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gretchensinister · 3 years

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Little Souls and Careless Gods: An Exploration of Worldbuilding in Toy Story

Sid did nothing wrong.

Or, let me clarify. The things Sid did wrong were: taking his sister’s toys and modifying them without her permission. That’s it.

Hi, my name is gretchensinister and I have a lot of thoughts about the worldbuilding in Toy Story.

I should admit at this point that I haven’t seen Toy Story 4, only talked about it with someone who has, so if some of my questions are answered by that movie or if it torpedoes some of my speculations, that’s just—that’s just an imperfection of this essay.

I barely know where to begin, but, I started with Sid, so I’ll keep going with Sid. Sid is a kid. Sid is a jerk to his younger sister, but she’s freely yelling across the house tattling on him, so it doesn’t seem like she’s suffering irreparable damage from this. Other things Sid does: wins a squeaky toy for his dog in a claw machine game, blows up toys with fireworks, takes toys apart and joins them to other toys to make new toys. Burns a toy with a magnifying glass.

None of these things is an immoral action, for a person who, through all lived experience (until the toy attack) understands that toys are objects. It’s not bad to give your dog an object to chew on. It’s not bad (morally) to blow up an object with a firework. It’s not bad to take objects (that are yours) and make them into new, different objects. It’s not bad to burn an object with a magnifying glass. From the toys’ perspective, Sid is a sadistic mad scientist type, but from everything he could possibly know, his “torture” of Woody is messing around with an object! His object! That he got from a claw machine! The pretend torture as a choice of play is worth questioning, but it’s not so uncommon as a media trope that an average kid would never have seen anything like that in an action-adventure context. And it doesn’t predict how Sid will treat actual living beings!

(As an aside, I’m firmly of the belief that if you own an object, you should feel free to do whatever you want with it. Set it on fire, take it apart to see how it works, use it as raw materials in a craft project, etc. And yeah I would make exceptions to this rule for like, privately owned culturally significant art or scientifically significant artifacts…but if they’re that significant…they shouldn’t be privately owned.)

So yeah. Sid gets traumatized because he treats objects like objects, and the objects don’t like that. Because they’re actually alive and have now promised to constantly surveil him.

And let’s be clear: Andy doesn’t know toys are alive, either. He never does. He just has a different play style than Sid, and more of an interest in keeping his toys intact. Andy has no empathy with Woody and Buzz, because he is not aware that they are beings that he could empathize with.

All right. Beyond Sid, what I really want to talk about is the nature of a toy’s mind/soul in the Toy Story universe. I will call this the toy’s animus. Much like with the soul and mind of a human being, the animus raises several questions. How is the animus created? Where does the animus reside? Is the animus a tabula rasa, or does it possess innate knowledge? Where does this innate knowledge come from, if so? Is the animus mortal or immortal?

The Toy Story universe offers various pieces of evidence to answer these questions, and they are all extremely worrying if toys and humans are both morally significant beings, though humans do not know this about toys.

Is a toy mortal or immortal?

In the Toy Story movies it is clear that toys believe they can die. Sufficient destruction of the body would cause a toy’s death. Sid’s plan to blow up Buzz Lightyear with a firework threatens his life. In Toy Story 3, the toys in the trash incinerator clearly believe that burning/melting will kill them. But, short of catastrophic destruction of the body, toys are immortal. Jessie suffers, but does not die, from withdrawal of her owner’s love. Stinky Pete was never played with by a child, and he’s alive as any other toy. Additionally, human-mimicking toys are not killed even when damaged in ways that would kill a human, though this does affect their ability to communicate. In the tea party scene in Toy Story, the headless dolls wave when they are referred to. (This raises more questions—how does a headless doll experience the world? They can still hear, but how? Also, why doesn’t the headless teddy bear move? Perhaps they simply don’t want to get involved in whatever’s going on with Woody and Buzz.)

I think, according to what we see in the movies, the animus is divisible, and each part of the divided animus contains only a portion of the cognitive ability of the whole. Moreover, the animus is not centered in the head, but rather dispersed throughout the body. I would further argue that splitting the body/splitting the animus, is traumatic, even when reversible. Consider that Buzz’s mental breakdown coincides with the detachment of his arm.

What does this mean for Sid’s creations? Well, it would explain why they don’t talk. The baby-doll head with the spiderlike erector-set body (aside: is this a reference to The Thing (1982)?) really has no reason to be mute, if a toy simply must have a mouth to speak. Its form is unconventional, but, I would say, still “complete.” But if the head only carries an incomplete animus, and the erector set parts carry no animus of their own (an assumption which will be questioned later) then the whole toy would not have enough animus for verbal communication.

Janie the doll and the pterodactyl, with their switched heads, suffer significant disruption of their animi. Would their fractured animi eventually merge to form a new animus for each new body, with a different personality than Janie or pterodactyl? What part of the “Barbie” personality lingers in the animus of the toy crane with Barbie legs?

There is an exception to the concept of the fractured animus, however, and that is Mr. Potato Head. Mr. Potato Head exists in several parts to begin with, and mere separation does not fracture the animus. Curiously, though, some parts of Mr. Potato Head do not appear to contain any part of his animus, such as his plastic potato body. He retains all of his personality and ability to communicate when he has to put his features on a tortilla (?—don’t remember this part well) even though he is from an era of Mr. Potato Heads where his features are only meant to be put in the plastic potato body, not random foodstuffs. (Another question here: what would happen if an even amount of Mrs. Potato Head and Mr. Potato Head features were put on one plastic potato body? Do both animi retain coherence?) It is impossible not to wonder how far apart the features of Mr. Potato Head could be spread and the animus remain whole. At least as far apart as different buildings, as shown in Toy Story 3, but how much farther?

Creation of the animus and innate knowledge.

We are now about to embark on the specific topic that fills my thoughts now when I think about the Toy Story universe. I believe I will first fix myself a vodka cranberry (note: not just vodka and cranberry juice. To make it properly you must also add a splash each of orange juice and lime juice) and read a synopsis of Toy Story 4. Forky’s creation is a deep source of trouble here, and I must fortify myself to face it.

Where do I even begin? Okay. Bonnie, a kindergartner, creates Forky from items salvaged from the trash and names him. He comes to life after being named. According to the synopsis Forky then suffers an existential crisis because he believes he his trash and not a toy. So in this case, the animus appears to arrive after naming, and the animus is not a tabula rasa. The history of the materials appears to have some effect on the animus? (What this might mean for Rex or the plastic army men is especially concerning here.) It doesn’t make sense for Bonnie to think of Forky as trash, so this conviction has entered Forky’s animus from somewhere other than his creator. Also Bonnie has created sentient life without being aware of doing so, probably before being able to write a full sentence.

That’s troubling enough, because, to the eyes of adults or even older children, Forky is garbage. I project Forky’s lifespan of play to be that of months. And he won’t get passed onto other children. Depending on how Bonnie’s community disposes of trash, he may linger with an intact animus, at a landfill, for longer than Bonnie’s own life. It boggles the mind. (And invites hoarding in the empathetic.) However, despite all this, I would be cool with it if this was the only way toys became animate: being owned/named/played with by a child. That could be a complete worldbuilding conceit.

But that’s NOT how animi are generally formed in the Toy Story universe. Let’s back up to Toy Story. Buzz Lightyear has a personality and memories of his history as a space ranger right out of his box. And as we see in Toy Story 2, every Buzz Lightyear comes with that same initial personality. A commercial in Toy Story shows aisles upon aisles of Buzz Lightyears. Something has enabled the creation of thousands, if not millions, of identical animi. There is no direction this can go that isn’t kind of batshit.

Buzz Lightyear and the story that forms his memories were designed and created by adults. It was someone’s (and probably a team’s) job to design a toy that would be popular for a specific demographic, with (if I remember correctly) a cartoon that elaborates on the story and can basically serve as a long-running commercial for the toy. There were probably team meetings, and focus groups, and brand analysis to come up with the name “Buzz Lightyear.” And in such an endeavor, while I would like to imagine that there were some truly creative people involved who cared about the design and story, the people involved would not be the ones playing with the toys as toys want to be played with. And this is where every Buzz Lightyear animus comes from? But how? A manager or director approves the name and then…what? Is there a wellspring of animus that forms? Is it tied to the prototype? The factory workers in Taiwan don’t care about Buzz Lightyear the way Bonnie cares about Forky, and yet their actions in completing Buzz Lightyears call the animi to the plastic bodies. (And the animi are there, without a child’s touch. Stinky Pete was aware in his unopened box. Other toys opened a new Buzz Lightyear and got a living Buzz Lightyear.) And even leaving aside how the animi get into the Buzz Lightyears, the fact is that with millions of Buzz Lightyears out there, we have to conclude that the process that created his animus/animi is orders of magnitude more powerful than what Bonnie did to make Forky. Even assuming some personal care held by Buzz’s designers towards their design, it gets weird. The imaginations of adult toy designers are that much more powerful than a little girl creating and naming her own toy? NOT the way I would expect such a story-world to be set up, but the evidence is there.

And what if the designers of Buzz Lightyear weren’t particularly passionate? What if their boss just said “space is popular now, make me a space toy” and that’s the only reason why they did? That could very well be the case for a different type of toy in the series: the claw machine aliens. Those toys were not designed as a soulful passion project. I’m trying to write this to not be mean to designers who work in not-so-great places, but seriously. We have all seen generic toys in claw machine games before. They were not made to be immortally loved. (And yet! This is what the animus of a toy inherently desires!) Now, the claw machine aliens do seem to have much less backstory than Buzz Lightyear, and have personalities (or maybe just personality)/culture based on the nature of the claw machine. That makes sense, since they wouldn’t have been given a backstory with creation. The point is, though, that they still have animi. In the process of creating these cheap, cheap toys, by the dozens and hundreds and thousands, somehow their bodies were invested with full, identical animi. Adult, corporate creation somehow gives more life to toys than individual, child-led creation.

There are more questions to ask. If adults still have the power (and MASSIVELY MORE power) to invest toys with animi that they also possessed as children, then what can be invested with an animus? What are the limits of toy-ness in the Toy Story universe? Is it the name? I don’t think it’s the face, because there’s Woody merchandise in Toy Story 2 with Woody’s face on it that doesn’t talk. And I think that some faceless toys are shown to move independently/have an animus (possibly including things like LEGO—are the bricks a hivemind? Do the minifigs live inside sentient structures? Can they communicate with these structures? Also, if so, the erector set legs on Sid’s spider baby toy should have added to its total animus. But that’s not the corporate intent, so they’re still voiceless.). Christine (1983) could fit into this universe if the name is of primary importance (movie backstory for Christine, not book). But this would also mean that literally every boat and ship was sentient, but secretly so.*

If the name isn’t the important thing, is it the intent that the object be played with as a toy? In this case, that would mean that Bo Peep’s animus was not mass-produced, as she was originally part of a lamp if I remember correctly. Child-created animi would therefore be more common among non-toy objects than manufactured toys. I also want to bring The Brave Little Toaster (1987) up at this point. In this movie a group of appliances behave similarly to Toy Story toys in some ways, including being played with by their owner and then missing his attention to a high degree when he goes to college. However in this film all appliances and cars have animi, and I personally do not want my vacuum cleaner to feel any kind of way about me, or ever think I have played with it, because I hate vacuuming and would neglect it to death if feasible. (That being said…roombas in the Toy Story universe can hardly avoid being invested with animi, I imagine, no matter the details of the worldbuilding structure.) I bring this up, though, because Wikipedia notes that the original members of Pixar worked on The Brave Little Toaster. Toy Story was released in 1995 and was Pixar’s first feature length film. There is a connection, is what I am trying to say.

I think I have to go with: intent of the object to be a toy and/or being played with as a toy invests a toy with an animus. If it was the naming, then many, many public statues would be as alive as Woody and Buzz, and the people of Denver I’m sure have enough to worry about without Blucifer (Jiménez, 2008) galloping around. Bizarre to say that the least troubling option places mass production on a higher level of investing power than a child’s imagination. And I mean what I say about the mass produced animi being somehow more powerful than child-created animi.

Let’s go back to Sid’s creations. What is wrong with them? Why aren’t they able to communicate like Forky? Possibility 1: Sid just doesn’t have the creative power that Bonnie does. I don’t like this because, as I said at the beginning, Sid is not doing anything wrong by making these chimera toys. He’s treating objects as objects, and the difference between Sid’s chimera toys and Forky is that Forky’s component parts were not originally part of mass-produced toys. So, (from a worldbuilding/Watsonian perspective), I have to go with possibility 2, which goes like this: mass-produced toys are imbued with animi because they are toys. Sid’s chimera toys suffer from their animi being fractured when he alters them. But these fractured, mass-produced animi retain enough coherence and power that Sid, a child, cannot replace the fractured animus with whatever he imagines for his new creations. He’s an imaginative kid! But the corporate animus cannot be expelled. The factory animus is the underlying animus and cannot be removed once the toy is a toy. It can develop with memory and experience, but it will always be the toy making corporation that brought the spark of life, not the child that actually plays with the toy.

And this actually corresponds to Sid’s toys’ decision to rebel and help Woody and Buzz. Their animi are more loyal to the corporate intent that first created them. Sid made them into something new, presumably plays with them, and yet they are not Sid’s. They are meant to be read as broken and tortured (Sid has changed them from their factory-created wholeness), not as new beings. A factory-created, owned object, is meant to be held with the same level of care and maintenance of coherence as a living being in the Toy Story universe. What a child imagines about their own toys has less creative power than a distant designer who’s been told to come up with something appealing to put in a claw machine. Children only have animating power for their toys when they make them out of raw materials.

On the one hand, it’s tempting to say that of course the toys aren’t Sid’s, they’re their own people—isn’t that what having an animus means? But Woody, for example, find it very important that he’s Andy’s toy—a possession—“a child’s plaything.” Andy writes his name on him and this is very important to Woody, enough a part of his identity that when Andy’s name is painted over by the restorer in Toy Story 2 the scene reads as an erasure of something important to him, not as a restoration of his autonomy. Time and again we see that toys want to be owned by children.

This is another place where things get weird. First, I raise the question: What do toys need to keep animus and body together? Not much—only a certain baseline of bodily coherency. They don’t need to take in anything from their environment. More interesting, though, is that they don’t need anything from the children they bond to. Shelved, boxed, and forgotten toys suffer, but they don’t die from these states. No toy will ever find a toy’s corpse the way a human could find a human corpse—whole in every way except for the absence of the animating spirit.

So: toys as entities need little. The next question is then, what do toys want? Toys want to be owned and played with by a child (I say child and not children, because the communal state of the daycare in Toy Story 3 is clearly not desirable to the toys). Woody relishes his place as favorite and most played with toy at the beginning of Toy Story. In Toy Story 2 Jessie grieves when her child outgrows her. Stinky Pete was ignored by children for years, causing him to develop the abnormal belief that it would be better for the Woody’s Roundup toys to be preserved in a museum.

(At this point, I spot another thread to follow. It seems that for a toy, the most important relationship in their existence is meant to be toy + owner. In Toy Story Woody is very invested in making Buzz understand that Buzz is a toy and not a space ranger—Buzz is supposed to stay with Andy. In Toy Story 2 the consequences of not being owned by a child are grief and violence. But at the end Woody tells Buzz he’s not worried about Andy outgrowing him, since they’ll always have each other. Now, Toy Story 3 builds up Buzz/Jessie and in Toy Story 4 Bo Peep returns and Woody leaves Buzz and the other group of Andy’s toys for a life with her, but Woody also leaves the toy + owner life to be with Bo. Toys aren’t made to have an independent existence, yet this is how they end up, also acting as matchmakers to help lost toys find new owners and enter into new toy + owner relationships? THERE IS A WHOLE OTHER ESSAY HERE.)

To stay within just one rabbit hole here, however, I must focus on this: Toys want to be owned and played with by a child. They bond with child owners who do not deliberately alter their bodies (I add this because again, Sid’s toys do not appear to be bonded with him). But within this framework, there must be essential pain within a toy’s existence. Toys are immortal unless destroyed. Toys will experience actual play with a child for, let’s say, ten years, maximum, and that’s if the toy is given to the child when the child is very young and the toy is more classic/versatile than most. That’s way shorter than the best human friendships and familial relationships, and at least human beings can often reasonably hope to have lifespans that are of comparable lengths. Oh yeah, and among human beings people are usually AWARE of the relationship that’s taking place. So toys want to form deep bonds with their children and want to have these relationships last. But the relationships can’t last. I’ll gladly state that play, in some form, is necessary for humans to thrive throughout their lives, but the kind of play that the toys in Toy Story find ideal is a childhood phase of play that that most people naturally outgrow. And even if a human did engage in play ideal for toys throughout their entire life, toys are immortal unless destroyed. All toys will lose their owners, and usually after a pretty short handful of years.

The aftermath of the owner + toy relationship is always painful for the toy. What are the options? To remain owned, but not played with: perhaps the “best” option, but it still leaves the toy with only a memory of a full life. Is a shelf life really a life? This is what was facing Woody, I believe, if Andy had taken him with him to college. Another option: to be outgrown and forgotten. This is what happens to Jessie, and it is a deeply, deeply painful experience for her. She develops claustrophobia from being stored in a box. To be donated or sold at a garage sale: also a source of trauma and panic for the toys, but still better than the worst fate, to be thrown out. But toys that have been separated from their previous owners are so often grieving and/or bitter in the Toy Story series.

This is troubling, to say the least, but it also loops back to questions about the animus and memory. Toys are not tabula rasa. Buzz has a strong personality and memory set from his unboxing. Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head do not need to court each other. Tour Guide Barbie will act as a tour guide in the absence of children. But with time, and accumulation of true memories as a toy, the toys will develop their own personalities, even if the animus starting point can often remain a strong influence. In Toy Story 3, however, we learn that certain toys, such as Buzz Lightyear, can be returned to the original animus state through a factory reset. I hardly know what to do with this. It wasn’t a permanent reset; Buzz’s memories and the personality he’s developed do come back. (But now he also has access to a “Spanish mode” that is…sexier (can such a word apply?) to Jessie than his English mode. Also other toys can put him into his mode against his will. There are so many worms in this can. Sexualization of Latinx people, can a toy expect bodily autonomy from other toys, etc.?) But not every toy has a reset button. Woody doesn’t. Slinky Dog, Rex, Mr. Potato Head, etc. don’t. Does the threat of a reset only affect toys with bodily components that could be considered brain analogues, i.e., microchips? But the animus is not the “brain” and neither does the “brain” store memories/personality. I really, really don’t know what to do with this, except it seems once again to assert the ultimate strength of the adult/corporate-created animus.

The point is, toys can lose their memories, but when we see that in the movies, it leads the toy to go back to their earliest state.

Now: a mystery. In Toy Story, Woody has developed enough memory and personality that he is well aware of being a toy and is involved with the life of Andy’s room in ways that neither his sheriff role or Andy’s imagination reasonably encompasses. (Consider the “Plastic Corrosion Awareness Meeting.”) All right. This would be of no concern if Woody was a generic wild west doll, but he’s not. He was made to represent a character on the Woody’s Roundup TV show in the 1950s. He would have had an animus strongly imprinted with that backstory just like Buzz Lightyear had his strongly imprinted space ranger backstory. Well, then maybe this means that Woody just never lost his memory. That would be the best explanation. That’s why he has a personality mostly free from this imprinted backstory, having been Andy’s favorite toy for some time. But Woody has lost his memory. In Toy Story 2, Woody learns (learns!) that he’s a representation of a TV character. He meets Jessie and Bullseye and Stinky Pete without knowing who they are at all. Woody has somehow completely forgotten his origins. He experienced memory loss that brought him farther away from his animus starting point.

Okay, so there are multiple kinds of amnesia for toys; I was wrong in my earlier assertion that memory loss tends to the origin animus. But I want to keep poking at Woody’s memory issues because of something else that Woody’s timeline leads me to conclude: Andy is not Woody’s first owner, OR Woody was boxed up and forgotten for DECADES before Andy. Actually, he’s probably spent a significant amount of time in storage or on a shelf regardless of whether Andy is his first owner or not.

Toy Story was released in 1995. If the story is set in the present, then Andy is very close to my age. Now, Woody is “an old family toy” according to Toy Story 2, and Al, as a toy collector, was so thrilled and astonished to find a Woody at a garage sale that he stole him when he learned he wasn’t actually for sale. This leads me to the conclusion that Woody toys aren’t in continuous production. Woody was probably only manufactured during the height of Woody’s Roundup’s popularity, in the 1950s. So there’s two options for Woody’s ownership history. I’m also going to presume in both cases that Andy’s father was the parent that previously owned him, though there’s no reason why his mother couldn’t have been the owner.

So, option one: the young parents/young grandparents option. If Andy’s grandparents had his father when they were about twenty, and then Andy’s parents had Andy when they were about twenty, then Andy’s grandfather could have gotten Woody at ideal playing age and then later passed him down to Andy’s father and then Andy’s father would have passed him to Andy. I don’t think this is the case, though, because Woody still has his incredibly rare hat and a functional voice box. If Woody had been played with by a child at ideal playing age at the height of the popularity of his character’s show, I think it’s likely that he would have gotten played with so much (and taken to places so much) that he would have lost his hat and his voice box would have worn out. Woody didn’t start off life as a collectible, and play causes wear and tear on toys. And if Woody was originally the grandfather’s toy, then he would have gone through another round of play with Andy’s father. Woody’s condition is too good for that. Unless, that is, Andy’s whole family is made up of people who are unusually careful with their toys? That’s sort of an intriguing idea, since it means that Sid’s actions look even more horrifying by contrast, and generations of “ideal owners” for Woody obscure the bizarre nature of the life of a thinking, feeling toy. However, the Toy Story universe keeps raising questions in Toy Story 2-4 about what it means to be a toy, so there doesn’t seem to be a motivation in the series for such obscuring. This is despite the fact that Woody’s amnesia does obscure some things about the nature of a toy’s life, at least in the original Toy Story. (I know the Doylist perspective answers all this easily—this isn’t what the audience is meant to think about, Woody’s backstory as a toy from a 1950s TV show isn’t important in Toy Story, and in fact this backstory didn’t exist until Toy Story 2 was created.)

Regardless, I don’t think the young parents/young grandparents option is the right one. Instead, I choose option 2: the slightly older parents option. Woody’s Roundup is a TV show from the 1950s. It was popular enough to lead to a lot of merchandise, not just the dolls of the main characters. Brief research shows that in the 1950s television Westerns were incredibly popular, and there were Westerns made for kids and Westerns made for adults. The question I’m trying to get at here is trying to figure out how Andy’s grandparents would have known about a kid’s Western show. But, it’s really not that difficult. In this timeline I’m building now, Andy’s father would have been born in the 1950s, making him in his early-mid thirties when he became Andy’s father. Given this timeline, it’s overwhelmingly likely that Andy’s father has siblings, including older siblings, that might already watch Woody’s Roundup. Or, even if Andy’s father was the oldest child, it’s also overwhelmingly likely that Andy’s grandparents’ friends had plenty of kids of their own and probably talked among themselves about what kids liked. The significant thing in this timeline is that Woody would have been given to Andy’s father when Andy’s father was very young. Perhaps too young for a Woody doll, but perhaps also with the assumption that Andy’s father would grow into the doll. So Woody is unboxed and waits on a shelf for a couple years while Andy’s father grows a little. My theory is that Woody’s Roundup was no longer on television by the time Andy’s father was at the right age to start playing with a doll of Woody’s type. This would have two consequences. One: Andy’s father would have been unguided by the TV show in regard of how to play with Woody, meaning that Woody would have formed many memories unrelated to his original animus in this early stage of his life. Two: even though Woody was played with, he never was Andy’s father’s favorite toy, which is why he was able to be passed down to Andy in good condition (and still with his hat).

In this option 2, which I feel is more likely, Woody has probably spent at least 25 years on a shelf or in storage. So why is this important? I think it’s important because Woody doesn’t act like he’s been through the decades-in-storage experience, or the experience of having an owner outgrow him. He sympathizes with Jessie after learning her story, but he says nothing about having experienced anything like it himself. And as far as the movies are concerned, his worries about Andy outgrowing him are new worries. But they can’t be new! He’s already been outgrown at least once before! I mean, with Andy he’s a favorite toy, so that’s a unique owner + toy relationship status that he (probably) didn’t have before. Maybe that amplifies what he’s going through this time?

But there’s another aspect to Woody’s experiences that I want to touch on. All the other toys he would have known as Andy’s father’s toy are gone. There are no other ��heirloom” toys in Andy’s room, or at least there is no evidence of this. All of Andy’s other toys seem to have been purchased just for Andy, and purchased new. There is no reference to garage sale trauma, previous owners, or anything like that. And as we’ve seen from other toys throughout the series, toys remember that kind of thing! But Woody doesn’t. His animus is one that shows years of experience building over his character backstory, but he never acts like he’s experienced being outgrown or losing all his toy friends.

Or at least he never says anything about such experiences.

I think it makes sense to read Woody’s amnesia as genuine. But I also think it would be reasonable to read his character as one that has undergone traumatic experiences and has responded by burying them so deep within his mind that he has no conscious access to them, even though they influence his current personality and life. (It’s impossible to know, but do toys in every household respond to birthdays and Christmas with such intense monitoring—with the desire for even the slightest early warning of replacement? Woody is the one who worries most about these celebrations, extremely anxious of his own status as favorite toy.) That the ending of Toy Story 4 removes him from the cycle of ownership and outgrowing can’t be ignored. Better to not have an owner than to experience losing an owner again, and again, and again?

But I do think there is one other possibility: Andy’s ownership of Woody caused him to lose all his memories of Andy’s father. A child may not be able to give a manufactured toy a new animus, but by possessing a toy in a play relationship (as opposed to a collector relationship) a child may be able to overwrite any memories of the toy’s previous owner. The process doesn’t happen instantaneously, as Andy’s toys don’t immediately forget him upon being transferred to Bonnie, but it would certainly explain why Woody makes no reference ever to a previous owner, even though he was most likely manufactured at least 35 years before coming into Andy’s possession. However, Jessie’s story argues against this. While she is happy among Andy’s toys, there’s nothing to show that she is forgetting her own past.

The possibility of a new child owner driving out all thoughts of the previous one is interesting, as it puts some degree of power over the toy’s animus back with the child. However, in the Toy Story universe, it’s clear that if this is the case, it’s not an instantaneous process. And if it’s not an instantaneous process, then it becomes overly complex. What memories would be driven out? For toys less adventurous than the main characters of the Toy Story movies, their whole lives are centered on their owners. They live in their child’s room/house. Anything that took place there would have to be forgotten to not bring up thoughts of the previous owner, including conversations with other toys that were friends of that first toy. At this point we approach a state of complete memory loss before the claim by a new owner. A gradual process would at least allow continuity of personality, since new memories under the new owner would be continually being made. But then, some new memories would have to fade, also. For wouldn’t a toy talk about their past while they could still remember it? And wouldn’t their new friends maybe bring up their past in conversation sometimes? They might even talk about the process of forgetting. That process would be noticed and known among toys. No, after thinking about it, I would say that there is no inherent forgetting process. Memories will mostly tend to stay, with whatever pain and joy they bring. And there will never be any transition process that is easy for the toy.

Woody’s amnesia remains his own, and remains his best defense against the trauma of being outgrown and shelved or stored for many years.

Toys have a strange and painful lot in life, semi-immortals being made to be silent companions to the briefest stage of a mortal lifespan. They live because they are made for children, but for most, in this world of mass production, children do not create them. Their animi are the spawn of creators who have no intent to create thinking, feeling beings. Escaping the stamp of such thoughtless creation means living long enough to know the deepest loss a toy can experience. Sometimes the only way to move forward from such loss is to forget. And yet, there is little will for most toys to move beyond this cycle. Toys overwhelmingly retain their roles as objects. I’d like to say that maybe this means that play is worth it, that temporary joy is worth it. But maybe it’s just the nature of being a toy. After all, if there’s any intent in their creation, there was the intent that they should be objects.

*I would never leave a dangling asterisk. My previous point was about ships and boats, but, if seagoing vehicles live because they are named, then there’s no reason why land vehicles would not do the same. It might be possible to argue that the Cars universe came about after some cataclysm wiped out humans and left only named vehicles behind.

Other avenues of investigation that were beyond the scope of this essay:

1) The situation between the Diamonds and every other gem in Steven Universe is highly analogous to the situation between humans and toys in the Toy Story universe, save for the crucial difference that the Diamonds have no excuse to not know that the other gems are complete feeling, thinking beings and to treat them as such. It was actually parallels I saw between Spinel + Pink Diamond and Jessie + her owner that got me thinking about aspects of the Toy Story universe in ways that I know are meant to be ignored. Also Pink Diamond bringing all those little pebble people to life just by crying on them. That’s a lot of responsibility coming from a solitary expression of emotion!

2) I’d be curious to know if a hugely popular series based on the agency of objects has had an effect on fan culture at all. Or it might at least be a way to examine actions taken on behalf of characters. Fictional characters, after all, don’t feel any kind of way about the situations and relationships people envision them in. They’re mental objects like toys are physical objects. In the real world is anyone going to argue that putting the faces of dolls or action figures together and making kissing noises is something to worry about? Is anything about putting a naked Barbie on top of a naked Ken a harmful act? In the real world I would say no. Also, with full awareness that this is a can of worms, what is the impact of such things in the Toy Story universe? Obviously this wouldn’t be addressed in any canon. But the Toy Story universe is supposed to be like reality with one big secret so there are kids that are definitely using their toys to play out love stories and stories including a vague understanding of sex. And another aspect to all this…if you’ve seen Booksmart, consider one of the characters’ uses of her childhood stuffed animal. I understand that this is not uncommon.

All right. I think I’m done now. And that I will probably go get another drink.

(I had a few baby dolls as a child that included their own toys as accessories. H—how would THAT work?)

#I've been out of school for YEARS and yet I was still compelled to write a long and slightly deranged essay in mid-December #Toy Story

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wanderinginksplot · 3 years

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Nobody Listens to Kix

Previous | Next | Masterlist

Case 01053: Hardcase (Yet Again)

Kix kept a clean medbay. Not only was it a necessity, but he took pride in cleanliness. He tucked starched sheets under the last medbay mattress and took a step back to admire his handiwork.

The beds were neatly made, sheets and blankets folded to crisp GAR standard. Every medical tool had been sanitized and tucked back into its proper place. Kix had even found time to organize his medical cabinet and desk - as long as one ignored the stack of uncompleted paperwork. The floor shone so uniformly that it almost served as a mirror to reflect the perfection of the rest of the empty medbay.

"Hey, Kix!"

Kix's shoulders immediately shot toward his ears as the peace of the medbay was shattered by a too-familiar voice, and the medic immediately started making his way toward his desk by the entrance.

"Hardcase," he groaned on the way, his view of the hapless trooper blocked by one of the privacy curtains separating the beds from the medbay entrance. "If you come in here any more often, I'm going to start charging you rent for a bed."

Hardcase laughed, but the sound ended in a pained wheeze. Kix stepped around a privacy curtain to find that the trooper was being held up by Appo and Fledge, both of whom were trying to support as much of Hardcase's weight as possible. Kix would have to make a full exam to be sure, but it looked like Hardcase was suffering from what was at very least a severely sprained joint in one leg.

"Put him on the bed, men," Kix ordered, motioning toward the first bed in the neat row.

As they did as Kix had said, Hardcase's eyes closed, his tattooed face tense. When Appo accidentally jostled the leg that seemed to be damaged, Hardcase let out a curse so loud that his voice broke before he could finish it.

With a quick scan, Kix found that Hardcase had a broken leg, a sprained elbow, and no fewer than four fractured ribs. Worse of all, one of the fractures had released miniscule bone shards that were perilously close to reaching one of Hardcase's lungs. If a clone's lungs were injured, there was no attempt at healing them. They were marked for immediate transport to Kamino for reconditioning.

After stifling the urge to throw the datapad that showed the results of the scan, Kix snapped, "What the kriff were you doing that caused this many injuries? Of all the shabiir, or'dinii, jare'la things you've done, nothing's ever been this bad-"

"It wasn't his fault!" Fledge argued, flinching back slightly at Kix's glare. "It wasn't, though!"

Kix turned to Appo for confirmation and the trooper nodded. "We were in the gym and Hardcase was working out on the overhead chest press machine when the cords snapped. All the weights tipped the machine over and they fell out onto him."

Kix shook his head and rested a hand on Hardcase's shoulder. "Sorry, vod. I'll get you something for the pain before we do anything else."

Hardcase nodded, but didn't say anything. Kix couldn't blame him. Judging from the panting he was doing, he was minutes from vomiting or passing out entirely. Though he was grateful, Kix honestly couldn't believe the trooper had avoided doing either so far.

Considering the pain level he was working with, Kix opted to inject pain meds rather than wait for pills to dissolve and enter the trooper's bloodstream naturally. When Hardcase's breathing had slowed, he relaxed into the bed, eyes fluttering as he struggled to stay awake.

"Let go, vod," Kix encouraged softly. "I'll take care of everything."

Hardcase nodded again and slipped into something between sleep and unconsciousness.

"What are you going to do?" Fledge asked.

Kix's answer - when it came - was blunt and grim. "There isn't much I can do for him. I'll try using one of the onboard medical droids, but Hardcase might need to visit a hospital on Coruscant."

Appo paled. "Will the Republic pay for him to be treated, or will they just send him back to Kamino?"

"It depends on how much he can heal in that time," Kix answered with a helpless shrug. As the two left the medbay, he could see that they weren't happy with his answer, but Kix was equally unhappy. There was a good reason he didn't use the medical droids that were intended to staff the medbay. Not only did the men respond better to treatment by an organic, but the droids also had a 55% chance of correctly diagnosing and treating a problem. It didn't inspire confidence in anyone, least of all Kix.

He went to the closet that stored the droids and, after the first medical droid had powered up, said, "There's a patient with a broken leg and a sprained elbow. I need you to set the leg and put a wrap on the elbow."

The droid nodded at him and made its slow, plodding way over to the unconscious Hardcase. Kix watched it for a moment, wondering idly why anyone had bothered making a medical droid look so much like an organic when it obviously struggled to move around.

However, he had bigger problems. Kix could loosely bind Hardcase's ribs to help them heal, but the shards were the biggest concern. Even if they didn't continue toward his lungs, they could pose a risk to his heart. Kix was no surgeon and, even if he was, there was danger in performing a surgery on a Republic ship in the middle of the Outer Rim. The 501st was traveling with General Unduli, Commander Offee, and several companies of the 41st Elite Corps, but that didn't make them safe from threats.

Abruptly, Kix had an idea. He left the medical droid treating Hardcase's leg and made his way to Commander Tano's cabin. She opened the door at his knock and stared up at him curiously. "Kix?"

Kix saluted. "Commander Tano. We have a situation in the medbay. Do you know where Commander Offee is?"

"I'm here, trooper," Commander Offee said, stepping up behind Commander Tano.

"What's going on?" Ahsoka asked, retrieving her lightsabers and fastening them to the belts crossed at her hips.

"Medical situation, sir," Kix told her, turning to Commander Offee. "I've seen you Force-heal. Can you do it without supervision?"

"It- it depends on the injury, I think," Commander Offee said slowly.

"I have a trooper with broken ribs and bone chips near one of his lungs," Kix reported. "Could you do anything about that?"

The young Mirialan commander paled to a sickly-looking jade. "Moving solid objects is a challenge. Normally, Force-healing is a gentle internal nudge to speed and guide the body's natural healing processes. Moving bone chips would be dangerous, if not impossible."

Kix pondered that. "Could you build up the cells of the lung to keep it from being penetrated by the shards?"

Commander Offee shook her head slowly. "It would stop the shards from piercing his lung, but it would also put undue stress on it. He would likely find it difficult to breathe and, depending on the severity of the build-up, could cause his body to react in unexpected ways."

There was another thoughtful pause in the conversation until she offered, "Perhaps I could assist while you perform surgery?"

"That's a negative, Commander," Kix refused flatly. "Surgery is too dangerous until we get to the Inner Rim. By then, the Republic may have decided that it's more cost-efficient to replace him."

"Kix!" Commander Tano reprimanded sharply.

Kix shrugged at her. "It's the truth, Commander. The GAR won't put too much money into clone health; we've seen that time and time again."

From Commander Tano's frown, she accepted his explanation but not the practice behind it. "Why don't you just heal the tissue behind the shards and let his body push them back toward his ribs? Then you could fuse them back in and heal his ribs at the same time."

Commander Offee and Kix stared at her in shock until Commander Tano grew visibly uncomfortable. "What?"

"Commander," Kix said slowly, "I could kiss you right now."

"Excuse me?"

Kix turned and saluted in one motion. It had been a good reflex since Captain Rex was walking down the hall toward them, his expression dark.

"Nothing, sir," Kix answered quickly.

"Hey, Rex," Commander Tano greeted cheerfully.

"Commanders, your generals need you on the bridge," Rex told them.

Both Jedi nodded and Commander Tano drew Rex away while Commander Offee murmured, "I'll report to the medbay as soon as I can."

"Thank you, Commander," Kix said fervently.

Rex stayed behind while the young commanders made their way to the bridge. "Trooper, do you have inappropriate feelings for Commander Offee?"

"No, sir," Kix said simply, fighting back a grin.

Rex's face grew, if possible, even more foreboding. "Commander Tano, then?"

This time, Kix chuckled aloud. Ignoring that it was a terrible idea to fall for a Jedi, the entire 501st would cheerfully de-spine the first brother to get inappropriate with Ahsoka. She could take care of herself, but the 501st had seen what General Secura and her men had to put up with and had sworn that no one would speak that way about their commander, not while any of them were around.

Realizing that Rex was still waiting for an answer, Kix said, "No, sir."

Rex relaxed minutely. "I'll be on the bridge, then. How is Hardcase?"

The weight of responsibility crashed back down on the medic's shoulders. "He's out for right now. We'll have to see how well he heals before we get to the Inner Rim."

Rex clapped a hand on Kix's shoulder and left for the bridge.

When Kix got back to the medbay, Hardcase was just beginning to stir.

"Kix?" he asked softly.

Kix was by the bedside immediately. "I'm here, vod."

"Are they gonna send me back to Kamino?"

"No," Kix growled, knowing that the ferocity in his voice was too intense for the situation, but unable to help himself. "We'll find a way to fix everything, Hardcase. I promise."

"Good," Hardcase said with satisfaction, closing his eyes again like he didn't have a care in the world. "I want to die in battle."

Kix laughed dryly. "With your grasp of strategy? I'm sure you will."

With a weak, faux-wounded smirk, Hardcase fell asleep once more. Kix stayed until Commander Offee appeared, Commander Tano in tow.

He gave Hardcase a mild sedative so he wouldn't move too much during the efforts to heal his ribs. It was a slow process, one that left Kix feeling frustrated and helpless as Commander Offee strained and sweated to heal the trooper in ways Kix never could.

All of those ugly feelings disappeared when she stepped away and shot him a weary smile. "His ribs are intact. I helped repair some of the minor fractures in his leg and started the recovery in his elbow. I would like to do more, but I must rest first."

"His ribs are completely healed?" Kix checked, and Commander Offee nodded. "Thank you, sir. I can't tell you how much this means to me. To all of us."

"It was a pleasure to be of assistance," she replied gracefully.

She and Commander Tano left the medbay as Kix offered his thanks once more. He was alone with a sleeping Hardcase and a veritable heap of paperwork, but Kix couldn't bring himself to do anything more than sit by Hardcase's bedside, filled with gratitude toward the Jedi.

---

A/N - if you want to believe this comes after Umbara and Hardcase is still alive, feel free. If you want to believe that Kix mis-numbered his files and Umbara is still exactly as it was in canon, feel free. Whatever works best for you!

#Nobody Listens to Kix #star wars #star wars the clone wars #star wars fanfiction #clone trooper kix #clone trooper hardcase #commander barriss offee #commander ahsoka tano #captain rex #clone trooper appo #clone troopers deserve better #more to come

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tanyawritesstories · 3 years

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Pain In Hurt Places | Fives x Reader

A self-indulgent Fives piece because I always wish he were with me during dark times. If this isn't your kinda thing then scroll past or check out some of my other works 😊

TW!!: Mentions self-harm and depression. Do not read if you don't feel comfortable!!

Word count: 1.9k

Warnings: angst, self-harm scars, past trauma, sadness, fluff, feelings, happy ending, we all need a Fives in our lives (that rhymed ;)

•••

You greeted the troopers you saw along your way to the hangar, stopping to talk to a few of them. Torrent was back from their mission and, as usual, most of the vehicles needed repairing.

As you entered the hangar, you saw your friends. Most of them looked fine, no injuries thank the Maker. You could tell they were worn out and needed rest. Fives was so exhausted that he wasn't even arguing back with Rex, who was giving him a piece of his mind.

You watched them all head off to eat and sleep, giving them a smile to try and cheer them up. Rex walked up to you, "a word please, Y/N." You stepped aside with him. "I don't know if you heard, but that di'kut cost us two LAATs because of some risky strategy he thought of. So he's going to help you repair every damaged piece of equipment from the mission. Can you supervise him, make sure he does his job?"

You nodded, "Absolutely, Captain. Thank you."

You jogged over to Fives, who was leaning against the side of a gunship in desperate need of repairs. “Why don’t you get some rest, bud. Then we’ll get to work. I know your Captain wants you healthy,” you told him. He shoved off the vehicle and walked past, giving you a salute.

You and Fives had been friends since he joined Torrent as an ARC trooper. You had been a new mechanic at that point, shy but good at her job. A few of the more experienced mechanics had made fun of you one day and Fives had overheard them. He told them off and ensured they would never bother you again. The two of you became fast friends after that. You hung out every chance you got, talking, playing sabacc, fixing things. Fives even taught you how to use a blaster just in case you ever found yourself in a dangerous situation. Over the months, you had grown quite the crush on your best friend. You knew it was one-sided, Fives was an ARC trooper, a busy one. He had better things to do than waste his time loving you.

You got started on the repairs, knowing Fives would join you when he was rested.

~~~~

You had been working for a few hours when you heard footsteps approaching from behind you. You stopped your welding and turned around, seeing Fives standing nearby. “Reporting for duty, sir,” he said sarcastically.

You walked over to him. “Did you get enough sleep?” You asked, shining your flashlight around his eyes, he still looked tired. “I never get enough sleep, you know that,” he replied. "Ok, well let me know if you need to take a break," you said. You knew he never would, he never had before. As much as you always wanted him to not be so hard on himself, there wasn't anything you could do.

You both got to work, repairing and improving the gunships, speeders, and walkers. Rex came by once to check on your progress, but other than that it was you and Fives working in a corner of the hangar. You took water breaks to cool down, all the physical work making you both sweat. It got to the point where Fives ditched the top half of his armor and blacks. You tried your best not to stare at him but you were failing. The way his muscles flexed and moved beneath his skin, the grunts and groans of exertion, and the drops of sweat rolling down his toned chest were very distracting.

"Cyare, you've got to be dying in that long-sleeved shirt," Fives commented. "I'm ok," you replied, keeping your eyes on your work.

You had taken off as much as you could, except your boots, long sleeve shirt, and your pants which you had rolled up to your knees. You could feel the sweat soaking the back of your shirt, making it stick to your skin.

Fives put the back of his hand on your forehead, pulling it back when he felt the moisture gathered there. "You're on fire, at least roll up your sleeves." You shook your head. "I'll be fine, I'm not as hot as I look," you joked. "I think you are.." Fives mumbled as he returned to his work. You forced yourself to pay attention to your work, in the process missing his hushed confession.

There was no way you could roll up your sleeves, not around anyone, especially not Fives. You couldn’t let him see the disasters of your past that chose to display themselves on your forearms. If he saw them there was no way he’d ever speak to you again. He would know that you had issues and that you were weak, you couldn’t lose him. Just the thought of losing your best friend was enough of a reason to slice into your skin again, but you pushed the urge away. You had been clean for two months, the last time being when you were certain Fives didn’t love you and only saw you as a friend.

“Hey, I’m going to the mess to get some ice. The cold water just ain’t cuttin’ it anymore,” Fives announced. You nodded in acknowledgment and watched him take off. You worked for a while before taking a break. You looked around and saw that you were alone, you wiped your forehead on your sleeve before cautiously rolling it up. The thin, light colored scars stared hauntingly back at you, a constant reminder of your failures, fears, and weaknesses. You ran your fingers up and down them, knowing the situation and story behind each one. You were so caught up in your thoughts you didn’t hear the silent footsteps approaching.

You were facing away from the gunship doors when Fives approached, carrying a bucket of ice. He didn’t announce his presence like he normally did, once he saw you sitting down in complete silence. You had your sleeves rolled up and now that he was thinking about it, Fives had never seen your sleeves rolled up. No matter how hot it was, you never showed your arms and Fives didn't know why. He quietly set the bucket of ice down and slowly crept closer to try and find out.

As he got closer he was able to see the scars on both your forearms, the skin littered with lighter colored lines, some older than others. He was immediately horrified, then worried, then sad. Why would you do something like that to yourself? Did you hate your life that much? Was it you, was it him? Whatever it was Fives wanted to make it disappear. He didn't want you to be in pain or upset, he loved you too much for that. You only ever treated him like a friend and he was afraid that's all he'd be to you. He wanted to be the man you loved and spent every moment with. It hurt him more than he realized to see that you were in so much mental pain that it caused you to physically harm yourself.

You sniffed in front of him and he couldn't resist putting his hand on your shoulder. You screamed and fell off the crate you were sitting on, yanking your sleeves back into place. "Maker, Fives. You scared the life out of me," you said, a hand over your chest.

"How long?" He asked.

"What?"

"How long have you been doing that?" He motioned to your arms. "Oh, that's nothing, don't worry about it," you brushed it off, turning away. Fives wasn't about to let this go and gently grabbed you, pulling you back to him. "Like hell it's nothing," he scoffed, "I've seen those marks far too many times on my brothers. Why are they on you?"

You looked at the floor trying to will away the tears welling up in your eyes. Fives turned your face to look back at him. Once you saw the sadness in his eyes you couldn't hold it in any longer. You broke down, tears spilling down your cheeks as you buried your face in Fives' neck. He held you against him, trying not to cry himself. “Shh, shh, it’s ok. Here, let’s sit down,” he consoled.

Fives never let go of you as he sat you both down on the floor, pulling you close to him. He held you until you stopped crying, running his fingers through your hair and rubbing your back. “I’m sorry, Fives,” you said, sadly. “Can I ask why you made those?” You nodded, the least you could do was tell him why you had been hiding from him.

“I started when my parents were killed two years ago,” you explained, “I’ve been doing it on and off since then. Whenever I feel the urge, really, or if I get sad enough.”

“Why didn’t you come to me? You know I would’ve helped you,” he said, taking your face into his hands again. “I didn’t want to bother you,” you sniffled out. Fives sighed. “Cyare, you could never bother me. I want to help you. I can’t stand seeing the woman I love so distraught.”

You pulled away, did you just hear him correctly? “You l-love me?”

Fives realized what he just said. “Kriff it,” he mumbled, “Y/N, I’ve loved you since we started talking more often, since you sat with me in the mess. Since I first saw you, I just knew I had no chance with someone like you, so I never-”

You silenced him by putting a finger to his lips. “Fives I’ve loved you since then too. Since you stood up for me when I was the new mechanic, since you would sit and tell me stories while I worked. I love you too, Fives.”

He smiled at you, love and adoration in his golden brown eyes. You cupped his cheek with your hand, brushing your thumb over his cheekbone. “May I kiss you?” He asked. You nodded and whispered a ‘yes’ meeting him as he leaned in. Your lips met his, soft but passionately, love infused into the action. You both stayed connected until you needed air, pulling away to find one another both smiling gleefully.

"Promise me you'll try not to hurt yourself again. If you ever feel the urge, come to me and we'll get through it together," Fives pleaded. "I promise," you agreed, "I'll do it for you, darling." Fives smiled, "Good, now I need you to do one more thing for me. Kiss me again."

You laughed and brought Fives in to connect in another loving kiss.

"Ya'know, the reason I took such a risky maneuver was because of you?" He said, leaning back against the gunship wall. You rested your head on his shoulder, one arm around his waist. "What do you mean?" Fives pulled you tighter to him. "I couldn't bear the thought of not seeing you again, so I risked half our transports to make sure I got back," he looked at you, "so I could see you again." You beamed up at him. "I'm so glad you did, I get to see you again and now we're together. I couldn't think of a better decision you've made." You both laughed, glad to finally be together and happy, something neither of you had been in a long time.

#star wars the clone wars #star wars fanfiction #arc trooper fives #arc trooper fives x reader #tw: self harm

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sergeantgoggles · 3 years

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@cloneshipweek

Secrets of the Castle -- Chapter 1 -- Chasing the Chaser Day 18 | Hogwarts AU Wrecker/Jesse (feat. Hunter/Tech and Crosshair/Echo) 1,832 words

Seventh year in Defense Against the Dark Arts had, so far, been Wrecker’s favorite class. Professor Kenobi was strict, but he was also fun, even if he didn’t get some of the older man’s jokes. His lessons were well thought out, and over the years had taken the time to help each student individually wherever they needed it, even if it wasn’t for his class. As the head of Gryffindor House, Wrecker expected nothing less. Oh, he wasn’t in Gryffindor himself, but he was well acquainted with students who were. In fact, it was because of how their classes were scheduled this year that this class was now his favorite.

It was the only class he shared with Jesse.

Defense Against the Dark Arts was the only class this year that Hufflepuffs shared with the Gryffindors, and the only class that saw all four houses in the same classroom. This meant a few things. The first, and most important as far as Wrecker was concerned, was that he got to be close to Jesse. He could stare at him, discreetly of course, and laugh at him and his friends, and be amazed by everything Jesse did for a whole uninterrupted two hours.

The other, slightly less important but also a plus, was that he got to be with all of his friends from different houses at the same time aside from outside of the classroom. Fate would have had it that his three best friends were all placed in different houses. It suited Wrecker just fine. As Tech put it, being as close as they are seeing as they’re in different houses breaks the societal norms and stereotypes. Something like that.

Professor Kenobi was running late, which was abnormal, but nothing that anyone gave much thought about. On the contrary, the buzz around the room was focused on the upcoming Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. Normally, he would join in on the ruckus, poking jabs and taunting the other team, but it felt weird to tease Jesse. He might not have been the captain of the team, that was Rex, but Jesse was a damn good chaser. Wrecker thought he might have made a better beater, seeing how broad and toned his shoulders were, but he couldn’t deny that Jesse was just as talented at being a chaser for the last five years.

“What’s wrong?” Hunter questioned. Of course Hunter would notice something was off. He always did, and it was as endearing as it was incredibly annoying.

“Hm? Surely you aren’t nervous about the match tomorrow?” Tech further questioned as he leaned into Hunter’s side, causing the blue in his robes to fall open. “It’s just an exhibition match. There’s nothing on the line.”

Wrecker knew that. After all, he was his team’s best beater. Well, perhaps that was a bit of a brag. Hardcase was also a great asset, but Wrecker’s ego refused to let him believe he was the best, and his record of hits proved it.

“That’s not it,” Crosshair leaned back in his chair and swished his wand so that little bubbles that were shaped like hearts floated over Wrecker’s head. “He’s just thinking about Jesse again.”

Flushing as dark as the crimson headband that matched Hunter’s robes, Wrecker clapped his hands around the bubbles and popped them in a single motion. “Cut it out, Crosshair!”

His trio of friends share a laugh at his expense at the same time the commotion grabs the attention of others in the classroom. Multiple heads turn to see Wrecker, red faced and scowling, one of them being Jesse’s. Wrecker shrunk in his seat and hid his face. When had he gotten so bad for him? They hardly spoke outside of a few exchanges in the hall or before a game, and it wasn’t usually more than a few words. Still, he groaned under the scrutiny and sighed when Fives playfully smacked him on the shoulder to grab his attention once again.

“Yikes, you’re in deep,” Hunter commented quietly and gently patted Wrecker’s back.

“If I recall correctly,” Tech chided, “you had it so bad that you accidentally cursed yourself with squawking like a chicken every time you spoke for a week just because I smiled at you.”

The memory of Hunter cooing like a bird made Crosshair snicker. “You’re all ridiculous.”

“Yeah?” Hunter raised a brow in Crosshair’s direction and turned to fully face him. “What about you and Echo? As if you didn’t do something completely stupid in his presence when you had a crush on him.”

A silence fell over the small group as they collective tried to think of a time when Crosshair had done something stupid in front of Echo, but none of them came up with anything.

“Wrong,” the Slytherin replied coolly. “I’m more mature than--”

“There was that time when you spilled hot tea down your robes because your hand slipped watching me undress.” Echo’s voice piqued from behind them as he leaned around to peck Crosshair on the cheek. A dark flush abruptly spread on the Crosshair’s cheeks as his friends’ attention was turned to him.

“No one needs to hear about that,” he mumbled, though he didn’t shy away from another soft peck of affection, this time to his lips.

“Surely,” Echo agreed, then glanced in Wrecker’s direction. “Still fussing over Jesse? I don’t understand why you just don’t talk to him.”

Wrecker groaned and ran his large hands over his face. “You guys make it sound so easy!”

“Because it is,” the four of them agreed at once.

“Seriously, Wrecker, just say hi after class,” Echo encouraged before squeezing Crosshair’s shoulder and leaving to join his brother and their friends. “I promise that he won’t bite, unless you’re into that.”

Another round of chuckles made their way around the small group, and Echo winked at Crosshair as he slid into a seat next to Fives, easily falling into their conversation.

“He’s a good one, Cross,” Hunter complimented. “Not sure how he fits in wherever he goes, though.”

Crosshair shrugs. “It’s fine. Fives can be annoying, but Echo usually keeps him in check.”

Wrecker took the time to look in Jesse’s direction again as his friends chatted amongst themselves. Like Echo, Jesse seemed to fit in wherever he wanted to. Conversation and charisma came naturally to him, and there was something about the way that his eyes twinkled when he laughed that made Wrecker’s heart skip a beat.

It was by chance that when Professor Kenobi came through the door that his eyes caught Jesse’s. Time seemed to stop, and Wrecker was sure that he wasn’t breathing, or maybe he was, but somehow Jesse’s gaze made it so he felt too light to need air. At first the gaze was shocking, like Jesse was surprised to see Wrecker there even though they’ve shared a class for months and have been in the same school for the last seven years.

After a moment, however, Jesse’s gaze turned soft, and his chocolate brown eyes sparkled in a way that made Wrecker’s skin prickle with excitement. He couldn’t help it, he smiled at Jesse, albeit shyly. How could he not when there was so much warmth and beauty in something that was just as simple as sharing a gaze?

But then the unthinkable happened, and Jesse smiled back and winked at him.

Oh, Wrecker was convinced now that he wasn’t breathing. He was dead. There was no other rational explanation for what was taking place. This was all an elaborate dream, a vision of what he wished would happen before death claimed him.

“Eyes up, Wrecker.” Professor Kenobi’s voice cut through his reverie, and thin fingers snapped in front of his face. “If you paid half as much attention in class as you did to the antics of your peers you’d be in much better academic shape.”

Blinking several times, Wrecker broke out of the trance he’d been in and watched Professor Kenobi situate the books and scrolls on his desk. “Uh, right.”

As per usual, his commentary caused an uprising in giggles throughout the room, and Wrecker sighed again. For once, he didn’t want to be the class clown, though he had long accepted his role in the school hierarchy. His friends offered sympathetic smiles as they broke into their assigned seating by house.

“Apologies for my tardiness, everyone. I do hope that you took the extended time given to you to double check your research essays on boggarts and how they can affect cursed objects.” Professor Kenobi grinned, undoubtedly knowing full-well that none of them had done such a thing. He listened to the collective groaning about the room before chuckling. “Very well. If you’re all so confident, take out your papers to be collected.”

Wrecker huffed as he rummaged through his belongings to dig out his roll of parchment. He was quite proud of himself for the work he had put into this essay. He didn’t understand a lot, but he was fascinated by boggarts and being able to shift into one’s greatest fear.

What would his boggart turn into if his biggest fear was rejection?

Quickly, he shook the thought from his head. Having found the parchment in question, he set it in front of him and watched as he floated into the air to be gathered with his classmate’s essays. They flitted and fluttered about until they were neatly stacked, then brought down swiftly and gently into a pile on Professor Kenobi’s desk.

He sat back in his seat, tapping his fingers on the desk quietly. Maybe Echo was right and he just had to say something. It couldn’t be all that bad, right? Sure it could, but maybe it was better to find out now then to hold onto hope and wait for another school year to come and go. This was their last year at Hogwarts. After this, who knew where they would all end up. Wrecker hadn’t decided on much of a path for himself, though he thought he had a chance to skate by with his Quidditch skills, but Jesse...he was so talented and smart. He could go off into the world and do anything he wanted and never look back at him.

Nodding to himself, Wrecker steeled his resolve. He chanced another glance at Jesse and smiled again when he noticed that Jesse was already staring back at him with a smile of his own.

“Sorry,” Jesse mouthed to him, then gestured at Professor Kenobi. Was he apologizing for getting Wrecker singled out?

Wrecker waved a dismissive hand and shrugged. It wasn’t all that big of a deal. He was used to it, but it meant a lot to him that Jesse felt like he had to apologize for it.

Their gazes broke again and Professor Kenobi launched into his lecture for the day. Yeah, today was the day. Wrecker was going to do it. He was just going to say hi.

Maybe.

#cloneshipweek2021 #day 18 #day 18 | hogwarts au #wrecker/jesse #clone commando wrecker #arc trooper jesse #sergeant hunter #clone commando tech #clone commando crosshair #arc trooper echo #crosshair/echo #hunter/tech #the bad batch #star wars: the clone wars #clone shipping #cloneshipping #clonecest #kanra writes

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glimmerglanger · 4 years

Text

Whumptober 2020 - Day 15

Part 15 of the oof!au. (One part left! And it’s really more of an epilogue than a full chapter, so). It’s been a long haul and I have plans for a sequel (and some snippets that might go INTO the sequel).

General Information: Post Order 66 Vader-Captures-Obi-Wan AU. Eventual happy(ish) ending. Codywan. Past one-sided Vaderwan.

WARNINGS: Past torture, non-con, and mind control. Attempt at suicide and discussions of suicide. Mental and emotional trauma.

Alt 10. Nightmares

Cody stiffened down his spine when Rex and Ahsoka came back onboard the Recompense. It should have been good to see one of his brothers again - to see another Jedi - but he hadn’t managed to be happy about it when they showed up. They were just another factor, something he couldn’t control, something he didn’t know how to predict.

And then Ahsoka had told Obi-Wan he should have done a better job saving kriffing Skywalker and--

Cody didn’t even know they were back on the Recompense until they turned around the corner that led to Obi-Wan’s room. It was, technically, morning. Cody’d slept a bit, on his feet. He’d tried, once or twice, to go bunk down, but…

But he never managed to keep his eyes closed very long, worries about Obi-Wan across the ship, in a room by himself, eating away at him if he tried. He could snag a few clicks of sleep leaning against the wall, confident he’d wake up if anything happened.

Usually, it was the sounds Obi-Wan made in his quarters that woke Cody.

He screamed, sometimes, in his sleep.

Rex and Ahsoka woke him, coming down the hall. He blinked to wakefulness, pushing away from the wall, glad he’d stayed close even as Ahsoka’s steps faltered. “Commander,” she said, glancing towards Rex and then back at him. She grimaced, looking miserable before she added, “I’m sorry. I didn’t--I’m just sorry. I wanted to…” she gestured at the door to Obi-Wan’s room. “Apologize.”

“He’s asleep,” Cody said, because Force knew Obi-Wan wasn’t sleeping enough - none of them were sleeping enough - and he wouldn’t interrupt that.

Ahsoka’s expression tensed further, mouth twisting and pressing thin. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, and said, softly, “He’s--not really, it’s…” She clenched and unclenched her hands, and said, raw, “It would be a kindness to wake him. But I - I may be able to help. Let him sleep better.”

Cody’d listened to Obi-Wan wake himself up screaming or - worse, somehow - trying to swallow screams back, for far too long. He swore, under his breath, and said, stepping forward to open the door, “Do it, then.”

Ahsoka didn’t hesitate, sliding into the room, the light flowing in around her. Obi-Wan was tangled in the sheets on his little bunk, jerking, just a little, making sounds too quiet to carry through the door, awful sounds, and--

“Sh,” Ahsoka said, sitting on the edge of the bunk, stretching a hand out, palm over his forehead. “Sh, sh, Master, it’s only a dream.”

Cody stood in the doorway, gripping the frame of it, and shivered down his back, watching Obi-Wan slowly go still, his breathing getting even and deeper, some of the lines around his eyes and mouth easing. His face was wet, catching the light, though his eyes remained closed as he settled.

Ahsoka didn’t make any move to get up off the bed or to take away her hand. She’d closed her eyes as well, expression set with determination. Cody wondered what, exactly, she was doing, but it hardly mattered.

It was helping. He could see it helping, soothing Obi-Wan in a way none of them had been able to accomplish. They’d found assistance. Someone to help, and--and Cody had promised - to himself - that he’d get his brothers and Obi-Wan out. That he’d save them.

He looked at Ahsoka, murmuring soft words with a lilting cadence, and realized that, perhaps, he’d done it. He exhaled shakily, turned on his heel, and walked away.

Rex waited, for a while, in the doorway to Kenobi’s quarters. He’d never seen Ahsoka soothe someone through a nightmare from this perspective before. He knew she’d done it for him, after - after the world fell apart. He’d woken up more than once to find his head resting against her leg, her palm cool over his forehead, all his nightmares kept away, at least for a few hours.

She had nightmares, too. He soothed them as best he could, without the benefit of the Force.

He lacked the ability to help soothe Kenobi, and he was fairly certain that if he made a move towards the bed he’d end up regretting it. Cody hadn’t been the only one of his brothers lingering around in the hall. They were all watching him, assessingly. He nodded, decided to leave the door open so they could keep an eye on their General, and took a breath.

He couldn’t help with Kenobi’s nightmares, but he’d seen the look on Cody’s face, before he left. It didn’t take more than a question to get a location for Cody’s quarters. Rex braced himself and went to find his brother.

Rex expected Cody’s door to be locked, when he arrived, but it opened at his touch. The space within was lit, revealing the little bunk and Cody, sitting on it, back to the door. Rex bit his tongue, hard, because Cody didn’t even turn to look at him, just...stared forward, blaster in hand and resting on his thigh.

Rex said, softly, “Hey, there.”

“Rex,” Cody said, voice flat and empty. He kept staring forward, even as Rex edged a step into the room, heart slamming against his ribs, blood burning in his veins. Rex had… anticipated something like this, after talking to Cody and the others in the mess.

He could remember, too easily, what had happened after they rescued Bly, after they pulled the chip out of his head, walking into his room the next morning and--and Rex hadn’t managed to get Ahsoka turned away before she saw the wall--

“Thought maybe we could grab some breakfast,” Rex said, with forced lightness. He’d made it far enough in to get a look at Cody’s expression and it was terrible. Blank and fixed, his face streaked with tears.

“You go ahead,” Cody said, and he had his finger curled around the trigger of the blaster, Rex noted, the cold in his gut spreading further. They’d all been trained, indoctrinated, not to draw their blaster unless they planned to shoot something.

“No, I’ll wait for you.” Rex shifted another step closer. He wondered, vaguely, if he could wrestle the blaster away. Cody had always been stronger than him, but Cody didn’t look up to struggling with anyone, at the moment. Then again, he knew better than most how stubborn his brothers could be, when they wanted to do something badly enough.

And he knew that Cody had - had broken that thing in his head, to get his way. He’d obviously lost none of his stubborn drive over the last three years.

Rex took another step, wetted his lips, and said, soft, “Why don’t you give that to me?”

Cody shook his head. He said, “I want you to look after him.”

“Yeah?” Rex edged nearer, close enough that he could grab Cody’s arm, if necessary. He didn’t bother asking who him was. They both knew. Everyone on the ship knew. Kriff, everyone in the galaxy with eyes knew. “You know, he wants you looking after him.”

Cody made a short, sharp sound. He said, “No.”

Rex flexed his fingers in and out, tried to tell himself it was a good sign that Cody was willing to talk to him, that he hadn’t just jerked his arm up and pulled the trigger. He picked his words carefully, wishing he were better at this kind of thing. “He does. Come on. Give it to me, please. Don’t do this to him.”

Cody blinked, for the first time. “I’m doing this for him.”

Rex shuddered, down his back. He wished, for just a click, that Skywalker was still alive, just so Rex could make him pay for what he’d done. “He’s not going to appreciate it,” he said, quiet. “You know that. Ahsoka said he’s already blaming himself for what happened. He’ll blame himself, every day, if you do this. It’ll be more pain. More nightmares.”

Cody’s breath hitched, and Rex could identify a weak spot when he saw one. Kriff, everyone had always known where Cody’s was. Rex touched Cody’s shoulder, soft, and said, “He needs help, handling what happened. The Jedi - they’re like us, not meant to be alone. He needs--”

“Not from me,” Cody snapped back, quickly, more life coming into his voice.

Rex drew in a breath, trying to play this correctly. “Ahsoka says she can tell he--”

“Not from me,” Cody cut in, gritting the words out, each one bitten off, snapped. “I enjoyed it,” he added, gutted. “What I did. To him.”

Rex almost recoiled back, restraining the urge at the last moment. He tried to imagine the possibility of the words being true and found he couldn’t. “No,” he said, firm, “you didn’t.”

Cody looked up at him, finally, his eyes wide and full of bottomless anger and guilt. He snarled, “You weren’t there. I--”

“You want to do it again, then?” Rex cut in, because they were getting somewhere, dragging Cody out of his head, out of whatever terrible pit he’d fallen into. And because the words needed said, probably. He continued, the words tearing like glass in his throat, even just saying them making his stomach ache with disgust, while Cody stared at him, “You could, you know. He looks like a strong breeze would knock him down. You could walk into his quarters right now and hold him down and--”

The wall caught Rex’s shoulders and the back of his head when Cody surged to his feet and shoved him back, hard. Rex saw stars, terribly aware of the fact that Cody was still holding the blaster, of Cody’s hand, pressed hard against his chest. Cody snarled, eyes blazing, “Don’t you kriffing ever--”

“See?” Rex cut in, ignoring the pain, because getting Cody fully off the ledge he’d thrown himself onto was more important than a headache. Possibly a concussion.“You don’t want to. You never wanted to. Va--Skywalker raped him.” He stared across into Cody’s eyes, and gentled his voice. “Raped you, too, Cody.”

Cody flinched, looking to the side and keeping his hand where it was, terrible strength in him, for all that he was trembling, a bit. “You don’t understand. I--Obi-Wan didn’t--but I--finished--I--”

Rex swallowed, hard, second-hand agony moving through him. He reached up, slowly, and - when Cody didn’t twitch towards shooting him - gripped both of Cody’s shoulders, softly. He said, careful, “You can’t always help the things your body does. No, you can’t, not even - even without the chip. Some things just - just happen. That doesn’t mean you wanted it.” He slid one hand down, towards the blaster in Cody’s hand. “It’s not your fault.”

Cody gritted out, “That’s what Obi-Wan says.”

Rex nodded, reaching the blaster, feeling the tension in Cody’s hand. He was gripping it far too tightly for Rex to just strip it away. He said, gentling, in a way he’d only learned how to be because Ahsoka had needed it, so much, after the war, “Well, he’s right.”

Cody shook his head, sounding hoarse when he said, “He says it’s his fault.”

That was a whole other nightmare, Rex considered. Hopefully one that Ahsoka would be able to help with, because Rex had no idea how to go about addressing it. “And he’s wrong about that.”

“Commander Tano having this conversation with him?” Cody asked, as though picking up the slant of Rex’s thoughts. It felt odd, to hear him call her by her rank, after so long without them, but Rex got the feeling they were all hanging onto the scraps of structure they had left behind, trying to keep the world held together, desperately.

And so he offered no correction, only said, “She might be. But she’s not the one he needs to hear it from. He’s not going to believe her.”

Cody grimaced. Rex got an up-close look at the expression. “Rex--”

“We all know how he feels about you,” Rex interrupted, because he could see chinks in the armor, and because he thought his heart might break through his ribs if he didn’t get the blaster away from Cody sooner rather than later. He felt Cody freeze, sucking in a breath and holding it. “It never was a secret.”

“He doesn’t anymore,” Cody said, voice broken, and Rex ached for him. “He can’t. Not after what I did.”

“Ahsoka says otherwise,” Rex said, a lie, because he and Ahsoka hadn’t discussed...that. But Rex didn’t need Jedi intel to see the truth of it. He’d watched the way Kenobi looked at Cody, yearning, full of hurt and the barest glimmers of hope, all at once, when they were around one another, yesterday. He’d seen Kenobi reach towards Cody, multiple times, only to draw back.

Cody dropped his head, gritting out, “Don’t.”

Rex pressed his advantage, such as it was. “Why is that so hard for you to believe? You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

Cody flinched back, away from him. “That’s not--”

Rex followed, focus split between Cody’s curved shoulders and the blaster, insisting, “Aren’t you?” Cody let out a terrible sound, not much of a reply, and Rex continued, testing each word, “Kriff, you broke your brain to help him. You killed Skywalker for him. Are you really going to let him suffer now because you want to take all the blame for something that wasn’t your fault?”

Cody looked up at him, slowly, eyes shining, face streaked with tears. Rex reached out towards the blaster. “They made us tools. They tried to kill us. They - they abused you and tortured you. You and him. But you lived. He lived. Because you had each other. You beat them, Cody, because you had him and he had you. Don’t let them win, now. Please.”

He restrained a relieved cry when Cody’s fingers loosened around the blaster. Rex stripped it from his hand, ejected the clip, threw the clip to the side, and then sagged back, breathing raggedly as he leaned against the wall, pulse pounding against his skin.

“Kriffing hell,” he said, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth, adrenaline still burning him up. He hadn’t been sure how things were going to play out, hadn’t been fully confident that Cody was going to hand over the blaster without a fight. He drew in a deep breath and reached out, curling an arm around Cody’s shoulder and pulling him in.

“You scared the fuck out of me,” he said, Cody going stiff for just a moment before he slumped. “But it’s alright,” Rex said, because he’d come back from the chip. They’d all taken the first step to coming back, and Rex could help them travel the rest of the way. He wasn’t going to lose any more of his brothers. Not if he could help it. He tipped his head against Cody’s, and said, “We’re going to get through this.”

And standing there, just for a few moments, he tried not to think about the fact that everyone else on the Recompense probably needed to hear the same thing. Well. He’d be there to tell them. As many times as they needed to hear it.

He hoped, though, that Ahsoka managed to help General Kenobi. It would probably come across better, coming from him.

“I don’t know what to do,” Cody said, voice all emptied out, shredded, and Rex wasn’t sure that he’d ever expected to hear Cody admit that. Not even at the end of the war, when they’d both been tattered and shredded by constant loss.

Cody had always known what to do.

Rex shuddered. He said, “Well, sleeping would be a good start. When was the last time you did that?”

Cody shook his head, which wasn’t an answer, and said, “I need to go make sure Obi-Wan is alright.”

“He’s fine,” Rex said, relieved, in a way, that Cody had switched tracks back to worrying about Kenobi. It meant he was another step further away from going for a blaster. He doubted the fixation was strictly healthy, but… “Ahsoka is looking after him.” But Cody was already pulling away, expression drawn and tense, and Rex had learned to pick his battles long ago.

He followed Cody back through the halls. They weren’t, he noticed, very far at all from Kenobi’s rooms. The door was still open. A half-dozen of their brothers were lingering around, without making any pretense for their presence, just… keeping an eye on things.

Rex nodded at them as Cody stepped up to the door, peering in.

Obi-Wan slept still, rolled onto his side, and he looked more like himself asleep, some of the lines erased from his face. Ahsoka sat on the side of the bed, her elbows on her knees and her head hanging down, turned to one side.

She looked up at their shadows in the doorway, her face streaked with tears, and Rex didn’t need to ask what she’d seen in the dreams. He could guess. “He’ll sleep for at least half a day,” she said, her voice raspy, when Cody drifted a step into the room, moving like a sleepwalker.

“There won’t be nightmares?” Cody asked, voice quiet as well. He started to reach out, towards Obi-Wan’s shoulder, and caught himself, drawing back.

Ahsoka cleared her throat. “Shouldn’t be,” she said, scrubbing at her cheeks. She stood, curling an arm around her chest, looking smaller, all at once. Cody nodded and then, without another word, sank down to sit beside the bed, shoulders pressing against the mattress. “Oh,” she said, “you don’t have to--”

“Just in case,” he said, drawing a knee up, arm resting across it.

Ahsoka opened her mouth, and Rex reached out, curling fingers around her elbow, squeezing pointedly when she looked over at him. “Of course,” she said, after a moment, and reached her hand out, carefully, fingertips brushing across Cody’s brow.

Rex watched him frown, just for a moment, but he was most of the way to asleep already. It barely took a nudge to send him the rest of the way down, his head dropping back against the mattress, his eyes falling closed.

“Get some rest,” Rex said, quietly, tugging Ahsoka a step back. He promised Cody’s sleeping form, “We’ll look after them.”

Nightmares had plagued Cody for as long as he could remember. Even before the chips, he’d had ill dreams. Most of his brothers had, he knew. Dreams of battle and blood and death. Dreams where they turned on their Jedi and executed them, calm and sure and--

Cody had always had nightmares.

They’d just gotten worse, lately. He hadn’t slept much, since Mustafar. When he had, memories and twisted horrors moved through his mind. He dreamed of Obi-Wan, hunched in a corner, bloody and--

And he woke up with a jerk, in a room that felt strange, his heart threatening to rip apart in his chest. There was a hand on his shoulder, familiar, Obi-Wan saying, “--up, Cody--”

For a moment, the dream and the waking world blended all together, disjointed and confusing. In the dream, he’d been unable to control himself, but he could move his body again, abruptly, the way he wanted to, and Obi-Wan was right there, crouching beside him, radiating concern, and--

There was no thought to Cody grabbing him, his nerves all burning with alarm, with a need to make Obi-Wan safe. Cody pulled Obi-Wan closer and twisted, putting him against the bed. Cody curled his shoulders over, sure, in the confused mess left behind by the nightmares, that a blow was about to fall, ready for his own fist to come down against his back.

It didn’t land, and he blinked, after a beat, the nightmare washing out of his head. Later, he’d realize Obi-Wan probably had a hand in that, pulling it out of his mind and releasing it. It left him shivering, braced, with an arm curled around Obi-Wan, pushed close and into his space, and--

Horror made him jerk back. He’d just grabbed Obi-Wan, without so much as a by-your-leave, put hands on him again. His gut twisted, hard, bitterness flooding his mouth. He made to pull away totally, only to freeze into place when a snag of pressure made him realize that Obi-Wan had, for some reason, grabbed his shirt, fingers clenched tight, holding on.

Cody stared at his grip, for a moment. Obi-Wan’s knuckles were white against his skin. Desperate, just for a moment, before Obi-Wan released his grip, pulling his hand back and turning his face away, panting out, “I’m sorry.”

Cody’s gut twisted, terrible, and he said, “Don’t, you don’t have to--”

“I do. I know,” Obi-Wan said, his eyes focused on the far wall. He looked… better, Cody noticed, with a lurch in his chest. There was some trace of color in his cheeks. “I know you don’t want to touch me, I know, I’m sorry, for--” he dragged in a breath, strangling himself off.

Memories sleeted back through Cody’s head, all at once. He’d… almost put a blaster against the side of his head, hadn’t he? Would have done, and happily pulled the trigger, if Rex hadn’t found him.

He shuddered, swallowing hard, trying to focus on the present moment. He was sitting on the floor of Obi-Wan’s quarters, the door open almost directly across from him. The lights were dim and he ached in approximately a dozen places, both from old wounds and the position he’d slouched into while sleeping.

None of that seemed to matter very much with Obi-Wan saying: I know you don’t want to touch me.

And Rex had - had said all kinds of things, only half of which Cody actually remembered clearly, the previous day had been a blur, but… “I do,” he said, fighting to force the words out, watching Obi-Wan blink towards him, control of his expression slipping. “I want to--make you safe. But I, fuck. I hurt you, Obi-Wan, I--”

“It wasn’t you,” Obi-Wan started, again, and Cody shook his head, hard, knowing he should shift back, give Obi-Wan more space, but…. But the door was open, and Cody itched, all down his spine, and he could restrain himself, but keeping his body between Obi-Wan and everything else made things easier.

He said, hoarse, “But I still remember doing it.” Obi-Wan went still. Cody felt it happen, felt him suck in a breath and hold it. “I remember hitting you. I remember what it felt like to - to force you, and I failed you,” Cody said, the past dragging at him, his voice ruined. “I hurt you. I -- couldn’t stop. I--” And he could almost see Obi-Wan gearing up to disagree, to try to take all the blame for everything onto his own shoulders, Rex’s words echoing in his ears and--

“No,” Obi-Wan said, reaching towards him again and stopping, his hand just frozen there, fingers outstretched, and Cody could read need in his expression, there and gone and buried. “Please, Cody, I should have--”

“Don’t,” Cody bit out, because he wasn’t sure he could actually bear to listen to Obi-Wan trying to blame himself for what had happened again. And he knew, bone-deep, that Obi-Wan was never going to agree that it was his fault. He’d fight, tooth and nail, over it, punishing himself for - for everything Skywalker had done.

Cody shifted, made a choice, thinking about Rex reminding him of things he already knew, that the Jedi weren’t meant to be alone, and lifted a hand, slowly, towards Obi-Wan’s. He went slow, gave Obi-Wan plenty of time to jerk away, and Obi-Wan made a gutted, punched out sound when Cody brushed their fingers together.

Obi-Wan jerked towards him, not away, fingers clenching around Cody’s, tight, as Cody said, “It’s not your fault Skywalker tortured you. Us.”

Obi-Wan froze in the middle of opening his mouth, eyes going wide, shiny in the dark room. “It’s not,” Cody kept going, words catching at his tongue and his teeth, “your responsibility. What he did to all of us. You’re not to blame. How could you have stopped him?”

Obi-Wan blinked, flinching, as though perhaps he’d searched his own mind and fabricated some ways he could have possibly done the impossible. Cody shifted his grip, bringing his other hand up, palm pressed to the back of Obi-Wan’s hand. “It’s not,” Cody repeated, quietly, as Obi-Wan stared across at him, eyes wide and stunned, “your fault.”

Obi-Wan exhaled, shakily, his skin cool as he shifted his fingers, just a little. Cody asked, swallowing, bracing, “Is this alright?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said, quickly, before his expression shuttered just a little. “But you don’t have to--”

“Obi-Wan,” Cody tried to find the words to explain the ball of pressure in his chest, the knot that refused to ease, worry and tension and a driving need to make Obi-Wan alright, and-- There was no way to speak it into being, he didn’t know how. He shook his head, instead, and rasped, “I want - if you want - I need--”

And maybe something he said made sense, or maybe Obi-Wan had just always known him well enough to decipher the things he couldn’t say, because Obi-Wan shifted, tugging his hand free; Cody released his grip, worried that he’d squeezed too hard, that he’d hurt Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan took a little breath, met his gaze, and reached his hand forward, towards Cody’s shoulder. He stopped, a breath away, and asked, “You need this?”

Cody jerked out a nod, shamed to need it, to ask, to expect Obi-Wan to excuse what he’d done, but--

But he could not help the way his shoulders curled over, when Obi-Wan touched him, radiating soothing peace towards him, emotions curling around him, and none of them hurt, it was impossible--

“Sh,” Obi-Wan said, hand sliding to his back, tugging, just a little, and Cody heard the broken noise that came out of his own throat as Obi-Wan shifted closer to him, murmuring, so soft, “Cody, it’s alright.”

Cody made a harsh sound, half-disagreement, but it was muffled because he seemed to have pressed his face against the side of Obi-Wan’s head. His hands shook as he curled an arm up, careful, around Obi-Wan’s back.

Obi-Wan exhaled, ragged, and Cody had not expected him to collapse forward, to grip tight, holding on as Cody made a nonsense sound, holding him carefully, waiting to wake up from this dream, or to have it warp into something awful and nightmarish.

Cody squeezed his eyes closed, wondering if Obi-Wan had needed this all along, if he’d failed, again, and--

And he set all those thoughts aside, for at least a while, curling his other arm around Obi-Wan, holding him there, on the floor, until it stopped feeling like a dream.

#whumptober2020 #alt.10 #nightmares #clone wars #fic #references to past torture and non con #suicide attempt #discussions of suicide #mental anguish #my writing #oof!au #codywan #the last big chunk!#please heed the warnings #fall out of mind control

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emmerrald · 3 years

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Opposites Attracts (part 1) chilumi fanfic

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Part 2

(A/N: Hey guys! This fanfic is a highschool version of genshin impact! Hope you like it!)

Lumine was a transferee of Teyvat University and other nations in Teyvat attends this University. In order to find her brother because their mother took him unexpectedly, she promised her father to take Aether back and she starts to travel alone and if Aether is here with Lumine they always travel a lot.

“Wow! Teyvat University is so big!” Lumine stop on her tracks and a sweat drops on her forehead “No... I said that wrong... Teyvat University is an island?!”

Lumine starts to walk to the bridge connected to the Teyvat University Island. Lumine sweat furiously because it’s a long way to get to Teyvat University. As she walking peacefully, someone bumps to her and they fall into the ground with a loud thud.

“Hey! Watch were you going!” Lumine said as she stands up and brush off the dust on her skirt. She looks behind her and saw a bunny-eared headband girl.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to bump int-” The bunny girl stop talking and look to Lumine up and down. She smiled happily to her and held her hands. “Your the transferee! Lumine right?!”

Lumine was startled and nod. “My name is Amber! It’s really nice to meet you! The principal entrusted you to me.” Amber said and Lumine smiled at her.

“Really?! Thank goodness, I thought I will be alone and be lost in the University because it’s so enormous.” Lumine said.

‘Don’t worry! I got your back!” Amber said energetically.

They started to walk side by side until they reach a waypoint at the end of the bridge. “What’s this?” Lumine asked.

“Oh! This is a teleport waypoint! It can lead you to anywhere in Teyvat University.” Amber show to Lumine some kind of device beside the waypoint. “You just click here wherever you want to go and it will lead you there! Try it out.” Amber said and step aside so Lumine can see.

Lumine put her finger to her chin and look at the device confused. “Should we go here?” Lumine asked Amber. Amber nod.

Lumine pushed the device and the two of them teleport in a blink of an eye. Lumine and Amber stand in front in the University. Lumine look so surprised and look at Amber with sparkling eyes. Amber smiled at her.

“Your reaction is so funny.” Amber said. “Well, I can’t blame you, that’s my first reaction too when I first transferred here.”

Lumine and Amber start to walk up to the stairs to reach the gigantic doors, “The doors are huge too?!” Lumine said and Amber starts to laugh.

“Open the door Lumine!” Amber said excitedly. Lumine push the wooden doors and stared at awe.

“Wow! the outside is beautiful but the inside is really magnificent.” Lumine said in awe. Lumine looks up and saw a 7 stained glass windows in different colors. “That’s the 7 archons, right?” Lumine asked.

“That’s right and they rule the 7 nations in Teyvat, and Celestia is the realm of the gods and they grant us visions.” Amber said as she show Lumine an ornament with a red color. “My vision is pyro, what about you?” Amber ask

Lumine starts to sweat furiously and avoid eye contacts with Amber “Shit! She can’t learn that I’m not from Teyvat!” Lumine thought. “And what the hell is a vision?!”

“I- umm... I-” Lumine was cut off when a man with an eyepatch interrupts her.

“Amber, the principal is looking for the transferee.”

“Oh my Archons! That was a close one!” Lumine wipes the sweat on her forehead and sigh heavily.

“Oh Kaeya-sensei! Here she is!” Amber pointed at Lumine. Kaeya look at Lumine up and down, and smile.

“Not bad, not bad at all.” Kaeya smirks and hold out his hands. “The name’s Kaeya Alberich, I’m a Cavalry Captain in the Knights of Favonious on Mondstadt, currently working on Teyvat University as a Research Coordinator.”

Lumine accept the hand and they shake it. “Now that the introductions is finished, let’s go to the principal office shall we?” Kaeya said and starts to walk.

“The principal? Do you know who is the principal?” Lumine asked Amber and Amber just sigh.

“The truth is, no.” Amber said and crossed arms, “all the students here actually doesn’t know who the principal is. Lucky for you, you could meet the principal.” Amber said and pout. “Go on now, Kaeya-sensei just literally left you.”

“Oh right! See you later Amber!” Lumine said and started to catch up with Kaeya.

“What a weird one that Lumine is.” Amber said as she look at Lumine running up to Kaeya. “And she didn’t answer what her vision is! I’ll ask her next time. That’s right! I need to get my precious Baron Bunny!” Amber said and she run off to who knows where.

At the corner somewhere that no one can see, a tall figured man with a mask on his head was leaning at the pillar, and a smirk was shown in his face, “A transferee eh? looking forward to it.”

“Here we are.” Kaeya said and look at Lumine, “I’ll leave you here now.” Kaeya said and started to walk but Lumine stop her.

“Umm Kaeya-sensei, do you know who is the principal?” Lumine once again asked. Kaeya started to laugh and pats Lumine’s shoulder.

“No, I don’t and I heard that the Principal is huge and it’s not a size of a human and has a monstrous eyes that eats you up.” Kaeya said and tried to scared the poor Lumine, but Lumine shown no fear in her eyes. Kaeya frown at the sight, not expecting for the reaction, “Huh, you’re not the least bit frightened, I see.”

“Are there suppose to be frightened of?” Lumine ask. Kaeya look at Lumine strangely, “What an odd girl you are...” Kaeya smile at Lumine and starts to walk away.

As for Lumine, she was left dumbfounded. She knocked at the door and hear a tiny voice “Come in.”

Lumine opens the door and a big office was shown and full of documents and books. In front of Lumine there’s a long table and a swivel chair facing at the big window that show the University grounds.

“Good morning Principal. You called for me?” Lumine ask. The swivel chair turn around to face Lumine, and she was shock to see a small figure sitting in front of her. “It’s exactly the opposite of what Kaeya-sensei said.” Lumine sigh.

“Nice to meet you Lumine! Paimon’s name is..... umm Paimon ehe. Paimon’s your principal. You’re the first one to see Paimon, be grateful.” Paimon said.

Lumine walk up to Paimon and touch her cheeks, “What are you? a toy? or a food?” Lumine said.

“Hey! Paimon’s not a food nor a toy! Paimon’s your principal!” Paimon said angrily. Lumine starts to chuckle and deeply apologize for her actions. “Anyway! Paimon wants to congratulate you for passing the exam and can Paimon ask you one thing?”

Lumine swallow her saliva and her heart starts to beat fast because of the nervousness she’s feeling right now. “Have I been found out?”

“You’re not from here, right?” Paimon asked Lumine. Lumine’s eyes widened and constantly stopped breathing. “Don’t worry, Paimon won’t do anything to you. Your secret is safe with Paimon.” Paimon said and smile at Lumine. Lumine sigh at relief.

“Thank you Principal Paimon.” Lumine said and bow to her, and Paimon get’s flustered.

“Drop down the formalities when were alone together,” Paimon said and start to scratch her head, “Paimon’s not used to it.” Lumine nods at her.

“And you don’t posses a vision right?” Paimon asked

“Yes, that’s right! What am I supposed to do in able to acquire it?” Lumine asked Paimon, Paimon starts to think deeply and a light bulb pop out on top of her head.

Paimon starts to float up in the air and go to the farthest top of the shelves and bring out a wooden box, she goes down and put it on top of the table and open it and revealed a 7 vision ornaments.

“Right now, you have Gyro that means it is possible that this ability allows you to absorb other elemental powers without the need for a vision. That’s why right now your emblem has a lack of light, and why is that?” Paimon asked Lumine

Lumine looks at her hands and start to play with it and some memories starts to show up, “Well, my mother cast a seal upon me, and I lose my powers. But I’ll work hard to unseal it so I can find my big brother and bring him home.” Lumine said with full of determination.

“You’re so hardworking, Paimon’s admires your determination, but right now you need to have a vision because once you left this room, it will become more dangerous and without a vision it will be more dangerous.” Paimon said and lay a contract in front of Lumine, “This school is kind of... has it’s own ways and as a principal, Paimon can’t control it as the way Paimon’s wanted to.” Paimon sigh and tap the contract in front of Lumine.

“This contract was made Rex Lapis himself, the god of contracts. This contract is the approval of the Archons that you can use this vision and the rules is just don’t selfishly use them, and use them correctly and blah blah, just sign it.” Paimon said as she gave Lumine a quill.

“Is it alright for me to use this? Won’t other people need this?” Lumine asked, Paimon smiled at her and sit down on her swivel chair, and looks satisfied. “Thinking about other people before yourself huh? Just as the Archons likes it.”

“Yes, it’s fine and Paimon think that they will approve to you too.” Paimon said and Lumine smiles at her, “and after you sign it, one of these vision will solely select you and you can use however you please.”

Lumine signs the contract and the paper started to glow and floats in the air and disappear like a bubble, and after that all the 7 vision started to glow. This made Paimon and Lumine shock.

“H-How is this possible?!” Paimon stated and surprisingly look at the vision. “One vision suppose to glow only!” Paimon said as the 7 vision started to fly into the air to Lumine’s chest. Lumine feel the pain burning inside of her and she falls down to the floor and grunt painfully. “Lumine! Are you okay?!” Paimon shouted worriedly.

Lumine hold her chest tightly and pants heavily, “P-Paimon *pant* is this *pant* n-normal?” Lumine asked with a shaky voice and look at Paimon whose face is full of worry.

“This is abnormal! Paimon does not expect this to be happen! It’s suppose to be one vision only but the 7 vision chose you abruptly... Paimon needs to report this and go to Celestia tomorrow.” Paimon said and help Lumine to stand up and sit on the couch.

“Is it because I’m not from Teyvat?” Lumine asked Paimon, Paimon put her hand on her chin and start to think, “Maybe...”

“Then, what should I do now? This a super rare case here in Teyvat University.” Lumine said as she try to calm down,

“You’re right... For now, Paimon allows you to use the Anemo and Geo vision right now, you can attune any of the 2 of them and look at the emblem that sticks to your dress, it’s teal colored, that means you had the anemo vision if you attune it to geo the color will be yellow and Paimon wants you to keep this as a secret.” Paimon said as she fly to the cabinet and let out a document, key, and a small pouch.

“Then how do I attune it?” Lumine ask. Paimon gave the things that she brought out to the cabinet to Lumine.

“Just go to the statue of the seven. The anemo statue locates at Mondstadt and the geo statue locates at Liyue, since the anemo vison is with you right now, Paimon suggest you go to Liyue first.” Paimon said as she go to her table and started to write something.

“Okay... then what are these?” Lumine asked as she pointed out the things that Paimon gave to her.

“Oh that’s your time schedule, a pouch full of mora and your dorm keys, your things is already in your dorm, and you have a dormmate there, waiting for you.” Paimon said

Lumine nod and smile at Paimon, “Thank you Principal.” Lumine said and go out to the office. Paimon stop writing and stares at the door.

“Oh shoot, Paimon forgot to warn Lumine about her dormmate... Paimon thinks that it will be okay!” Paimon said as she disappears to thin air.

“So this is where the dorm locates?” Lumine asked Amber and she nod.

“Mhm, It said here in the paper, your dorm is in East Building, mine is in North. If you have any trouble just call me.” Amber said and wink at Lumine, Lumine chuckle.

“Thank you so much for everything Amber.” Lumine said and held Amber hands.

“No problem. Oh! That’s right! You didn’t tell me what’s your vision is.” Amber said and look at Lumine innocently, Lumine avoid her gaze to Amber and sweat drops

“Umm m-my vision is a-anemo.” Lumine stuttered and show the emblem to Amber.

Amber smiled at Lumine and they said their goodbyes. As Amber was walking away she stopped in her tracks, “Strange... I thought I saw earlier that her emblem has no color... Hmm probably just my imagination. Right now, I have a tea with my Baron Bunny and Barbara.” Amber said as she skipped happily.

As for Lumine, she was now inside the elevator waiting for her floor. “Wow this dorm is really luxurious, good thing I have enough mora to transfer here.” Lumine said to herself.

The elevator made a sound and opens the door. Lumine walk out and now is searching for her room, “316... 316 where are you... Oh here she is.” Lumine take a deep breath and shyly opens the door. and take a look inside.

“Wow... this dorm is massive!” Lumine goes inside and take a look around. There’s a balcony, a living room, and a kitchen fit for two and 3 doors inside, Lumine thinks, maybe it’s the bathroom and the other two is the bedroom.

Lumine was surprised that the middle door was suddenly opened and a tall ginger haired man came out from the bathroom, half naked. The man noticed Lumine and smiled at her.

“Hey girlie.” The man said.

Lumine’s face looks like a tomato right now and she covered her eyes and scream.

“WAAAAAHHHH!!!!!! A pervert!!!!!!!!” Lumine shout as she tried to reach the doorknob but instead she’s been wall slammed by the man at the door entranced, still half naked.

The two of them look at each other, eye to eye. And the tall man smirks, “Now, that’s not the way to greet someone you just met, girlie.”

Lumine glare at the man and push him away, “W-Who are you anyway?”

“Feisty one aren't you?” The man said and his smirk grew wider, and Lumine just gave him a death stare, “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you, why won’t we take a seat first, no?” The man said and go to the couch and sit, and Lumine just followed him and sit on the other side.

“The names Tartaglia, you can call me Childe. I’m your dormmate, nice to meet you girlie.” Childe said and smile at Lumine.

“Dormmate? The University allowed the opposite sex to live each other?” Lumine asked, Childe just shrugged. Lumine just sigh, “My name is Lumine.” Lumine said and avoid gaze at Childe.

“Why won’t you consult to the principal?” Childe suggest to Lumine.

“Your right... but the principal is in the Celestia...” Lumine said, and Childe looked at Lumine with a suspicious eyes.

“Celestia? Why would the principal be there?” Childe asked getting curious about the subject.

“ Oh, its because-” Lumine stop herself as she remember Paimon’s words.

“Paimon wants you to keep this as a secret.”

Lumine shuts her eyes and inhale deeply, “It’s nothing... I just met the principal earlier because she ask my attendance.” Lumine said as she stands up.

Childe put his hand on his cheeks for support and crossed his legs, observing Lumine above her head to her toes. And his eyes became dark.

“Oh, can you tell me where’s my room?” Lumine ask Childe that made his expression change and show her a happy face.

“Oh yes,” Childe stands up and led Lumine to where her room is. “This is it.”

Her room is next to the balcony and Lumine look at Childe and gave him a lovely smile, “Thank you so much.” Lumine said and go inside her room.

As for Childe, he still stands in front of her room and was surprise of what Lumine did earlier, a blush was shown on his face, he put his right hand on his face to cover the blush, “Damn, that girl, what is she?...” Childe mumbled to himself and go inside to his room.

After Lumine close the door, her knees suddenly felt weak and sit down across the floor, and start to roll side to side at the corners of her room, her face is so red like her blood is boiling inside. “Oh my Archons! That Childe! Why won’t he dress up like a normal person?! And my eyes are betraying me... looking at those beautiful 6 pack toned abs~” Lumine was shock when she said that and slap herself.

“Get yourself together Lumine! That man is dangerous!” Lumine said and pinch her cheeks and look at her room and sigh, “It’s gonna be a long day to unpack my things...” Lumine stand up on her floor and start to organize her room.

After many hours has passed Lumine decided to call Amber.

“Hi Lumine! What’s up?” Amber said at the other side of the phone.

Lumine decided to tell Amber about her dormmate, “Hi Amber, I have a question.”

“Sure! What is it?” Amber ask, Lumine sigh and lay down on her bed.

“About your dormmate, is it a girl? or a boy?” Lumine ask

“Of course its a girl! Her name is Barbara. Why? Is there something wrong?”

“Yes! There is something wrong!” Lumine shout and sits up on her bed and hug her pillow, “My dormmate is a boy! His name is Childe! Do you know who he is?!”

There’s a moment of silence until Amber ruin Lumine’s ear. “WHAAAAAAATT???!!!” Lumine put her phone away to her ear and start to rub it.

“You mean Tartaglia?! That Tartaglia?!!!” Amber exclaimed.

“Mhm, is he popular?” Lumine ask.

“More than popular! he’s a Casanova! and he’s also part of the student council! That council named themselves as the 11 Fatui Harbingers, they are powerful here in Teyvat University. Tartaglia also named Childe is the youngest among them but one of the most dangerous among their number. That said, Childe doesn't seem to fit in well with the others.” Amber explained.

Lumine stop breathing, and her eyes are spinning around trying to process of what Amber said, “Lumine! Your still there?!”

“Y-yeah, I’m still here.” Lumine said as she lean on the wall and tries to calm her heart down.

“A-anyway, I’m worried about you!” Amber said in full of worry.

“Yeah, I’m worried about myself too...” Lumine said and the both girls sigh at the same time.

“What is the principal thinking?! Allowing you to live with a boy.” Amber said irritated.

“I’m sure there must be a good explanation.” Lumine said and scratch her head. “Anyway, I need to go to sleep.”

“Yeah me too, Be careful. You will never know what Childe will do to you.” Amber said warning Lumine.

“I’ll lock my doors.” Lumine said and hang up the call.

Lumine sigh once again and cover herself up in the covers and started to sleep but disturbed by a knock. Lumine gets up and open the door revealing Childe with a grin plastered on his face.

“Hey girlie, want to celebrate us being dormmates?” Childe said and smile at Lumine.

“But I need to sleep-” Lumine was cut off by Childe holding her hand and Lumine was startled.

“Aw come on, you don’t want to celebrate with me? It will be my treat.�� Childe said with a puppy dog eyes.

Lumine on the other hand can’t resist the look of Childe. She sigh and finally give up, “Fine... But let me change my clothes first.” Childe sheepishly smiled and nod.

To be continued...

#genshin impact #Genshin Impact fanfiction #Genshin #genshine lumine #genshin childe #childe x lumine #lumine x childe #chilumi #Tartaglia #school #fanfiction #romance #game #lumine

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grimm-the-tiger · 2 years

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Making a masterpost for The Outsider Chronicles just in case.

What is the Outsider Chronicles?

The Outsider Chronicles is my special interest from hell fan comic, which currently only exists as a prose version because art is hard. The comic is a mega-crossover divided based on what storylines are following which character, which is probably why, when I do get around to making the comic version, I’m going to upload it to either Tumblr or AO3 with their (questionably) handy tagging systems so fans of one character can simply...read that character’s storyline.

Yes, but what is the Outsider Chronicles about?

Hoo boy.

So there’s a solid fifty different characters in just the first volume alone (this thing has 10 planned volumes and is probably going to get more) and each one has their own storyline. It’s probably easier to describe the overall plot instead of each of the individual storylines, which will probably get their own posts later on.

The comic begins with the basic fanfic crossover premise of “characters wake up in another universe” and then goes completely off the rails. The central cast consists of the Outsiders, a bunch of people who randomly showed up in the Supergirl universe one day and decided to team up because one of them, Jenny, promised to show them a way home if they’d help her rescue her father, the Doctor. The comic is being narrated by this snarky little shit named Aelitah, who knew the Outsiders at some point in time, long after their dissolution and apparent demise. We learn more about her as the story unfolds and how her story ties into the Outsiders’.

What fandoms are featured in the Outsider Chronicles?

The most important fandoms for just the first volume (i.e. the ones where the protagonists come from) are Doctor Who, Generator Rex, Hetalia, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, the Alcatraz Vs series, Scandinavia and the World, Realicide, Alita Battle Angel, Lockwood & Co, the Pandava Quartet, Ben 10, Shazam!, anything by Rick Riordan, Danny Phantom, Daniel X, Hermitcraft, the Dream SMP, the Empires SMP, Hollow Knight, Stand Still Stay Silent, Voltron, Avatar: the Last Airbender, Fullmetal Alchemist, Septimus Heap, and Red Rising. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE FAMILIAR WITH ALL OF THESE WORKS. I cannot stress that enough. If you’re familiar with just ONE of them, you can follow that one work to the end of the series; assuming I did my job as a writer correctly, you should be able to parse enough information about whatever fandom interacts with your own the most to get through the story.

The works the settings are from include the Supergirl tv show, the Fallen London ‘verse, the MCU, the SCP Foundation universe, a few previously mentioned works, and a few settings of my own creation. You also do not have to be familiar with these settings to read The Outsider Chronicles.

There are also few fandoms not mentioned above that also appear. These include Little Nightmares, Centricide, Mianite, Sunless Skies (technically part of Fallen London but still), Bioshock 1 and Infinite, Hadestown, Dune, Attack on Titan, and other works that would probably get me cancelled on Twitter.

Is there anything else we need to know?

Yes. Because of this story’s size, it’s going to be a bit slow when it comes to updates. I’ll try to update whatever storyline I’m working on at the time at least once a week, but life gets in the way sometimes and I might not be able to progress this fast enough.

There are also some content warnings for warfare, genocide, violence, sexual assault (not shown but fairly blatantly discussed), abuse, death, child abandonment, mental illness, suicide, and prejudice. There are probably others but I don’t know what other things might be triggering; let me know if you decide to read the comic and find some more, and I’ll update this list.

This series also heavily features headcanons of mine! I’ll try to name them when I can, but just remember to take things with a grain of salt if you intend to read another work featured in The Outsider Chronicles.

I think that’s about it. There’s some more posts about my comic if you want to read them below:

Stupid parts of the lore

Some art of random character designs

#the outsider chronicles prose #the outsider chronicles comic #don't mind me #just rambling about my special interest #which is my own fucking comic but you know what? it's fine #this is fine

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happytroopers · 4 years

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A Knight in White Armor // pt. 3

Rex X Royal!Reader

nearly two years later, brought to you by the burning desire I’ve had to yell at the trade federation since I was 6 years old. I’m a SLUT for plitical drama and for Captain Rex

for those of you who are new here:

Part one Part Two Part three Part Four Coming Soon or possibly in two years.

Did i pull an all nighter to rewrite this bc tumblr deleteed it YES. An no, I don’t know why the formatting looks like that.

Uhhhm if I tagged you, it’s because you expressed interest recently so if you want me to leave you alone (or want to be included) lemme know.

So, taglist: @robotxtrash @mackstrut @clonewarsreturns @94pigeons @skdubbs and about ten other people who messaged me on anon lmao

Y’all know the drill, this sucks and its unedited blah blah b;ah

______________

A day and a half. That’s all you allowed yourself to wallow in self pity. After that, you forced yourself to remember that whoever sent that assassin only sent them because you were doing good work.

And once you reminded yourself of that, you were back in the spotlight like you’d never left. After you made some changes, mind you, like dismissing the maids they provided and bringing in your personal maids that you’d known since you were sixteen.Of course, Rex was by your side and more protective than he had been. With his formidable presence ever present, even the more hostile politicians were hesitant to get in your face. Yes, you were back, and more determined than ever to truly make a difference.

You were also grappling with other feelings. Feelings that you buried deep into your heart until you were alone. Ever since the first time he called by name, Rex had held a soft spot in your heart. You tried to be reasonable, tell yourself that he was only doing all these things because it was his job. He was only so protective because he was ordered to do so, only candid with you because you asked him to be, so on and so forth. Those things were easy to write off, to kill any hope of him returning your feelings.

But then, he’d go above and beyond his job. Listening to you complain about other politicians, offering you a steadying hand when you were going down steps in those cumbersome skirts you had to wear, laughing at something you said, staying with you if you felt uneasy at night, carrying food and water with him because you had an awful habit of forgetting to eat between engagements…. A particular memory that always turned your cheeks red was when you were posing for an official photo and your skirts got tangled up, before a maid could fix it, Captain Rex was on one knee expertly fluffing your skirt back out and laying your train flat. That certainly wasn’t his job. Those were harder to write off and any hope you previously squashed came back with a vengeance.

It was then you’d have to remind yourself it could never happen. On the off chance he did feel the same way, you knew that there had to be some terrible punishment- it probably fell under insubordinates. Additionally, no matter how persistent the butterflies were, you weren’t naive. You were a princess, royalty, top of the nobility, and you weren’t even the first born. It was only a matter of time before you were married off to satisfy some ally you’d never met before. You’d long since made peace with the fact you marriage would be arranged for the good of your people. As royalty, you sacrificed very few things and lived very fortunately, this was the price. Royals didn’t get true love. Besides, love was a bit melodramatic. You could content yourself with fluffy daydreams for the moment.

That being said, you hardly had time to day dream. Middle of week two (in the month of peace talks), and you were so busy you barely had time to think of anything but public policy, war treaties, and trade negotiation. Trade Negotiation being the first thing on your mind that evening as your maids flurried about, preparing you for that night’s engagement: an invitation from the trade federation to talk about your planet’s charters with them over a private dinner. You were reticent to accept the invitation, especially after Padme’s warnings about them. Even though you were young, you well remembered the siege and blockade of Naboo. But, after speaking to your advisors and parents (the reigning King and Queen), you decided to go. At the very least as a show of strength, and at worst to warn them off bothering your people.

Rex wasn’t all too happy with this dinner either. He’d heard of the trade federation blockade of Naboo from Generals Kenobi and Skywalker, and he’d read the HoloNet articles about the Blockade of the Pantoran Moon. Not to mention all rumors of kidnappings, Separatist ties, and assignation (attempts and successes) that surrounded the Trade Federation. He’d even heard rumors that the Trade Federation ordered a hit on your planet’s senator. Ultimately unsuccessful, but it didn’t make him feel good about you sharing a meal with them. Rex had a feeling that the Neimodians were just as slimy as they looked, and he made his opinion quite clear as he watched your maids assemble your look for the night.

“(Y/N), you don’t have to go. No one will think any less of you.” He assured you from his spot, leaning against the arm of the couch nearest you. Out of your sight, or at least they thought, (and without Rex paying attention), your maids shared a look, as if to say, did this soldier just address the princess by her first name?

You turned your head slightly towards him, but the maids quickly adjusted your posture, “They will, but it’s not about that, Rex,”

You paused, to let the maids know that you definitely saw the looks that time, they hurried back to their work so you continued, “I’m going so that they know that I won’t be bullied into a terrible deal for my people.”

Seemingly finished with your makeup, you watched as the oldest maid pressed your tiara into your hair. Pleased with your appearance, you stood straightening the skirt of the slip you were wearing (the youngest maid had tried to shoe Rex out, saying it wasn’t proper for him to see you like that before you assured her it was alright). They brought over the stiff, heavy, formal dress that would go over the slip, and unlaced the back. You held your arms up and allowed them to slip it over your head. Rex was still watching with an uncertain look in his eyes as they laced you up.

“They can threaten me all they want to, but I will not allow them to threaten my people because they think I’m too young and naive to notice.” You voice was firm, you hadn’t even raised it a decibel, but still commanded all the attention in the room. Finally, you turned to look at the Captain, and he finally understood.

While you always looked Royal, you generally weren’t overly fussy about your appearance, but tonight was different. If Rex understood your culture correctly, this was a modern, toned down take on traditional war paint and battle dress, what a princess or queen would wear in a time of war. You meant business tonight, more so than usual. There was no room for argument. Nodding, Rex slid his helmet on, “Then I’ll be right beside you the entire time, your highness.”

Once again, your maids shared a look, somehow using your formal title seemed more intimate than using your real name. Nevertheless, they finished off this look, quite proud of their work by attaching a long, dark, velvety cape to the shoulders of your dress with jewel encrusted clips that probably cost more than a starship. Finally, at the height of regality, you nodded to him and with a flourish of your cape you were out the door.

“Let’s be off then.”

__________

As it turned out, this dinner was not as private as you were promised. Having expected this, you enjoyed the look of frustrated shock when Senator Amidala entered the dining room. Rex nearly flinched as you took a sip of your wine, you’d been quite adamant in not having it tested for poisons.

(“If they’re stupid enough to poison me at their own table, let them dig their own graves.” You had told him, but this didn’t ease his mind. He didn’t trust these people, and Kix didn’t carry many anti-poisons with him.)

If you were worried about poison, you didn’t show it, only raising your glass to Lott Dodd, the republic representative of the Trade Federation. Since you were the only royal in attendance, you were sat at the end of the table with your host, Lott Dodd, on the other end, ten feet away. On your right, Padme, decked out in a tight, black dress with a large, jeweled neckpiece, sat confidently beside you. On your left however, there were two members of the technounion, and two other member of the trade federation. On the other side of Padme was a hologram of a Muun banking clansmen. Of course along the back wall were all of their security, mostly droids. Behind you and Padme, the walls were lined with Rex’s men and Padme’s own Captain Typho.

“I see you took the liberty to make this dinner not so private, I’m glad I always overdress.” You mused, eyebrow raised in challenge. As if wishing he’d tell Padme to leave.

“I could say the same thing about you, your highness.” Lott Dodd replied lowly with a sugary fake smile.

“The more the merrier, right?” You asked, flashing an equally as fake smile. The neimodian only nodded before taking a large gulp of his wine. If anything was to tell Rex how the rest of that evening would go, it was that interaction right there. As the first course was being served, you half listened to a member of the techounion, Trev, propose a partnership in the technounion and your planets Science Research Division and also his interest in your fuel reserves (which was suspicious all together because it was common knowledge that you planets top scientific priority was developing weapons and medical supplies/technology for the Grand Army of the Republic). Beside you, Padme was in an intense conversation about banking regulation with the Muun hologram. Rather quickly, this was brought to a halt as Lott Dodd gathered your attention,

“Princess, shall we discuss business now so we can get it out of the way?”

“Of course, I’d love to get it over with quickly.” You nodded, motioning for him to continue.

“I’m sure you read the earlier proposal I had delivered to you?” He asked, again you nodded but narrowed you eyes at you glass before lifting cold eyes to him. You could register the shock at your change in demeanor, so you just continued on.

“You mean the proposal to decrease the regulations on the good you import while you also increase the prices, and at the same time decrease the already low prices and taxes on the exports we sell to you?” You clarified, raising a defiant eyebrow at the representative. “I’m no economist, but I’m sure you know that a charter like that would crash our economy. We’ll have to renegotiate.”

“Perhaps our proposal was a bit heavy handed, surely we can find a way for it to work without resorting to unseemly measures. Young people like you don’t seem to realize how trying war time can be.” Lott Dodd tried to regain control of the situation without losing ground on his proposal, but you caught the way his brow ridge twitched and the hidden threat behind his words.

“Oh, like a blockade?” Senator Amidala couldn’t help but mutter into her glass. You breathed a laugh but didn’t comment, if the other guests noticed they didn’t either.

“Hmmm.” You hummed ignored the stammering of your host, instead turning towards the banker, “When money is involved, the banks always have an opinion, so tell me, what do you think of all this?”

The Muun was clearly uncomfortable with the sudden amount of attention on him, but cleared his throat before giving an obviously rehearsed answer, “The Banking Clan does not interfere with any business outside of our own, but no matter your decision if you should need a loan, the banking clan would be honored to work with you to draw one up.”

“How generous, and I’m sure you’ll be the first ones to hear if our economy does crash.” You mused, taking a sip of your wine as the banker gaped at you.

“I’m sure I don’t understand what you mean.” He humphed, the blue hologram flickering. You offered a sweet smile.

“I’m sure you don’t.” The phrase was innocuous but the smirk on your face told everyone exactly what you meant. You even earned a chuckle masked as a cough from Rex behind you. Apparently, some of the other guests had had enough of you.

“Did your parents send you here just to mouth off?” One of the members of the technounion, the one you didn’t know, snapped, and the room went silent as you stared at him. You waited a moment longer than what would have been comfortable before laughing directly in the Skakoan’s face, or well, mask considering they wore those ridiculous suits.

Quieting yourself, you looked to the man who had snapped at you, not many were brave enough to openly insult you to your face, so you’d give him that,

“First of all, sorry I didn’t get your name,”

“It’s-“ He started but you just kept going.

“No, no, I didn’t ask it doesn’t matter, my parents didn’t send me. Since our senator is still recovering from an assassination attempt,” you paused again to flash a seemingly meaningless look at the Neimodian beside Dodd who flinched, before continuing, “Out of all my siblings and all the royal officials, I was appointed to come here, no, not to mouth off, you’re right, but to represent my planet’s wellbeing and interests. But mouthing off to people who give me dumb proposals sure is a bonus.”

The Skakoan stuttered for a moment before Lott Dodd drew your attention back to him, raising his voice and slapping a hand against the table, this caused Captain Rex to shoot his hand towards the holstered blaster on his hip. You simply reach back out of the other guests sight, not stopping until you hand found his armored knee, a silent show to let him go on. And go on he did.

“Princess (Y/L/N). I realize you're young, princess, but I’ll ask you to respect my guests.”

“Representative Dodd.” You mirrored, slapping the table lightly, "I’ll ask you to show me some respect. I have many drawbacks as a person, but my age isn’t one of them so I you insist on taunting me find something better. Furthermore, don’t assume I’m so young and naive to let you bully and trick me into something that will only benefit you.” “The princess is right, the senate won’t be pleased to hear about these contracts. If their economy crashes, the republic would lose its number one weapons and medical supplier.” Padme added before turning to the technounion member, “I’m sure the senate would also want to know what the technounion wants with their Science Division considering almost all their research is for the military. War time makes people paranoid, and I’d hate for anyone to assume anything too terrible”

Tension in the air was thick, and the trade federation was desperate to regain the upper hand. Feeling a storm coming on, you turned back to Rex and beckoned him down to you level.

He obliged as you whispered, “Could you move one of you men where they can get this whole table in the frame and tell them to video record until it’s over? I want to show my advisors exactly what was said and happened here tonight.”

Nodding, he set your plan into action as Lott Dodd tried a new approach, intimidation, “I’m not as radical as some, but I’m sure some in the federation will call for drastic measures if your planet doesn’t wish to compromise with us.”

“I’ve heard how well you compromise.” You challenged, before flicking your eyes around the table. The banking clansmen was listening intently and the Technounion members were glaring at you sharply from behind their goggles. These negotiations, if you could even call them that, were derailing. This time you voice wasn’t a challenge, it was firm, stern, an order. "Since this no longer concerns the rest of you, you may leave.”

The banker was the first to go, his hologram flickering out before your anger could be directed at him, Trev and his parter were next and they filed out with their security droids filing behind them. Padme gave you a look, and you nodded to her assuring her you’d be alright. With one last comforting hand on yours, she got up and gracefully exited but not before throwing one last glare at Dodd. Along the walls most of the droids had dispersed, so you decided to even the playing field. If he wanted to play the intimidation game, you’d play it, but you wanted him to be intimidated by you not your security forces.

Turning to Captain Rex, you loudly announced, “Captain, you and four of your men stay. That should be plenty to escort me back to my quarters when we’re finished. The rest can be dismissed.”

You could tell under his helmet his was not happy with your plan, so quietly you continued, “The trade federation is stupid, but not so stupid as to murder me right here. Besides, there’s maybe 5 droids-“

“6.” He corrected shortly.

“6 droids, you and your men should be more than capable of handling them if it comes to it, which it won’t.”

With a sigh, he carried out your orders and you watched as half the squad filed out before he returned to your side. With that done, you turned back to the three Trade Federation member that sat ten feet across from you.

Currently relaxed in your chair, you gave each of them a once over before adjusting your posture so you sat stick straight, elbows resting on the armrests but hands clasped in your lap, shoulders back and down, chest out, chin up, eyes narrowed. You managed to look down on them despite being ten feet away and a whole foot shorter than all of them. Captain Rex saw the change in your whole demeanor, you went from conversation to looking like a marble statue on a throne in the blink of an eye. He saw it long before he heard it in your voice which wasn’t far behind.

“Now, I sent them out so you could save face. I’ve shown you that kindness, you’re welcome.” Somehow even you voice had an edge to it, slightly lower than you usually spoke and had a certain coldness that he’d never heard from you. “With them gone, please, feel free to openly threaten my people. The propriety and pleasantries will keep us here all night, and I was hoping to enjoy better company this evening.”

Lott Dodd was stricken silent, so the shorter one next to him nodded fervently,

“Of course, your majesty, I’m positive we can wrap this up quickly if you-“

He was interrupted by Dodd snapping back to his senses, “If you agree to our proposals, I’m sure we can work out something for your people.”

“Stop calling them proposals, they are demands. They are ransom demands of my people which you haven’t even taken hostage yet.” You remarked, angry words but an icily calm voice.

“I’m not as radical as some of my fellow Tradesmen, but if you insist on bringing it into the conversation, blockades of planets that don’t meet the requirements in our charters are well within our senatorial rights. If you refuse, your planet can be blockaded and sieged until we work something out.”

“I understand I have two options.” You began.

“Finally, we’re getting somewhere.” The third tradesmen smiled, but you weren’t finished yet.

“First, I could sign this charter right now and by the time I return home, my economy would crash, people would starve, citizens would riot, and then, look at that, we’d have to take a loan from the banking clans to stimulate our economy. This lets my people starve and suffer. Second, I could say no to this ridiculous offer and you think you’ll blockade my planet which will again let my people starve and suffer.”

“I do not think, I know.” Lott nodded, finally speaking some truth. This time you shook your head.

“No, you think. First of all, if you blockaded out planet and kept the Grand Army of the Republic from getting it’s much needed supplies during war time under Marshall law- which renders that funny senatorial right of yours null- they have every legal right take care of you for us.” You paused, forcing a bittersweet tone, “War Times can be trying for all of us.”

“Things work so slow in the senate, that could take months. Your people could be with out food and supplies for months, and when politicians, even royals, fall out of favor, well I sure you remember last weeks dreadful incident.”

He was referring to the assassination attempt, there was a twinge of anxiety when you recalled the night but you pushed it down, “I find, actually, that politicians, even royals, are in most danger when they piss off other politicians. But I’m sure you don’t know anything about that, Representative?”

He cleared his throat, “Of course not, princess, regardless of public opinion, a blockade, even a short one, can do untold damage to a planet’s resources. I’m a humanitarian and I’d hate to see your people suffer- starvation, disease, shelter crises, riots… I hate to see that happen because you wouldn’t sign a treaty with us.”

That was the tipping point, you’d heard and seen enough.

Standing so fast, you tipped over your chair you were quick to cut into the Neimodian, “Even if the military doesn’t come to our aid, if you haven’t noticed every planet you’ve blockaded in the last decade have been crucially underdeveloped weaponry wise. That is not the case of my planet or my people, we will not be afraid to fight back. If you blockade our planet, we will be all too happy to use our ground-to-upper-atmosphere plasma cannons to shoot you out of the sky. So, please, I invite to you blockade my planet, it’ll give me great joy to see you efforts wasted.”

“Secondly, you think I’m so young that I don’t understand the thinly veiled threats on my life? The references to assassins? I’m not a senator, I’m royalty and a threat on my life is considered an act of war. And believe me, my planet will wage a war on the Trade Federate rage and determination, the likes of which, you very well have not seen before.” Words fell from your lips like venom, and though your voice was raised it was a controlled form a shouting that resonated through the whole room, and was honestly much more intimidating than if you were screaming. But you weren’t done yet.

“But, go ahead, threaten me and my life all you want. I simply do not care, but if you threaten my people with suffering like that again,” You stopped, hand falling to the table top and finding its target as your fingers wrapped around the handle of the knife, picking it up and burying it into the polished wood surface, "I will execute you where you stand by my own hand. I don’t relish in the death of others, but unlike others present, I don’t hire assassins, I’ll get my hands dirty for my people. And yes, not only is that a threat, that is, by my family’s name, a promise.”

You paused to take a breath, ready to continue laying into them but Rex placed a a warning hand on your shoulder as if to say, you’ve made your point, stop while you’re ahead. Nodding, though he hadn’t said anything, you observed your audience who were all staring at you in both awe and slight fear. Breathing slightly heavy, you took one long and slow breath.

“Now, you better be grateful I’m the person they chose to send because I’m far more understanding than any of my siblings. They would go ahead and cut all charters with the trade federation right this moment, but since I’m much more forgiving… First thing tomorrow morning, you will get a call from my planet’s chief economist and head financial advisors. With them, you’ll devise a new charter that benefits both sides, and I wouldn’t get too greedy considering how tonight went,” You ordered, eyes narrowing in on Lott Dodd, “Please do remember what I told you tonight, all of it.” With that, you turned naturally (re: purposely dramatically) throwing your cape behind you as you went. Your fury was only punctuated by the wind off your cape hitting the Tradesmen who only watched you stride away cape billowing and soldiers marching behind you. _________

Later, that same evening, you were pacing the length of your quarters while Padme reviewed the video you gotten from one of the troopers, Jesse his name was. You’d long since abandoned the cape, formal dress, hair pieces, tiara, and gotten rid of most of your makeup, leaving you in a lounge dress you deemed fit for company. Afterwards, you dismissed your maids for the night- it’d be a while before you could even think about sleep.

Captain Rex had gone to talk to the general’s about tonight’s events which left you alone with the Nubian Senator, not that you minded. You’d considered her a friend long before these peace talks, considering how close you were in age, she was only a handful of years older than you. Even with her there, you were still going over the earlier events. Even though your parents and advisors had already seen and approved your actions, now that the righteous anger had faded you were left with nervous anxiety.

As the video clip ended, Padme looked over to you (you had paced behind the couch she was on) and tried to assure you, “Some may say that you got a little carried away, but other than that I see nothing wrong with this.”

You only hummed in response as you turned and crossed the room again, “If you’re worried about the senate, the proposals were ridiculous and the trade federation is on thin ice after their Pantoran scandal, so the senate won’t look twice at this.”

This time you nodded as you turned on your heel, but this time, as you strutted past her, she caught you by the wrist and pulled you onto the couch with her. (Part of your head reminded you of how you’d basically put yourself on Rex’s lap to escape Kix’s disinfectant- on that very couch. But you cleared that funny memory before you even got the chance to blush.)

Despite her approval, the approval of every high advisor, and even your own parent’s approval, something still didn’t feel right but you couldn’t find the right word for it.

Fortunately, Padme seemed to sense this and put a comforting hand on top of yours, “I know how you feel. The feeling that you still have more you want to say, the feeling that you said too much, anxiety about the enemies you might have created, anger that they threatened your people’s safety, frustration you couldn’t do more, fear you didn’t do enough. I had the same feeling with the trade federation years ago, and I wish I had the confidence to talk to them like that, then. And if all this gets out and into the media, your people will be proud to see their princess standing up for their rights. You have nothing to worry about.”

Just like that, she put that feeling into words and somehow that made it easier to deal with. With a small smile, you took her hand in yours and gave it a squeeze.

“Thank you, Padme, your friendship means more than you know.” You admitted, she returned the gesture.

“For the look on Dodd’s face, I should be thanking you.” She joked to ease the mood, you remembered every single look on his face, and she was right, worth it. To your surprise, she actually leaned forward and hugged you. Returning the embrace, you relished in the touch, not remembering the last time you’d been hugged like this, it was nice. When she pulled away, she smiled again, “Now, you should get some rest, tomorrow is another mass peace discussion and you can’t walk into that with a tired mind.”

With that, she smiled once more before turning to leave. On her way through the door, she was met by Captain Rex who gave her a quick salute as he carried a small tray in. Once the door slid shut, the captain set the tray down on the table nearest you before plucking off his helmet.

“You didn’t eat much at the dinner before it derailed, so I thought you might be hungry. I asked your maid to find something suitable for you- all I had were ration bars and I’ll barely eat them.” He explained. You weren’t hungry at all, but you still thanked him sweetly for his thoughtfulness as you picked at the plate so it wouldn’t be for nothing. This level of thoughtfulness wasn’t part of his job, you thought to yourself before correcting that line of thought. Instead, you imagined the butterflies in your stomach being fumigated, watching him as he did his routine safety checks.

As if he could feel your eyes on him, he simply asked without turning around, “Something wrong?”

Your eyes immediately fell back to the plate, critically analyzing the color and texture of every piece of fruit in the fancy spread, “No, no, I was just worried about what happened tonight but Padme very helpful.”

“She’s a good woman, especially for a politician.” He nodded, checking the balcony doors. Even though you always encouraged him to speak candidly, sometimes his honesty caught you by surprise. You couldn’t help but laugh at his distaste for politicians, a subject that had come up before.

“Yes, she is. And a good friend.” You sighed, picking at the side salad as you shamelessly continued observing him as he checked your closets next. He was tense, something was definitely bothering him. So this time, it was your turn, “What about you, Rex, something wrong?”

Though it was only for a millisecond, you caught that look of I wish I kept my helmet on and the side glance he threw at it where it sat on corner of your bed. Sans helmet, it was much easier to read his emotions, even though he was fairly good at hiding them. You could see him debating on whether or not he wanted to tell you. And for a moment, you feared you’d upset him- you rarely gave firm orders, maybe he was upset you gave him orders at dinner?

Finally he looked over to you and ended your spiraling thought process, “Brave and Impressive as it was, the next time you wish to shoot off like that, please give me some notice. Further more, please keep in mind that one day you might yell at someone who carries a blaster.”

Oh, there was that honesty again. You felt a little hurt for a second until you caught his eyes, and then you understood his plan. Say something just harsh enough to distract you from what was really wrong. You’d play along, for now.

“Well, I’ll try to keep that in mind the next time someone threaten’s my planet’s security, Captain.” You nodded playfully, abandoning the picked over plate to move to your vanity. Scrubbing off the remainder of the makeup, you watched him move from your closet to the floor to ceiling windows, using the wall panel to close the blinds for the night.

“You know your security is my top priority, (Y/N).” He shot you a glance, half playful, half serious. You relaxed a bit at your name, it made everything less formal and stiff. He seemed to sense this too, so he just continued, “I thought Jesse was going to piss himself when you sassed that banker. We had a closed circuit conversation going during the dinner.”

He explained, and you just smiled taking your hair of of the braid and pulling a brush through it. Through the mirror, you saw his helmet. You’d often wondered about the sound proofing they hand, and now you had your answer.

“Glad I could be of entertainment.” You teased as he disappeared into your bathroom. He emerged shortly afterwards with a small smile.

“Hardcase asked me if you carried a blaster, apparently you seem like ’the type’, whatever that means. He assure me that ’the type’ is a high compliment, apparently Senator Amidala is also ’the type’.” He continued. You always enjoyed hearing him talk about his men, he obviously cared a lot about them, even if they drove him crazy sometimes.

“Well, I think I should know how to fire a blaster before I make a habit of carrying one around.” You thought aloud as you went through the process of putting serums and creams on your skin, a ritual usually reserved for your maids but you were just as capable. Out of your eye sight, Rex cast you a funny look before remembering normal children weren’t brought up learning to assemble, aim, fire, clean, and disassemble every type of firearm the military had access to.

Instead, he offered, “If this place had the facilities, I could teach you.”

You both knew it didn’t, so you just smiled, “Or perhaps, I’ll just try not to get shot.”

“Yes, that works too.” He nodded with a grin, “Well, rooms all clear so you’re free to go to sleep whenever you want to. Unless you need anything else, I need to speak to my men before dismissing them to get some rest.”

He was already walking away by the time you called back to him, “Actually, Rex, before you go, you want to tell me what’s really bothering you?”

He stood wide eyed for a moment before you explained yourself, “Rex, it doesn’t take a Jedi to see that you're tense.”

He stayed silent for a moment longer that you felt comfortable with, so you hid the hurt in your voice with, “Alright, if you really don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. Goodnight, Rex.”

But just as you could read his emotions, he had gotten rather good at finding what you really meant from what you said. He could easily hear the disappointment in your voice, so tried to remedy it with a rushed, “No it’s not that, it’s just that I-“

He paused again, so you turned around to fully face him and prodded him to continue, “You what?”

“I’ve... developed some unprofessional feelings during this assignment… for you. And, please don’t take this as a negative light on my men or the Republic. I would never act on it, or let it interfere with this job. I’m not expecting you to do anything or reciprocate anything,” He paused to look away, “You’ve made it very easy to forget who you are, who I am. Made it easy to forget that even on the impossible chance you reciprocate these feelings, that we could never be anything more than what we are right now. But tonight, seeing you command a room like that, as Brave, and amazing, and stunning as that was to see, it was a painful reminder of every reason why it would never work. So, I didn’t want to tell you because it would only hurt the two of us more. ”

You barely heard the last part over the pounding in your ears, sweaty palms balling up your skirt- he was right, knowing but not being able to act on it, especially hearing it from his lips, hurts worse than wondering. He took your silence as the only answer he need as he turned to leave again.

“I, uh, understand if I’ve offended you or made you uncomfortable. So if you’d rather not see me anymore, I can send someone else to be your personal escort for the remainder of this assignment. Just send a maid to tell me by morning.” He instructed stiffly before the door swooshed open. It took a moment for everything to process, but then, before you could stop yourself, you bolted off after him. Catching him by the wrist, you pulled him back into your quarters. It took a moment to gather your thoughts, but after an awkward pause of you just holding his wrist, you stammered, “That won’t be necessary, Rex, because, these feelings you have, they, uh, don’t bother me because, well, because I’ve felt the same way for a while now.”

For a singular moment, you allowed yourself to forget about your responsibilities. Allowed yourself to think like a normal young woman and be happy you just found out the man you fancied returned you affection, and in that moment that regular young woman threw her arms around his neck and hugged him like her life depended on it. Felt his chin stubble against her face and how his armor poked the softer parts of her body. Slowly, he brought his arms around her waist and held her there, silently enjoying the touch for a long as she would allow herself.

When you pulled away, Rex subconsciously kept a hand on your hip as you looked up to him and pressed one tentative kiss to his cheek- all you dared to do. This time you pulled away and put a bit more distance between you and him and wrapped your arms around yourself to keep from reaching out to him- any closer and you weren’t sure you would say what needed to be said. In the pause, you reminded yourself of every reason you weren’t that regular young woman.

For a moment, you stared at the Captain with sad eyes truly debating if you had to stop yourself. Firmly, you reminded yourself of your responsibilities, but Rex already knew you had made up your mind. Still, he let you speak, knowing it was more for you than for him.

“I’m sorry, but you were right. Even though we share these feelings, nothing can come of it- we both have responsibilities.” At first you tried to keep you voice clear, as if you were addressing the public, but that didn’t work so you switched back to you normal tone, softer and just for him, “Rex, I don’t even want to know the punishment for this, but I don’t want anything bad to happen to you because of me. So, you’re right let's just end this before we both get hurt, and just carry on as we were before, right, Rex?”

You’d never asked for guidance, and Rex considered being selfish, but he knew he couldn’t do that to you. You were asking because you needed him to tell you that you were doing the right thing, and if you needed his strength he’d give it to you.

“Of course, we’ll carry on and get through this just like we have been.” He assured you, which even though you knew it was the right thing, it was the exact opposite of what you wanted to hear. Rex turned to leave after a quiet goodnight and this time you let him.

“I just never thought you‘d be-“ You started with a sad smile, but the door cut you off, Captain Rex never even heard you over the door closing, separated the two of you physically as you had just done metaphorically, you couldn’t stop yourself from finishing though, “the first person I loved.”

You comm unit beeped on your nightstand, Rex’s voice immediately followed, “I’m sorry did you need something, I thought I heard you say something.”

You quickly answered, forcing a nonchalant tone, “No, just talking to myself. Goodnight, Rex.”

“Goodnight, your highness.”

Somehow that stung worse than ending something that never had its chance. But that’s the price of royalty.

#captain rex x reader #knight in white armor

330 notes · View notes

bcbdrums · 3 years

Note

Waterfall!!! And also I appreciate the font!#

You thought I forgot... You thought it would never happen... Well friend, I never delete anything!!! Enjoy waterfalls, and adventure galore.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, @gothicthundra!!!

FFn AO3

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Lost World

Shego pushed her hair out of her face as she gave Drakken a sidelong glance from where she sat piloting the hover-car low over the ocean, rapidly approaching an island—their first sign of land in hours, when their destination should have presented itself early that morning. Drakken's brow was lifted in a furrow as he held the large map out in front of him, the corners flapping in the breeze as he turned it clockwise once, and then again. Shego let out a groan.

"Do you even know where we are?" she asked, licking her lips against the slight chapping that was beginning from the hours in the wind.

Drakken seemed to startle and he brought the map close to his chest, turning an innocent and far too broad grin on her.

"Eh, heh-heh..."

There was a pause as Shego blinked at him before groaning.

"Ugh, fine. You fly, I'll navigate."

"But you said I'm not allowed to fly because the last time we were over islands we—"

"Ugh."

They traded roles, with Drakken handing her the fluttering map as she shifted over one seat so he could take the center in front of the steering column. It wasn't too long after the change that they descended through the remaining cloud layer, and in following the small chain of islands a more promising destination soon came into view—a massive island the size of Iceland.

"All right," Shego said decisively, "Hench said it was near the—"

She was cut off as a shadow suddenly covered them, and they had but a second to look up and then duck before what could only be a living creature swooped in to attack them. As a the hover-car was rocked in the air and a horrendous scraping sound filled her ears, Shego registered a glimpse of brown leathery wings and teeth within a beak.

The sound and shadow gone, Shego lifted her head and whirled around in her seat, hands ablaze and ready to defend them. But their adversary had vanished, presumably up and into the clouds.

"Was that a pteranodon!?" Drakken sputtered, spinning in his seat and leaning over the dash in search of the creature.

"No. They're extinct, dingus," Shego said, her ire misplaced as her heart pounded for fear.

"But it looked just like one!"

"As if we really have a clue what any extinct thing looks like," Shego scoffed, peering over her side of the hover-car. There was no sign of their attacker. "It was probably some kind of condor."

Even as she spoke, their eyes locked together on broad scratches into the back of the hover-car that appeared to have been made with talons. Shego swallowed nervously and rolled her eyes, turning to quickly sit down again.

Drakken was frowning and appeared quite anxious, but he sat back in his seat, Shego hoped noting the logic in her words. She herself realized that the map had been lost when she ducked, and she tapped the control console to hopefully distract Drakken's attention from that fact and the bizarre attack. She had definitely seen skin, not feathers...

As Drakken gripped the controls again, another shadow suddenly covered them, but as they looked up this time and gasped in unison, it wasn't a single creature, but a flock. Distinctly triangular wings with claws at their apex drove the creatures directly toward them, and Shego barely had time to throw her hands over her face before Drakken was clinging to her, and somehow together they fell to the floorboards as the hover-car was scraped, rocked, and spun during what Shego could only call a bird strike. Or in this case, a seemingly-not-extinct pteranodon strike.

It ended with a loss of sound and a gaining of black smoke that billowed up around them as Shego felt her stomach suddenly float. They were falling out of the sky, fast, and Drakken realized it as she did when they gasped again.

"Get off!" she cried, shoving at his arms even as he was scrambling away, both of them reaching for the controls as the craft plummeted.

They ended up both half-seated in the center as they pulled back on the control stick, trying to level the hover-car. But whatever the creatures had done was making it nearly impossible.

"Rrghh! What's wrong!?" Shego shouted over the wind, and after moment of blinking out of his panic, Drakken turned and started looking around at the damage to the craft.

"Nnh! The right engine is out and I think the gyroscope was damaged, among other things!"

"Can you fix it?"

"Not in the air!"

Somehow, the craft was beginning to respond, and as Drakken slid back into the seat and rejoined Shego in pulling on the control stick somehow they started to level out. But they were still rocking violently and Shego finally noted the blaring of alarms from the instruments. The smoke from the flamed-out engine was no longer choking them and they all but fell through the last wispy layer of clouds as they moved too quickly toward the nearest island, upon which trees and cliffs were beginning to gain definition.

"We need a place to land!" Drakken called above the wind.

"If we can do anything but crash I think we should call it good!"

Shego internally felt the grimace that Drakken displayed, and they fell into silence for several minutes as they fought the controls in an effort to bring the craft safely down. The cliffs and trees that came into focus were revealing a tropical paradise, which was in fact the type of location they had been looking for, but whether or not it was even the right island anymore was in question.

"I think we can make that ridge over there," Shego said, risking taking a hand from the stick to gesture to the only visible clearing they could see as the hover-car continued to rapidly descend despite their joined efforts.

"Then what? Nyaaaaahh!"

Shego let out a scream herself as below them, out of the trees emerged a massive barrel-shaped head, a gaping mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, and short limbs that reached for them as they soared past. A deep yet deafening rumble sounded from the giant creature, and whether it was from both their efforts or only one Shego didn't know, but the control stick was yanked violently away from their new adversary and the hover-car started to flip.

Shego grabbed onto one of the restraints just as Drakken grabbed onto her, and as the craft spun wildly beyond any hope of control they fell back to the floorboards in a heap where Shego tried to brace herself inside to keep from being ejected as their usual place of security became a violent ride worse than any rollercoaster she'd ever braved.

She heard Drakken scream her name, but he was still holding onto her so she didn't acknowledge him but with a pointed cry.

"Hold on!" she said and then grit her teeth as the hover-car slammed into things, rocks and trees and who knew what else, until it finally hit ground hard and slid to a stop beneath some cooling shade.

Shego realized she'd closed her eyes and opened them as she tried to calm her breathing and assess her situation. She was bruised, but nothing felt broken, and she felt like she'd been through the worst of the old Team Go training routines that Global Justice had ever designed.

She had a flash of panic as she realized Drakken was a dead weight atop her, and she elbowed him hard as the first instinctive reaction she could muster.

"Owww, Shego!" he complained.

She breathed a sigh of relief. "How badly are you injured?"

"Well thanks to you I have bruised ribs."

Shego rolled her eyes and gave him a gentle shove, and was further relieved as he slowly climbed off of her, wincing but seeming to be in no worse state than she was. She sat up slowly and together they peered at their surroundings.

They were deep in a tropical forest, the trees rising high and cool, lush greenery surrounding them. There was a distant sound of water along with the cries of unfamiliar birds and the buzzing of insects. Shego grimaced and watched Drakken's concentrated frown as he slowly looked around them, probably mentally asking all the questions she was.

Where were they? Were they okay? Could the hover-car be repaired? If not, was there another way off the island?

"Was that a T-Rex?" Shego blurted out before she could help herself.

Drakken blinked down at her. "No. That thing was much...larger."

Shego blinked in surprise as Drakken offered her a hand up, but she took it. She suppressed her groan of pain as she righted herself and then they both climbed out of the hover-car and took a few steps away to truly assess the damage.

Their trustworthy vehicle certainly looked battered beyond repair, with numerous gashes from the talons of the winged creatures they'd encountered and dents and scrapes from the impact of the crash. The right engine had flamed out entirely and was definitely inoperable, and from the look on Drakken's face when Shego glanced at him, there was far more wrong with the craft than the superficial damages.

"I'm guessing we can't fly that out of here?" she asked.

"Nghn... Help me get the hood open," Drakken responded.

After forcing the hood up and feeling the start of a headache from the disapproving scowl on Drakken's face, Shego decided to do some quick scouting.

Looking all around, she could only see trees and lush greenery that seemed to grow thicker in every direction except one. She headed that way, and after cautiously pushing past several trees she thought she recognized she spotted the high ridge they had previously been seeking for landing. She also saw smaller cliffs nearer and others beyond, all covered in the same tropical vegetation. Distantly, she thought she could hear the roar of a waterfall.

She felt her brow knit as she turned back. The new lair they had been heading to—a specialty design and first of its kind from HenchCo, fully equipped with a variety of automated defenses and standard super-villain tech—was supposedly on that island, if they had navigated correctly. But there had been nothing, absolutely nothing in that brochure...about dinosaurs.

As Shego returned to the hover-car where Drakken was bent deep within the engine and grumbling, she wondered if Drakken's map-reading had been that bad or if Hench had pulled one over on them. When she reached the still-smoking vehicle Drakken stood up, wincing in pain as he slammed the hood closed.

"Can you fix it?"

Drakken glared at the craft. "Not here."

"Well...great, just great. Now what?"

Drakken rubbed his neck, wincing again as he cast his eyes over the wreck. He reached down to the dash and pushed a button Shego couldn't clearly see.

"We still have the map... Let's just...go to the lair."

"Uh, we lost the map," Shego admitted.

Drakken's brow twisted and he reached back to the rear of the vehicle. Shego's eyes widened as he pulled the map she'd let go during the first attack, tattered and soot-stained, from the ridiculous tail fin of the center engine. She rolled her eyes.

"Yeah... Maybe the water's turned on at that lair. I could use a shower."

Drakken was turning the map over and then seemed to startle as he took in Shego's words. She watched as he assessed his own appearance, his coat twisted and a bit dirty from the smoke, but not damaged. His hair was unkempt as hers was, and her own suit was a bit dirty. But more notable was the sweltering heat that reached them even beneath the shade of the trees. Sweat had already beaded on her brow and was worse on Drakken's.

As she took the map from him and turned it the right direction, leading them back the way toward where she'd seen the ridge, she wondered if the quest and impulsive purchase of a new lair wasn't a fool's venture to begin with.

-----------------------------------

The grade was at least forty-five degrees, Shego decided, after a mere three minutes into the more difficult part of the hike. They had navigated through thick trees, across a trickle of a stream that Drakken had wanted to follow, but Shego reminded him their new lair was on a cliff, and up a hill densely packed with shrubbery. They had both been slapping insects off of their faces more than once, and Shego was grateful for the suit she wore and even for Drakken's coat, if it meant that much less complaining.

"Shegoooo," he whined.

She rolled her eyes. "What?"

"You said we'd find a break fifteen minutes ago," he said pointedly.

Shego grimaced. The 'hill' they were ascending had turned into a mountain and the incline had grown steeper by the minute. After almost an hour she was ready to acknowledge the need for a break, but there truly was nowhere to stop. However the trees were thinning and the sun was becoming brighter—good for the possibility of a rest stop, but bad for their mildly injured condition.

"Okay, we'll stop once we get through these trees," Shego compromised, adjusting her step to be more towards the light. Unfortunately it meant changing her gait to walk more sideways, and she wondered if Drakken would catch on. "Hey, Dr. D.—"

"Ahhh!"

Shego rolled her eyes and shook her head as Drakken slipped and fell, tumbling several feet before smacking into a tree trunk. Shego winced sympathetically and carefully started toward him.

"You all right?"

Drakken waved away her offer of a hand up as he used the tree for leverage.

"I'm beginning to wonder if Hench wasn't just feeding us a line about this...state-of-the-art lair..."

"You think?" Shego scoffed.

Drakken stumbled past her and began climbing the mountain again. Shego noted the sweat dripping down the side of his face before wiping her own brow as it suddenly began to itch. She followed him in silence, the map useless in their present endeavor since they simply needed to reach the top.

"Shego! Look!"

Drakken had paused and was leaning back against a tree, and when she reached his side she saw what had caused him to grin.

Not a flat area, but a sharp cliff's edge awaited them, rocky and just as thick with trees as the part of the hill they were walking. But more telling was the view beyond, where a thin, sparkling waterfall fell from a higher ridge and down beyond view.

Drakken cast a smile toward Shego as he pushed off the tree and started toward the cliff. She followed quickly, worried he might slip and fall over to a horrible end, but as they reached the edge a few minutes later she saw...while a dangerous fall, it wasn't sheer. The rocky cliff was peppered with vegetation, and it appeared one could climb down if determined. The waterfall emptied into a shimmering blue pool below, looking like something out of a dream.

Beyond the tiny oasis, the larger ridge was in view through the trees, and Shego could hear but not see a thundering waterfall somewhere beyond what the tropical forest concealed. She wondered if they were still heading in the right direction, since the map did indicate a fall near the lair. But the map hadn't said anything about dinosaurs...

As if in reminder, a sudden deep rumble echoed off the cliffs, the sound bouncing over the mountain in menacing waves and seeming to even vibrate Shego's bones. The birds nearby responded in flight, scattering from the trees in zig-zag patterns and revealing their bright, foreign colors for a moment before returning to their havens.

"I'm going for a swim."

Shego did a double-take as Drakken picked his way to the edge of the cliff, looking up and down the smaller ridge for a convenient way down.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm hot, tired, bruised, and smelling a bit ripe. We can take a break here," he said decisively as he climbed a bit further up the edge of the cliff. Shego's breath caught as his foot slipped on loose rock dangerously near the edge, and then she started up after him.

"Dr. D., we're lost, probably trapped, and there's dinosaurs on this island. I don't really think there's time to be getting caught with your shirt off."

Drakken had fairly tripped his way several more feet up the incline, Shego cringing with his every step, and he had apparently found a place he thought suitable and was beginning a climb down the cliff.

"Stop being such a panic-Nancy."

"That's not the phrase, and—"

"You could always join me, you know. You're not exactly smelling like roses this afternoon either."

Shego's jaw dropped in a gasp, and she watched with wide eyes until Drakken had descended out of sight beneath the cliff face. She was so busy processing the insult and the request and trying to understand which had made her face suddenly flushed beyond the heat of the sun, that she forgot she needed to keep an eye on him. When she finally picked her way to the cliff's edge, Drakken had already reached the bottom where dense shrubbery surrounded the pool. Drakken was peeling off his lab coat.

"Dr. D., you realize that there could be parasites or something in that water."

Drakken's gloves were stuck inside his boots along with his socks, and Shego narrowed her eyes at the button-up shirt he was wearing beneath his lab coat...and was beginning to unbutton.

"We don't even know if this is the right island, Shego. If we have to climb this mountain I'd rather be at least mildly comfortable doing so. And I'm fairly certain I lost some skin in the crash."

Shego was about to protest, but Drakken's shirt had come off very quickly and had been tossed atop the lab coat on a bush and she found her mouth had gone dry. The white tank top beneath his shirt was sweat-soaked and showed the definition of his muscles quite well. She was staring at his broad shoulders and the way sweat seemed to glisten on his biceps, when the telltale sound of a buckle being undone suddenly sent her heart racing.

Shego reached blindly for a tree to hold onto as her breath caught when Drakken stepped out of his pants, folding them carelessly and tossing them on the bush, and then he pulled off the tank top. He even removed his hair-tie and sat that atop the pile. When his thumbs hooked beneath the elastic of his boxers, Shego spun around and gripped the tree trunk with both hands, noticing suddenly how heavy her breathing had become.

"Wait! Sh-Shego, you're not peeking are you?"

Shego rolled her eyes before gritting her teeth. It took him until he was naked to think about that? Was he...trying to get her to look at him or something?

"No I'm not," was what she managed, her mouth still dry.

"Good... Oh, Shego..."

Her heart leapt to her throat at the way he moaned her name and she stepped nearer the tree, as if it could protect her somehow.

"What?" she snapped.

"The water is perfect!"

Shego swallowed anxiously and slowly turned around. Drakken was over waist-deep in the water but she could still see far too much pale blue beneath the ripples than was decent. She drew her gaze upward to his face, but at that moment he ducked his whole body beneath the water and swam toward where the tiny waterfall was splashing down softly, the white foam further disrupting the clarity of the water to Shego's relief.

She watched as Drakken stood beneath the fall, tilting his head back and letting the water run over his face and wetting his hair down into a shiny black curtain over the back of his neck. When he reached his arms high under the stream and stretched, Shego's heart began to pound.

Drakken... Drakken was...startlingly attractive.

As if without permission, Shego's eyes drifted down to where the water rippled and obscured the pale blue beneath the surface. Strong legs held him up, and atop them she saw the healthy curve of his rear and...

She looked away again, swallowing the lump in her throat as her eyes stared without focus at the trees. Yes, he was very attractive.

"Shego? This is very refreshing. Are you sure you won't join me?"

Shego let herself slide down the tree trunk to sit. It gave her less of a view of the pool, but she could still just see Drakken from where she had settled in her frustration. He had taken a few steps out from beneath the falls and was peering up at her.

"No thanks," she said, crossing her arms and legs. It was then that she suddenly noted just how itchy her skin was, the sweat even worse for Drakken's antics, and she grabbed up her tangled hair and piled it atop her head in an attempt at some small relief.

The desire to peel out of her own suit and slip beneath the waters was suddenly very strong as she felt the heat under her collar, the way her suit was sticking to her in places, and the way too many of her muscles and joints were aching from both the crash and the prolonged exertion of the climb. But Drakken's seemingly friendly request had her heart pounding and her head racing in confusion. Was he actually expecting her to strip and swim naked with him? Was it some kind of...awkward proposition or come-on, disguised in an innocence he hoped she wouldn't see through?

She couldn't find an answer that made sense, so she let her eyes fall back to where Drakken was still standing next to the small waterfall, rubbing and scratching at his skin with a small grimace on his face. Shego wondered just how banged up he was from the crash and considered again how amazing it was neither of them had come out with worse injuries. After a few minutes of 'showering,' Drakken stepped fully out from beneath the sparkling fall, the sunlight seeming to accentuate his best features both above and below the water, and then he turned to float on his back. Shego's cheeks reddened and she looked away.

"Ah...Shego?" Suddenly his tone was anxious.

"What?" she said tersely, studying the dirt on her boots.

"I think...uhm. Ah... That is. Were you going to join me?"

"No," she said just as curtly, not daring to look down. "Someone's gotta keep an eye out for prehistoric nightmares."

The hesitation in his voice suggested he might have realized his state of indecency, and that the waters were crystal clear rather than the gray-blue that surrounded their usual lair. It allowed her heart to calm just slightly, knowing he hadn't in fact been propositioning her in any way. Although it didn't erase the images she was trying not to picture, the revelation of just how appealing her boss was from head to toe still at the forefront of her mind.

"I, ah...think I'm done actually, if you...wanted to clean up? A-After I get dressed," Drakken added quickly.

The tiniest of smirks curled Shego's lips upwards, knowing Drakken had figured out just what he'd done and he was hopefully now as embarrassed as her. She could make it worse with a quip thanking him for the show, but before the thought could leave her lips another occurred. If she accepted the admittedly tempting offer to slip into the waters, would Drakken then be perched atop the cliff ogling her?

It seemed unlikely, given his present nervousness, but...he was only a man, right? Would he be tempted to watch her? Or perhaps simply notice by mistake...

Of far, far greater concern was the heat rising in her chest and pooling deep in her core, and in fact...that she was leaning towards going down to the waters to see if he would peek at her. And the sudden, unthinkable desire for him to actually do so...

"Shego?"

She startled, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them, letting her hair fall as she stared wide-eyed at Drakken's face suddenly less than ten feet from hers as he had ascended the cliff. He was fully clothed once again, his wet hair pulled back into its usual ponytail.

"What?" she snapped far too harshly, and he recoiled.

"Did you...want to clean up, and I can keep watch?"

Her heart pounded. Her lips parted even as she still mentally tripped over the choice she suddenly found desperately difficult to make, but then...

Another deep rumble, closer than the last, sent birds vacating the trees and this time many of them didn't return, but headed toward the higher ridge. Shego swallowed the lump in her throat and ignored the rising heat in her body as again the sound seemed to shake her to her core.

"I think my turn's gonna have to wait, Doc," she said, pulling herself upright.

Drakken climbed the rest of the way up and over the cliff, and Shego watched him with a wary eye even as she glanced around over the dense trees that were likely hiding unknown horrors.

"So you feel better now, huh? Can't be comfortable to have gotten dressed while wet."

Drakken glanced at her a bit nervously and then after wringing out his hair, resumed the trek ahead of her up the cliff.

"I used my under shirt to dry off. It's better than being itchy," he tossed back over his shoulder as Shego paused to consult the map again.

They still didn't even know if they were on the right island, so she wondered if there was even a point. But the ridge that was hidden beyond the tiny oasis would seem to line up with what they had been told, if the distant sound of a larger waterfall was any indication.

Puzzling over the map and their location helped Shego refocus on their present circumstance, and not the brief show she'd been witness to minutes before. Not to mention Drakken's renewed grumbling as he half-stumbled up the ridge ahead of her. But if she needed a further distraction, it was quick in coming as a few steps later had her nearly crashing into Drakken's back.

"Uh, what's the big—?"

"Hsshh! Shego!" Drakken whispered in a hiss, turning and nearly knocking her down the steep cliff. Their mutual grabbing of each other's arms was her saving grace, and she was about to protest when he suddenly pointed to the top of the cliff which was the source of the thin waterfall. Shego's jaw fell open.

At the top of the cliff was a herd of small creatures, perhaps the size of a retriever dog, but distinctly dinosaur-like in appearance. They looked like sauropod dinosaurs, gray-green and scaly, and they were all moving about the cliff in apparent ease, drinking from the unseen waters above and foraging in the bushes.

Shego swallowed slowly. She was about to make a comment when from somewhere behind the ridge, a massive head rose up into view on an even more massive neck, at least three times the girth of a giraffe's by her estimation. She had no idea where the ground was below the creature, but if the head and neck were any size indication then the thing was over twice the height of a giraffe as well.

"Drakken..." she heard herself choke out, though she wasn't sure why.

"It's...it's a sauroposeidon!" he whispered gleefully. "And her tiny broodlings!"

Shego turned to him with a grimace. "You just made that up."

"I did not!"

A shadow passing overhead caused them to both look up, and the massive silhouette of a pteranodon was clear as it blocked out the sun momentarily, then flying away and down past the cliff that concealed the greater body of the sauropod.

"Okay, I think we're on the wrong island," Shego said, trying to lean out of Drakken's grasp. "Unless DNAmy got here first..." she added in a mutter.

"What?"

Just then, the sauropod raised its head high and it let out a low call. All of the young ones turned and vanished into the bushes and trees, and Shego and Drakken watched as the massive creature seemed to turn before also disappearing beneath the cliff. A foreboding worse than had already been swimming around Shego's mind took over with a pounding in her head and chest.

"Should we be worried about that?"

Before Drakken could answer, the birds in the trees around them all took flight, and they turned just in time to see the massive barrel-shaped head from before with its gaping mouth of teeth moving through the trees on the steep hill they had already traversed. Shego could see more clearly now the gray-brown color of the creature's scaly skin, the life in its amber eyes, and the way it moved with purpose towards them.

"Drakken..."

"Okay, maybe it is a T-Rex," he said through a nervous laugh. "A very, very...very big one."

Not one coherent thought ran through Shego's head except 'run', which was useless as there was absolutely no way they could.

"Run!" Drakken cried, pushing past Shego and moving down the hill and toward the dinosaur.

"What...?"

She didn't have long to wait as Drakken started scrambling down the cliff again and toward the pool. She followed, having no other recourse, and she noted with rising anxiety that the dinosaur was advancing on them with ease.

"It'll probably just get us more easily down here!" she protested as she caught up to him, and together they attempted to push through the dense foliage and move along the perimeter of the pool. Beyond were more trees, and presumably a stream or some other outlet for the waters. Shego knew there must be another cliff just out of sight somewhere, given where the large sauropod had been.

"Well it definitely would have caught us up there!" Drakken retorted.

Shego couldn't argue, and as she glanced behind them to where the sounds of breaking branches and a heavy thudding that were surely the creature's footfalls indicated its continued its pursuit, her eyes widened at how close the animal suddenly seemed.

"Dr. D. it's gaining!" she alerted him, and he paused to glance back with a frown.

Shego moved past him then, escaping some of the thicker shrubbery and wading through a shallow stream that was revealed as the small pool's outlet, her boots sinking into the heavy silt.

"Hey be careful crossing this," Shego cautioned, turning back as she left the less than knee-deep waters.

"I think the Tyrannousaurus is of greater concern, Shego!"

She rolled her eyes and shook her head at him as he stumbled into the waters, still moving forward herself. But then she gasped as suddenly the ground gave way beneath her and yet didn't as her feet and calves were engulfed by a viscous material. Her arms flailed as she fought the momentum trying to send her face to the ground while her feet remained suspended one in front of the other in a run. Managing to stay upright, she looked down at the same time she heard Drakken's strangled cry from behind her.

"Quicksand..." she muttered.

"Don't move!"

Shego twisted her torso to face him.

"You think? Get me out!"

In crossing the stream they had moved beneath some taller trees, which Shego hoped would give a momentary shelter from the pursuing beast. She held stock still, knowing the slightest movement would increase the rate at which she was sinking, and that there was a point coming soon at which there would be no escape.

"How!?" Drakken said, looking around frantically.

The thudding of massive footfalls and the snapping of branches was growing nearer, and Shego felt panic begin to grip her heart as she realized that without movement, she was almost defenseless against the terrible lizard. But would it go for the stationary target, or the moving one?

"Oh, Shego! There's vines!"

Her worried gaze that had come to rest on Drakken lifted to follow where he was pointing upward, well out of reach, to where some vines wound around the trunks and branches of the tall, tropical trees. She grimaced as she realized they were useless, but it was a short-lived thought as at that moment, the dinosaur stepped into view.

Its head was about level with the vines, at least twenty feet off the ground, and its sharp eyes fixed first upon her and then down to the nearer target of Drakken. Shego instinctively tried to move, but that only resulted in her lifted leg sinking further and feeling cemented down. She ignited her hands and fired a massive, glowing blast at the face of the creature.

The dinosaur recoiled, and an unsettling rumble so low in frequency it was scarcely audible shook Shego so violently that she stopped firing and held her hands to her ears, Drakken doing the same even as he stumbled away in attempt to flee the creature. Shego realized the sound had come from the dinosaur, and she grit her teeth and resumed firing, ignoring the painful vibrations in her chest as she sought to defend them against certain death.

To her dismay, the beast only shook its head against the flames and continued forward and in her direction. Her eyes widened at the sight of its gaping maw, every tooth sharp and glistening as it sought to make a meal of her.

"Drakken!" she screamed as she fired blasts into the fearsome animal's open mouth.

It recoiled again against what she hoped was a worse pain, and then out of the corner of her eye she was stunned to see Drakken had also apparently attacked the creature, though merely by slapping and kicking at it repeatedly as he was doing in the glimpse she caught. Whether or not it distracted the beast she didn't know, but the situation took a startling turn as the T-Rex took a foul step and sank deep within the quicksand.

A strangled shout left Shego's throat as the beast's body fell less than ten feet from her in the quagmire, it not being able to maintain balance as she had.

"Drakken!" she screamed again as its head wagged toward her, and she resumed firing to hopefully discourage it.

"Shego, cut these vines!"

Drakken's voice suddenly came from somewhere above, and she blinked in surprise to find he had climbed up onto the tail of the dinosaur after it fell. Drakken was pointing to the vines still out of reach on the higher branches, but before Shego could fully process his request the dinosaur thrashed in attempt to free itself. Drakken was tossed upward by the unexpected action and Shego gasped as he smacked into the trunk of the tree. She fired at the nearest vines to where he'd hit and was surprised again as Drakken had the wherewithal to grab onto not just one, but two of the pieces of loosed vegetation.

One vine slipped from his grasp, but he managed to hold onto the other and get both hands on it as it spun and fell, bringing him down in a spiral toward both Shego and the dinosaur. He cried out incoherently, his eyes wide as he sailed so near the T-Rex's face he could have touched it, but then the length of the vine ran out and he began falling back the way he'd come, still spinning and looking dreadfully out of sorts.

"Shegoooo..." he called helplessly, sounding almost sick. But before Shego could reply Drakken had crashed into the tail of the dinosaur once more and this time he held on.

"What...what are you...?"

Drakken had climbed up on the felled creature's back and was traversing it towards her.

"Tie the vine around you, and...I'll pull you out," he said, stopping his approach near the creature's hips. He was still a good ten feet from Shego, but apparently found it near enough as he hurled the vine toward her. Unfortunately, the dinosaur chose that moment to thrash again, and Shego watched in horror as Drakken was propelled up and back, this time falling hard on the ground beyond her sight somewhere behind the large creature. But she had caught the vine.

"Dr. D.!?" she called even as she began pulling the vine into a make-shift harness, unwilling to reject the one opportunity of escape that had been presented.

As she tied the vine she glanced over to where the horrible beast was likewise trapped, its bright amber eye staring at her with intelligence and menace. Her heart beat faster for the look of threat, and as she finished securing the vine she tore her eyes away from the massive creature and back to the jungle, her gaze darting to and fro searching for blue.

"Dr. D.?"

Silence was the only response. And it was with that uncertainty that for the first time since even before the crash, she felt true fear begin to weave its dark tendrils around her heart.

"Dr. D.!?"

"Hold on!"

Shego craned her neck until she saw Drakken ascending a tree behind the dinosaur. She was confused until she saw that the tree's branches were just as overgrown and entwined with those of the larger wild tree where her vine was anchored. She realized he was trying to reach the vine in attempt to free her, but the other tree would have been impossible to climb.

The dinosaur slowly wagged its head toward Shego, and she noticed that it didn't seem to be sinking any further into the quicksand though its hind legs were completely submerged. She wondered if there was a bottom to the deadly pit she had unwittingly stumbled into, and for the moment hoped not because it might save her from the T-Rex. It had moved its head to within fifteen feet of her, lolling in the quicksand and staring at her with a fierce, calculating glare. She ignited her hands to see if it would see her as a threat, but it only continued to watch her. It reminded her of a wolf sizing up its quarry.

She glanced upward cautiously to where Drakken was crawling along a twisting branch, and she followed the vine with her eyes. It wound around the branch he was on several times, and then seemed to grow from the other. She narrowed her eyes.

"I'll cut it loose," she called up to him, and as soon as he affirmed the decision with his eye contact, she shot a blast up to sever the vine between the two branches. As soon as it fell, end still smoldering, Drakken grabbed it and started unwinding it from the branch while his other arm gripped the limb desperately.

The dinosaur brought its head nearer to Shego, within ten feet, and she leaned away instinctively. Its upper body had sunk somewhat into the quicksand, but perhaps because of the greatness of its surface area it hadn't gone in too deep. The beast appeared to be smiling due to the natural set of its jaw, and Shego grimaced. It would just be her luck, to be gobbled up by a smirking dinosaur.

"Hold onto the vine!" Drakken's voice sounded from above, drawing her focus. She complied, noting how Drakken had wrapped the vine around his waist and one arm. She was concerned he would injure himself, but had no chance to warn him before he suddenly let himself fall from the branch.

The shortened vine caught him quickly where it was still draped over the branch, and she felt the tug as his weight was the force trying to heft her up out of the restrictive quicksand. But it still gripped her legs like a vise despite the slight give she could feel, and the resulting pull of the harness was painful as she took all of Drakken's weight. She glanced at his face which was twisted in pain, his arm clearly being pulled to its limit where he had wrapped the vine around it, and she started trying to move her legs back and forth to create space around the confining substance. At first she only felt herself sink further, but her persistence coupled with attempting to pull herself up on the vine finally resulted in some upward movement.

"It's working!" she called to Drakken, who acknowledged her with a brief look even as he struggled against the restraint he'd put himself in. Shego wondered if his arm wasn't going to end up dislocated, but then she felt an even greater give in the quicksand.

Shego turned her focus almost entirely to escaping, peripherally watching the dinosaur that seemed to be eyeing her now with anger. She wondered if it was intelligent enough to understand that she was going to be free, while it most certainly was going to meet its end. The seemingly growing menace in its eye, mere feet away from her, seemed to imply just that, and it gave her the adrenaline she needed to hasten her escape.

After what felt like forever but was probably just over five minutes, she had fully extracted one leg. The release of the one vise-like grip let Drakken's weight settle even more, and the tug against her other leg was increased and it took even less time to fully free that leg.

She maintained eye contact with the dinosaur as she ascended, Drakken's weight bringing him to the foliage-covered ground where he didn't even bother trying to stand, laying on his back as he tried to extract himself from wrapping of the vine. Shego looked down at her legs, dripping with the thick, wet sand, and despite the sudden trembling of her frame she began pumping her legs powerfully.

As soon as she had enough momentum and before Drakken could unwittingly drop her back into the quicksand, she leapt from the vine and landed next to him, mere feet from the tail of the T-Rex.

Drakken peered up at her, seeming to assess her, while she did the same to him. His arm didn't look dislocated, and he was looking at her in a mxiture of pain and confusion.

"You have quicksand in your hair," was what he finally said as he lay panting on the ground.

Shego rolled her eyes, ignoring her own heaving chest and shaking limbs as she reached down to give him a hand up.

"We should get out of here."

"I don't think it can get out... Shego..." He had let go of her hand after standing, and she turned back to see him staring at the dinosaur in childlike awe. "It's a Tyrannosaurus rex."

"Yeah, and it has no interest in small talk. Let's go."

Drakken acquiesced with only a small frown of dismay, this time following when she grabbed onto his wrist. As they moved with utmost care around the massive wash of quicksand, the dinosaur opened its jaw mere inches and another bone-shaking rumble caused them to stop and cover their ears, the low-frequency vibrations causing even Shego's hair to hurt.

When the sound stopped, Shego grabbed Drakken's wrist again and hastened their departure. As they left the dangerous mire behind and approached what appeared to be a break in the trees for the sun shining through, she paused to look back at the beast one more time. She felt unease as it made eye contact with her again, and she suddenly realized why: it wasn't behaving like a trapped animal. It seemed wholly calm, and was clearly intelligent enough to know it was trapped.

Shego swallowed nervously and decided to put the creature out of her mind as they turned to leave the denser part of the jungle behind. As they approached the sunlight the sound of water grew louder, and it wasn't long before they saw why.

"Whoa..." Shego said as they exited the trees and came upon another cliff, this one sheer and dropping away to another lower plateau. It was there that a massive waterfall poured down over yet another far larger cliff, which gave way to a valley beyond. The tributary that the falls were flowing from ran along the plateau, and as Shego followed its shimmering line further she could see the large sauropod in the distance, having made its wise escape. The plateau extended far, and the fast-flowing waters curved around the other side of the mountain they had been previously ascending. She wondered briefly if there was a spring at the top, or if it was simply snow melt that fed the various falls.

Suddenly her senses were assaulted by the familiar rumble which was the T-Rex's bizarre and unnerving vocalization. She stumbled from the pain it caused, sending vibrations through every fiber of her being, but then she gasped in fear as Drakken's own pained stumbling brought him to the edge of the cliff.

"Drakken!" she shouted, lunging for him in time to grab his shoulders, but not too late to prevent them from both going over the edge. They half-fell, half-slid down the cliff face, knees and elbows bumping painfully against the jagged rock while Shego tried to keep one hand on Drakken and grab for anything to slow their fall with the other. He was apparently doing the same, as suddenly their fall was broken by an impact against thin tree branches, which they then tumbled through until Shego managed to get a strong grip on one of them. Drakken slipped out of her grasp, but she was relieved to see him get his hands on another branch moments later.

They made eye contact through the falling leaves, again assessing one another, and when Shego released the breath she was holding Drakken let out a small whimper. She expected him to complain afterward, but he merely gritted his teeth against obvious pain and turned to start descending the tree.

"You all right?" Shego heard herself say as she moved to follow suit.

"Never better," was Drakken's sarcastic yet flat reply. Shego's only response was to grimace until they were on the ground again, and she looked around to be sure this time it was solid. There was no sign of quicksand, and the plateau was far more open than the higher part of the mountain had been, the trees more sparse and the foliage less dense.

Shego discovered she was still trembling as she started toward the fast-flowing waters of the broad tributary, intending to clean off the quicksand that was somehow spreading from her legs over the rest of her. Drakken was clutching his left arm as she passed him, and he followed quickly.

"Are you okay? Shego?"

"If this is the right island, Hench had better give us our money back," was her reply.

They reached the silty bank and Shego paused, second-guessing the decision as she wondered if the slick ground was going to prove to be another death trap.

"Shego?"

"I'm all right..." she muttered absently, wondering again what they were going to do. The map had most definitely been lost during the last misadventure, before she'd even stumbled into the quicksand.

"Shego!"

She looked down as Drakken's hand was suddenly on her arm, and then she was yanked forward along the bank of the stream. She had no need to protest as looking up she saw his cause for alarm. Less than ten yards away, one of the winged creatures—a pteranodon, if she remembered right—was standing beneath a tree and had begun walking toward them, the claws at the apex of its wings suddenly turning the creature into a quadruped. Standing, the creature was taller than they were. As she was processing this, another movement at the corner of her eye attracted her attention, and what had seemed merely like gray-green rocks suddenly became living forms that she soon recognized as more of the winged creatures.

Drakken stopped running and she nearly crashed into him. Peering over his shoulder she saw he had stopped about ten feet from the edge of the next cliff, next to the massive waterfall. He looked nervously between the waters, the drop off into nothingness, and the advancing pterosaurs. Shego stepped up to the edge and looked down. This was the waterfall she had been hearing, over thirty yards in width and falling what appeared to be nearly two-hundred feet to a broad, sparkling river in the valley below.

Shego looked back up to where the creatures were still advancing.

"I don't suppose there's any chance these ones aren't carnivorous?" she asked.

Drakken took a step back toward the cliff, shaking his head as he frowned in worry. One of the animals spread its wings then, their extended length reaching nearly twenty feet.

"Nrrgh!" Shego groaned in pain, her face twisting as she yanked at her hair in frustration. She noted then the quicksand that Drakken had mentioned earlier, tangling the ends of her dark tresses. She would worry about that if they survived. She turned and grabbed Drakken's face and forced him to look at her.

"What? Shego—"

"Don't flail too much because you need to stay upright. Right before you hit, straighten your legs and press your feet together, point your toes, and press your arms down to your front."

"What? I don't underst— Shegooooo!"

Fearing there was no time to lose, she had simply picked him up as she ran the last few feet and leapt off of the cliff, letting go as soon as they were in free-fall. It had been the right decision, as seconds later a pteranodon passed over their heads, its talons closing on air as it sailed past.

"Don't forget!" Shego called, catching his fearful gaze just before he accelerated past her.

She grimaced and grabbed hold of her hair as it whipped around her, keeping to herself that they would hit the water below at over one hundred miles per hour and that her instructions on how to fall could mean life or excruciatingly painful death. But there was no more time even if she wanted to, as the water was approaching faster than she could process. She pressed her feet together hard as she held her hair in front of her with her arms down, holding her breath at the last second.

Just as being trapped by the quicksand had been like being stuck in cement, entering the water felt like slamming into concrete, and for a moment she almost forgot to hold her breath as pain arrested her every sense. But as time seemed to slow she gradually felt the encompassing wetness, her hair floating away from her body as she had somehow let go of it. As her momentum decreased and she became aware that her limbs, though feeling like jello, were still attached to her, she remembered to move them and started pushing against the water that seemed determined to pull her downward. Then she opened her eyes and started looking for Drakken.

Turning all around she finally saw a dark blue shape amid the lighter blue waters, descending rather than ascending. She mentally cursed as she pushed her pained body toward him, hooking her arms under his without taking too close a look at him as she kicked her aching legs to bring them to the surface. If he was dead, or terribly injured...she couldn't bear to see it.

When finally air hit her face, she gulped in a breath even as Drakken's head lolled onto her shoulder. The spray from the waterfall kept her face from drying and she feared her voice would be lost in its roar, but still she filled her lungs again and fairly shouted.

"Drakken!?"

His closed eyes pinched more tightly shut before sliding open to peer deliriously into hers.

"Shego?"

That was all the response she had time for as her strength was giving out. She turned to look all around them, but the riverbank was at least fifty feet distant or more on both sides. She nearly felt like crying at the effort it would take to swim them both to shore, but then Drakken's hand lifted slightly out of the water and pointed.

"There," he said through a cough, and she looked to where behind the waterfall there was a clear space along with rocks and foliage, and the hint perhaps of a cave. It was far closer than the banks, and so gritting her teeth she held onto Drakken with one arm and began to swim.

After several strokes which brought them nearly to the crash of the falls, she felt resistance and was surprised to find Drakken pulling away from her, beginning to swim on his own power. She watched as he pushed his hair out of his eyes and appeared to be in great pain as he swam with purpose toward the mossy rocks behind the falls. She wasted no time in matching his stroke, and before long they were climbing up to safety side by side, the thick moss providing easy handholds for her shaky grip, and then gratefully she found herself on an almost flat surface.

Having slid her body up to be face down, she leaned up on her elbows to watch as Drakken did the same. They made eye contact in that same way they had been for the last several minutes of chaos, assessing one another, searching for the assurance from the other that everything was okay. Receiving it again, despite all odds, Shego let her strength give way as she fairly dropped her cheek down upon the thick, soft moss that covered the rock. Drakken did the same, holding her gaze even as they both blinked in exhaustion from the ordeal of the fall.

"Shego..." Drakken said quietly.

"Mmh," she fairly grunted in reply.

"If this is in fact...the right island... How should we kill Hench?"

A laugh that sounded more like a cough left her lips in reply, and despite the desperate urge to simply close her eyes and sleep, she lifted her head again to peer around at their surroundings. The mossy rocks gave way to the familiar, lush foliage and the darker rocks of the cliff, eroded away after years of being beaten upon by the waterfall. There was a tall, narrow crevice that could be a cave or merely a trick of the eye. And as she turned to look on either side of the falls, she saw that on one side the cliff rapidly grew steep and more jagged, and was completely impassible. On the other side however, it looked as though they may be able to walk their way out to the opposite bank rather than swim, if they were careful.

A light misty spray from the falls was still hitting them, and Shego slowly rolled to her back and was amazed at the sight that met her eyes. The sun was shining directly on the falls, the thicker parts looking gray but the rest a brilliant white as the cascading water droplets reflected the light. She let herself lay down fully, the pain from impacting the water finally settling in as the shock diminished, and she might have slipped into an exhausted sleep right then if not for a slight tugging she felt at her scalp.

"You still have quicksand in your hair," Drakken said quietly, his gloved fingers pulling at the ends of one thick tress and dirtying with the remnants of the sand and scraping up bits of the giant moss in the process.

Shego withheld a groan as she painfully pushed herself upright. Astonishingly, she didn't think she had any injuries that were easily detectable. No broken bones, at least.

"Are you all right?" she asked Drakken as he continued to be distracted by her hair.

He blinked at her and slowly sat up, grimacing in pain as he did so.

"Something's wrong with my arm," he said, and she noted he all but let the left one lie limp—the one he'd wrapped the vine around.

"Can you move it?" she asked.

He cautiously lifted it and began testing its limits, each movement accompanied by a fresh wince of pain.

"You might have torn something," Shego continued, shifting closer and taking his hand, starting to feel his joints for anything that might be out of place. She entirely missed the startled look on his face while she did so, and for a minute as she felt up his arm, searching for torn muscles or ligaments and anything that might give more pain and an indication of how badly he was hurt, she was unaware of his other hand still trying to clean the quicksand from her hair.

When her hands reached his shoulder he let out a hiss of pain, narrowing his eyes at her for a moment before the look suddenly softened. She was surprised by this, and as he held her gaze she suddenly found her cheeks flushing, though why she did not know. She pushed on his shoulder again to distract him from it, and a distinctive 'ow' left his lips.

"Yes, that's where it's the worst!" he affirmed, leaning back from her slightly.

"You might have torn something, but it's not bad," Shego said. "It would be best to immobilize this arm."

"And just where are we going to find an ACE bandage out here, Shego?"

She rolled her eyes and shifted away, sliding her shaking legs back into the water.

"Same way we got a harness and pulley?" she said.

Drakken half-frowned as he watched her dip her hair into the water and run her fingers through it, removing as much sand as possible. But after a glance around them showed no vines or other suitable binding material nearby, she simply climbed back on the rock and returned to his side. Her legs still felt like rubber beneath her and her body ached, and she wondered how Drakken was managing to sit upright enduring at least the same pain as she was, if not more.

When she was next to him again the fatigue suddenly hit her like a weight, and she looked from beneath heavy eyelids to where he cradled his arm, his wet hair plastered down to his forehead as he looked at his limb worriedly. She was surprised as the emotion was suddenly transferred to her, his brow rising as he looked at her in concern. This time when her face flushed she didn't look away, but merely marveled at how well Drakken had endured everything they had been through. She was frankly surprised that she had survived, let alone her boss.

"Are you cold?" Drakken asked.

Shego realized she was hugging herself and shaking, her muscles tensed. It was probably a combination of shock from all that had occurred, but she was indeed cold.

She nodded to the affirmative as Drakken let out a huge yawn, his teeth chattering when his jaw closed again. The look he gave her then caused her heart to beat harder, though it wasn't any different that she could tell from his prior worry and assessment. But before she could analyze it further he was unbuttoning his sodden lab coat.

"What are you doing?"

Drakken paused. "Did you...want to keep moving?" he asked, appearing a bit dismayed at the prospect.

Shego's brow rose, and knowing that he must be at least as pained and exhausted as she was, it was clear then that a rest was apparently in order. Especially since all danger seemed to have passed. At least for the present.

"Not yet," she said, shaking her head. "Let's...break here for awhile."

She lay down on the moss and watched as Drakken got out of the lab coat, unbuttoning a few buttons of his shirt beneath as well. There was no sign of the tank top he'd worn before, and she wondered if it had been left behind at the pool or was simply shoved into a coat pocket.

As her eyes lingered on his sculpted collarbone and his broad, muscled shoulders revealed through the wet shirt, she almost missed him spreading the coat out over his legs like a blanket, wet though it was. She was surprised then when he moved to spread it over her too.

Her first thought was actually how much warmth the coat suddenly brought, despite being wet. The second was a further flushing of her face and pounding of her heart, which she knew had been encouraged by Drakken's physique being put on display again. But it was hidden again as he settled down on his back on the moss and closed his eyes, pulling the coat up to their shoulders and then holding his injured arm across his chest.

Shego watched him for a moment, but then as rational thought caught up to the emotions that had seemed to rule over her since the hover-car crash, she realized that he was probably just as concerned for her as she was for him. The insecure part of her wanted to cast off his kindness and say she could take care of herself. But the more mature part was eager to accept the small offer of comfort and safety; it was all they had at the moment, after all.

She moved nearer to Drakken on the moss until she was almost touching him, and she caught his suddenly nervous gaze just before she let her eyes slip closed. It would serve him right to be a little uncomfortable, after the show he'd given her earlier...

With her mind racing with images of every moment between the crash and the present, and with her body feeling so heavy that it might simply dissolve, she fell fast asleep.

---------------------

Shego nimbly undid Drakken's shirt buttons with one hand while her other pushed his collar aside. She bent forward to place a soft kiss on his shoulder as her fingers continued to explore his physique. A thrill ran through her as his hands slid into her hair at the back of her head, his fingertips running gently under her jaw to draw her face up toward his. She looked at his lips, smiling softly, and as she leaned forward to meet his kiss her gaze lifted to his eyes, warm, and full of love...

---------------------

Shego woke up. Her racing heart was the first thing she was aware of, and the roar of the waterfall second. Next she realized that somehow, she had moved nearer to Drakken in sleep and was pressed up against his side.

A flash of imagery from her dream caused her to hesitate, but only for a moment before she backed away. Drakken was still sleeping, unmoved from when she had closed her eyes before. She wondered how long she had been out, suspecting only a brief period because her hair and suit were still very damp. Of course, the lab coat retaining heat and thus moisture could have something to do with that.

As images from her dream came back to her again, she stared at Drakken's still face. She thought back to when he had decided to bathe in the pool, unaware of her watching him. That had to be the reason for the dream... Nothing else. She had no other feelings for him, besides...

She blinked at herself as she watched him sleep, wondering at herself. What were her feelings exactly? Protectiveness... She wanted to keep him safe. It was her job, after all. And she supposed there was a sort of caring and friendly regard that had developed over the years. But nothing deeper. Nothing like the lust she'd felt in the dream, or like...that look in his eyes.

She rolled over to face away from Drakken, her face twisting in worry. He didn't...have feelings for her, did he? He couldn't...

And yet despite all the uncertainty and fear the idea brought her, she couldn't deny the warmth trying to seep into her heart at the idea. A sudden, sharp inhale from behind her alerted her to Drakken's waking, and she felt a fluttering in her chest and stomach. She groaned internally before rolling back over to face him again.

He was blinking in confusion, and when she took a deep breath his eyes flashed to hers in fear.

"Dr. D.?" she asked quietly.

His expression calmed and his cheeks colored—from embarrassment, she was sure, nothing more—and then he moved his hand over his injured arm.

"Shego... If this island really is some sort of lost world...we could make a fortune—"

"Whoa, hold it right there Chief," she said, pressing a finger to his lips to silence him. "We are not selling, cloning, mutating, mind-controlling, nothing with these dinosaurs."

"But Shego—"

"Nope. Has the...what, hour and a half at most that we've been here taught you nothing?"

Drakken's face fell. "Fine..." he said, more disappointed than angry. It surprised Shego, especially as she'd been hoping for a tantrum to try to bring more normalcy back to her thoughts.

She was saved then by a gurgle from Drakken's stomach, and she carefully pushed herself upright, every joint and muscle protesting the action.

"You hungry?"

Drakken likewise started to sit up, slower than she had and grimacing with the movement.

"Like there's a Chez Couteaux around here..." he muttered.

Shego rolled her eyes. "We can catch some fish from the river," she said, gesturing broadly.

"Oh."

"After we find some place with more sun so we can dry off," she continued, slowing standing to her feet.

Drakken winced doing the same, and Shego noted how he still held his left arm to his chest as he fumbled with his coat.

"Wait... What about using your belt as a sling?" she suggested.

Drakken blinked back into focus as he peered at her curious.

"My belt?"

"Yeah. Here, I'll do it," she said, reaching for the black belt of his lab coat and pulling it out from the loops. She buckled it and then reached up to put it around his neck. She couldn't help but blush from the closeness, and when she glanced at his face it had colored too. She frowned and looked down to his wrist, carefully looping the belt around it several times until it was elevated and held close to his chest. She then draped his coat over his shoulders so he wouldn't have to fight with it, fastening the collar so he could wear it like a cape, though he slipped his right arm into the sleeve regardless.

Drakken cleared his throat. "Ah... Thank you."

"Just be careful," she said, regretting how harshly the words came out. He hadn't actually done anything... It was her own mind to blame if she was having any confusing thoughts. "Let's look for a place we can start a fire and get dried off."

Drakken nodded his agreement, and Shego took the lead as they picked their way over more moss-covered rocks and others that were simply slick from the surrounding mist. The sun still shone brightly, and it helped in their carefully moving out from behind the thundering fall and back into familiar, lush foliage, birdsong eventually reaching her ears as they moved further and further from the waters.

It occurred to her then that there was no guarantee of safety down in the valley. In fact there would probably be more creatures near the water in the more forgiving terrain. But thus far there were no signs of dangerous animals, and she decided to relax while she had the chance. There was no telling how long the peace would last.

Several minutes later found them in a slightly more arid part of the forest, the shrubbery less dense and the air not so damp. There was no sign of anything she could use as kindling, but she could always cook a fish on a rock if it came to that. She paused and squeezed down the length of her hair, but only a few drops fell from the ends as the sun was doing a good job of drying it.

"All right..." she said, sighing lightly. "Dr. D. if you wanna wait here and maybe look for something to start a fire, I can go— ...What is that?"

Drakken was several paces behind her and trying to hide something under his coat. But with the one arm immobilized he wasn't very successful, and she could see what he held was white and about the size and shape of a melon. He smiled nervously as she narrowed her eyes at him.

"Ah...lunch?"

Shego realized the object in his hands was in fact...a massive egg. Which could only mean one thing... She rubbed her temples as the ache in her head grew.

"Where did you get it? Wh-When did you get it?" she fairly stuttered, in awe of the man's ability to not only get into trouble but also to find a loophole in the litany she'd given him earlier.

"Over there by that boulder," Drakken said, nodding back to a massive, gray-lavender rock partly concealed by the shrubs.

At that moment, the boulder seemed to rise several inches and then sink down again, the process taking several seconds. Shego and Drakken had both frozen upon seeing the action, and then Shego tiptoed next to Drakken who was chewing his lip nervously.

"That's...not a boulder, eh-heh...is it..." Drakken muttered.

"No, it's a big mama dinosaur!" Shego hissed. "Put...the egg...back!"

Drakken favored her with sad, pleading eyes, but she only frowned at him in response. He grimaced and started tiptoeing toward the new potential threat. The creature let out what could only be a snore, and Shego held her breath as Drakken crept nearer.

Suddenly, the 'boulder' rose again, and Drakken scurried quickly back to Shego's side where together they slowly began backing away. The dinosaur took shape and Shego recognized it as a triceratops, at least ten feet tall and twice as long.

She expected the beast with its impressive frill and threatening horns to turn on them, but it only gave them a momentary glance before trotting away at a brisk pace.

Shego felt tension drain from her frame as she relaxed and Drakken did the same next to her, both heaving sighs of relief.

"You would steal from the one dinosaur on this island that isn't carnivorous... Still gotta put the egg back."

"But...but Shego—"

"Nope, I know you don't actually want to eat it. And an angry mama dinosaur is the last thing we need right now."

Drakken looked like a hurt child as he started toward where the triceratops had rested. But at that moment, a familiar bone-shaking rumble sounded through the valley. Shego held her ears as Drakken cried out in pain, clutching tightly to the large egg.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Shego shouted. When the sound stopped and the pain diminished, she ran forward and yanked on Drakken's shoulder, nearly causing him to trip as she started running after the triceratops.

"Shego, why are we...? Oh, yes, good plan!" he said, smiling in approval as they ran through the thinning forest.

"Makes sense to follow the natives. That...long-necked one knew how to escape, maybe this one will too!" she said, voicing the thought that Drakken had already figured out.

They moved through the thinning trees until the valley opened up into a vast grassy field. They stopped short at not only the sight of the triceratops, but also more sauropods and other dinosaurs of varying species and sizes, some in herds, others alone or in small groups.

Shego and Drakken turned to look at each other simultaneously.

"Wrong island?"

"Kill Hench anyway?"

They nodded to each other just before another low rumble caused them to cringe, and they continued forward into the field having nowhere else to go. Shego hoped the T-Rex would have more of an appetite for familiar saurian prey than new.

They had passed the triceratops and noted other smaller dinosaurs fleeing, some heading away into the trees and others looking to shelter with the larger specimens. Shego paused as she realized, there was no shelter in the field, and she doubted a dinosaur would recognize them as friend.

A sound between a snort and a roar caused her to turn around, and she gasped in shock as a T-Rex burst through the treeline out into the field. Whether it was the one that had threatened them before or not, she didn't know, but it was running faster than she and Drakken were and if it chose them as its target, there would be no escape.

To her surprise, the triceratops then turned around to face the advancing predator, sounding its annoyed snort again in challenge.

"Doc, look!" she called, and he stopped running and turned in confusion, his brow rising as he saw what appeared to be about to happen.

Shego watched as Drakken's face morphed from fear to shock and then unbridled joy. Her own brow furrowed in confusion until she realized...the scene unfolding was probably a childhood dream come true. Two prehistoric creatures, inexplicably living, and about to engage in epic combat.

"Is this all just a dream...?" she mused to herself as she turned back, just in time to see the T-Rex commence its attack.

The beast opened its mighty jaws and lunged down toward the triceratops's neck. The slightly smaller dinosaur turned, its frill and one horn meeting the attack and sending the T-Rex recoiling in pain. The triceratops advanced then, thrusting forward with its long horns. The larger bipedal dinosaur stepped aside with shocking agility and went again for the neck of the shorter one.

Shego was just as transfixed by the scene as Drakken, but as a dinosaur that looked like an oversized ostrich suddenly ran in front of them, she realized they were missing their opportunity for escape.

"Dr. D., I hate to interrupt this childhood fantasy, but we really need to go."

He made a sound of protest as he looked at her in dismay, still clutching the massive egg to his chest.

"Look, I know this is a unique situation, but we're really exposed out here."

She watched as Drakken's expression became torn between the wisdom of what she had said, and watching what was surely a once in a lifetime display.

"Nyeh... Nnh, nragh!" he cried out, his face twisting in frustration, and Shego breathed a small sigh of relief at his acquiescence.

They glanced around together and then made a broad circle around the battling dinosaurs, heading back toward the treeline and the high cliffs beyond. Everywhere else around them was too distant, and too uncovered. And besides...there was far more prey for the T-Rex in the field.

When they reached the treeline, panting for breath, they paused to watch the fight once more. The triceratops still seemed to be an equal match to the predator, thrusting its horns toward the T-Rex's belly as the larger creature continued to try to gain a fatal bite.

"I wish we'd brought the camera," Drakken grumbled.

"These probably aren't the last dinosaurs we're going to see today. Come on."

They pushed back into the foliage, leaving the valley with its herds and the fierce battle of the legendary beasts behind them.

The next several minutes were a silent journey, following the sound of water again until it led them right back to where they'd left, albeit from a different angle. They found the side of the foliage-covered cliff, beautiful and entirely impassible, and then moved along its rocky base back around to the waterfall which had proven their one place of respite. Shego was considering the cave-like crevice they had seen, wondering if it too would hold terrors or if it would be one place on the island devoid of prehistoric creatures come to life.

Drakken either guessed her thoughts or trusted her without question, because he didn't say a word when they arrived back at the river and she began leading them back across slippery and precarious moss-covered rocks. Her hair hadn't fully dried yet, but she tried to keep them nearer the cliff wall to avoid the spray and the mist, sure that Drakken in his damp layers was far more uncomfortable than she was.

When they arrived back at the flatter place where they had had a brief nap, Shego paused to look at the waterfall. The sun was still shining through them, the waters cascading down like waves of liquid lace, taking form and then vanishing, the sequence restarting and never ending as the waters emerged from the top and joined the river at the bottom.

She grimaced, the sight suddenly unsettling in that it wasn't something tangible she could exert any will over, just like waves across the ocean.

"Shego?"

She startled slightly hearing Drakken's voice right at her ear, and she turned to see him still holding the melon-sized egg, and then looked up to his concerned face. He backed off slightly when she raised her brow in question.

"Ah...were you...thinking we should try the cave?"

"Yeah," she said, hurrying to move past him and climb higher up the rocks to where the crevice began.

Was she just imagining that Drakken seemed softer and more attentive toward her, or was that a result of all they had been through on the island? Or was he perhaps always that way, and she was only just noticing it now?

The thoughts sent her heart racing again, and she put them aside as she hefted herself up the final rock and onto the ledge where the crevice began. She turned, realizing Drakken would need help, and reached down to take the egg. He looked reluctant before handing it off to her.

"Don't break it!" he cautioned fearfully.

"Not yet. You said we could eat it, well...we're going to."

Drakken looked dismayed as he used his one arm to raise himself up, Shego tugging at his coat with one hand to provide some aid, and she shook her head at his expression.

"No taking dinosaur eggs home to experiment on, either. If we're not eating this thing, then stop carrying it around."

"Ngh... Fine," Drakken said sadly, again surprising Shego with his lack of fire and protest.

Her brow furrowed as she handed the egg back to him and then turned to examine the crevice. It ran at least fifty feet up the side of the cliff beneath the fall, narrowing at the top, and was scarcely six feet wide at the bottom. But Shego could see now, it ran deep under the mountain and there was light coming in from somewhere else, which meant it at least had a 'window' if not another outlet.

"Let's go," she said, striding forward confidently.

Drakken followed close behind, the damp rock beneath their feet soon becoming dry, and no less than twenty paces in did the path broaden and two paths diverged. One grew more wide and seemed to get darker the further it went. The other seemed to be the source of the other light and was narrower. Shego looked over her shoulder at Drakken, who was glancing between the two paths.

"I...would prefer light right now, if...that's an option," he said.

Shego silently agreed and turned to go down the narrower path where light still shone on the ground. The ceiling above grew lower and soon the path was a mere crack, and Shego paused wondering if it was worth continuing and if it would open up at all. But distantly...she could still see light. Drakken made no objection when she turned sideways to continue squeezing through the narrowing passage, and she noted Drakken struggling to keep the large egg from bumping on the walls as he did the same.

"Oh... Whoa," Shego finally said as their efforts were rewarded and the tiny passage suddenly opened into a vast cavern. But it wasn't the space, but the cavern's contents that caught her attention.

"Amethyst?" Drakken said as he stumbled out to stand next to her, the both of them gaping at their surroundings.

A hole in the ceiling was providing the light, and the walls of the cave were entirely covered in sparkling crystal formations. Even parts of the floor were adorned with the majestic-looking stones, and Shego wondered if it was safe to walk on. She had never seen anything like it, and glancing at Drakken's face she was sure he hadn't either.

"Well..." she finally said, swallowing dryly. She took a few steps forward and then sat down on some of the normal stone in the cave. "Want to crack that baby open?"

Drakken blinked back into focus and sat down, his expression morphing into a pout. He leaned forward awkwardly to set the egg down, his left arm still restricted slightly due to its partial-immobilization, and the large egg bobbed slightly on the stone ground before coming to rest between them. Shego lit her hands as she stared at it.

"I guess roasted in the shell would be easiest?"

Drakken grumbled something incoherent, twisting uncomfortably on the ground until he finally reached up to unfasten his collar and then shake the coat off of his right arm. Shego noted that his shirt and pants were still quite damp, and she wondered if since there was an outlet in the ceiling, an actual fire wouldn't be useful.

"I could go grab some firewood?" she suggested. Drakken looked confused, so she continued. "You could dry off a bit more."

"Nngh...all right," he agreed, and Shego rose again, taking a moment to look around at the sparkling purple of the cave before making her way back out through the narrow passageway.

She glanced back to see Drakken gather up the egg into his lap, and she shook her head. She could understand his feelings about the situation... Granted, harnessing dinosaurs for evil would be pretty impressive. But knowing Drakken, ultimately he would likely get bored with the endeavor and simply want one as a pet.

As she moved back out of the passageway and toward the waterfall, she considered the prospect. Where would they even keep a pet dinosaur? And the egg Drakken had taken, from the triceratops... If the size of the mother was any indication there was most definitely no room for a full-grown specimen at the Caribbean. Not to mention, it probably needed food sources that could only be found on that island.

No, a pet dinosaur was simply impossible. Unless...

Shego let the roar of the waterfall mix with her thoughts, the sensation somehow calming as she considered their entrapment. If Jack Hench had really sold them a lair on a lost world, there were a lot of questions to be answered. How had he managed to build it? Why hadn't he mentioned the dinosaurs? If they were truly on the right island, as the map had seemed to indicate, was all of it nothing more than...a plot by Hench to get rid of them? They had ripped him off plenty of times over the years, one time even destroying his entire inventory via accidental explosion when they stole a neutronic laser.

Shego had gathered a number of branches in her arms as she mused over the possibilities, but nearly all were still green. Not that she couldn't ignite them, but Drakken would certainly find the heat uncomfortable. The thought struck her then, that if it was too hot he might take off his shirt.

Her face flushed and she almost stumbled over a mossy rock at the idea. She really, really needed to get those thoughts out of her mind. And yet, the image of a broad blue chest and muscled arms was suddenly filling her vision.

She groaned at herself and shook her head in attempt to banish the thought. So her boss had an attractive figure, so what? That fact wasn't about to change anything between them, and she certainly didn't want it to, so it was best to forget all she'd seen before.

She awkwardly shoved her way back through the passageway, the branches and twigs in her arms making the task more difficult, but finally she managed to push through and returned to the sparkling purple cavern. She was surprised upon entering to find the dinosaur egg sitting alone atop Drakken's open lab coat, the man himself standing next to one of the walls and apparently just staring.

"It's gonna get hot in here," Shego said by way of greeting.

Drakken jumped and whirled around, and a tiny smirk curled at the corners of Shego's mouth. Even with all the noise she'd made in returning, she had still been able to startle him. It was a welcome familiarity, and she focused on that to be rid of her other thoughts as she began arranging the branches and sticks into a pile.

"Oh. Ah...Shego, would you...like a crystal?"

Shego looked up to where Drakken was still standing next to the wall, and holding his right hand behind his back.

"I'm guessing you already got one somehow?"

Drakken then revealed a tiny laser cutter in his left hand, and Shego rolled her eyes as her smirk grew. He stepped back over and sat down carefully, next to her rather than across from what would be the fire, and then he opened his right hand to reveal a beautiful, sparkling amethyst.

Shego felt her face grow inexplicably warm again, and she plucked the golf-ball sized crystal from his palm and pretended to study it in hopes he wouldn't notice the pink in her cheeks.

"This is another volcanic island," he commented as he pocketed the laser cutter and shifted to be more comfortable.

Shego grimaced. "I think we are in the right place... But I'm thinking Hench just sent us here to get rid of us."

Drakken glowered. "Should leave him stranded here..."

Shego leaned back, grinning pleasantly at the idea. "Sounds like a plan. All right, how about lunch?"

Drakken's face fell, but he leaned over and rolled the egg toward him from where he'd left it on his coat.

"So...just set it in the sticks and we can roast it, I guess," Shego commented.

Drakken moved to do just that, but then he gasped and held the egg out in front of him, almost dropping it before he managed to set it on the ground where it rolled until hitting the sticks.

"What?" Shego asked.

"It moved!"

Her brow furrowed. "Eggs don't... Oh...oh no."

A small cracking sound was heard, and Shego stared in horror while Drakken gasped in glee as a small hole appeared in the egg, something gray starting to poke through. Drakken reached down and began trying to pry away pieces of the shell.

"Ungh... Dr. D., you know it probably needs to do that itself to...build strength or something, I dunno..."

Drakken gasped again as he pulled his hand away.

"You're right! Ohh I wonder how long it will take!"

Shego grimaced as she idly looked at the large amethyst still sitting on her palm.

"Look, Dr. D.... I already thought about this. We can't have a pet triceratops. Or any kind of pet dinosaur. It wouldn't fit back at the lair, and it probably needs some food that can only be found on this island."

Drakken turned to her with expectant eyes. "But if we find the lair that Hench sold us here..."

"I don't think there is a lair. And if there was, there's no way we're living on an island filled with dinosaurs."

"But...but Shego—"

"No buts. It's not happening."

Drakken's frame diminished as he sighed, and he turned to watch the egg thoughtfully as he began scratching at his shoulder. Shego considered the pangs in her stomach and considered that they would still need food, especially since it looked as though they would be there for awhile.

"I can still catch us some fish. Want me to start the fire now?"

Drakken considered and then nodded, picking up the egg and moving it several feet away, near part of the amethyst-adorned ground. He then scooted back himself as Shego shot a continuous blast at the stick pile, the heat rising instantly in the cave as it took quite a bit to ignite the green wood.

Shego stood once she was sure the sticks were ablaze and shook her hair out, eager to finish drying off herself. Drakken's scratching had reminded her of her own discomfort, and she wondered if it would be out of place to take a purposeful dip in the river and let her suit dry next to the fire.

She opened her mouth to suggest the idea and ask if she could borrow Drakken's coat for modesty, when her words caught in her throat at the sight of him peeling out of his shirt. But he got stuck due to the belt wrapped around his wrist.

"Ah, Shego could you help me with this?"

Her heart was pounding.

"Help yourself," she answered, a slight edge to her voice. As her eyes lingered on his bare shoulder while he carefully extracted his left arm from the makeshift sling, she thought again about wanting to clean up further... And then her mind recalled the image of Drakken under the waterfall, this time adding herself to the picture.

She closed her eyes and shook her head, the heat she was feeling having nothing to do with the fire she had built. She sat down again, this time on the opposite side of the fire from Drakken.

The flicker of the flames was creating a fascinating effect on the rich purple crystals of the cave, making them shimmer like waves, some slow and others quick and fleeting, matching the chaos of the tiny blaze. It was distractingly beautiful, and she forced herself to focus on that as it became clear to her that her imagination couldn't be trusted for even a second.

"Shego! It's hatching!"

She looked down to where an impressive amount of progress had been made, and she could see a broad curved beak and scales within the much larger hole in the egg. Its sides were also cracking as the creature seemingly pushed against its entrapment, and she let herself slip into the distraction of watching the process, the sounds of the fire and the shimmering surroundings of the cave becoming a mere backdrop to the magic occurring in front of her.

It could have been minutes or even half an hour, but Shego didn't care as long as it provided distraction. Drakken had all but laid down as he stared at the egg, a broad grin on his face as he occasionally muttered encouragements to the creature within. And then finally, the shell gave way to reveal the baby dinosaur.

Drakken apparently couldn't resist any longer and began pulling pieces of the shell away as the baby triceratops, about the size of a chihuahua, rolled over and wobbled up to its feet. It fairly matched the cave, being gray-lavender in color, and it blinked between Shego and Drakken and let out a cry that sounded something like the moo of a calf.

Shego straightened up as her brow furrowed. An internal war began as she looked between the creature and Drakken's excited face, and it was with an annoyed growl that she rapidly came to a decision.

"Oh, look Shego! It's so cute! I'm going to name her...Crystal, after the cave where she was born," he said happily.

Shego's brows knit together.

"How do you know it's a girl?"

"Well—"

"Never-mind. Dr. D.... We have to take it back to its mother."

Drakken looked devastated. "But...but Shego, can't we—"

"Doc... Have you ever seen a baby...anything, born before? What's the first thing they do?"

The little dinosaur let out another cry, louder than the first, and Drakken frowned as it stumbled across the floor and continued looking around.

"They eat," Shego finished the thought. "If you want...little Crystal to survive, she has to go back."

"We don't even know if the mother survived..." Drakken protested faintly.

"Yeah, but this thing'll still stand a better chance out there than it will in here with us."

Drakken frowned, but sighed with the logic of her explanation. As he started to re-dress she looked down to the amethyst crystal she still held and suddenly wondered...why had he given it to her?

Finding no suitable answer, or at least none she wanted to entertain as her cheeks flushed again, she put the gem away in her leg pouch and then hesitantly made to pick up the little dinosaur. Drakken wouldn't be able to manage a squirming creature with his injured arm, and he watched in surprise as she grabbed it and held it away as it began wiggling violently in protest.

"Wild animals don't make good pets..." she muttered as Drakken shrugged into his coat, putting both arms through the sleeves but leaving it open as he put his arm back in the makeshift belt-sling himself.

"Sometimes..." he said sadly.

"Well not this time. Leave the fire, this is still probably the safest place to spend the night."

"Spend the night?" Drakken said as he started leading the way out of the cave.

"Well yeah, unless you have some brilliant escape plan?"

The conversation paused until they had traversed the more difficult part of the passage, and then Drakken glanced at her as they began moving back toward the waterfall.

"It shouldn't take a full day for the henchmen to reach the wreckage. It only took us about...six hours, to get here from the lair?"

"Wait...what are you saying? Why would the henchmen come looking for us?"

Shego very nearly dropped the baby triceratops as it renewed its struggling, and Shego could tell by the look on Drakken's face that he wanted to hold it. She would have gladly handed it over if not for the risk of further injuring his arm.

"They'll just follow the hover-car's tracking device."

"But why? How would they know we need help?"

"Because I activated the distress signal," Drakken said plainly as he began moving over the moss-covered rocks behind the waterfall.

Shego's eyes widened and she felt anger begin to boil in her veins.

"You...you what!?" Shego cried, almost dropping the baby dinosaur in her rage.

Drakken nearly slipped on a rock as he looked at her in confusion and fear.

"Yes, before we left to look for the new lair..."

It was the sheer bewilderment in his expression that caused Shego's fury to diminish as she realized...it made sense. They were supposedly in search of a new lair, and wasting time standing around a pile of wreckage for hours when there was a promise of modern comforts made no sense. It had just been their bad luck that they had most likely been crossed by Hench, and of course Drakken would have activated the distress signal.

Shego scoffed and stared down at the dinosaur, its fearful wiggling continuing while it also appeared to briefly take in their surroundings every few seconds. The small creature reminded her of all the pain and extremely near-death experiences they had been through in their hours on the island, not that she really needed reminding; her body still ached from the death-defying cliff jump.

"Okay, after we get this thing back, we're going to the hover-car. If there is a lair on this island, we're not finding it today, and I wouldn't want to even if there is."

Drakken's face fell again, but she knew he would eventually see it her way. A lost world with all of its unknowns was not the place for a super-villain's lair...

At least, not until it was better understood.

She considered this for the first time as she followed Drakken back through the trees toward where they had first encountered the mother triceratops. Yes, the island was rife with danger... But Drakken said it was volcanic, and that was a plus. They could easily build a defensible lair on an active volcano; they'd done so before, after all. It was doubtful that dinosaurs would be a problem in that harsh an environment, and the fearsome creatures would provide a natural defense against any intruders. Not to mention the island's other hazards, quicksand and giant cliffs, and who could know what else...

Shego's thoughts were broken as Drakken stopped short, and she looked beyond him to see that the mother triceratops was about twenty yards distant, rooting at the ground with her snout and seeming either ill or confused as she turned in large circles and moved back and forth over the same spot of ground. It was clearly looking for its egg.

Shego looked at the slightly-calmer creature she held, and then to Drakken's sad but awed face.

"You...want to pet her before we let her go?"

Drakken startled and looked down at the baby dinosaur. He hesitated, and then reverently ran his fingers over its frill. As he did so Shego looked back to the massive creature in the trees ahead of them. She noted the lines of red blood over its frill and back, indicating where the T-Rex had gotten a few bites in. She wondered if the battle had ended in a stalemate, or a triceratops victory, but she wasn't about to voice the thought and give Drakken the idea of going further into the valley to find out.

She looked down to where Drakken was still petting the small creature, which had amazingly stilled in her hands. Its curious eyes were teal in shade, she noticed for the first time, and its gray scales definitely had a lavender tinge. It really was...cute, with its small nubs of horns and tail that was swinging idly as Drakken gently felt over the creature's skin.

Shego looked up at his face. He was in pure awe of the creature, and there was longing in his eyes as he even ran his gloved hand over the sole of its small foot, seeming to try to memorize everything about it. Shego was tempted to sigh and hurry him along, but...she decided to let him have the moment. It was surely one that would never come again.

"All right," Drakken said with a sigh, his eyes sad as he retracted his hand.

Shego set the baby triceratops down and faced it the right direction, giving it a nudge to get it to start stumbling forward. It let out another of its moo-ing cries, and the mother triceratops immediately looked up and started in their direction.

Shego began backing away, setting a hand on Drakken's shoulder to make him move with her. But the flash of fear she'd felt was apparently unnecessary, as the hatchling and its mother were united in moments, the large dinosaur's attention turning solely to its baby. But then, it lifted its head again and looked directly at them.

Shego held her breath, seeing the same intelligence in the creature's eyes as she'd seen in the T-Rex's before. But it apparently bore them no ill will as after regarding them for a moment it turned to head deeper into the forest, its small baby running at its feet. She sighed in relief, and turned to see Drakken looking almost as if he would cry.

"Come on, you big marshmallow, let's go."

"It was a baby triceratops, Shego! A baby triceratops! Do you understand what this means? The implications of this very island?"

"No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me."

As Shego walked back through the trees toward the river, Drakken began going on about theories being proven and dis-proven, and how the scientific community would be forever changed by the discoveries that could be made on the island. She couldn't help but smile at his excitement, but he stopped suddenly when they broke through the trees and saw the waterfall in its full glory.

The sun had begun to set, making the falls look like liquid fire as they thundered over the cliff and down to the blue of the river below. And then near the top of the fall, a ripple of purple shone through and broke the brilliant gold, and Shego realized that somehow the amethyst cave or perhaps another was also catching the sunlight.

Drakken seemed transfixed by the sight, and Shego's smile grew. It had been an adventure...but one she knew she would remember fondly.

"So..." she began, "let's say we strand Hench here as punishment, and then...in return for getting him out safely, he finances our new lair here."

Drakken did a double-take, his entire form brightening as he fully comprehended her words.

"You mean it? We can have a lair here?"

"Long as it's in a volcano."

Drakken let out a gleeful cackle and raised both fists triumphantly, recoiling slightly as pain arrested his left arm. But as they began walking along the river and in the direction of the hover-car, she knew he would be fine as his prattle about scientific discoveries changed to that of how everyone would soon fear 'Dr. Drakken, prehistoric menace.'

Shego grinned as she listened to his ideas. A T-Rex with a mounted laser cannon did sound like quite the idea.

-----------------------------------

Drakken ran his hands back over his head beneath the thin, sparkling falls, the water shimmering over his blue skin. And then he reached forward to set his hands on Shego's bare shoulders as she stepped under the fall to meet him, his fingers beginning to trail downward sending a thrill to her heart...

-----------------------------------

"Hey Boss? Miss Shego?"

Shego startled awake and sat up, hands ablaze. The startled henchmen recoiled with cries of fear, and the vision in Shego's mind started melting away as she took in her surroundings.

She was seated in the ruined hover-car, apparently snuggled up against Drakken's side where he was still asleep. In front of them stood three henchmen and not too far beyond, two more hover-cars sat parked. The sky around them indicated that twilight had fallen.

Shego's face flushed with embarrassment and she shoved Drakken hard.

"Wake up, you blue dolt. We're rescued."

Drakken let out an annoyed grunt as he was startled awake and likewise looked around them to gain his bearings. Shego moved away from his side and climbed out of the wreckage.

"Hey Boss, can we get going? Schwartz said that he saw a velociraptor, and even though I know dinosaurs are extinct I definitely saw something prowling around in the trees."

Drakken's confusion turned into a smirk as he climbed out of the hover-car and started toward one of the two rescue craft.

"Oh ye of little faith," he said, wagging a finger at the frightened trio. "While we haven't seen velociraptors, there are a great many species of dinosaurs on this island, where we shall be setting up our new lair inside of a month if all goes well. You know, there is a long-held belief that dinosaurs are in fact no more than the dragons of legend and ancient history..."

"Dinosaurs?"

"New lair?"

"But first," Shego interjected as she followed after Drakken, grateful for the distraction, "go kidnap Jack Hench and bring him back to the lair."

"R-Right away, Ma'am."

The three henchmen scurried toward the other waiting hover-car as Shego and Drakken stepped into theirs, Drakken pausing and looking at Shego in confusion.

"You don't want to get him yourself?"

Shego's face flushed, and she hoped the dim light would hide it.

"We can torture him later. I had something else on my mind..."

"Oh... What is it?" Drakken asked as he settled in behind the controls.

Shego made a show of yawning as she sat down. "I'm still tired. Can you set the auto-pilot?"

Drakken looked at her in confusion, but complied with the request as Shego settled in and with a race of her heart moved nearer to his side. He looked at her again in surprise, and she ignored the look as she reached down to her leg pouch to pull out the amethyst he'd given her. It looked different in the twilight, but no less magnificent as she turned it over in her hands.

"Thanks," she said, indicating the gem, and then yawned again before boldly leaning into his right side and setting her head on his shoulder where it had lain before.

Drakken tensed, and for a moment Shego wondered if she'd misread the gesture of the gift, and the looks he'd been giving her throughout the day. Or the way in which he'd snuggled nearer to her before when he thought she was asleep... But then he relaxed as he pressed the button to activate the autopilot, and Shego noticed the flush to his face when he leaned forward slightly. He took his left wrist out of the sling and settled comfortably against the back of the seat, and then hesitantly set his arm around her.

"Sh-Shego...?"

"So. Dragons?" she asked, giving him a soft smile.

His expression relaxed, and he began exhorting about some legend from the middle ages, gesticulating with both hands as he grew more animated doing so. Shego looked down at the gem she was turning over in her hands as her smile grew, and she settled her head back on his shoulder as the hover-car began taking them back home. The next time the dream came she would let it continue, and hoped that someday...it would become reality.

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