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cadday · 4 years

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Collateral Damage - Chapter 6

It’s just about around a week later when he thinks about that conversation with Ansem again. He and Lea are sparring, which is a nice way to say he’s throwing random shit at the kid while the kid tries to use freaking frisbees like a weapon. Bizarre brat needs a better weapon, those plastic nuisances couldn’t protect him from shit. Shouldn’t need protection if Radiant Garden doesn’t fall, won’t fall, can’t…

Braig chucks another stick at the kid, mainly because he’s running out of ammo having exhausted the bouncy balls he commandeered from Ienzo earlier. Which were going to be a pain to pick up but maybe he could push that up on the hot head who just got nailed in the head with said stick he tossed.

Eventually they had petered out into sitting and throwing those bouncy balls back and forth while they took a break for lunch.

“So why is someone trying to kill you? I mean I get you’re an ass but like it’s only half the time.” Braig jumped a bit startled, not expecting the question.

“I’m sorry who’s trying to do what?” He looked at Lea like he had two heads. There was no way the kid had just asked him that.

“The guy who's trying to kill you. It’s why everyone’s weird about things right, and what happened to you, you know. I figure he’s gotta be still around right?” Lea shrugs like this was a completely normal conversation to be having after training for the past hour.

“...why do you figure that?”

“Because everyone is paranoid if you run off for like any amount of time. I heard Master Ansem talking to Dilan about how he thinks someone’s trying to off you or something but you like don’t want to tell them or worry them or something.” Lea looks nervous and he realizes he should probably get on his case about spying, but Lea, Axel, Lea was always so very good at deception and snooping, honestly it could come in handy if the kid had practice, doesn’t matter he’s never going to be in a situation to use.

Braig stares at him before looking down to the ball in his hand. He bounces it off the wall closest to him and catches it. He thinks about how to respond and tries for something close to the truth. Lea isn’t asking him this completely off the cuff, he’s pretty sure Master Ansem has been hinting at them to try to get him to talk and he isn’t sure he blames him. He hasn’t been forthcoming with information but if Lea goes and reports this well that might be better. It means he avoids the other’s trying to get him to explain more and Lea doesn’t seem like he is going to push for more.

“I don’t think he’s still around...He could come back though and sometimes I go to check to be sure he hasn’t.” Lea does look startled. He realises that the kid probably was expecting him to either lie or tell him that everyone was just fussy old worry warts.

“So someone is trying to kill you! Dude that’s fu…” Braig waved a hand at the kid to get him to stop talking.

“Watch your mouth kid, lord knows Even is going to give me an earful if he hears you cursing. He about took my head off for that time Ienzo said the F bomb after an experiment backfired.”

“Oh my god, I would pay to hear Ienzo cuss.” To be honest he thought it was pretty hilarious too but technically it wasn’t appropriate for a kid his age to say things like that. If you're old enough to lose your heart, you're old enough to...

“Anyway the guy wasn’t necessarily trying to kill me, it’s complicated. But let’s go with this, if you see some guy with white hair and yellow eyes you book it out of there, just in case…” Lea seems to consider this so seriously that Braig is shocked the kid is capable of it. But then again he’s been accused plenty of times of never taking anything seriously.

“...okay.” Lea nods like it’s some sort of promise, and Braig kinda hopes that if it comes to it the kid takes it to heart and is gone before any crap hits the fan again. Can’t be again if it never happened to begin with.

The bouncy ball he chucks at Lea nails him in the forehead and Braig literally falls over laughing.

Later Braig convinces Lea to help him clean up the training room, because he was using the balls just as much technically and really hadn’t Braig technically been helping the kid out or something.

The kid disappears to probably go find Isa, and stare at him when he thinks Isa can’t see like he’s made of moonlight or some poetic shit. Braig returns the balls to Ienzo who when asked why he had so many anyway was just told cryptidly that they were for ‘science’. While that was ominous he decided the best choice was not to pry or risk that ‘science’ be directed at him in some way.

Braig ends up outside when evening is getting close, partially because he was feeling restless but also he did obsessively check the place Terra had shown up, hadn’t shown up. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he did appear. He couldn’t just leave him, last time the guy had amnesia, maybe he could convince him he was more Terra then Xehanort, not like there was a keybearer around to…

Red hair girl has. will have, had a keyblade. He stops in the square and just isn’t sure what to do with that thought. The girl was like Ienzo’s age, maybe younger, he couldn’t imagine her fighting much of anything seriously. He has a hard time taking Lea seriously as it is. Terra hadn’t shown up though and might not ever, but something in him, his heart maybe, was telling him that for all things changed for him that Terra, Aqua, and Ventus were not likely as lucky. The girl needed someone to train her though at the very least and if Aqua was gone then she didn’t really have any options. None of the apprentices besides him really had any information about the keyblades and what was to come. There was that mouse king but he wasn’t sure where he even was and how to contact him, or if he would believe him to begin with. Keyblades drew heartless to them and that put the girl and radiant garden in danger. There was no other keyblade wielders running about during this time though…

‘i could.’ Oh right, other heart. And wait what did she mean that she could?

‘teach the girl to use the keyblade.’ Really that was, well not the craziest option all things considered but their in itself lay a serious issue one that had him uncomfortable at the thought.

‘no, you would stay in control. i am not strong enough anyway, but i can teach you to then teach her.’ That was an option but would that even work.

‘it will have too.’ Braig nodded and then realized that he was nodding to himself in the middle of the square probably looking like a crazy person. He quickly continued on to check for Terra but already was certain that he would find nothing. If more heartless appeared he would see to that girl learning the keyblade. Who knew really if it would ever even come to that?

It’s late when he gets back and he tries to ignore the way all the shadows look like they're creeping closer to him the longer he is out. If he all but runs inside the entrance to the castle well everyone should just be thankful he didn’t slam the damn door. Braig tries not to berate himself for being paranoid as he heads to his room. In the hall outside his room is Dilan, which I mean it’s kinda late so that’s surprising, he thought and kinda hoped they would all be asleep. Dilan raises an eyebrow but doesn’t ask where he was which is kinda a blessing because he didn’t have the time to think up a lie or even an explanation that wouldn’t sound just as much like a lie.

“Hey, what’s up? Missing out on beauty sleep lurking outside my room you know.” Dilan huffs but it’s more a laugh and Braig grins at little victories.

“I found it.” Braig looks at Dilan super confused because he wasn’t aware anything was missing until he’s holding out a red fabric something and it occurs to him that everyone had said he wasn’t wearing something. Carefully he takes it from Dilan’s hand and isn’t sure why he’s being so careful. He can’t even remember what was important about it.

“One of those things, the little monsters that have been around had it. Don’t know why.” Braig nods stiffly and okay that’s weird he guesses but he isn’t sure what to even say to that so yeah just nodding works.

“Thanks.” Is what he ends up kinda croaking out in a response and Dilan nods slowly but doesn’t really go anywhere. Braig just stares at the fabric in his hand and thinks he remembers it hadn’t always been his, there had been someone else who wore it first, someone important and he realizes suddenly that there's a lot he can’t seem to remember. Because Braig can’t recall how he ended up Ansem the Wise’s apprentice, or what his parents' names and faces were, he can’t remember why this piece of fabric is so important, and all of this has him leaning against his door as he tries to calm down. It occurs to him that either he must have known these things at some point, and his heart and the other heart both agree that somethings wrong. So it’s easy to come to the conclusion that this was freaking Luxu’s fault again. Braig is missing parts of himself, memories of things and he might not be able to ever get them back and he would be pissed if he could actually breathe right.

When he finally calms down somewhat he is aware that Dilan is not only still there but sitting next to him with his arm slung over his shoulder in some sort of side hug thing. He thinks that this is embarrassing for a second then decides he does not give a damn and leans more into his friends side.

“It was not my intention to send you into hysterics.”

“Not your fault dude. Kinda my new normal isn’t it?” He tries to laugh but it sounds so fake even he’s cringing.

“Whatever happens you know I’m not, we all aren’t going anywhere. You're stuck with us I’m afraid.” Braig can’t look at him. That was well rough, because they might not ever go anywhere but Braig had. He had been forced to leave them, and he wondered if they had hated him for it, they had to, for abandoning them, betraying them, lying to them. But he hadn’t done that. It hadn’t happened and wouldn’t happen and they would never know. Except he does. He still remembers and it freaking hurts all the time.

“Dude, feeling particularly sappy today. If anyone’s stuck with anyone it’s more like ya’ll are stuck with me. I’m like glitter, you ain't ever getting rid of me.” Braig is still leaning on his shoulder and neither of them move for a while. When they finally go to bed Braig is still gripping the fabric that had been returned to him and he falls asleep holding it to his chest.

#kingdom heart #kairi #braig #luxu #luxu is a dick #dilan #ansem the wise #aeleus #ienzo #even #isa #lea #au #fix it #ptsd #fanfic

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apophyll-sands · 5 years

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This is Ramble

I gathered pretty quickly that this whole interceptor thing was meta, Which is honestly not my personal preference, but you know whatever Story they want to tell, So you can imagine my excitement when we get introduced to repressed memories last version. Hey maybe we have our own backstory? Suddenly feel more connected to The world. And you know a better idea of how the powers work (oh that’s why in Blacksteeple we couldn’t be awaken) also is that we might be someone else? Or have someone else inside us?

Very good stuff so anyways The last update totally added so many things to the fire, namely Axle/Ariana +co and Adrest + what’s their name it gives me so much to think about

Like first of all if you are one of the two shown player characters you are like wait a minute that’s me I don’t even look much younger if anything And possibly is that my real name?. If you aren’t you are just like those are the people that Crescent had in her room, Did I know them?

You drop into the side quest w Narcissa learned that people who lived through the calamity do not recollect much because of the trauma. She also had headaches so another big hint. Probably something PC Observes w shiver, It honestly gave me Pokémon mystery dungeon explorers vibe, you hear something that may have caused your amnesia? You wonder if it’s really it or maybe something worse.

Also I wonder do you have fake memories because everyone looked around the same age so it can’t have happened a while ago, and it’s conveyed that you are close to your mother so who is she as we are still unsure of. Or maybe we do have a limited memories and we just haven’t known because it hasn’t come up because we are at the damn player character. to add to the fire consider if it’s a coincidence that we survived a horrible tragedy and having a pyramid behind our house is that we have been inside and that has magical healing water. And maybe we also have the person who lived inside spirit with us?? And how does Nymiera know this- unless it’s just because of her power Could be as simple as that. Also would she have seen us during that time we were both alive in the past? There were just so many questions that came up and maybe PC is seriously freaking out rn..

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masterdetectivexx · 6 years

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Rum Arc Discussion Series: Higashio Maria

Higashio Maria is a kansai transfer student in Teitan Elementary that was introduced during Kir arc (File 548-549), and was recently reintroduced in Rum arc (File 1006-1008). I will be discussing this suspicion, that I’ve held since her reintro, about how she could be Asaka. Previous Discussion Topic (Iori Muga):

https://masterdetectivexx.tumblr.com/post/157524917964/rum-arc-discussion-thread-plot-characters

Asaka’s disappearance

Asaka’s disappearance is very suspicious, since she was last seen with Amanda, who was killed later that day, and was perceived as her bodyguard. Rum was able to successfully kill Amanda with the APTX4869 prototype drug (made by the Miyano parents) and cover it up as if nothing happened, according to the Black Organization’s M.O (as seen with how clean and tidy her room looked 17 years ago, in contrast to Kohji’s messy room, File 948). Despite being a female figure guarding Amanda the last time she was seen, Asaka was somehow still missing from the crime scene and not found dead along with Amanda (after failing to hinder Rum’s plans). As I’ve suggested in previous discussions, Asaka’s disappearance could be because she was drugged by Rum along with Amanda 17 years ago, but instead of dying, she actually shrank like Conan and fled (which would explain why she is missing). “Asaka taking the same drug as him” was a possibility that Conan also considered during his first speculation of Asaka’s identity (File 953), so there’s a good chance that Gosho was foreshadowing what had happened to Asaka.

In File 948, Haibara explained that she tried to recreate her parents’ APTX4869 with their remaining data (even though the BO wanted her to make something else that wasn’t a poison), meaning that her APTX4869 prototype, which shrinks as a side effect, originated from her parents’ APTX4869 model.

In File 1025, Gosho further clarifies Haibara’s statement by having her directly monologue that her parents created the same drug that shrank her and Shinichi, meaning that according to her, the shrinking side effect definitely originated from her parents’ APTX4869 prototype.

This information further underlines the possibility that the 17-year-old prototype could also shrink people as a side-effect in rare occasions, which in turn could easily explain how Asaka was able to disappear from the crime scene despite being in a position that should have made her someone Rum got rid of in the process of successfully killing Amanda.

Foreshadowing to Asaka’s identity

What we know about Asaka is very limited, but the info that we do have suggest a connection between Asaka and Kohji. In File 948, when Conan read about the hand-mirror, Haibara explained that it was a popular hand-mirror and that her sister had one of them which she inherited from their mother, and later suggested that Kohji might’ve inherited the hand-mirror from his mother as well. However, we later find out in file 953 that Asaka was seen holding that same hand-mirror. This immediately suggest that the hand-mirror was passed on from Asaka to Kohji, implying that they were familiar with each other to that extent. If you take Haibara’s correlation to Kohji about “sister inheriting mirror from mother”, it’s possible that Gosho was using Haibara’s story to foreshadow that just like Haibara’s sister, Asaka inherited the hand-mirror from her mother.

In other words, Kohji borrowed Asaka’s hand-mirror in order to prepare for his meeting with Amanda, and Asaka later leaves with Amanda to act as her bodyguard. Going back to Conan’s first suspicion of Asaka, he suspected that Asaka took the same drug as him and that Mary would be the prime suspect. This is something Conan also did in regards to Rum’s identity, where according to his first suspicion, Yamato Kansuke came the closest to the descriptions of Rum (File 913).

Iori Muga, who I deduced could be Rum, fits with Kansuke’s characteristics. They are both considered effeminate men (both have long curly dark hair), a strong build, Kansuke’s left eye is damaged while Rum’s left eye is foreshadowed to be a prosthetic (Higo plushie “left eye coming off” reference, File 999) and Muga’s left lense consistently reflected like Rumi’s suspected blind right side (File 981-982), and if Muga is hiding 5 years from his age like Satami Saya (File 920), then he would be the same age as Kansuke. If Kansuke is a Rum model that shares direct similarities to Rum, then the likelihood that Mary was utilized as an Asaka model is very high.

The one who shares the most characteristical similarities with Mary, and thus could be Asaka, is the latest transfer student Higashio Maria. Mary and Maria have pretty much the same name. “Maria” is the latin form of “Mary”. Gosho even went as far as to have Ogura mistake Mary’s name for “Mari-chan” (File 928-930), which could have been intentional on his part in order to emphasize the similarity to “Maria-chan”.

Both Mary and Maria are also light-haired kids and are hinted at being half-japanese. Mary’s sister Elena is confirmed to be half-japanese (File 1011), and Maria has the english influence, to the point that her grandma called the toy “bird-chan” (File 1007).

Asaka was also compared to Ran (File 954), which also could be Gosho’s hint to that Asaka is in reality a normal 17-year-old girl who was mistaken as a “personal SP”/official bodyguard for Amanda, due to her skills. If Maria is shrunken adult Asaka, then the comparison to Ran would make sense too, since she has a sweet personality like her that is very subverted from everyone’s expectations of “the bodyguard Asaka”/“a weird person”(as Ran put it), despite her similar qualities.

In other words, 17-year-old Maria came along with Haneda Kohji to the US in order to watch him play in the chess tournament. Her black hair colour in the Asaka photo would be as a result of her dying her hair black, like how Gosho seeded that concept in with Takashi during department store case (File 941).

And after she got drugged by Rum and shrank, she changed her one-tail hairstyle (as seen in the photo) to her current twin-tail hair style, just like how that concept was seeded in with Isuzu from secret cafe case (File 994), in order to not get easily recognized.

If Maria shrank as Asaka 17 years ago, then the true purpose it would have would mainly be to answer the question regarding Conan’s and Haibara’s aging state, and that answer would be that they can’t age like Vermouth, since Maria is still a 7-year-old, because, as mentioned above, the drug they were affected by is a recreated version of the one Asaka would have been drugged by (and is very likely to have the same effect). If Maria has been a child for 17 years then her parents would be much older and the parents that she is currently said to have (File 1006) would have to be fake/stand-in parents.

Going back to the idea that Asaka inherited the hand-mirror from her mother, there’s another detail about Maria that fits with this interpretation. In File 1006, Maria’s grandma gave her the advice “it’s important for a girl to watch over her appearance”, which is very consistent with someone who would pass down a hand-mirror. This could be a small clue to that Maria’s grandma is actually her mother. In other words, those cherished memories in her reintro case was actually her with her real parents.

Wakasa Rumi’s True identity (Link to summary)

Wakasa Rumi’s target

Gosho has a tendency to foreshadow the introduction of new plot elements by hinting at it just before it happens. in this case, just before Higashio Maria was reintroduced, the previous chapter had a cliffhanger with Wakasa Rumi staring at the APTX4869 victim list (File 1005).

This could be Gosho’s introduction foreshadowing to that Higashio Maria is that very target Rumi is after, Asaka (who potentially got drugged 17 years ago). In fact, both of Maria’s reappearances in Rum arc consistently followed Rumi’s appearance, as if she could be tied with her in the ongoing plot (File 966 & 1006).

Following my deduction regarding Rumi’s identity being Vermouth, this would automatically fill in the holes regarding Rumi’s APTX victim interest, since Vermouth has personal motivations for keeping the shrinking effect hidden. If the BO dismissed Asaka as dead, despite her missing corpse, someone like Vermouth, who knows about the shrinking effect’s existence would suspect that Asaka is alive. Rumi’s goal in Teitan Elementary could therefore be to not only investigate Haibara’s neighbor in the Kudo mansion (Subaru), but also investigate Asaka’s disappearance. Her disguising as a potential Asaka, carrying Kohji-case-related objects and using a dying-message-derived name (“wACASA RUMi”) could be a grand scheme in order to use Conan’s help in locating Asaka, who ends up being the newest transfer student in class 1B after Haibara.

Maria’s Personality

Maria’s personality is very child-like and innocent, and ever since her intro in File 548, she never showed any signs of having an adult mind (more than likely because even if she happens to be Asaka, she was probably not initially conceived as another APTX victim). How Gosho could handle such a plot move, where a seemingly normal older character enters the plot, is maybe by playing the amnesia card, meaning that Maria suffered memory loss as a result of a post-traumatic stress from the Kohji case. In which case, Maria-chan may have lived those 17 years with her “grandparents” in the Kansai area as if she was a “normal” child.

Summary: - Asaka was drugged by Rum along with Amanda 17 years ago, but shrank and fled. - Asaka lent her hand-mirror to Haneda Kohji, which she might’ve inherited from her mother. - Asaka could be Higashio Maria. - Wakasa Rumi is Vermouth in disguise and is investigating Asaka’s potential shrinking.

#detective conan #rum arc #rum arc discussion series #higashio maria #higashio #maria #maria-chan #asaka #the kohji case #haneda kohji #mary #wakasa rumi #vermouth #aptx4869 #aptx list #miyano parents #prototype drug #shrinking

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 6 years

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Grand Titans Rewatch: 1.01

so! i only really got into the show around the 6th episode, which means that while i was intrigued by the first five, i didn’t really pay a lot of close attention the first time ‘round. so i’m going to try and rewatch the entire series over the next several weeks and bring you Thoughts, because um. well. I Will Have Them.

SPOILERS for pretty much the entire series, though i will be covering only the pilot episode in this post. let’s see how this goes.

1. i’m just such a sucker for eerie dreamscapes, so i’m definitely biased when i say that this is a promising start. what’s really intriguing, though, is rachel dreaming of dick’s past well before she’d met the guy. after eleven episodes, the extent and even the very nature of rachel’s powers is still nebulous; this ability to dream about people she hasn’t even met only comes up this once, as far as i remember. (again, my initial viewing was superficial, so i might’ve missed it coming up/referenced again.)

1.5. a doylist explanation for this? hint at a special relationship between rachel and dick right off the bat, set the tone for the rest of the series, establish a character-development-by-dreamscape precedent, give us a gander at the origin story of the most iconic character in the ensemble, and set the broader arc of the season—an acceptance of and an ascent out of inner darkness—in motion with these two characters.

an in-universe search for an answer is potentially more interesting, however: why should these two be connected? i like to think that trigon’s influence started here, pushing rachel further and further down the path that would lead her to free him. i mean, handwaving aside the comic-booky implausibility of trigon foreseeing the exact pattern of random events that would lead to the moment rachel pulling him out of the mirror in 1.10 (he’s an interdimensional being! i don’t know! *flails hands*), i like the symbolism of it: both batman and trigon as phantom fathers that rachel and dick run away from, only to be pushed together. this is not to imply any broader equivalency between trigon and bruce wayne, of course; but it goes some way in explaining why this dick is especially traumatised and brutal, and why it would’ve had to be an especially traumatised and brutal bruce wayne that taught him everything he knows.

1.6. HAH at the ‘flying’ in the ‘flying graysons’ sign fizzling out just before the rope snaps, tho! so corny but also so upsetting.

(‘so corny but so upsetting’ – a valid tagline for titans)

1.8. oh but the set-up around rachel is so intriguing, tho! this is both the greatest strength and the greatest pitfall of the show: each of its characters can occupy a genre show of their own; because the first three episodes focus so heavily on rachel, it seems like the tone of the show changes when the titans finally get together, and like a lot of interesting, painstakingly slow set-up for rachel is just dropped and wasted.

2. the first glimpse we get of dick grayson is in the rearview mirror of his car. FUCK. i’m going to start a count.

MIRRORS, MIRRORS EVERYWHERE: 1

Ok. things i love about this little two minute introduction to dick grayson:

a) look at this broody asshole. i love him so much.

b) right away we have this push-pull re: his robin identity. he hates it, resents it, but can’t quite let it go. his officer grayson persona isn’t enough for all the evil in the world, even if it means losing control and falling farther and farther down a spiral of self-loathing.

c) he’s so damn mired in crime and tragedy, tho: officer grayson by day, vigilante robin by night. MAKE A FRIEND, DICK. GET A BEER, DICK.

(so true to character, tho: a suffering dick grayson is usually a determinedly self-isolated dick grayson.)

d) AMY ROHRBACH! i refuse to believe they’d just unceremoniously kill off such an iconic character. i fully expect to see her in s2.

e) “you do your thing. i’ll do mine.” a poorly functioning dick grayson picking up unhealthy coping cues from his mentor.

f) i love how implicit it is that gotham is a carnival of unending horror among the officers in the precinct, and probably every other city in america.

3. the clawmarks on rachel’s mother, tho! fuck, i wish they’d carried over more of this eeriness in the second half of the season. oh, and also:

MIRRORS, MIRRORS EVERYWHERE: 2

i realise why we had to get a move on with the plot, but i can’t help but wonder if we could’ve gotten an even slower build-up to rachel’s powers, because honestly? i know you’re lying, i always know when you’re lying, and the vicious slut! in the school bus window? actually more unsettling than watching rachel liquefy some baddie from the inside.

(tho. um. don’t get me wrong. that’s plenty disturbing, too.)

4. conflicted!brooding!vigilante!dick, here to chase away the images of dead women splayed over living room floors with bullet holes in their heads.

4.5. the fight scene was brutal, sure—but to be fair, most of batman/robin’s fights teeter on the fine line between causing enough damage to keep the bad guys down for a bit and outright brutality. it’s difficult to bring that to life on screen (in a series that touts to inject grittiness/realism into proceedings, no less) and portray a robin who’s definitely crossing some lines without going into some real brutal territory.

4.6. so far i’m loving how economical the storytelling is when it comes to dick—how quickly it’s established, then underscored, how being robin is so important to him and the last thing he wants. his curdling resentment at the thugs immediately looking for batman the moment they see him, and his inability to move on from being the other half of batman-and-robin. he feels compelled to play both parts at once when he’s fighting, and he hates it. all of these things are playing out right underneath stretched-too-thin skin, jagged and awful and ugly.

4.65. and the editing and sound choices keep emphasising how this is not dick in his natural state—how, in a lot of ways, robin is not his natural state anymore.

4.8. dick, brooding in his open-plan apartment, broodily listening to vinyl records and cleaning his armour of blood, while brooding. did i mention that i love this asshole?

(i don’t know where the bruises came from, considering that it seemed like the thugs couldn’t get a single hit in during the fight.)

MIRRORS, MIRRORS EVERYWHERE: 3

4.9. a dick timeline: the zucco thing happened, what, two years ago? robin hasn’t been seen in over a year. and dick moved to detroit a month ago. hmmmm.

5. rachel’s alter-ego-self as a manifestation of her powers continues to be fascinating. as is the fact that that alternate self appears less and less as she grows more accepting of what’s inside her and learns to control her abilities.

5.25. so, what, was sally a part of the cult that wants to kidnap rachel specifically, or just a Bad Person in general?

5.5. “you got that thing for helping kids” – i love that dick has this reputation barely a month into his time in this department. like. this guy is broody and closed-off and clearly traumatised, but hey, he’s good with kids!

MIRRORS, MIRRORS EVERYWHERE: 4

5.8. “you’re the boy from the circus” is super-dramatic and all, but how did rachel recognise adult!dick when she’s only seen kid!dick in her dreams? and also, why did she dream of dick at all?

5.99. side note: officer!dick’s hair is the best. it never gets better than this for the rest of the season at least until he becomes trigon’s demon acolyte.

6. KORY!

6.5. so… did the car accident cause the amnesia? do we ever find out why exactly she couldn’t remember anything about who she is? she doesn’t look injured; just dazed.

6.6. her passport was issued in 2014—so she’s been here a while, searching, researching. or not, because it’s probably a fake-ass document. stop reading so much into this, emmram!

MIRRORS, MIRRORS EVERYWHERE: 5

6.8. her super-convenient amnesia means she’s forgotten her identity but not human language, mores or customs. i like this extra layer of… alien-ness? that this brings to her: so now she’s not only a stranger to the rest of the world, but to herself. again, so many interesting things are set-up here that the show never really follows through with for the rest of the season—imagine re-discovering kory’s identity along with her, piecemeal, rather than an impersonal infodump near the end of the season!

6.9. also given that portrayals of starfire (at least those that i’ve seen/read) make liberal use of the ‘born sexy yesterday’ trope, i rather like this take—she’s already learned everything she needs to know about assimilating into human society, and it’s a question of rediscovering that knowledge instead of having some dude patronisingly mansplain the world to her.

6.95. why did she snap that russian dude’s neck, tho. that’s just brutal. i’d forgotten about this.

7. i like to think here that when dick says i’ll find someone who can help you, he’s not just thinking of law enforcement, but also of people in the super-community—psychics, or telepaths, or somebody who has experience with both. there’s still so much about dick that’s kept in the dark for most of the season, but given the length of time he’s been with batman and the easy familiarity with which he talks about other heroes in the finale’s dreamscape, i’m going to assume that he’s more than well-connected.

7.5. but he’s shuttered himself away for so long, and robin’s return has been far from well-received. i like this little moment where he steps outside and just… lets himself be overwhelmed. just for a bit.

7.7. i like that amy says “sidekick” first instead of “partner”. on-the-nose, but i like it!

7.8. the glibness of he and i had different ideas of how to do the job is making me laugh. oh, dick.

i guess the idea of batman sours quite a lot when you’ve spent most of your life as his partner. i get that he’s projecting losing his own sense of self to a role he just isn’t cut out for onto bruce, but it’s sad anyway.

7.9. gosh i just want these two to bond. i don’t care how you do it Show but bring back amy next season, yeah?

MIRRORS, MIRRORS EVERYWHERE: 6

8. is there any particular significance to the repeated security-cam footage shots we’re getting in this episode?

(gosh, i love the cinematography so much in this scene.)

8.4. so… kory had to use some sort of russian mob and come all the way to vienna to find rachel?? why??? are we ever going to find out?

8.5. on a happier note, i love love this version of starfire’s ‘innocence’. like. she’s baffled, almost apologetic about it, but she isn’t going to take any shit about it, either. also, the music when she uses her powers for the first time, man. FUCK.

9. aaaaand there’s the liquefying-a-guy’s-insides bit. i both love and hate this show’s self-indulgence.

9.5. i gotta say, this episode makes a lot more sense on rewatch than it did the first time ‘round. i remember being so confused by evil!cult!guy, but then again, i was pretty distracted at the time. i only really picked up the show because i was so amused by the over-the-top reactions fans had to the trailer. now look at me, writing 2k+ word reviews dissecting its every moment. *shakes head*

10. *rachel stares at dick’s porsche*

“this is yours?”

“family heirloom.”

“… from the circus?”

“not the one you’re thinking.”

I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS EXCHANGE.

10.5. i love these two Dramatic Kids.

11. beast boy cameo! just to assure us all that yes, he is in this show, and that, yes, he is the Best of them all.

12. you guys, this episode is so much more fun that i remember it being. you’ve got an amnesiac interstellar super-spy in kory, a straight-up supernatural horror story in rachel, and a psychological case study whatever genre batman’s supposed to be in dick. each of them could easily fill their own show, but i love that titans wants to connect them with something more than just a team falling together just because.

#titans #meta #dick grayson #koriand'r #rachel roth #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle #a gothic cookie #grand titans rewatch 2k19

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p-redux · 6 years

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As Promised...A Little Tea Spillage...(sorry I didn’t put stuff under the cut, but my computer wasn’t cooperating)

@contemplatingoutlander CO decided she liked to live dangerously, or I guess she thought I was bluffing when I asked her to “stand down,” leave me alone, and I would leave her alone, ‘lest more tea would be spilled about her past fandom sins. Perhaps she mistook my great restraint, in not defending myself against her vendetta against me, for weakness. But today she poked the lioness one too many times, and the lioness decided to give a little warning bite back.

Sooooo, here goes. Remember when CO made her proclamation that she’d been approached by an insider source--supposedly a friend of Sam’s? And that this friend of Sam’s had been looking at Tumblr blogs for awhile, decided CO was “the chosen one,” and confided in her that Sam and Mackenzie had broken up, and even given her “permission” to publicly post this very personal news. Yeah, well, if you believe that, I’ve got some oceanfront property to sell you in Nebraska.

BEHOLD, CO’s FAKE Sam insider source. 👇

~~~You know what made me suspicious of SouthernBlonde--SB97 for short? I kept seeing that she would comment on CO’s posts, saying snippy or negative things about me. And she would also go to my posts and say negative things directly to me. Below is just one example of many. 👇

~~~At the same time she was making positive comments to CO and reblogging ALL CO's posts 👇

~~~So I DMed SB97 to reach out, and let her know that I'd noticed she'd left negative comments specifically about me, saying she’d "heard" stuff about me, etc., and that if she had any questions about me I’d be more than happy to answer them so she wouldn’t just get one side. Much to my surprise, when I DMed her, suddenly she did an about face and was super nice to me and talked shit about CO 👇 What?!

~~~So I thought she was cool and maybe trying to be neutral, attempting to see different sides, but NOPE. She showed her duplicity when publicly she continued to defend CO even after she had talked shit about her privately in DMs to me. 👇

~~~And notice the bottom right screencap 👆 That's CO saying her Sam source told her she'd looked at NST blogs and didn't like the nastiness she saw and did like CO's willingness to dialogue...mhm that started to sound similar to what SB97 was saying. So I started to pay attention...

~~~And I looked at what SB97 was saying that was similar to what CO said her Sam source said 👇At that point, SB97 started to actively defend CO.

~~~CO said her source was a friend of Sam's. And someone who had been reading Tumblr blogs for awhile. Well, as I showed in one of the screencaps above, SB97 supposedly lives in Scotland. She reiterates that in the screencaps below. And oh look, she works in the entertainment industry. Allegedly. And she's been around since the Abbie-Saltire days, which means a couple of years at least 👇 This was all fitting in now to SB97 being CO’s Sam “source.”

~~~After that, my Spidey senses went into overdrive and I really started to pay attention to similarities between what CO had said about her Sam source and what SB97 was saying. After CO blogged her post about a Sam source telling her she could post that Samzie had broken up, that’s when SB97 literally reblogged everything CO posted, something she hadn’t done before.

~~~BUT the piece de resistance that clinched it that SB97 was CO's supposed Sam source was this 👇

~~~Well, well, well, isn't that interesting. SB97 threatened Paul Camuso saying he didn't want her "airing the bit of truth I have" about him, and also said he wasn’t really Sam’s friend...JUUUST like CO said her source told her. BINGO! But there's more...

~~~So, Paul saw that and shot back with this...

~~~mhm, again, just like what CO is referencing her source said. Now, who hates Paul, hates me, and doesn’t want Sam and Mackenzie together? Why, an Extreme Shipper of course. And CO was a sitting duck since she also hates me, hates Paul, and had been touting that Sam and Mackenzie had broken up. Picking CO to be the one to blast me, blast Paul and conveniently announce a Samzie break up was like taking candy from a baby---so easy it’s laughable. And since CO likes her ego stroked, she fell right into the fake sources trap who made her seem like she was specially chosen.

~~~Ladies and gentlemen, that's how you get played. And that's how CO got played by her fake Sam source.

~~~And guess what? After I started posting hints that I knew who CO’s source was, and after Paul set the record straight that SB97 was FOS about the accusations she was making about him? Guess who vanishes? Poof. SB97 has never been heard from again. She stopped posting, commenting etc.

I’m sure CO will deny it, or find a way to explain it, and maybe SB97 will make a reappearance and try to justify it too, BUT you know, and I know exactly what happened here.

What I posted here is just the tip of the iceberg of the LIES CO is mired in. If she stands down now, stops mentioning me altogether on her blog, I won't post the Vivid stuff. (Either CO has amnesia or she doesn’t realize the extent of how incriminating the screencaps I have on her are in reference to that). This lioness got poked one too many times by CO today, like I said, consider this a little warning bite. But keep poking me, writing crap about me, and I will bite back and hard. I’ve been saving this little “CO got played by a fake Sam source” morsel all this time, imagine what else I have saved, just waiting for the right moment to pounce. What happens next is entirely up to you, CO. Choose wisely....

#co #contemplatingoutlander #southernblonde97 #fakesources #youvebeenplayed #nowyouknow

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gascon-en-exil · 6 years

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I Liked Fates Before It Was Cool!: The Opening

Prologue

Here begins my run of Fates, in which I react to things that I believe merit either praise or criticism and that hopefully haven’t been thoroughly picked over yet hundreds of times by everyone else in the fandom. I’ll be doing each route in the sequence I used last time, with gameplay details to follow as they come up. To answer @damoselcastel, I’ll be doing an all-male run, and it does indeed suck that the game screws this over a bit at the very beginning by forcing me to take Felicia over Jakob first. Breeding will come when I feel like it, more to have extra chapters to play through than anything.

Prologue

In what I assume will continue to be a series trend going forward, all of the 3DS FEs open somewhat in the abstract, including a flash forward to a future event. Fates’s particular take is both the most surreal and the least dependent on shock value, as the events it depicts are only several chapters away rather than near endgame. Azura picks up her Lady of the Lake associations right from the start, there’s a very early glimpse at what will be eventually revealed to be Valla, and Ryoma and Xander and Xander’s ludicrously acrobatic horse square off to set up this setting’s central conflict. The chapter proper is (fittingly) dreamlike, with surreal music and a high-energy scenario that begins in medias res and doesn’t entirely follow the normal rhythms of FE combat. I have absolutely no idea how this would come across to a newcomer to the series - I got my hand held through Lyn Normal Mode, cut me some slack - but I imagine it would be disorienting.

Chapter 1

That’s apparently official concept art of Nohr. Reasonable worldbuilding, what’s that?

The in-game presentation starts off rather less absurd. Hell, if it weren’t for the ominous castle rooftop setting of Xander’s training session one could almost find Corrin’s slice-of-life interactions with their servants and their Nohrian family quaint. Xander is just a drama queen like that. This fight calls back to Path of Radiance and New Mystery, which also start off with training sessions against significantly more powerful named characters. For Birthright it also forms a narrative bookend, but I’ll get to that in due time. I have Feelings about the presentation of Xander...and not just because he’s my husbando either.

I like that Corrin’s retainers are domestics first and combatants second unlike those of the other royals, because it stresses that they’ve been isolated in a non-combat role during their upbringing, their exposure to Nohr’s allegedly spartan military culture limited to sparring with Gunter and Xander. I have no idea how that would be enough for them to survive when they evidently live in Mordor, but then Nohr is the source of the most consistently sloppy worldbuilding in Fates so at least we get that established right away.

Oh, and Lilith is here. There’s never a point anywhere in this game where Lilith’s character is competently handled, so I have a tendency to forget she exists unless she’s on-screen. Here she’s just an unassuming stable girl with an unusual design, and Elise makes an incestuous insinuation in her direction that’s only funny if you played the appropriate DLC.

Chapter 2

Structural contrast with the towering Hoshidan royal palace aside, I don’t entirely get how Krakenberg works. A dragon did it?

Anyway, Corrin gets an under-explained and clearly evil magical sword from his shamelessly homicidal father only to balk at the thought of killing anyone with it. Leo salvaging this faux pas isn’t the silliest example of Corrin not understanding the basic concept of lying - it’s presumably easier to fake someone’s death with magic than with a giant sword - but it’s definitely up there. The Nohrian royals on the other hand have no trouble with such things based on their traumatic but mostly implied experiences at court. Important to note that everyone here up to and including the prisoners of war calls out Corrin for their sheltered worldview; their development from here on out really is dependent on the player’s choice of route. I vastly prefer this approach to Awakening’s for explaining why the Avatar is such a relatively blank slate - almost no amnesia necessary this time.

And while they appear in most chapters, I want to praise Dragon Veins here for being a really cool concept that doesn’t get as much love as it should. Draconic or otherwise superhuman bloodlines in FE are usually expressed in gameplay with the ability to wield certain legendary weapons, and while that also makes an appearance in Fates Dragon Veins represent more dramatically visible utility. They really make a difference in some chapters, and I’d like to see them reuse the concept in future games where it would be a logical addition (which would be most of them since humans with dragon blood pop up all over this series).

Chapter 3

I chose this image because I want everyone to appreciate as I do that Hans dresses like the world’s most tasteless leatherman. A harness and straps that show off all the wrong bits, and it’s in purple. Not even the overall weirdly fetishistic look of this game’s berserkers can excuse that.

But aside from that, Hans sucks. Iago also sucks. Less characters than plot devices that pop up whenever there’s a need for someone to act completely despicable to move the conflict along, there’s no way to spin them in a way that sounds like they contribute anything positive to the narrative. Case in point: in this chapter Hans single-handedly reignites hostilities between Nohr and Hoshido by Leeroy Jenkins-ing his way through the chapter and later (possibly) killing Gunter, with the only interesting caveat that he claims to have done so at Garon’s behest. And sure, Garon is also flat over-the-top villainy incarnate, but he at least has gravitas and a master playing a long game that arguably succeeds in two of the routes. Hans and Iago are just two more in the line of FE villains with flat motivations and personalities who lack even the good grace to be attractive, but unlike Desaix and Darin and Chagall and others like them they stick around in the story long after they’ve worn out their welcome. Did Nohr really need not one but three flat antagonists in its ranks around for most of the game?

I haven’t even gotten into the first appearance of Camilla’s...issues surrounding Corrin or whatever the dimension-hopping hell Lilith pulls with her invocations to presumably deceased dragon “gods” now that she reveals her true form. This is really the first chapter to offer a hint of how disjointed and frequently contrived Fates’s stories are going to end up, saved only by the very end when Rinkah puts this game’s new blunt weapon category to its logical use. Not like the game wants us to feel bad for Corrin....

Chapter 4

...because Hoshido is paradise. And also Takumi.

Everyone knows the story, both as it’s explicitly told and as can be read through the lines. The writers weren’t afraid to let their biases show, the localizers and the Western fandom did a fair amount to mitigate that with some bias of our own, and the final product is one big mess that fails to make logical sense in-universe and teeters on the edge of real-world two-way racism. Here we’re introduced to Castle Shirasagi, glimmering and verdant and awash in cherry blossoms, as well as Azura, Corrin’s foil in Stockholm Syndrome. But it’s all good, because Mikoto is tranquil and peace-loving and enforces her tranquility through a plot contrivance magical barrier that is just one of many examples in Fates of magic not working the way it does in the rest of the series (or at least I can’t think of anything else like this, correct me if I’m wrong). We don’t learn just why Nohr is so hellbent on invading Hoshido that they’d resort to summoning soulless monsters to do so until much later (and only in Birthright of all routes!). For now they just sound like unprovoked aggressors, and the Hoshidan royals Corrin’s true and loving family.

However, what I really wanted to bring up for this chapter is how oddly it’s structured, such that it never fails to throw me off a bit. It opens in an unnamed Fire Tribe village in a snowy area of Hoshido, which might I mention is the only point in the game we see anything of the Fire Tribe other than Rinkah herself. Considering all the time we spend in multiple routes with the Wind and Ice Tribes, that lack of detail strikes me as peculiar. Kaze then brings Corrin to the Hoshidan palace where Ryoma and Mikoto reveal the truth, then it’s immediately back to the snowy north to rescue Hinoka and Sakura from Faceless before returning to the palace to meet Azura. Was there any reason the Faceless fight couldn’t have happened before Corrin left the village, and the reveal and trip to Shirasagi left for after the chapter map and partially in response to Hinoka’s OOC crying fit?

I also hate maps where high-powered NPCs go around stealing kills. Kaze barely got to see any action this chapter, poor guy.

Chapter 5

Props to this manakete design, which is unlike anything else in the series and manages to work in elements of Anankos and Corrin’s weird outfit. No props to the scripting of the thing, as after this chapter Corrin may as well not even be a mankete except for gameplay purposes (which are minimal anyway unless you need them to tank something). You’d think learning that you can turn into a dragon would leave more of an impact on...anyone really, but nope. I guess it technically becomes relevant again in Kana’s paralogue, but that’s as tangential and ultimately irrelevant as everything else involving the kids.

There’s a lot else going on in this chapter, but I’m sorry to say that neither Mikoto’s death nor the obliteration of a large chunk of Hoshido’s capital lands as powerfully as they were meant to considering Corrin and the audience have spent all of 1.5 chapters with these people. This isn’t anything like Elbert or Greil’s death scene or even remake!Rudolf’s for that matter - at least that one came with a shocking twist that was responded to appropriately. It’s hard to even appreciate these events from the perspectives of the Hoshidan royals because they’re still pretty new characters in the player’s mind, though with the hindsight of Conquest I can maybe sympathize with Takumi here at the beginning of his downward spiral.

Corrin also picks up their legendary sword in a way that feels extremely random. I guess the Yato was inside the statue that got blown up? Weird place to keep a divine peace-bringing relic, that’s all I’m saying.

Branch of Fate

Despite some early warning signs and a few slight missteps, I’m happy to say that this story moment works. It’s a good thing that it does too, as this is the defining moment of FE14 in everything from its marketing to its game design to its core themes. The setup is rushed and tense and allows only Corrin, i.e. the intended player self-insert, full knowledge of the weight of the choice put before them, as none of the other royals are aware that they are all in a way family to the person they’re now abruptly forcing to pick a side. Familial connections (biological or otherwise) may not be a narrative hook that grabs me personally, but nonetheless this scene sticks with you. There is no easy choice, and the consequences of any of them immediately define the direction of the story.

This is not to say that all three of the iterations of Chapter 6 that follow succeed equally well, but that’s for other posts...including the next one, which will kick off Birthright.

Next time: Birthright Chapter 6 - 11

#Fire Emblem #Fire Emblem Fates #FE14

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yafaemi-but-gone-fishing · 4 years

Text

| the spookiest night of the year

Summary: tonight is important for two reasons, and Aurora is intent on making sure that it’s enjoyed to the fullest. Everyone else is in for the ride, whether they want to be or not. :)

________________________________________________________________

The knock on the door was the first sign that the night was not going to be as peaceful as Oliver was hoping for.

Actually opening it was the confirmation. And when he nearly jumped out of his skin at the sight of Aurora jumping out from the hidden side of the balcony, caked in what looked like blood and decked in tattered robes. “By the gods, Rory, what is wrong with you!?”

She cackled. Not even a laugh, it was a full on cackle. “Come on, it’s All Saints Wake! This is the perfect time to scare your friends out of their wits! Gods, that face you made was priceless, Oli! I’ve never heard you yell that loud before!” Doubled over into herself, odd eyes nearly crossing in her unending laughter.

“By the Fury, I could hear you all the way from the other side of the house. What seems to the--” Amandine stopped dead in her tracks, halfway in the hall. Oliver ignored the stifled snicker she made when she spotted Aurora. “I see.”

It took several moments for Aurora to compose herself well enough to even speak. Let alone anything else. She wiped away a tear carefully, making sure not to disturb the fake blood saturating her face. Then, with a passably serious expression, she looked up again.

“We have two things we’re doing tonight,” she explained with a grin, brushing past Oliver into the house. He followed after her silently, letting out a shaky breath as he closed the door, “Scaring random people that are walking around somewhere dark, and celebrating Miyuki’s nameday.”

“...Pardon?”

“Wait, how did you even find out what his nameday was?”

Aurora waved a dismissive hand, saying, “He mentioned something about it earlier to me, when I asked if he was free tonight. He’ll be here in a half hour, I think he said. I gave him directions. Hope you don’t mind.”

For some reason, it appeared as though whether or not Amandine did was irrelevant. Given the fact that Miyuki was already on the way to begin with, anyways. There was no way to retroactively take the information back, unless she hit him over the head and gave him amnesia.

She shrugged halfheartedly, “I suppose I can let this pass.”

“Awesome. Ok, so, we need to get you guys some costumes.” When neither Oliver or Amandine replied, Aurora gestured to herself with a pleased grin. “I’ve got mine, and Miyuki already dresses like a voidsent trying to pass as a mortal, anyways. Do you guys have any, like… ruined bedsheets, or something? Oliver’d make a good ghost, so that’s his costume already set up.”

Of all the things that could have happened tonight… this was probably not even the worst. Not by a long shot. Scaring people and dragging along someone who was barely even their acquaintance, at that point? What was it about All Saints wake that always made Aurora so intent on causing trouble?

“I was a ghost the last year we spent in Radz-at-Han, though, Rory. That would just be unoriginal, now.”

He’d known her for too long to bother questioning it, even if it was a bad idea. If you can’t understand them, join them, or whatever it was people always said.

“Hmmm. Bat, maybe? I don’t think we’ve dressed up as bats in ages.”

“If we might pause for a moment,” Amandine interrupted them, causing the attention in the room to stop short of actual costume making, “What exactly is going on here? I seem to have lost track of the conversation.”

The way that Aurora sighed made it seem like she was inconvenienced by this. The slightest hint of Amandine’s violet eyes rolling to the back of her head made Oliver shrug in mute sympathy. “We’re trying to think of Oliver’s costume, so that we can go out and scare people.”

“Very well. However, if I might ask another question: why?”

“Why not?”

That seemed to make Amandine sigh. She crossed her arms, “Why do you think, Aurora? This is not exactly your everyday spontaneous decision.”

Technically, she was right. Though technicality was likely one of the things Aurora paid the least attention to in her decisions. It was a fun idea, something to do, and celebrated two events in one sitting. In summary, an absolutely perfect way to spend the night.

Whether or not everyone else agreed could be considered later. Besides, they would come around eventually. Likely in the far future, where the night's events would be a hilarious story that ended in chaos.

At least they were fun nights. “Believe me, Mandi, this is more or less normal for Rory. I thought you knew that already,” Oliver said with a shrug. Then with a small grin, “Plus, the last time we did this, we all went to the Bismarck and got the sandwich platter.”

“Ooooh, I remember that!” Aurora turned to him, giving him a light shove as she nodded. The grin was splitting through her makeup. “Gods, those pirates were something else, weren’t they?”

Amandine looked suddenly less impressed, but at least a hint amused. “Halone forgive me for this. I’ll follow along with whatever insane plan you have brewed for tonight, Aurora. But I swear, if we end up gallivanting with pirates, I am leaving. With or without you, Oliver,” she added. The attempt to sound stern failed quite miserably when the teasing smile broke onto her face.

“Good!” Aurora clapped her hands together, grin only getting wider. Oliver smiled despite himself, watching as Amandine rolled her eyes once more with a smile of her own. “You won’t regret this, I promise. Go and find something suitably spooky to put on, alright? Or just, like… dark. Maybe you could be like a voidsent’s mistress, or something?”

Half a chuckle escaped her lips, and she turned down the hall, saying, “Mhach itself will bow down to my otherworldly charms.”

“That’s the spirit!”

________________________________________________________________

Miyuki had arrived while Amandine was preparing.

“You actually came!” Aurora bounced up from the couch the second Miyuki entered the living room, followed closely by Oliver. Looking as unenthusiastic as ever. “Thanks a lot, Yuki. I mean it, this is going to be awesome.”

“Miyuki,” he corrected with a single righting of his glasses. “It’s Miyuki.”

“Uh huh.” Aurora ignored him, more or less. As she usually did. “Amandine’ll… probably be out in a minute. She’s getting ready. I think. Or she just climbed out of a window to avoid having to go with us.” She shrugged, then glanced towards the doorless entrance that went out into the main hall again.

Miyuki brushed his dark hair to the side, then nodded once. “I envy her. Really, I do.”

“Hey, this is your nameday we’re celebrating, here. What’s the fun if it’s not with the old man himself?”

“Aurora, I’m literally three years younger than you are. I’m not old in the slightest.”

It took half a moment for her to respond. Aurora squinted her eyes at him, raised an eyebrow, then said, “...You’re only 21? Gods, I thought you were older. You act like it, anyways.”

Oliver blinked. “Ya… I didn’t think I was older than you. Only by a year, but… that’s cool! Happy nameday anyways, Miyuki.” He didn’t mention the confusion on the fact that Miyuki’s hair was definitely longer the last time they’d spoken.

“You don’t act your age either. We’re even.”

Aurora snorted. “Hey, I act my age. When I have to. Otherwise, what’s the point in always being serious other than boring yourself to sleep?” Something caught her eye behind Miyuki, from the way she paused. And the second after when she went to speak, her voice seemed to fade away, leaving them only with a weak, “...Oh. Wow.”

Amandine had, apparently, returned. Decked in a long, flowing black coat, with silver engravings running down the entirety of it. There was a running slit that went up her leg, stopping midway up her thigh. “I pray this isn’t too formal for your ridiculous antics? I wanted to play the part.”

“No, that’s… that’s cool. You look really nice.” Aurora swallowed, then finally scooted her eyes from the long slit in the dress. She got up, stretched, and then smiled at the group, “...So, are we ready to go now? We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

Oliver nodded once. He’d slipped into something suitably bat-like in the time that Amandine had been preparing, and Miyuki arriving. At least, he hoped it was suitably bat-like. Aurora’d given him a thumbs up about it, if nothing else.

“I’m leaving you to your fates if this gets us into trouble with the authorities,” Miyuki remarked, moving his small braid to the side of his shoulder. He ran a hand over it, then let it drop back. “I’m not getting arrested on my nameday.”

There was a snicker from Amandine. “Well, I suppose since Miyuki has taken what my witty reply would have been, I’m prepared as well.”

“Good. Then let’s get out there, and make this an All Saints Wake-- and nameday, too-- that we won’t forget!”

________________________________________________________________

They’d developed a very good system, for scaring people.

Aurora would most often be the first one to jump out, being that she looked the most like a zombie that had wandered into a city. Often followed by Miyuki, who would then apologize for his minion’s inability to control herself. Even if his lack of utter enthusiasm often made the joke fall slightly more flat than intended.

And the fact that Aurora would break into laughter far too easily at the unsettled faces of the victims.

Then again, that was until one rather interesting scare.

“...at which point, the cast would be far easier to use lightning aspected aether. Yet that is simply easier said than done, unless you’re in a place highly saturated with it,” Amandine explained, with a simple shrug. She and Oliver were settled comfortably behind a bush, in a rather empty spot in Gridania. Their turn to scare a few people had come and gone once more, of which she was most grateful.

“I think I understand what you mean. I guess some magic is just sort of impossible to cast without like… a focus? Is that what you call them? Or just… something that has what you need…?”

“There are various ways to call such things. Though, your best bets are--”

She was cut off by thundering footsteps, and Miyuki suddenly bursting through the bush. Slightly out of breath, by the long pause he took before even regarding them. Oliver and Amandine looked up with surprised expressions as he gathered his breath, and said, “Aurora is in trouble.”

Without another word, Oliver was up and leaping through the bush. It sounded like Amandine was on his heel, yet he hardly bothered to glance back.

He hardly took the chance to even slow down from a reckless half-sprint until Aurora came into view enough to discern what was happening. From the seem of it, she was… hardly in any danger to begin with. Simply standing there, and with what looked like a slowly forming grin.

Miyuki walked right past both he and Amandine, then went to stand by Aurora. He looked at her, then to Amandine and Oliver, then-- in the most surprising twist of the night, in Oliver’s own opinion-- smiled.

...And right then and there, it hit Oliver what had just happened. “...Rory, are you actually serious?”

Then Amandine’s voice cut in, cold as ice. “Aurora Rivers, if the Twelve do not strike you down someday, I swear I will do it myself.”

Aurora nearly screamed out in sudden bouts of laughter. Nearly falling over, one hand going to catch herself on Miyuki’s shoulder as he let out a soft snicker. Though, he did brush her hand off. “Seven hells, that couldn’t have been any better!” She let out a gasp, nearly tripped on her own feet, and righted again. It was the front door all over again, suddenly. Oliver crossed his arms. “Hah, give me a second... that was too good!”

“You tricked us!”

“And you seriously fell for it!” Aurora let out another laugh, this time falling over onto the ground. “...Seriously, you should’ve seen the looks on your faces! That was too good!” There was a moment of silence, and she finally sat herself up, pushing a mess of black hair out of her face. Some of the strands were still stuck into the makeup. “Ok, to be fair, that... “ she took another pause to breathe, “That was Miyuki’s idea.”

He shrugged at the collective glares from them both, the smile going a hint smug. “You’re all terrible influences. Your glaring has no effect on me.”

Aurora got herself up, brushed off her tattered clothes, and did a half-hopping skip over to Oliver and Amandine. She caught Oliver in a hug, still stifling down giggles as he only let out a long-suffering sigh. “Aw, c’mon, at least admit it’s sort of funny! You’re gonna make me feel bad.”

“I’ll admit it when I’m not upset. Does that work?”

With a slightly more soft laugh, Aurora shrugged, “That’s fair. And, well… I think Amandine’s planning my death now, so I’m not going to try and ask. Happy All Saints Wake, though…?” She glanced over at her, offering a raise of her shoulders.

“They’ll find your body in time for the next All Saints Wake, I assure you.”

“Oh. Well, that works, at least!”

Oliver spared her a glance. He offered at least one half of a smile, then said, “Mandi, please don’t kill my sister. You can take a limb, though..”

“Hey, c’mon! I need my limbs.” For emphasis, she waved around her arms, glancing between the two of them. “This isn’t a game of halfsies here. All or nothing. I’m not a coward.”

“He’s bartering for your life, and you’re trying to give her a reason to take it anyways.” Miyuki came up behind her, then stood at her side with crossed arms and a raised brow. He pushed up his glasses again, “That makes sense.”

“You’re just jealous that she wants my life, and not yours.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

When Amandine’s forehead went to rest in her palm, Aurora let out another laugh. “Alright. How about, as an apology, we go and get some food? I guess I can pay as an apology. At least Oliver’ll forgive me?” She looked at him for confirmation, and only received a shrug as an answer. “Close enough. Come on, guys. I know a great restaurant in this area. They even serve free cake for your nameday, so we’ll all get a slice because of Miyuki.”

“It had better be a vanilla cake.”

“...Nevermind, the cake’s not worth it anymore. Chocolate or go home.”

“Then you’re not getting cake at all, because I’m going home.”

Amandine scoffed. “Forgive my forwardness, yet for the part you played in this trick, you are not leaving until I have received the finest slice of cake this restaurant has.”

“I’m with Mandi. You two owe us cake,” Oliver said with a nod. As Aurora, Amandine, and Miyuki started off, he added, “...And besides, you’re both wrong, anyways. Ice cream cake is way better.”

#my writing #ffxiv #ff14 writing #all saints wake #writing #oc writing #rory's little notebook // writing stuff and things #this isn't really like... the best writing i've ever done but i was bored and wanted to do something lol #it was fun to write it honestly! just like... for fun and not too over-the-top :P #some clowns being clowns i guess you could say #oh! and the first appearance of miyuki as well. o.o i talk about him sometimes on my twitter but i don't think ive ever mentioned him here

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murasaki-murasame · 7 years

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Danganronpa V3 Liveblog: Part 1 [Prologue]

So now that my several week-long adventure in trying to secure the necessary equipment to legally play this game has come to an end, I’ve finally gotten a hold of it and have begun playing it, so I’m going to start my liveblog!

For the sake of keeping my followers as spoiler-free as possible, I’m going to try and heavily tag these posts, and put about 99% of each post under a readmore. I’m also going to keep the labeling pretty vague for each post. My basic plan is to play each section of the game in one sitting [if we imagine each chapter being split into three sections of daily life, investigation, and trial] and then make one post for each of them. For now I’m going to label them with what part I played, for convenience, but I can’t help but be a little afraid about the possibility of there being some shift in structure later that might be spoiled via my labeling. We’ll see how it goes. If people want to completely avoid spoilers I guess they can just blacklist the tags and stuff, but I’m still going to try my best to avoid major spoilers, so the majority of these posts will be under read-mores.

This is going to be a pretty interesting experience for me, since even though I’m a huge fan of this series and have been following it for a few years now, I’ve only ever watched LPs of the game, so this is my first time actually playing one for myself.

Anyway I’m just gonna put my thoughts on the prologue under the cut since this is already getting long. [Fake edit: this got super long but mostly because half of it was me posting my initial reactions to characters and stuff, so with that out the way, maybe the rest of these posts will be shorter. We’ll see]

I don’t really wanna waste time talking too much about my history with this franchise and whatnot, so I’ll just get right into things and say that I have no goddamn clue what to expect from this game. I’ve almost completely managed to avoid spoilers on it, beyond what was shown in pre-release material. Well, mostly. There’s a few vague, context-less things I’m aware of, but I won’t say what those things are in case anyone is reading these posts without having played the entire game. [Though as a warning, I’m not gonna hold back on openly talking about every other part of the franchise that came before this]

I’ve heard that this game’s ending is ‘divisive and controversial’, but I have no idea how, and honestly that’s kinda been the trend with this series for better or worse, so it’s not really a surprise.

Thankfully I’ve also heard that this is maybe possibly the best game in the series so that’s cool! It’s not like I’m expecting greatness from it.

I’m really glad that I haven’t seen any LPs or anything besides the demo, because wow did things start off in a way that I wasn’t quite expecting. The whole beginning part was . . . bizarre. I got so thrown off by how everyone was wearing normal school uniforms. In general the whole way that things play out but then, like . . . loop back on themselves??? was really weird and unexpected. I feel like the game is already throwing out major hints about late-game twists, to the point where it all feels so ‘obvious’ that it’s probably some kind of misdirection. The whole shot we got of Kaede wearing some kind of science experiment helmet thing in particular felt like a ‘peeking behind the simulation’ moment, but DR2 already had a simulation twist, so the fact that they seem to be hinting at a similar thing feels like misdirection.

On the one hand I feel like I shouldn’t think too hard about it in case I guess the twist in advance, but on the other hand all of this signalling is so blatant and in your face that I feel like I may as well talk about it.

Even beyond the weird time-looping thing, there’s also a pretty heavy focus on the idea of amnesia and deja-vu [amnesia is pretty common for the series but the deja-vu element is interesting], and there’s some really interesting hints given out about the outside world, with references to stuff like the Ultimate Hunt, I think they called it, and how that apparently ties in with how everyone had forgotten their talents in the ‘first loop’, if I should call it that.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that this game is set in the Hope’s Peak Saga universe, since the first opening movie literally spells out that this game is a continuation of it, so it’s hard not to work with what the previous games set up story-wise to try and guess where the hell we’re at in this game.

I’ve always wondered how the whole concept of Ultimates would have been handled post-DR3, and how Hope’s Peak would function. It definitely seems like we’re hinting at the idea that something went pretty wrong down the line. It almost sounds like maybe the concept of being an Ultimate is, like, treated as a crime now, but it also feels like it might be another DR2-esque thing with how that game’s cast were all the Remnants of Despair who were in the simulation for rehab purposes. I don’t think it’ll be exactly the same sort of thing, though at the same time it’s also hard to believe that the whole Despair thing completely died out after DR3 so who knows.

It’s interesting to compare this with DR2, in how that game really started out as a legit rehab program of sorts that tried to hide the truth from everyone, while this game is upfront about the idea that this game’s cast are criminals who are being punished for something. So it’s kinda easy to guess that maybe they really are all criminals who’ve just been made to forget their crimes.

[Fake edit: I was just about to finish this post but I just realized that I forgot to point out how incredibly suspicious it is that the prologue is literally called ‘Ultimate Revival’, when we already had the weird time loop thing happen]

I’ll try not to think too much about the overarching plot until it becomes more relevant, but yeah to put it simply I’m already getting huge DR2 vibes from this set-up.

Anyway, enough talking about serious Speculation [tm] and Theorycrafting [tm], let’s talk about the stuff we’re all here for! AKA the characters and the flashy visuals and whatnot.

Just to get it out the way, I’m stuck with shitty dialogue audio quality because I had to import the US Vita version of the game because 1: I don’t own a Windows computer [and for some reason the Steam version is only on Windows even though the first two games are also on Mac], 2: I don’t own a PS4, and 3: I have an NZ PSN account but I literally cannot obtain an NZ Vita copy of the game because no online or retail distributors have it available, and because for some godawful reason the NZ PSN store only has the voice patches for it, and not, y’know, the game itself. So I’m stuck with the US version of the game since it was the only one available, and because the voice patch is treated as DLC, and DLC is region-locked, I can’t get the high-quality dialogue audio even if I wanted it. Which I do. It’s not THAT terrible, but it’s noticeably bad. Especially for certain characters, like Shuichi and Kaito. But I literally cannot do anything about it, so I’m stuck with it.

On the topic of voices, I still do like most of the voices, even if the audio quality isn’t great. A lot of the voices sound a lot more . . . plain, I guess, than I was expecting. I dunno how to explain it. I kinda like it. It makes them sound more like real people, though some of them sound like, well, middle-aged people trying to voice-act teenagers while barely bothering to try and sound like teenagers.

The music is still high-quality and sounds great. I still love this franchise’s music style. Most of the tracks in the prologue sound either similar to or the same as stuff from previous games, which is fine, but the Monokids track is . . . certainly something. Definitely in a similar vein as how weird Monomi’s track was in DR2, but this one’s less cute. Still good, though.

The game’s visuals are still on-point, though the image quality isn’t great at times. The colours are really vibrant, but things often seem really pixel-y when they’re even slightly far away. I think that’s just how the series looks in general though, and it’s just easier to forget since I’ve only ever watched LPs of them. I do really like the more dark and earthy sort of atmosphere and colour palete this game has compared to the other ones, though. The other games look great, but I like that they did something a bit different. I get what they meant by calling this game ‘psycho-cool’.

Getting to the characters, I like them already, though I obviously haven’t seen them in action much yet. Visually, I honestly think they’re one of my favourite casts in the entire series. It definitely feels like they had a bit more restraint in designing a lot of these characters, compared to earlier games, while still keeping the same DR character design charm. I don’t know how the hell this series’ character designer is still managing to churn out unique and interesting designs after so many franchise entries, but here we are.

Since there’s so many characters I think I’ll just address them one by one.

Kaede: First of all, it still makes me happy that we got a female protagonist for this game. It’s a nice detail. Secondly, I’m just gonna lay it out and say that I’m expecting some major plot twist relating to her identity. It’s not a difficult thing to assume after how DR2 [and DR0 I guess] had big plot twists relating to their protagonist’s identities, in different ways, but still, the writing’s kinda on the wall for this one. I don’t know if Kaede will end up having anything uniquely shocking about her compared to the rest of the cast, but still. The way the beginning scene played out, with the focus on her not knowing who she was, immediately made me suspect that she might not actually be ‘Kaede’, somehow. We’ll see. I honestly would not be surprised if she’s a ‘decoy protagonist’ and someone else is the real protagonist. Especially considering the fact that the first characters shown off were Maki, Kaito, and K1-B0, nearly a year before we saw Kaede, which makes me suspicious on many levels. Anyway, I really like her design. It’s been a favourite of mine since we first saw her. The yellow/white/pink-purple colour palette is really nice. And on a related note, the goddamn magical girl transformation she had when she got put into her main uniform was amazing and glorious and exactly the sort of bizarre thing I wanted to see out of this game. There’s not much to say about her personality thus far, but I like her. And I also like that she’s a pianist. It’s refreshing to get a DR protagonist who’s talent is something other than ‘hope’ or ‘literally nothing’. I guess you could count Ryouko and Chisa as DR protagonists with actual talents, though. But you get what I mean.

Shuichi: It really surprised me that he was immediately presented as being the secondary protagonist. Or, at least, the ‘helper’ character. I like how, in contrast to people like Kirigiri and Komaeda, he isn’t really doing this out of his own volition, and was literally just stuck in the same room as Kaede. Which is still kinda suspicious in and of itself, really. He’s really great, though. I was so worried that he’d be a complete copy of Kirigiri, but he’s really not, thus far. He’s honestly really adorable, with how humble and easily-flustered he is. I also really like his design, and how simple it is. I wonder how his role in the game will be, going forward. He’s definitely the helper/assistant/etc right now, but who knows if that’ll change. I hope he has a different role overall compared to Kirigiri, at least, to shake things up a bit. Oh, and before I forget, I’m already guessing in advance that he might actually be a girl, although that’s almost entirely based on him being voiced by Megumi Hayashibara in Japanese [and on that note, boy am I annoyed that on top of not being able to get the high-quality dialogue audio, I also can’t get the JP voice pack for the same reason :/]. He definitely sounds much more like a boy in English, so I’m inclined to think that maybe they weren’t trying to hint at anything by giving him a really feminine voice in Japanese.

Rantarou: I already adore this dude and I plan to immediately do all of his free-time events. OK fine I’ll do other people’s ones as well, but he’s the one I’m most interested in talking to. Partly because I’m really inclined to think that he might die relatively early on so I want to get to know him immediately. He at least comes across like the sort of character who might get killed off early as a big plot twist, to contrast with how mysterious and plot-important he seems right now. I don’t really know what to expect from his role in the story, but it’s hard not to get Komaeda vibes off of him, especially in the parts where he gets vaguely sinister. Thankfully his personality is already pretty notably different. He definitely seems like the character who’s probably most ‘plot-important’ other than Kaede and maybe K1-B0. It makes me wonder what his deal is, especially since he doesn’t remember his talent. I hope the inevitable reveal isn’t lame or anything. I also can’t help but wonder if maybe he’ll become some sort of love interest for Kaede, but I guess Shuichi would probably fit the mark better at this point. Who knows. I imagine that Kaede will have a love interest of some kind, since the other DR protagonists did. Anyway, I like his design as well. His outfit honestly seems like the sort of thing I could imagine a normal person wearing without it being weird at all. It’s neat. His hair looks mostly cool, like 90% of it does, but I can’t get over how weird those two upward-poking wavy bits at the top look. They’re so weird. Also, I’m still slightly thrown off by how deep and mellow his voice is, but it more or less fits his personality. I guess that in general his personality is a bit different than what I expected. I expected something a bit more fun and light-hearted.

K1-B0: OK first of all I might eventually just start calling him Keebo because it feels more natural than typing a name that has numbers and stuff in it. I still love his name, though. It never stops being the silliest thing ever to me, that his name is literally just a robot-y version of the Japanese word for hope. It’s great. I’m still kinda surprised that he didn’t end up being the game’s protagonist, given that he was front and center on the game’s first poster. He’s even the only character shown on the limited edition box design for the game. So who knows what’s up with him. Either way it’s hard not to see him as being potentially plot-important, with how immediately different he is to everyone else. We’ll see. His design is still kinda amazing and I love it. There’s a lot of places where V3′s character designs show restraint and realism, but hahaha not with this dude. In terms of his personality, I’m still really surprised that he’s mostly kinda nervous and defensive and high-strung, while also being pretty desperate to appear normal while being really unaware of normal things. Which is a fine way to write a robot character, and I prefer his ‘over-emotional’ portrayal over the more typical ‘emotionless robot’ characters we usually get. My main concern is that the game seems to be framing him as some sort of joke about “““SJWs”““, and it’s just bizarre and out of place. I also don’t know how the heck we’re even meant to view it thus far, since his whole ‘I’ll take you to court for your robophobic comments!’ attitude seems like it’s meant to be a joke, but at the same time his whole intro scene involves Kokichi literally questioning and denying his identity because he’s a robot, and being really inappropriate and invasive in general, so it’s kinda hard to view his defensiveness towards ‘robophobia’ as some sort of a joke we’re meant to laugh at. I guess we’ll see how it gets handled in the long run. Also let me just say that I’m REALLY happy they didn’t attempt to put some sort of obnoxious voice filter on him to make him seem more like a robot.

Maki: As I said above, I’m still suspicious about her prominent placing on that first poster we got. It’s even the reversible cover of the game, which is why I got reminded of it. I’m really curious to see what her deal is. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about her yet, since she’s mostly quiet and cold to people, which isn’t really a personality type I like seeing. I could see her potentially being a prominent part of trials, though, since she seems like she’d probably be calm and logical and whatnot. Also just to be blunt I kinda want her to be Kaede’s love interest, or at least one of them. I’ve kinda low-key shipped them since I first saw them. But do I really trust Kodaka to give me a healthy and mutually-alive same-sex ship after how DR3 ended? Not really, lol. I really like her design, though, even if her personality is a bit meh thus far. The red and black looks really nice, and it contrasts well with the brighter colours of Kaede’s design. Although there’s something weird about how her mouth is drawn. It looks a little wonky.

Kaito: I’m even more confused about what the hell this dude was doing on that promo poster, especially after seeing him in person. He basically seems like the Soda of this game, but thankfully way less weird and creepy. He seems like a really great dude all around, even if he’d be a bit too, uh, intense for me to enjoy being around in real life. I’m also still kinda amazed that he’s an astronaut, of all damn things. I remember that one coming out of nowhere. His whole conversation about how he illegally cheated to become an astronaut and when he got caught they just decided to keep him on board anyway was amazing. It’s a pretty hilarious way to address and basically gloss over the question of how a high-schooler could possibly be an astronaut. Also, his design is kinda hilarious. The simple white/purple theme works really well, but jesus christ his goddamn hair is amazing. I love it. It’s so silly. It’s like someone took a normal hairstyle and then messed with it in Photoshop. I wonder what it’d look like if they ever try and make figures of him. But I unironically love that the inner part of his jacket has a space design on it. That’s a nice detail, even if it’s hard to see normally. I can also tell that some of his expressions are going to be hilarious.

Kokichi: I can already tell that this dude’s gonna be a major player in this game, especially in trials. To the point where I’d be amazed if he doesn’t survive for at least four chapters or so. I feel like he’s going to be such a central part of the trial experience that cutting him out would leave a bit of a void. He’s obviously going to be sorta Komaeda-y in how he messes with people but he never actually kills anyone or anything. I’m just guessing, though. I’m also basing this on the demo I watched someone play, where that’s exactly how it went. [Though on the topic of trials, it’s still interesting to me that Rantarou and K1-B0 were specifically excluded from the demo trial]. I don’t know if I’m a huge fan of his overall personality, though. He just seems a bit annoying for the most part, even if he’ll probably be pretty compelling overall, partly in a ‘love to hate them’ sort of way. And obviously I disliked how incredibly shitty he was toward K1-B0. That was unpleasant. His design’s cool, though. I like how he seems to be wearing some sort of a loose straitjacket. His huge checker-print scarf is also pretty neat. Not sure how I feel about his hair-style. It’s a bit odd. I’m also curious to learn more about his talent, since it’s hard to imagine him genuinely being what he says he is. I wouldn’t be too surprised if he’s actually lying about his talent.

Gonta: I love him so much but he’s so obviously going to die because the baras always die. That’s not a spoiler though. I don’t actually know if he’ll die or not. I’m just assuming that he will because every character of his vague ‘type’ have died previously. He’s great, though. I love how much of a gentle giant he is. He just wants to be a gentleman and everyone’s just immediately intimidated by him instead. But then again he does get genuinely scary whenever someone insinuates that they dislike bugs. So that’s a thing. The fact that his whole talent is about how much he likes bugs is strangely endearing to me. It feels like such a gentle, delicate, and studious sort of field that it clashes with his design in a fun way. Also he has Harry Potter-y glasses and that’s adorable.

Miu: She’s kinda already turning into a problematic fave of mine. I totally get why she’d be too much for most people, and I’d hate her in real life, but as a character she’s really fun to watch, and adds a lot to the group dynamic. I’m not really expecting much from her in the long run though, since she’s obviously meant to be this game’s fanservice-y and kinda dumb character. I can’t help but wonder if she has some sort of connection to K1-B0 though, or if they might develop one, since her talent as an inventor who knows her way with machines seems sorta fishy in a game with a literal robot character in it. Her design’s also pretty nice, though the weird BDSM-y equipment she has is kinda hilarious and bizarre to look at. I love her aviator goggles, though.

Kirumi: I already like her a lot, though it’s sorta hard to pin down why. I think it’s mostly to do with me really liking her whole aesthetic. The spiderweb/broken glass pattern on her dress in particular is really cool. The only weird part is that it’s kinda weird how her eyelashes are drawn visibly through her hair. It just looks strange. There’s not much to say about her personality, though her whole ‘I’ll do what people tell me to do’ attitude is very worrying given, you know, the situation they’re all in. I don’t exactly expect her to survive. Also I’m still a bit confused what the difference in talent is between her being a maid and Chisa from DR3 being a housekeeper.

Tsumugi: She’s unexpectedly funny but I feel like she won’t last long, so that kinda sucks. Her overall design is still by far the plainest in the game, but I like how it’s an intentional choice that’s contrasted by her personality. I appreciate that she’s not, like, super wacky or anything, but she’s still pretty hilarious. Especially her realistically surprised reactions to stuff other characters say. It’s also a really neat detail how when she gets excited about something and clearly starts forgetting things like social boundaries, her sprite gets bigger and bigger like she’s entering your personal space. It’s also an interesting concept to have a cosplayer character who’s just wearing a really plain and boring school uniform, and cares mostly about the actual production of the costumes. I can’t help but wonder if her talent will end up leading to her being able to disguise herself as someone else. That’d be a really interesting thing to use in a murder case. Also I seriously hope there’s a scene in the game where she’s just cosplaying as Junko for no real reason, and you’re tricked into thinking for a moment that Junko’s genuinely back in this game. That’d be amazing.

Korekiyo: I have no idea what to make of this dude thus far. He didn’t really get many lines outside of his intro scene. He definitely seems like the most ‘creepy’ character. I kinda like him, though. The way that he talks about the beauty of humanity makes me really curious to see how he reacts to the killings as they happen. It’d be a bit amusing if he lives for the entire game and just keeps being really fucking weird about the whole thing while everyone just averts their eyes. His entire design is incredibly weird to me, and it’s kinda hard to tell what they’re going for beyond ‘this dude’s incredibly super chuuni’. It doesn’t seem to fit his actual personality much. You’d think he’d be way more, well, chuuni, I guess. It also kinda surprised me when I looked at his profile and saw that, at least relative to average Japanese heights, he’s actually really tall. It’s kinda difficult to tell people’s relative heights in VN-esque games like this. Also, I actually think it’s really cool that he’s an anthropologist. It’s cool to see an actual academic field like this in the franchise. There’s not too many characters with talents like that. I hope he gives out lots of random trivia about anthropology-related things.

Himiko: She’s not exactly my sort of character, but I like her. I mostly like the little ways in which she’s handled differently than how you’d expect her to be. Like how the only fanciful part of her design is her witch hat, which isn’t very fancy itself, and how she’s really chill and mellow but also a little childish. Even when she’s trying to be bombastic, it’s pretty chill. Also her whole ‘magic is real’ thing reminds me so much of Beatrice from Umineko, and that just makes me immediately like her, even if they’re [presumably] very different characters.

Angie: I keep mentally grouping her and Himiko into the ‘short, cute girl’ category for some reason, even though they’re very different. She’s definitely very . . . unique, that’s for sure. I’m still thrown off by her accent. I get what they’re going for, but for some reason it just sounds sorta French to me, so it feels like they told her VA ‘put on a foreign accent’ without telling her WHICH accent to put on. I don’t know if her accent is necessarily inaccurate for the part of the world she’s from, but ‘French’ is my first thought upon hearing it, so it feels odd. I like it, though. It’s a unique voice. Her design as a whole is definitely really cool. I love how bright and cheerful it is, colour-wise. I like her bright and bubbly personality a lot, though she can be a little creepy at times, like in the whole ‘blood sacrifice for Atua’ scene.

Ryoma: Thus far he’s immediately my favourite ‘cartoon-y and unrealistic-looking’ character, compared to ones like Hifumi and Teruteru. For one thing, he’s not a perverted creep, so that immediately puts him about fifty levels above those two. I also genuinely adore the way that he acts and talks like he came out of some kinda detective noir film, and has a Dark Backstory [tm] involving him murdering mafia members with a goddamn steel tennis ball. It’s so melodramatic and angsty but so incredibly hilarious because he’s like a three-foot tall teenage tennis player dramatically talking about how he used his tennis-playing talent to kill, and that he’s now just an empty shell of who he once was. I love him already. If he gets killed off, that’d be a real shame. But his character type also never survives, sadly. I don’t have much else to say about his design itself, but I think he has a chain around his ankle like a stereotypical ball and chain put on prisoners and that’s just the icing on the cake of how amazingly emo his design is.

Tenko: Not gonna lie, I almost forgot she existed and had to look at the cover of the game to figure out who I was missing. She’s probably my least favourite character thus far simply due to me liking everyone else more, and also due to me just not being a huge fan of her design. It’s mostly just the way that her uniform looks like it’s five sizes too small, but her giant green hair ribbons are also a bit weird, and so is the weird DNA helix-y way her hair is braided. It’s a bit of a bizarre design all around. But I absolutely adore her facial expressions so much. They’re fantastic. I love how unrepentantly weird and gross some of them are. That fucking smile-smirk-grimace-thing she does when she first talks about ‘degenerate males’ is one of the funniest things in this game thus far. Although on that note, her whole man-hating thing is already a little grating. It’s not terrible, but still. Although it looks like the game might do some funny things with it, like how in the demo she couldn’t say which guy walked into the cafeteria because she just hates men so goddamn much that she basically blocked him out of her vision and then couldn’t remember who it was later. That sorta thing is amusing.

Monokids: I almost forgot to comment on these guys, but I may as well, since they’re a noteworthy new aspect of the game. They’re definitely very fitting for the franchise, but it’s almost overwhelming having so many variations of Monokuma running around. It was also really weird how it felt like half of the script in the prologue was just them talking, and the actual main characters just responding to them sometimes. I hope they don’t hog the screen-time that much for the rest of the game. I’m pretty interested to see what the hell their deal is, though, since presumably someone is controlling them, but they seem to be operating independently from Monokuma. I guess they might just be actual autonomous robots though. But still.

I don’t think there’s really any point to me saying anything about Monokuma, since he’s not exactly a new character. But I can’t help but wonder who’s controlling him this time, if he’s not also an autonomous robot. Presumably it’d be an all-new character this time around, unless they somehow bring back an old character. But if it’s a new mastermind, will it be one of the main characters of this game? If so, how? If it’s not, then who would it be? I doubt that the mastermind would end up being a completely, entirely new character. I guess we’ll see.

Anyway that got really really long but oh well. I have a lot to say about this game already, lol. I’m really excited to finally be sitting down to play one of these games on my own terms, rather than just seeing someone else play it on Youtube. Even if it’s been a bit of a nightmare trying to get the necessary equipment to legally play it.

I’m very curious to see where my opinion falls in the long run, since this seems to be a very ‘love it or hate it’ kinda game. I don’t really have super high expectations though, at least after I disliked DR2′s ending, and I thought UDG was kinda weird, and I thought DR3 was a bit of a trainwreck. I love this franchise a lot, but it can also be kinda terrible at times, so I’m keeping my hopes in check for this one.

#murasaki rambles #danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers #that might be an unnecessary tag since anything spoilery will be under readmores but I'm playing it safe #if anyone has the spoiler tag blacklisted but wants to read my liveblog then I'll have individual links to each post on my blog

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lenfaz · 7 years

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Time Upon Once, ch. 7 (7/?)

Summary: Killian Jones is a bailbonds man, living in Boston and doing his own thing. But on his 29th birthday, a kid knocks on his door and claims to be his son. What happens when Killian is forced to face his past along with a mystery prophecy about his own purpose in life?

Rating: M (eventually)

A huge thank you to @tnlph @businesscasualprincess and @blessed-but-distressed for beta duties and @shady-swan-jones for the banner!

Tagging a few people that showed interest in this story: @lk0622 @nowforruin@sambethe@xemmaloveskillianx @l-e-x-a-xd @profoundlyfadedprincess @once-uponacaptain@icecubelotr44 @poetic-justice-96 @allietumbles @el-kelpo (want to be tagged? let me know and I’ll do it)

on Tumblr: I II III IV V VI

ao3 ff.net

Chapter VII

Killian didn’t know why he was even at a party for a man he hardly knew, let alone a man who wouldn’t have remembered him now even if they had known each other. He’d been given the invitation at the station that day, Kathryn Nolan giving him a hopeful smile. And he’d accepted, not really knowing what else to do.

On one hand, he wanted to stay at the loft and be on hand to distract Mary Margaret from the party she decided to skip and the life resolution she’d taken when she’d resigned from her volunteer work at the hospital. But on the other hand, it was - perhaps - the only chance he’d have to see Henry for a while. Regina had held firm on her decision to ground Henry, and as much as Killian wanted to see the lad, he knew he would have to abide by her rules. Henry had tried sneaking into the station to see him, but Killian had reluctantly turned the boy away, praying that his mother would never learn of it.

But Mary Margaret, sensing that Killian’s desperation for even the smallest of contact with Henry, had sent him on his merry way to the party, claiming that she’d be more than fine on her own. “I’ve been alone for a lot of nights before you came along, Killian. I’ll be okay.” A small part of Killian wanted to hug her and promised her that she wouldn’t be alone from now on, but he knew a thing or two about making promises he wasn’t sure he could keep, well-intentioned or not. He had given her a hug anyway, engulfing her petite frame in his arms before he left for the party.

That was how he’d ended on the foyer of the Nolan’s house, sharing a bench with a 10 year-old that was still hung up on a curse.

“You know why he doesn’t remember, right?” Henry prompted. “The curse isn’t working on him yet.”

“Henry, David has amnesia.” Killian insisted, trying to gently infuse the difference in Henry’s mind.

“Well, then the amnesia is preventing the curse from replacing his fairy tale story with fake memories,” Henry insisted, speaking in a low voice and stealing glances at the kitchen, where Regina was.

“Aye. Because everyone here has fake stories that prevent them from remembering who they really are,” Killian tilted his head and pronounced the last quip almost sarcastically, hoping that Henry would understand. But his son either didn’t take the hint or had just decided to ignore him, just another blind adult who couldn’t see his truth. If Killian were to take a wild guess, he’d say it was the second, because the way his son’s eyes glinted at him with half-annoyance, half-bossing-around was painfully familiar. Emma used to give him the same look every time he tried to talk her out of something she’d set her mind on.. And every time he’d failed miserably, Emma moving forward with whatever she wanted to do anyway.

“Right. And now’s our chance to help him.” Yep, the lad definitely took after Emma. Killian felt himself losing the battle again. “We just have to get him to remember that he’s-” Henry trailed off, looking at Killian’s expectantly.

“He’s Prince Charming,” he sighed, finishing the boy’s thought. My bloody father.

“We just have to jog his memory by getting him and Miss Blanchard together.”

Hell, no.

“Didn’t we just try that?” Killian argued, every single fiber of his being blanching at the idea of causing Mary Margaret more heartache. She was already suffering as it was, only because Henry had wanted to be proven right about his cursed town theory. And while Killian was on board with preserving his son’s fantasies if they helped him deal with complex emotions, it couldn’t be at the expense of people’s - Mary Margaret’s - feelings.

“And it woke him up!” Henry stated proudly.

“Lad, listen-” Killian started but he was interrupted by the man of the hour coming over to stand next to them.

“Hey,” David said, a feeble smile coming to his lips. “You’re the ones who saved me, right?”

Killian stood, facing the man in front of him. They were about the same height, and he found himself studying him. They definitely did not seem alike. “Aye, I guess you could say so,” he offered with a smile of his own.

David fidgeted, his smile morphing into a nervous chuckle. “And, uh, you’re also the only ones I know here,” he acknowledged with a sincere voice.

Killian felt bad for the man, clearly feeling like a stranger in his own house. He knew the feeling, that ache of never quite belonging, as it had been his sole companion for decades. Only twice he’d felt like he’d belong: first with the Joneses and later with Emma. And he’d lost them both. Stealing a look at Henry, he thought perhaps, maybe thrice. “You can hide with us,” he offered and David beamed.

“Fantastic,” he said as he stabbed a cocktail snack from a tray that a waiter carried nearby with a toothpick.

“So,” Henry started and by the tone of his voice Killian was already fearing what would come next, “have you ever used a sword?”

“I’m sorry?” David asked confused and Kilian gave Henry a stern look.

“Henry,” he admonished, cocking an eyebrow in a clear message for the lad to drop it. “Not now.”

“You live with Mary Margaret, right?” David asked, almost nonchalantly, but Killian could spot a loaded question a mile away.

“Aye, yes, we share a household,” he said softly, not giving much away and waiting to see what David would ask next.

David seemed to falter for a moment, before he casually continued. “I didn’t know that you two - she didn’t mention -”

It was painful to watch, even for him and Killian didn’t have the heart to go on. The man was already second-guessing and hesitating about everything -and everyone - in his life.

“No, no,” he waved his hand in the air. “As lovely as Miss Blanchard is, ours is a relationship of a friendly nature.”

David’s eyes lit in a way no married man’s eyes should lit at the mention of any woman other than his wife. “Is she coming tonight?”

“I’m afraid she couldn’t make it,” Killian replied and watched that light snuff away. He felt sorry for the man, he did, but he also realized that now, more than ever, he needed to be there for Mary Margaret. He could see Henry wanted to push David a little further but he turned away and gave his son a stern stare. He wanted to help the lad, he really did, but they had no business aiding a confused married man and getting Mary Margaret hurt in the process.

It seemed their silent conversation took longer than they both thought, because the next thing he knew, Kathryn was walking over to them, asking them if they’d seen David. It was only then that Killian noticed the man had vanished. And considering the way he’d looked when he’d mentioned Mary Margaret, Killian had a pretty good hunch on where he might be headed.

Bloody hell.

/-/

Killian had no intention of confronting Mary Margaret as he wasn’t eager to bring the topic of David with her - even after spotting the man leaving as he was arriving to the loft. But he couldn’t avoid it when the first thing that greeted him as he entered the apartment was the view of Mary Margaret obsessively scrubbing a dish in the kitchen.

“Love, is abusing the Brillo pad a good way to end the evening?” he asked gently, as he crossed his arms over this chest and waited for her answer. She stopped her scrubbing, only to deposit the plate in the water-filled sink.

“Dishes were just piling up…” she trailed off, not really meeting Killian’s eyes. He sighed, removing his black leather jacket and going to take a seat at the counter.

“Perhaps your actions are more related to David stopping by than the actual need to have a perfectly clean household?” he said, and Mary Margaret looked at him as if she were a deer caught in headlights. “I saw him leaving with a sulking expression as I pulled up.”

“We just, uh” Mary Margaret let the dish drip before she put it on the rack, avoiding his gaze and stumbling on her words, “he just-”

“Aye, you both just,” Killian sighed, running a hand through this hair. “For what is worth, I believe you did the right thing, love.”

“Well, he made a pretty compelling case,” she replied, her hands attacking the next dish.

“I know - I was at the party,” Killian admitted.

“What do I do?” she asked, her nail fidgeting with the side of her forefinger, her voice dropping to a low whisper that was filled with longing.

“First, you need to stop cleaning,” he said kindly as he stood up and extended his hand, palm up. “And have a drink.” He cocked an eyebrow.

Mary Margaret gave him a small laugh that didn’t quite lift his spirits, but he’d take it for now. She gave him her hand and he squeezed softly before he redirected her to the table and made her sit. He retrieved the brand new bottle of rum he’d purchased a few days before - his first contribution to the household - and two glasses. He poured a healthy amount in each as he continued speaking.

“Lass, I don’t know much about relationships - other than having my heart broken followed by a string of one-night stands and poor choices.” He handed her one of the glasses before he sat on the other chair and faced her. “But generally speaking, if you think that something you want to do - or a certain activity you want to partake in - is wrong, then it usually is.” He gave her a soft smile, his eyes looking at her with fond concern. “You have to stay strong, Mary Margaret. And he needs to figure out his life. You deserve better than this situation and you know it.” He raised his glass and clinked it with hers. “Cheers. Bottoms up.”

Mary Margaret downed half of her glass with one gulp, grimacing as it went down. “Did you ever feel - with Emma - that it wasn’t right?” she asked hesitantly.

Killian took another sip of his drink, letting the alcohol burnt his throat before he answered. “Never.” The word came out broken, the sting of the drink adding a rawness to it.

“Then what happened?” she asked curious, leaning her body forward, her elbows resting on her legs, the glass cradled between her hands.

He didn’t want to talk about the circumstances that led to him and Emma parting ways, the wound still very much un-healed even after a decade. He’d kept that pain deep within him, as his silent companion, never speaking of it. He wasn’t even sure he could go there. He’d always secretly believed that the reason he hadn’t completely fallen apart was because he’d never talked about it, the pain woven through every part of him somehow also holding him together. The moment he talked about it - the moment he shared the story with someone, anyone - he feared he’d simply unravel, never able to put himself together again.

Mary Margaret let the silence stretch between them, tilting her head to the side and offering him a comforting smile. “It okay, Killian,” she whispered, one of her hands reaching to squeeze one of his. “Maybe one day you’ll trust me enough to tell me.”

He swallowed, marveling at her selfless offer for comfort when he was the one that should’ve been comforting her.

“Aye, I truly hope so,” he admitted.

/-/

Killian sat at his desk at the station, his eyes scanning an old file. It turned out that, so far, the only difference between his bail bonds work and being a deputy had been trading stale coffee and uncomfortable hours sitting in his car in a stakeout, for terrible coffee and uncomfortable hours sitting at his desk at the station. Action? Not so much, not after the stunt they pulled on the mines.

He closed the manila folder and placed it down on his desk. He was about to pick up another when Graham walked in, carrying a box of bloody doughnuts from the local bakery in his hands.

“Mate, really?” Killian asked, his voice making it clear he found this beneath the sheriff - and mostly - him.

“What can I say? Sometimes clichés are true,” Graham shrugged, opening the lid of the box so Killian could take a peek. He looked from one to another, noticing the bear claw almost right away. He hadn’t had one in years, but it didn’t mean they weren’t the first thing he’d always looked for.

“Alright, spill. What do you want?” He cocked an eyebrow at Graham, not willing to take the bribe before knowing what he was committing to.

“Remember when I said no night shifts?” Graham grimaced and Killian could see how this sentence was going to end. “I need you to work tonight. Just this once.”

“You better have a good excuse for that one, Sheriff, because I had plans today.” There were two half-truths in there and Killian knew it. One, no matter what he was promised, he was Deputy and Graham was Sheriff. The other man was his boss, so Killian could have thrown any tantrum he wanted, he still would have had to follow orders. And two, he didn’t exactly have plans tonight - at least not any set in stone - but he had been toying with the idea of asking Mary Margaret to go with him to the local bar, have some beers and hot wings. He had hoped it would take her mind off David Nolan and perhaps he could find a suitable, eligible, single decent guy for her. There had got to be one in town, somewhere. Perhaps Graham -

His thoughts were interrupted by Graham’s voice. “I volunteer at an animal shelter, and the supervisor’s sick, and someone needs to feed the dogs.”

On further thought, why hadn’t Graham and Mary Margaret fallen for each other? It seemed they were both so bloody perfect for each other with their good deeds and optimism. He would have to look into that, perhaps make some hinted remarks to one and the other, see what came out of that. But it would not be tonight, clearly, as Graham had civil duties to perform elsewhere.

“You’re too good for your own good,” Killian said as he reached for the bear claw, “and for the price of one bear claw, I will cover the night shift.”

“Well, you do sell yourself cheap, Jones,” Graham joked, “I thought I’d have to at least relinquish half of the box.”

“What can I say, I’m easy, Humbert. I’ve never been able to resist a pair of pretty eyes.” Killian batted his eyelashes at him. “And you have such pretty eyes.”

Graham’s retort died in his lips as Mary Margaret barged into the station and headed directly towards Killian’s desk. “Killian, can I talk to you for a minute?”

Humbert cocked an eyebrow at him amusedly, clearly getting the wrong idea but before Killian could say anything, he was retreating towards his office. “I’ll just go patrol my office and leave you birds alone.”

Oh, bollocks.

The moment Graham was out of earshot, it was as if a dam had broken in Mary Margaret. “He left his wife. David – he left her. He left Kathryn.” The entire sentence was pronounced in one breath, and now Mary Margaret was gesticulating with her hands, clearly agitated over this ordeal.

“Slow down, love,” Killian started and she took a deep breath.

“He did it for me.” And she was back at speaking at the speed of light as she walked to the other side of him and Killian had to turn in his chair to follow her. “He wants me to be with him. He wants me to meet him tonight.”

“That’s- well-”

“I mean, I’m trying so hard to be strong, but he just keeps coming.” She paced to the other side again. “I mean, how do I stop it? You know, how do I let him down? What would you do?”

There was such longing in her voice, and such hope hidden in it, that even if part of Killian was still repelled by the idea - the man had just left his wife - he simply didn’t have the heart to crush her dreams.

“I’d go,” he shrugged.

That seemed to finally made Mary Margaret stay still. “What?”

“Well, lass, he left her,” Killian pointed out. “It’s one thing to say that he wants you, but it’s another to actually make a choice and now, it seems that he has. That’s all you can ask for.” He still felt the need to leave her heart a little guarded, just in case. “Just, you know, tread carefully.”

Mary Margaret leaned on his desk. “Given her new friendship with Kathryn, I don’t think Regina would be happy. “

Oh. “Regina - aye, that won’t be a good thing but, the heart wants what the heart wants.” Killian placed the bear claw on his desk and cleaned his fingers before he reached for Mary Margaret’s arm, his eyes boring into hers. “If he’s willing to fight for you, maybe - just maybe- he might deserve you.”

Mary Margaret’s eyes were lost in a sea of her own hope. “Good Lord, is this really happening?”

“It seems so.”

/-/

Since he had the night shift, Killian felt no remorse in leaving Graham to his own devices for the rest of the afternoon and heading back to the loft to catch some shut-eye before the beginning of his patrol. Throughout the years, his random sleeping patterns and work hours had made it easier for him to simply command sleep to come to him regardless the time of day, and sometimes a quick nap brought him more rest than a restless night filled with nightmares and aching.

The small mezzanine of the loft had become a very welcoming lodging for him, the one that felt more like a bedroom than a lot of the places he’d had over the years. The spread was a little flowery for his taste - maybe a lot - but he knew how much Mary Margaret had put of her own heart into arranging this place for him. He couldn’t care less if it seemed more appropriate for a young girl than an old rapscallion like him. It was the thought that counted. And Mary Margaret’s welcoming thoughts could be counted in spades in that little room. He could buy something more to his taste - a navy blue comforter and some naval themed sheets - once he finally got a steady paycheck.

He woke up after a couple of hours and took a long shower, before pulling on his jeans, a shirt and a soft sweater to keep him warm if the night were to get a little chilly. He grabbed his leather jacket and shot a text to Mary Margaret as he left the loft, wishing her good luck on her date later that evening.

Killian was no stranger to spending long nights working. He’d spent half of his last job doing stakeouts, spending countless hours sitting in his parked car, waiting for skips. Night patrols weren’t that much different, if he were to admit it, the only thing that varied was that he was constantly driving the town streets instead of standing still in one place. Other than that, the coffee still tasted like tar, the night was still too silent and the ghosts of his past still decided to show up, reminding him of all the other nights he’d spent wandering around with Emma, either driving around with no purpose or laid over the hood of the car watching the stars.

He was deep in those thoughts, remembering one night at the very beginning, when they were still walking that line between acquaintances that didn’t quite trust each other and friends, where he had shown her the stars and told her everything he remembered from Liam’s stories. She’d listened, mesmerized, asking questions as she kept pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, her green eyes so pure and honest in that moment that he knew then he’d never look into another girl’s eyes in the same way he looked into hers.

From the corner of his eye, a flicker of movement at a second floor window of Regina’s house caught his attention. He cursed his luck, as of all the places in town a burglar could decide to rob, it had to be the mayor’s house on the night he was assigned the patrol? He pulled over as soon as he was able and got out of the car, slowly making his way towards the gap in the hedge, his nightstick ready in his hand. The moment the man made it to the sidewalk, he ambushed him, throwing all his weight into the hit. Caught by surprise, the man fell to the ground and in that moment Killian saw the streetlight illuminating his face. He gasped as he recognized Graham.

“You call this volunteering, mate?” he spat, shoving Graham one more time. His clothes were in an interesting state of disarray and he was carrying his jacket in his hand. He quickly stood up, grunting.

“Plans changed,” he said, not meeting Killian’s eyes. “Regina needed me to-”

“Spare me the details, Humbert. If you needed me to cover your shift for a bloody booty call, you could have just said so.” Killian clenched his jaw. To be honest, he couldn’t care less who Graham - or Regina - slept with. This put a damper on his plans to set him up with Mary Margaret, but other than that, it was none of his god damn business. But he didn’t like being lied to. “Why were you sneaking out the window?” he asked confused.

“She didn’t want Henry to know.”

Now, that he had a problem with.

“She’s lying to her son?” He couldn’t help the next words that came from his mouth. “You’re both lying to my son?”

“Killian, let me explain, I-”

“You know what, Sheriff. I don’t want to hear it tonight. You could have just been honest with me from the beginning about your liaison with her. You offered me this job, you asked me to help you at the station. You knew things between me and the Mayor were tense, there was no need to keep me in the shadows if we were going to be a team at the station.” He tossed him the keys of the patrol car. He had to get out of here. “You can finish the bloody shift for me, mate.”

He turned around and walked away. The Rabbit Hole wasn’t far away and he had all the intention of drowning all his frustrations with more than one healthy dose of rum.

He didn’t make it back to the loft until late that night, and considering that Mary Margaret still wasn’t back, he was glad that at least one of them seemed to be having a pleasant night. He climbed the stairs carefully, the alcohol making his movements slightly clumsy, and he stripped out of his clothes, not bothering with pajama pants as he climbed into the bed only in his boxer briefs, ready to put the night behind him.

/-/

He decided to sleep in late the next day, not really caring if he missed part of his shift - or all of it. He was supposed to have the day off after the night shift and he still intended to benefit from that. Mary Margaret was gone by the time he made his way downstairs, a slight headache a sign of the mild hangover he was sure he’d be nursing for the rest of the day. He sighed, running a hand through his hair as he turned on the coffee machine and opened the fridge to search for something to eat. There were eggs and bacon and Killian’s mouth began to water at the idea of a hearty breakfast. Deciding that the best way to start the day after his dreadful night was to start fresh, he quickly jumped into the shower while the coffee was brewing.

One shower, two cups of coffee and a fantastic plate of scrambled eggs and bacon later, he took the time to tidy up. He cleaned the kitchen, did his laundry and sat down with a book to kill a few hours.

Mary Margaret had texted him that she would be out late in a school meeting and by the time the sun was setting, Killian had had enough of the apartment and headed for Granny’s. The sight that welcomed him as he entered was the one of a slightly inebriated sheriff throwing darts with deadly accuracy. Killian’s frustrations from the night before came crawling back and he clenched his jaw to reign himself in. He refused when Ruby asked if he wanted a drink, choosing to simply leave. A dart thrown in his direction, sticking into the doorframe right by his head was enough to make him stop and face Graham again.

“What in the blazes, Humbert? You could have hit me!”

“I never miss, Jones,” Graham said, downing his drink and walking towards him. “You missed your shift.”

“Sheriff, this is not the time nor the place to have this conversation,” Killian pointed out. “And if you’re so discontented with my performance, you can always fire me,” he said as he walked away.

Graham followed him out to the street. “You’ve been avoiding me because of Regina, haven’t you?”

Killian didn’t want to have this conversation, and it seemed sarcasm and quips were the only way he was going to get out of it. He turned around, turning on his best smug smile, his eyes all but blazing at the other man. “Mate, this is looking quite weird and I was under the impression, after seeing you practically leaving Regina’s bed last night, that you didn't bat for this team. So which one is it? Do you find me that attractive?”

Graham might be slightly intoxicated, but he was no fool. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Killian. We’re partners.”

“We’re barely acquaintances, Graham. You’re my boss. Nothing else,” Killian retorted. “Whatever you do with your personal life is not of my business.”

“Can we talk about this?”

“Why?” He really couldn’t understand why Graham wanted to discuss this with him.

“Because I have no one else to talk but you, Jones. No one.” There was such despair in Graham’s voice that it almost made Killian cave. But he wasn’t here to get involved in people’s personal lives. He had enough with Henry’s insistence they all came from a fairytale world. He’d already let Mary Margaret get deep under his skin in a way that none ever since Emma had - although in a completely different and non-romantic way. He didn’t have time to help the Sheriff sort out his love life. Especially when said love life involved the adoptive mother of his son.

“Mate, go talk to Archie about your bad judgement,” he said, exasperated.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Graham insisted, leaning against the wall brick of the alley, his eyes lost. “You don’t know what it’s like with her-”

Bloody hell. “Probably not, but bad relationships are just that, Graham. Bad,” Killian offered, running a hand through his hair and leaning in next to Graham, wishing he had his old flask with him.

“I know you and Regina have issues and I should have told you about us before you took the job.” Graham said, and Killian nodded at that.

“Why the secrecy? We’re adults and I’m hardly some naive maiden. I have my own track record of poor choices and shady liaisons. It’s not like I was going to be horrified by it. You’re screwing the mayor, big deal.”

“I just - I don’t know, I guess I didn’t want to admit there’s nothing there,” Graham said. “That I feel nothing. And if I say something to you...”

“Then you would have to admit it to yourself,” Killian sighed, clasping his hand on Graham’s shoulder. “It’s too late for that now.”

Graham was startled, his eyes lost in the horizon for a brief minute before he shook his head.

“Are you alright?” Killian asked worried.

“I don’t know, mate. I don’t know,” Graham sighed. “I-I better go.”

“Do you- do you want me to go with you?” Killian asked, fearing that Graham wouldn’t make it back home in one piece.

“No, I’ll be fine. See you tomorrow at the station, Jones.”

“See you tomorrow, Humbert.”

/-/

Killian retired early for the night after his strange meeting with Graham, falling into a somewhat peaceful slumber for most of the night. He was down the next morning in time to see the bouquet of flowers sitting by the counter.

“Mary Margaret?” he called and turned to see her coming into the living room with a stack of folders. “I take it that things went well with David two nights ago?”

Mary Margaret’s face turned into a sad expression and Killian wanted kick himself. “I - David remembered. He decided to go back to his wife and give his marriage another chance,” she said in a soft voice.

“Love,” Killian started to take a step towards her but she cut him off, moving to the side and speaking quickly, keeping herself entertained with the folders and the flowers.

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” she repeated almost to herself.

Something still didn’t sit well with Killian. “Then who sent you the flowers?”

Her face turned crimson, her eyes avoiding his as she put the flowers in a vase. “Uh… Dr. Whale.”

“Why would Dr. Whale-” Killian started before he put two and two together just in time for Mary Margaret to give him a pointed look. “No. Really?”

“It’s a disaster,” she sighed.

“Well, I wouldn’t call it that,” Killian said. Granted, he wouldn’t have pegged Mary Margaret for the type to pick up a guy for rebound, but it seemed to be working in her benefit. “It seems things are going well and you’re getting over David.”

“First of all, there’s nothing to get over and second of all, it’s just a one night stand,” she defended herself.

“There are flowers involved, Mary Margaret. That is not a one night stand.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have called him.” Mary Margaret sighed.

“You called him?” Killian asked shockingly.

“Well, okay – I’m still learning. I never had one before.” She was pacing around the apartment, avoiding his gaze. “I felt guilty.”

Killian chuckled and stopped her pacing, bringing her to his side in a friendly hug. “Lass, no. Rule number one of a one night stand: you never call. Actually, you don’t even stay for breakfast. You leave in the middle of the night.” He gave her a side smile. “Without ever mentioning it again…”

She smiled at him. “Wow. You have a little of experience with that, don't you?” There was something in her tone that made Killian slightly uncomfortable, but in a good way.

“Why do I feel I’m being judged by me mum?” he cocked an eyebrow at her and she rolled her eyes, extricating herself from his arms.

“Maybe because I’m supposed to be your mother,” she said matter-of-factly.

Gods, he hadn’t thought of that. And here he was, discussing one night stands with the woman.

He ran his hand through his hair. “If this curse proves to be true, we’re going to need so much therapy.”

She tilted her head to the side. “I don’t think even Archie could repair that kind of damage.”

“Are you going to be okay??” he asked concerned. He hated the idea of Mary Margaret being sad over this.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I’ll get there.”

“Maybe you should give the doctor a chance?” Killian suggested. “He sent you flowers, after all.”

“I don’t think he wants a relationship,” Mary Margaret said, as she grabbed her things and readied herself for school.

Killian’s thoughts went back to the idea that had been on his mind for a few days and he decided he might as well put it out there. “What about Graham? Have you ever thought that you and him... Perhaps? You’d make a good match.”

The stare that Mary Margaret gave him was a clear answer. “I’m not that naive not to know he’s sleeping with the mayor, Killian.”

“True, but it seems that things might not be going well. I’m just saying-”

“Hey, how about we talk about your love life for a change?” she interrupted him.

“I don’t have a love life. Nor do I intend to,” Killian said. “One nights work pretty well for me. I know the basics.” He cringed at the harsh tone of his words but Mary Margaret didn’t seemed the least bit fazed.

“I know you’re still hurting, Killian. And there’s that wall you’ve built,” she gave him a soft smile.

“There’s nothing wrong with being cautious, love,” he said feebly, his jaw clenching. He knew she was right, he had a wall. He’d built it and fortified it around his heart for years.

“Oh, true. True. But, Killian, that wall of yours? It may keep out pain but it also keeps out love.”

That’s what she got wrong. That wall wasn’t keeping out love, it was keeping it in.

/-/

It had been an odd day for Killian. He wasn’t sure if it had been triggered by the conversation he’d had with Mary Margaret early that morning, or the fact that Graham had seemed so out of sorts the night before. But when the clock struck noon and Graham still hadn’t arrived - or called, he started to get restless.

He’d left a few messages on Graham’s voicemail, but there had been no call back. Hell, he’d even tried calling Regina, but the Mayor told him that he wasn’t paid to meddle with the sheriff’s life - or hers - and that he should leave the issue alone.

You may think you’re doing nothing, but you’re putting thoughts in his head. Thoughts that are not in his best interest. You are leading him on a path to self-destruction. Stay away. Killian wasn’t quite sure what Regina was referring to, as the only thing he’d done was tell Graham that his life choices were his own, but apparently Regina was eager to pin him as guilty for anything - or anyone - going wrong in this town.

He was still fuming from his conversation with her when Mary Margaret showed up at the station, her face showing signs of distress.

“Is everything alright?” Killian asked, “Did something happen to Henry?”

“No, no,” Mary Margaret said but she seemed hesitant for a moment. “Graham came to see me. He was - he wasn’t himself. Kept asking me about how long we’ve known each other and then he started rambling about past lives.”

“Past lives?”

“Yeh, he seemed very interested to know if I thought we’d met in a different life.” Mary Margaret paced back and forth, rubbing her hands together in a clear sign of distress. “I didn’t realize he was burning with fever, not until after-”

“After what?” Killian’s heart dropped to the pit of his stomach.

“I told him about Henry and the book. I’m sorry Killian, I didn’t know,” she said, her voice full of remorse.

He was by her side in an instant, placing a comforting hand over her arm. “It’s okay Mary Margaret, I don’t think Graham would hurt Henry.”

“We have to find him.” Mary Margaret pleaded.

“Aye, we’ll do that,” he promised.

It wasn’t hard to track Graham, considering Killian had a very good idea of where he might have gone. If he was delirious and thought he was remembering past lives - or if he believed in the curse - then Henry would be the first person he’d go see.

And just as they suspected, they saw Graham coming out of the Mayor’s house just as Killian pulled his car into the street, and he and Mary Margaret got out.

“Hey, mate,” Killian started slowly, trying to come up with his best soothing voice. “I heard you’re having a rough day.”

“Says who?” Graham asked, clenching his jaw. Killian noticed the slight disarray of his clothes and the way his eyes were not completely focused.

“Graham,” Mary Margaret started, taking a step towards him. “I told Killian. I’m worried about you: you were burning up, we need to get you home, have some rest.”

“I’m fine, Mary Margaret,” Graham spat and Killian moved closer to her instinctively. He knew rationally that Graham wasn’t the type to hurt a lady, but Graham didn’t seem to be in his right mind at the moment, so he didn’t want to take any chances.

“You’re not fine,” he said firmly. “You just went to see a ten year old who believes fairytales are real for help.”

“He’s the only one making any sense,” Graham said, looking around him frantically.

Mary Margaret started to move towards the sheriff and Killian held her arm, not really wanting for her to get so close. She turned around and gave him a look that was half understanding his concern and half ‘I’ll do what I please’ stubbornness. Killian let go of her and she simply walked towards him.

“You’re usually not like this, Graham,” she said softly, her eyes searching his face, trying to understand. “What’s really troubling you?” her voice was soft, as if she were soothing a frightened and wounded animal.

“It’s my heart, Mary Margaret. I need to find it,” he said feebly.

Killian almost took a step back, worried about Graham and the fact that he wasn’t making any bloody sense, but Mary Margaret didn’t even flinch. It seemed she was more used to hearing fables than Killian. She tilted her head, as if she were examining the man’s words and taking them seriously.

“Okay,” she said in a tone Killian was pretty sure she used to placate her students. “And how are you going to find it?”

“I just need to follow the wolf.”

“Wolf?” Killian said in disbelief and Graham startled. Mary Margaret snapped her eyes at him and Killian felt the silent scolding she was bestowing upon him. Clearly his tone had set back the work she’d been doing in calming Graham and reaching to the bottom of the issue. She turned around, her hand reaching to touch Graham’s face and making him look at her.

“Which wolf?” she asked, her tone the complete opposite of Killian’s prior and he took note of how well Mary Margaret was handling this as opposed to him. She seemed to reach to Graham in a way he wasn’t able at the moment.

“From my dreams. It’s going to help me find my heart. I need my heart,” Graham said in a desperate tone.

“Do you really think you have no heart?” she asked, her eyes boring into his, her hand still on his cheek.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” he whispered, closing his eyes, a tear running down his cheek. “It’s the only thing that explains why I don’t feel anything.”

“Graham, look at me,” Mary Margaret asked and Graham opened his eyes. Her hand moved slowly from his cheek and down his chest. She placed her palm flat over the left side of his chest, underneath his jacket and vest, pressing where his heart was. Graham looked mesmerized, not able to tear his eyes from her face. “You have a heart, Graham. I can feel it beating. It’s real.”

Graham shook his head but Mary Margaret didn’t let go, taking his hand and placing is over hers. “See? You can feel it too,” she said with a soft smile.

“It’s the curse, Mary Margaret,” he said in a strained voice, pushing her hand aside. “None of it is real.”

“Graham,” Killian said, taking a page of Mary Margaret’s book and speaking softly, soothingly. “You can’t really think that none of this is real. That we’re cursed-”

Whatever words he was planning to say were cut off by Mary Margaret’s gasp. She was looking at something behind Graham and she seemed in shock. Killian follower her stare and he had to refrain the colorful curse that came to his lips the moment he spotted a bloody wolf with two colored eyes looking at them. He’d only been able to catch a glimpse of it the night he arrived into town and he’d crashed the sign, but he’d bet all his money - and his existence - that this was the same wolf he’d spotted that night.

What in the blazes was happening in this town?

The wolf stood there for a moment, its eyes moving from Graham to Killian to Mary Margaret.

“Be careful,” Mary Margaret said, her tone showing a slight hint of panic. Graham turned to look at her, giving her a soft smile, the first normal expression that Killian had seen in him that day.

“He’s my friend. He won’t hurt us,” he promised. At that moment, the wolf ran away and Graham took after it. “But I have to follow it.”

Mary Margaret exchanged a brief look with Killian, both of them sharing the same thought. They couldn’t leave Graham alone. He quickly nodded before they followed Graham down the street.

/-/

Of course the bloody beast would lead them to a graveyard. What better place to look for a missing heart than a graveyard?

The wolf seemed to have vanished, and if it weren’t for the three different people that had spotted it, Killian would have pegged it as a figment of his imagination by that point. But - and even if Graham might have been delusional - Mary Margaret had seen it too and she was currently between him and Graham, walking among the graves, looking for it.

What was becoming a fruitless search led them to the top of the hill, where an intricately carved mausoleum sat, noticeably better cared for than those around it.

“Perhaps we should head back,” Killian said, but Graham was looking at the crypt and he’d gone paler than before.

“Graham? What is it?” Mary Margaret asked.

“It’s my heart. It’s in there,” he announced as he took out his flashlight and made his way to the entrance.

“Mate, wait!” Killian called, pulling his flashlight and handed it over to Mary Margaret as he went after Graham.

“Stop! Graham, stop!” he called as he reached the man and pulled him gently out of the entrance. “You can’t desecrate a grave like this.”

“My heart is in there, Killian. I have to look in there,” Graham pleaded.

Killian sighed, running a hand through his hair. He knew that even if he were able to pull Graham away from here - resorting to physical force if needed - the man would come back at the first chance he’d got, and Killian and Mary Margaret wouldn’t be there to help defuse any situation that this might trigger.

“Okay, but let me try,” Killian said, trying to open the door and finding it stuck. “Stand back,” he called as he gained momentum and then threw all of his weight into it, the door giving way under the force of his shoulder.

/-/

The crypt looked exactly as creepy as you’d imagine someplace would be if it were hiding human hearts. Killian stepped in, followed by Graham and Mary Margaret. Graham started to search frantically, going through each one of the shelves and shaking one of the urns.

“It’s got to be in here, somewhere,” he started to pull at the urns and even the shelves, trying to loosen some of the boards. “Maybe there’s a hidden door. A lever. Something.”

Killian exchanged a quick look with Mary Margaret before he slowly approached Graham. “Graham, mate,” he started cautiously, not wanting to startle the already fragile state of mind of the sheriff. “There’s nothing here.”

“There has to be,” Graham said stubbornly, his eyes scanning the crypt, his voice shaky with fear. “If there isn’t, then-”

“It’s okay,” Mary Margaret said, her hands reaching for his arms and squeezing softly until she was able to calm him and have him focused on her. “It’s going to be okay. I promise,” she said with a soft smile and Graham tilted his head, nodding slowly.

The piercing sound of Regina’s voice tore the fragile calm they’d just achieved. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Killian pulled Graham and Mary Margaret out of the crypt as his eyes focused on Regina. “Regina? What are you doing here?” he asked confused, trying to make sense of the scene unfolding in front of him.

“Bringing flowers to my father’s grave like I do every Wednesday,” she spat at them and Killian felt the blood in his body running cold at the implication of her words. He didn’t have much time to react to the news before Regina had moved her attention to Mary Margaret.

“Miss Blanchard, I see that you’ve moved from giving damaging books to children, to disturbing the peaceful rest of the death.”

“Don’t blame her,” Graham said, standing in front of Regina, leaving Mary Margaret protected behind him. “It’s my fault. I wanted to look in there.”

“Why? What were you looking for?”

“Nothing, it was nothing,” Graham whispered defeatedly, his head hanging low, his shoulders slumped.

“You don’t look well, dear. Let’s take you home,” Regina announced in a soft tone that had more than just a hint of patronizing in it. She grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the exit, but Graham broke free, taking a few steps back and reaching Mary Margaret’s side.

“Regina, I… I don’t want to go home. Not with you.”

Regina gasped in surprise, her eyebrow raising for a moment. Her eyes transformed into a murderous glare the moment they set on Mary Margaret. “Oh. But you’ll go with her.”

“This is between you two, Madam Mayor,” Killian said, his arm closing protectively around Mary Margaret’s shoulder. “Leave her out of it.”

“He’s right,” Graham said, turning to face her one more time. “This is between us and things have to change.”

“I wonder why that is all of the sudden,” Regina’s eyes were still trained on Mary Margaret with such venom that Killian felt the need to simply pull her friend out of this situation and leave the other two to figure it out, but a quick glance from Mary Margaret told him she wasn’t willing to leave Graham like this.

“It has nothing to do with her,” Graham insisted. “You know, I’ve realized that I don’t feel anything, Regina. And I know now it’s not me – it’s you.”

Killian could see Regina’s physical reaction to the punch Graham had thrown her with his words. She curled into herself for a moment before she bit back.

“What was it, Miss Blanchard? You couldn’t steal David Nolan from his wife so you decide to take Graham from me instead?”

“Regina, I’m not leaving you for her. I’m leaving you for me,” Graham insisted, his eyes looking for Killian and Mary Margaret for support. Regina’s eyes throw murderous looks at them.

“I don’t know what I ever did to you, Mr. Jones, to deserve this. To have you and your friend keep coming after everything I hold dear. My son, Graham-”

“Killian has nothing to do with this, Regina!” the other man shouted, running his hand through his hair. “This is about us, about me!”

“None of this happened until he got here,” Regina’s voice was so full of hatred that Killian took a step in front of Mary Margaret, shielding her from the words and the looks.

“Regina,” he said softly, not wanting to antagonize the woman any further. “Henry came to find me. Graham is now making his own choices. This has nothing to do with me - or Mary Margaret. Perhaps,” he sighed, “perhaps it’s time for you to ask yourself why this is happening, instead of trying to find people to blame.”

She was in front of him in an instant, the force of her slap enough to make his head turn to the side. He wasn’t shocked by it. But it was better for her to redirect all her hate and frustration on him and leave Mary Margaret out of it.

“Regina!” Graham shouted, grabbing her arm and pulling her back. He gave her one look before he tilted his head and motioned Killian and Mary Margaret to follow him as he left.

Regina called for him several times, but Graham never looked back.

/-/

It had been silent journey back to the station. Mary Margaret wanted to go with them, but Killian was determined that she stay back at the loft. She had been involved enough in this ordeal and as much as Killian wanted her and Graham to become a thing - eventually -now was not the time. So he dropped her off and then he and Graham made their way to the station.

The other man was calmer now, it seemed the fever and whatever had possessed him for the last few hours was gone.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I kind of lost my mind.” They were sitting by the deputy desks. Killian had pulled his old flask out of the inner pocket of his leather jacket and served them both a healthy dose of rum into a couple of mugs.

“Don’t fret. You were tired and feverish. And heartbroken,” Killian dismissed the other man’s apology. He knew a thing or two about broken hearts and bad relationships, and Graham’s delusional ramblings were nothing compared to some of the things he’d done back in the day. He wasn’t proud of any of it, but what was done was done and he couldn't turn back time.

“I don’t know why I let myself get caught up with her in the first place.” Graham sighed and took another sip of his mug.

“Because it was easy. And safe,” Killian shrugged as he played with his own mug. “Not feeling anything is an attractive option when what you feel sucks.”

“You seem to know a lot about these things, Jones.” Graham gave him an inquisitive look and Killian fidgeted under his stare. “Was it Henry's mother? Did you and her-”

Killian didn’t let him finish the sentence. He couldn’t bear the thought of someone thinking that, even if they never knew Emma. “Gods, no.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It was pretty much everyone after her. But Emma, mate, she was everything.” He trailed off, his mind going back to the moments he’d shared with Emma.

“Killian why are we stopping here? You know the last housekeeping shift was two hours ago, there is no way we can sneak in.” She pouted and pointed to one of the rooms of the motel where he’d parked the Bug.

“We aren't sneaking in, not tonight.” He pulled the key out of his leather jacket pocket. “I - I got us a room,” he stammered, averting his eyes to avoid hers, his cheeks blushing.

“We can't afford this, Hook” she sighed, her tone soft and calm as she reached for his hand reassuringly. “The backseat of the Bug is more than fine… especially now that we sleep a lot closer than before.” Her hand moved down to his knee, her voice low and slightly seductive.

He knew he was blushing but he looked at her anyway. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise, her curved smile changing into a “O” form. “Oh, Killian is that why you’ve been holding out on me? Because you think the Bug-”

He cut her off with a stutter. “You noticed?”

She rolled her eyes. “I might not have done it, but I’m not stupid, Killian. I know how things are supposed to go in these situations and clearly you have been holding back. Why? Is it me?” There was a hint of self-deprecation in her tone and Killian wanted to punch himself for making her hesitate like this.

“No, Emma.” He reached out to kiss her, pouring everything he felt for her in that kiss. He rested his forehead against hers. “I just- you deserve better, so much better than me and the life I lead. The life I can give you. I just wanted to give you more, for one night at least. I wanted to give you a nice bed, soft sheets-”

“Stop it.” She reached for his hand and pulled it to her heart. “You’ve given me so much and you don't even know it.” She took the key from him with her free hand. “One night, huh?”

“For once, I want to fall asleep with you in my arms in a bed and pretend this is our life.” His eyes bored into hers. “Nothing has to happen, that isn't why I-”

She cut him off with a searing kiss that left him dizzy. “But what if I want something to happen?”

He couldn’t believe how lucky he’d gotten to have Emma Swan in his life. His lips curved into a smirk. “Well, I suppose we could.”

“Let's go inside, Killian.”

“You really loved her, didn't you?” Graham’s words shook him out of his thoughts and Killian realized he’d been staring at nothing, his eyes lost, the hint of a smile on his face. He nodded.

I love her still.

“Aye. We had nothing, and yet she made everything better. Every hardship, every bad turn life threw at us, none of it mattered when I got to hold her in my arms each night.” He drained his mug, needing the rum to keep his emotions at bay. “After she left, it was hard to make room for anyone else. No one could make me feel like that. I don't know much about love, but I know that if you’re not willing to give it all for the other person, then maybe it’s best not to give them false hope.”

Killian turned to look at Graham, but the other man’s eyes were lost ahead of him, as if he were someplace else. Killian feared that he’d been pulled into his delusions again.

“Graham, are you okay?”

His eyes were glassy when he looked at Killian, a tear running down his face. “I remember.”

“Remember? Remember what?”

But before he was able to say another word, Graham’s face contorted in pain and he put his hand on his chest and grunted.

“Graham!” Killian yelled as he watched the other man collapse on the floor. “Mate!” He shook him by the shoulders, but Graham didn’t respond. Desperate, Killian reached to feel his pulse. There wasn’t any. Killian massaged Graham’s chest as he started CPR. “Come on, Humbert!” he screamed, but it was pointless.

His heart was still and he had no pulse. Graham was gone.

#cs ff #lenfaz fics #time upon once #captain swan #canon divergence

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