#i wouldnt be surprised to learn that he made up several parts because i really really doubt certain things were said

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

Well, i have read the sample from Shusters book and what can i say. Now i get what the other anon was saying. Just from two chapters it’s already clear that Shuster is trying to paint Ze like some applause dependent dictator, who doesn’t give a fuck and his kids and wife(As Shuster wrote «Puts his work above everything else»🤡🤡)

Interesting, what you can say about that book because i’m already disappointed…

.

[bloodycassian]

anon asked:

ok hear me out, azriel x reader where reader can hear thoughts or something along those lines and she doesn’t know how to control it so she’s constantly hearing or feeling thoughts/emotions and it’s heats super overwhelming and az helps her through it <3

The headaches hadn't stopped for weeks. Rhys had even called over a medwitch from the continent to help, but there was nothing she could see that was wrong. They were all worried, but their worries just somehow made your head hurt even more. The whispers you could hear from them down the stairs of the townhouse were the worst part. 'Do they need a cleansing?' 'What happened to cause it?' 'Their body is doing this for a reason.' they went on and on and on, never answering each other. Each voice different through the muffling of the walls.  You were ready to scream. Pillow over your head wouldnt even block them out. You rocked in bed, hands over your ears. Nothing, no more silence ever. Just the ringing in your head of all the voices. Mor had tried asking her father if he knew anything about such subjects. Anything for help. Azriel swooped into the city streets, nodding at a few shopkeeps as he went. After being gone for the last few weeks, the welcome faces of his home were a sight for sore eyes. He held the bag of various salts and salves gently, just as he had his whole trip back. He landed with precision at the front gate of the town home. The familiar wrought iron fence squeaking slightly when he opened it. You felt his presence before he even opened the front door. The coolness of his essence seeping through the walls. The curling shadows that darkened everything ever so slightly. "Your condition seems to have...developed since I left." He set the tote down on the chair by the door, then closed it softly. The whispering became more intense, a pounding in your head that drowned out almost everything else.  "Oh-" He breathed as he walked in. A shocked look then he was grinning. "Leave us." He dismissed Rhys, who gave him a look before obeying. He took off his jacket, leaving him in a dark tunic that made his eyes look brighter. He cocked his head when staring at you, then took a breath. The shadows seemed to summon around him, making him look even more intimidating than normal. They slunk around his ankles like a fog. Then they covered the walls of the room, blocking off the light from the window entirely. The relief in your mind was overwhelming.  You choked out a sob, looking at him with wide eyes. The silence, the weight taken from your brain was like breathing for the first time. "H-how?" You panted, getting up from the bed. Sickness did not weigh you down any longer. The pounding ceased completely, alleviating your too warm temples. He came close to you, only too close because of the thin nightgown you wore. Really it was one of Cassian's old shirts that just fitted you like a dress. When you had taken his room due to your apparent illness you had found a few 'interesting' items of his that were left. "It seems your condition has...evolved since I saw you last." He reached a hand out to you, the siphons atop thrumming with a warm dark blue. You took it tentatively, your eyes slid shut -then there he was. His scent, his thoughts, his everything was in your mind. You scrambled away from it mentally, your heart slamming in your chest. He stroked a thumb over your hand. His mental voice was warm, yet rough and commanding. "Slow. Think, but slowly. I'm here, you're okay." The voice said.  His darkness seemed to follow him to your mind, coating it in a coolness that was much appreciated. "What do I do? What am I?" You took a breath, trying to center yourself. Your entire being was roaring at you to fight back against the intrusion, but he shushed you into not trying it. "You...are new. You're like me, in a way." He whispered softly, his essence drifting over you comfortingly. Like a soft blanket, cold but still comforting.  "How do I get it ito stop?" You sighed, wanting to bury your head in your hands again. He touched you then, slowly at first. Dragging a soft, textured hand up to your wrist, then pulling you in for a hug. His warmth was the opposite of everything else about him, those shadows did nothing against the core of him, his heat.  "You dont, you learn how to make it work with you." He said aloud, his presence rolling out of your mind like a thundercloud. He pulled out of the embrace, "You need to make the thoughts blend like street noise- like a crowd. Learn to select what you want to hear. "  "You make it sound so easy." You rolled your eyes at him, crossing your arms over your chest. Azriel may or may not have glanced at how it hitched up the oversized t shirt. Hunger opened up in the pit of his stomach at the filthy thoughts. He knew it was Cassian's shirt, recognized and scented it. It made him want to put his own scent on you in several different, creative ways. He cracked a grin and shrugged slightly, "It'll be like reading a new language. But you need to learn to speak it first." He wrapped an arm around your shoulders and lead you to the balcony, the shadows following you in a close bubble the whole way.  "All these people have their thoughts, their words and actions. My shadows tell me all about their outfits, their scents, their hair. Unnecessary unless they have a weapon." He gestured to a few fae males outside a townhome a few houses down. One threw their arms up in the air and stormed back inside." I can't keep them from giving me this information, but I do let it go. I dont even listen unless I detect a threat."  You let out a long breath, feeling the anxiety of him leaving already. "Please stay." His stomach dropped at the words. You grabbed for his hand. As if the open sky was demanding he take off that second. " I cant-" You kept your voice from trembling. "It's too much. Why me? Why now?" Tears threatened and you looked away. He couldnt bear to see you in such pain. He wanted - he needed to give you relief from it. He squared his shoulders and squeezed your hand back. "Are you afraid to fly?" he asked, flexing his wings. The shadows answered with their own wave. "I'm not the biggest fan-" Before you could give your list of excused you'd rather not fly, he was shooting into the air, the backs of your thighs rubbing over his deliciously warm skin. Your yelp of surprise was left behind you. You held on to his shoulders for dear life. "If you would open your eyes you might not be so scared." He laughed, his siphons glaring a bright shield around you that protected you from the wind. He flew fast, and far. His presence was the only one you felt, like a cool rain on your still reeling mind. He had sent Rhys an advisory thought before he took you, letting him know you needed some 'fun'. "If I open my eyes I'm going to vomit all over you." You said, squeezing your eyes tighter. You felt the laugh through his chest. His thumb circled the back of your knee, giving you goosebumps that had nothing to do with the slight chill running through the shield. The shirt was not nearly enough for an outing, and you doubted he was taking you anywhere with anyone who would mind. The thought sent a thrill through you. Alone. He wanted to be alone with you.  As if in approval, his essence drifted happily into your mind, caressing you as his thumb did. He flew lower slowly, enjoying your scent mixed with the cool smell of the lake below. The way the sun at this angle made your hair shine. He landed softly, setting you down only after you'd made him promise you were no longer flying.  "We're done...for now." He winked when you opened, marveling at his wind tosseld hair for a second before collecting yourself and brushing your shirt absently. He grinned wider, and the coolness you'd felt since he showed up in the town home receded. You felt...like you. Normal again, weightless in comparison after the weeks of buzzing in your head. And the view beyond his goofy grin was marvelous. A snowcapped mountain towered above, sloping to create the lake. Mixes of different rock lay everywhere. The scattered pines seemed like giants whispering in the breeze. "Listen to the birds, enjoy the silence for a while." He said, then began walking to the bank of the bright blue water. You stood in shock for a while, letting the sound of the wind and nothing else seep into you. You reveled in it, joying in the simplicity of it. Everything seemed so much louder than you remembered.  You sat on a boulder and watched him skip rocks, the short splats of them echoing off the mountainside. He skipped one after another, occasionally picking up smaller ones and pocketing them. You let your mind wander, trying to regain the feeling he had shrouded you with in the townhome. The solid wall he had put up around your mind for you. But he had said you needed to learn to let it blend in, to deal with it and not shut it out. It was an asset, not a hinderance. You shuddered at using the gift for much. You didnt care to know peoples ins and outs in normal conversation, let alone without them knowing. You attempted to summon that wall. It was like grasping at water, thick and heavy and impossible. The lingering remnants of control slipped away like sand through your fingers. You buried your face in your hands, letting the tears fall.  When he approached, you didn't bother hiding. He had been in your head, he knew what it was like. He said nothing, just wrapped an arm around you and let you cry into his shoulder. Holding you tighter on the bigger sobs that ripped out of you. 

[springfieldblues]

my long ass review for S32E03 Now Museum, Now You Don’t

warning: LONG because i rambled about history more than i thought i would

id been looking forward to this one because i like art history, especially after seeing how they tried their best to stick to historical accuracy in the previous episode I, Carumbus. this time however….they didnt try that hard. i dont know why i thought theyd go through that sort of trouble again LMAO

but its okay, i dont really expect the simpsons to be the paragon of historical accuracy or anything. especially in anthology episodes told through a particular character's lens (in this case, lisa, whos already feverish so whatever)

first i just wanna say that this is, i guess, less of a review and more of an accidental list of history fun facts. so im just gonna get my general thoughts out of the way first.

the episode was fun! to me at least haha. i mean it got me to think and do a lot of research on my own so that must count for something. besides a couple of really weird ones, the jokes were good. anthology episodes tend to be….not that good but i thought this one was one of the better ones so far. idk.

anyway on to lisanardo da vinky its the renaissance! jesus christ the italian accents in the beginning of this segment were annoying as hell but i also feel like that was the joke lmao. ill be real i kind of tuned out for a second there when grampa started rambling so idk what he said.

i told myself i wouldnt get nitpicky with historical accuracy if the jokes were funny (final edit: so that was a lie) but this meh bit with the pizza guys and mascots was really not worth ignoring the fact that its impossible for italy to have any tomato-based food in the 15th century (tomatoes were brought to europe from the americas in the 16th century, and pizza as we know it today—flatbread, cheese, tomato—originated in the late 18th century)

oh this next part was kind of legit tho. lisanardo, like the real leonardo, became andrea del verrochio's apprentice at his workshop. i loved this next bit:

"Whoever paints the sweetest cherub will have the honor of having MY name signed on their work. That's what great artists do!"

SO YEAH as it turns out, lisanardo painted the sweetest cherubs. the painting here is called The Baptism of Christ, and the real leonardo assisted verrochio in finishing it. specifically, he painted the cherubs in the corner.

this causes verrochio to quit and go someplace with less talented people: a music school (yes, verrochio did quit painting after getting owned by young leo and his mad angel painting skills. he never did anything with music tho, he was more of a sculptor)

alongside lisanardo, in mr largo-verrochio's workshop we have barticelli (botticelli bart), dolphatello (donatello dolph), ralphael (raphael...ralph) and mediocrito (no one that i know of. sorry milhouse) (and kearney i guess but they dont refer to him by name). botticelli and donatello are said to have also been apprentices at verrochio's workshop, but raphael came a couple of decades later so he couldnt have been there. and donatello was too old so that claim is a bit questionable. but anyway

it IS true that leonardo's peers envied him, to the point where he was anonymously and purposefully accused of being gay (a major crime punishable by death in 15th century florence) while he was still working at verrochio's workshop

we are then treated by what im pretty sure is the fourth time the show has used 'at seventeen' by janis ian, this time sung by a dejected lisanardo (man they really do keep making yeardley sing these days huh) who only wishes to be appreciated and not envied.

"I'll show them all! I'll show them all in a secret diary that no one will decipher for 400 years!"

some of lisanardo's future inventions. who wouldve known

so after barticelli, for some reason (revenge??? or something?? what was his plan here idgi) steals lisanardo's diaries full of blueprints of her inventions and takes them to mr burns who i have to assume is pope alexander VI here, they decide to use her inventions for war.

"With these, we can kill the most evil people in the world!! ....Slightly different Christians."

leo actually did this of his own accord. im surprised this is what they decided to do with lisanardo instead of talking about leo's love of nature and vegetarianism (not a single mention of that in this episode? come on...) then again, trying to do good only to end up indirectly making things worse is a very standard lisa storyline. i guess they didnt want to miss the chance to have evil pope burns (very fitting, especially for that era since they were all about money and controlling the people)

so lisanardo decides to leave for france, unlike the real leonardo who was more or less persuaded by his ultimate fanboy king francis I to move to france.

"Lisanardo, I have many questions. Why are you hitting yourself? A nerd says 'what'? And how is it possible that I am rubber and you are glue? Et cetera, et cetera."

that line may seem a little random, like hes just nelson saying nelson things (and i mean, obviously he is) but the real francis also "had an unquenchable thirst for learning, and Leonardo was the world’s best source of experimental knowledge. He could teach the king about almost any subject there was to know, from how the eye works to why the moon shines." so yeah, he did have many questions and lisanardo, finally being appreciated for her intellect, was happy to answer them all. its very interesting how lisa assigned this role to nelson in her retelling of da vinci’s life :^)

and so she lived the rest of her days in france, nat king cole's 'mona lisa' plays because duh, and they make a da vinci code reference because duh. and the segment ends. and not a single time did they show the actual mona lisa painting. the fuck?

(ngl i was fully expecting bart to say 'leonardo da vinky' for a second here)

so this next segment is about french impressionist painters, most likely the batignolles group, a name adopted by the early representatives of impressionism. its much more vague than the lisanardo segment since no one here is referred to by name (except moe, more on him in a sec) but i dont feel like it really matters in this case. bart is prrrrooobably claude monet but its hard to say, this segment is kind of a mish-mash of a lot of things. also i gotta say i really liked how lisa introduced the story to bart with an 'if you hate the formal study of art' and not 'if you hate art' because thats exactly my headcanon. i LOVE the concept of artist bart and whenever its referenced it just makes perfect sense to me.

anyway the segment opens in 1863 at the école des beaux-arts (back then it was actually known as the académie des beaux-arts), preserver of traditional french art styles. skinner reviews his students’ paintings one by one. praises the plain, unimaginative paintings depicting your typical european countryside landscapes. very run-of-the-mill (haha get it...cuz theres….a windmill) (although the real académie didnt approve of such basic stuff, they wanted artists to draw epic historical and mythological scenes) then he gets to barts painting and he gives him an F- because the painting made him think.

(the paintings in this scene arent real famous paintings as far as i know but they are inspired by real paintings enough to get the point across)

in comes barney dressed as bacchus as a model for the students to sketch, which i just loved:

barney: “You prefer robe open or robe off?” skinner: “Just cover your privates with this walnut shell.” barney: “Whoa!!! So roomy!”

skinner gasps in horror at bart’s sketch, which “looks nothing like him” and bart explains that “it shouldn’t; we’re making the art that we feel because we can’t compete with a camera.��� damn, you go bart. take that, realism. draw what you feel!!

(also no, you didnt need to hold still for 17 hours for a daguerreotype. 30 min tops.)

nelson haw-haw of the week: FOIE-gras!

so here they are at the moulin rouge (“enjoy it before baz luhrmann ruins it” hey shut up. i love that movie), which wouldnt be built for another 26 years, but it is the most widely known gathering place for bohemians in the public consciousness so i can understand why they went with the moulin. nelson delivers this anachronistic line:

“This époque keeps getting beller and beller!”

which alludes to la belle époque, the golden age of france usually dated from 1880 to 1914. made me snort so ill let that slide

and heres moe! as henri de toulouse-lautrec, who was actually born a year after the year this segment is set in. yo moe szyslak he was just 1

toulouse-moetrec introduces himself as the chronicler of the demimonde (not an actual job). an iconic figure associated with the moulin rouge (largely due to his affinity for alcohol and prostitutes), toulouse-lautrec was also a painter, having illustrated a series of posters for the moulin himself. he simply had to be in this segment, anachronisms be damned, just because they decided to include the moulin. cant have one without the other.

and yes he did have a walking cane where he kept his liquor.

i love how everyone drinks absinthe in this place. theyre bohemians what else would they drink

toulouse-moetrec points out that barts paintings are the greatest thing hes ever seen (and hes seen like five things!) and that hes a genius. milhouse realizes that they should stop doing what the teacher says and use their own minds to instead...start doing what bart says lmao. to the easels!

next we have skinner hyping up chalmers about the art his students made for the salon de paris, an art exhibition that the emperor of france will attend. he assures him that none of these paintings will encourage debate, provoke thought or be out of place at a dentist’s office. when they unveil the art, theyre both SHOCKED at how scandalous the paintings actually are.

this reaction was kind of accurate. impressionism was severely rejected at the salon de paris, due to paintings not looking finished enough to them, they thought they were ugly and vulgar for depicting nudity in a contemporary setting (historical and mythological nudity was fine). these impressionist paintings were sent to the salon de refusés, which is. yeah. the place where they sent the rejects. the salon de refusés does not make an appearance but this scene makes a reference to it when the artists get expelled from the royal salon. also:

“What about our student loans?” “Oh they’ll be refunded. We are not barbarians, I mean, come on.”

(god if only)

so the painters are down because they want the emperor to actually see their paintings. toulouse-moetrec pipes in once again with an idea.

“There is one thing the emperor loves more than anything.” “France?” “No, he hates France.”

apparently the emperor really loves cheese, which makes sense since its napoleon III (who loved cheese) and homer (who loves cheese.) so the painters roll into the salon inside a giant wheel of cheese (obviously.) as lenny said, “Eh, you know French cheese. Very runny.” napoleon III chases after the wheel into a room, where the wheel falls apart after getting chomped on by the emperor. now that they got his attention, the painters proudly show the emperor their impressionist art, which he couldnt be more indifferent about because he just wants to eat his cheese dammit, and he awards them with the royal medallion just to kind of get them out of his way. skinner immediately starts kissing ass (as he does) until marge’s like ‘hey wait a minute. you expelled these students from the royal salon’ and an executioner immediately starts ominously measuring skinners neck.

“Uh, sir...is your tongue sticking out because you’re dead or because you’re mad at me?”

and thats the end of that lmao (gore in this episode, gore in the last episode, and next week we’re getting gore too cuz its THOH, what the hell is goin on)

we get a short intermission with maggie, who wants a story for her too! lisa tells her that renaissance artists loved to put babies in their paintings, especially baby angels.

here she is showing her The Triumph Of Galatea by raphael:

King David Playing The Harp by peter paul reubens:

and a very simplified version of pretty much any depiction of hell by hyeronimus bosch lmao:

not much else to say about this one, really. but i really liked that sky!

the last segment is about frida kahlo and diego rivera. or as bart puts it ‘the one about a fat guy whos wife is too good for him.’ i was REALLY looking forward to this one because i love frida and i thought itd be a cool opportunity for animators to go bonkers and do really cool shit with her art as inspiration…..but the segment is not about frida, its about diego and his selling out to capitalism. and its also yet another story with homer and marge drama. no funky cool animation here. sigh i guess i’ll take it

the story begins in 1929 at la casa azul, frida’s home (now museum dedicated to her life and work.) frida and diego are getting married. this courtyard definitely did not look this way yet back in 1929. also theres something very cringy yet funny about lovejoy saying spanish words the way he does, i honestly cant decide how i feel about that one

the writers know theyre being cringy with their gringoness so they go along with it.

moe: “Spanish for ‘best wishes’!” mel: “Spanish for ‘congratulations’!” bumblebee man: “Spanish for ‘muy bueno’!”

OH YEAH BUMBLEBEE MAN this is his new voice actor, eric lopez! hes not mexican but its still great to finally have a latino actor voicing a latino character and hes very excited to be part of the show so i hope to hear more of him!! im rooting for him

el barto/zorro makes an appearance which i am very confused about. he has jack shit to do with frida and diego and mexico in the 20s-30s. el zorro was set in the spanish california of the early 19th century. their use of the original theme song makes me think they just wanted to flex their disney privileges tbh

lets not talk about that that whole scene was bad

anyway diego announces he and frida are going to new york, without even asking her first. frida is obviously pissed.

“Don’t worry, as a woman, you’ll be treated with much more respect in America.”

so in new york, diego is having a bit of a business meeting with mr burns as one of the members of the rockefellers, who is commissioning him to draw a mural for the rockefeller center. its kinda funny how he refers to him and frida as socialists even though they were very much communists lmao its okay you can say it. ok so far, but then frida says ‘yes, we hate the capitalists! right now, a young socialist is being born who will take them down! mr. bernie sanders. i hope hes quick about it’ and that was a simple enough joke and couldve been left at that but then its immediately followed by this weird as fuck family guy-esque cutaway gag to bernie as a baby:

“Getting a cootie shot should not cost your lunch money. And if you don’t listen to me, listen to the Bernie Babies! What? Everybody’s got goons.” *larger babies start beating up this other baby* “I disavow that, and welcome it.”

this confused me so much that i had to ask one of my american friends to help me understand, but even she was like ‘uhhh yeah thats a weird joke,’ especially now that hes been out of the race for months (then again these episodes take almost a year to produce. i guess they couldnt be bothered to replace it with something more relevant.) whatever that was weird and confusing and unfunny moving on

frida is pretty irked that diego is going through with this deal. after all, it goes against everything they believe in. im not sure how the real frida felt about diego doing the mural, but she did feel a bit of rage during her visit to the united states, especially the obvious disparity between rich and poor. she hated having to interact with capitalists and found americans very boring. in this segment, frida seems to be acting more like the american communist party, which diego got kicked out of for accepting commissions from wealthy patrons. in any case, frida is pretty upset about this whole thing.

and finally we get the first and only kind of surreal frida moment. kinda. maybe. its more cartoonish than anything but im desperate ok

interesting how they felt like they had to add a “don’t smoke” in big letters after showing patty and selma flying away on their giant cigarettes. i wonder if this is something theyre making them do now? i remember hearing something about them toning down patty and selma’s smoking

diego comes home to frida, drunk as hell, followed by the marx brothers. i cant believe they didnt make a marxism joke come on it was RIGHT THERE. THE MARX BROTHERS. KARL MARX. COME ON

frida paints her feelings.

this makes diego realize that frida is a genius and he is not half the artist she is. he proclaims he will now show his awe of her by sleeping with other women, starting “an hour ago.” to which frida replies, “and i will start sleeping with other women, starting two hours ago.” yes this was pretty much their relationship. though im just wondering how the hell did diego not know frida was this kind of artist until now? i know homers an idiot but jeez. art was how frida and diego met, diego knew from the get-go that frida was an incredible artist. i guess the fame got to his head or something. again, homer just being stupid.

“well enough already, while the art is still deco, okay?”

its time for the mural diego painted, Man At The Crossroads, to be unveiled:

rockefeller examines it. good and great so far, and then...uh oh

“Who’s that fellow…? With the beard, and the bolshevik smile…” “That’s the founder of Soviet Russia, Lenin!”

“B-b-but he’s a communist!” “Oh he just attended a couple of meetings.”

rockefeller will not have this communist in the temple to capitalism that is the rockefeller center, so he orders diego to paint over it. diego stands his ground and refuses. despite rockefeller’s threats, diego says that theres only one person he wants to be proud of him no matter what and in true homer & marge fashion, frida is touched by this. they happily leave the rockefeller center.

now, the real story of Man At The Crossroads and the rockefeller center was actually not that different. as soon as the rockefellers found out diego had snuck in a portrait of lenin into the mural, they ordered him to paint over it, to which he refused. diego even offered to include abraham lincoln and even american abolitionists in the mural as a compromise, but the rockefellers simply did not want any references to communism whatsoever. they did not complain about the hammer and sickle, though. yes, they did know diego was a communist and hired him anyway. what did they expect? lmao. diego said:

"Rather than mutilate the conception [of the mural], I shall prefer the physical destruction of the conception in its entirety, but preserving, at least, its integrity."

so they decided to destroy the mural before it was even finished and they never talked to each other again.

diego then repainted the mural at the palacio de bellas artes back in mexico, this time known as Man, Controller of the Universe. this new version included even more communist leaders and a depiction of john d. rockefeller jr. drinking at a nightclub, right underneath a depiction of syphilis bacteria. cue nelson haw-haw:

this was the version they used in the episode also, since the original was, well, never finished and also destroyed. only a black and white photograph of it exists, taken by diego before it was destroyed so he could remake it.

right so, homer!diego then pulls a Barthood and finishes the episode with a large mural summarizing the entire episode. he says some rick and morty thing i didnt get because i dont watch the show idk idc

the end

ALRIGHT NOW ITS TIME FOR THE STORY OF VINCENT VAN MOE

[the-darklings]

a soulmate au woth santi and v wouldnt end goof though, right? ugh its 1am and j dont

—SHE LIVES IN DAYDREAMS WITH ME;

warning: swearing, slight nsft but mostly suggestive

pairing: that one most of you seem to really like ft baba yaga

wc: 8.8k+ (started out as a warm-up exercise to flex my writing muscles and…well…it’s soulmate!AU…and mayhaps I SNAPPED)

YOU REALLY HAD TO TEMPT ME, HUH??

gif credit (x)

You always figured it would be John.

Even without the soulmate mark. Even if his words were not the ones marking your skin or vice versa.

It should—is—him.

Not—

Not this man with green eyes and a smug smirk that stretches wider and wider as he takes you in.

“Ah, the woman I have heard so much about.”

It’s a gentle, seductive purr and Tarasov—irritated and already scowling because Giovanni sent his son to bargain instead of coming himself—makes a noise at the back of his throat. A rough, annoyed sound that indicates that he’s not in the mood to play. Not today.

But those words. Those soft, elegantly spoken words.

You always imagined that your soulmate would speak them with subtle awe, respect, even adoration.

You’re not wrong.

The elegant imprint curling just beneath your left breast burns and scorches and you can’t breathe.

Your tongue has turned to lead inside your mouth and you are grateful for it.

Tarasov barks an order and the two parties step inside, ready for a long discussion.

You, as is expected of you, stay by Tarasov’s side the entire meeting.

Santino D’Antonio doesn’t look away from you once.

…

You spend the next few days learning everything there is about your—

Soulmate.

The word tastes bitter in your mouth.

No—no, that arrogant Italian is not your—he couldn’t be.

You haven’t spoken a word to him.

Even when after the meeting he made a point of coming over and kissing your hand goodbye with a sliver of that blood boiling smirk. So arrogant, so used to the world around him bending and breaking for him.

The words on your skin had ached at the touch, at the proximity, but your expression had given nothing away. Still, he lingered, for far longer than necessary, and you couldn’t help but fear that maybe he felt it, too. Some sort of allure driven by a deeper instinct that whispers to him that you are—

You are nothing to him. You love John.

That’s all there is to it.

…

Santino D’Antonio proves to be exactly who you expected him to be.

You can’t do as much digging as you would like though.

Camorra is power near unmatched by others.

They are cruel and they are ruthless and they protect their own viciously.

A small part of you can’t help but wonder what that’s like…belonging. Belonging so thoroughly to a faction—a family—that they would do anything for you. Belonging somewhere where you are trusted and can trust in return.

You can’t help but wonder.

D’Antonio—because he is not your soulmate, will never learn who you are to him—is the heir. One of the two. And he lives up to his title.

Arrogant, spoiled, vicious. Self-absorbed and with a loose to no moral code to abide by.

Exactly the type you will never want or care to spend more time around.

(You ignore the part of you that whispers that he is clever, and ambitious, and ruthless, too. All things you do admire. But no—you smother that part of you daily and tell it to disappear entirely).

…

Your second meeting is—for all intents and purposes—a complete accident.

It’s one of the few, rare days when you don’t have to work for Tarasov and there is no job to attend to.  

John is out of town, working, and you are left alone. For once.

You tried to work on your newest project but nothing was coming together so instead you had ventured out into the busy New York streets.

You window-shopped more than anything and even though you now have the money to buy all the expensive, pretty things you want, you rarely indulge yourself in the luxury of it. It feels wasteful. When you grew up having nothing—barely anything to even eat—spending 4k on a designer bag seems…silly. Wrong, somehow. You understand why people enjoy it, but can’t help but feel like you’ve been rob of that simple joy.

Life has robbed you of many things though.

Perhaps that’s why you found yourself at the Metropolitan Museum of Art only an hour later.

Even while busy, it’s still an escape from the bustling New York streets.

And it’s full of pretty things you don’t have to feel bad about not wanting to buy.

You study the large, sprawling painting of an ancient battlefield when you feel a presence behind you.

A blade slips into your hand and you turn, pausing sharply when you feel a blade press against your side, over the spot where your kidneys are. A foolish oversight on your part. But your own blade comes to rest against the exact same spot on the person in front of you, and you stare at the woman with a hard expression on your face.

A stalemate.  

To people around you, it would look like you’re simply standing close and gazing into each other’s eyes, but your mouth twists.

The woman—with her sharp features and bright blue eyes looks no less surprised or intrigued at the development—and you both regard each other for another tense second before a voice interrupts your standoff.

“Ares, please,” a smooth, accented voice interrupts. “We do not attack guests.”

Ares leans back slightly, and drags the blade slowly, suggestively, over your ribs before dropping her arm. She shoots you a wink, her mouth curling in a sensuous line and you blink.

You like her immediately.

For guts alone, if nothing else.

“Such a pleasure to see you again, cara mia.”

Your attention drops away from the woman in front of you, and comes to rest on your soul—

D’Antonio.

He looks pleased to see you. His hands buried deep in his suit pockets—a rich, dark brown three-piece that fits him to perfection—he stands in the gallery like a king in his throne room.

Your soulmate words tingle.

They dig and drag you closer to him but you remain stubbornly rooted in your spot.

He strolls closer towards you, eyes devouring as he blatantly takes you in, and you work your jaw.

You count five guards, excluding Ares.

Punching him and running for dear life is out then. Pity.

No—instead, you move towards him too. He halts, as if he didn’t expect that, and you meet him halfway.

Did he expect you to cower then? Fear him? You know there is a reason to fear. He is powerful and influential, and he could have you shot right here and now but you know deep in your gut that he won’t.

Stupid, idiotic soulmate bond, that’s not how real life works—

You stop in front of him. Scrutinise him for a long minute. His lips twitch upwards, all arrogance. Like he already knows how this will end. Judging by the look on his face it involves you, him, and his bed.

You almost scoff right in his face.

But you can’t give yourself away. Your jaw remains clamped shut.

You look him up and then down, and then back up again.

Your—nothing, he is nothing to you.

(but a part of you wants to scream at him, whisper to him, and shout at him anything and everything that’s on your mind just to see what words you might have branded him with—)

You can’t.

John. There is only John.

With that chaos roaring through your mind, you dismiss him with a single hum and sidestep him, intent on leaving this damn gallery.

His hand latches onto your forearm, stilling you and you tense.

“Wait.”

His is stare is wild, bewildered, and for a moment you can’t help but wonder if he’s truly that arrogant that the idea of someone not wanting him is shocking to him.

Or if it’s something else, something deeper, something like the feeling inside your gut that coils your insides at the simmering heat of his grip on your arm.

“Join me for dinner.”

He is nothing to you.

You jerk your arm out of his grip and walk away.

He surprises you by not stopping you again.

…

“I met him,” you choke out, your voice a croak. “I met him.”

Winston hums, not even glancing up as you collapse in the seat before him. It feels good to finally vocalise it. Like you’re no longer insane because you’ve acknowledged your reality.

“Am I suppose to read your mind?” he wonders idly. “Or do you expect me to just know what you’re blabbering about?”

“My—soulmate.”  

It comes out as half a curse and half a plea.

The older man looks up at you, thoughtful, but you don’t miss the faint glimmer of surprise in his eyes.

You’ve never asked Winston if he has a soulmate too. Whenever the subject comes up, he withdraws, growing more severe and serious. A part of you wonders if he, perhaps, had someone once and lost them. Losing a soulmate is said to be a loss you never recover from. A wound that never quite closes because it’s like losing half of yourself.

Such a rare gift, finding your soulmate. Such a tragedy, losing them.

“Congratulations.”

You ignore the sarcasm in his voice.

“I don’t want him. He’s wrong for me.”

Winston arches an eyebrow, and takes a slow sip of his drink. “Is that so?”

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

The man sighs. “Is that you speaking or your supposed love for Johnathan?”

Your sharp reply dies on the tip of your tongue at that.

Winston only peers at you over his glasses with a knowing little smile. “That’s what I thought.”

…

He doesn’t want you.

John.

He doesn’t want you.

“Maybe if things were different.”

Maybe.

Maybe it’s just better to accept that no one wants you—

(but someone does.)

You cradle the glass in your hand and swat the irritating thought away. Briefly, your hand settles against your words, running just beneath the curve of your breast. Such a possessive place for soulmate words to manifest. Such a statement, such a promise, curling gently around your heart.

Ah, the woman I have heard so much about.

You shouldn’t linger at the bar for much longer.

Your flight to Tokyo is leaving in less than three hours.

But soaking in self-made misery seems preferable right now.

“What is a beautiful woman like yourself doing in such a miserable place, hm?”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

Your head turns and the Italian before you grins, his teeth flashing as he approaches. He pauses before your table and nods his head towards the empty seat.

“May I?”

A part of you considers telling him no, just to see if he would sit down anyway.

Reluctantly, you dip your head, but your cool expression doesn’t ease. He seats himself with refined elegance, his cocky demeanour on full display as he takes you in.

You count six guards dotted around the lounge, but don’t let it show.

He’s favouring light colours today and you watch dully as he fixes his sleeve, his gaze not dropping from you. He looks impeccable despite the hour.

You’ve forgotten. Winston mentioned earlier about having business to attend to with the Italians. Italy has plenty of powerful players though. So you didn’t immediately assume it would be Camorra itself.

I apologise if I offended you the last time we met.

For a moment, you’re so taken aback that you freeze completely.

He signed his words at you.

Does he think you’re mute? Does he believe that’s the reason why you won’t speak with him?

You stare at him blankly.

His expression twitches and he chuckles under his breath, folding his fingers on the pristine tablecloth.

“I confess, cara mia,” he begins pleasantly, observing you like you are something peculiar and truly beautiful to him. “You are rather difficult for me to read. A rarity,” he adds in a murmur, thoughtful.

My dear.

Your throat bobs once, twice.

You’re not in the mood for this. For him.

John—he—

“We…can’t.”

Santino waits for a moment to see if you will speak and his eyes narrow when you don’t, still thoughtful. “Such a mystery,” he notes, but sounds delighted by it. “Perhaps, despite the hour, you would join me for food, cara mia? Drinks?”

And maybe it’s the ache in your chest, or the lingering alcohol in your system, or the soulmate words that burn and tug at you to say yes, yes, I’m here, you found me—

Or maybe it’s the way he watches you. With shameless, naked want and you are so much more than a slab of meat for some arrogant bastard to drool over. More than a subject of desire for some egotistical man who believes that the sun shines out of his ass.

“Call me that again and I’ll slit your throat.”

The words slip out before you can control them. Tumble and trash from deep within you and terror locks your muscles.

Shit, shit—

Santino’s face goes slack with shock, with raw disbelief. His lips part and you stare at him wide-eyed, horrified by your own slip-up.  

“You.”

He exhales it from somewhere deep inside his chest and your heart seizes for a second. Your own words are warm—a bond completed, both sets of words spoken and shared at last, and the feeling is so warm, right.

You feel like you’re going to be sick.

Jerking back, you rise from your seat hurriedly, your chair scrapping back and a few people glance over at the commotion.

“You,” he says again; soft, frenzied, his eyes drilling into you. “It’s you.”

It might as well be a prayer.

He might as well be damning you.

You don’t run from him, but it’s a close thing.

…

The knock comes only twenty minutes later.

Longer than you expected.

Staring at the door, you breathe deeply, laboured.

Don’t let him in.

(let him in. let him in. let him in.)

You swallow weakly.

The knock comes again—harder this time, more insistent.

Something tells you that he will not let this go. Will camp outside your damn door all night if that’s what it takes. You saw that look in his eyes when he realised what you were—are—to him.

The amazement, the wonder, the longing, the need—

You’ve never been needed before.

Soulmate bond is not some fairytale love-at-first-sight bullshit. It’s hard work just like any other relationship. But it’s the tug, the rightness and the knowledge that this person—this one person is yours as you are theirs. That they’re supposed to be that final puzzle piece that will help you find your best self.

Your fingers tremble around the handle.

Straightening your spine, you force your expression into neutrality before opening the door.

Santino stills from his restless fidgeting once the door swings open and stares.

And stares.

Like he’s appreciating and cataloguing every inch of you through new eyes. You, reluctantly, find yourself doing the same.

His suit is more crumpled but still fits him far too well. The dip in his round chin, the length of his eyelashes framing those bright green eyes, the curve of his mouth—

His hair is messier. You wonder if he ran his fingers through it as he tried to figure out what to do.

(what would it be like? to run your fingers through those curls, feel him close, to taste him—)

“We…can’t.”

That memory chills you, forces you back into the present.

Santino takes a step forward and your arm flies up, stopping him in his tracks.

“You’re my soulmate,” he whispers, his voice hoarse, as he peers at you. He speaks those words as if they’re supposed to explain everything. For him, maybe, they do. But not for you. “May I come in, cara—”

He falters as if realising his mistake and waits for you to say something.

Your gaze lowers but you step aside, allowing him the space to enter.

No guards.

You wonder if the reason it took him so long to come up is because he had to convince them he was to go alone.

He looks around the room curiously.

“My name—”

“I know who you are,” you cut him off, and cringe at the defensive note in your voice. “I know.”

His eyes sweep over you again. “And you?”

Folding your arms over your chest, you wonder coolly, “What about me?”

He clicks his tongue and wanders a step closer, wisely cautious. “May I know the name of my soulmate?”

“I don’t want it,” you force out instead, and see his expression—the almost boyish lightness in his eyes—crack and crumble. “The bond between us. I love someone else.”

The haughty, proud gleam you’re so used to seeing gutters out. Like a candle being blown out.

“That’s why—that’s why I didn’t want you to know,” you continue you, even if those words taste like crushed glass in your mouth. “It’s pointless.”

His features are drawn, rigid, as he listens and you see the coldness taking over his demeanour. The hope you haven’t noticed till that moment fading bit by bit.

“But you’re my soulmate.”

He speaks those words with such obvious longing.

“You don’t even know me,” he insists firmly, taking another step closer. “Let me at least try.”

Shaking your head, you scoff. “I know enough.”

His lips purse and perhaps it’s a cruel thing to say and with such a dismissive, almost repulsed tone.

“Then let me prove you right,” he says instead, his chin tilting upwards with that cool arrogance. He’s stubborn, you realise. Stubborn and hotheaded. And… “At least get to know my awful self, yes? Then you can walk away, cara.”

“And you will let me? No strings attached?”

Because you don’t trust him—not even a little bit. But he seems to understand that if he lets you go now, he will never get another opportunity like this again.

He hesitates and that’s how you know that he’s at least serious about this.

“Yes.”

Reluctant, almost petulant.

You have a flight to catch—

(hello, you found me, hello, you, you, you—)    

“You have till dawn.”

…

There isn’t much to do in the early hours of the morning.

But Santino is money and power.

You expect something lavish, extravagant. He surprises you again.

He takes you to Central Park and you don’t question how you are able to get inside even though the park closes at 1am.

He walks with you.

He asks you questions.

Some you answer, some you don’t. He doesn’t linger on the latter, seemingly aware of his time constraint.

You ask him questions back, bold and unflinching. Some catch him off guard.

“Ever had shower sex?”

A sharp inhale. Did he really think that he’s the only one capable of playing this game? Besides, this is all about monitoring his reactions, his honesty.  

“…Yes. You?”

A slow, mischievous smile blooms across your face. “Won’t you like to know?”

He chuckles and relaxes just slightly, growing bolder with his own line of inquiry.

It’s chilly outside, and noting your shivering, he offers you his overcoat but you refuse him.

Instead, you take him to a diner not too far from the park.

Another test.

It’s a dingy place and the Italian before you looks comically out of place when you both sit down.

Santino’s guards stay outside, though you can feel them tracking your every move. It’s a pity the woman seems to be absent.

You ask him about her.

His grin stretches wide. “She likes you, bella,” he hums, sly and knowing. “It’s rare for us to agree on such things. She has, ah, peculiar taste.”

“Have you slept with her?”

He shifts in the cheap plastic chair. “No,” he tells you, and you examine him closely, looking for any sign of deception. “Ares is my friend. One of the very few. Our relationship is strictly platonic.”

You believe him. For some reason.

“And what about this…individual…I will be stealing you from?”

Taking another spoonful of your ice cream, you let his question hang between you.

“Confident, are we?”  

His mouth twists and he leans closer. There is determination—practically a burning flame—dancing in his eyes and if he wasn’t attractive before, he certainly is now. That lethal focus and grim determination.

“You will find that once I put my mind to something, bella,” he purrs, low and gentle; a lover’s caress, and your words tickle again. Suddenly, the only thing you do want to know is where your words are on him. “I never fail.”

Meeting your soulmate is not a love-at-first-sight type of affair, but it is an attraction. Pure and simple and intense.

You lean closer too, lowering your spoon and his breaths slow at the proximity. “Did you suspect? Before I spoke?”

He’s silent for a length of time and that surprises you. The city skyline is already bleeding delicate pink. Sunrise is only minutes away.

Santino blinks a few times, glancing away briefly before turning back at you. There is hesitation, and you wonder why. “I think I dreamt of you,” he utters quietly, guarded, cautious. “Just glimpses. Nothing that could help me find you quicker. Brief flashes. A laugh. A smile. Sunlight. I think I could have recognised you blind. Not your face, or name, or even where you lived, cara mia. Just you.”

You’ve heard about it. How some bonds are so powerful that there are…transferences. Usually in dreams just like he said. Ability to simply feel your other half.  

“So to answer your question, yes,” he admits and swallows, his eyes roaming over your features. “You attract me in a way no one else ever has. You did from the moment I first laid eyes on you, bella. Now,” he chuckles, but it sounds harsh. “Now, it certainly makes sense as to why.”

You haven’t expected him to bare such a fact before you so easily.

His lips part, as if to say something else, but you cut him off before he can. “Time’s up.”

Above New York, a new day dawns.

You sit in silence for a few minutes. He watches you watch him, but the silence is not awkward. Surprisingly.

“Did I—”

“No.”

You can’t lie now. He’s been honest with you.

His head dips, his gaze serious, no doubt already calculating what course of action to take next.

“My name is (Name).”

His features crease with confusion.

You stand and stare at him for a moment, considering. “I’ll see you around, Santi.”

A grin blooms across your face at the way his serious expression crumbles to pieces.

You turn to leave but his voice gives you a pause.

“Have dinner with me,” he calls out hurriedly, but you only wave at him over your shoulder without turning around, a brief laugh slipping free.

“Maybe next time.”

…

You miss your flight to Tokyo but can’t find it in yourself to care much.

That day is also the first time a present arrives at the Continental reception addressed to you.

A beautiful golden bracelet with green gems gleaming in the light.

Fitting scales for a mighty viper, won’t you agree? I look forward to seeing you soon—Santi

Your eyes roll, but a reluctant grin appears despite your attempt to smother it.

You close the box and give it back to clearly curious Charon. “Send it back.”

It’s the first present.

Over the next week, at least a dozen more follow.

You send every single one of them back.

…

Her name is Helen.

Her name is Helen and she’s beautiful.

Her name is Helen, she’s beautiful, and she’s John’s soulmate.

It’s like a punch.

Right in the heart.

Quick and brutal.

They met at a library, he tells you, and like in a fairytale they bumped into each other and she caught a glimpse of the book in his hands. Opened her pretty little mouth and spoke the words stretching over the wide, powerful expanse of John’s shoulders.

Fortis Fortuna Adiuvat.

A part of you wants to scream while another part of you remains cold, calm.

“I’m sorry.”

You know he is.

It still stings.

You always thought that it will be him—soulmate mark or not.

You wanted it to be him so badly.

Pressing your fingers under your left breast, you inhale and wait.

Wait for the pain, the rage, to hit you but…

(you, it’s you, you, you, you.)

Something does glimmer but it doesn’t feel like rage and more like disappointment. Sadness.

How can you be angry at him for finding his soulmate? Finding happiness?

He’s half in love with her already and he doesn’t even realise it. But you do because you know him.

Her name is Helen.

But you are not Helen.

And maybe, one day, you will learn to live with that fact.

Maybe, one day, it will not hurt at all.  

Perhaps sooner than you think.

…

Your phone keeps ringing, ringing, ringing.

Balancing the measuring cup in your hand, you finally pick up.

“What?”

“Good morning to you too,” a wry but highly amused voice greets; a voice you haven’t heard since the diner, since those shadowy hours where you exchanged a part of your soul for his. “I like the sound of your voice, bella. Have I told you that yet?”

“Where did you get this number?”

“Is there something wrong with my presents?”

“Yes,” you mutter, irritated. “It’s your belief that you can buy my favour with money.”

You hang up.

A text follows only a minute later. Grinding your teeth, you glare at the phone before picking it up and opening the text.

I’m not trying to buy your favour with money. I simply believe that you deserve beautiful things—Santi

Your finger finds the Block option and you hesitate over it.

You’ll regret it, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Winston drones in your ear.

Groaning, you drop the phone on your bed instead.

You don’t block the number, but you don’t answer him either.

The following week makes you regret that decision.

…

I have not seen you today, but I bet you look beautiful—Santi

…

Have you eaten yet? There is a wonderful Italian place I would like to take you to in Lower Manhattan—Santi

…

What’s your favourite colour? Mine is either blue or green—Santi

…

‘The woman I have heard so much about’. I think as far as first words go, I did pretty well, no?—Santi

…

Why Vipress? Not many vipers are venomous—Santi  

Stop bothering me.

We are conversing—Santi

No. You’re being annoying.

Are you flirting with me? How shameless of you—Santi

(middle finger emoji)

;)—Santi

…

“Help him.”

“Hello, cara mia, you look beautiful today,” Santino greets as he swivels the glass of wine in his hand. The red colour is as dark as blood and you stare at it. “So wonderful to see you again.”

He means that.

The words etched into your skin warm under the weight of his steady stare.

He looks unfairly handsome today.

Green looks best on him, you want to tell him. Brings out his eyes even more.

Almost two months of this back and forth between you. Of flirty texts and phone calls and brief meetings. Meetings that leave you smiling and breathless and aching. He knows how to get under your skin. But it’s a sentiment shared. 

You destroy him with nothing but a smile.

But things are different now.

Now, John’s life hangs in the balance.

“Help him,” you repeat, harsher this time. “Please.”

His eyes snap to yours, hard, and he studies you for a prolonged moment. His eyes gleam and the light in them is dangerous, dark. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

What would be the point of lying?

He rises to his feet and stalks closer. You stand your ground and he stops a breath away, gazing at you raptly, intently.

“And what would you give me in return?”

That part of you that whispers his name in your dreams withers at his words.

Perhaps—

No—it was foolish to think that maybe he would be different. Everyone always wants something from you. That’s the way it’s always been.

You try to swallow over the lump in your throat, over your bitter disappointment, “Anything.”

He smiles but it’s not quite a smile. It’s something bleaker, more frayed and torn around the edges. You feel a pinch against the skin where your words lay and you shift slightly in discomfort.

“Then consider it done.”

He lingers briefly before turning away and heading back towards the table as you stare at his retreating back in confusion.

“What do you want in return?” you wonder, uncomprehending.

He glances at you over his shoulder. “Nothing, cara mia,” he states calmly, flatly. “I want nothing you can give me because the one thing I do want is the one thing I cannot demand.”

But he could.

He could.  

And the fact that he doesn’t—

It warms something deep down.

It would be so easy to claim power over you now. So easy to bind you, chain you, demand everything.

“Thank you.”

He doesn’t acknowledge your words, instead, he goes back to his wine.

That image of him—shoulders curved, eyes empty, a glass of wine in hand like a shield—stays with you long after you leave.

It haunts your sleep for weeks.

…

The wedding is beautiful.

You sit through the entire thing and marvel at how well they just fit.

There is still an ache in your heart when you look at them—a part of you will likely always love John to some degree, it’s hard not to.

But they fit, Helen and him.

A harmony of cold and warm, of light and dark.

Soulmates.

You clap loudly when they kiss and find your smile surprisingly genuine. It’s easier than you thought it would be.

Easier, perhaps, because you—

Someone else has been occupying your thoughts.  

His texts stopped after your meeting and haven’t returned for a month now.

Last you heard, he went back to Italy.

Santino D’Antonio. Your soulmate.

John is not yours—was never meant to be yours.

But maybe someone else could be. If only you dared.

You slip away quietly, unnoticed.

But it really shouldn’t surprise you that John—Baba Yaga, the best assassin in the world—catches up with you easily.

Even when Helen finds you both talking, you don’t feel any bitterness towards either.

“Let’s stay in touch,” John suggests, his voice subdued but hopeful. “There are secure channels we can use.”

Looking towards the sky, you grin, almost cheekily. “Sure,” you say. “But don’t complain if I turn up at your doorstep at 2am covered in the blood of my enemies one day.”

Much to your surprise, it’s Helen that laughs at your morbid joke. Loud and genuine.  

Yeah, you might just like her after all.

…

Have dinner with me?

…

A week passes. Nothing.

…

Have dinner with me?

…

A reply comes another week later.

I’ll be in the city tomorrow. My driver will pick you up at 7pm—Santi

Demanding.

He doesn’t reply, and that night you sleep with your palm pressed against your—his—words.

…

His eyes devour you.

Good. You certainly made an effort.

A simple, well-cut black dress can do wonders.

He looks good as well, it would be a lie to say he doesn’t.

He’s wearing black as well and your mouth curves.

“A matching set.”

He grins, despite the fact that you can see him trying to fight it back. It looks good on him because it’s less arrogant and more him.

It surprises you yet again. The pang you feel at seeing him. You’ve missed him, you realise suddenly, and it startles you more than you would care to admit.

You’ve missed him and his irritating texts at all hours of day and night. You’ve missed the teasing and the tension and the flirting. The way you gravitate towards each other like magnets but never quite touch despite few lingering grazes.

“Thank you,” you say while you wait for food to arrive. “For helping him.”

Santino’s lips thin into a stiff line but he manages to keep his composure. “I didn’t do it for him.”

You know he didn’t.

But you could still kiss him for saying that with such quiet steel in his voice.

“He’s gotten married,” you divulge, watching the way he goes rigid in his seat. “She’s his soulmate. That’s why he wanted to get out.”

Candlelight dances over his features as he digests this information. You figured that would explain everything but Santino still looks furious, restless.

“He left you—just like that,” he states and bitter sort of iciness lingers in his soft words. “To have his fairytale life. Forgive me, cara mia, if I am not jumping at the opportunity to send him a celebratory bouquet of flowers.”

You peer at him over your glass for a long time, risking an equally soft, “Won’t you do the same?”

For me.

His eyes flash, his jaw clenching as his long fingers curl into loose fists. His Camorra ring gleams. A mark of who he is. Of what he might be one day.

“I would do anything. Anything at all.”

You believe him. Curse your silly, foolish, too-hopeful human heart but you do.

(it’s you, it’s you, it’s you—)

“Do you still—” his voice cracks.

But you know what he wants. Understand without him having to voice it what he cares to know.

“There will always be love between us,” you tell him, frank and direct, so he understands that John will always be a part of you. “But…no. Not that kind of love. Not anymore. He’s happy and I’m happy for him.”

It’s true.

You’ve spent months convincing yourself of that truth. A truth that has been a part of you for a long time now without you even realising it.

But it feels good. Good to say it and mean it.

A lightness shines bright and fierce in your chest and you feel a sense of freedom in that confession—in the acceptance of it.

Santino knows you mean it too.

Because you don’t think you have ever seen him look quite so happy.

…

The penthouse apartment is as magnificent, as him, as you expected it to be.

This is your first time inside his space. He’s invited you before—many times—but you have always refused him.

You’ve been missing out. The view is breathtaking.

He’s been staring at you for at least ten minutes now, not saying a word.

Loosening your crossed arms, you turn away from the view and move your eyes in his direction. He sits sprawled on the sofa, legs crossed loosely, a glass of wine in hand as he scrutinises you.

“What is it?” you wonder, curious and open.

He licks his lips and swallows heavily—both actions seem to give him trouble. “Just admiring the sight of you in my home.”

“And do you imagine me inside your home often?” you can’t help but tease with a slight grin.

He lowers his glass, stands, turns in your direction, and you distantly wonder if you made a mistake prompting him like this.  

He cuts across the room smoothly, easily, and comes to stand right in front of you.

This is another reason why you have never accepted his offers in the past.

This is intimate, this is dangerous, and the air between you is suffocating already. Neither of you has said a word or even touched the other but your soulmate words tingle and ache. That tug that always wants him closer, demands his touch, his mouth—

Your head turns but he grips your chin between his fingers, tilting your face back towards him.

“Every day,” he admits shamelessly while his hungry eyes journey over the planes of your face. “I see you everywhere. And if I don’t see you, then I feel you,” he whispers and leans closer, the sweet tang of wine still on his breath. “Tell me, (Name), do you ever touch your words and imagine it’s me as I do?”

Your heartbeat spikes at the use of your real name. It’s always ‘cara mia’ this and ‘bella’ that.

“If you want to know where they are,” you breathe and lean into his touch for a moment before gripping his hand and guiding it away from your face. “Then you only need to ask nicely.”

Something wild burns between you at your open challenge.

Suppressing a smirk, you guide those long, slender fingers lower and lower.

His breaths grow shallow when his fingertips ghost over the curve of your breast.

“Just a bit lower,” you promise; a teasing, hushed thing that only strains his self-control further.

You still your hand just beneath your left breast, and use your fingers to move his index finger across the curve of the words beneath your dress.

He lets out a sharp hiss of air and flattens his fingers across the space. You wonder if even with the material of the dress separating him from your skin, he can feel them. You certainly can.

It’s a whirlwind of longing and desire and need—

“It is…not a bad place…for my words,” he admits with great difficulty, his words a wrecked mess that only makes you grin wider. “Would you like to know where your words are, hm?”

(yes. yes. yes.)

You only dip your head in a nod.

He takes your hand and moves it down.

And down.

For a moment you think he’s going to place your hand right against his groin but he doesn’t.

His hand stops on the lowest dip of his inner thigh and he traces your fingers up and over his hip bone. His hand stills, your fingers still interlocked and you hum.

“It is not a bad place for my words.”

Prompt and simple.

Your eyes lift to his.

And you can pinpoint the exact moment the last of his self-control shreds itself into nothing.

You meet him halfway when he leans down and devours your mouth with his.

…

He takes his time with your soulmate words.

Or his words.

Santino traces them with his fingertips, over and over again; featherlight and delicate. Then worships them with his lips and teeth and tongue. Less gentle and more hungry, pleased, content.

There is such light in his eyes as he learns and explores. Traces and kisses and claims.

“That tickles,” you mumble sleepily, pressing your cheek deeper into the silk pillow. “I might kick you.”

He chuckles breathlessly, and when his head lifts from the expanse of your bare stomach, he looks half-drunk on you but his grin is unguarded, genuine. It makes you hungry for him again. Makes you ache for him again.

He moves up slowly, hot mouth ghosting over your skin. Over the dips and curves and patches of skin that he takes time to linger on.

He lingers the longest on the elegant curve of his handwriting curling under your breast, then your collarbone and finally your mouth.

Santino leans into you when you touch his face. Your other hand sweeping over the mess that is his curls and he tuts.

“Who could have thought you would be so impatient, amore,” he teases, sounding smugger than you’ve ever heard him. “I am shocked that I still have hair at all.”

You spin a lazy curl between your fingers. “Then stop making those noises whenever I pull on your hair.”

His eyebrows arch and his thumb brushes over your parted lips. “Hm, what’s this? Are we comparing notes on who moaned louder? Oh, amore, I do believe I have you beat.”

You sit up at his tone and find that his self-satisfied smirk is far, far too attractive. Your hand trails away from his hair and down his face, neck, chest. Your nails track down gently, playfully, and the lean muscle ripples under your touch.

“Careful.”

You ignore his strained warning.

Your fingers scratch against the familiar words on his smooth, tanned skin and it’s hard to control that part of you that’s full of feminine satisfaction.

A compliment and a threat. You wonder if it says something about you both as people that your soulmate words are what they are.

Your fingers press against his burning skin—the touch gentle and needy and greedy all at once.

(mine, you found me, mine, you found me, mine—)

It’s not about possession but it is about belonging. About happiness and this wild, untameable man that has blown into your life.

He kisses the corner of your mouth. “Found you.”

You freeze as if struck by lightning.

“What did you say?”

His eyes find yours and he takes your face in his hands.

“When I dreamt of you,” he murmurs carefully in the centimetres separating you. “You always asked me to find you. Find me, you always pleaded. I tried. Oh, how I tried, cara mia. For years. But here you are. Finally, eh? Found you.”

Your eyes burn.

“Oh.”

He lowers your back onto the pillow and kisses you.

Over and over again until you forget the world outside.

Until you forget every hurt and every sadness.

Until you forget the taste of your own name.

Until—under his strong, burning touch—you are remade anew.

…

When you wake up, it’s to the sensation of him tracing the naked skin of your back.

“Ah, good morning, soulmate.”

A slow kiss against your spine. Then a lighter peck, higher. And another.

Your eyes crack open and your toes curl.

His mouth is stretched into that grin you now think is your favourite. A crooked, slightly devious thing that makes his eyes gleam in the morning light.

“Don’t look so smug,” you grouse tiredly. “Or I might have to kick you.”

“So violent.”

His grin widens as his eyes drag slowly over your still naked body, just barely covered by his silken sheets.

“Shower sex?”

You throw a pillow at his face.

And learn that he has a very nice laugh.

…

He doesn’t get his shower sex.

He pouts about it for two days straight.

…

“Perfezione.”

“Smooth.”

Deflection is easier than admitting how nice it feels to have him look at you like that.

Like you are something special and beautiful. Like he can’t bear to look away from you.

Your lips press against the vicious slash of Call me that again and I’ll slit your throat.

“Did it ever bother you?” you question mildly, a distant worry gnawing on your nerves. “That it was a threat?”

Your voice sounds meeker that you’ve heard in a while but you need to know.  

Santino sits up, and wraps his arm around your waist so he could pull you closer to him.

He’s like a furnace of heat and safety, and your body instinctively curls further in his hold.

“Never,” he admits easily. “I loved my words. From the first moment they appeared on my skin. Hm, I knew they belonged to someone strong, and smart, and beautiful. Someone who would no doubt drive me crazy,” he mumbles, now in Italian, against the curve of your jaw. “And you do.”

“And did I meet them? Your expectations?”

He kisses your neck leisurely, nibbles on your earlobe and your nails sink into his back, steadying yourself with a shallow sigh.

“Better,” he breathes hotly into your ear. “So much better.”

You try, and fail, to hide your smile from him.

…

“Is he…you know?” the woman in front of you wiggles her eyebrows. “Well?”

Your own eyebrows rise slowly. “Is he what?”

Helen grins knowingly. “C’mon. You know what they say about Italian lovers. Is he any good?”

Smothering a cough, you give her a flat look. “Is John any good?”

The brunette sitting in front of you goes pink and you don’t bother hiding your biting grin. There’s no viciousness in it though. You’re happy to visit your old partner and friend. Even happier to get to know Helen who—much to your surprise—is both brilliant and delightfully witty. You can understand why John loves her. You can understand why she’s his soulmate. They compliment each other beautifully.

There is that energy between them.

Energy so similar but also vastly different to one you and Santino share.

The smug bastard finally got his shower sex this morning, and had spent the entire day strutting around the apartment like Cheshire Cat.

Brilliant, insufferable bastard.

“John is…fine.”

You almost choke on your drink. “Fine? Ouch.”

Helen splutters, flustered. “I just mean he’s amazing but I don’t want to brag—”

Practically cackling, you bend over your drink, wiping at the tears gathering in your eyes. “Oh man,” you wheeze out. “Poor John. I mean…Santino is…adequate, then.”

Helen’s eyes gleam with mirth even if she cringes. “Uh-oh. Don’t let him hear that. I don’t think his male pride can take such a beating.”

Your fingernails scrape against the rim of your cup and you give her a secretive smile. “Oh, putting a dent in his ego is one of my favourite hobbies now, I assure you.”

Staring at each other for a second, you both lose it at the exact same time.

That’s when John decides to make himself known, his eyes going from you to Helen and then back again.

“Should I be worried?” he wonders quietly.

Helen looks at you and you towards her.

You both grin at the same time and devilish is the only way you can describe it.

“Most certainly,” Helen says sweetly to her husband.

The world’s best assassin has the good sense to look spooked.

…

“Retirements suits you.”

“Certainly helps with the wrinkles,” comes John’s wry reply and you crack a smile.

He lowers himself on the seat beside you. Helen is back in the apartment, chatting happily on the phone with her friend who rang only minutes earlier.

“She likes you, you know,” he says, though sounds cautious about it. “She looks forward to your visits every time.”

Your smile softens and you can just see a glimpse of the beautiful woman inside as she moves around the kitchen with her phone pressed to her ear.

“I like her too. She’s wonderful, John, really,” you tell him, and mean it. “And I’m very glad that you found each other. Name your firstborn after me, will you?”

John chuckles under his breath, but you see the way his eyes soften at the thought. “Duly noted.”

For a few minutes, you both sit in silence, soaking in each other’s quiet presence and the setting sun. Helen’s voice filters through the closed patio doors and you breathe deeply.

“I found him,” you confess to him quietly. “My soulmate.”

John’s head snaps in your direction. “You did?”

“Yeah. A while back. Even before Helen.”

That surprises him, you can tell. “Why didn’t you—”

Shooting a bland stare his way, you shrug, “You know why. And it was complicated. He’s not exactly someone I considered a fitting match at first.”

Curiosity burns in his dark eyes, but when you remain tight-lipped, he speaks, “Do I know him?”

Your laugh is sharp, almost shrill but you nod your head, venturing a look in his direction. “It’s Santino.”

John goes so still you fear he’s turned into a statue beside you. “Santino?” he echoes, at last. “Santino D’Antonio?”

You almost roll your eyes.

“Do you know many Santinos, John?”

A flutter of emotions flickers across his face but his lips remain a flat line, his eyes scrutinising you. And you know what he’s thinking, what’s going through his head. Santino’s reputation, all that he knows about him personally, the wild possibilities in regards to your future and Santino’s.

How dangerous and malicious he can be.

How ruthless and charismatic and manipulative.

But because John is John, he asks you only one question, “Does he make you happy?”

And you adore him so much at that moment. Even if it’s not love like it once was, you adore the fact that he understands and knows you better than anyone. Adore the fact that he doesn’t judge you or condemn you or think less of you. Doesn’t try to preach to you how it’s unwise to tie yourself to a man like Santino.

He’s just John with his patient dark eyes and silent strength. He is comfort and sanctuary and that’s never going to change. Not ever.

But his question remains.

Does Santino make you happy?

You think about it. Think about him and consider his flaws. Consider the fact that he hasn’t magically changed in the last few months. He’s still the Camorra heir. He’s still a sharpened blade. He’s still a cruel man. A ruthless businessman. He’s not good.

But neither are you.

The physical closeness is nice and fulfilling, but being with him is so much more. It’s the ease; the knowing that around him you can breathe and grow, that he will never smother you. That he trusts you and adores you and respects you. That when he touches you, he does so like he’s marvelling at every touch—like he’s lucky to do so, like he’s counting every instance your skin meets his, no matter how innocently. How he makes you laugh and fills your chest with a reluctant sort of fondness and affection. How he challenges and supports you. How stepping into his embrace feels like warmth and comfort and safety—more so than even John’s embrace ever did. 

“Yes,” you breathe faintly, your voice wobbly. “Yes. The happiest I’ve ever been.”

John smiles slightly and his fingers wrap around yours, squeezing once.

“Good.”

And that’s that.

The sun is almost set when Helen joins you on the balcony. She sits beside you, and you reach for her hand, too. She looks pleasantly surprised by the gesture but holds your hand like she can understand the need without a word.

“Thank you.”

Neither reply.

But they don’t need to.

…

“Join my family.”

Your heart skips a beat, or two.  

“What?”

He’s only just stepped through the door. He cut through the apartment the moment he caught sight of you and made a beeline straight for you.

The arms around your waist tighten, his hot breath tickling the sensitive skin of your neck.

“Join my family,” he repeats, breathless, his eyes raging when they find yours. “You are a part of me, as I am of you, cara mia. My father could never deny you joining. You belong with my family—you are my family.”

The quiet intensity of the last sentences shreds your heart. Makes blood in your ears roar.

“Santi—”

His gaze is imploring as he presses your foreheads together, his fingers gentle but firm against the side of your face.

“Be with me, (Name),” he whispers tightly. “I don’t care about rules or waiting. I just need you.”

Need, not want.

“But Tarasov…”

Tarasov who has been too busy building and reaping the benefits of the slaughter John has unleashed to get out. Tarasov who will never let you go now that John is gone. The High Table values soulmate bonds—it’s a part of their sacred rule set—but not enough to wipe your debt away.

Even if you want to—and you do, so very much—it’s not that simple. You’ve thought about it, haven’t you? What it would be like to belong to such a family? To be a part of something ancient and powerful. Feared.

Santino’s arms tighten around you—like he can keep you here and away from everything that exists outside the safety of this home—and you see the ruthlessness in him, then. More so than ever before.

“How many died during the Impossible Task, hm?” he poses sharply, shrewdly, and you know he’s already thought about this. Planned for this. “How many got buried by Tarasov’s order? Who is to stop anyone from retaliating?”

You suck in a breath, your gaze wide, searching. You know exactly what he’s saying.

Blood for blood.

His family’s words.

Tarasov took your family, took your freedom and now—

Now.

“You reckless, unbelievable—”

He kisses you.

“I can’t believe you—”

And again, except this time it’s hungrier, more intense.

He could kiss you a million more times and you would never grow bored of it.

(found you, found you, found you—)

Your heart beats with those words, and as if he can feel them too, his fingers settle over them.

“Yes,” you choke out, your eyes burning and chest tight from…happiness. “Yes, yes, yes.”

He kisses the tears that fall down your cheeks; careful and slow.

And maybe this can be love.

If it isn’t already.

…

Viggo and Iosef Tarasov die a week later.

You mourn by letting the world know exactly who you are.

The Vipress. The soulmate of Santino D’Antonio.  

Part of Camorra by oath and soul bond.

Willingly given.

You are your own master.  

Finally free of your chain.  

…

an: actually anon, soulmate!au is one of the few instances where everyone gets a happy ending. ahhh. sometimes we can have nice things :) writing V that’s not haunted by Tokyo was a damn joy, let me tell you. thank you so much for reading this. i did bare minimum editing so if this is riddled with mistakes rip me, i guess. 

[vigilentballofpassion]

Hi! I saw that you do headcanons, and you did both Ban and Hendrickson as fathers! Do you think you might be able to do one like that for uhhhh Gowther? If not no worries! Have an amazing day!!!

Hey! I'm sorry this took so long! Thank for for requesting Gowther as part of as a parent series! (If I can even call it a series XD)

Personally I really ship Gowther with Slader. But I was it to make it generalized so it can be with anyone.

*I'm not sure whether or not Gowther can have biological children. But, with the amount of magic in the world and great power of adoption. I dont think that matters!

*I think if he has a little girl. I think his lover would want to give her the middle name Nadja after his first love. Gowther might not understand the sentiment but he would appreciate it none the less. Like with the charm King made him.

*Same thing with a boy. Perhaps middle name could be Escanor after his treasured comrade.

*Maybe he would name would Gowther jr. But after Daddy Gowther, not himself.

*Everynight he would read his kids a bed time story. This would continue until his children move out of the house of they let it.

*He would also give them a Shoulder Boot. I'm just kidding. Please watch the Seven Deadly Schmucks parody in YouTube if you haven't.

*Storytime with Gowther is the best! He does all the voices! He'd sometimes change his appearance and act out all the scenes!

*I think theater is something that he would eventually get into. As a result his children might as well.

*Since Gowther doesnt need food. I'm not sure how much of a cook he is. But, I'm sure he cant be worse than Meliodas so... I guess his kids are safe in that department.

*Gender specific clothes are not a thing with this man. His sons and daughters will probally get dressed up in make up, bows and dresses. And suits, armour, suspenders. The like.

*His kids will be very well read. I'm sure hed introduce them to all kinds of literature. But with a preference for fantasy. (Does fantasy even exist in this world? Would it just be fiction?)

*If he marries I can see him wearing both a wedding dress and a suit. I could not make up my mind which one.

*if his child marries. He will have the best mother of the bride dress, that will leave anyone jealous.

*I think if he ever gets concept of sentimanity he will have so many scrap books of his family and friends. If he doesnt he will appreciate it if his partner or friends do it for him.

*Will probally read every parenting book he can find.

*Given how upset he was at losing Daddy Gowther... Also losing Naja. (He may have a few abandonment issues) I think Gowther will be hesitent to leave his children for long periods of time.

*This may be annoying to his kids when their younger. But I think they'll appreciate it when their older. Always being able to rely on quality time with their dad.

*Gowther will be the best at tea parties. Going way out with dressing up.

*I can't see him having a lot of kids. Maybe just 1 or 2.

*He would be so factual when "giving the talk". This could either be more embarrassing for his children or a relief for them.

*I dont think ever actually learned how to "read the room" so he might accidentally embarrass his kids and partner from time to time without meaning too.

*Because of that, he might be really nonchalant about asking them personal questions that they may not want to discuss.

*Since he really started valuing his friends and teammates. I think Gowther would like it if his kids, grew up being friends with the others kids.

*I think Bartra, given Gowther's previous relationship with his sister would accept any children of Gowther's as more grandchildren and attempt to spoil them.

*Gowther would be very fair when deciding if his kids can have a pet or not. And would mainly base his decision on how responsible they and how likely they are to take care of it.

*When it comes to birthdays and things I think he would aim for more sensible things for gifts for his lover and kids. Like clothes, shoes, armour, equipment for any jobs or hobbies.

*sometime He may have to talked out of it. Because it could be considered offense. Off the top of my head. Maybe like giving his spouse a new broom for their anniversary because the old one broke

*Once in a while he'll surprise them with something truly sentimental. Like stitching old baby clothes into a quilt or something.

*Oh and books would be a common gift from him and a good one to give him.

*I think of he marries someone with a short lifespan or adopts kids with short lifespans. (I.E. Humans) it would cause him.a great deal of distress given how quickly they age and die.

*Although since he's a doll... it may not matter how long their lifespan is because he will still out last them.

*May actually seek something from.Merlin to allow him to age with his family.

*Given that he has friends from all races. Several of whom are in interspecies relationships. And presumably his partner isnt a doll he himself would be in one. So I don't think he would rarely care who his children decided to pursue romantically. All that would really matter if they treat them well.

*Growing up with a sin as your parent would probally be some serious street cred. Especially for them dad could beat your dad argument.

*People will probally assume the child of great knights, like that of the legendary order of the Seven Deadly Sins will be knights themselves.

*Gowther wouldnt push them to be a knight if they didn't want to.

*Sometimes he will be too blunt. Like if their outfit is ugly. He may come out and say it. He's not trying to be mean. Probally didnt consider it before saying it.

*Since he's a doll. I don't know if he actually needs to sleep or not. So Getting up with a baby would be no problem for him

*Wouldn't be phased by changing diapers. Would do it without ever being asked.

*if his kids are being bullied. I think he'd take care of it himself.

*Might try to entertain his children's friends by taking of his own head and scaring the crap out of them accidentally

*I think he would be great if his kids ever need help with homework.

*Since Daddy/Demon Gowther was Merlin's teacher/Mentor. I think it would be really cute and full circle if Merlin was at least one of Gowther's children's mentors.

*Diane will probally teach his children how to dance

*King will give him so many parenting tips assuming King becomes a dad first.

*Both King and Diane are really proud of the progress Gowther as made.

*Gowther's family will be invited to visit the Fairy King's forest any time.

*Meliodas will offer to arrange to have baby shower or any invents in Boar's Hat Tavern (If Gowther's partner wanted something nicer. I think Elizabeth would offer up the Castle)

*Elizabeth would probally offer to babysit so that Gowther and his partner could go out on dates.

*Ban would probally slap Gowther hard enough on the back to make him jerk and almost drop his glasses. Once Ban learned Gowther was going to be a dad.

*Ban would probally gift him very fine alchohal that Gowther would probally give to his partner.

*King and Elaine would probally work together and make the kids the cutest clothes ever.

*I can see Gowther taking his family to vacations where he went with the sins. Like to the beach or the mountain.

*Gowther will over all be a pretty good partner and parent to have. A few bumps in the road here and there. But, over all pretty great.

As always. Feel free to add on to these.

Also if you want to use these if a fanfiction or fanart go ahead. Credit would be nice. But it's not needed.

[dadzawa-adopt-dabi]

Learn some dam self care Keigo.

Dabi has noticed Keigo getting tired.

"What's the matter? Don't they don't give you Heroes breaks?" He mocks to cover up the sliver of concern.

"Not me." Is the short and bitter response. Its genuine for once.

Dabi puts off the next meeting for a few days to try and give him a break. Spying and working double shifts nearly everyday is obviously leaving the Hero with little time to rest. He’s not worried, really he isn’t, but Keigo may have stumbled a few times last meeting. He caught himself and didn't appear drunk wich leaves exhaustion.

When he messages the hero again it's just to tell him the next meeting time and location. Hopefully the dumb bird has rested up and they can get back to exchanging information.

Dabi ends up running a little late again. Toga wouldn't leave him alone about meeting Hawks and he had to shake her loose before he came to see him.

Keigo is curled into the corner of a sofa and is folded into his wings when Dabi walks into the warehouse.

"No greeting birdy? And after i let you have time off" Dabi notices that Keigo actually dosnt look much better than he had a couple days ago. He makes a note to check social media and see if Hawks had been pulling double shifts the entire time.

"It's fucking cold. Let's just get on with this." Keigo grumbles from inside the cocoon of his wings. He sits himself up straighter but keeps his wings around himself as a makeshift blanket.

It's about 20 minutes into the conversation before Keigo stops talking midsentence. A few moments later he falls forward and Dabi rushes to catch him.

That's it. Its officially intervention time. Keigo is obviously being overworked. He had stopped talking at several points in the meeting, loosing his train of thought or dozing off before jolting himself awake. He's looked him up on his phone while Keigo was struggling to stay awake and Keigo hasn't had a night or day off in weeks. Its past a burnout pace.

So it's not a complete surprise when he finally gives up and falls asleep.

Dabi calls Kuroguri and tells him to pick him up and prepare for a guest as Keigo struggles to wake up again. Keigo is mumbling at him and trying to stand but stumbling, so Dabi walks him straight back into the opening warp gate.

"Your meeting the boss. Oh and I'm kidnapping you until further notice." Dabi casually states and follows after him to see Shigaraki steadying him on the otherside. He had on his gloves he usually used for gaming and was scowling at Dabi already. Kuroguri had warped them right into the living room.

This is going to cause shenanigans and Shig knows it.

"Is he drunk? He can't even stand. What are you doing bringing him here right now?" Shigaraki let Keigo go when he tried to jerk out of his hold.

"I- I'm too- I can't, Dabi?" Keigo mumbled and moves toward Dabi.

"It's fine Keigo. Shig is just concerned. It's fine he's got his gloves on." Dabi muttered to the tired bird and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Is he drunk or what?" Shigaraki hovered nearby.

"Remember how I was saying the Hero commission was pushing him too hard? He's not drunk, just sleep deprived and exhausted. So I kidnapped him"

Shigaraki scratched at his neck.

"Is he always like this? Is there anyone coming to look after him?"

"Not as far as I know. Hey Magne can you start a bath? He's pretty cold." Dabi started leading Keigo down the hallway.

Toga appeared at his elbow and got a good look at Keigo.

"He can use one of my bath bombs. He looks like he needs some self care."

" You can lecture him on self care when he wakes up later." He continued supporting Keigo and was guiding him down the hall to the bath.

" Can you make sure he stays upright in the bath?" Shigaraki asked Shuichi in the corner.

Shuichi hoped up passing his game to Shig to save for him.

"I can bath myself." Keigo insisted and pulled away from Dabi. Waking up a little bit more. He stumbled again and leaned against the wall.

"This really isn't necessary, I appreciate it, but this happens all the time."

Shuichi grabbed his hands and pulled him upright causing a glove to slip off.

"Shouldn't happen at all" muttered a concered Kuroguri from the kitchen as Shuichi made a choked sound.

Keigo snatched his glove back and shoved it on.

"Fuck that's gotta hurt dude, no need to hide those here. I've got mine long. No one cares if I cut them or not bro" Spinner spread his hands out to show Keigo the talons Magne and Toga had painted just a few days ago.

He took Keigo's other hand and tugged off the glove. Keigo's nails revealed as talons clipped short and frayed.

"Dabi can keep watch." Keigo muttered. If this was going to be how he met the rest of the LoV it was better the devil he knew with him while he was vunerable.

Dabi wheezed behind him and coughed to clear his chest.

"Not a good idea" he coughed out.

"No he can not. He would be useless" Shig said while trying not to laugh.

"The hell you all standing around talking for? Let's get bird boi bathed changed and in bed. Not Dabi's bed. They're still not at that point evidently" Magne stated.

"I'm not a child. And I have patrol in 3 hours. I can't just skip." Keigo followed anyways. Sleep sounded so nice and technically he was still spying while he was here.

"Stage one kidnapping and get Kuroguri on a soapbox for Hero treatment and schedules. Got it." Sako grinned.

"You better give me that soapbox. First Shouta now this young man. I've got quite a bit to say to society on how much they demand from heros." Kuroguri appeared to be writing a speech already.

"I'm here so how are you going to fake a kidnapping?" Keigo was really getting tempted by the idea of that rest. Why the hell was the LoV so nice? Maybe if he asked Dabi would dry his feathers off for him?

Too nice. All this sounded too good to be true.

"Magicians never reveal there secrets"

"Wouldnt you like to know feather boi?" Toga cackled as she reappeared with gold and pink bathbombs.

"Keep your secrets then. Also thank you Toga I've been wanting to try these." Fuck it Keigo decided. He was tired and could spy properly when he more rested. This was somehow nothing what he expected the LoV to be and everything Dabi had implied they were for him.

"We are talking about whatever the hell these guys think is going on when I wake up" Keigo took the bathbombs and followed after Shuichi. Only bumping into the wall a few times.

Keigo only nodded off in the bath once and Shuichi threw a rubber duck at him when he did.

"What else does the Hero concil have you hide?" Shuichi asked trying to keep Keigo talking and awake.

"Um I have a 3rd eyelid my visor obscures? My talons are actually my fault at this point. I have to regularly clean and straighten my feathers or use them all up. They are a lot of maintenance but most of its second nature at this point." Keigo stuttered in some parts.

"Eye markings?" That's something Shuichi was actually curious about.

"Not makeup. Most people just assume its eyeliner but I was born with them." Keigo finished rinsing out his hair and held out a hand for a towel.

"Cool. Dabi thought so but I totally thought it was eyeliner."

"How often does Dabi talk about me?" Keigo shrugged into some sweats and a shirt that had a deep v already cut for his wings. That was thoughtful.

"He talks about you a lot."

"Does he like me or something? Do you think he would mind helping me dry out my wings? I dont want to annoy him" Keigo went to leave.

"How are both of you this clueless? You are literally wearing his sweats. Yes he would help you with your wings. we all would if he would challenge us to a pvp for the honor." Shuichi facepalmed.

"They kinda suck though, and make people uncomfortable. My feathers are basically a bunch of knives. Maybe Toga wouldnt mind? She likes knives" He muttered and shuffled towards the room he came into. There had been a couch and he could always use his wings as a blanket. Wet or not he would pass out almost immediately.

"I've never seen Toga and Dabi fight yet and I am not eager to see it now." Shuichi nudged him towards a diffrent room.

"Your rooms over here."

"I have a room?" It was probably because he was so tired but Keigo started crying. They were so nice to him already.

"DABI, your bird is crying. Come fix him." Shuichi yelled towards the main room.

There was some cussing heard and a few seconds later Dabi was beside him.

"Why you crying pretty bird?"

"I'm mostly just tired but you guys have been so nice! I have a own room already and you kidnapped me and my shirt has holes cut and no one minds my talons." Keigo babbles and leans forward until his head is resting on Dabi's shoulder.

"Well yeah, as soon as I started talking about you seriously joining us Shig set you up a room. The sweats and sleep and acceptance is just basic decency. Let's get you in bed." Dabi led him in the rest of the way.

"Wait can you dry my wings? They're wet and gross and Spinner said you wouldn't mind? I promise they won't cut you." Keigo muttered. Dabi would probably say no but he was too tired to detach them all and spin them around until they dried.

"Sure. Go to sleep already birdy."

Keigo finally got to sleep knowing it would be for more than a couple hours. Dabi running his heated hands through his wings was definitely something he was going to ask for again.

Fuck the commission he was staying here. Maybe Toga could give him a face mask next time.

[itstheapocalypsebaby]

TUA Power HCs Part 1!

Luther

Discovered them at age 3 (He was the first)

He accidentally broke one of their nannies fingers

Had trouble controlling his strength (still does)

For personal training Reginald first made him build up his body

Because just cause he had incredible strength, didnt mean his body could take said strength

He used to accidentally break his arms when he used too much strength

They always healed fast though

As if they never broke to begin with

Baby Luther used to hide the fact that he broke/sprained/bruised his arms, legs, basically any part of his body because he felt like a failure whenever he got hurt

Later in life (maybe at 10?) Reginald discovers that Luther not only is super strong but also had super endurance

(Special Training was not fun that year, Reginald wanted to see how long he could last without food, water, air, shelter, etc.)

After that year, special training was a mix between building up his strength (weight lifting heavier and heavier objects every week) and building up his endurance (running around the room carrying a crap ton of weights, carrying a really really heavy weight and Reginald seeing how long he could carry it before his body gave out)

Diego

They first discovered his ability to breathe underwater first

Diego unlike his sibling absolutely adored bath time as a child

He would stay in the tub for hours if he could

One time his nanny had to leave him in the tub because one of his siblings was having a tantrum

She comes back to a sleeping Diego

Who's asleep in the tub

submerged in water

Was lowkey jealous of his siblings' powers while growing up

Reginald was so disappointed in him for having such a "useless ability"

Poor baby took it into heart :(

Special Training was awful before he found out his secondary power

Reginald wanted to see how long Diego could last underwater (he discovers Diego could last an indefinite amount of time down there)

He stopped liking water after that

He finds out about his secondary power at age 6

He likes to help Grace in cooking and usually cuts up the vegetables for her

He gets really good with the knife

So when Reginald demands he learns to wield a weapon he immediately chooses the knife

At first its was all stabby stabby but then one of his siblings goads him enough to rashly throw the knife at them

His aim is perfect. The knife is sailing through the air, going exactly where he wants it to be, except he wanted it to be in their head and oh god Diego panics, he didnt mean to throw that knife he never meant to hurt his siblings and he loves them and -

The knife is sailing towards his sibling's head and then it suddenly curves

Diego runs up to his sibling and hugs them and apologizes

Diego never wanted to pick up a knife after that

But then through some persuasion (Allison), he forgets the incident and picks it up again

Special training is all about accuracy and precision. All about moving targets, really tiny targets, living targets

Reginald wanted to know how much he could curve, what could he curve and all that jazz

Diego learns Physics because its an absolute must

(He learns how hard he has to throw for it to curve that much, how fast it needs to be to keep in the air even after it curves, how heavy should the knife be if he wants this specific result)

At first its hard and because he can curve anything he likes through pure instinct why does he need to learn Math?

But Reginald wants him to be as accurate as possible

(He motivates Diego by putting Mom and his siblings in situations where one false error could lead to their deaths)

He learns physics quickly

(Five and him bond over physics, Five helps him, He helps Five until Five gets too advanced and well...)

He actually gets super good and can do equations on the fly

People are constantly surprised at the amount of math needed for his powers

Allison

as a kid had absolutely no control on when her powers would activate

it would activate all the time leading to a lot of accidents

one time she snapped at Klaus to stop talking and he couldnt speak until she was able to reverse it

Reginald decided the best way for her to control it was through trigger phrases

she went through a lot of them because it wasnt cool enough for her

there was "listen up", "somebody once told me" (someone always interrupted her, usually Klaus, with the world was gonna roll me so she dropped it after like 3 uses) and a bunch more before settling on the iconic™ "I heard a rumor'

early on she learned that she had to be very precise with the wording or else the rumor wouldnt turn out the way she wanted it to

so special training was mainly focused on her wording, her pronunciation, and her learning other languages

allison is fluent in italian, french, spanish, mandarin, filipino, somali, she also can speak in a bunch of other languages but isnt super fluent

allison was actually pretty ok with special training until she was 10

thats when reggie brought in actual real life people

until that point she had only rumored her siblings (reginald actively encouraged it as long as he wasnt the one who got rumored) and occasionally the businessmen who came over to talk deals and shit

reggie was smart and only brought in people he was sure no one would miss, homeless hobos, drug addicts, people who lived by themselves and didnt have much family or any family at all

at first few meetings, she could stomach the feeling of wrongness

it was still easy for her to reason that what she was doing wasnt really wrong after all the commands she was issuing were really mild (like i heard a rumor you stubbed your toe, i heard a rumor you could play the piano perfectly)

they were just testing the reach of her powers

(could it rewrite your brain? create illusions, hallucinations? make you gain talents you never had? make you feel things?)

(reginald already knew her rumors could affect the memory, no need to test that, same thing with if her rumors could affect herself)

but then the more they pushed the boundaries the darker the rumors, the harder it was to stomach this sense of wrongness that threatened to swallow her whole

(could it override survival instincts? could it fake relationships? could it wreck relationships? can the human mind take multiple rumors at once? how about multiple conflicting rumors? how many rumors does it take to break the mind?)

its a lot easier to deal with special training when you cant remember

(but in her dreams she cant forget, she wakes up screaming, absolutely terrified and cant remember why)

Klaus

at first thought everyone could see the ghosts

actually he thought they werent ghosts cos they didnt appear to him with their death injuries

realized they were dead people when he accidentally walked through them

at first the ghosts were ok (they were mostly the nannies vanya killed so they were nice) they were loud and sobbed really really loud all the time but they didnt actively seek him and so he didnt actively seek them either

he still didn't like his powers even back then when they werent as bad as they are now

since he didnt really have any interest in his powers, reginald forced him to use them more, to explore them

klaus really didn't want to talk to any ghost so Reginald locks klaus into the mausoleum for the first time

this is where everything goes to shit btw

Klaus is absolutely terrified because these ghosts arent like the ghosts in the mansion (the nannies)

these ghost were malicious and horrible and they were dead for so long that they lost any sense of self or humanity in them

this is where klaus develops his fear of the ghost and his powers

this is where klaus loses a grip on his powers and it causes horrible repercussions

he sees the way they died now

and it terrifies him even more

from ages 8 to 11 hes facing the full force of his powers whenever hes trapped in the mausoleum

every session his fear gets worse and worse

the ghosts appearance actually reflects on how he feels about them actually

thats why ben and dave dont look awful

and why the rest of the ghost do

klaus loves ben and dave

he's absolutely terrified of the rest of them

he discovers that drugs numb their abilities when one of them gets hurt badly during training and is on really heavy pain medication

maybe it Five who broke 5 ribs when sparring because luther forgot to control his strength

Five couldn't jump at all when he was on those meds and he hated it

but Klaus? the moment he put two and two together he jumped at the opportunity to temporarily get rid of his powers

he would purposely get super banged up during training just to get rid of his powers and it scared the living shit out of his siblings

they ask him to stop and he does, he doesnt like it when he scares his siblings

but the ghosts get too much and klaus is severely tempted to fuck himself up to get that sweet relief that the pain meds provide

he stumbles upon Reggies alcohol cabinet and discovers that while getting drunk doesnt exactly cut off his powers it gives him this buzz that makes it a lot more bearable

he discovers drugs when he sneaks out one night to get more booze

he starts off with weed and gets hooked

the ghosts are always worse after coming down so he scrambles to get high as soon as possible

he doesnt try anything harder until ben dies 

after ben dies he spirals

TUA Power HCs Part 2 is coming up in a bit, ask me if you wanna get tagged for it :)

[deaf-bakugou]

Present Mic Headcanons (LONG)

So it is Present Mic's Bday so yeah. I figured let's chat about some headcanons for my Favorite Deaf since childhood character. (In my opinion.) These could also be considered a little bit sad. Okay. Some are definitely sad. But tragic backstory. That is how it goes.

So maybe he was born Deaf (because his body was already protecting him from his quirk)

Maybe he wasn't

Regardless it wouldnt have mattered because the moment he was born he screamed just like every other baby in existence does.

The doctors, attending nurses, parents, all Deafened almost immediately or had severe damage to their ears.

I like to believe that Hizashi is actually part of a set of twins. A little girl was born first and his big sister is also Deafened by the blast.

His birth parents immediately give him up.

He is placed in a sound proof room and it takes a lot to convince nurses to go in and tend to the screaming baby who is cold and alone.

Social services is called in and they know they need to do an emergency placement immediately.

They succeed finding a profoundly Deaf couple who already can't hear anything to adopt this little boy. Hearing tests show that the baby is already pretty Deaf. The doctors apologize to the new parents who are not impressed with that at all and go off on the doctor saying being Deaf isnt something to apologize for. It is a wonderful and different worldview.

Hizashi gets to grow up with two loving Deaf parents who immerse him in the world of Sign language and Deaf culture. He bangs on the dinner table for attention. Shouts and jumps and waves his hands. Struggles with the concept of personal space. Deaf people may not hear, but they are not quiet.

However social services stays involved. A quirk like that is dangerous so they want it to be monitored closely. The parents don't really want to force Hizashi to goto speech therapy or force him to wear hearing aids but social services requires it potentially even taking them to court to mandate it for the child's care. So there he is at a very young age receiving his first hearing aids.

The parents are not thrilled but support Hizashi anyway. They want him to have the best possible life he can and they know that forcing him into the hearing world is not the way to go. Hizashi is startled by the new noises and responds to them as you often see in the Deaf child gets hearing aids videos. Oh yes so sweet or something. (Those videos are super harmful for Deaf community. Not related and a discussion for another time.)

Hizashi and his parents return home where he promptly flushes them down the toilet because he hates them. (Super common for young Deaf kids.)

Thus comes several years of him destroying or losing various sets of hearing aids. He doesnt know how expensive they are and his parents are not paying for them because it is the government requiring he have them for quirk control.

One day when he is maybe 6 or 7 he hears music for the first time properly. It is a new and better set of hearing aids, they are walking through some festival and bam, there it is, someone playing a guitar or something. He pretty quickly falls in love with it.

He doesnt expect his parents to support him, but they do. They are just as enthusiastic for him to become involved with music as he is. As long as it is what he wants and not something that is being forced on him. They can feel the bass vibrations and enjoy music. He ends up with several instruments, they can't afford the lessons but he learns online but never shows anyone.

He is a genius child. He learns how to arrange light shows to go with his music.

When he enters school he is put into the Deaf Ed program with the rest of the Deaf kids. Still immersed in Sign language. Since he learned Sign first, japanese as a second language comes decently easy to him and he learns to read quickly. He starts to actually listen during his court mandated Speech therapy though he doesn't talk.

He has a quirk accident as a child. Of course he does. All children do. But his accident shatters windows at the school. He doesn't mean to but he struggles with volume control though. Doesnt understand it is something he really needs to work on or monitor.

Of course they start requiring that he go to quirk training outside of school. A specialist is required for these things they say.

His parents are reluctant but have to do as told in order to be allowed to keep him.

He hates the quirk training. He is learning to listen to and understand spoken word now though he never speaks. He can also lip read a decent amount because of all of the therapy which focus's on oral. Even though that isnt the correct path. Hearing people often think that it is. But he understands. Understands they are calling his quirk evil, dangerous, perfect for a villian. But he trains, he tries. From then on he only uses his voice during his mandated quirk training sessions.

He doesn't speak, he doesn't hum. He is doing his best to stay on behavior. It stays like this for years. Of course he occasionally has accidents. One time out with his Dwaf friends he laughs too loud, some bystanders ear starts to bleed. The bystander calls the police.

This is the first time that Hizashi gets arrested. He is just a child but he and the police do not understand each other they think he is resisting arrest, hisashi doesnt understand why they are there. It goes on his juvenile record as unauthorized quirk use in public. He doesn't laugh again. Not for a long time.

He has a few more incidents like that and he is not thrilled but learns to be perfectly quiet. No noise at all.

But he is still a happy child. A bright child. He knows he can control his quirk and just live his life the way he wants to and he will. He is a natural talent with music though he never sings.

His family isn't rich, but they have the basic additions. His parents have a hearing dog, they have flashing doorbells and vibrating alarms. Flashing fire alarms. All of the standard equipment that is considered typical to living a Deaf life.

But they do not have a Deaf intruder Alarm.

One night a villian decides they are easy targets. Hizashi isn't home. He is at a friends house. His parents die that night.

This changes many things in Hizashi's life.

He goes back into the system. No one wants him when they learn about his unique difficulties. His record and his quirk. The fact that he is Deaf. But none of that matters he has made a decision. He will become a hero. And he will find the person who murdered his parents and make sure they never hurt anyone else.

A few months later social services finds a foster family willing to host Hizashi. The house father is not a kind man. When Hizashi arrives he gives Hizashi a list of rules to follow. No quirk use, no speaking. Among others. Hizashi moves from his old school and loses his friends. His foster father puts him into hearing mainstreamed classes.

Things are much more difficult for him now. But he will survive. He starts studying to get into UA. He works harder at his mandated training. It would give him an edge over the others.

He cries out in his sleep one night. Nightmares from traumatic experiences.

His foster father has a special muzzle made. When he enters the home he wears it until he leaves instructed to eat breakfast on the way to school and dinner in the backyard away from the other house kids.

He grows to hate people like this. A darkness festering in his soul. A delicate balance between two paths he could fall down.

He studies technology too. Experiments with creating things when he can. His is paranoid. He doesnt want to be caught off gaurd like his parents so he wants to create a flashing alert for his door and windows. He is sure some are already out there but he no longer has access to these things.

At 14 he starts to speak. Not at home, not at school. But at his required speech therapy. To the surprise of all he speaks perfectly. No accent, no lagging, perfect volume control, and perfect speech. He is just as surprised as everyone else. A quirk specialist decides it is a part of his quirk. His quirk being Voice, it seems to override some of the effects of being Deaf.

Hizashi is pleased because he knows this gives him an easier path to the world of hero's. Having to overcome the barrier of speech issues would have been difficult. He doesn't speak often.

Depression settles in. But he has a goal. He moves forward. He applies for UA for the scholarship program. On the day of the test he wipes the floor with his opponents. No one knows how to handle his quirk. He makes it in easily.

He decides then and there that he will change everything. He will be happy and bright and like he was as a child. For his parents. And he is. He finds himself melding more into the hearing world. He has to.

He creates his own combat hearing aids, out of a set of headphones and some old hearing aid parts. Not perfect but progress. He does such a good job he is allowed into the support work shop and soon has a much better set. He keeps the first pair forever though.

When he meets Shouta, the other child doesnt care about his hearing aids. Or about much at all. Hizashi learns that Shouta knew a Deaf girl at his school back in middle school. Shouta knows basic signs but never bothered to really talk to her either.

Hizashi is still thrilled. By the time they graduate Shouta is reluctantly good at it.

Hizashi never looks back to his foster family once he moves out. He goes on to do wonderful things in the hero community. He uses his radio show as a platform for children in the foster system and children with disabilities. He never wants anyone to feel the way he did.

He eventually tells Shouta about his parents. Shouta just let's him talk. Hizashi needs it. But Hizashi is happy now, there is still a darkness in his soul, something that pulls tight if he gets to angry. A flash of the villian he could be. But being with Shouta tends to keep it at bay.

It isnt until years after they graduate, in their early twenties after college, that Shouta looks at Hizashi, who has grown his hair out. Hizashi is laughing with Nemuri and tosses his longer hair over his shoulder. Shouta realizes that this man looks almost identical to the girl he went to middle school with.

Shouta tracks her down out of curiosity. After some finagling he learns that this girl is indeed Hizashi's twin. He eventually tells Hizashi. Hizashi reunites with his twin sister and develops a bond that will never break with her. It will take many more years before he finds the will to speak with his borth parents. He doesnt know if he will be angry or not. It doesnt matter either. Because the Deaf couple that adopted him, and loved him, had been his parents and no one could replace them.

He lives happily with what he has built for himself. Bouncing between the Deaf and hearing communities. He builds hearing aids and other aids for underprivileged Deaf families and children. He creates his own line of alarms connected to video feeds. His house is always armed to the max. But it isnt so bad once he marries Shouta, able to trust him to hear intruders as well. Though the man sleeps like the dead so he never stops using the alarm system anyway.

Eventually he meets another boy with a voice quirk, shunned for his abilities and with a darkness brewing in his soul.

So of course he keeps that boy. He had been adopted after all, so adopting isnt a difficult decision.

[batfamily--headcanons]

My Thoughts on Episodes 7-9 of Young Justice Outsiders

Episodes 7-9 of Young Justice Outsiders gave me what I had been wanting since it was announced that season 3 was happening. So, I’m going to talk about my thoughts on these three awesome episodes. Spoilers ahead (duh).

In episode 7, we got plenty of team bonding between Violet, Brion, and Forager which I was kind of loving. Brion’s “hot lava” comment had me laughing so hard and then the shade about Nightwing’s mullet and disco era made it so much better. The dynamic between Brion and Violet is something that I’m starting to enjoy and I’m actually starting to get invested in the new characters.

When they were having that campfire and discussing how stupid it would be for Batman to fight Superman, I was living for it. It almost gives me hope that DC might be able to learn from and even joke about their mistakes. Seeing Dick, Conner, and Artemis train a new team on the beach of Mount Justice made me seriously nostalgic for season one and it made me realize how grown up the original team is now.

Vandal Savage was there too, which is relatively common for Young Justice. As someone who used to watch Legends of Tomorrow, I’m just so sick of Vandal Savage that I don’t really care that he’s here. I get that he was the main villain for season 1 of Legends, but they overused him quite a bit and it feels played out to me.

In episode 8, Jade makes her (triumphant?) return. I’ve got to say, Jade’s appearances almost always irritate me. There hasn’t been much character growth with her, she’s just defined by the fact that she’s a villain even though she doesn’t really have much motivation anymore. Maybe I’m only angry because in the comics she did see Lian even though she was in jail and she wanted to be part of her life. At the same time, I understand that she thinks that Lian is better off without her. Artemis telling her to go visit and that she’s still Lian’s mother was good to see too. Even though she isn’t her sister’s biggest fan, she still tries to help her in a way.

This episode might have been my favourite of these three for three reasons in particular. Those reasons being Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and Cassandra Cain. Just before they made their appearance on screen, I’ll admit to being kind of annoyed. We hadn’t much of Batman, Robin, or Spoiler since episode one and even in episode one, they were barely there. Everyone kept mentioning that Batman Inc. was happening simultaneously and that’s one of my favourite Batman stories. The fact that it was happening but we were focused on training on the beach was kind of irritating.

Then, we got to see the whole Batfamily (minus Jay and Dami who obviously shouldn’t be there right now) together in several scenes. I do hope that we get to see some part of The Killing Joke this season because it’s obviously already happened and because not everyone is well-versed in the comics. Casual fans are probably wondering what happened to Barbara and it would be bad storytelling to assume that everyone knows and to not tell the story.

As for the fact that Batman Inc., Dick’s new team, Young Justice, and Wonder Woman have been secretly working together the whole time, I’m not surprised. Batman wouldn’t quit the Justice League without a bigger plan in place and I knew that from the moment he resigned in the first episode.

In episode nine, we can really tell that this show isn’t on Cartoon Network anymore. Lady Shiva brutally decapitates Ocean Master, something that we would have never seen before, and I really enjoyed it. Lady Shiva is a dangerous assassin, she wouldn’t simply give him a warning, she would kill him. It is interesting that Lady Shiva seems like she’s going to play a fairly large role this season, the season that introduces Cass for the first time. As some of you may know, Lady Shiva is Cassandra Cain’s mother, so I wonder if they’re going to do anything with that.

I was worried throughout the episode about the superparents and their children. Logically I knew nothing would happen to them, but then again, we’re not on Cartoon Network anymore so I couldn’t be 100% sure. Seeing all of the League’s kids having one big play date was kind of adorable and it’s something that most superhero shows wouldn’t bother showing. That’s one of my favourite things about this show, it shows more than the heroes kicking ass, you see their every day lives too and the characters feel more fleshed out because of it.

Bart also got some screen time this episode and I loved seeing him help Iris with her speedster twins. I really hope he and the rest of the second team get some more screen time soon. As much as I love the original team and getting to know this newer team, I do feel like we’ve been seeing a little bit too much of them. I grew way more attached to the second Young Justice team than I thought that I would when I started season 2, which is why it sucks that we haven’t seen much of them.

To sum it all up, I enjoyed these three episodes more than the six that came before them, but I do understand that they had to set everything up in the other episodes. I do have some questions about certain things that haven’t been acknowledged yet like what happened to Arthur to make Kaldur Aquaman or why M’gann’s hero persona looks so drastically different. However, I’m sure they will explain in due time. Here’s to next week’s episodes and to seeing more of Jason soon, even though that’s probably not going to happen.  

[the-skooma-den]

Aight! part 2 to my whole shebang on my eso main syke! Part 1 is here and it covers the basics of who/what she is. This one is how she goes through the main plot, all thats under cut

And here is a directory to both posts about her, as well as the ones about her siblings

Were gonna do this bullet point style .also just assume the main plot quests are going on at the same time, the “main” quest remains relatively unchanged aside from her relationship with Abnur Tharn, who is her grandfather, which although it sounds important really isnt because she hates him. 

Pre main plot: Mostly covered in the previous posts

 Her time before the main plot, as a member of the brotherhood.  At the time of her kidnapping she was mentally a wreck and moments away from a mental break. She was on a lot of drugs and was drunk pretty often, it was a very bad scene. On top of that morally speaking was pretty ambiguous if not downright evil.She was actually infamous in the brotherhood for her ruthlessness. (It’s actually a common story to tell the new recruits about the time she slit a babies throat in front of its mother because the mother got in her way). Overall unsympathetic and completely apathetic to worries of the world around her. 

It’s worth noting that deep down she was already ashamed of herself, which fueled a lot of her unhealthy behavior. She doesnt see much wrong with how the brotherhood operates in general (she was literally raised in their cult so not much surprise there) But her earned reputation as being brutal was not one she was proud of 

Eventually she was drunk one night and was captured and sacrificed by the worm cult, thus starting the main plot

Cold Harbor: She was in cold harbor for a long long while ,she’s not actually sure how long she was there. It felt like years, but when she got back to nirn she had only been missing for about 6 months, and some of the injuries she couldve sworn were there for a months looked only hours old when she escaped. Her experience there haunts her for a long time,pretty much the rest of her life, but she does her best to deal with it. Her time here cause her first real shift, because now she cares about something. Even if it’s just caused he pissed her off. She’ll stop at nothing to stop Molag Bal even at the cost of her life. Which might not really be an issue in the first place, as thanks to her lack of a soul she is essentially immortal. Whenever she “dies” her body falls to the ground and her concienness is left to wander nearby while it magically heals (unless the body is completely destroyed, then she ends up at a wayshrine a while later)

Cold harbor is where she got her most prominent scars. The shackles around her neck (mostly on the back of her neck) and wrists and lashes on her back. All of her piercing were ripped out as well. Her hair is extremely matted and overall shes just gross and uncomfortable She also has 2 neat and precise stab wounds above her heart from manimarco.

Khenarthi’s roost/ Auridon: After Razum-dar drags her out of the ocean looking like hell, She’s so dazed from ya know,dying and coming back to life that she doesnt bother coming up with any kind of character or disguise, she barely even has the mind to come up with her fake name,Syke.

When he dredged her up he immediately brought her to healers and though they had to work pretty quickly they fixed her up well. They cut off all the matted bits of her hair (which she later fixed into her little Mohawk thing), they healed up all her tears from the piercings being ripped out. They also healed up the wound from the shackles and whips the best they could ,they couldn’t do it all the way through but they made sure it wouldn’t get infected at least, but there was no way to stop it from scarring.

She actually does know who Raz is even though they’ve never met, she’s just heard of him. She figures “Hey getting the support of the Queen and her spy force would be useful” so she goes along with it and helps him. She manages to conceal the fact she knows who he is pretty well, but he is still suspicious. (which to be fair a women who was recently pretty clearly a prisoner falling out fo the sky and clearly being a experience fighter and mage isn’t exactly normal). She proves herself dangerously competent, extremely useful (and also kinda hot) so Raz asks for her help on Auridon as well. 

Only a few notable divergent from the main plot of things happen while on  Auridon. The first is that after she is appointed as an Eye of the queen she asks the queen to speak privately for a moment and while no one knows 100% of what they spoke about, the main thing is that this is when Syke explains the whole “I have no soul and am planning on killing Molag Bal to get it back” thing. As his invasion is starting to really mount up by this point the queen promises to support the endeavor whenever it happens so on so forth.

The second is an extra moment between Raz and Syke after the quest at Mathiisen. Basically She looks at Raz and realizes since she’s met him like 4 of his friends have died. She’s not very good with people or emotion but, well they may not really trust each other but they still like each other…and she’s at least pretty sure they're friends,all his other friends are kinda dead, she figures she might as well TRY to comfort him. This ends up with them getting absolutely smashed in the local inn and is basically an excuse for exposition because Raz knows almost nothing about her at this point. He does end up learning quite a bit about her, including that she’s from a little town north of silvinar (which honestly, kinda obvious. She has a pretty strong east bosmeri accent even after living away from there for years and years), and that she’s at least somewhat noble with little to no interest in claiming her titles. She greatly downplays HOW noble she is. He returns the favor and tell her he’s from a little farming village and She immediately guesses what part of Elsweyr hes from, shes spent a lot of time there in her youth, and she could identify that southern Anequina accent anywhere. After this she takes to jokingly calling him Farm Boy…if only in private. They also learn more about each others families, though it mostly amounts to funny stories about their younger siblings.

They wake up horribly hungover (and naked) the next day and go on their separate ways for a bit. (aka, he goes to meet up with the Queen on their way to the festival in skywatch, Syke goes and does some sidequests and then they meet up during the festival. The plot continues)

Last little side note here is her addiction to skooma and other drugs. Dying, spending a long time in spooky terrible ghost hell prison, and then kinda but not really coming back to life has some pretty funny affects on a person. She didn’t get any kind of magical cure for her addiction, she was basically just forced to go cold turkey for god knows how long. She’s in an ok enough mental space to at least refuse skooma, but she still hits the alcohol pretty frequently.

Valenwood:  Valenwood is where things get a little conflicted with her personal life, Namely because of her sister, Nia. (more on her in part 1 but quick summary, she ran away almost 10 years ago and faked her death,and then showed up with the bosmeri noble members of their family completely denouncing her, their mother and the rest of their family)

So while Syke is off doing the main quest in Valenwood, Raz puts together that one of the Dominions biggest supporters among the Bosmeri Nobles matches Sykes description of her sister. Raz decides to tell said Noble about the whole thing and she confirms that, that sounds a LOT like what happened between her and her sister. Raz learns a bit more about the whole family drama he has somehow stumbled into, including the whole “Nia ran away Thing, but doesn’t learn much about Syke specifically. Just that her and Nia are actually cousins, they have different last names and that she’s pretty much always gone by fake names or nicknames (and that Nia is working of the correct assumption that Syke wouldnt appreciate her real name being revealed) 

Nia at this point, does not regret leaving and knows it was what was best for her, but defiantly regrets how she did it. Raz informs her that hes actually going to see Syke at Marbruk and invites her along to try and apologize to Syke.

Raz is expecting some heart felt reunions and tearful apologies and is of course surprised when Syke didn’t even let Nia say two words. She saw Nia, was stunned enough that Nia took off her mask without struggle but before she could get even 2 words out Syke decked her. Hard

So Raz talks to Nia (once she wakes up) and learns some alarming things from her. Mostly why Nia ran away in the first place (she didnt want to be a member of the dark brotherhood and being a impulsive teenager who figured that faking her death was the best option) and that yeah, Syke is not just a member of the brotherhood, but a really notable one,and also a lot about her …disturbing reputation in it. Not to mention the fact she’s a bit higher up on the nobility scale then she originally implied…by like a lot. She is pretty close to inheriting several thrones and important titles, and is by the way, Abnur tharns granddaughter.

Raz, of course, runs to the Queen to deliver the information that yeah, their extremely efficient new recruit is a member of the brotherhood, and is the granddaughter of the man who tortured her. The Queen already knows. Syke isnt dumb, she figured this might come up eventually and told the Queen first chance she got (remember that conversation in Auridon?). Ayrenn agreed to continue letting her be an Eye,with the understanding that if Syke ever moved against the Dominion she’d be killed on the spot. As for the Abnur Tharn thing, well Syke never really knew him. At the time of the Auridon conversation she had never met him, and you can’t really hold a person accountable for the actions of a relative she never knew… Course Syke had at this point met Abnur tharn multiple times but even someone with zero social grace like her understood that this was not the time to mention it.

Raz is pissed at Ayrenn and Syke for not telling him any of this, Syke is pissed at Nia for…everything she’s done for almost 10 years, and Ayrenn and Nia are getting along surprisingly well (and lowkey are kinda dating). Nia follows Syke around for the rest of the main Dominion plot, Syke is not happy about it but damn Nia’s hard to shake. Nia is as stubborn as her sister and If Syke won’t forgive her then she can at least try and help get her sisters soul back.

The Raz and Syke thing gets resolved before the end of Valenwood after another brief conversation where it really hits Raz with the pure amount of shit Syke’s been through and is still going through.

Yeah hes still mad, but shes desperately trying to apologize to him and honestly sometimes you have to cut a person some slack. Whatever her reasons for joining in the first place she is genuinely loyal to the Dominion (if she wasn’t those giant golden wing tattoos on her back were a real stupid move). There’s no way around the fact he’s a little intimidated by her now, for several reasons really. And it sucks and it hurts her but you can’t really blame him.

The main plot counties as it does, though I like to think they get a slight break at the end to actually enjoy the celebration appointing the new Silvinar and Green Lady for a couple days before things go to shit and she has to run out to reapers march.

Appearance wise, shes starting to replace her Piercings and she’s getting tattoos to cover her scars. Golden Laurels around the shackle marks and Golden eagle winds to cover the whip marks on her back. She really believes in the Queen at this point and thinks Ayrenn is the best bet Cyrodill has, to the point she’s decided to represent it on her body.

Reapers March: (technically part of Valenwood I think but i figure it deserved its own part)  Even more shit hits the fan now, cause being declared an important figure in a completely different religion isn’t something that’s gonna help a crisis of faith. So a few things happen here.

A third member joins the party, Syke’s little adoptive brother Jo’Thera, a Khajiiti Necromancer and fellow member of the brotherhood shows up. He was besides being her little brother, easily Syke’s best friend. He knows She’s been unhappy for a long time now and when she disappeared he was the only one who didn’t just assume she killed herself. The moment he heard a rumor that a woman who sounded a lot like Syke was running around the Dominion territory he took off after her. (side note, the reunion between him and Nia isn’t as violent as her and Syke’s, its just bitter and cold and sad). He was never really all that loyal to the brotherhood, he was mostly in it for his family so when Syke explains the situation he’s just fucking ready man, ride or die. Fuck it lets go off the grid, tearing credit cards and shit if she’s out then he is. (She’s not actually out yet, leaving was never in the question for her. She desperately wants to get back to her famly she just wants her soul back first. He’s just supportive)  and Syke is considerably happier to have him along then she was Nia (who while ostracized by her siblings, is still following along). He kinda creeps everyone out, cause on one hand he’s a perfectly cheerful friendly man. On the other hand he’s a necromancer assassin. It’s just an unsettling combination...It doesnt help that he aware hes creepy and finds unsettling people extremely fun. 

So of course Senalana happens. She lets Raz live, so he is of course extremely mad. and thats a whole damn thing. It’s not to different from what happens in game, just imagine afterwards it’s more of a real argument rather then Raz just yelling at her, also its longer. And also imagine some more romantic tension between the player and Raz .LIke they aren’t really dating yet, but they've defiantly banged multiple times and theyre both lying about not having feelings for each other

She does have a good reason for letting him live outside of their growing romantic relationship. She doesn’t really believe in the dominion so much as she believes in Ayrenn and Razum-dar. She’s seen to much of the Dominion from the inside and out to really think well of it, but she knows Ayrenn. And she knows Raz. If someone has to be emperor/empress of her home she’d prefer it to be Ayrenn. However she is also convinced the Ayrenn won’t be able to do that without Raz specifically, Syke has seen them work together and at least from Sykes point of view if one loses the other then any hope the Dominion has of winning this war is fucked.

Anyway that whole argument ends up in a shouting match at the end of which Syke takes the circlet,disappears for a few weeks, hides it her own damn self and then continues on the main quest.

This is the main reason why it really took Raz and Syke so long to get together, if it weren’t for this they would have been together before Syke went back to coldharbor easy. This complicated things a bit, made them both think

Syke chooses Shazah as the Mane and was really torn up by Khali’s death. This only real difference between this and the canon quest is that she actually threatens Shazah towards the end of it, like full on knife to throat, right after watching Raz and Ayrenn die. Basically saying that if any of this comes to pass, Syke will hunt down the traitors first, then Shazah. And if it comes to it she’ll take the Ruby throne for herself (one of those moments that everyone remembers that she is a noble woman, even if she doesnt use the title. and also that no one but her really knows just how high up she is). Shazah asks her if she loves him. (him being Raz, she did just watch Syke sob over his body, then only tear up a little at Ayrenns corpse). Syke doesn’t Deny it, she doesn’t say anything. They just keep moving.

(Also Raz and the rest were being kept updated on what was happening during the whole ceremony and up until this point it was basically a mix of dark humor about their own deaths and sympathy for the girls having to go through it. At this point it goes dead quiet, eyes turn to Raz, and im not gonna extend this further by adding a pic of the surprised pikachu meme but in spirit its here and representing Raz’s face)

The main plot keeps on rolling till it’s time to storm cold harbor. She does go in alone though, despite her siblings insistence, she refuses to put them in danger of losing their souls to.

She has one final conversation with Raz before she goes, they admit nothing cause theyre stubborn bastards but they do apologize to each other 

Cold Harbor: There’s really not much different here about how syke goes through it. The only things of note are that she’s terrified for the whole thing and also makes friends with a few of the other reoccurring characters, namely Darien, who i think shows up earlier then he actually does in game because he basically ends up her sidekick through the whole thing (though he might say otherwise). She is suitably distraught when he disappears. She helps out in the search for him whenever she can spare the time after that.

The Dlc start to happen about a year after the main quest (that year is when all the things like that mages and fighter guild happen). At this point her hair does keep going grey but once the stress of “I have no soul and i’m going to fight a god” goes away it slows down a lot. The worst of her scars are already covered by tattoos and her favorite piercings have already been replaced, so this point any additional piercings and tattoos are just for fun because she likes them.

as for the last 2 drawings,One is just her in game look,I thought it be fun to put in here. the other is just a reminder that she almost always wears a mask and that variations of this mask are the only thing most characters will ever see of her.

[crusty-the-snowman]

Part 2

So some nights later Jake (he tries very hard) to carry Rich out with him to Jeremy and Michael who has a saddle, both to learn how to if he can fly rich, and incase Rich doesn't know how to fly since hes yet to see Rich do it. Rich is also a bit bigger than Jake so to move quickly once they get out to the wilderness Jake sets Rich down and is happy to find Rich knows his name and follows when called (Michael while waiting knows Jakes arrived when he starts hearing " come on Richie, Richie, Richie, good boy almost there, youre remember Mikey? Mikeys got a nice surprise for us! Yes he does! Yes he does!) Jakes saddle is made with a specific horn and stirrups even because Rich will climb on walls and Jake doesnt want to fall if Rich does that Rich takes a moment to recognise Jeremy can't hear any noises he makes but they adjust quickly and play for awhile Jeremy is excited "the dragon is here!!!!!!! I smelled him on the fleshy dragon and he is here!!!!" Jeremys dad arrives and is excited "my son has made another friend!!!!! Friend is nice!!!" he thankfully only feeds Rich meaning no puked up fish for Jake and Michael It takes some work to have Rich hold still to put on the saddle ( hes excited to play with Jeremy) but as long as Jake keeps scratching him it works out Seeing Jeremy and Michael fly makes Rich a wiggly boi like he wants to fly but it takes Jeremys dad giving a nudge for Rich to attempt to even get off the ground Rich can fly but he just neeeded encouragement bc hes never done it before They end up flying for awhile and its really nice, Jake and Michael even race eachother acouple times Michael won Jeremys dad trailed after mainly following to make sure they were okay. -- Eventually after several days of racing and flying around suddenly Rich, Jeremy and his dad began flying off towards a place that seemed to be a whole nest of other dragons And there was a dragon called the Blue Death (squip) that it seemed all the dragons were feeding. If they didnt feed it enough a a dragon might get eaten Jake was very shaken up about this and honestly very happy that Rich wasnt going to be part of that if he could help it. Michael felt similar about Jeremy but both were worried about Jeremys dad who they couldnt exactly stop Eventually Michael amd Jake were given a ceremony to kill a monstrous nightmare so they could graduate Only Michael couldn't And because the monstrous nightmare was in an enclosed space it went after Michael who screamed in a panic because he couldnt calm down a dragon thats trying to kill him out of fear Until a certain flamewhipper dove in through the opening and curled around Michael before shooting fire at the monstrous nightmare to protect him Jake then hopped in through the wire above to stand by Michael and Rich Chloes parents were pissed, took rich to find the islabd with the blue death and Michael and Jake were left to think about the fact Rich was being sent into a death trap as was everyone else Christine admitted though that she thought it was cool and thats when Michael got an idea Christine was introduced to a scauldron named madeline (i wanted a shakespeare ref but also to include canon vmc characters for consistency) A dragon that was kept in the academy like Rich Jenna got a stormcutter she named Dustin Chloe was met with a Nadder/changwing she named Brooke Most movie events happen the same except Jake had to free Rich and the blue death destroyed the ship the were on, breaking both of jakes legs in the process and Rich had to carry him to somewhere safe Considered ideas though if not all of those are quite fitting to ur liking: Jake didn't get a dragon until he decided to obtain get a whispering death that soon after laid an egg. Unbeknownst to him a screaming death was born which he then named Rich upon learning such Rich is a potentially dangerous and destructive dragon but he thinks Jake is his brother so he wouldnt do anything unless Jake wanted him to. Jake: ow my legs hurt Rich: !!! D:

[deafeningsuitdestiny]

The Elephant in the Room

Chapter one, My beginning

Hey there,

how are you?

Me, well I'm doing okay. To be honest a little roughed up, but okay none the less. My names Paige, I'm 22 and a bit of a nerd. 

I spend most of my time in my room, by myself, hiding in my world of electronics. That's kind of what ive always done. My whole life has been a bit of a rollarcoaster. I was born in '98 and while others wouldnt, I do wholehartedly consider myself a '90's baby. Not that I actually remember much of the 90's.

I've grew up in the sunny and ever so saught after california Inland Empire, in a tiny town called Norco, horse town USA. No, I didn't ever have a horse in my backyard growing up. But I always had one at my grandparents. Tinker was her name when I was young. We never rode her, grandma always said that she had hurt her foot when she was younger so we couldn't. I personally just think my grandma left her alone for so long that she wasn't a 'broke' horse anymore. 

Not that that was her fault. She has arthritis really bad in both knees and has had it for as long as I can remember. Growing up i spent a lot of time with my grandma. I was at her house almost everyday. Both of my parents worked. My dad in construction and my mom at a christian pre-school. That meant that every morning, Monday through Friday at 4-5 A.M, I was hauled over to grandmas house. I have endless love for my grandma for so many reasons. Her home has always been a safe haven for me to go, and really has been my whole life, even as an adult.

My childhood is probably one of the most complex parts of my life. I've never really been one to talk about  it, or myself really. If you would have asked me a few weeks ago i would have brushed it off and said it was normal. However, my childhood was far from normal. I actually don't remember a lot of it. I have really had to sit and think about it to try to piece it all together. I won't go into detail about anyone in my family but me, but it wasn't really all Glitz and Glam for any of us.

Like i said my earliest memories are at my grandmas house. I do remember a bit about my childhood home. I remember having big birthday parties and asking to go to friends houses all the time. Thats not really something I was allowed to do a lot. Except for my childhood bestfriend, Natalie. I went to her house as often as my parent would let me. I remember having her house phone and my moms cell phone number memorized only. I called her almost everyday after school waiting for her to get home from dance classes so we could talk about the Sims and whatever elementry school drama we could find.

I'm so thankful for Natalie. She's been a really big person in my life and I have been able to rely on her a lot through-out my life. She and I to this day keep in touch. I also spent a lot of time with my 'cousin' Kendyl. I say cousin because her mom Stephanie and my mom were best friends. So i know i spent a lot of time with her and she is considered Family. When I was home my mom babysat her a lot. Stephanie was a single mom when I was growing up and hustled her ass off to get whatever she could for kendyl. But that meant she worked a lot.

Therefore Kendyl was also a very good friend to me growing up. Although I can remember being a bit mean to her at times. I was older and not getting enough attention in my own home so I think I ended up taking it out on her a bit. I can vividly remember her mom going off on me for smapping a balloon on her hand. Lightning struck quite a very few times in my childhood that I remember getting really upset, but that was one of them. I don't really remember why but I think there was a small group of us all hanging out. I got embarressed.

When I talk to other people about their childhoods they remember so much more than I do, but I do think it's a blessing that I don't remember a lot of it. Another memory I have from when I was younger is being at Stephanie's boyfriends house with Kendyl riding around in her green little Jeep, we went  up and down his driveway until the battery was so low it wouldn't go up anymore and we ended up flipping over somehow. For some reason I also remember getting in trouble for that like it was my fault when i was probably no more than 5 outside playing without any supervision.

A lot of my childhood is like that, no supervision and left to my own devices. I think that kind of explains a lot of why I am the way that I am. I learned to exist by myself. So i learned how to escape from the world around me. A tool I use well into my adulthood.

Chapter 2 Growing Pains

I gained a sister at the ripe age of 2 & 1/2. Ms. Avery Rose made her appearance and I was not so happy at the time. I greeted her with a sippy cup to the head the day she came home.

Sorry Ave, Love you.

I was standarly upset about having another person to now add to, what i considered, a competition for attention. We shared a room, with a bunk bed. I claimed the top bunk so she was stuck on the bottom. I've always been messy, so naturally I ate in my bed. Therefore i had ants in my bed. That meant that Avery would not go anywhere near the top bunk, as shes a bit of a clean freak, and at the time that meant my deturrant was working as intended. I had my space and everyone stayed away. That was the goal, so I slept with ants. It didnt really bother me.

I don't remember why I wanted to keep everyone away, but I felt the need to. So I made huge messes and didnt really ever take care of myself. The idea was if I looked a mess and had messes around me, the standard person would stay away. I would be safe and could do as I pleased. which wasnt much but escape to the land of my imagination.

I can remember going to my toy box and literally throwing every toy I could grab over my shoulder to make a mess of my bedroom floor. My grandparents ended up coming over that night for dinner and my grandma helped me pick up my bedroom. When I say helped I mean I sat contemplating begrugendly as I watched my grandma pick up the beautiful chaos that I had created for myself. She knew i was upset, so she stayed in my room with me until I fell asleep, turned on sleeping beauty to try to calm me down, and it worked. Disney Works. Dreamworks Works. Very well, thanks to grandma. To this day I can turn on a classic disney movie to calm down.

I don't think she even knows, but to this day I use that. She has given me one of my greatest coping mechanisms.

Isolation bred imaginary friends. Bobber, Bingalong, and Joshco. They were with me wherever i went. I had bobber well into my later adolescent years and still vividly remember what he looked like.

They were all tiny, and could fit in the palm of my hand but would sit on my shoulders more often than not. Bobber had scraggly hair and wore overalls and had a red shirt. It's not a surprise that red was my favorite color most of  my life. My whole family still teases me about them, but in a really weird way they are family to me. They were around when no one was there.

I did not like the outdoors as a kid. Absolutely hated playing outside. My mom, thinking I needed the normalcy would lock Avery and I outside to "play". Most of the time this led to me intentionally scraping my knee, stubbing my toe, or just outright throwing a fit to get back inside. I wanted to play on the computer instead. Club Penguin, BarbieGirls, VirtualMagicKingdom, Wizard 101, Neopets, I had a Nancy Drew Orca game that I loved to play, a Jimmy Neutron game I completed several times over. I loved the escape of it all.

Those were the only places I felt happy, safe, and had enough fun that I felt like I was thriving.

Chapter 3 School House Blues

School was always something i've been naturally good at, when i put in the effort anyways. My grandpa spent the time teaching me math as a kid, thankfully. Otherwise I would have been lost. It was not my strongsuit. School was never somehing that i wanted to pursue but I did good because I was expected to do good.

Although I never really fully paid attention as a kid. I was still off in my own world. I had a Group of girlfriends I always hung out with. It was Jada, Myself, Natalie, Emily, Cheyenne, Taylor E. , Taylor M. and sometimes a Sierra or Cierra. To that friend group ~ I am sorry if I forgot anyone. This was a while ago haha

Even in the group I always tried hard to fit in, because I felt like I didn't. I felt like that third wheel friend that always had to try really hard. I think my try-harding annoyed a lot of them to be honest. By the 6th grade the whole group was done with me and the last 6 months of elementry school I spent by myself at a picnic table, until I remembered the Library and Mrs.Curd.

Thank god for Mrs.Curd. From that moment on I spent all of my free time in the library. We has something called A.R. when i was growing up when I was growing up, basically the school wanted to make sure we were reading enough books and growing our mini human brains. The goal was to get to 100% by the end of the trimester. Well in 6th grade I made it to 100% by the second day of school thanks to the twilight series, I had read in the matter of a few days, I flew through it.

I remember finishing the first book in a day and immediatly begging my mom to go get the next one.I even read Midnight Sun online as it was released without Stephanie Meyers' permission. All 152 pages then I think it was. That also meant whenever it was A.R. time I would Immediatly run to the library while everyone else silent read. I would put books away and eat all of her butterscotch candy.

A huge shoutout to Mrs.Woolard for letting me go~ that is until my other grades started to drop. Math started to get the best of me since I was so caught up in books and my imagination. I wasnt allowed to run off to the library anymore, I had to focus on my A.M. basically it was the math version of A.R. but every single recess and lunch time I spent with Mrs. Curd.

I don't really know what happened to her, but I really hope shes doing well. She is a big credit as to how I'm still here. Teachers really are the Life Blood of our society. I'm living proof.

Chapter 4

Puberty

I wish I could tell you that Jr. High got better. My grades kept falling. Thankfully my educators were still a few good and true. Mr.Walker taught me more history and structure than I ever could have asked for. That man taught me organization.

He was a stickler, he was very good at making sure the homework assignments were done and held the accountability for it as well. I remember he was the first teacher to ever give me a detention, because the whole class didn't do the outline the night before. It was a detention that came with love however. The whole class spent that hour after school writting the outline.

Thus my love of writting began. I can't tell you how many outlines i did in that class but it was a lot. A whole binder full. His homework schedule revolved on a schedule. That meant that if you missed a day you still had a pretty good idea of what was expected of you.

It was also nice because he was someone who didnt believe in homework on the weekends. He believed in putting in hard work and having your personal time as well. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were days that homework typically wasn't assigned. Unless of course we had a project, but they always came with ample time to get them done and a solid deadline.

Mr.Walker taught me the importance of balance and knowlage. That you need to know whats going on, but you also need to take care of yourself. At the time that didn't quite click BUT years later I can look back on those days and understand the importance of what he was teaching me.

Jr. High was also the time that I Joined Choir. I was hoping it would be the fun and happy place I always dreamed of but quickly learned it was kind of a free for all with songs nobody knew unless it was around christmas time. Not exactly what a Maturing Mini Human was interested in. I remember asking Mr.Betts if we could do more relent songs, or something in the Top 40, his repsonse was no, we have to keep the classics alive, which I understand. Now looking back I wish I would have told him he was living in the past and trying to grow the future.

That doesn't work.

Chapter 5

A small circle

In Jr. High the friend group was small. So small in fact I don't think I ever consistantly spoke to more than 2 people at a time. Keeping up with friends we never my strong suit. I remember sitting in the same far right table next to the choir room every day. Being excited for Pretzel day and having access to vending machines. I would spend every quarter I had on the many snacks back then, no regrets haha.

That lunch table actually had some of my fondest memories, dancing and practicing ballet spins with Chey, doodling the many anime doodles with amie. Shes probably one of the first friends I ever openly talked to about my love of Anime. I wrote every one I watched on the front of my homework planner, it was my messy list of all the things I loved. Blue and Black ink was smeared all over it.

I wish I kept it but I didn't. It was lost in the many moves. By jr high we were living in our third house. We had moved into a new house when my baby brother came along. We outgrew our little three bedroom, moved on to a 5 bedroom and then went back down to a 4 bedroom. It had stairs and don't ask me why but that was the most exciting thing to me. I could not wait to live in a house with stairs. Call me an odd ball, everyone else in the house complained that it was too hot upstairs or they didnt like to carry the laundry up the stairs, but I didn't mind at all. I thought it was fun!

I was also in love with that house because of all the trees in the backyard, lemons grew in a large plethora. We were never short on lemons, apricots, a few tiny oak trees, the street was lined with tall pines, we had peppers that grew, grapes, it was like a mini haven. I don't think we ever could have used all the lemons. The two trees produced so much fruit my dad would complain about having to pick them out of the grass.

That house is also where I fell deeper in love with music, the Ipod Touch 1st generation came out and I think i went through a pair of headphones every 2-3 weeks. My parents werent too happy about that but my eardrums were. Evinescense, Lincoln Park, Black veil Brides, and Rihanna became my heros. I ran to them when the rest of the work felt too scary to handle. I remember watching the music videos over and over. Dancing around my room with the music as loud as I could get away with. Which was pretty loud as long as it was still light outside.

I still do that, in my car the music is always full blast. Music became my escape all over again but this time it was everything I wanted to listen to which rocked my world. Figurativly and Literally.

Chapter 6

DisneyLand

Through all of this my mom was losing touch with herself. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to watch. The strong woman I once thought could rule the world was now bedridden. A lot. It was nothing she could have controled. She just fell to pieces and I had a front row seat.

It was my first heartbreak watching her shatter bit by bit. It felt endless, lonely, and daunting. My poor dad just had to keep going to work. That wasn't an option. he had three kinds and a sick wife he needed to provide for, and he did his damndest. We never went hungry, we had the new clothes still, we just had no savings. He couldn't keep up with it all by himself and I don't fault him for it. Our world was going through a forced change that none of us were ready for. At that point he wasnt even working at a job he liked. After everything crashed in 2008 he lost his fancy construction job.

He wasn't working with all the people he loved, he wasn't being paid properly, he was just working his ass off trying to make it. Lightning continued to strike,  a lot of screaming matches brewed, and it didnt help that my room was closest to theirs.

So hiding things? You could not.  No hiding anything, I knew all the struggles and annoyances.

Thank the Universe for headphones. I kept those things in almost 24/7.

Now, choir was not all bad. It did have some pretty fun moments when we got out of the classroom the few times we did. We ended up going to Disneyland, going back stage and recording a few disney songs as a class which I do have to say, was pretty fricken cool. To me we got the perfect songs, we did Hawiian Rollarcoaster Ride from Lilo and Stitch and The is Halloween from The Nightmare Before christmas. Two Iconic, what I consider to be, classics. Moments like that got me through.

That only took us a few hours and then we were free to roam Disney and enjoy all of the magic. For the first time since I was 5-6 years old. And then I could do whatever I wanted. All the ride choices were at my finger tips. It was the first time I felt Free.

Trips like tha gave me things to look forward to, and honestly thats all I needed.

It took absolutely forever to get our recordings back and I didnt end up buying one, we were struggling financially as the time and I was not about to add another expense to the plate. I knew I was taking enough. Probably too much. More than my parents could have handled at the time. But I knew that, and I was still messy as hell. It kept my room as my space so nobody could come in. It was mine. My Chaotic Castle. Where I was free to blast the music, dance, and sing all I wanted.

It was my home.

Chapter 7

Off a cliff

That chaotic castle didn't last and we ended up moving to another house, but this one hung off a cliff. We had to downsize again, so Ave and I were back in a room together, and quite unhappy about it. We already fought like we were mortal enemies and for a while the severity just got worse and worse. Then one day it was like a switch went off and we decided to just make the best of whatever situations came our way. Teamwork makes that dream work. You do what you gotta do.

Sharing that tiny room with her was hard. She didn't have a closet and had to use my brothers while he used a wardrobe. We barely had room to walk around. Each of us had a bed, a nightstand, and atop our 'Paige, Avery, Money, Boys' cabnet was an itty-bitty TV in the middle that we often faught over. Usually we could reach a mutual agreement when it came to NCIS or Law and Order: Svu.

To this day we can recite the opening by heart.

We shoved two tiny twin beds in that room and did our best to get through it. Her being a clean freak did not enjoy my mess that I allowed to take over everything. Eventually she got to the point were she would just shove everything to my side. I brushed it off with an eyeroll and a shrug.

Even worse I am not a fan of laundry. And as a lazy pre-teen I was not about to do it all the time. So I lived in dirty clothes and didn't care. Once a week we would go over to grandmas house to spend the night and she would always make sure I had clean clothes. She made sure we all did when we were over, she did what she could. I always wished It was more but you can only stretch a sheet so thin before it tares too, you know?

We also had a family dog that nobody really took the time to take care of. Crap and pee was a common occurance when you walked down the hall, it got to the point where it didn't even phase me anymore.

By this point nobody had come to our house in years. We really kept an isolated boat. It was hard, I was basically trained to stay quiet and thats what I did. I put my headphones in and went off to my own. Kinda like now its funny how everything comes full circle when you don't process it. Some things you can't just wish away.

They demand to be felt.

Chapter 8

That House

That house was one of the places that haunted my nightmares. It never felt safe or like home. I atribute that to it residing right next to a cemetary, talk about the Heebe-Jeebies. It felt wrong. While I spent all of my time in my room, my sister was smarter. She always had a knack for the more social butterfly side of things. She built her own support system of friends. She didn't wait for one to poof into existance in our household. She made sure she found people who actually cared about her. That's not something I learned until much later in life. You really need a group of people you can count on, its what makes you feel human, it brings you back down to earth. It humanizes you to yourself, as wild as that sounds.

When I was a kid i thought of myself as one of the wild things, like in that book 'Where the Wild things are." I even came with the scraggly hair to match.

Avery Rose taught me it's necessary to have people in your corner, because you cannot do everything yourself. No matter how hard you try. The world is a big place to take on by yourself and you will fail every time. Trust me.

Chapter 9

Basketball

Throught my life my family always tried to in some way shape or form keep me busy. Idle hannds never thrive. When I was small it was dance, but I grew tired of that quickly, then I was pushed head first into basketball. 10 years of it to be exact. Now that sport and I have always gone back and fourth. It's very much a love/hate relationship, But i can sit here today and honestly tell you I know that game like the back of my hand.

All the way down to Passing Game.

Its a game that tests you, pushes you to your limits, and forces growth. With some perseverance you make those sidelines and suicides your bitch. The running is good for your lungs. It helps you breath more clearly.

So note to self, basketball, the sport that needs to be played, and it needs to be played more. A hell of a lot more, and if you haven't lately- Go pick up a Basketball and start dribbling.

Your hand eye coordination probably needs it.

Chapter 10

Staying Active

Through-out my messiness, I did also stay active. The hustle has and always will be real. Its what drove me. The desire for better. If you aren't pushing yourself you arent growing. Without growth, you die. So in a sense, the hustle is the whole point to life, you just have to find your hustle. It's different for everyone.

The shoe just has to fit, you can't force it like Cinderella's step sister tried.

It won't work.

You have to find your niche, for me it's writing.

For you?

Well, what do you dream about?

[harlockauxillia30k-blog]

♞ – Black Knight — Are you creative? In what ways?

Harlock and his men were dropped off on this moon three weeks ago, with the expectation to hold their designated fire base, eliminate hostile troops, and keep the landing zones clear for a future astartes reinforcement.

That was fine, because this particular jungle was nearly a death world. Perhaps not as mean as some, but soldiers were being eaten occasionally by stealthy plantlife, half the unit had minor to severe cases of what medics had begun to call ‘rickets’ (no actual name for the condition existed beforehand) due to irritable spores, the bogs sporadically placed around sucked you in, and if you stayed in too long, would act like quick sand, and the few animals encountered were all mean, terrifying, and hostile.

The locals had the right idea. They gave up on jungles for the most part and lived on mountain cities, using tunnels to move around faster. They did fight in the jungles with the Army however, just to oppose and attempt to eject the defenders. That was where groups like Harlock’s came in.

It could have been worse. Harlock had for himself a hill mercifully free of bogs and heavy foliage. After knocking some of the trees down he had the makings of a good position. Harlock cut trenches laterally into the earth in a steppe pattern on all sides, until the hill looked laced with a zigzagging set of cuts all around. The ammo dumps he kept in small dank dugouts, and his company set about adding to the dangerous landscape mines, barbed wire, and conventional traps and pitfalls.

The 2nd Centauri were poor at this at first, but Harlock had years of experience over these regular troops, and had learned most of these tasks firsthand. He lead seminars on the digging of the defenses, showed how to pile the sandbags just-so, made an example pitfall spike trap, and routinely reminded squad leaders how to identify them lest they cause friendly fire.

So, without incident beyond the terrifying jungle itself eating them alive, Harlock’s company dug into the hill, all the while the intrepid Captain lead recon missions whenever possible to try and get an idea of the immediate environs. Most of it was indecipherable, save that a swift running river was to the east, and awful bogs/swamp land surrounded it.  Beyond that, Harlock couldnt distinguish- perhaps due to his straining and status as an officer of infantry, not a forward observer or recon element in a light infantry force. The men under his command did not see much either, so the company settled into a calm misery. Harlock tried to keep them alert, and harshly punished sentries caught off guard, but could not keep the entire unit as sharp as he was. It was the jungle: it blocked sight lines, and due to the Centauri’s unfamiliarity with the terrain it would be easy to sneak up all the way to the treeline, and there was only a scant 55 meters from the furthest tree to the first trench line.

Harlock observed this, and ordered a set of small dirt-and-flakboard pillboxes be cut into the current trench line to cover the communication trenches connecting the first and second trench lines. He lightened up the garrison on the first trench line, and ordered his mortar men to have a set of ranges prepared as close as 10 meters of the first trench.

...

0200 Hours, Xan-C, Jungle Moon. Hill 100.

“Heyo, Jefferson. Captain’s a real stick in the mud eh? What with all the work on this hill. Soon the marines’ll come and we’ll just leave it all to rot anyway.”

Will said, sipping a bit of insta-recaff in his pit on the front trench. Jefferson, a sentry, lazily sweeped to and fro with a magnocular set, then dipped behind the dirt wall.

“Yeaaah, he busted Mark for nodding off on duty last night. Mark’s an ass and he’d have been shot by most officers, but- really, this hill is nothing special. I heard the other hills are only getting little skirmishes here and there. The real fight is in the Cenax River Valley.”

Jefferson gestured for a lho stick.

“Greedy bastard.”

Jefferson walked over and bent over the open fire, lighting the lho stick with the flame.

“You know Jeff that dumb trick is going to burn off your damn eyebrows someday, and I really can’t wait. Your a damn Lho-leech, you know that?”

Jefferson smiled, flashing his big dumb teeth “Well you know what they say, I’m the best Lho leach in the ArRGGGH”

A long knife was stabbed into Jefferson’s neck. Before Will could shout in terror, a garrot was on him. Will struggled.

“HRK- URGH! HN!”

Steps were heard through the first trench, as two figures covered in vines and leaves struggled with Will. The one that killed Jefferson laid his body down gently, then promptly ended the noisy scuffle with a stab to Will’s heart.

“Haaa-” Will exhaled, pushing the remaining air out of his lungs, both through his mouth and the new hole in his chest, and promptly went into shock and would die in a few seconds, as the steps approached. The two figures, now joined by a small squad, drew their weapons. they were equipped with midnight blue-green camoflage uniforms their dark skin was covered in similar paint, obscuring all but their eyes and the glint of blades and metal.

...

Sergeant York walked the trench line, looking for Sentries to beat. After the incident with Mark, he was on direct orders to make sure everyone was doing their jobs. It was a quiet night, as the unit was ordered to bed early and no one was singing drinking songs or playing cards. York himself was tired, but knew that that meant his sentries were probably nodding off too- that wasnt allowed.

Then he heard some odd grunting noises, and some foot scuffles. York narrowed his eyes. “In a trench? Filthy lewd degenerates” he thought, and holstered his sidearm. Before he walked into the front pit, York whistled sharply.

“OI! YOU FETHING DEGENERATES BEST NOT BE DOIN THE NASTY. SERGEANT YORK’S GONNA SODOMIZE YA BOTH WITH HIS RIFLE IF YA ARE. GET SMART YOU FETHING-”

York walked in and was shot twice by a silenced machine gun, thankfully both non-lethal hits. A team of dark figures in foliage were crouched about in the trench, waiting for him.

“ATTACK!-” York screamed, before three more rounds promptly killed the man.

Whistles sounded all over the hill. As men woke up and walked up to their posts, a wave of soldiers washed from the tree line, and only a few sentries got any purchase against them. In about two minutes, the first line was overrun with all hands dead.

Harlock woke at the first report of las rifle, and threw on a cloak and grabbed his saber and plasma gun. A man explained in broken gothic what was going on and Harlock silently nodded, then ordered the men to ready up and deploy. Harlock himself moved to the mortar pit at the apex of the hill.

The gunners were just waking up; they had been ordered to sleep in a small smelly dugout next to the guns.

“MORTAR PLATOON!” Harlock bellowed.

“FIRE COORDINATES! Ranging fire, adjust Killzone-C to the first trench! Fire for effect!”

A sergeant looked confused. “But that’s going to hit-”

“Do it, sergeant!”

The sergeant saluted and the teams went to work. Harlock bade them no heed and ran down the lines to the second trenchline, which had sleepy units of his guard.

“Throw your grenades! Frag the first trench!” Harlock yelled, running amongst the men, checking on one position in particular.

The communications overwatch MG.

Harlock looked inside the small dirt bunker and found it abandoned despite his orders. He also saw hostile forces moving up the communications trench- silently and unopposed.

Harlock didnthave time to think. He grabbed the machinegun, which was ill suited to his style and training, and did his best to lead the targets. At least it was fed into a box of stub rounds, meaning he wouldnt have to rely on a loader yet.

Harlock squeezed the trigger, and hit a soldier of the advancing enemy, the recoil wasting the other three rounds of his short burst. Harlock cursed; there went the element of surprise. The enemy reacted immediately. A few immediately grabbed the sides of the trench and tried to climb up. Other men near the back took cover on the entrance of the communications trench, while the foremost soldiers fired as they advanced, trying to push through regardless.

Harlock knew they would frag his pillbox soon, and with his mediocre aiming skills he would not suppress the trench line. So, he pulled out a personal flare gun, and fired it direclty into the communications trench.

Amusingly, his pistol aim was much better, hitting and burning a man with the flare with a square hit to the chest.

“FLAMER! GET A FETHING FLAMER TO THE COMMUNICATION TRENCHES!”

Harlock screamed, probably fruitlessly, as the first mortars began raining down on the enemy-packed first trench line. He fired again with the machine-gun, trying hard to control its aim and only fire in short bursts for accuracy.

...the night carried on, and when it departed so too did the remainder of the enemy raid force. All told, the hill’s defenders suffered 12% casualties, and were mentioned in dispatches for their quick thinking in the moment of crisis. After the battle at Hill 100, Imperial officers were ordered on pain of flogging to ensure a wider kill zone, and drill troops in proper garrison practice,

Harlock, knocked out from a frag grenade caving in part of his MG pit, was nominated for regimental citation by his lieutenants; a motion which was quickly denied by senior regimental command.

[ordinarilychallenged]

I am not mature enough for this

So my baby sister is turning 21 in October, and has asked me to come visit for her birthday, since she has no friends her age to take her out and give her a proper ~21st~ experience. Me, being sick and with really nothing better to do, agreed. I felt bad because I had no girls my age to take me out for that birthday, and my mom pressured me to go to have a responsible adult there to look out for her. And, my dad agreed to pay for the ticket, because he wants to see me...which would all be good things, except for one factor. The Stepmonster.

Yeah, I know, it’s a tale as old as time. Evil Stepmother™ is a cliche and should really not be a thing that exists in the real world. Now, I know not all step parents are the spawn of the devil...but trust me, this woman is. Let’s set aside all of the abuse I endured when I lived with them, that’s a whole other rant in itself. What fucking infuriates me is that the abuse has carried onto my little sister, and my father has been complicit and even started participating in it. 

My sister works full time, has her own car, and is saving up to move out with her boyfriend. Her and my dad moved into our old house about a year ago after Stepmonster kicked them out for the 3rd time, and my dad decided to stop renting and instead live in a house HE WOULDNT BE KICKED OUT OF every other month. My sister left to visit me and my mom for the holidays, and I flew back out with her to spend time with my family there...and there she was, in all her glory....moved in. Satan’s mistress. No word, just up and out of the blue reconciled and moved in. It didn’t surprise me to hear that she was being evicted from her own home, and unfortunately, had no where else to go. She lacked that sort of compassion for my dad and sister both, but of course /she/ deserved a place to stay, for the sake of my poor little brother who was only conceived as a bargaining chip in their relationship. During that trip I held it together as best I could, I saw firsthand how that woman treated my sister. Her very existence ~upset~ her. She’d make a huge show of leaving the room any time my sister walked in, and all we could do is roll our eyes. My dad seemed to buy into this victim act, and blamed my sister for ‘setting everyone on edge’. I quickly shut this down when he tried to get me to play into it, but I wasn’t surprised to hear it continued after I left. After all, the second my dad involved us in their relationship, we held her accountable for the shitty way she treated him. Of course she’d want to push us out of his life. Unsurprisingly, after a lucrative offer came up at work, she married him 3 months shortly after that. He’d proposed to her several times over the past 5 years, where each and every time she said no. I even had suspicions she was seeing someone else when I lived with them during for a time. But, with no house and no other appealing options, she finally decided to dig in her claws for good. Then the talk of what he’d do with this money came in. He flat out told my sister that he and his blushing bride ‘agreed’ that he could not help her out financially, at all, unless he extended that same amount to all 8 of her children. The children who physically and verbally assaulted both me and him, who screamed in our faces that we weren’t good enough to be a part of their family, that we were awful, horrible people...they’re all now entitled to the things my dad has worked hardest for. The business he built with me and my sister’s future in mind. A business that my mother supported. We never felt entitled to that money, but I’ll be damned if those brats see a dime after the way they treated him. Spoke to him.

Because that’s all he is to them, a dollar sign. To me and my sister, he’s our dad. He’s the one we’ve wanted to have in our lives, but his new wife holds the keys. We’ve bent over backwards kissing her and her kids asses over the years, only to be told it wasn’t good enough. We’ve held our tongues and kept our heads down for the sake of maintaining a relationship with our father, while this woman gives free reign to her children to brutalize and belittle the man who’s been single-handedly supporting them and her for years. She got her kids to drive me away, and now she’s doing her damndest to make sure my sister doesn’t feel welcome in the house she’s known since birth. The woman trashes the house with her kids, but chastises my sister if a single thing is left out of place. She makes it difficult for her to park, takes her laundry out half done, gets my dad to scream and holler at her for making her ~uncomfortable~ by just being herself. And this is with my sister BARELY BEING THERE to begin with. She told me she literally only stops there to sleep and shower, and the rest of the time she avoids the place like the plague. My dad wonders why my sister never wants to be there, and blames her for wanting her to spend so much time with her boyfriend. He doesn’t realize that he drove her into a relationship that serious because that boy is literally the only security she has in the world. The one person who is there for her, unconditionally.  I can’t watch this anymore. I left to take care of myself, but I can’t stand by while this woman treats my sister and my father like garbage. Cause believe me, I’ve tried. I tried to make this whole blended family shit work, to make amends with this woman even after all the vile shit she did to my mother during my parents divorce. (Calling her, telling her he didn’t love her or his family anymore. Telling her that all her friends and neighbors, who she made a point to hang out with, liked her more. Isolating my mother and eventually driving her out of the fucking state. She made sure to get pregnant before my parents even started the process of divorce. I love my brother dearly, but I know he was no accident. His mother barely pays attention to him if it isn’t to make a show for my dad.) If she at least made my dad happy, I could live with it. But all they do is scream and holler at each other. She refuses to work, refuses to take care of the house or my brother...goes out of her way to abuse my sister for what I can only assume is to get her to leave. Because once she has my dad alone, she’s free to treat him as she likes. Before I moved in with them, he had learned to just take it. She blames me for him learning to stand up for himself, if only a little. I have to do something, I can’t just be complicit. I’ve behaved perfectly and maturely and smiled and held my tongue from the age of 16, which is more than I can say for this grown ass, 50 fucking year old hellion. She may have married into this family for money, but she damn well is going to have to earn it. That fucking leech is going to learn to treat my father and my sister with respect before my trip is over. Anything less is unacceptable.

[byjove-cannibalcove]

I would like to see a sort of phantom-of-the-opera themed fic, where Will works for the opera, not as one of the singers, but in the orchestra pit.

(long stream-of-thought summary of the story below)

Will is a very good player, and the orchestra MOSTLY likes one another, so everything is technically very stable where he stands, better yet that he has no aspirations to first-chair (which is more like being class president than anything, everyone in your section looks to you for queues and to match energy, it isn't actually a rockshow type thing) so technically he is quietly doing his thing. Very talented and stable, but not a magically amazing perfect player. He has earned his place and he doesn't show off.

But there is a newer guy, put into the pit because he’s the nephew of the new theatre owner. He is not amazing. He’s not the WORST either, but he tries to show off when he should be harmonizing, he plays too loud, and his bow transitions aren't as smooth as they could be. It is really only noticeable to the other violin players, the audience isn’t going to pick up on it, so they just grin and bear it.

Not always, but often, there is something like a ball in the front after a show. The rich patrons get to meet the singers, or the orchestra, whatever, and attendance is more or less mandatory. In the latest of these, Will meets Hannibal, who is very new to the area, had always made it a poitn to donate to theatres, but has only come to a few showings so far. Will cant quite fathom why, of EVERYONE at this party, Hannibal would zero-in on the man that most clearly does not want to be there, but fine. 

There is a bit where they shake hands and Hannibal turns Will’s hand over and says ‘i see you are one of the strings’. (technically that's lefthanded, lets say Will was caught off guard and was holding a drink)

Will is surprised, says yes, he’s one of the violins. 

Hannibal seems... pained... Asks if he is new and when Will says he has been here for a few years, Hannibal relaxes.

Will points out that he can tell Hannibal is a chef from the callouses on HIS fingers, and Hannibal is clearly pleased, though he of course corrects him. 

They talk a bit, Hannibal is casually asking about the theatre itself, who works there, the management, the actors, the orchestra. It's a nice conversation, honestly, Hannibal has actual questions and seems to know what he’s asking about, it’s not just mindless ‘i wish I could play an instrument but its too hard, i have a life, unlike you hahah’ type of chatter.

Will to point out the newest member of the strings, jokingly telling him that Hannibal now knows more about the theatre than the owners kid, “too bad YOU don’t play”

Hannibal plays a little, but not violin unfortunately.

The conversation is very mild, and the next weekend he sees Hannibal again, socializing a bit more, but a smile does pass between them at least, Will leaves early i bet after that exact ‘you must have no life outside of violin haha’ joke happens (which is technically true).

It is a complete surprise when, a week or two later, the (many) people who sleep at the theater come downstairs to the body of the new violinist, strung up from the rafters like a marionette, they might not have noticed if not for the pool of blood.

The police naturally are of no help, because this is the 1800s, it basically comes down to asking all the violinists if they had a grudge, getting overly aggressive with a few ,then deciding it was probably more to do with his wealthy father.

The very superstitious people are now acting like anything odd in the theatre must be the ghost of the violinist, and SOME of them think a ghost killed him. Its a lot of nonsense, but they are all artists and theater people so OF COURSE it goes to their heads, they start coming up with more and more dramatic stories, until nearly everyone superstitious (aka nearly everyone) is now in a PANIC over it. Will snaps at a few people over it, but honestly everyone is snapping at everyone so it is hardly noticed.

They are preparing for a new show and one of the dancers trips. It happens occasionally but they all FLIP and start saying she was shoved. A few of the actors are in hysterics over this, one of the singers passes out. They call for the theatre doctor (that was a thing, lots of people there and lots of injuries) (would this be chilton?) he comes, but also comes Hannibal! Will is strangely thrown off by this, he hadn’t really expected to meet him outside of those parties, or possibly ever again. Chilton probably starts condescendingly telling the female performers to all calm down, talks about hysteria, mass panic (which is true) but he's really shitty about it. Hannibal tends to the singer and calms her down, is really sweet and gentle in a way that will clearly have her falling for him. He might say something like ‘even if nothing but their fear is attacking them, yelling at them won't steady their hearts’

Will naturally does not fall for him (not even a little bit, even if he is totally charmed and okay maybe he fell a LITTLE) but he is invited for dinner at Hannibal's somehow and rides in a carriage with him and possibly even helps make dinner, i dont know. Hannibal maybe hasnt hired a maid yet and said his house is lonely.

They probably do NOT kiss, because 1800s, but that atmosphere is THICK

More accidents are happening at the opera because of panic and the fucking owner tells the audience they are haunted (either sincerely, in a ‘forgive us if it isn’t perfect tonight’ or a ‘isnt this exciting?’ way. Probably the first since his sons dead). This panics the backstage people MORE, the dancers tumble, the singers miss notes, its a MESS, Will cant help but laugh at it. (secretly, in the audience, Hannibal is amused too, he had not expected this performance to go well after all, and it was more a comedy story anyways)

Hey guess who is one of the set designers? Hobb! Hey did you know his daughter was the singer that passed out earlier? 

Do you wonder if Hobbs would kill a few of the other singers to move her up the hierarchy a little bit, disguising it as either a ghost or the original killer? I am 100% sure he would do that, actually, but that's just me.

(Abigail is  “little angel of music that could” but actually she isn’t nearly good enough to be top-billing, but TOO BAD Hobbs is going to kill his way up the ranking anyways. Lots of the workers are going to quit, but nope, he’s just-a-killin’ left and right, she’s going to be a STAR)

Will is subtly investigating these murders because it ISN’T A GOD DAMNED GHOST and possibly even getting Hannibal (who he is definitely in love with but won't let himself touch because Laws) to help him out on occasion. Will notices the pattern of Abigail always moving up, but technically it could be any one of a couple lower-ranking girls, he only notices Abigail really because it happens TWICE and her dad works there and doesn't seem worried for her.

He tells Hannibal, since he isn’t sure what to do with this since its basically just a feeling and the police probably won't listen (lets say he has a reputation as a weirdo or something, or some past scandal he doesn't want anyone looking into (gay? crimes? asylums? witch? Who knows, all, neither, Will wouldn't do well in the 1800s, he doesn't even do well in 2010)) so it basically comes down to confronting him directly and scaring him off. He takes hannibal with him.

It does not go well.

Betcha Mr Hobbs tries to kill Will

Betcha Will fights him off

Betcha Hobbs runs STRAIGHT for his daughter onstage

GUARANTEE he slits her throat,  because she is doomed to have this happen in every universe

Will does not shoot (why would he have a gun at his violin job) but probably beats him half to death, while Hannibal holds Abigail's throat closed

They both end up covered in blood ON STAGE (this is a rehearsal, which is why Will isn’t in the pit right now) and everyone sees it. 

Somehow everyone STILL ends up deciding that the phantom in the opera house had possessed Hobbs, somehow, because no right-minded man would ever try to kill his daughter.

Probably you cant survive a throat slitting in 1800s, but she does anyways, because Hannibal.

Hobbs is arrested, but largely for the sake of asylums and exorcisms or something, he’s alive and will probably see his daughter fairly often when she visits him, but she cant sing anymore so she might be demoted to set work (not HIS job but like... heavy hard work girls wouldnt usually do, because the other innocent set guy doesnt want her ending up on the street. she takes to the job well and will always have a croaky voice)

Probably Will goes home with Hannibal Abigail is stable, presumably because they are ‘both’ stressed and in need of comfort. They bath, seperately, but they end up in front of the fire less put-together than usual, comfortable clothes, and Will cant help peaking at Hannibal, trying to be subtle. Maybe Hannibal is like ‘maybe its not the best time to show you, but i bought you a gift’

Its a new and VERY fine violin, to replace his aging one, and WIll plays music for Hannibal, glad to find his shaking fingers steady on the strings, like they always do. 

Id like it if somehow they could dance, but i guess its not really workable. They definitely kiss, but Will pulls away from it and they go to bed separately.

Soon enough things wind down enough for Will to learn about murders happening OUTSIDE the theater, in other parts of town, and he will actually end up finally talking to Hannibal about his feelings. Hannibal is unrepentant, which Will takes to be because Hannibal is foreign. They kiss, and after several more dinners and things at the theatre calming down, these two FINALLY have sex, that whole deal, being 100% for-sure illegally in love.

 and just as suddenly, Will figure out that Hannibal is the RIpper

Will probably goes to visit Hobbs, to ask why Hobbs thought killing was worthwhile, but its so COMPLETELY not why Hannibal kills that it actually puts Hannibal into perspective for him

Will probably tries to tell the police that Hannibal is a killer. They dont believe him. Will outright tells Hannibal that he had tried to turn him in but it didnt work. Things are tense, but Will eats the meat and then they PROBABLY end up having rough+tender ‘i know you are a murderer’ vs ‘im a murderer who loves you, and to the police that love is the worse crime’ sex, because im trash

Let's then have a VERY public arrest of Will for (pick your fav, past or vague gay actions, general witchiness, insanity, being born in to a cult under a different name, i dont care, pick your poison) , which they caught after someone at the station recognizing him from SOMEWHERE but it took a few days for them to be sure from where. He’s arrested and of course put into the same asylum as Hobbs. They probably never even cross paths, but it doesnt matter, Will knows that they are in the same place for wildly different reasons, but in the end its all the same to the powers-that-be

Have Hannibal somehow save Will, possibly by already working at, coming to visiting, applying to work at that asylum himself, or maybe taking him out on ‘a walk’ and actually bringing him to a waiting carriage and running away.

Either way EVENTUALLY Hannibal manages to spring him, they run away together, both their own type of criminal, and it more or less ends on Will, very unhappily, deciding that if his life is a crime ANYWAYS, if his love for someone can have him sent to the same punishment, he might as well eat people, because fuck it. 

Uhh, but more angsty and poetic, he IS an artist after all.

[tayegi]

wo w ee i am so excited to see where u take equilibrium! tbh i really like how u r writing jungkook (not in the obsessive relationship sense but like) because it feels like u r really giving us an insight to his mind and how complex of a character he is and like what drives him.. idk if that makes sense lol but i really enjoy the entire story and cant wait to see how it develops !!

Here are the rest of my equilibrium asks under the cut! I am so truly sorry that I just simply do not have the time to answer the rest of them (besides wouldnt you guys rather have me expending my energy on writing ch 12? ;)), but be assured that i have read each and every one of these messages multiple times over and appreciated them all

bonyg said:Equilibrium is really giving me mixed feelings, it's so complicated that I don't know if I want oc with Jungkook or Jimin. It's just not healthy to be in this relationship :"( if I were oc I'd definitely left them both even if I'm gonna die without Jimin :'( it's getting more exciting and I can't wait to know what's gonna happen between oc and Jimin. Thank you for updating ^^

jaaneman-s said:Hi, I don't if this sounds or rude or not, but I'd like to thank you? or idk, I was born in a very manly culture? I know (on my own) how certain things that look okay in this culture but are not in equalness and respect to the woman happen but reading equilibrium has like, opened my eyes a little bit? When I read ch.11 I just sat down and spent a while thinking about everything and how different you view stuff from my point, and how this is actually right? anyway keep the great work ily ♥

Anonymous said:pls read equilibrium at my funeral🙏🏻

Anonymous said:oh oH OH is it going to be one of the cases where the boy "misinterprets" the girls basic human kindness for flirting?!!?? If so, @ the character: go to hell

Anonymous said:Well, it seems like JK (and a little Y/N) has tipped the balance and now everything is coming crumbling down. Who does JK think he is?? I can't imagine Y/N could let the weekend go by without getting close to JM, especially since he needs her. I'm just anticipating the moment when jimin realizes and everything is out in the open. I really loved this chapter! You can see how bold JK is getting knowing that Y/N will do anything he wants, just for his cooperation. Suspenseful!

Anonymous said:me rn: *prays for a joon hyung to sweep OC off her feet and abandon JK and JM* (seriously i'm such weightlifting fairy trash it hurts) (also do you know where i can find my very own joon hyung 😭😭😭😭)

Anonymous said:Reads part 11 Equilibrium -insert jungshook meme here-

Anonymous said:Don't be bothered by those ungrateful readers who thinks you're obligated to write them more than 3k words. Seriously, did they somehow get the impression that they're paying you for this? Just write at your own pace so you can produce quality stuff.

Anonymous said:Finally got around to reading Chapter 11 & if I'm the oc I'd be on a plane up outta there so quick! Set Jimin up with some soup & a blanket, & scoot skedaddle my way out of dodge. Jungkook isn't about to talk to me like that, thinking dick isn't abundant & low value. Shit... Also bless your writing, each Equilibrium update has me on pins & needles~

Anonymous said:I just like... What if Jungkook comes home unexpectedly and finds y/n and Jimin getting it on and then flies into a murderous rage, severely injures Jimin and kidnaps y/n. The second part could be Jimin feeling all guilty and trying to find her while she tries to escape

Anonymous said:Holy shit I'm convinced that Jungkook poisoned Jimin because he's going to be away for the weekend and he's paranoid and crazy as shit that the OC might do something with Jimin so he made sure he's unable to do shit with her 😵 cuz when he called to ask her where she was for his graduation, he didn't even seem all that surprised that he's sick, he just cared about where the OC was.

Anonymous said:Twist end: OC learns boxing and kicks Junglebooks ass

Anonymous said:theory: part two will be titled monogamy and Jungkook and OC will have an abusive relationship. Cause you seem pretty adamant on the idea of abuse (which is 10000% not a bad thing for obvious reason) so i feel like you are taking this story as a lesson for girl to see the warning sign. and part 3 will be about her leaving him finally and becoming single or whatever

Anonymous said:I don't want to defend the oc by saying this but in equilibrium she clearly is right now the one who is fucked up The other 2 get what they want after jk's scary possessiveness and if she wouldn't be controlled by her feelings towards jimin then maybe she would've already left She has also fault but earlier they took advantage of each other's feelings and everyone got something that they wanted but rn oc is like trapped in a cage & can't even touch jimin Idk maybe I'm the only one who thinks so

Anonymous said:I don't understand equilibrium??? Like I thought it was sweet that JK wanted her all to himself but after chap. 11 I think it's just plain creepy with his possessive obsession towards her... like WTF! I kind of want to see Jimin's side of the story like why is he in love with JK and what is with JK not giving a f**k about Jimin at all like when he was the one who initiated this relationship anyways WHUT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED!

Anonymous said:I mean it Jungkook will kill them both. Like this boy has the makings of a serial killer. Why the fuck does the oc not love herself?? Why are you trying to create your happiness from the sparse attention given to you by a man??!! Why the fuck are these people so dysfunctional?? Even Jimin and Jungkook they're basing they're entire happiness on people who they know don't care!! If there's ever a lesson here its self love first before you can love someone else.

Anonymous said:Just read the new Equilibrium chapter (11) and wow JK is absolutely terrifying in there. I'm so glad there are stories out there that portray abuse the way it should be portrayed and not romanticized. I really just want the OC to get the hell out of that house and faaaaar away from this messed up relationship ): she needs to run away from him asap like forget Jimin he ain't helping you either just run while you still can girl!!!!

Anonymous said:iF JUNGKOOK GAVE JIMIN SOMETHING IM ABOUT TO GIVE HIM THE BIGGEST WHOOPING EVER

Anonymous said:Regarding Equilibrium, I reread some chapters after I was done with 11. The necklace bit in 11 makes the sex scene in 4 kinda freaky. The way Jungkook yanks on OC's chain and how he got angry when OC said that she didn't know where hers was. It's like Jungkook finds security in the couple necklaces because he associates it with OC being his and when OC doesn't wear the necklace, he feels that his possession has been taken away from him. Maybe I am thinking too much but it was such a cool detail.

Anonymous said:I have a feeling that jimin's going to witness something that's gonna break his heart bc if you look at the situation then jimin should be happy bc he gets his alone time with jk who he loves and he doesn't have to pretend to love the oc that often bc jk doesn't let her go near him and if jimin sees something that breaks his heart(jungkook&oc)then maybe he would leave both and so they would all go their own ways(?)none of them would have a reason to stay but maybe jk will become even scarier idk

Anonymous said:You should just have the OC in Equilibrium go full on Bruce Lee on JK and JM

Anonymous said:Chap 11 in Equilibrium freaked me out btw. Especially after the sex scene when OC watches Jimin sleep. You wrote "tug" so that implies that OC used her hands. So when OC finds her hands restricted by Jungkook, that honestly scared me. Also in that scene, it was interesting for OC to say that she would do anything to comfort Jimin but seemed to take back that statement when she was restricted by Jungkook. It's like OC has become more afraid of Jungkook than she is in love with Jimin.

Anonymous said:In ch11 of equilibrium it was really sad when she compared herself to a pet... like girl, you're a functioning human being, an adult that can take care of herself. You're able to get out of this cage that's been created around you. It's scary what manipulative people can do to someone but at least she knows what messed up situation she's in now and not like... being attracted(?) to the crazies JK is pushing on her

zeloandhobiaremyhubbies said:Hi there ^^ I'm a new reader, and can I just say I love your writing skills and the story line so far. With that being said, coming from a person who has a close friend in a manipulative/almost borderline abusive relationship, I can honestly say I hope the OC get out of that relationship, especially with Jungkook. There's a thin line between being jealous/slightly possessive and possessive and pretty much controlling. Ugh! I want to know what happens next, but I'm also scared to know as well.

Anonymous said:What do you mean you don't know where is the chain OC(me)?! How can I be so careless?? What if Jimin will find it, no I am sure he already did 😑 and now probably the person I precious the most hate me cuz I took his love of life... This shit (relationship) is not falling fast enough huh? Good job me, good job 😒😒

holdingbackforsnow said:I've read equilibrium 11 and somehow I have the feeling that Jimin knew. Even before Jeongguk showed how messed up he is for us readers. I feel like, that's why Jimin entered the relationship. Maybe he was worried for the OC and wanted to act as a buffer in between her and Jeongguk (including his feelings for Jeongguk) that would explain his phone call, when he was gone on business and even how he wanted the OC to go to graduation so badly. I feel like Jimin knows more than we think...

Anonymous said:As much as I anticipate every update, I hope you are taking care of yourself too! Even as an undergrad, I still get stressed & overwhelmed with my workload so I really worry about your well being since being a phd student is so much more stressful and you still give us great content. Thank you so much & I hope you can take some time for yourself as well! ik remembering to take care of yourself is the last thing on your mind with a huge workload but please please don't neglect your well being!

Anonymous said:Oh god Jungkook in Equilibrium is really a psychopath. The fact that he's so manipulative and lacks empathy for others; it's quite terrifying to think about how long he's been manipulating everyone without anyone realizing it. As a psychology major it's really interesting to read a character like this but it's scary how so many people see his behavior as okay esp since there's so many real cases of abusive relationships like this, it makes me really sad. Ty for shining light to issues like these

Anonymous said:Wow, jk has really started to go crazy-something's gonna blow up soon.love the tension you are building though. It's really appreciated the time you take to build an intricate storyline. and not to focus on negative stuff, but for real, if any misogynistic messages pops up now, then... While I think most readers (but apparantly not all) saw the possessive traits of jk in earlier chapters despite it being somewhat(but not very) subtle, this time you rly spelled it out

lastshadowmonkeys said:to stay with Jimin. Everyone's being manipulative as fuck and it can never end well in my opinion...This is so...Wow, and it all comes out of your brain and imagination, that's amazing! I'm so excited to see where this all will go and if Jungkook will just lose his shit (or any of them really, someone is bound to lose their shit) and to see where Jimin stands with oc now and wow so many questions! I'm intrigued! Amazing job, thank you so much for writing this piece of art!

lastshadowmonkeys said:after that, but woops boy was i wrong. He just turned full on psycho, and i have the impression Jimin is not even interested in her in that way and never has been. That leaves OC to be in a relationship with men who don't love her at all, in the end, which is so so sad and i just wish she'd get over her love (or is it obsession, really?) for Jimin, so she could get the hell out of that toxic situation. She's being manipulative herself, going through all that misery to somehow be able (3)

lastshadowmonkeys said:blowing my mind and i have immense respect for that. I'm not lying when i say i'm trying hard to improve my plot skills haha, since my mind tends to be too chaotic to ever get any structure in anything. I enjoy your stories so much. As for Equilibrium, shit's about to go down man and i just can't fucking wait to see what will happen. At first i was rooting for Jungkook and the oc since it seemed like he just had pent up frustrations from being misunderstood? I thought it would get better (2)

lastshadowmonkeys said:Hey Lu! Even though my asks get lost a lot of the time, it doesn't stop me from telling you how much i appreciate the fact you make time to write such wonderful, intriguing stories to make us actually think about important matters. Equilibrium has become one of my top favourite fics ever, and i just love how you can make every chapter like a little piece of a giant puzzle. You write so well, and they're actually plot goals! To imagine you're a grad student on top of all that is just (1)

got7boystobang said:I feel like (in fact; i knew it due to the fact that u hate nochu so much) the end of Equilibrium is going to be such a downfall for jk just like what happened in jjk must die and that crys drabble idk how tho but u just always have ways to kill jkook cause i bet you've millions of pictures in your head on how to😂😂😂 i love your dedication!!!!! lol

Anonymous said:Ugh, Jungkook is threatening people now? Yeah, it's time to call the cops. That's scary. I felt uneasy the whole chapter. I asked myself several times while reading, "Yo, what's wrong with this kid? And what's up with Jimin? Is he just CHOOSING not to acknowledge some of the fucked up shit that's going on around him?" And actually, homegirl is holding up a lot better in this chapter than I thought she would. Interesting. Thanks for another chapter! Looking forward to the next. :)

Anonymous said:Omg so intense!! Gosh I just don't know what to expect anymore, I'm glad there'll be alone time with Jimin but then what if Jungkook finds out, and what if-what if-gah! Can't wait to see what will unfold next, thank you once again for updating even though you're busy~

Anonymous said:WTF OC JUST FUCKING DROPKICK JUNGKOOK IN THE FACE AND GTFO!!! HOMEBOY IS CRAZY AS FUCK