystical. It draws us further in, but it's also dangerous, deadly and too much of it can lead to our demise.
Dipper was considering not only STAYING in gravity falls, but DIVE HEADFIRST INTO MORE DANGER, LIKE FORD. THE SAME GRAND UNCLE WHO MADE THE DEAL WITH BILL CYPHER TO BEGIN WITH, WHO GOT TRAPPED IN A FOREIGN DIMENSION FOR MANY YEARS (by accident, but that's his line of work).
And then comes BILL CYPHER
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This triangle's sole motivation is to cause MORE and MORE weirdness.
AND HE HAS ABSOLUTELY NO BREAKS.
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Bill Cypher, designwise and plotwise answer the question: "What happens if we indulge with occult/weird/bizarre stuff endlessly?"
To Bill, Gravity Falls was BORING. it wasn't WEIRD ENOUGH. His goal was to unleash as much weirdness as possible. The fact that he's also based on the All Seeing Eye, a symbol very involved in conspiracy theories and the like only enhance that.
The obsession with weirdness, the bizarre and the exceptional makes one unappreciative of the world around them and Bill embodies that to the limit. No weirdness at all is boring. A little bit spices up life, but too much and it's stressful or harmful. Pacifica's father can attest to that.
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Bill Cypher forces all the character to face the weirdmagedon in order to survive and what do they do? They decide enough is enough and after they defeat Bill they say "No more weird stuff". There's a limit and that's that. It was fun, but it already got to be too much. They want new things, new experiences and they move on.
Summer was great, it was weird, it was fun.
But Dipper and Mable have to go. They got more things to do in life.
Not only new experiences, but different ones as well. If they latched on to the weirdness forever, they would be one dimentional adults who can only talk about weird stuff when they grew up. Instead, they had the adventure of a lifetime and will live many other stories as they grow
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cloudywilmon · 2 years
Text
cloudymiIk fanfic masterpost
Guide
Status
☑ complete ❒ in progress ☒ hiatus
Rating
Ⓔ Explicit Ⓣ Teen Ⓝ Not Rated
Young Royals
stand alone oneshots and multichaptered
get it off your chest, get it off my desk Ⓔ ☑
wc: 6,877
Vincent hasn’t called him to stand since the time with Felice, although there have been multiple nights where Simon has slept over. He supposes that while one can assume, it’s not actually evident that he and Simon had sex during those times (even though they definitely have). There was no mistaking the way they’d left early the night before, however. No mistaking the darkened bruise on Wille’s neck. They’ve already received some smirks from the boys around them, cheekily asking them if they’d had a goodnight.
i find myself running home to your sweet nothings Ⓣ ☑
wc: 2,196
He’d always known Simon was beautiful, to him, it was a universal constant. But now, getting to see him in person, looking up at Wille so openly - eagerly - he was radiant. - Following Wille's speech, he and Simon finally get some time alone together. Post S2 E6.
bloom where you are planted Ⓣ ☑
wc: 12,915
Wille is a plant boy, Simon has a black thumb. They both run semi-popular Instas.
make the yuletide gay Ⓣ☑
chapters 5/5
wc: 34,947
Wille doesn’t have anywhere to go for the holidays, Sara wants her family to stop asking if she has a boyfriend. Fake dating over Christmas seems like the perfect solution - at least until Wille meets Sara’s brother.
series
darling, you're the one I want
1/2 - i hate accidents except when we went from friends to this Ⓔ ☑
chapters 8/8
wc: 59,633
Simon is Wilhelm's best friend, so when he confesses that he's insecure about his lack of experience Wille offers to help him. After all, it's what any good friend would do, isn't it?
2/2 - i want you (bless my soul) Ⓔ ☑
wc: 15,539
Wille and Simon decide to take another step in their relationship - but first, Wille needs to do some research (off the school wifi this time).
 
In your heart I see the start of every night and every day
1/2 - You're Simply the Best Ⓔ ☑
chapters 27/27
wc: 123,730
“So if you’re not staying there, and you’re not coming here…” Erik began, pausing for Willie to answer and giving another laugh when Wille didn’t fill in the blanks. “Pray tell Wilhelm, where exactly is my little brother spending the weekend? I thought your crush went to Hillerska?” or Erik Lives
2/2 - i'm stuck on your heart Ⓝ ☑
wc: 8,788
moments from 'you're simply the best' from other perspectives
✨ Prince Simon Cinematic Universe ✨
Tell me what you need (You look so free) Ⓔ ❒
chapters 2/10
wc: 39,102
He let himself imagine for a moment that they could be friends - maybe in another life, another universe. The whole point of his attendance at the conference, however, was to portray the image that his mother wanted him to. He brushed the fantasies aside, it was a big enough event, he should be able to get away with avoiding Prince Simon. He had to. - Fresh off his breakup with Nils and the release of the tape, Wille is determined to be the model prince, to play the role that's expected of him. Simon might throw a wrench in that plan.
unholy trinity Ⓣ - with @prince-simon
chapters 4/4
wc: 6,443
Prince Simon consults his best friends for advice on his feelings for the little prince of Sweden.
tryna play it cool (i could be your crush) Ⓔ ☑
wc: 8,545
Wilma is very into Rosh and kind of wants to kiss her. She has a mild crisis about it.
london calling Ⓣ ☑ - with @angelbabysimon
wc: 3,130
When Simon and Wilhelm head to London for their first anniversary, things don't go quite the way they expect...
it takes a fool (but we both are so its okay)
I Lied Ⓣ ☑
wc: 2,685
Between Christmas and New Years, Simon's friends tell him to check instagram.
New Years Resolutions Ⓣ ☑
chapters 3/3
wc: 6, 521
Sara drags Simon out to a New Years party with Felice to stop him from sitting around and pining over Wilhelm who is still stuck at the palace dealing from the fallout.
It gets worse before it gets better  Ⓣ☒
chapters 9/?
wc: 24,739
Simon and Wilhelm are back at Hillerska before the term starts, but they still have to deal with the fallout of the tape.
Red, White, & Royal Blue
YourMusicSucksAndYouLookLikeADickhead Ⓔ ☑
wc: 6,762
In which Alex gets a new neighbour who immediately pisses him off, and they begin blaring their music to communicate with eachother. - aka Alex and Henry get off on the wrong foot, Alex has his bisexual awakening, and Nora deals with Alex's bullshit.
Healthy Choices: Relationships, Sexuality and Family Planning Ⓣ❒
chapters 1/3
wc: 10,420
Alex's high school decides to take a slightly more hands on approach to sex ed, and he finds himself stuck partnered with Henry. And their fake baby.
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theghostpinesmusic · 4 months
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youtube
Alright, I was putting off dealing with this beast of a video yesterday, but now I think it's time.
The backstory here is that in addition to surprise-announcing a four-night run at the Capitol Theatre with their new drummer two months before the start of their summer tour, Goose also had a surprise theme for night two of the run, which was also the night of the lunar eclipse: they would play through their 2016 album Moon Cabin in its entirety (with a few theme-appropriate songs at the beginning and end of the show to round things out). This resulted in a) us getting to hear Cotter play on a lot of "classic" Goose songs for the first time and b) lots of long jams, since turning one CD-length album into a three-hour show necessitates a bit of stretching out.
The centerpiece of the show arguably came in the first set, with this nearly 50 minute "Into The Myst" -> "Arcadia" pairing. I'm a huge fan of both songs, but haven't yet written any posts about either.
"Myst" was one of my "first favorite" Goose songs, back when I was still getting familiar with their catalog. It and "Creatures" are maybe the most notable examples of the part of the band's repertoire that dips into electronica/EDM territory. Back when I first started listening to the band, these two songs really set them apart from the other jam bands I was familiar with and so I gravitated toward them. And yes, I know that the Disco Biscuits and Lotus and Spafford exist and that Goose didn't "invent" jamtronica out of whole cloth, but still. They were/are good songs and I did/do enjoy them.
"Myst" tends not to get jammed out very often (with a few notable exceptions), but it usually features a sort of breakdown after the main song that slowly gets built back up to the song's peak-y outro over the course of a few minutes while staying firmly in "Type I" territory. This version is...not that.
If Goose has a "hit" song, it's probably "Arcadia." It's catchy, the lyrics are fun and good but also a little allusive, and it's designed to end with one of those bring-the-house-down resolutions that we jam band fans love. Like many, many other Goose fans, what made me a fan in the first place was watching the band's 2019 Peach Fest performance on YouTube, and in particular that "Arcadia" grabbed my attention and is still a version of the song I come back to almost five years later. It's also on Alive and Well, which is cool.
Improvisationally, "Arcadia" tends to follow a similar path as "Myst": the band plays the song proper, drops down into breakdown mode, and builds momentum and intensity back up to the song's peak. There are a ton of great, unique versions of this song out there, though, and I'd argue that the journey to the destination varies much more with "Arcadia" than it does with "Myst."
I'm excited to dive back into this particular section of this particular show because I actually had some weird video/audio problems with this show originally when livestreaming it, and so I missed a bit chunk of this "Myst" and part of this "Arcadia," and spent most of the rest of the show playing catch-up technologically. The show as a whole definitely warrants a full relisten on my next big road trip or something, but for now, of course, I'm "just" covering this 47 minutes of it.
I always love getting to see Peter ham it up during the "Myst" intro. I also always love when the song's intro drops into the verse chords. It takes awhile in this version, as the whole band jams over the intro for longer than usual. But it's cool, because there's some great Trevor/Rick interplay during this section. Eventually, the "drop" happens at 3:45 and we're off and running.
The little solo break in the middle of the song is way more bass-heavy than usual, as Rick lays back a bit after seeming to have some sort of guitar/tech malfunction right before (?). Hard to tell from the camera angle what was going on.
Anyway, we make to the end of the composed part of the song at 11:25, and immediately the move into the jam is a little different than usual. Instead of a drop into a breakdown, Cotter starts playing a quick beat and that makes the transition instead. I like Peter's pecking at the Vibe here. I also like that there's no pretense of playing the rest of the song the "normal" way: the band immediately swerves into weirdness with no hesitation.
Something about this section of the jam (Rick's noodling, the rhythm both drummers lock into) sounds very Dead-ish to me. I love how much the camera focuses on Cotter early on because he's killing it during this part.
Also, Peter being a ham again at 15:05.
I know I'm probably getting a little repetitive at this point about this, but what strikes me (again) about this first section of the jam is the patience the band shows in slowly exploring this space. Certainly, a lot of Goose jams from earlier years also stayed in this or that sonic space for five or even ten minutes at a time, but there was often little feeling that they were developing particular ideas or moving toward something; instead, it often felt like the rest of the band would just settle into a background that Rick could play guitar over. If there's ever been anything about this band that I've been inclined to criticize, it was that. It seems to have sort of...gone away...since last fall?
For example, nothing much has changed dramatically in this jam by 18:00, but there's a sense that we're picking up momentum, aided by small changes in what Cotter and Peter in particular are playing. Moving forward not by a sudden key change or dramatic tonal shift, but by slow degrees. It's cool. It's also a major way in which New Goose is reminding me more and more of Phish: not that they're "copying" Phish's sound (as naysayers will often say, naying), but that their improvisation is taking on more and more of that smoothness and hive-mindedness that I love so much in the best Phish jams.
A great example of this is at 21:00 or so here, where Rick locks on to this neat, looping riff that ends up sort of serving, through magical telepathy, as the end of this jam section: when we come out on the other side a few seconds later, Cotter is playing a much more driving beat and then the rest of the band moves to match him in intensity. Pete moves over to electric piano shortly after and we've achieved full-on Bliss Goose Mode for the next few minutes.
Wow. This was the part that I missed when watching live and it's really, really good. When you can hear the crowd screaming over the webcast you know the band's really tapping into something.
Rick finally turns the hose off at 27:00, a full sixteen minutes after the jam started. If there's one tiny complaint I have about this nutso jam, it's that they don't return to the end of "Myst," which is usually a pretty badass, cathartic moment. Again, it's a tiny complaint in this case, though, because instead we get a really smooth segue into the spacey intro for "Arcadia."
The jam out of "Arcadia" starts around 31:55. At 32:05, the camera catches Peter feeling the groove, and it sort of seems like Rick picks up on his reaction and drops out as well, letting the rhythm section do its thing for a bit. You know me: I'm never going to complain about a Trevor solo. Goddamn. Eventually the rest of the band joins back in around 33:25.
This funk breakdown bit is pretty typical of the type of jamming the band does during Arcadia, but this version has some extra oomph to it, in my opinion. Part of that is probably Cotter adding a different touch to the percussion section and, again, it almost feels like Rick is trying not to play that much, letting everyone else come through more clearly.
I really like the riff that Rick locks on to at around 36:00. I think he does, too.
Peter moves over to the clav at about 38:30 and while this doesn't dramatically change the tenor of the jam right away, it certainly makes it crunchier and seems to at least start driving the band toward a build. It takes another two or so minutes for Rick to warm up to Full Shred Mode, but by 42:00 the whole band is going full speed, Peter's banging out something crazy and dissonant on the piano and we're well on our way to a classic "Arcadia" peak.
If you're not familiar with "Arcadia" already, the jam usually builds up tension until it releases into a minor key progression that is the actual ending to the song. So you get, in a sense, two huge peaks for the price of one in most versions. Which is probably why everyone likes "Arcadia" so much.
Here, the change happens at 43:57. I really like Cotter's swinging during the early part of this build. It's one of those many little things that he does differently that makes old songs like this one feel new in a cool way.
The smoke machines are a little intense and I'm not sure how I feel about them. This "Arcadia" peak, though, is fantastic. If your ears get burnt out on Rick losing his mind, listen to Trevor instead.
And that's the story of how Goose turned two five-minute tracks from Moon Cabin into a forty-seven minute cave diving expedition/ear slaughter!
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dailyrandomwriter · 7 months
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Day 547
While I had mentioned last year that I would not be doing New Year's resolutions, if I had one, it would be to get my life in order.
This month’s task was to finally get my ‘file box’ into order. The box where I had dumped all my paper bills, bank statements, insurance statements and income tax stuff over the years. Among other things…
I was told by my mom, once upon a time, well over a decade ago when I was a mere undergrad, that you had to keep all your documents for seven years in case you were audited. Here’s the thing though, it’s one thing to tell your offspring that they have to keep their documents for seven years, it’s another to actually do it.
Even back then, I had always wondered (back before digital statements were common and paper copies reigned supreme) where anyone found the space to keep seven years worth of documents. Like all your bank statements, energy bills, water bills, other bills, and if you had a medical condition that required medical supplies you had to keep that too.
In fact an unspoken rule, but one that just made sense to me was that I would be keeping permanently any documents that noted my contract with a bank, insurance or government social program. 
And that’s a lot of paper.
A lot of paper that undergrad me was given without being told or given the tools to keep properly. Mom did help, she put all my income tax stuff into duotangs for me, but I didn’t really have a place to keep them, nor any tools to organize it with. So, a friend of mine gave me my file box that could hold hanging folders inside. It sounded like a great idea except…
Undergrad me was far more disorganized than I am now, and that’s saying something.
I tried… I really did. Paperclipped stacks of papers according to year together and putting them away, but it was messy and hard for me to find what I was looking for. So, I ordered my own duotangs and today began sorting, hole punching and putting away papers into their proper places.
The file box had been culled about two weeks previous, so there weren't as many papers (but still so many…). The result was satisfying, even if it took longer than I had expected, but it’s done now and that is one more thing to strike off the list.
Hopefully, with the leftover duotangs it’ll stay organized from now on.
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Hi Пчёлка!
It's literally fine, I have an ask in my inbox from November that I haven't touched since last year (so weird it's 2023 now. I hope you have an amazing new year that is uneventful and you're loved ones stay in good health <- coined phrase over the last couple day lol)
AS FOR THE LITTLE BIT OF SNOW I TALKED ABOUT it kept on coming then there was like a foot and a half, which wouldn't be too bad except it stayed like -23 for like a week and a half (arctic outflows my beloathed) and never melted the entire time.
tbh the weather's not bad anymore, it's still pretty cold but all the snow is gone and it was sunny today!!! I made pancakes an moved my plants to the big window so they could get sun to celebrate.
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once again risking it all for some whipped cream.
tuque is such a fun word to say! it also has a bunch of different spellings.
The new job is going pretty good! I've discovered that kid's under the age of 7 think my fake and very bad for that matter Russian accent is hysterical, which I think is hysterical.
December was actually pretty good! An stubbornly optimistic is definitely the vibe for this year. I don't really have any new years resolutions except for maybe treating myself as kindly as I hope this year teats me. How about you?
Alas, Priory is still sitting rejected on my bookshelf. I got a really cool copy of The Hobbit at my favourite book store so now i'm doing a re-read 😂 While I was there I met the new bookstore cat and not to be dramatic but I'd die and kill for her.
I hope you're staying warm! I am so glad that weather passed and I hope it leaves you alone soon!
Gender fuckery my beloved <3
Literally so glad we don't live in a world where J*ke G*llenhall is Frodo. I do love Nicolas Cage but Viggo Mortensen is literally the perfect Aragorn.
alhdgskhf my family makes the best garlic powder and it goes on everything.
SPEAKING of Ronanceifying a song, I am about to send you the most rambly au idea.
I would literally kill for Paramore tickets. The News has been stuck in my head since it came out. It's totally storm cloud grey and reminds be of.. storms. Devil Is A Woman is totally dark magenta and you know that feeling when you're walking around and feel kinda like a villain in a movie, but in a good way? yeah that. (having thoughts of starting a side blog where people can send in music and I can do the colour/vibes thing. thought?)
oh it was 3 am for you too?
Quite possibly the last time I sign off like this, not because i'm going anywhere but because I think i'll ✨reveal my identity✨ tomorrow
-el
Hello hello! <33
I have some asks as old as September in reference to an ask game I’m not sure I could find again if I tried LMAO. The same to you! I hope the year treats you and your family with kindness and is chill!
WOW, that’s a lot! I hope it was at least fun to play in or something! Glad it all melted and it’s sunny now! Those pancakes look INCREDIBLE, and I bet that’s some damn good maple syrup ;)
Fake and very bad Russian accents are indeed hysterical! I love kids, honestly, they’re so fun. I worked a summer “camp” for a two week period and my best friend was a 5 year old who drew me a picture because I hung out with her when she was sad. What sort of job are you working, if you don’t mind me asking? :O are you teaching?
That’s a pretty damn good one! We all deserve to be treated with kindness, especially by ourselves!! Besides that, I just want to keep working on my silly novel(s), see my friends more, that kind of thing!!
Poor Priory, rejected by the both of us LMAO. Yay for The Hobbit! That was one of my favorite books for years, honestly you may be inspiring a reread for me now lol. Bookstores are my favorite ever, but they’re even better with animals! My irl bestie took me to one locally that I didn’t know existed and they had a dog and he was so cute.
Definitely staying warm! It’s actually warm enough yo be mildly concerned about it (insert TikTok audio “the weather outside is warm, the planet is dying). I wouldn’t mind it being slightly colder because I am gay and I must wear LAYERS. I hope you’re staying warm as well!
J*ke G*llenhall Frodo is literally the darkest timeline. Gotta say, Nick Cage as Aragorn does sound interesting tho. But for some reason this man is solidified in my brain as National Treasure Man. I’ve seen National Treasure once???
I saw you sent it! Gonna check that out right after this 🫡
I was about ready to kill for tickets! They randomly added a second OK location after the first one sold out, so I LUCKED OUT. They’re definitely nose bleed seats, but IDC, I GET TO SEE PARAMORE AND IM GOING INSANE. I’m normal about them. Truly. I think the side blog idea is AMAZING, that would be so cool! I have a silly music side blog too, but mine is much less interesting than that lmao. If you do it, let me know because I will absolutely follow it 👀
When I responded to that other one, yeah! Time zones are funky
AYO? I’m excited! I think I have a theory, but I will wait to see if I’m right hehe
Eagerly awaiting your next not anon message,
- Max/Lo <33
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imstilldaydreaming · 2 years
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How do your paras celebrate the New Year? How do they feel about New Year’s resolutions? Do they have any? And, if you’ve daydreamed then celebrating before, is there a memorable moment from a previous New Year’s celebration?
hey!! thanks for the ask! I actually haven't really daydreamed about them celebrating New Year, so this was fun to daydream! I've done this for my Warriors of Halcyon paracosm btw!
it's kind of long, so yeah, it's under the cut!
happy new year btw!
--- I think the Warriors of Halcyon would all celebrate it together at Hotaru's place. ---
Sasami: I'd say she feels kind of indifferent towards resolutions and New Year celebrations in general, but likes to be with the rest of the team, so ends up finding it fun. She and her brother celebrated it together while he was still around, so there's that side to it as well.
Ririka: Didn't even know what New Year was until the others explained it to her. She's definitely amazed by the fireworks since, even if she saw a fireworks show before, she doesn't remember. Doesn't really understand the concept of New Year's resolutions, but finds it fun anyway and joins in the fun.
Yuri: She just doesn't care. Finds this whole ordeal dumb, honestly. To her, it's a day like any other, except that Hotaru dragged her to a New Year's party with the others.
Hotaru: Takes it very seriously. She organizes the mini party at her house, is paying attention to the countdown all the time, gets the raisins, the alcohol free alternative to champagne, has all the resolutions carefully thought out (they're all about 1) being more like a knight or 2) helping the team btw)... Basically, if Hotaru wasn't there, the others would just shrug it off and go on with their day normally.
--- Now, for the Ex Libris squad. ---
Kagura would probably stay inside reading if it wasn't for Kyou. This guy managed to sneakily get in the library and be all like "Heeey Kagu ~ Do you know what happens todayyy? :3" and then proceeded to drag her out of there. They sat on the Rune Association's roof (somehow Kagura went along with all of this) and watched the city's fireworks display and everything. Kagura actually loved it (but as if she'll ever admit that lmao).
As for resolutions, Kyou would keep his a secret (they'd be about having the others overcome their issues except it goes into an oddly specific level of detail. oh, and also about his as well). Kagura, on the other hand, would have resolutions that are all work related (or about books to read or techniques to master).
Sakura: Can't really grasp the passage of time, so this day has probably been overlooked several times. Probably only realises it's the New Year when the fireworks start. And, even so, all you get is a "Huh. New Year's already here." Sakura doesn't really care about it, but not in a Yuri-like way. It's more that she forgets it exists. So don't expect much on the resolutions department either.
Yumeno: Probably the most average one of all of them. She spends it with her friends usually. It's just your casual New Year's party, really. Though, she probably spent it alone the year after joining Ex Libris, because being in the setting where her dear best friend used to be but no longer is would be low-key painful to her. As for resolutions, probably something to do with being more brave or just with revenge.
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monster-noises · 2 years
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4,6, 24 (if you don’t do resolutions then just something you’re happy about improving in/a healthy habit you developed)
4. Movie of the year: ah.. hmm.. I didn't watch a lot of new movies this year admittedly....goodness now that I think about it I think I've only watched five movies this year just like.. in general.. Yipes. So I'm going to give it to Cabin In The Woods because genuinely been meaning to watch that one for a g e s and was super happy to finally get around to it! (and for the good company to have watched it with v-v) 6.Episode of tv or webisode that defined the year for you? Despite having Still not watched it at all (because I'm a creature of habit and I love my Youtube Videos,) I'll have to give this one to the episode of OFMD with the kiss. I just.. It feels really special to me idk, even if I haven't seen the show all the way through and am not/likely won't be in the fandom at all it made me Feel Things... big, happy, hopeful things. and though 2022 has been a year of just fucking Beefing it Hard with a strong upswing in the last like.. 10th that feeling Is kinda the defining factor of the year in a lot of ways, in its myriad meanings and avenues and interpretations. 24. Did you keep any New Year’s Resolutions? I try not to do resolutions because in general I limit any rigid expectations of what I'm going to be able to accomplish in any given time period dflgkd but again this year was Hard and I don't think I did as much Improving as I did.. simply Making It To The Next Thing... Within that though I guess I could say I'm happy with how I've gotten better at listening to my body for responses to things? I've gotten better about knowing when to back off and not over extend myself, including saying No to people, and about listening when I'm getting clear Tired Exhausted signals instead of ignoring them in the name of simply.. staying awake? to either try to work (make myself more tired and miserable) or for no real reason at all except to have Time? I guess? And registering when my Body is feeling an emotion even if my brain Isn't. which is an odd skill to Have to develop, but a good one to have on hand. I'm hoping 2023 gives me actual room to settle in and clean things up around here (inside of my brain)
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arabellaflynn · 2 years
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Advent Calendar 12: The Shiny Frisbee
Greetings, and welcome to Advent Calendar 2022! This year we're being self-indulgent and rambling about video games.
As usual, the Advent Calendar is also a pledge drive. Subscribe to my writing Patreon here by December 15th for at least $5/mo and get an e-card for Ratmas; subscribe for $20/mo (and drop me a mailing address) and you'll get a real paper one!
I hope you're all having a happy winter holiday season. Let the nerd rambling commence!
Picture it: Phoenix, Arizona. 199... uh, 3, ish? It's been a while. As mentioned, my father did a lot of CAD design and sometimes worked at home, back in the days when the brontosaurus stampedes sometimes interfered with his morning commute, so we always had at least one up-to-date PC in the house. 
The big purchase that year was a tricked-out '486. For those of you who were not buying desktop PCs when you had to know and care what all the parts were, the CPU (and the motherboard it went on) was usually the single most costly piece, so you figured out your price range and picked that out first. Next up were the RAM and the hard drive. These days you don't need to worry too much about either unless you're building a server or a gaming computer, but back in the day it legitimately mattered. Less in my house, perhaps -- my father taught me how to field strip an ATX case when I was in grade school, followed by the long tedious process of whacking the OS with a hammer until it understood what you'd just done to the hardware, but a lot of people didn't upgrade their PC for funsies. 
The most exciting part of this new PC, however, was the "multimedia package". It came with a 17" SVGA monitor that displayed a whopping 1024 x 768 pixels, a resolution today achieved by my dirt cheap LG Rebel 4 phone. It came with a SoundBlaster 16, a sound card with wavetable and FM synthesis playback using a Yamaha YMF262, a chip which can now be purchased for under $2. And, most importantly, it came with a CD-ROM drive.
The idea of using audio media for data storage was not crazy. Computers made the jump from physical recordings like Jacquard loom punch cards and paper tapes to rearranging ferrous particles with magnets at about the same time as the music industry did, in the 1950s and '60s. Home microcomputers used cassette tapes for storage in the '80s. Floppies and hard drives are pretty much the same thing, except the signal is stored in concentric circles on a platter instead of in one long line down a strip of tape. The concept of CD-ROM was first demonstrated in 1984, and drives were on the market by 1986.
No, the crazy part was the idea that any normal person would ever need access to the sheer amount of random crap a CD-ROM could hold. The first drives were expensive bastards sold to the same kinds of educational institutions who bought LaserDiscs full of science to cram into the heads of impressionable children, and the first killer app for it was Microsoft Bookshelf. It was conceived of as a way to not just store millions of pages of text, but to augment that text with explanatory pictures, sounds, and video clips, and to make all of those things accessible at the click of a button, or at least a brief keyword search.
This is obviously not what happened. This is never what happens. Every time we invent something meant to advance the state of our species, the first thing we actually do with it is fuck around. We invented writing to keep accounting ledgers, and immediately used it for graffiti. We invented the printing press to spread spiritual enlightenment, and we used it to print pornography and bawdy shit like Chaucer. So obviously when we created a data format designed to collect and maintain the bulk of human knowledge in an easily-referenced format, somebody looked at it and went, "Holy shit -- do you know how many games we could fit on that?"
Up to this, video games had stayed small out of necessity. Cartridge games were constrained by the size of the ROM chips, which were relatively expensive. Atari 2600 games were around 2-4K; the largest SNES cart that I know of was the 1995 release Tales of Phantasia, which clocked in at 48 megabits (= 6 megabytes). A Commodore Datasette stored about 100K per 30 minutes of tape. Computer games could span several disks, but a single 3.5" diskette held at most 2.88Mb, and that format was relatively rare -- most were half that. A CD-ROM could hold 650 megabytes of (almost) whatever you wanted, and it would just be right there, ready for access, sitting in the drive like it lived there.
The bottleneck at this point was the machine reading the disc. Just because your media can hold 650Mb doesn't mean the computer can choke down all 650Mb at once. The transfer rate for a basic CD-ROM is 150Kb/s, which not coincidentally is also the throughput needed for MPEG-1 video; you can stream MPEG-1 video straight from a CD (which is what a VideoCD is), but you can't get anything else off the disc while you're doing that, and there's a limit to what you can stash in RAM. So most of the very early games for CD-ROM used the space for a few short video clips, and eighty bazillion "high-resolution" pictures instead.
youtube
Behold, the most famous of famous CD-ROM games, MYST. Originally released for the Mac in 1993, MYST almost single-handedly drove consumer adoption of the CD-ROM format. To hell with having a reference library in your desk drawer -- people wanted pretty pictures that you could click on until you got a reward, like a rat hammering on the food lever in a behavioral lab! Except instead of something useful like a food pellet, your reward was a new picture to click on. If the game was really pleased with you, you might get a short grainy video clip. The basic setup is one still used for a lot of mobile games today. So if you've ever mysteriously lost eight hours of your life playing June's Journey, you can thank Brøderbund for reminding everyone that point-and-click adventures existed.
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tswwwit · 3 years
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since Bill says Dipper and Ford's magic tastes similar and Ford's never had a familiar before, could him and Bill have formed a familiar bond??
Have an AU!
The thud of feet coming down the stairs.
A pair of 'em, weird enough.
While Bill notices - he doesn't react. He's done with making anything easy for this guy.
Or doing anything for him, at all.
"And this," Ford says, with grandeur. Probably even a wave of his arm. "Is where it all began."
"A... triangle." Says another voice. Male, younger. Sounding a little confused, to boot.
Bill has no reason to change up what he's been doing for the last couple decades, so he stays still. Eye shut. Limbs tucked away.
Though the humans walk closer, talking shop -
Bill waits.
He can wait as long as he likes.
Unlike these losers, he's got plenty of time.
Bill's gone and shut up, and clammed up. Sixer's played jailer for for a couple decades. Bond or not, he's getting absolutely nothing. Zero, zilch, and nada. Even if Sixer's bringing in some new blood? They still aren't getting jack shit.
It's only a matter of time, in any case.
Stanford Pines is going to die one day, and then Bill will finally be free.
"A demon," insists Stanford. Probably clenching a fist, the dramatic-ass nerd. Almost certainly gesturing over the circle. "The magic's gone by now - but the bond will remain for a lifetime."
It didn't have to be gone! Not if that supreme nerd didn't disagree with Bill's party plans! Bill doesn't open his eye to roll it. Even though he's tempted.
There's no point in discussing anything with Stanford Pines. The knowledge Bill gave him, at the outset - the very beginning, when things coulda been so good -
Ford had his chance.
Almost twenty years, stuck in this thing. In this circle. No way to dick around with mortals, and no way to go back home.
Ugh. This sucks.
But it sucks for Fordsy too, and spite helps pass the time!
Decades don't pass any faster for eternal beings - but Bill's gonna outwait this awful mortal asshole. Trapping him in place like this, on the mortal plane. Stanford Pines can go hang, or die in a friggin' fire or something. Bill's imagined seven thousand different ways for him to perish, each one better than the next.
"Huh." The younger guy sounds curious. There's a hesitant couple of steps, coming closer.
"Wait! Wait." Ford again. Probably holding this young guy back. "He's too dangerous."
"The triangle." The voice repeats. Sounding skeptical.
"Well." Ford hesitates. "He has been dormant. For. Well. Longer than you've been alive." Then he finds some pep somewhere, and his voice firms. "And I still think it's worth the attempt. Just... never. Ever. Break the circle. Nothing living can ever pass the boundaries. You understand?"
A beat of pause.
Ford goes on. Giving this young guy some more instructions - all related to Bill's prison, how to stop him from escaping, yadda yadda whatever -
Huh. This is interesting. Actually interesting!
Aside from the brother, Ford's never gone and told someone about Bill! Even though Bill's sensed all kinds of mortals, coming and going, somewhere up above.
Nobody's seen him in person before.
Except for one person.
Bill almost wants to peek at what's happening. This is new! It's different, it's finally some friggin' relief - he's had almost nothing but daydreams and boredom for a full on twenty years -
But fuck Stanford Pines.
Bill resolutely keeps his eye shut. Still, and unmoving.
In front of Bill, Ford clears his throat. "Cipher -"
Yeah, like that's gonna work. Bill stays hovering in his unmoving place. The last time he gave this jackass any info, it screwed him over! What does he think he's trying?
Ford continues. "-Tell me what you know about illusion magic."
Wait. What?
Now that's a first. Of all the interrogations Poindexter's put him through, this doesn't make sense! Sixer here doesn't have jack shit for talent in that area, he'd never be able to make one -
But then again. There is another human here. Bill can't check this other guy's magic without opening his eye, but ugh, it's new. It's tempting -
"Hm." Ford, tapping his foot on the ground. "Still dormant." He sucks in a breath. "Damn."
"I mean," The younger voice, hesitant. "It was worth a shot?"
"Better he's not active, certainly." Ford agrees. Sounding a little relieved. "As long as Cipher can't interfere with people's minds, the world is a better place."
Another beat of silence.
"This isn't the last resort." Ford lies. Bill can sense it. Whatever these two are doing, Bill was definitely the last being Ford wanted to check with! "I've known more than a few illusionists. Dipper, your magic is..." Hesitating. Then, with false confidence - "We'll work it out in no time."
"Yeah." The younger guy says, with equally false cheerfulness. "Sure."
As the two humans chat among themselves - Bill contemplates all those neat new facts.
Huh! Now this is real interesting.
So there's this young guy - Ford's new apprentice? Having trouble with some magic stuff. Weird that he hasn't got a hang of it himself already! Gotta be pretty tight with Fordsy, too, or else he wouldn't have resorted to Bill.
What's going on here? Bill itches to check.
Bill runs over the ideas, again and again. There's a lotta possibilities, but nothing's certain. Not unless he takes a look at the guy, and that's not gonna happen.
When he returns his attention to his jail, Stanford's gone. Finally. It's way more intolerable to spend the hours, imprisoned, with the guy who did it arou-
Something goes 'clink' against his surface. Bouncing off him, and clattering across the ground.
What the- ?
Bill almost blinks. He reaches out with his other senses instead.
Huh, Ford's gone. Been gone for a while by the feel of it; Bill can't taste his magic nearby. But for some reason, he actually - impossibly - left this young guy alone in his lab?
The young guy's talking. Mostly to himself. But more importantly he's.
Alone. In Ford's lab.
And Stanford freakin' Pines? Trusting someone?
Who the hell is this kid?
Bill's been ignoring everything for years, and tolerating others. But this?
This is so new, and so different -
Bill opens his eye. He blinks, twice.
"Oh, nice." The kid - Dipper, is it? - picks up the twenty-sided die. It's been bounced off Bill's surface, rolling out of the circle. "A natural twenty." A quiet mutter. "I never get those."
"Ha! Tough luck! That's my roll, kid." Bill claps a hand on his surface, and watches the kid jump in alarm.
The kid - Dipper - takes a quick step back. His own eyes are wide, and alarmed, looking over Bill. "What?"
Bill lets his lower eyelid raise in a smile, and waves.
After a second - the young guy waves, hesitantly, back. Offering a super awkward smile.
Now that Bill sees this human, and his magic - wow. Yeah, no wonder he's been having problems!
Bill lets his eye trail over this mortal, and starts to glow.
He's starting to see why Stanford has such investment in this kid! Man, that brain is nice. Very, very nice. Oh man, there's so much will, and potential.
Bill spares a moment to ogle. Then another.
Meanwhile, the human lets his hand drop. Blinking at Bill. Casting a glance over his shoulder, towards the doorway. Like he knows he should be calling for Ford.
But he's not.
Bill should clam up again, but hey! He's already been spotted, and he's spoken!
Besides. This could be fun.
"The twenty's mine, kid. After all - Last one to touch it rolled the die!" Bill wags a finger in the air. Watching this human look slightly grumpy. It's a technicality, but Bill's right. He glows even brighter. "And I got a feeling I'm gonna be real lucky, soon."
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if I can never give you peace — one || Jungkook
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Pairing: Jungkook x reader // Word count (chapter): 6k // Genre: Mafia AU, Hybrid AU, enemies to lovers // Ao3
↳ It starts like quite a few stories do, in your world. Girl meets boy, who happens to be a hybrid, girl buys him at an auction where hybrids are sold, boy falls in love with her, girl gets bored of him. Then it’s not so typical anymore, when the boy ends up forced into illegal fighting rings, until he makes a wrong move and the girl’s father decides he needs to be killed.
Where does that leave you? Well, you’re the one who handled Jungkook’s fight and generally organized his life, and, when the girl’s father, your boss and mafia leader, tells you he wants him ‘put down’, you’re the one who has to get it done. Except, instead, you let him escape, and everything turns out fine.
Until he comes back.
Warnings and tags (chapter): Descriptions of violence, Minor Character Death, Guns, kind of dark in general
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The first gunshot takes everyone by surprise. Unsure glances are exchanged all around, “did you guys hear that”, and disbelief is clear as day on people’s faces. There’s no way this would happen here, right? People are mostly aware of the fact that they’re technically working for a mafia leader, but this is the legal side of the business, and this building is in the middle of the town’s business centre. This cannot be happening.
You stay perfectly still, immobile where you were standing. Out of all the people here, you’re the one who is the most involved in the questionable parts of the family’s activities. In fact, you were just about to go up to Mr. X’s floor to discuss said questionable things — in this case, the smuggling of a large cargo of weapons.
The gunshot is still ringing in your ears when it is followed by another one, and then possibly more, but you can’t hear them because chaos erupts all around you.
People get up, start running around, some towards the elevators, some towards the stairs. Your brain tells you those choices are probably bad. If those gunshots are for the Family — and who are you kidding, they are — then whoever is firing them is coming up.
“Don’t use the stairs,” you order, and some people stop to look at you, unsure of what to do. They trust your decisions, to a degree, but you doubt it’s enough in this situation. “They’re probably coming,” you explain, even if three of the employees have already slipped through the door and left, “and I don’t think you should be in front of the elevator when the door opens.”
Blood drains from people’s faces. Downstairs, there are more shots fired. A woman starts to cry. Your brain is going in overdrive, processing everything, trying to come up with the best decision, and yet it doesn’t feel like anything is actually registering.
“You should barricade yourself in a room,” you say. Your voice is eerily calm, even to your ears, and it feels strange to hear it. It’s like a curtain has fallen between you and the world around you. You understand that this situation is terrifying, that you should have a reaction that is not apathy. You just don’t. “I don’t think you’re the main targets here. I’ll be going up to see Mr. X.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” a man shouts. “You just want to leave us here to be canon fodder! You—”
He’s shut up by your bodyguard pulling out a gun of his own.
“I suggest you do what she’s saying,” he orders, voice deep and gravelly.
On top of being armed, Hector is a bear hybrid you hired about a year ago. He’s tall and large, very impressive physically, which is generally enough to discourage any kind of altercation. He’s also a calm and gentle person most of the time. This is the first time you’ve ever seen him hold the gun he carries.
“You should stay here with them,” you tell him. He send you a disconcerted look.
“Are you sure? Even if they’re not the target, you might be.”
The statement shouldn’t take you by surprise. It’s something you should have considered immediately, and it takes you a second to figure out why you haven’t. If you are a target, that means the attacker knows about the workings of the organization. That would mean that they’ve been planning this for a while, and that they’ve simply gone completely under your radar all this time. Which is a lot more worrying to you than anything else.
“Stay,” you insist. When this is over, it will be better if people here think you had their best interest at heart.
If you make it out, that is.
Hector ushers people inside a conference room, and you walk towards the stairs. From there, you hear gunshots better than you did earlier, and you wince at the sound. You’re not used to it. It’s strange, since you’ve been working for the Family for years now, but you’ve very rarely heard people firing guns. You’ve never even had a gun pulled on you. You’d like to think it’s because you’re too careful, or too smart to find yourself in those situations, but the truth is you’ve just never been in situations where that sort of things would happen.
Sure, someone could send a killer for you — they have, actually — and then the carefully crafted net of precautions you’ve woven around yourself would — did — stop them, but you don’t participate in drug deals and you’re rarely out in the street, and that’s where those things happen most of the time.
You glance down. You’re on the fifteenth floor, so you doubt the employees who ignored your warning have made it out yet. You doubt they will, to be honest.
Glancing up, you wonder if you’ll make it to the twentieth before someone catches up with you and, since it’s a useless thing to think about, you begin your ascension. You’re not the most in shape, most of your daily exercise consisting in walking from places to places. That is a lot of walking, and you can do it without getting breathless, but you never take the stairs. Soon, you’re panting, and you’re about to take a break after three floors when you hear new gunshots that make you freeze.
These were in the stairwell. They echo deafeningly, and, for the first time since this all started, fear actually grips you. You swallow, heart beating loudly, and you keep going. You hear some screams, down there, and the horrible sound of flesh — bodies — hitting the floor, and then nothing. You’re sure someone must be climbing up those stairs, but you can’t hear them at all, and that terrifies you. You have no idea how fast they are, how soon they’ll catch up with you, how—
You slam open the door to the last floor. The time is not to discretion, and anyway, whoever is down there is probably coming for the twentieth floor.
The second you walk out, three guns are pointed towards you, and someone is screaming at you to stay where you are. You obey, until Mr. X’s bodyguards identify you. You had told him that hiring hybrids would be a good idea, since they rely more on their heightened senses and tend to have better reflexes, but you’d been ignored, so you had just shrugged it off and followed your own advice.
“Mr. X is inside,” one of the men tells you, pointing at the door, but not moving to take you there. You walk by him, and they all keep their eyes firmly on the stairwell’s door. That makes you assume the elevators don’t work, otherwise they’d have part of their focus on there.
“Mr. X, do we have any idea what— Miss Xanders, I apologize, I hadn’t seen you there.”
“It’s fine, (Y/N),” Anna says. “We really have more important things to concern ourselves with.”
“Do we know who’s attacking us?” you ask, giving your attention back to Mr. Xanders.
Mr. Xanders is an old man, you feel that he was already an old man when you’d joined. He had Anna quite late, when he was nearing his fifties, and he recently celebrated his seventieth birthday. You would know, you organized the party.
He’s looked old for as long as you’ve worked for him, using a walking stick, small eyes hidden behind large glasses, skin marked with wrinkles. But there was always something sharp and smart, cunning, in his eyes. Despite everything, he felt dangerous, and you had never doubted that he was not a man to underestimate.
Right now, though, he looks tired. Exhausted. He’s staring at his laptop screen and shaking his head, utterly confused.
“I can’t recognize anyone,” he says, and your heart misses a beat. Not good, that’s not good at all. “Can you?”
You walk around the desk quickly, examining the view you get from various cameras placed all around the building, and your hands involuntarily clench into fists as you see how dire everything is. On several different floors, men with machine guns are walking around, and you know for a fact they’re not working for you. You can’t see what’s happened to your people in the low-resolution, but you can guess, and your stomach tightens at the thought.
“How is that possible?” you whisper. “How has no one intervened yet?”
You know the police isn’t too keen on coming here, but this is genuinely insane. The only explanation you can think of is that they’ve been paid-off, and again, you don’t know how you wouldn’t have heard about that.
“That’s not what I asked you,” Mr. X says harshly, and you wince, focusing again on the men on the screen. You scan the men again, quickly. Some are wearing masks, but a lot of them are brazenly showing their faces, and that is one more thing that is not good. They should want to make sure no one would recognize them. If they’re confident enough to do that…
“I don’t know them,” you whisper. Some look vaguely familiar, but you just can’t place it, so you’re sure they aren’t big names. You have definitely not been on the look-out for them.
“Dad, we should really go up to the helicopter,” Anna says urgently.
Mr. Xanders hesitates, then nods, getting up in a movement that is slow and clearly painful. You help him out without thinking much about it, holding his arm and giving him his walking stick.
“How will you do that? The elevators aren’t working and the stairs don’t go to the roof.”
“We’ll reactivate the elevators,” Anna explains with a shrug, and you stare at her in disbelief.
“That will mean those people will be able to move freely in the building. I don’t think—”
“They are already moving freely,” Mr. Xanders barks.
“Still—”
Then, a lot of things happen at the same time. You were standing in front of the elevator, Anna calling it with a special key, the bodyguards surrounding you, eyes and weapons still directed at the stairwell door.
The elevator opens with a ding. And the door slams open.
There are gunshots everywhere. You dive to the ground, or maybe you’re pushed down, you’re not too sure. You look up to see two men falling down around you, the third guard ushering Anna and her father in. You try to push yourself to your feet, but the door is already closing. You call out, you can’t hear your own voice, ears ringing from all the noise.
You meet Anna’s eyes, filled with indifference and a complete lack of remorse, and then the door is closed, and you know they’re gone.
And someone, someone who wanted them dead and just killed two men, is in this room with you.
Slowly, oh so slowly, you turn around. As you do, you feel your lower lip starting to tremble, and you sink your teeth into the flesh to stop it. You push yourself on your elbows, and your eyes fall on a man with bleached blonde hair pushed back with a bandana, a round face that makes him look younger than you suspect he is, and a mocking smirk. Once more, you’re struck by the fact that you don’t know him. He’s alone and he took out two trained guards, not to mention the people he must have killed to get there, and you have no clue who he is.
His eyes confuse you, at first, and then you realize it’s their color that is throwing you off, an unnatural yellow, and the slit of his pupils. He’s a hybrid, you understand, and you curse yourself for how slow your brain is at the moment. You don’t have time to wonder if he’s part cat or part snake before he takes a step towards you. Fear grips you, and you consider crawling back, but you force yourself to stay unmoving. You don’t let emotions control you. That’s not who you are.
Instead, you stare at him straight in the eyes, even as you feel tears well up in yours. You’ve never been afraid of death, and yet it seems that you can’t stop your body’s reaction as you understand that this is it. This is how you die, where you die, this is who kills you.
The man crouches down in front of you, and lifts his gun to press the barrel against your forehead. He looks at you like an animal playing with its food. The situation seems to be amusing to him, and you think he is waiting for you to beg. You have no intention of doing that.
“Just make it quick,” you say.
You don’t recognize your own voice. The man’s smile widens, revealing pearly white teeth and a set of fangs. Tears start to roll down your cheeks, and you’re completely unable to stop them. You don’t feel sad or afraid, you just feel empty, but the tears keep falling. Still, you hold the man’s gaze. You won’t beg for your life.
“What if I let you go?” he drawls, and you can’t help the way your eyes widen at the possibility. Then, he laughs, pleased by your reaction, and you’re horrified to find out that this had an effect on you. The treacherous hope you’d just felt makes the reality of your imminent death crushing. A sob escapes you before you can get yourself under control again.
“Please,” you whisper. “Just get it over with.”
A pout forms on his face, and he shrugs. Then, to your surprise, he removes the gun from your forehead. The next thing you feel is the grip of the weapon, violently connecting with your temple, and then you don’t feel anything at all, not even the floor when your head hits it in your fall.
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You wake up to the sound of soft, muffled sobs. It takes you a few seconds to piece things together, your head throbbing painfully and your mind in shambles. You lift your head with a groan, trying to take in your surroundings. Your thoughts are slow and you hate it. It makes you feel so vulnerable and defenseless.
Of course, that gets worse when you realize your hands are tied behind your back. That sends a jolt of adrenaline through your body, and you manage to look around you. It seems like you are in some warehouse, which, in your experience, is not a good thing. That’s where executions happen. They’re places that are accident prone, so the presence of blood could be explained easily, and they aren’t inspected that often anyway.
There's another sob beside you, and when you turn to look where it’s coming from, you find Anna, not just tied up but gagged, tears streaming down her cheeks. You assume that means her and her father were caught before they made it to the helicopter. On the other side of her is Mr. X, who seems to be in the same situation as her.
I’m here to be killed, you think. You can’t see another explanation. Mr. X and Anna are definitely here for that reason, so if you’re there with them— it means you’re here to die. You hope it will be quick, like you had asked that man, but you doubt it. If they took you here, it’s probably because they intend to make an example out of you. Intellectually, you don’t blame them. If this is a takeover of the family, they’ll probably need all the intimidation power they can get to keep the situation under control. It’s a ballsy move, certainly, and you would be at least a little impressed if you weren’t thinking about the creative and painful ways they can choose to get rid of you.
“Is she awake?” a voice asks. You turn your head quickly, too quickly, and another groan escapes you as your head painfully reminds you of the blow you just took.
You meet the mocking eyes of the man who knocked you out, before he looks away from you, at a large man you don’t think you’ve seen before.
“He wants to see her.”
The man nods, and then he’s on you in just a few steps, roughly forcing you up, his grip tight around your arm. You groan again as he drags you through the warehouse, to a large black car. You have just the time to think that someone must not want to be seen, if they’re in that, before you’re pushed into it. You lose your balance and land on your knees, and that’s when legs appear in your field of vision. They’re clad in black suit trousers.
You slowly look up. First, you discover elbows resting on spread knees, tattooed hands joined between them. Then there’s an elegant white shirt, unbuttoned at the top, muscular shoulders, a strong jaw, an amused, mocking smile and—
Your mouth drops open. Today is definitely proving to be a trying day for your reputation of never expressing your emotions, no matter the situation.
“Jungkook?” you ask, in disbelief.
Because it’s him. There’s something harsher in his eyes, his hair is longer, dark locks falling down to his jaw, and he’s lost any remaining softness he still had two years ago, when you last saw him, but it’s definitely him. He looks confident, and he’s more relaxed than you’ve ever seen him, clearly knowing that he’s in full control of the situation.
“Hey,” he says. “Wanna take a seat?”
He watches you struggle to get to your feet, something that turns out not to be that easy when your hands are tied behind your back, and doesn’t make a movement to help you. When you manage to sit opposite him, you’re still watching him like you’ve seen a ghost.
“What are you doing here?”
You know you should be able to piece things together to get an answer now. The deferential tone the man had when he talked about him earlier, everything that happened since these first gunshots… In another situation, it would be obvious to you. But because it’s Jungkook, you can’t bring yourself to come to the natural conclusion.
Jungkook had an out. He could have left this world behind altogether. So why wouldn’t he?
“Come on, you’re supposed to be smart,” he says, mocking, and his smile is harsh and condescending. “I’m taking over for the Xanders family. I think that should have been pretty clear.”
There’s a moment of silence, a long moment, as he waits for it to sink in. He’s in no hurry.
“But why?”
He shrugs, lean back against the leather seat.
“Because I can. Don’t you wanna why you’re here?”
That… would be a good idea, actually, and you’re bothered by how long it took you to think about it. You’re also bothered by how you lost track of that the second you saw Jungkook. You blame it on the surprise and on the fact that you’ve known him since before you became as— you’d like to say ‘efficient’, but the right word is probably ‘emotionless’. Empty.
“Why am I here?” you ask, frowning. If he wanted to kill you, he would have done it outside. It could be that he just wants to gloat, but something tell you he has—
“I have an offer for you,” he says, and then he grins and reveals his teeth. “It’s my way of saying thanks for how generous you were when you gave me five minutes to save my life.”
His tone is so abrasive it almost makes you wince, but you’re already falling back into your normal self. ‘Offer’ is a good thing, it means negotiation, conversation, things you can do, things you’re good at, things you can focus on to block out everything else, like the pain in your head or the guilt that settles in when he describes your actions.
“What offer?”
The grin disappears. He doesn’t seem happy he didn’t get a reaction from you.
“Work for me.”
That… makes sense, you suppose.
“I’m taking over for Mr. X. You know everything around here, and some people say you’re the best there is at what you do.” Then he shrugs, and casually pulls out a gun that you think was tucked in his back pocket. “That, or join him out there. I’m not sure you’ll like the outcome for that though.”
Despite the obvious threat, you can’t help but seriously consider the offer. If there’s one thing you’re sure of, it’s that it’s not a good one. Even if he manages to replace Mr. X, you doubt all the people who work for him will obey him. Stabilizing the whole thing will be a titanic task, but that’s not even what worries you — you can appreciate a challenge. No, the issue is that if you switch your allegiance, people will remember it. You will make a lot of enemies, and that doesn’t even include the people who simply will not trust you because you used to work for someone else. It’s a poisoned gift, really, and you’re sure Jungkook knows it.
“How do you plan on making the families follow suit?” you ask with a frown.
He rolls his eyes.
“Do people ever tell you how boring you are?”
They do, actually.
“This is not the only coup happening today. Some people who have already agreed to work for me will get in power. And the others… will take some convincing, but I’m sure they’ll come around.” He gives you a joyless, aggressive smile.
You’re still focused on his first words. You were already so puzzled that you wouldn’t have heard about what’s going on today — about how Jungkook is back in town, about how he’s been planning an entire takeover — but this is on a whole other level.
“How did you do that?” you ask, and when he lifts an eyebrow, you know you didn’t manage to keep your surprise out of your voice.
“Which part?”
“How did I not hear about that? I mean, Mr. X could sneeze and I would have known about it. People couldn’t open speakeasies without getting approved by me first — and they tried more than once.”
Jungkook looks at you, and disbelief passes on his face. This is what gets you? You couldn’t be bothered to give a shit about anything earlier, now you seem barely affected by the fact that he was threatening to kill you, but that caught your interest. Not just that, but you almost look impressed.
Okay, maybe you’re not as boring as he’d said, but you sure are fucking weird.
“We can smell you,” he says, tapping his nose. “It’s not too hard to figure out who you’re in contact with. Just had to make sure to avoid them. There were a few close calls, but we took care of it.” Then he shrugs. “It wasn’t as hard as you think it was. You’re not as cautious around hybrids.”
You stare at him for a while. He starts picking at his suit, looking annoyed by the turn the situation has taken, and you think about what he said. He’s right, you realize. You fucked up here — badly. You should have taken hybrids’ senses into consideration. You’d like to tell yourself that you didn’t think about it because there were no hybrids in high places, in the organization, but that’s not a good excuse. You file the information in your brain. You’ll do better.
“I’ll do it,” you say, and Jungkook glances at you.
“What changed your mind?”
“I’m— curious, I suppose. I’d like to see where this thing is going.”
Jungkook considers taking back his offer. He didn’t know what he thought would happen, but he expected it to be more interesting than this. Instead, you sat there, face as stiff as ever, and now you’re talking about being curious, which sounds wildly out of character, if you ask him. Yoongi’s told him you cried when you thought he was about to kill him, but he doubts it right now. It doesn’t look like anything can get through that thick shell of yours — and even if it did, he doesn’t think there would be a lot underneath it.
But the thing is, he was telling the truth earlier, when he said you were rumored to be the best there was at your job, and Jungkook is nothing if not a perfectionist. He likes to surround himself with the best. Which, unfortunately, means you.
“Suga!” he shouts, opening the door.
The man with the slit pupils jumps in easily, and looks at you with a disapproving twist of his lips.
“I’m not killing her, am I?”
He sounds disappointed.
Jungkook shakes his head in response.
“That’s Suga,” he tells you, pointing at the man. “He’ll explain how we work to you.”
You nod.
“I think he should kill you,” Suga informs you off-handedly, dropping on the seat next to you. “I think you’ll betray us.”
“If she does, I’ll kill her, if she fucks up her job, I’ll kill her, ” Jungkook says, and you have no doubt he means it. “Consider this your five minutes. Let them go, and you won’t have another shot.”
“That’s fine by me,” you say evenly. Betrayal has never been an option for you. You had no loyalty towards Mr. X, but the threat over your family was too big to risk it. And now, with Jungkook— you guess you’ll have to wait and see. You don’t think you’ll betray him, but if things turn sour… You suppose you’re not above it.
Maybe it should worry you, how little you value your own life, but you brush it off quickly. Thinking about it too much could compromise the way you do your job, and you can’t have that.
“So,” Jungkook says, leaning back, eyes watching you carefully. “What do you suggest we do with the Xanders?”
Suga opens his mouth, but Jungkook lifts a hand, signaling that he wants your answer. You wonder if this is some kind of test.
“Killing them would be the best decision,” you say, somewhat reluctantly. You know your decisions in the past, your suggestions, have lead to the death of people, but you’ve rarely been so direct about it. Then again, death is part of the game, when you work this kind of job. Mr. Xanders is about as close to an actual monster as it gets. And Anna… Well, maybe Anna isn’t. You don’t like her, and you absolutely believe that she was happy to enjoy everything that came with what her father did, but she’s not him. Which is a low bar to clear.
“She’s not wrong,” Suga echoes, sounding annoyed.
“Letting them live would be seen as a proof of weakness and they would try to come back. It’s just— a bad idea.”
You can see Jungkook’s jaw tensing. Next to you, Suga starts to make his leg shake. You suppose he has the same kind of bad feeling you do.
“What if we kill Mr. X but not Anna?” he asks, and Suga groans. Jungkook rolls his eyes and develops. “Yoongi, we’re not taking over the legal part of the business. We can just— leave that to her, and not bother about it.”
“We’ll have to figure out something else to launder money,” you say, because that was the main point of that side of things, legal just in name really. That is not your biggest concern, though. “But if you kill her father and not her—”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Yoongi snaps. “She needs to die.”
He’s right. It’s just the smart thing to do.
“People here aren’t impressed by mercy,” you insist, and that’s when you realize you’ve lost that fight already. Jungkook knows it. There’s no way he doesn’t. He’s made his decision, even if it’s a bad one, and trying to change his mind is useless. So you’re quick to jump to the things that need to be done if he lets Anna live. “You need to get her to sign emancipation papers.”
Jungkook tenses suddenly at the suggestion and a low growl comes from his throat as he bares his teeth at you threateningly. Yoongi barely moves, but you see his hand settling on his hip, near his gun, which you guess serves as a reassuring gesture. The car fills with tension, and you swallow. You feel small and defenseless. It’s not that rare a sentiment, but you suddenly become extremely aware of the fact that you’re alone with them, hands still fucking tied behind your back, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do.
“Anna doesn’t own me,” Jungkook snarls.
“Legally she does,” you explain. You’re choosing your words carefully, making sure not to anger him any more, but you’re still staring right at him. “You may have forged an ID or something, but if she lives and she can prove she hasn’t freed you— the consequences will be bad.”
There is a second that feels like an eternity, Jungkook just staring at you, lips now in a tight line, before he shrugs and you can breathe again.
“Okay. Let’s do that.”
Yoongi groans and sends you a furious glare that you don’t understand. You agreed with him. What did you do to deserve that?
“I’ll take care of Xanders,” Jungkook adds. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
“Can someone— Can someone untie me?” you ask as they’re moving towards the door.
Jungkook glances at you.
“We’ll see when we come back.”
A grin flashes on his lips when your lips twist into an offended expression, and then he jumps out of the car, followed by Yoongi, and leaves you alone in there.
Fuck.
What an asshole.
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Jungkook walks towards his captives with long, confident strides. Yoongi is right behind him, of course, his shadow, the perfect killer. He may disapprove of Jungkook’s plan, if you can even call it that, and he sure doesn’t like how easily you dropped the topic, but he’s still loyal to him. If he fucks up, he’ll clean up after him.
Jungkook savors the moment when Anna’s eyes fall on him. He can tell she recognizes him immediately by the way they widen and how she tries to speak through her gag. It’s been years since the last time he saw her. Much longer than the last time he saw you, which leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He’s thought about this so much. A long time ago, he dreamt of her telling him she wanted him back, but over the years, it mostly turned into him finally taking revenge, and he intends to fully savor it now that it’s happening.
He removes the gag from her mouth, and takes an unhealthy pleasure from the way she sobs out, loud and desperate.
“Jungkook, Jungkook, baby, please, please…”
Jungkook only needs to glance at Yoongi for him to set her free, albeit after an annoyed roll of his eyes. The second he does, Anna falls from the chair, right into his arms. Jungkook knows that she’s only trying to save her life, doubts she’s thought of him for more than a split second since he’s disappeared, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to enjoy it.
“Hey baby,” he grins, and he watches as she winces when she sees his sharp teeth. Right, she didn’t see him after that.
Fuck. It’s been a long, long time. She really didn’t give a fuck about him, huh?
And yet he can’t kill her. And yet he knows her bright, pleading eyes, the light weight of her body, the curve of her neck by heart.
“I’m going to need you to do something for me,” he says, voice deep and eyes boring into hers.
She blinks.
“And if I do you won’t— you won’t kill me?”
Jungkook’s opinion of Anna is far less charitable than yours. He thinks she’s an opportunist, will do anything to preserve herself and, sure, she’s not personally involved in her father’s business, but she wouldn’t bat an eye if she was. She likes to play the innocent girl who’s horrified by what’s going on with her family, but she just isn’t. As simple as that.
“Nah. I won’t.”
It doesn’t take long before Anna is kneeling on the floor, writing down what Yoongi is dictating to her, reading from his phone. Jungkook could do it, knows the text by heart, learned it a long time ago when he still hoped for it, but he just stays there immobile instead, watching her at his mercy.
It’s not as nice as he’d imagined.
Finally, she hands him the piece of paper with trembling hands, a small smile forming on her lips as she thinks that her nightmare is over.
Jungkook takes it, reads it over, and nods. Then he pulls his gun out, and Anna’s smile vanishes. Jungkook thrives on her reaction, on the idea that he has complete power over her in that moment. It feels dark and twisted, but fuck, it also feels good.
“But I—”
He shoots and Anna yelps, protecting her ears in reflex.
It takes her a second to realize he wasn’t aiming at her, and relief washes over her, before she understands what it means. She turns around, slowly. And screams.
A clean shot, Jungkook decides, looking at Mr. X. The man had been glaring at him the entire time, and he doubts he would have groveled like Anna had. Now, his blood is splattered on the floor, head thrown back, mouth open, staring at the ceiling with empty, dead eyes. Jungkook doesn’t care when Anna runs to him, sobbing, calling for him, trying to shake him awake.
“We’re going,” Jungkook announces to Yoongi, who finally seems a little less angry with him.
He doesn’t look back at Anna as he walks away.
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You rub your wrists, then your shoulders after Yoongi has cut you free. Jungkook doesn’t say anything about it, just sits back in the luxurious car. You thought he would look content, happy with himself. He doesn’t.
When the car stops in front of your building, you’re not sure what to do. Part of you still can’t believe he’s letting you live.
“We’ll come and get you tomorrow to get things started,” Jungkook informs you while staring out the window. “You know, you probably should have moved two years ago,” he adds, and for some reason, that really rubs you the wrong way.
“I changed the locks,” you answer, and he grins.
“You still haven’t figured out how I did it, right?”
You frown. You haven’t.
He looks genuinely pleased by that.
“What should I call you?” you ask. “Do you want to be the new Mr. X?”
He growls at the suggestion, but seriously thinks about your question.
“Call me— Call me Mr. Jeon,” he decides spontaneously, without explaining his decision, and you nod. This should help make things more professional, isn’t if this isn’t actually a professional setting.
“Fine, Mr. Jeon. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
You’re pleased to find that your voice is back to normal, calm and even, not letting anyone know of whatever you’re feeling.
Except Jungkook and Yoongi can probably hear how fast your heart is still beating, but that’s a problem you’ll have to deal with some other time.
You step out, and linger there a second too long, the door open. Finally, you gather the courage to turn around and look at Jungkook.
“Why are you back?”
You mean a lot by that. In the city, sure, but also in that setting. You’d always thought— you’d always thought Jungkook was better than that. You’d always thought he should get the opportunity to get away and he’d be fine. That’s something you can’t shake away, can’t push under the rug.
He couldn’t escape.
He stares at you blankly.
“Where else am I supposed to go?”
Then he leans in and closes the door, and you’re left alone on the pavement.
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Tagging list: @chaiwivluv​ @mintyrae​
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theseerasures · 4 years
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a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride
honestly there is just like. no point as of Witch (if not earlier) in thinking about Marrow and Winter as following along the same defection path, and downright facile to compare the two in terms of who is “closer” to defecting and therefore “less problematic” (even setting aside that making value judgments along those lines in fiction is...never that straightforward), when the narrative has emphasized REPEATEDLY how they are on entirely separate tracks in terms of character and role in the Atlas military.
seriously, it’s like saying “this orange is bad because you can’t eat the peel like you can eat an apple skin”
so like, yes, Marrow is the one who has verbally expressed his misgivings, and has clearly articulated scruples (as opposed to just the dial-up noise) and will blurt them out any second now as soon as he gets a word in edgewise. but also: Marrow HASN’T gotten a word in edgewise (except with Winter, fancy that), and has done approximately fuck all to actually subvert the system that he is growing to hate. both his theory and lack of praxis are tied into Marrow’s relatively low, overlooked position in the Atlas system, and feed into the fact that for Marrow the project of Atlas is not personal.
Marrow joined the military on ideological grounds. he clearly does want personal connection, but that has been denied him at every turn, largely by his teammates, largely by his partner, all of whom use him to enforce their own struggles with the clash between political duty and personal grief. he has been alienated by the system he upholds, which started even before we meet him. this makes it much harder for him to rebel in deed, because he doesn’t have a lot of power to begin with and he knows the system will not protect him if he does; at the same time, that relative powerlessness and isolation keeps his investment in Atlas abstract, uncomplicated, and much easier to dispel. Marrow is still with Atlas because he has a job to do, because it’s his duty, because he is still clinging to the Atlas military’s illusory altruism. he wants Penny to come with them so she can save Atlas. his protestations at seeing Team FNKI, that they are “just kids,” comes from the belief that it is categorically wrong to send children into battle. what is keeping Marrow from defecting is belief, and once the belief is shattered--like, say, when his boss’ new ingenious plan is to Nuke the Poors--there is nothing keeping him around.
and once his path is set he will not waver, because Atlas, by design, has no hold on him materially or personally (outside of his own life, which he was already happy to dedicate to a cause). Marrow then, is the limit case of Atlas being hoist with its own petard: an exemplar for how it gives its people nothing while demanding everything, but also an exemplar for how quickly the entire system folds in on itself when the veil is lifted. when Marrow defects (and it IS when) it will represent Atlas as a whole defecting from itself, even if we don’t see it visually--from the civilians, to the enlisted soldiers, to perhaps even members of Marrow’s own team.
NONE of the things i just mentioned really apply to Winter, because there is nothing about Atlas that is not personal for Winter.
i have no doubt that Winter is in some ways invested in same abstract principles that swayed Marrow, but that is constantly overridden by the fact that Winter has family at all sides of this, even before everything fell to shit, and the narrative will not stop reminding her.
“what about your sister?” “would you say the same thing if it was your sister inside?” her father was gunning for a seat on the Council. the man who took her in is essentially Head of State. Penny has made herself Public Enemy Number One, and Weiss is actively abetting her. even Whitley has now thrown himself into the fray, unbeknownst to her. and another person might be better at compartmentalizing all this the way Winter clearly wants to, and stick to the party line, but Winter cannot, because the more i watch her the more i’m convinced that the current crisis in Atlas is just a microcosm of the real issue, which is to say: everything is personal in Atlas for Winter, because everything is personal for Winter.
at a moment-to-moment level, and especially when backed into a corner, Winter defaults not to ideology but her tightly coiled lattice of personal relationships. and this makes perfect sense, because Winter grew up in a household where she had to perpetually crisis respond, and then she never stopped. Marrow does what he does because he believes in the dream, in making the world a better place, and therefore it is more difficult in some respects for him to defect, because it involves taking a long hard look at and then rejecting the structures he bought into and made himself complicit in. once lines are crossed and he DOES do that, though, he’s home free. for Winter, there are no lines to cross, because all Winter wants in the end is to throw her arms around everyone she cares about and drag them to safety. to keep them there, closely held, where she can see them and make sure that they stay safe.
but what’s tricky about Winter--what’s fascinating to me, what Jacques tried to beat out of her, what James alternately capitalizes on and tries to quash, what she resents about herself--is that in times of crisis (which for Winter is again ALL THE TIME), “everyone she cares about” becomes everyone, so that suddenly she takes a shine to the General’s war machine, so that she’s risking her life to give Penny and Fria a few more seconds of time, so that she’s stepping in front of Elm’s incoming fist, so that she’s letting JYR go rescue Oscar. Marrow has ideals he values, but at her core Winter has nothing but the people, who are real the moment she sees and feels them--real enough to defend, or defend against.
Winter jealously protects her web of people, but that web will also spiral out to infinity if she lets it--so she doesn’t. she has adamantly refused to move out of the mode where she lives present-by-present, only reacting to what is right in front of her, what she has been told, weighing her own life against the people who are closest, and no more. this is unquestionably a trauma response, but it’s also reinforced by 1) her choice to become a career soldier, and 2) the fact that Winter actually HAS quite a bit of power, and she knows that. but she has never trusted herself with any of it, largely because her hypervigilant response to situations has only ever been chastised instead of rehabilitated. Winter knows the weight of her name and her position, but she constantly tries to ignore it, or run away from it, so that she is only ever the heiress, the second-in-command, and never the Queen. she cannot be a leader until she is Good (that is to say, perfect and rational), so she tries to obliterate her power the same time she obliterates that pesky personhood: remaining still for as long as possible, avoiding situations that she knows will prompt action and choice, and when absolutely pushed to think through her power, moving the pieces around with extreme caution, hoping that the world won’t be burnt black by it.
Marrow and Winter are fundamentally at opposing ends of the personal-political bleed, and the story could NOT telegraph it any more clearly than their conversation in Witch, where Marrow makes a personal plea to Winter so that she can make a call far beyond just that, and she refutes him, by reminding him of his obligation to Atlas in the form of impersonal duty.
i’ll conclude by pointing out that there is something very interesting happening with Winter right now, that exceeds her power in-universe. because even as a Schnee, as Ironwood’s protege, what Winter can do is limited (partly because she limits herself), except for how the story has resolutely centered her actions and MADE them significant. in the course of this war Winter has let herself make exactly two choices--both of them noninterventionist, easily justifiable, and not meant to take any ideological stand--and they ended up altering the entire fabric of the war with Salem. all because she loved her sisters more than her duty. all because she was shown a slim chance to save the kingdom and a fourteen-year-old boy, and she thought just for an instant, what’s the harm
(and James Ironwood will never know. that even with his plan, his bomb, all his ships, all his soldiers...he was no match for her. his loyal lieutenant. the only child he will ever have, who has only ever called him “sir.”)
it is not about what Winter COULD have chosen in those moments, if she had the ability to stop Penny and Weiss from leaving, if JYR were even Oscar’s rescuers, in the conventional sense. it is about the fact that she DID make those choices, and the story has made them reverberate, in spite of the fact that she did not mean for them to. Marrow’s story is about being neglected and overlooked by the system, the moment of recognition that it needs you more than you need it, that there are so many more of you, and together you can stop chasing the dream and make your own. Winter’s story cleaves to the heart of not just Atlas, but the RWBY monomyth, which goes something like: stars are like us. the world was created because two brothers could not get along, and sundered because a woman could not cope with her grief. just because you move closer to the elite, to the center, to the top, to the sublime, it does not mean that you move farther from the fallible. we are all, at our deepest layer, people.
but the world does not tremble any less for it.
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bokubonk · 4 years
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enough
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warnings: angst
characters: Oikawa x gn!reader
date: 1/25/21
word count: 1.1k+
notes: this is officially my second post and I’ve seen a lot of Oikawa angst where he ditches his s/o for practice and while I think this would be an often occurrence, I don’t think he would completely disregard you like I wrote about in this one-shot. Oikawa is very ambitious but I know he would be wiling to dedicate time to his s/o if they were to communicate with him. I also wrote this in the middle of class so I apologize if it sucks. Anyway I love him so please don’t hate me for writing this lol ♡
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Love wasn’t supposed to be like this.
You always knew that love wasn’t going to be the fairytale romance you had always dreamed about. You knew there would be fights and arguments but you never thought the ache in your chest would become a constant and apologies would replace the well-planned dates you looked forward to.
Mornings were tinted gray. It had been months since your rose-colored glasses shattered and you saw Tooru for who he really was: someone who couldn’t be bothered to waste time on you when he could be improving his skills.
Late night practices became a new routine and soon the nights you spent falling asleep in his arms turned into nights you spent holding your phone close and wondering if he would send you a text “goodnight” like he used to. But you knew the truth: he couldn’t even be bothered to ask how your day was. He wanted to avoid wasting his time and those three words would lead to a useless conversation when you spent everyday at school together and you never went anywhere else except straight home after class.
You woke up every morning, heart heavy with regret for staying up for a boy who never gave you any time. Yet, you didn’t know who you hated more: Tooru, or yourself for still loving him and hoping he would change and his apologies would one day turn into promises he actually kept.
Today was your three year anniversary. You stuck by him since the beginning of high school and your cheers were always the loudest at any game. At some point, you and the team were practically family with how often they would see you at practice. But it seems like you got too used to the happiness that accompanied finally dating your childhood best friend who you once thought would never give you the time of day.
You, Tooru, and Iwaizumi used to be the best of friends, the golden trio. Hangouts were weekly and through all the teasing and harmless flirting you somehow fell for the boy who had more fangirls than you could count. Iwaizumi was your confidant, someone who knew about your feelings without you even having to tell him. He saw the way you looked at Tooru and he also saw the fleeting glances Tooru shot towards you when you weren’t looking.
That didn’t mean he ever let the secret out that your feelings were mutual. He let the two of you figure it out yourselves, giving advice from the sidelines and stepping in whenever Tooru was being a flirt with his fangirls and disregarding his feelings for you.
It was a scene you often remembered. You watching from the sidelines as girl after girl threw themselves onto your best friend and he simply laughed flirting back with them as though your heart wasn’t shattering with every compliment that fell from his lips.
You supposed that should’ve been the first sign you were never meant to be. But somehow, the two of you began dating and for the first two years you were attached at the hip. Whenever he talked to any girls, you were always right there with him, his hand wrapped around your waist and your head on his shoulder.
So where did it all go wrong?
The question had been running through your head for months and you were beginning to lose your mind trying to find the answer. Your thoughts were constantly occupied with the memories the two of you shared and you wondered if it was that time you were late to his game because your alarm didn’t go off. But from the way he brightened up once he realized you finally made it, you were sure that couldn’t have been it.
Maybe it was the time you saw the lights to the gym were still on and you opened the doors to see Tooru still practicing, putting obvious pressure on his knee. Sweat was beading on his brow and you could tell he was exhausted but you knew he wouldn’t stop anytime soon. After all, his determination was one of the reasons why you fell in love with him. He set ball after ball, each one fueled with his frustration and even when he saw you standing there he didn’t stop.
He glanced at you and muttered a resolute “go away” before getting back to what he was doing. You stood there dumbfounded and a little hurt by his obvious dismissal but you walked over to him anyway, taking hesitant steps.
“It’s getting late,” you murmured, standing next to the net a few feet away from him. “You can always practice in the morning, Tooru. We have a test tomorrow and I’m sure you have to stu-.”
Your words got cut short from the glare sent your way. You couldn’t hold back your flinch and you averted your eyes, staring down at your scuffed shoes. 
You had never seen that look before and you wondered if you had simply imagined the venom in his gaze. 
“Go home, y/n,” he spat, turning away from you. You wondered if he could tell you were crying but from the silence that stretched between the two of you, you hoped he hadn’t because that meant he didn’t care.
You remembered walking home alone that night, tears clinging to your cheeks with only a thin jacket that didn’t do a good enough job of keeping you warm. When you woke up with a fever and an apology text from Tooru the next morning you weren’t surprised. You simply replied with an “it’s okay” before snuggling back into bed, wondering if your worries were a burden to him.
But perhaps that wasn’t it. After all, he showered you in affection once you came back to school and the memory of his hate-filled gaze faded with every kiss he gave you.
So here you were, waiting at an empty table with only a glass of water in front of you. The ice had melted seeing as two hours had passed since you sat down. After the first hour, the waitress began sending pitying glances your way and you heaved another sigh as she approached you once again.
You cut her off before she could speak with the screeching of your chair as you stood up. You threw her a small smile and a quiet word of gratitude, slipping her a ten dollar bill for wasting both of your times and walked out the door.
When you thought of love, you never imagined the eight missed calls while you sat alone at a restaurant you didn’t even like, waiting for the boy who used to promise you forever. And for some, three was the charm but after three years, you had finally had enough.
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diavolosthots · 4 years
Text
It's not quite New Years yet where I live but I wanted to get these HCs done with lol so Happy New Years from the boys and me
Warning: mentions of alcohol
THE BROTHERS celebrating New Year’s with MC
Lucifer:
It’s that time of the year again,... already? Honestly he rather hide away and do his own thing than bother celebrating another year that he knows will turn into at least 3000 more, 4000 if he’s very unlucky. All jokes aside, he’ll probably be the cheesy one that stays up only to steal a kiss from you at midnight and then? Well, he says he’s going to bed but you and him are going to start the new year off with a bang ;) sex if you’re down, getting wasted if you’re sex repulsed/asexual/not down for another reason. 
“We can’t start the New Year slacking off, can we? Come here, Darling. Let me properly introduce the New Year to you.”
Mammon:
WOOHOO PARTY! Asmo and him definitely managed to decorate and give everyone those stupid party hats. Except to dance a lot, and a lot of grinding and touching from his end. Also expect to have him drunk and whining for your attention at any given moment. He’ll stay sober enough to give you your New Year’s kiss but then it’s time for the real party! If you fall asleep, he’ll make sure to carry you to bed and tuck you in… with a goodnight’s kiss of course. 
“Yer the only thing that matters to me this year, MC.”
Leviathan:
Hates it, doesn’t like the party, can you two just stay in his room and celebrate together? Yes? Cool. He’s a lightweight when it comes to drinking and prefers not to, but fear not! He got all the best snacks and your favorite movies to count you down to the New Year. Shyly asks for a New Year’s kiss and may miss it by a minute, but that’s okay, his clumsiness makes it just a little more special. Afterward, you’ll be cuddled up in his arms and this is actually the time where he lets himself be the most vulnerable so expect a lot of deep talks :) 
“You’re special to me, there’s no one else I would have kissed into the New Year. I… love you.”
Satan:
This is the night where you figure out that Satan can be quite the party animal and he can get wild! In a good way ;) He views this as a time to get all the old baggage of the old year off his shoulders and Asmodeus and him are sure to gossip, but once midnight strikes? He pulls you into his arms, dips you down, and kisses you like the flirtatious gentleman he is, careful not to spill the champagne in his hand. You won’t get any sleep tonight, MC, because much like Lucifer, he has to ensure to start the new year with a bang. 
“Oh? Was that a yawn, my little kitten? I’ll have you awake again in no time, screaming Happy New Year.”
Asmodeus:
Mammon and he went all out when it came to the party. With a little funding from Lucifer and Lord Diavolo, they rented out Ristorante Six for dinner and then went back to the castle for the actual celebration. Lots of games, lots of touching, and of course the famous “New-Year’s-Make-Out-Session” are all part of your evening. Surprisingly, it most likely won’t lead to any serious uh… alone time, because Asmo is too busy partying and teaching you the ways of the party animal, with some soft moments sprinkled in the middle.
“Happy New Year, love, I can’t wait to have you for many more.”
Beelzebub:
He stays up for this because he likes how the family gets together. Everyone is in a good mood and there’s a LOT of food, which he of course devours after having made sure you had enough; considerate boi. The evening will mostly be lowkey, with some dancing here and there and few words exchanged as he keeps you close and maybe does a few drinking games with Belphie. Nothing special to him, but he’s happy to have you by his side this New Year and kisses you repeatedly once midnight strikes. One kiss just isn’t enough. 
“Thank you for sticking by my side… having you with me this New Year’s is what makes me happy the most.”
Belphegor:
Truthfully, he got dragged into this celebration and much rather would be like Levi and hibernate with you in the attic. Probably drags you somewhere private to kiss you for New Years, because no matter how tired he is, he will never miss a kiss from you. And then? You’ll probably watch the fireworks together, leaning against each other while talking about New Year’s resolutions that will never work out anyway. 
“Thanks for sticking with me, MC. I couldn’t imagine anyone else to watch the fireworks with.” 
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